When the question comes in about what is the speed of your computer, you might think (actually most of the people think) about the CPU speed of your computer. But CPU speed isn’t the only thing that measures your computer speed. It also depends on your RAM speed. What is RAM speed and how to check RAM speed on your computer? Read this article. You will have a good understanding of checking your RAM speed when you are at the end of the article.
Table of Contents
What Is RAM Speed Actually?
Before checking your RAM speed, you must know what is RAM speed. The answer is simple, but it is so complex to understand how RAM speed actually affects your system performance. In a nutshell: The speed of your RAM means how fast it can transfer data to local memory and how fast it can retrieve that data from the local memory. The faster the speed, the faster your PC can store data to local memory and can retrieve the data from the local memory.
The speed rating of the RAM changes slightly based on the DDR(Double Data Rate) version which your computer is currently using. It is not simple to know the ram clock speed of your processor. It is a combination of hardware factors. But generally, it is not so hard to understand that the faster is better, fastest is best, isn’t it?
Why You Need to Know RAM Speed
Sometimes, people find that their computer is not working properly rather it’s running at a slow speed rate. Most of the time, the gamers who need a high-speed rate(for the perfect motion of the scenes) face the RAM speed problem. To ensure that you are currently having the perfect RAM speed, you must check the speed rating of your RAM. Because it is not always as same as the manufacturer set the speed of your RAM. Your PC may automatically let you use less speed than the actual speed of your RAM.
How to Check RAM Speed
In this section, you are going to know how to check your RAM frequency from windows PC using the command prompt, and form MAC.
Using Command Prompt in Windows PC
Click on the windows icon in the lower-left corner of your monitor and write the command prompt. In windows 7, go to start menu and write the same thing to check ram speed in windows 10, you can search in the Cortana search box writing command prompt. The command prompt application will be shown there. Click on that to go into the application.
Or you can press the Windows key on your keyboard and then hold the Windows key, press R key. The run application will open. Write cmd in the text field of the box. Then press enter or click ok. This will take you to the command prompt application.
Type “wmic memory chip get speed in the command prompt”. This command allows us to check the RAM chip’s speed and show the speed at the command prompt. After writing this, press enters key on your keyboard. Then the command will be executed. You may have multiple RAM installed in your PC. The command will show each one of your PC’s RAM’s speed.
In the above picture, it shows the RAM speed of the PC’s only RAM and the speed is 1600 MHz or 1.6 GHz.
Using MAC
- Double click on the System Information. The icon of the system information is like a computer chip in your MAC’s utilities folder. Double-clicking the system information will open the application in a new window.
- Click on the memory located on the left panel. After finding the memory tab from the navigation panel on the left side of system information, Open Memory tab. After opening this, you will see detailed information about ram chip or chips that are currently installed on your MAC.
- You can check the speed of each of your memory chips on the Memory Slots table. This table shows the list of all of your installed RAM chips and shows the speed of each one. It also shows the Size, Type, and Status of each of your memory chips.
Using CPU-Z
To check and set the frequency of your ram, CPU-z is the best software to do that. You can check almost every device of your computer. You can set the speed of your ram to perform well through this software.
How To Download CPU-z and check your ram speed
To download this software, go to its website or you can click on this link(https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html) to enter into the website of CPU-z. This will lead you to the front page of the website.
Scroll down and find the download section. You’ll see multiple options there. Click on your suitable one. Then click on the download now. This will automatically start downloading the software.
Then install it like other software. Run it.
You will see a window like this:
Click on memory from the tools.
This window will show you everything about your ram like type, size, NB frequency, etc. You can change the rate if you want. But before that, you must know the highest speed rate of your ram.
Must Know Existing RAM Speed Before Buying New One
You can buy any ram having any speed. But you should buy the same ram model you are currently using because RAM is pretty complicated. You may have the DDR or DDR2 or DDR3 or DDR4 ram model. You cannot mix DDR with DDR2 or DDR3 and so on.
Summing Up
Checking the RAM speed isn’t just to operate your computer perfectly. But if you roughly use your computer like running more than 2 or 3 software at a time, then you should be concerned about your ram speed. Because it’s the speed that the software can store data to the local memory and retrieve the data from the local memory. The faster the speed, the faster and smoothly the software will perform. You may run heavy software on your computer like Solid Works, Adobe Photoshop, or play heavy games like FIFA or GTA. To get the best performance from these, you must have high speedy RAM. But how to check RAM speed on your computer? After reading this article, I hope you now have much knowledge about your RAM speed and its necessity.
