Overclocking RAM For More FPS

Our benchmark focused on the latest memory technology for AMD and Intel platforms, DDR5. Since it launched in 2021, DDR5 has had one of the fastest performance gains year-over-year of arguably any memory technology in the past 50 years. Debuting at 4800MT/s CL40 for JEDEC industry standard speed and timings, in just one year it jumped to 5600MT/s CL46. (Sidenote, CL stands for CAS Latency, which is one of many timings or wait states between the processor and memory). By comparison, DDR4 took nearly four years to scale up by 800MT/s. But gamers don’t use standard speeds and timings, they tap into the hidden potential of their system by overclocking the RAM far beyond spec.

Kingston FURY is our line of overclockable RAM solutions. Note that if you selected ValueRAM or one of Kingston’s other standard memory product lines, those are not overclockable. We discussed in previous articles the overclocking basics, and how to choose the right components for your performance-tuned system. If overclocking is new to you, check out our YouTube series that explains the process and benefits.

These were run at 1080p and under high settings for a level playing field, as not all users will have 4K capable monitors. For most of the titles our benchmarks reflect three scores: maximum FPS (red bar), average FPS (gray bar), and minimum FPS (blue bar). We used a combination of in-game benchmarks and overlays to measure FPS.

Rainbow Six Siege is an excellent choice as a first person-shooter e-sport title, where high frame rates are critical. Our tests showed incremental improvement as memory speed increased, with a marked jump as memory went from 6800MT/s to 7200MT/s.

For Cyberpunk 2077, we noted only slight improvements across all speed increases. 7200MT/s saw slightly lower minimum FPS than the rest of the lineup, but no notable difference at maximum FPS, resulting in a marginal average.

Red Dead Redemption 2 showed a significant range between minimum and maximum FPS, and as we increased memory speed, we only observed a two point increase in the average FPS.

F1 2020 is a racing simulator based on the professional racing series Formula One. All speeds ran at an average FPS of 149 and a maximum of 150. The minimum frame rate did increase as speed increased showing 7200MT/s with a 6 FPS differential compared to 4800MT/s at a 28 FPS differential.

Arma 3 is a popular military simulator with large open maps and various vehicles to be driven. Running through a training course, open and closed spaces were encountered with sporadic gunfire. 4800MT/s lagged behind scoring the lowest average while 5600MT/s scored the highest, beating the Renegade options by 2-6 FPS. The minimum FPS increased as speed increased excluding 7200MT/s.

Horizon Zero Dawn was a PlayStation® exclusive that received a PC port a couple of years ago. This adventure game features grand areas and high-quality textures. Average FPS did not vary much between speeds, hovering around the 144 mark. The Beast speeds maintained a higher maximum with 6000MT/s having the highest FPS.

APEX Legends is a popular battle-royale title that features 100 players fighting to be the last one standing. The top Renegade speeds saw a larger drop off in their minimum FPS with 7200MT/s achieving the lowest average. The other speeds saw consistent results, hovering just below a 144 FPS average.

Ashes of Singularity is a real-time strategy game with large-scale battles. Running the CPU-focused test, average FPS increased as speed increased, over 11% from 4800MT/s to 6800MT/s. During this test we were curious just how much of a difference dual channel made over single channel memory configurations. For budgetary reasons, a lot of users may opt to only install one memory module in their system instead of the recommended two. This benchmark illustrated an average 17% difference in FPS performance when compared to the dual channel configuration.