Every program on your PC churns through RAM as it works. Your RAM operates at a certain speed set in place by the manufacturer, but a few minutes in the BIOS can bump it up far beyond its rated specification.
Yes, RAM Speed Matters
Every program you run gets loaded into RAM from your SSD or hard drive, which are comparatively much slower. Once it’s loaded, it usually stays there for a while, being accessed by the CPU whenever it needs it.
Improving the speed at which your RAM runs can directly improve your CPU’s performance in certain situations, though there is a point of diminishing returns when the CPU simply can’t churn through more memory fast enough. In day-to-day tasks, the RAM being a few nanoseconds faster might not matter, but if you’re really crunching numbers, any small performance improvement can help.
In games though, RAM speed can actually have a noticeable effect. Each frame might only have a few milliseconds to process a lot of data, so if the game you’re playing is CPU bound (like CSGO), faster RAM can improve framerates. Take a look at this benchmark from Linus Tech Tips:
The average frame rate is usually boosted a few percentage points with faster RAM when the CPU is doing most of the work. Where RAM speed really shines is in minimum framerates; for example, when you load a new area or new objects in a game, if it all has to happen in one frame, that frame could take longer than usual if it’s waiting on the memory to load. This is called microstuttering, and it can make games feel choppy even when the average frame rate is high.
Overclocking RAM Isn’t Scary
Overclocking RAM isn’t nearly as scary or unsafe as overclocking a CPU or GPU. When you overclock a CPU, you have to worry about whether or not your cooling will handle the faster clocks. An overclocked CPU or GPU can be much louder than one running at stock settings.
With memory, they don’t produce much heat at all, so it’s quite safe. Even on unstable overclocks, the worst that happens is you’ll get an error when testing for stability and be kicked back to the drawing board. Though if you’re trying this on a laptop, you’ll want to verify that you’re able to clear CMOS (to reset the BIOS to default settings) if something does go wrong.
Speed, Timings, and CAS Latency
RAM speed is generally measured in megahertz, usually abbreviated as “Mhz.” This is a measure of the clock speed (how many times per second the RAM can access its memory) and is the same way CPU speed is measured. The “stock” speed for DDR4 (the newest memory type) is usually 2133 Mhz or 2400 Mhz. Though this is actually a bit of a marketing lie; DDR stands for “Double Data Rate,” meaning the RAM reads and writes twice for every clock cycle. So really, the speed is 1200 Mhz, or 2400 mega-ticks per second.
