Squeezing performance out of Kingston 16GB DDR4 2666 in Metro Exodus
Running 2666MHz RAM in 2026 is a total nightmare. In the snow scenes of Metro Exodus, my 1% lows were tanking to 18 FPS. The lack of bandwidth left my CPU just hanging, creating this awful choppy feeling. I tried killing every background app, but that only gained me 2 FPS—like trying to make a snail run a marathon. I decided to push the RAM to 2933MHz in the BIOS and tightened the timings from 19-19-19-39 down to 16-18-18-36, while bumping voltage to 1.35V. Looking at the RTSS frame time graph, the jagged spikes smoothed out, and the minimums rose to 32-36 FPS. I did blue-screen three times during the process until I loosened tRFC to 420. Now, RAM temps are 45-52℃ and the CPU is at 65-71℃. I exported the performance logs to verify the gain, with fans steady at 1400-1600 RPM. It's still not high-end, but the stuttering is gone.
