Is it worth waiting for 3200Mhz ECC RAM?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Shafarevich

New Member
Aug 15, 2019
18
1
3
I am building an EPYC Rome server, with every component ready except for the RAM. Rome supports 3200Mhz ECC RAM, but such RAM modules are hardly available in the UK. I tried to buy some from an online retailer but received engineering samples, which I had returned for a refund. Meanwhile, 2933Mhz modules are available from Crucial, and there are plenty of 2666Mhz modules too. Does anyone know if using 3200Mhz RAM modules with Rome makes a notable improvement in the performance compared to 2933 or even 2666 modules? Is it worth waiting for them to be available?
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
884
312
63
38
That depends entirely on your workload. In the extreme case of being completely bandwidth-limited, you get ~9% more performance, compared to DDR4-2933. Most other workloads will benefit much less from faster RAM. But I know the feeling, you buy shiny new hardware and need to have the best possible setup, no matter how much you actually benefit from it.

You know this site? geizhals.eu EU
This might help you finding a vendor that ships to UK.
 

Shafarevich

New Member
Aug 15, 2019
18
1
3
That depends entirely on your workload. In the extreme case of being completely bandwidth-limited, you get ~9% more performance, compared to DDR4-2933. Most other workloads will benefit much less from faster RAM. But I know the feeling, you buy shiny new hardware and need to have the best possible setup, no matter how much you actually benefit from it.

You know this site? geizhals.eu EU
This might help you finding a vendor that ships to UK.
Yes some of my workloads are bandwidth limited and will benefit from higher RAM frequencies. But at least it is good to know that other workloads would not suffer as much on slower RAMs. :)

I have used geizhals before, and unfortunately none of the 3200 modules it found ships to the UK. I guess I will just wait for some more time, and buy 2933 modules if 3200 are still not available by then.
 

tiggun

New Member
Aug 2, 2019
6
1
3
One thing to keep in mind for Rome are that it has 8 channels per socket for DIMMS, so populate them at least one DIMM per channel for best performance
 
Last edited:

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
884
312
63
38
Are you 100% sure about the latter? I never heard that before. At least the Ryzen 3000 CPUs with the same architecture as Rome automatically run Infinity Fabric and DRAM clock 1:1 up to DDR4-3600.
 

tiggun

New Member
Aug 2, 2019
6
1
3
I'm not too sure. You have a good point about the Ryzen 3000 series. I must not be remembering right