Is my slow RAM bottlenecking my CPU(Ryzen3 3100) even on non-gaming usual tasks like browsing?

[L ætitia]

Currently I'm using Ryzen 3 3100 without OC'ing and my RAMs are budget 2666MHz CL19 8GB x2, just a JEDEC copatible RAM which has nothing special.

I often hear that Zen arches in general are sensitive to RAM speed for their performance.
And I saw lots of cases where better frequency/timing RAMs are sitting on better result in game performance and benchmarks.

But for less-demanding tasks, specially for browsing on Firefox in my case, would buying better RAMs like 3200MHz or more frequency with CL16 timing give me noticeably better experience?

In gaming, I'm already satisfied with current performance.
But for browsing, not so much.
I feel like there's a room to improvements and it'd be great if just upgrading my RAMs can improve my browsing performance, any thoughts?

 

[WatEagle]

when i didn't have the 3200mhz kit i used 2400mhz from my previous build and for general usage there was almost no difference or i didn't notice it. In gaming faster ram in general gives you better performance, no matter intel or amd.
Before you go to buy a new kit of ram I would suggest you to try to overclock the one you have. Try the dram calculator from 1usmus, maybe if you can get it to 3000mhz probablyyou don't need to upgrade

 

[FinneousPJ]

What issue are you having while browsing

 

[ArdWar]

For browsing, more RAM is almost always better than faster RAM.

Although if you get subpar browsing experience with your current setup, I'd take a look at what you/your computer are doing during browsing. Opening a lot of html5 or JS-heavy pages would tax your CPU, ditto with misbehaving extensions (using multiple adblocker for example). Hardware acceleration sometimes *decelerate* your browser if your GPU driver/setup isn't quite right. Sometimes your browser don't even fully utilize available RAM and frequently dump cache to HDD instead (I know on Chrome I had to manually increase cache size just to open certain website, granted it wasn't your average website). etc.

 

[ebivan]

Yeah, those applications should not really benefit much from faster memory.

If browsing performance is generally low, there are many other factors that could be limiting your experience like slow internet connection or bad wifi connectivity, maybe even some other client in your network is using all your bandwidth...?
There are lots of browser plugins that can slow browsing experience too, just try disabling your plugins and check if there is any improvement. You can also try out another browser like Chromium just to see if its a software problem.

 

[biffzinker]

But for less-demanding tasks, specially for browsing on Firefox in my case, would buying better RAMs like 3200MHz or more frequency with CL16 timing give me noticeably better experience?

In gaming, I'm already satisfied with current performance.
But for browsing, not so much.

Have you tried another web browser? I get random stuttering in Firefox 81.0.2 when scrolling a web page with the mouse wheel. I’ve already tried Edge, Chrome, and Edge Chromium. None of those web browsers exhibit the scrolling issue I’m having.

 

[Bill_Bright]

But for less-demanding tasks, specially for browsing on Firefox in my case, would buying better RAMs like 3200MHz or more frequency with CL16 timing give me noticeably better experience?

No. And the following is why.

For browsing, more RAM is almost always better than faster RAM.

And actually, for almost all, if not all tasks, more RAM is always better than faster RAM. At least when you are starting out with small amounts of RAM. But you are not. 16GB is a large amount of RAM.

You really should fill out your System Specs so we can see what we are talking about.

As for your browsing experience, what browser are you using? How do you connect to the Internet? If your gaming performance is satisfactory but you are not happy with your browsing performance, the problem is likely not with your hardware causing a bottleneck.

How much free disk space do you have?

 

[rethcirE]

If you really want to scratch your itch and you are comfortable both in and resetting the computer's BIOS, you can try overclocking your memory and monitoring the improvements(latency/throughput.)

I have mismatched (Micron & Hynix) 16GB 2666MHz CL19-19-19-43 2T sticks. I had NO expectations whatsoever for the memory to overclock at all, given mismatched and low-tier pricing and frankly garbage timing.

At 1.35v they successfully run at 3000MHz 16-18-18-34 1T with fairly respectable sub-timings. For laptop memory I was more than pleased and did notice small benchmark improvements. FPS gains also small but noticeable. Would I spend ANY money jumping from 2666 to 3000MHz memory? No, it would need to be 3600 or higher for me to open my wallet. But free performance can be had if you are persistent and able to experiment. Even on bargain-bin mismatched modules in a laptop no less.

 

[xtreemchaos]

i read somewhere that the sweetspot for zen is between @3200 to @3600 but ill go along with everything above i used to use 2666 without noticing. or it might of been 2166 darn memory its like the tide brain memory that is.

 

[L ætitia]

Thanks for all replys.
It seems like my RAMs, or my hardware in general don't have nothing to do with the problem.

So I have checked what's wrong with my browser(Firefox 81.0.2, though I've received latest update just now.) and finally found the cause of problem.

I'm using uBlock Origin and there were lots of filtering rules that used to be meaningful but not anymore.
Those rules were either still blocking things which incurs an another rule that gets blocked, or just making my browser cluttered.
So I just cleaned up those obsolete and useless filtering rules I've created, and now it got quite better, especially on Twitter.

Maybe I might buy better RAM in near future if there's a great deal cause of DRAM oversupply, but as of now I'll stick to my RAMs since it doesn't seem like heavily bottlenecking my PC.
Thanks everyone for helping me, really appreciate.

 

[Bill_Bright]

FWIW, I think you should stick with uBlock Origin. It is the best, IMO.

If you have a lot of extensions, you should remove what you don't use.