PC Building

[sefbo]

I recently upgraded from a Ryzen 5 1600 to a Ryzen 5 5600x and have been noticing stuttering in some games (mostly rust). My first thought was it was mostly likely my ram as the 5600x is suggested to run with 3600 mhz ram and I currently have 16 gbs of 3000. If I were to upgrade should I buy two new sticks of 16 gb 3600 ram or buy two more 3000 sticks?

Mobo is gigabyte aurous b450 pro and graphics card is rx 6600xt. 

[Alex11]

In my opinion get more faster ram close to 4000mhz and 2x16 

[sefbo]

Budget wise I can only do one of the two but otherwise I would definitely splurge 

[Axxemann]

Get the 3600. Flip the old stuff. Or worst case, see if you can OC the current RAM.

[Weber462]

3600 is the sweet spot for am4,  I would have to agree and maybe look into that.  If you are not doing any heavy production loads, 16gb it plenty.

[elstaci]

The stuttering in some games is probably related to the AMD VGA Driver or some configuration settings in either Radeon Settings or Windows Settings.

I don't believe it has anything, directly, to do with your RAM.

But if you upgraded from a Ryzen 1600 to a Rzyen 5600 and didn't upgrade the RAM, it is best to upgrade your RAM to one listed from the QVL List from either Gigabyte or the RAM's Manufacturer's Support site for best performance and compatibility.

As noted, The 3000 & 5000 Series processors "Sweet Spot" is 3600Mhz but you can go as high as 2000Mhz for a slightly more improvement in performance.

But make sure the 2000Mhz is listed in the QVL list for that specific RAM speed.

NOTE: The old RAM you can keep as a backup in case your new RAM goes bad for some reason since you know it works with your 5600x processor or sell it at Amazon Marketplace or Ebay to help defray the cost of the new RAM.

[MADZyren]

There is stuttering and stuttering, so without seeing it, it is difficult to offer good advice. Stutters are not usually the result of limited performance, but another type of issues.

Slow memory affects the same way as any other slow component and reduces performance, but it is not what I would necessarily call stutter. 

To reduce stutter, I might try things like: set FPS cap to game from Radeon software. Try changing CPU clock speed by trying an all-core overclock or by setting some temperature or clock speed limit. If you have PBO enabled, try disabling it.

Also check for BIOS or driver updates mentioning stutter or performance improvements.

Someone on this message board complained about stutter, but the problem turned out to be that after he had upgraded hardware, monitors refresh rate setting had dropped to default 60Hz by itself and got fixed by setting it back to what he was used to. This was another thing I would not 'feel' as stutter, but stutter to some people means one thing and something else to others.

I think, what @elstaci said might be the solution, but I would try these too... Set FPS cap, try not pushing your hardware too far aso.

Memory? Well, if you plan to upgrade your DDR4 system in future, maybe you can get more memory or even upgrade to 32Gb 3600MT/s or something  like that, but if you plan to use this system, already have 2x8Gb or more and next big update is years from now... You'll likely end up getting DDR5, so I am not sure you would benefit much. In the end, faster memory might offer a nice little boost, but it is not going to be any kind of game changer. If it was like 2133-2666 -> 3600 with tight subtimings, maybe, but...

[ajlueke]

So, the thing about AMD Memory controllers is that you will see the biggest benefit from higher RAM speeds as long as you can maintain the 1:1 clock with the Infinity Fabric.  1800 MHz on the fabric clock (or 3600MHz Effective for RAM because it is dual channel) is the highest setting where the 1:1 will be automatically maintained, hence the "sweet spot".  Going higher will drop the drop the infinity fabric to 2:1 and can often result in worse performance.

All that being said, the stuttering sensation can often be cause a few different things that aren't related to RAM.  Since you recently gained a significant amount of CPU processing power, the likely culprit is the increased frames.  Having higher frames can cause stuttering if you have Vsync enabled and your framerate exceeds the maximum refresh rate of your monitor.  If for whatever reason, you drop below the maximum refresh rate, VSync will scale to refresh way down, and that will feel like a major stutter.  Turning Vsync off will eliminate the stuttering, but you will likely seem some ghosting and tearing instead.  

Likewise, if you just have inconsistent framerates where you don't have VSync on but a game is fluctuating between say 200 and 120 fps.  When you get a frame rate dip, it is noticeable because you were running at a much higher framerate before.   So the best solution is to set a framerate cap near the maximum refresh of your monitor.  Framecaps don't do anything if framerates drop below the setting, unlike VSync, and can help even out framerates that are fluctuating, and then use adaptive sync for within the range.  Freesync or Gsync Compatible technologies ran help reduce the stutter by scaling the refresh rate to match the frame rate, so the monitor doesn't have to display a frame multiple times during dips.  Make sure this is turned on if you have it.

To note, if you consistently run way above your monitor's maximum refresh rate, then setting framecap can result in significant input lag.  At that point it is worthwhile to consider a higher refresh monitor, or a higher resolution monitor that brings the framerates down.