Performance
Performance has been tested on the AMD Ryzen platform which contains the Ryzen 5 3600, 6-core processor, ASRock X570 Extreme4 motherboard, MSI GTX1660Ti graphics card, and Crucial P1 1TB SSD. Used OS is Windows 10 x64 and the latest updates.
Our comparison includes overclocking results and settings at which the Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 was stable. Maximum stable settings on our motherboard were DDR4-3800 CL16-19-19 at default 1.35V. We were unable to run it stable above DDR4-4000. It’s not really important as Ryzen 3000 architecture causes much better performance with infinity fabric clock set to 1:1. When the memory clock is set past DDR4-3800, then it’s automatically switching to a 1:2 ratio. We could see a similar performance at DDR4-4600+ what is simply out of range for this memory kit.
As usual, we will start with AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark, which is probably the best software for synthetic memory speed tests.
In the AIDA64 we can see that memory is scaling well up to DDR4-3800 and reacts better on memory clock than the timings. Memory’s XMP profile performs well and seems well-tuned for new AMD processors. All results are pretty high and slightly higher than what we could see on Micron based memory at similar settings.
PCMark 10, which base on popular applications, is showing that performance is not much different at all tested settings. Depends on the test, results are slightly higher or lower, but the XMP profile provides optimal performance in all tests.
Rendering benchmarks like Cinebench series, are also showing that memory settings don’t matter much and all of our settings are providing high performance.
It’s time on some 3D benchmarks from UL(previously Futuremark).
3DMark and VRMark series benchmarks are showing higher performance gains related to memory settings at lower graphics details. It’s because less demanding environment uses more CPU power for calculations. In all tests, the XMP profile provides optimal performance, which is only slightly worse than that of DDR4-3800.
I also won’t hide that for the first time. I see such a profound difference between memory settings in most of our benchmarks. In VRMark it even looks like a mistake, but it’s not. All settings except DDR4-3200 have nearly the same results. The difference between them is usually less than 0.5FPS. Since we use an average of multiple runs, then the average FPS is exactly the same.
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. There would be a higher difference between our results and that at lower memory clock like DDR4-2400. However, I doubt that anyone would decide on a standard memory for a gaming PC.
New games like Farcry 5 or Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p are showing a bit different scenario than usual. We are used to seeing about the same performance difference in both these games, but in this case, Farcry 5 is showing up to 3FPS improvement at higher memory clock. The Tomb Raider, on the other hand, shows exactly the same performance at all our settings.
I guess that gamers will be fully satisfied with the performance of the Viper 4 Blackout. Regardless of which frequency we choose, results are high. Those who are looking for something more can take a look at the next page of this review.
