Intel 13th gen Core Series RAM/Memory Tuning & Scaling, i5-13600K, i7-13700K & i9-13900K

foreign [Music] box today we're taking a close look at ddr5 memory scaling and memory tuning performance with Intel's latest Flagship desktop processor the core I9 1390k now the goal of this content is to discover what the best sweet spot memory is for Raptor Lake processors and then determine if memory tuning is worth the headache but before we do today's sponsor spot is brought to you by hetzner a reliable hosting partner with a passion for it pet snow runs their own high-tech data centers in Helsinki Finland as well as German cities Nuremberg and falkenstein by merging its capabilities in Cutting Edge technology attractive pricing and skilled customer service hetzna has also increased its market share both inside and outside of Europe as one of the leading hosting providers hetson is still innovating when it comes to new products offering a variety of services outstanding self-developed high-tech dedicated servers such as their recent launch of the ex-44 featuring Intel's Core i5 13500 and ex-101 using Intel's core I9 13900 so for affordable approaches to modernizing your it infrastructure please check the link in the video description okay so once again I've called on an actual hardcore overclocker Mr buildzoid to help out with this content so full credit to buildzoid from the actually hardcore o'clocking YouTube channel for providing the tune timings that I'll be sharing with you in this video and if you'd like to learn a lot more about memory tuning and all things overclocking for AMD in Intel processors then I do strongly urge you to go check out his channel and I'll provide a link in the video description now for this content piece I'm going to look at the core I9 1300k exclusively there will be no comparison with AMD processors and this data should roughly translate to represent the kind of gains you'll see with say a core i7 or core i5 Raptor Lake processor as a side note though in the near future I do plan to compare the 1300k and 7950x 3D head to head in a wide range of games both stock and with tuned memory timings and I also plan to compare the 1300k with ddr4 and ddr5 memory both stock and tuned so plenty of interesting content is coming up over the next few weeks for this Benchmark I'll be testing the 13900k using ddr5 7200 6600 6400 6056 hundred fifty two hundred and even 4 800 memory of course the base spec for the 1300k is ddr5 5600 but I'm sure some of you would like to see memory scaling right down to 4800 as for buildzoid's tune timings I'll be covering 7200 and at 6000 speeds and for complete transparency the full list of timings used will be provided and any timing not mentioned has been left on auto it's important to note that these timings should work with just about all 13th gen K series processors basically any LJ 1700 motherboard and of course with the tested memory kits buildzoid doesn't believe that all CPUs will handle 7200 with these timings and this information was also supported by g-skill so in some instances you might have to dial back the frequency a bit if you have a weaker CPU having said all of that though with the right hardware and some luck from the Silicon Lottery you could certainly maintain stability with more aggressive timings but we want to provide data that should be achievable for everyone or just about everyone and this is the same approach we took when testing amd's Zen 4 processors now for all of this testing I've decided not to use my standard LGA 1700 test system which uses an MSI Motherboard and instead opt for the gigabyte z790 auras Elite ax but please note there are some inconsistencies in the naming for the various timings between board partners for their Intel boards finally here's a list of the memory kits that I've tested with the highest clock of which is the g-skill Trident Z5 RGB tdr5 7200 cell 34 which can currently be had for a cool 220 us then we have the 6400 kit which I've used for most of my testing in the past though we will transition to 7200 for Intel anyway here we're using another G skill kit the Trident Z5 RGB ddr5 6400 cell 32 which costs 160 USD I've also included a 6000 cell 30 kit the same one we use for testing zen4 processors along with a Corsair dominated ddr5 6000cl36 kit we also have G skills flare X5 5600 cell 28 kit both the single Rank and dual rank model so the 32 gigabyte and 64 gigabyte kits and then below spec is the Corsair Dominator ddr5 5200 cell 38 kit and some 8 gigabyte crucial ddr540 100 cr40 modules now for the memory tuning we've got two configurations here the fastest of which uses ddr5 7200 memory and those timings are as follows and it's worth noting for these timings to work the memory voltage will need to be increased slightly to 1.4 volts and I believe most 13th gen CPUs can run at 7200 speeds but again buildzoid and g-school both agree that not all CPUs can handle these speeds while maintaining 100 stability as a side note I know a lot of Intel fans have been calling for ddr5 8000 testing but this is basically a no-go with the board I'm using most wrapped like CPUs and Z series motherboards will max out around 7600 so if 8 000 you will need a good quality CPU and an overclocking Focus motherboard with just two dim slots so the Asus z790 Apex gigabyte z790 tachyon or EVGA z790 dark the cheapest of which costs 700 us so more than the cost of the 13900k so at that point you really are starting to get into some