One of the new features introduced to the B560 chipset is the support of RAM overclocking. On B460 systems, RAM frequency is limited to DDR4-2933 or DDD4-2666 depending on which processor is used. Now on B560 systems, you can overclock RAM and improve your gaming performance.
However, RAM overclocking can be a complicated topic for many people. Many factors have to be considered when you try to overclock RAM, such as RAM voltage, CPU IO2 voltage, CPU SA voltage, and timings. It’s quite a challenge for users who don’t have much experience in overclocking.
Fortunately, Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) provides an easy way to overclock RAM. It enables users to overclock RAM by selecting profiles optimized by RAM manufacturers, instead of adjusting the parameters in the BIOS.
In addition to Intel XMP, MSI “Memory Try It!” offers more support for overclocking. It has more than 100 overclocking profiles to push your RAM further than XMP can.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to overclock your RAM on an MSI B560 motherboard with XMP and “Memory Try It!”, and see what benefits they bring for gaming.
Enable XMP on Your Motherboard
After entering BIOS, you can see there’s an XMP Profile button on the top-left side of the screen. If there are two XMP profiles on your RAM module, you will see two XMP buttons. Click on the XMP Profile button to load the XMP, or load XMP from the “Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)” dropdown menu. Then save and exit BIOS to apply the settings.
We’ve tested the performance of several XMP modules with AIDA64 Memory Benchmark. It turns out that RAM bandwidth scales with RAM frequency. RAM bandwidth increases as frequency goes higher.
However, the latency does not always scale with the frequency. The latency is higher with DDR4-4000 than with DDR4-3600. This is because DDR-4000 is running Gear 2 Mode*, with the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) clock at half the speed of the memory clock.
RAM overclocking is helpful to gaming performance as well. It looks like DDR4-3600 is the sweet spot for gaming. It is 8~25% faster than DDR4-2133 and a little bit faster than DDR4-4000. Please note that the performance improvements will vary depending on the games.
Get Extra FPS with MSI Memory Try It!
If you’re not satisfied with XMP, you can push it even further with Memory Try It!.
Memory Try It! offers more than 100 overclocking profiles for popular RAM chips such as Samsung, Hynix, Micron, etc. You can overclock your RAM with higher frequency and tighter timings than by using XMP. You just need to select the profiles and test if your system is stable. If it’s stable then you can try profiles with higher frequency and tighter timings until you find the maximum stable settings.
You can also adjust the parameters to achieve better performance based on Memory Try It!. Take the ADATA DDR4-3200 kit for example, we found out that it’s stable with the “DDR4-3600 CL16-20-20-38” profile from Memory Try It!. We kept on pushing the timings and found it to be stable at DDD4-3600 CL14-16-16-28. It reduces the latency from 55ns to 47.7ns and you will get an extra 2%~5% FPS compared to DDR4-3200 XMP.
Conclusion – Overclocking Your RAM for More FPS
From our test results, RAM speed can affect games. RAM overclocking makes B560 motherboards a bargain for gaming systems. If you have XMP modules, don’t hesitate to overclock your RAM with XMP. If you want more FPS, try with Memory Try It!.
Note:
*Memory Gear Mode:
Intel has introduced Memory Gear Mode to its 11th Gen Core Processor. There are two modes available: Gear 1 and Gear 2. In Gear 1, the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) clock is equal to the memory clock. In Gear 2, the IMC clock is halved. Gear 1 has lower latency than Gear 2. RAM modules higher than DDR4-3600 may only boot with Gear 2 mode. You can adjust Gear Mode from the “CPU IMC: DRAM clock” option in BIOS.
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