Hi!

[mike7877]

I'm going to admit...a lot of what you wrote went over my head. I'm pretty sure I just OC the RAM to what I set it to. I don't recall about XMP...If I had to guess I think it was already on. I know for certain I left the timings alone/what the BIOS/UEFI had preset.

I don't really notice a choppiness in my gameplay. For the most part, my rig can handle just about anything I have thrown at it.

The 3600 that I have is the first AMD I have used in a while. The last AMD I had was a laptop CPU and long before ZEN came about.

I'll admit, I'm glad you have found a place here in the forums. Hope to see you around in the discussions.

Other than making sure the best bang for the buck RAM is fast enough at build time (it usually is), I find RAM speed doesn't need attention until your 1% frame lows drop to the point you no longer enjoy gameplay. Even then, specific treatment depends on the the cause and how old the platform is at that point in time - you have to make a decision: upgrade the RAM for speed, amount, ...maybe both. Or! Wait a little longer until the optimal CPU/platform has been released and is out long enough that it's a good value proposition. That's how I do it anyway, (barring catastrophes) - basically the catastrophic failure of an essential component at 3-5 years age (when the warranty has usually expired lol...)

I'm similar to you in my AMD ownership - other than recently, my last AMD chip was in a laptop - dual core ML-32 (or MT-32... maybe 30... whichever is the lower power dual core 1.6Ghz version. From 2005/6...). Those were the days! AMD was very competitive and cranking things out cheap!
I remember the ATi 200m graphics were so bad, but not bad compared to what $800CDN got you back then! Integrateds at the time were useless, but a 200m (the worst integrated btw...)? Quake 3 at native resolution (1280x800) was consistently over the display's 60Hz with 2xAA/8x AF (I could even use vsync!), and UT2k4? Playable (for the time...), at 1024x768 & 45-70fps. All with a ~2.3W TDP (or something) GPU! Lol

If you ever feel like OCing and optimizing your RAM, lmk. It's rewarding, it's like designing, building, and optimizing something. Actually, it's not "like", it's "exactly like".
Risk can be zero zip zilch too - you just don't increase voltage along with the other stuff. Considering that most often people can run RAM 0.4V higher than stock for 5+ years with no observed effects, the usual 0.2V is extremely safe... RAM voltage damage is like tylenol liver damage: everything's completely fine right up until you take too much - then your liver is in BIG big trouble. Fortunately for RAM, that point is well past 99% of peoples' comfort zone

 

[Laura Knotek]

Other than making sure the best bang for the buck RAM is fast enough at build time (it usually is), I find RAM speed doesn't need attention until your 1% frame lows drop to the point you no longer enjoy gameplay. Even then, specific treatment depends on the the cause and how old the platform is at that point in time - you have to make a decision: upgrade the RAM for speed, amount, ...maybe both. Or! Wait a little longer until the optimal CPU/platform has been released and is out long enough that it's a good value proposition. That's how I do it anyway, (barring catastrophes) - basically the catastrophic failure of an essential component at 3-5 years age (when the warranty has usually expired lol...)

I'm similar to you in my AMD ownership - other than recently, my last AMD chip was in a laptop - dual core ML-32 (or MT-32... maybe 30... whichever is the lower power dual core 1.6Ghz version. From 2005/6...). Those were the days! AMD was very competitive and cranking things out cheap!
I remember the ATi 200m graphics were so bad, but not bad compared to what $800CDN got you back then! Integrateds at the time were useless, but a 200m (the worst integrated btw...)? Quake 3 at native resolution (1280x800) was consistently over the display's 60Hz with 2xAA/8x AF (I could even use vsync!), and UT2k4? Playable (for the time...), at 1024x768 & 45-70fps. All with a ~2.3W TDP (or something) GPU! Lol

If you ever feel like OCing and optimizing your RAM, lmk. It's rewarding, it's like designing, building, and optimizing something. Actually, it's not "like", it's "exactly like".
Risk can be zero zip zilch too - you just don't increase voltage along with the other stuff. Considering that most often people can run RAM 0.4V higher than stock for 5+ years with no observed effects, the usual 0.2V is extremely safe... RAM voltage damage is like tylenol liver damage: everything's completely fine right up until you take too much - then your liver is in BIG big trouble. Fortunately for RAM, that point is well past 99% of peoples' comfort zone

How long do you typically run Cinebench to test the stability of your OC?

 

[mike7877]

How long do you typically run Cinebench to test the stability of your OC?

Sorry for the huge delay - I don't use Cinebench for CPU, I use Prime95 small FFT. This will do error checking and stress the CPU more with ~20-30% higher power consumption. I usually do this for an hour or two during tweaking, and for the final setting I let it go for 36 hours. I've done extensive testing, and if something doesn't pop up by between 24 and 30 hours, Ive never seen it happen after (I've let things go for weeks).

4 hours small FFT on all cores simultaneously should be sufficient for non-critical systems. Basically, they won't crash during any real world operations. 99.9999%+ you won't run into computation errors either, I just go for ultimate continuity... It's definitely unnecessary, but, it's a hobby! Lol