fairly Niche overclocking and the gains here will be well beyond the point of diminishing returns and that's just not something we're interested in for this content or probably in general I'd say now a configuration that should be achievable on all raptor-like CPUs is buildzoid's tuned ddr56000 for this you will require hynix based modules basically any 6000 rated kits with ACL timing of 30 to 32 will work here anything above 32 should be avoided as it might be using Samsung and anything rated for cl36 or greater will almost certainly use Samsung chips and they won't handle the high next timing shown here so these are the two memory kits that I'll be tuning up on the gigabyte z790 RS Elite ax using boss version F5 with the 1300k and of course I'll be using the GeForce RTX 490 with the latest display drivers all of this data is 100 fresh for this content using AZ 790 motherboard that I've never benchmarked on before so let's get into it okay so first up we have Marvel's Spider-Man remastered and this title is very memory bandwidth hungry especially with Ray tracing enabled here we're looking at a five percent increase for the stock ddr5 7200 memory over the 6400 stuff we normally use for testing 13th gen processors now tuning the 7200 stuff with buildzoid's timings we saw a further five percent boost to the frame rate averaging 181 FPS not an amazing performance uplift for the effort but a handy gain all the same it's also a 10 uplift from our standard 6400 review kit which is a significant Improvement now the 6000 cell 30 memory kit that we use for testing Zone 4 processors that managed 162 FPS and tuning it up did result in a nine percent performance boost just edging out the stock XMP 7200 configuration now the Dual rank ddr5 5600cl28 kit that was comparable to the 6000 cell 30 stuff and we found a similar situation when testing with zen4 processors then we said that performance really does drop away significantly with the cheap 8 gigabyte 4800 modules which you absolutely wouldn't pair with an expensive core I9 processor it's also a really interesting to note that from single ranked ddr5 5600cl28 to 7200 XMP we're only looking at an 11 performance increase which is a great result for the 5600 kit given that it only costs 120 U.S therefore it's probably not worth spending the extra 100 on the 7200 memory as that's an over 80 increase in cost for just 11 more performance in this example next up we have the Callisto protocol which isn't nearly as memory sensitive as Spider-Man remastered here the tuned 7200 Kit gained just an extra two percent performance going from 271 fps to 277 FPS so that's really a negligible difference there in fact from the stock ddr5 5200 cell 38 kit to the ddr5 7200 tuned configuration we are only looking at a mere seven percent performance increase or just five percent when compared to the affordable 5600 cl28 kit so really memory performance in this example is a non-issue next we have a plague tail Requiem and this has some interesting data for us in this example the tuned 7200 configuration was seven percent faster when compared to using XMP that's certainly not an amazing result but it is a bigger gain than what we saw in Spider-Man also in this example the XMP configurations for the 7264 kits delivered basically the same results in fact the 6000 kits are also much the same ddr5 6000 cell 36 for example was just two percent slower than the XMP configuration for the 7200 memory but despite all of that we did see a five percent boost for the Dual rank 5600 memory over the single rank kit and that meant the tune 7200 configuration was just five percent faster than the stock 5600 dual rank memory finally in this example the cheap 8 gigabyte ddr5 4800 modules they didn't really fall away that much so some really odd results in this game basically all of the single rank XMP configurations produce similar results yet despite that the Dual Rank and tune configurations were still able to provide a performance boost now as we found previously Horizon zero Dawn it's not all that memory sensitive though even so the tuned profiles did provide some benefit though having said that the 7200 memory was just eight percent faster once tune but we did see a four percent game with the 6000 CL 30 memory though this is still really nothing to write home about now for testing the rift breaker we're using the CPU Benchmark and here the ddr5 7200 configuration saw a four percent boost once it was tuned averaging 246 FPS interestingly though we only saw a two percent boost for the ddr5 6000cl30 memory once it was tuned up though that was enough to match the stock 7200 stuff and again we have yet another example where the tuned 7200 configuration really isn't that much faster than the stock single rank ddr5 5600cl28 memory in this example we're looking at a mere six percent performance boost now the gain seen when tinkering with the sub timings look more impressive in Shadow of the Tomb Raider this time the 7200 memory was seven percent faster once it was tuned again that's not an amazing performance uplift there but it's certainly one of the better gains we've seen so far we're also looking at a seven percent Improvement for the tuned ddr5 6000cl30 memory as for the stock scaling there's just a four percent Improvement when going from the 120 ddr5600 sl28 memory up to the ultra expensive ddr5 7200 so again the faster memory hardly seems worth it last up we have Watchdogs Legion and here the tunes 7200 