It's just been about two months since Chia's MainNet went life, and I still feel like there's a lot to learn about the planning process. My plotting machine's RAM was just upgraded from 32GB (4 DIMMS) to 64GB (2 DIMMS). When utilizing Big DIMMS (32GB per stick in this instance), I've discovered that you need to use RAM that is on the motherboard's Qualified Vendor List (QVL). I wanted to leave two slots open this time to avoid being trapped with little RAM as I was previously.
If you need more storage in the future, you may upgrade to 128GB. That's why I went with two 32GB sticks. Thermaltake TOUGHRAM RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 3600MHz C18 was the kit I chose (amazon affiliate link). For my motherboard, this was the only one I could locate.
I received the kit and put it in the plotter. I created a single plot using the same parameters as previously (6 threads, 3416 RAM, Solo NVMe).
There is a 700-second increase in speed. So, what exactly is going on here? This may be caused by several factors:
With quicker RAM, AMD CPUs are renowned to perform better. Infinity Fabric, which is linked to the RAM speed, is used by Ryzen CPUs. Quicker RAM means faster Infinity Fabric performance.
This may potentially be a result of switching from four to two DIMMs. It has long been known that two DIMMs outperform four DIMMs when it comes to overclocking. I'm not overclocking here; I'm simply using XMP.
However, there are a few additional questions that need to be investigated further:
With the 3600 Kit, the RAM timings are worse. Does this imply that RAM timings are unimportant? Is MHz the king of RAM?
Is this going to help with parallel plotting times?
It takes a long time to test these things, so I'll attempt to address these queries as soon as possible. The purpose of publishing this blog early was to let people know that if you're planning to construct an AMD plotting as service, you should buy the quickest RAM available. Right now, hitting 4000Mhz with RAM and having the Infinity Fabric equal it at 2000Mhz is very difficult; it seems that 3800 RAM is the sweet spot? AMD has said that this should be feasible, and they are working on AGESA changes to make it so. You'll have to conduct your study on the motherboard and CPU combination that you have.
Another piece of information is that I'm presently evaluating an AMD 5700G computer. Once I get that information, I will make it public.