# Is XMP really needed?



## CuteSniper22 (Dec 31, 2005)

Hi guys,

Sorry, i'm not asking any help/support here. I'm just a beginner & just wanna to ask whether ram overclocking will really boost up the performance? What I knew that CPU has bulit-in memory controller which decided & limited I/O between CPU & RAM.
May I know what's the point of overclocking the ram since its high frequencies still downclocked in order to works with CPU? I just don't get it..

Sorry for asking noob question...


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

There's a wealth of information here https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-overclocking-guide,4693.html about this, and I believe the opening statements of that guide do answer your question. Read and understand all of it and you'll be to able to tell whether it's beneficial to your use case or not.


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## SpareChange (Mar 7, 2019)

XMP is worth it to get your advertised speeds, and for a select few games that benefit from the performance boost. In some cases it can be 10-15%. It can also be very beneficial if you use an AMD Ryzen Platform where both the overall computing and gaming performance increase can be rather substantial, granted you use a good enough motherboard to cover the DDR4 ratio spread. E.G DDR 3200 that can actually run stable _both_ in nominal running mode _and_ gaming at all times (I don't accept anything less some do but I don't). There are a some B350-450's that will do it and about 90% of X370's run most quality vendor checked ram at advertised speeds. It takes a quality built board, with good stable & overall power distribution to do it on a reliable everyday basis.


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