Do you think the Intel XMP function should be enabled or NOT, and why / why NOT?

I was reading another topic in the System Building and Upgrading Forum, wherein the OP posed an essential question about the Intel Extreme Memory Profile (Intel XMP).

He asked if the XMP function in the BIOS should be enabled for better performance, right? However, according to the Intel article above, the XMP function lets you overclock the DDR4/DDR5 memory modules.

This makes me wonder if the Intel XMP function should be enabled or NOT, but due to netiquette, and because I am a newbie in hardware, I would rather like to ask about that in a new topic.

And hence, my question is as follows: Do you think the Intel XMP function should be enabled or NOT, and why / why NOT?

Thank you very much in advance!

I can only say that for my personal computers I would have it enabled if present, and if stable.  With XMP off it will default to a "JEDEC standard" profile.  The standard JEDEC profiles for DDR4 are listed in a table here - DDR4 SDRAM - Wikipedia Note there's no DDR4 speeds over 3200 MT/s in the JEDEC standards, so anything over that will be an overclock.  These profiles are safe, but will not give peak performance to people who want that.  XMP may be technically an overclock, or may not - it depends.  For example, I have come across DDR4-2666 which was installed in combination with an i5-9x00 CPU, and the memory had an XMP profile you could enable.  It basically caused it to run slightly "tighter" memory timings than the JEDEC standard profile (which was also set at 2666 MT/s), but did not increase voltage over the standard (1.2v), or cause it to run faster than officially supported by that CPU, therefore as far as I'm concerned, it's not an overclock.

As another example, you could have DDR4-3600 RAM with a Ryzen 5xxx series CPU - its a very common combination. If XMP is enabled it will likely bump the voltage up to 1.35v and run the memory at 3600 MT/s.  This is a higher speed than officially supported by the CPU (3200), and also a higher voltage than officially used by DDR4.  Will it cause any damage?  Pretty unlikely I'd say, but each user has to make their own decisions.  Sometimes there can be stability issues with attempting to run XMP profiles, particularly if they are very aggressive, or it can work fine with 2 modules installed but become unstable with 4.  If it's something you're not interested in at all, and you just want the best stability, with no complications, you can buy memory modules without any XMP profile embedded - it's the standard OEM style plain DIMM's (often green, plain modules) sold by, for example, Kingston and Crucial.  Example DDR5.

On

Intel XMP  - On

DOCP (AMD) - On

EXPO (AMD) - On

However, I match the recommended memory speed (MT/s) for the motherboard according to the recommended memory speed as specified by the CPU.

For example, 3200 MT/s RAM kit installed for a Ryzen 5800x and DOCP enabled brings the speed correctly to 3200 MT/s. As recommended by AMD for this CPU.

Instead of using the default lower speed which is set by the BIOS itself.

IOWs no overclocking of the RAM,  just what is recommended.

I would not buy a 6000 MT/s RAM kit for a Intel 13900K CPU,  and instead buy a DDR5 2x32 GB kit rated at 5600 MT/s and enable XMP to just that 5600 MT/s, as that is the recommended speed for that particular Intel CPU.

No over clocking.

Or if using the 6000 MT/s kit, then lower the speed to 5600 MT/s in the BIOS to match the CPU's recommended speed.

Edited by 0lds0d, 30 March 2024 - 05:14 PM.

It should be off

You could explain why that is the case,

Personally I have it enabled, I spent money on ddr5 6000 RAM and you bet your butt I want to take advantage of that especially with me having an AMD Ryzen system where higher frequency ram is extremely beneficial.

By default, my motherboard goes down to 4500 and while this is adequate I still like that extra 1500 available for Ryzens infinity fabric.

Edited by midimusicman79, 30 March 2024 - 08:41 PM.

For almost all DDR4 or DDR5 RAM that I've seen, you need XMP (or DOCP or EXPO) enabled to reach its advertised speed. XMP profiles do use tighter timings than JEDEC standards, even if the frequency matches one of the JEDEC standards. In that sense, it is a factory overclock, and there are RAM manufacturers that really do factory-overclock their RAM (based on some people removing the heat spreaders and looking up the part numbers on the actual chips, but that's more of a problem when that type of RAM is relatively new). Crucial is the only retail RAM brand I know of that will natively run at its advertised speed. (Note that Crucial's Ballistix series uses XMP. The regular line without heat spreaders doesn't.)

The problem I have with XMP is that even if you buy RAM that runs at one of the JEDEC standard frequencies, it will run at a significantly lower speed by default unless XMP is enabled. That causes problems with prebuilt systems (especially laptops since you can't build those) because they typically don't support XMP. I still remember people complaining about some of the earlier Ryzen-based systems that shipped with DDR4 3200 RAM, but the BIOS didn't support XMP. At the time, common DDR4 3200 RAM only ran at 2133 without XMP. Also, both Intel and AMD treat XMP as overclocking and will void your warranty if you admit to using it, regardless of the actual frequency.

Edited by lti, 30 March 2024 - 08:57 PM.

Thank you, jonuk76, Pkshadow, 0lds0d, cryptodan, and MadmanRB!

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Essentials is also resource intensive while creating my weekly Disk image backups on my desktop-only computer.

Well mind you I only speak from the perspective of an end user and a gamer.

I have no idea if enabling XMP/DOCP/Expo would benefit something like disk image backups or not on your particular hardware.

I can at least attest how things work on AMD Ryzen processors as they typically benefit from higher speed RAM more than intel in games, there the benefits are very clear especially on first gen Ryzen where ram speed was crucial to performance.

It's not as cut and dry on both zen 3 or 4 however as they changed the design from zen 1 and 2 but it does seem the speed does have some factor on zen 4 in games due to how powerful the 7800X3D is in gaming.

However in things like data backup? No clue, I mean it seems faster for me but only slightly as my NVME drives are still PCIE gen 3 so I'm limited when concerning that kind of thing

Still its plausible PCIE gen 4 NVME drives may benefit from the ram speed too.

Edited by midimusicman79, 02 April 2024 - 07:02 PM.

XMP is not overclocking, it is a gimmick to make end users think that they are getting something extra, they are not.

OCing is manually increasing CPU and/or RAM settings, XMP is a pre detemined voltage setting that the BIOS detects.

Moral of the story with XMP, match the tested speed of any RAM to the fastest that your CPU can handle, enable XMP and be done with it, the RAM will only reach the maximum speed when under load and that won`t be when only browsing etc.

Thank you, PhillPower2!

However, my ASRock Z170 EXTREME7+ LGA1151 ATX Motherboard supports DDR4 3600+(OC)*/3200(OC)/2933(OC)/2800(OC) /2400(OC)/2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory.

It also supports the Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 2.0, but I do NOT use it, and my CRUCIAL 16GB Kit 8GBx2 DDR4 2133MHz Non-ECC RAM is running stably at 2133MHz.

My Intel® Core™ i7-6700K Processor supports the Memory Types DDR4-1866/2133, and DDR3L-1333/1600 @ 1.35V, but with all due respect, I do NOT think I will enable XMP on my 8-year-old desktop-only computer.

As such, I was only generally asking about the Intel XMP function, and in the motherboard's user manual, in the DRAM Timing Configuration section, it says: "Load XMP settings to overclock the memory and perform beyond standard specifications."