How Do Memory Timings Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
988 words · ~4 min read
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so you've bought some shiny new RAM sticks for your computer you've made
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sure that they're the right speed and they're the right voltage and you even
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paid extra for that sick RGB lighting bro but when you furiously rip off the
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packaging and are just about to insert the modules into your motherboard you
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notice a strange sequence of numbers on
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the stickers and start wondering what those mean is there some crucial
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specification you've missed before buying your RAM these numbers here are
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called memory timings and they are one of the factors that determine the
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performance of a d module but how does
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that work doesn't RAM frequency in
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megahertz already tell us how fast it goes not quite while the clock speed can
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tell us how much data your RAM can send and receive per second it doesn't tell
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us anything about latency the delay between operations which you can learn
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more about up here that is where timings come in they give you information about
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how quickly memory can be accessed before the data starts flying around
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let's start with the first number in the string this is called cast latency this
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is the time it takes for the RAM module to start responding to a request for
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data measured in clock Cycles in general
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this means that a lower cast latency is better but because different RAM modules
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run at different clock speeds you have to consider them together with the
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frequency to find the total real world
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latency in Nan seconds using this formula so check this out slower clocked
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RAM can effectively be quicker if it has a lower cast latency something to keep
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in mind when buying your memory though remember your speed is still going to be
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more important generally speaking but what about those other numbers the
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second is a mouthful row address to column address delay or trcd you see RAM
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is set up in a grid and your computer needs to access a particular row before
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finding which column of that row has the piece of data that it wants so this
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number expresses the small delay between row and column access the third number
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is row pre-charge time or trp referring to the latency involved in opening a new
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row and the fourth is row active time or
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TR the minimum number of clock cycles that a row must stay open to ensure the
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data is read or written properly that's
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why this one is longer than your other timings and how does all of this affect
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the way that you configure your RAM modules when you first slot them into
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your motherboard most modern bioses will have a pre-loaded XMP profile that you
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can enable to ensure that these modules are running at their rated speed voltage
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and timings but if you want to get the fastest speeds possible you can actually
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lower or tighten your timings then run a
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stress test like me test 86 plus to validate that your changes aren't
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causing any system instability I would recommend changing each of the first
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three numbers by an increment of one and then validating in between perhaps
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giving your RAM or memory controller a bit more voltage if things look unstable
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but to be sure check Intel or AMD's recommended voltages to make sure you're
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not going too high once you've done that adjust your TR accordingly and you're
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pretty much done once your RAM is stable although it's been a while since
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tightening timings has given a noticeable real world performance boost
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in most applications early reports are
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indicating that RAM speeds matter far more with AMD's new ryzen Chips than on
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the Intel side so if you really want to dive into the world of Enthusiast
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tinkering and you've got a ryzen based system you might want to give adjusting
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your timings a shot at the very least it'll be something else to experiment
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Linus all right guys thanks for watching if you like the video like it if you
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