DDR4-3200 vs. DDR4-3400: The New Enthusiast Clock

With Ryzen 2000 "Pinnacle Ridge," AMD upped maximum memory clocks across the board. The processor now supports DDR4-2933 natively (JEDEC), and DDR4-3400 is being touted as the "enthusiast" memory configuration for this chip, like DDR4-3200 was for the first-generation Ryzen chips. In this test, we compare DDR4-3400 CL16 with DDR4-3200 CL14 across the bulk of our CPU performance bench.


This is rather surprising. The jump from DDR4-3200 CL14 to DDR4-3400 CL16, a 6.25% increase in not just DRAM, but also InfinityFabric clock, results in a negligible 0.65% performance increase. If you've read our first-generation Ryzen Memory Analysis article from last year, you'll know that the jump from DDR4-2133 to DDR4-3200 resulted in significant performance improvements of 3.1 percent (which is quite a lot for CPU-focused tests). The jump to 3400 MHz from 3200 MHz not being as great, it would be advisable not to pick up overpriced 3400 MHz Ryzen-friendly kits if 3200 MHz kits are cheaper.

Getting DDR4-3400 to work with CL14 isn't easy, and wasn't stable despite our best efforts. Even the G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3400 "Ryzen-friendly" kit we have at hand won't budge from CL16 at its advertised clocks. Please also note that 3400 MHz is running at CL16 (which is the fastest that's available). At 3400 MHz, CL16 is 8.89 nanoseconds (16/3200*2*1000), whereas the 3200 MHz kit is running at tighter absolute latencies of 8.75 nanoseconds, which gives a slight latency advantage to the 3200 MHz kit, while the 3400 MHz kit has the bandwidth and CCX-performance advantage.