New Gigabyte DDR5 Bios Settings Improve Performance

[wdseith]

I have a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master that I bought in March, 2022. I have an i9-12900K on it along with 4 sticks of G.Skill DDR5 RAM. The RAM kits I have are F5-6000J3636F16GX2-TZ5RK, which run natively at 6000 Mhz with timings of 36-36-36-96. If you've read any of my earlier posts, you know that I have been experimenting with various settings to improve the RAM performance, with new options being possible every time Gigabyte updates their BIOS for this board.

In mid-November, Gigabyte released bios version F21 that introduces two new options for DDR5: 1) High Bandwidth; and 2) Low Latency. When I tried these settings, they didn't seem to really do much until Gigabyte released bios version F22 this month (December 2022). Now with XMP Profile 1 selected and both of these settings switched to "Enabled", my read and write speeds are substantially improved by at least 10-15% and latency is also substantially reduced by about 20%. Interestingly, these 2 settings only allow the system to boot when an XMP profile is selected and left unmodified. If you try to change of the timings or ram speed with either of the two new options "Enabled", the system won't boot. That said, while I was able to get my system to boot my timings tightened and speed increased to 6400 Mhz, the read and write speeds and latency were not as good at 6400 Mhz as they are now with the native XMP profile selected and the two new settings set to "Enabled."

In typical fashion, Gigabyte provides no information on what these two settings actually do, but they do seem to provide a substantial DDR5 performance boost. Check to see if Gigabyte has released a new bios for your DDR5 board and look for the "High Bandwidth" and "Low Latency" settings on the "Tweaker" page. You should see a substantial boost in DDR5 performance with both options set to "Enabled" and XMP Profile 1 selected for your kits. Enjoy!

[wdseith]

In January 2023, Gigabyte released BIOS version F23a. I've since been experimenting with activating XMP Profile 1 and switching both "High Bandwidth" and "Low Latency" to "Enabled" while also overclocking my G.Skill 6000 Mhz kits to 6200 or 6400 Mhz. Just as before with version F22, the system refused to POST when both settings were set to "Enabled". However, once I switched "High Bandwidth" to "Auto" and only "Low Latency" to "Enabled", the system booted with the RAM set at 6400 Mhz and now runs faster than it ever has before. I did change the stock timings slightly from 36-36-36-96 to 36-36-36-102. I left the voltage and all other settings in XMP Profile 1 on "Auto". Aida64 now shows a RAM throughput of over 101,000 MB/s and a latency of 61 ns while also passing a stress test with flying colors. This absolutely blows away the performance numbers with the RAM at its native speed of 6000 Mhz, even when "High Bandwidth" and "Low Latency" were "Enabled." I'll take it!

Gigabyte has proven to have been absolutely the right choice for this new memory format. And G.Skill has proven, once again, that its building kits that outperform its own design specs. As an early adopter of this new tech, I couldn't be happier.

[Onestroke]

I just wanted to thank you for posting your settings to get your system to boot. I am running on a Gigabyte Z690 Auros Ultra with F23a BIOS release. I have an i9-12900KS with 2 sticks of DDR5 (2x16GBs) F5-6000J3636F16GA2-TZ5S with timings of 36-36-36-96. My setup seems similar in some ways. I could only get 1 stick of RAM to work when the XMP profile was enabled and was very frustrated trying to figure out how to get Windows 11 to recognize the whole 32GB. The only way Windows would recognize it was when I turned off XMP. I was confident the Gigabyte MB could handle the XMP settings, but just couldn't get it to work right until I saw that you switched "High Bandwidth" to "Auto" and "Low Latency" to "Enabled". That was a combination I had not tried or even considered. I gave that a try and it worked when "Memory Integrity" option was turned off in Windows with "Normal" boot selected. When I turned "Memory Integrity" back on, Windows could only see 16GBs again. I tried changing the memory boot to "Auto" and keeping the other settings, then I was back to 32GBs running at 6000Mhz with 36-36-36-96 timings. I have not tried to overclocking my RAM, but I was curious to what your settings were? I was thinking I could get 6200Mhz out of my RAM.

[wdseith]

You can try both 6200 and 6400 with stock timings. If your system crashes with either of those, try upping the 4th timing (96) to 102 for better stability. You may also need to up the voltages from 1.35 to 1.40. But see how it goes with 1.35 first.

[Onestroke]

I still seem to have a problem with WIN 11 showing all 32GB of ram. If I reboot, I sometimes have no issue but other times I just see only 16GB in Windows system, but if I run HWiNFO64 I always see 32GB of ram. I think there must be a setting in the bios that is set to automatic which is causing it to boot inconsistently which is messing up the reported RAM in windows. I'm not sure what it is because I have tried disabling fast boot and I have tried doing normal boot but both seem to have occasional issue with the total amount of RAM shown in WIN 11. I don't know if anyone has any ideas to solve this?

[wdseith]

Please confirm you have your memory modules in slots A2 and B2, and that they are fully seated in each slot.

[Onestroke]

Both sticks of ram are clipped in on each side and fully seated in slots A2 and B2. I've run comprehensive memory checks and found no issues. I have noticed that if WIN 11 is showing only 16GB of ram, I can simply reboot and go into the BIOS menu without making any changes and hit the "exit without saving" option then WIN 11 will recognize all 32GB. I think the MB boots slightly different after you go into the BIOS as compared to rebooting without accessing the BIOS. Any ideas?

[wdseith]

Welp, I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage at the moment because I'm away from my Gigabyte rig at the moment. As I recall, I have pretty much everything memory related set to "Auto", including not only the memory boot type, but the whole board boot type. So nothing is set to "Normal" or "Fast", all just "Auto". It's possible, I suppose, that you have an issue with one of your two A2/B2 slots. While not ideal, you could try both dimms in A1/B1 to see if you get a different result.