configuration provided its biggest gain yet nine percent so not quite double digits but certainly the closest we've come we also have another example where the stock ddr560 400 and 7200 configurations are very similar in fact 7200 XMP was just five percent faster than the 5600 cell 28 single rank kit so there's very little to see here and then tuning up the ddr56000cl30 kit that provided a nice nine percent performance boost getting us to roughly 200 FPS on average now here's a look at average frame rate performance seen across our small seven game sample with an RTX 4090 at 1080p you can typically expect to see a five percent boost when tuning ddr5 7200 and are in a six percent boost for ddr56000 these are very mild gains to say the least and frankly in my opinion they're not worth it and by worth it I mean worth risking stability when gaming but I guess that's really up to you to decide as for The Sweet Spot memory for Raptor like based on this data I've got to say the single rank ddr5 5600cl28 kit for just 120 us that looks really impressive it's just four percent slower than the 7200 stuff while coming at almost half the price so for those of you using a core i7 or i5 processor this is what I'd consider Sweet Spot memory and while it's also Sweet Spot memory for I9 users they're probably more willing to venture beyond the point of diminishing returns for something like 7200 I've got to say given all the fuss that's been made about benchmarking with tuned memory timings the results are extremely underwhelming just five percent on average with up to nine percent gains sure it's nice for free performance but it also explains why the vast majority of you are more interested in XMP numbers the set and forget type configurations now I know there are more extreme memory configurations which will yield even better results but you will need specific hardware for those results and some luck with the Silicon Lottery with the right CPU or motherboard ddr5 8000 or even 8200 should be possible and while that's something we might look at in the future I'd only expect a very mild performance gains over what's been shown here and as a side note I have noticed that the gigabyte z790 board used for the testing in this video can be a bit faster than the MSI z790 board that I was using though a number of variables have also changed so I'm yet to do proper Apples to Apples testing but this could be due to gigabyte more aggressively tuning the memory we saw this exact same thing when testing zen4 as gaming performance between the various board vendors could vary by as much as 10 so this is something that I would like to look at in the future as I do have quite a lot of z790 motherboards so I will allocate some time to making sure that testing gets done and it also means if you are using an MSI or maybe even an Asus an ASRock board the gains from tuning your memory could be more substantial than what's shown here it could be as much as double not sure on that again I have to do the testing but I could see how that could be possible so I will make sure that we do that investigation before too long at the end of the day for those of you after the absolute best performance possible and are willing to spend big on the hard way to get it the 1300k will deliver though I am Keen to tune up the 7950x 3D for a head-toe comparison my prediction though is pretty unexciting as I expect nothing to really change here these Flagship processors are neck and neck out of the box and I'm willing to bet the same will be true once they're tuned up and wrapping this up I'll just give my two cents for whatever that's worth in my opinion Gamers who are after every possible Advantage wouldn't and shouldn't risk stability for on average five percent more performance it's just not worth it it's quite literally as a gamer nothing worse than having your PC crash in a multiplayer game or really any game for that matter and on that note just a quick story a few months back I tuned up my 12 900 KS rig which I use on stream when gaming it appeared stable and it did work well for quite a few gaming sessions but then out of nowhere it just started crashing nothing had changed apart from the stability ability I was about to drop a 20 bomb two players left and I was hit with the blue screen of death in the final moving Circle devastating stuff so back to stock I went the difference certainly wasn't noticeable and months later I haven't had a single issue so happy days and that is going to do it for this one thank you for watching the video give it a like if you enjoyed it and don't forget to go check out buildzoid's work at actually hardcore overclocking again link will be in the video description I'll probably try and remember to pin one as a comment as well because there's just a wealth of knowledge over there and buildzoid's an awesome guy for letting us use these timings and do some benchmarks in games which is something that he's not interested in doing oh yeah that's really gonna do it for this one we're float playing patreon if you'd like to sign up to either one of those you'll get access to some pretty cool stuff we have an exclusive Discord server uh behind the scenes content we do a live stream uh once a month you myself get together and do that uh and Q a stuff so some cool things there check it out if you're interested but if not that is perfectly fine and I would like to thank you for watching this video I'm your host Dave see you next time [Music] foreign

