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We maintained the DRAM voltage at 1.35V and the timings at their 16-18-18-38-2T stock values for the overclocking testing. Our goal is to increase the motherboard dividers and see where G.Skill’s memory kit refuses to POST or hold stability in the AIDA64 stress test.
The best stable result that we could achieve was 3600MHz memory speed with the stock timings of 16-18-18-38-2T. Despite our best efforts to push past 3600MHz (include tweaking of the BCLK), we could not get the system to boot above 3.6GHz. Not even a bump in the voltage to 1.40V helped.
An extra 200MHz on top of 3.4GHz kit is a good overclocking result, especially with the timings and voltage staying at default levels. This configuration was also good because it allowed the BCLK to be set back to its 100MHz default level, allowing the CPU and CPU Cache frequencies to be set at rounded values.
Noticeable performance improvements are delivered by the combination of a 200MHz boost to the RAM speed and adjustments to the CPU and CPU Cache thanks to the 100MHz BCLK. 7-Zip archival tasks complete slightly faster, which is primarily thanks to the higher speed memory. Cinebench benefits slightly from the greater RAM frequency and CPU-related speeds.
GTA V gets a boost in its average frame rate thanks to the 200MHz RAM speed increase. Minimum frame rates for each of the benchmark's tests are also generally similar with 3600MHz memory, compared to the 3400MHz tests. Such is the nature of minimums, a single low result decreases the average, as is shown in the graph.
In general gameplay, outside of a benchmarking environment, there is unlikely to be a considerable performance difference between the 3400MHz and 3600MHz memory configurations. 3400MHz memory is already well above the point where a bottleneck would be created.
