Performance
Performance has been tested on the Ryzen 3000 platform which contains the 3900X, 12-core processor, ASRock X570 Extreme4 motherboard, MSI GTX1660Ti graphics card and Crucial P1 1TB SSD with installed Windows 10 x64.
All tests were performed on the Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 memory but various settings so all know what to expect, even if used motherboard won’t support the highest frequencies.
As usual, we will start with AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark, which is probably the best software for synthetic memory speed tests.
As we can see, results in AIDA64 clearly show a higher bandwidth at higher memory frequency. It does not always go in pair with the performance as there are many variables which have to be considered on new chipsets.
PCMark 10, which base on popular applications, is showing that performance is scaling better with memory frequency than latency. Ballistix’s XMP profile shows optimal performance in this benchmark and about the same situation we could see on the X299 platform and the Elite DDR4-3600 memory reviewed previously.
Rendering benchmarks like Cinebench series, are showing that memory settings don’t matter much and all of our settings are fast. However, in this test, we already see that the test platform affects results and can be a bit misleading. Because of the infinity fabric dividers, memory at DDR4-3600 shows similar or even better performance than any setting at DDR4-4000 or above. We have to remember it’s the way Ryzen 3000 acts and it’s not the memory fault.
3D benchmarks from UL are showing similar results but here DDR4-4400 CL18-22-22 offers the best performance.
VR benchmarks from UL are showing quite unexpected results. Usually, we can see that the highest frequency or the optimal infinity fabric divider is the best. Here the XMP setting performs the best. It’s not a big difference but still counts.
More demanding 3D tests at the display resolution up to 8K are not much different. In Final Fantasy XV and Superposition benchmarks results are slightly better at higher memory frequency but nothing that would profoundly affect our gaming experience.
The latest release of the Assassin’s Creed at 1080p is confirming what I said before. Depends on the game, performance may be better at a DDR4-3600 and tighter timings than at anything past DDR4-3800 because of the mentioned infinity fabric divider in AMD Ryzen processors. As far as we can’t see any difference in the Metro Exodus, then Assassin’s Creed is up to 3FPS faster at DDR4-3600 CL16-17-17.
I’m sure that the Elite DDR4-4000 memory will satisfy all gamers. At the same time, I feel like AMD users won’t see a special difference between the DDR4-4000 version and the theoretically slower DDR4-3600. On the other hand, those who are looking for the highest overclocking memory should have a lot of fun with the Elite DDR4-4000. Some of our results are on the next page of this review.
