AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X & 1950X Review

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Memory Speeds & Their Effect On Performance

Whenever I get to the comment thread of these reviews, someone always asks why we use a standardized memory speed of DDR4-2666 for every platform. The next question will always be about how higher memory speeds would affect overall performance. Well this time I decided to include a section dedicated to just that.

Ryzen’s memory configuration and inherent limitations haven’t changed since the Ryzen 7 1800X was launched a few months ago. Even with Threadripper, the CPU’s memory controllers are certified for default operation at DDR4-2400, with DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3200 being only “unofficially” supported through overclock speed bins and built-in XMP profiles. But that got me thinking: what if I had actually pushed the frequencies to DDR4-3200 or decided to keep the reference design DDR4-2400? I grabbed my trusty set of G.Skill memory, kept the timings at an aggressive 13-13-13-32 and got to work.

Synthetic System Benchmarks


The first set of benchmarks was actually pretty interesting since there really isn’t much difference in performance when going from DDR4-2400 to DDR4-3200. There are some slight performance benefits but really not all that much.

Real World Testing


Switching gears to the real world of Corona and Adobe actually shows that the Corona rendering container loves faster memory with every uptick in speed being directly correlated to a lowering of output times. Adobe meanwhile didn’t show anywhere near the same separation but there was a slight improvement when going from DDR4-2400 to DDR4-2666.

Game Testing


Gaming ended up pretty flat as well, except for that pesky GTA which seems to throw a wrench into the works whenever I benchmark it.

With all of this said and done, I can’t conclusively say that Threadripper users will benefit from spending extra money on a DDR4-3200 memory kit. At least from the testing you see above the effect is minimal at best, likely due to the fact that the quad-channel memory interface already delivers a ton of bandwidth at reasonable memory speeds. However, if I had to choose between DDR4-2400 and DDR4-2666, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the faster of the two.

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