G A M E T I M E // D R A M P E R F O R M A N C E T U N I N G
ASROCK Z390 PHANTOM ITX/AC &
G.SKILL F4 TRIDENT Z F4-3200 C14
E
very once in a while I test DRAM
frequency scaling and application
performance. Mostly for review
purposes, but I recently had to do this
when replacing a faulty motherboard.
During that process I decided to
measure the DRAM performance as it
impacts games, video encoding and of
course overclocking benchmarks.
For the most part or at least in
many reviews. What happens is that
when performance scaling is done,
secondary and tertiary timings are
34 The OverClocker Issue 46 | 2019
ignored. There’s no issue with that for
the purposes of a review. That said,
be aware that these timings change
dynamically with the DRAM strap and
whatever auto configuration rules the
board vendor has programmed. There
will be variation of course between
motherboards, but regardless of
what motherboard you have, tuning
these can often give you a better
performance boost than just tuning the
primary timings.
To that end, I set about trying to
measure the difference between AUTO
rules and hand tuning the memory.
For that I solicited the help of one fine
ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming ITX/
AC motherboard and a G.SKILL Trident
Z DDR4 3200 C14 set of memory. I
had little to no expectations from this
motherboard, but it turned out to not
only be speedy but simple to overclock
with. As with most two DIMM boards,
it’s particularly adept at DRAM
overclocking. Aside from this, it’s the
clean FHD UEFI, quick recovery and