Performance
Performance has been tested on the AMD Ryzen 4000 platform, which contains the Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G, 6-core processor, MSI X570 Unify motherboard, ASUS TUF RTX3070 OC graphics card, and Crucial P5 500GB SSD. Used OS is Windows 10 x64 and the latest updates.
Our comparison includes overclocking results and settings at which the Ballistix RGB DDR4-3600 was stable. The maximum stable settings on our motherboard were DDR4-4133 CL18-22-21 at 1.45V. The maximum recommended for AMD Ryzen 3000 will be DDR4-3600 CL16-17-17 1.35V, so a bit modified XMP profile. On the other hand, it’s not so much faster to waste time on additional tuning. Ryzen 5000, even though supposed to have a stronger memory controller, runs about the same as Ryzen 3000, so you can’t count on anything more. This is the reason why in tests had been used Ryzen 4650G. It offers a much stronger memory controller and Infinity Fabric frequency tied with memory clock at 1:1 ratio up to 2200MHz so DDR4-4400 or even some more.
Some more photos as this memory kit looks amazing.
As usual, we will start with AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark, which is probably the best software for synthetic memory speed tests.
A high capacity causes memory to run at a bit more relaxed timings and also is significantly harder for overclocking. Considering that, DDR4-4133 at 128GB RAM is an impressive result. Not many users will be able to do that, but we present how much memory can do without real limitations on the environment. Overclocking this memory gave us up to 7GB/s higher bandwidth and about 8ns lower latency. The XMP setting in the AIDA64 benchmark showed around 90ns latency while the best results were already around 82ns. Even though it seems not the best, then we have to think that it won’t be much better on this platform because of the huge memory capacity and the requirement to use more relaxed sub-timings. If we use the same memory on Ryzen 5000 processors, then we can count on around 70ns latency at XMP settings what is already a good result.
PCMark 10 is showing us high performance in mixed load tests. DDR4-3600 should give us optimal results without further overclocking, but if we wish, then we can improve them some more. All results are high, even if we compare them to lower capacity memory at tighter sub-timings.
In Cinebench series benchmarks, results are similar. These tests are not using much data, so results are based more on the CPU speed. We can still see the difference in results.
It’s time for some 3D benchmarks from UL(previously Futuremark).
3DMark and VRMark series benchmarks are showing similar results at all memory settings. These benchmarks show higher differences in CPU and physics tests, but it’s a low percentage of the total score.
The highest difference can be seen in lighter tests for the hardware, and we see higher FPS. Especially in VRMark Cyan Room, there is a high difference, up to 10FPS between settings. The Orange Room is clearly limited as we’ve seen not much lower FPS using significantly slower graphics cards.
More demanding 3D tests at the display resolution up to 8K are not much different. In Final Fantasy XV, results are the best on modified XMP profile. The XMP profile delivers optimal performance in both tests.
Results in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider or FarCry 5 are reacting well to memory settings. The results were made at default settings and 1080p display resolution so we could see the differences more. The 1080p is still the most popular display resolution for gaming. In both games, we can see up to 8FPS difference because of memory settings. This is how we can still improve the performance of the fastest DDR4-3600 memory kit based on 32GB modules. Once more, it’s impressive.
To show you how well is performing Ballistix RGB memory, we had to use Ryzen 4000 platform as only this way we could show the differences at default, XMP settings, and anything above that. Our results clearly show that even though we can achieve better results, then the XMP profile of the Ballistix RGB DDR4-3600 memory is high enough to satisfy the most demanding users who are searching for the fastest memory at the highest possible capacity.
On the next page, I will tell you some more about the overclocking of the Ballistix RGB.
