Performance and Overclocking
Performance was tested on already mentioned MSI B350 Mortar Arctic motherboard with the latest BIOS. Used processor is quad core Ryzen 1200 what is pretty good option for a budget gaming PC. Memory performance is not limited by this processor so you can expect that benchmarks like AIDA64 will show similar memory bandwidth on higher AMD Ryzen processors. In 3D tests was used EVGA GTX1060 6GB graphics card. All tests were performed on Win10 Pro x64 operating system with the latest updates.
We are starting from AIDA64 so synthetic benchmark which is showing us memory bandwidth.
AMD Ryzen loves fast memory and we see that in all AIDA64 tests. Memory read is nicely going up at each higher frequency step reaching nearly 47GB/s at XMP settings of DDR4-3200 CL16-18-18. Performance is high and seems optimal for gaming or other activities.
AMD Ryzen is not affected by memory latency as much as Intel chipsets. We won’t focus on lowering timings as it’s not helping in general performance and users simply can’t see the difference.
Memory write and copy results in AIDA64 are also high and we can see significant difference between settings. Anything below DDR4-3066 will show performance drop regardless of used memory timings. Quick conclusion, higher frequency is better if you have AMD Ryzen PC.
HyperPi 32M is showing us performance in Pi calculations. Also here higher frequency affects overall performance. Even between DDR4-3066 and DDR4-3200 is about 40 seconds difference what is huge step considering that both settings have similar memory timings.
In rendering difference is not as visible but still we can say that higher frequency is better. Both XMP settings provide similar performance while anything lower is showing performance drops.
Patriot Viper LED is performing well in rendering as it was expected.
Last test is VRMark which is showing performance in demanding 3D environment. As we see, faster RAM is helping also here. AMD Ryzen has quite good memory controller which nicely reacts to high frequency memory so we can always improve performance using memory if we can’t overclock CPU any further.
If DDR4-3200 is still not enough then we can try our luck in overclocking.
Overclocking
Overclocking is never guaranteed so the presented results may vary from results on other memory kits. I am not recommending overclocking if you do not know what are you doing. High voltages may damage hardware and it will not be covered by warranty.
Since we know that our memory kit uses the best Samsung IC then we have high expectations regarding overclocking. On the other hand, test platform is limiting maximum frequency but Patriot Viper LED still has no issues to run stable at DDR4-3466 settings and memory timings close to XMP profile.
I guess that the same memory on new dual channel Intel chipsets will be able to reach DDR4-4000 or higher speed. Previously tested Patriot Viper 4 memory was based on similar memory IC and could pass DDR4-4133 mark. There is a chance you will see more overclocking results on the Viper LED memory once new motherboards arrive to our redaction.
