Is manual RAM overclocking needed for Expeditions: Rome on A320M?
I was honestly stoked when I bumped my RAM from 2133MHz to 2666MHz; the loading speeds in Expeditions: Rome shot up. It's rare to see such a jump on an old platform. The memory controller on the ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 is pretty mediocre by default, which caused a 18-25ms calculation lag when the CPU was juggling tons of AI units. I tried the easy route with XMP, but the system refused to boot—I actually panicked for a second thinking I'd fried my RAM. I switched to a manual step-by-step OC, locking it at 2666MHz and pushing the voltage from 1.2V to 1.35V. Average FPS climbed from 42 to 58, and the stutters mostly vanished. I did notice some memory parity errors during idle, but a slight tweak of the SoC voltage to 1.1V fixed it. RAM temps are hovering at 40-46℃ and VRMs are at 62-68℃. After testing various timings, this setup is the sweet spot. Frame times are now a stable 7.2-8.5ms.