This new feature gives new AMD chips a 21% gaming boost

If you own one of AMD’s latest processors, you’re in luck. With the release of Ryzen 9000, AMD added a feature called Optimized Performance Profile (OPP), which lets you easily overclock your RAM.

There’s more, though. If you have both a Ryzen 9000 CPU, such as the Ryzen 7 9700X, and an MSI motherboard, a new BIOS update can help you improve the gaming performance of your CPU by up to 21%. This is due to MSI’s own stack of features, which now includes MSI Memory Try It and High-Efficiency Mode.

MSI shared some benchmarks highlighting the improvements you can get from each feature. It appears that you can mix and match, such as by using AMD OPP and MSI’s High-Efficiency Mode, or by combining the two MSI options into one overclocking tool. For the purpose of testing, MSI used a PC with a Ryzen 7 9700X CPU, the MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk Wi-Fi motherboard, and two different types of memory: Galax’s HOF Pro DDR5-7200 and Kingston’s Fury Beast DDR5-6000.

Let’s start with AMD OPP, which can only be used with memory modules with SK Hynix chips. Using OPP, MSI overclocked the memory to a DDR5-6000 CL30-38-38-96 profile and compared it to a default of DDR5-4800. This already delivered sizable gains, bringing latency down by 19% compared to the default profile; it also turned out to be around 5% better than using AMD EXPO. Gaming performance boosts varied depending on the title, ranging from a 2% increase all the way up to 13% at 1080p.

Next, MSI combined AMD OPP with its own High-Efficiency Mode, which is available in four presets: Tightest, Tighter, Balance, and Relax. MSI paired OPP with the second-best mode, Tighter, and found that this combination reduced latency by an extra 8% compared to using OPP alone. Gaming gains were there, too, ranging from 2% to 8%.

Lastly, MSI ditched OPP in favor of its own Memory Try It feature, which supports memory modules from more vendors, including Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. MSI says that Memory Try It boosts frequency and offers tighter timings. To show it off, MSI used the DDR50-600 CL28-35-35-60 setting and paired it with the Tighter preset from the High-Efficiency Mode.

The result seems pretty sweet. This combo delivered an up to 10% uplift compared to using AMD OPP alone, a 13% boost compared to using EXPO, and lastly, an up to 21% 1080p gaming boost versus a setup that wasn’t overclocked at all.

AMD’s OPP is nice enough on its own, but if you have an MSI motherboard, you might as well take advantage and download the latest BIOS update to give it a spin. However, remember the warning that MSI also shared in its blog post: Overclocking your RAM may cause system instability, so proceed with caution and don’t go all-in all at once.