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 56,838

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: RTmbYak_8gE

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/dusnuut]

I think the small difference between 7200 vs 5600 (4% slower) comes from the microarchitecture.

Raptor Cove cores have large L1 and L2 caches with massive bandwidth but that comes at the cost of latency. To minimize stalling of the execution engine, when it has to fetch cache entries, they increased the internal buffers so they can absord that high latency by having the cores work on a different set of instructions in the meantime.

For example the Reorder Buffer in Golden Cove holds 512 entries, while Zen 4 only holds 320.

[u/Aelrikom]

They really need to factor whole system cost when comparing prices. $100 vs $200 for a 5% increase is a lot different when your PC is already $3K.

[u/der_triad]

Edit: The MSI Z790 Tomahawk motherboard used in his other testing with the 13900KS really sucks. The 13900K showed pretty huge gains when running on the Gigabyte Aorus Extreme.

Here are the differences in the results between this video and the 7950X3D comparison video. Worth noting - I'm only comparing 7200Mt/s C34 without the buildzoid timings applied.

Edit2: The 7950X3D in the head to head comparison was using the Gigabyte Aorus Extreme.

Spiderman Remastered
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 173 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 138 fps

Plague Tale Requiem
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 151 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 145 fps

Riftbreaker Dx12
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 236 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 229 fps

Tomb Raider
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 296 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 295 fps

Watch Dogs Legion
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 188 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 187 fps

Horizon Zero Dawn
13900K Gigabyte Aorus - 245 fps
13900KS MSI Tomahawk - 218 fps

[u/dualboy24]

I would have loved to see a DDR4-3600 CL18 in the benchmarks (on the DDR4 version of the same motherboard (Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite Ax DDR4)

[u/soZehh]

I would like to know, id i put these setting son my 7200 c34 kit will be 100 percent stable?

[u/Jeffy29]

Basically feels like just get 6000 CL30 and tune it (Buildzoid's timings are also quite conservative you can get quite a lot more out of those). I mean the really smart money is on 5600 and tuning/OC but that requires a bit more skill. I don't really get the argument buying expensive RAM/MB. The argument that you'll use it with next CPU doesn't really hold up because by 2024/5 those kits are going to be much less expensive and probably even better. While 5600/6000 are hitting the price floor so resale value is going to be really good. And not counting Coffee Lake refresh Z790 is basically a dead platform too as Meteor Lake is supposed to use LGA 1851, so there really isn't much argument as a long-term investment. I mean if price doesn't matter then cool, but if does putting that money away for a big upgrade on LGA 1851 makes more sense to me.

[u/cowoftheuniverse]

I noticed HUB list of timings didn't mention tWR and Steve said he uses auto on everything not mentioned.

From their earlier article about zen 4 memory write recovery if not tuned was quite high at 90. I wonder how high it was for these tests.