Adata XPG V1 2400 Vs. Crucial DDR4-2133: DDR4 At 32GB

[Crashman]

Are high-capacity memory modules harder to overclock? Adata’s DDR4-2400 kit battles Crucial’s standard DDR4-2133 for bandwidth, overclocking and value.

Adata XPG V1 2400 Vs. Crucial DDR4-2133: DDR4 At 32GB : Read more

 

[alidan]

would be nice to see a ddr3 value set in there for comparison purposes, many of us will be jumping from 3 to 4 with our next builds... well ill be jumping ddr2 to 4, and seeing what the difference is there and when ddr4 really starts to overtake 3 would be a good help to us.

 

[T_h_e_S_k_u_l_l]

...and the conclusion is that RAM in practice reached a brick wall , i.e. no real advantage for games.
It also makes us wonder WHY we need DDR4 *NOW* in 1st place when there is very decent DDR3 at 2133 or even 24000mhz that is cheaper....only reason is power drain but even DDR3 2133 can be slightly undervolted...i did it w/o problems.
Sure, it will still waste more energy, but DDR3 is cheaper and till you recover the difference, it will take a lot of time.

 

[Savvy_01]

The reason to upgrade to ddr4 isn't so much for a RAM upgrade, but for the CPU upgrade. After all, if you want to use the latest Intel CPUs, you need ddr4 RAM.

 

[alidan]

...and the conclusion is that RAM in practice reached a brick wall , i.e. no real advantage for games.
It also makes us wonder WHY we need DDR4 *NOW* in 1st place when there is very decent DDR3 at 2133 or even 24000mhz that is cheaper....only reason is power drain but even DDR3 2133 can be slightly undervolted...i did it w/o problems.
Sure, it will still waste more energy, but DDR3 is cheaper and till you recover the difference, it will take a lot of time.

if i remember right ddr4 came in at faster than ddr3 despite having higher numbers, with the exception of extreme ddr3 overclocks.

and like the other person said, its less about the ram and more about the cpus, though the ram being faster is always a nice bonus.

 

[Cryio]

We see here DDR4 at 3000. But we already had DDR3 hit 3200, so I'm not impressed.

Different voltages, sure, but the difference isn't that big.

 

[tigerwild]

If you are looking for a good set of test for Large RAM capacities, please take this into consideration for your tests:

7zip compressing with max compression, 4 cores, max settings, it wants 22GB of RAM for compression. It is a better tool than WinRAR and WinZIP in its multi-threaded capability, it soaks up excessive amounts of RAM, gets amazing compression and it is freeware.

But before you do this also setup a 4 to 8 GB RAMDISK, out of your 32GB available! For the RAMDISK set it thensave it as an image that get loaded with windows. Setup directories and a tiny 500MB windows swap file on it. Save the image with compression to your SSD (should shrink to less than a few MBytes) Change Windows temp directory variables, Mozilla Firefox cache variable to a directory on the RAMDISK, and set windows swap file mapped to the drive. Test the speed improvement for web browsing, installing and using large memory footprint programs, or just 7-zip a 20 Gig set of files for archiving!

I do all of these things regularly with my setup, and having a lot of FAST RAM really helps in my experience! I save on wear and tear off my SSD's write lifetime by setting up a cached image of the RAMDISk to the SSD. It is a compressed image (800KB) gets loaded at startup, inflated size is over 4 GB with appropriate directories in it. Windows gets a GREAT speed and responsiveness jump.

Most people don't believe in setting a swap file to a RAM disk because it seemingly defeats the purpose (swapping RAM to RAM-ha ha!). But in my experience with memory hungry applications, two factors come into play that make it advisable on a Windows platform; 1-with the swap file in place on a RAM DISk (and with hibernate manually disabled) windows will not 'lock up' if your system needs more memory. This will happen if you DO NOT have a swap file and run out of RAM. Instead it will auto expand the swap file to the OSes current needs. This is accompanied by a mere warning that you didn't start with enough swap disk allotted space, rather than a blue screen of Windows Death! I make this happen by setting my SSD drive to have a 50MB swap file, and the RAMDISK to a 500 MB swap file. 2-as long as Windows has a swap file it does a better job of file caching all around. I usually augment this with registry entries that keep executable and DLL files cached for extended use.

 

[oyoy]

So, working with all Adobe / Discreet products won't show any performance gain when upgrading 16 to 32 (or 64) ram? I have waited two years and I'm so confused right now.

 

[AJSB]

oyoy,
If you are happy with performance of your CPU and amount of RAM there is no reason to upgrade either the amount of RAM or its type.
AFAIC, i will continue to use my G.Skill 8GB 2133MHz kits because in all my tests i don't see inm anyway any program really using it in amounts to justify a change...but again, this is for *my* uses.

You should check the amount of RAM used by your system be it gaming, be in in "productivity" applications, i recommend the freeware Open Hardware Monitor.

 

[AJSB]

alidan,
There is NOTHING in the specifications of DDR4 that makes it faster than DDR3 if both are running at same frequency.
ANY *real* increase in performance when both using *same* clock freqencies must be attributed to CPU or Chipset differences.

Only real advantage of DDR4 is power drain...that's *ALL*.

However, even that gap could be minimized if DDR3 manufacturers reduced the voltage of DDR3 (witch they are doing) and in special if they used the DDR3L,etc. specifications.

All this is/was possible, it's only a question of WILL from them.

Why do you think DDR4 was all this time in "development" ? Because there was no perceived reason to do so....and the numbers in this test shows that the increases of frequency, even going from 2133 to 3000mhz don't reflect in increase of performance.
*IF* there is no increase of performance going from 2133 to 3000, *why* dump DDR3 that can achieve same performance at lower price ?
Only reason would be power drain but even that could be minimized via more DDR3 standard compliant voltages, DDR3L,etc. or undervoltage.

There must a LOT of performance increase in DDR4, in special timings but also even greater frequencies AND CPUs/APUs that really can use that RAM performance, to it be really a significant improvement in games,etc.

Even in APUs (from AMd or Intel no matter Intel APUs are not called that way) DDR4 brings VERY LITTLE , near ZERO improvements.
MUCH more radical improvements would be large amounts of RAM in the SoC to work as a RAM video (but that would be too expensive) or color compression new techniques that start to happear already in NVIDIA and AMD most recent cards.
Any of those options would increase the graphics bandwidth of the APUs to a much higher level than any DDR4 , even at 4000MHz, could do...and at a fraction of the cost in the case of color compression.


AFAIC, for *now* is a complete WASTE of money to make an upgrade because of significant costs (RAM plus CPU plus MoBo) for reduced, or even i dare to say, insignificant improvements in performance.

 

[Crashman]

We see here DDR4 at 3000. But we already had DDR3 hit 3200, so I'm not impressed.

Different voltages, sure, but the difference isn't that big.

Be impressed with what happened here not because of the RAM, but because of the CPU. It's not supposed to support higher than DDR4-2666, and the Haswell's DDR3 memory controller had better high-frequency stability than the one in Haswell-E

 

[AJSB]

Crashman,
I also have a build with an AMD A6-5400K that supposedly is only for 1866MHz...but i have it running with 2133MHz (didn't try 2400MHz because i don't have RAM kits of 2400MHz)

 

[Crashman]

On most X99 boards, you just don't find a ratio beyond 2666 MHz. Haswell (DDR3) has higher memory multipliers available, and those high multipliers are mostly stable.

 

[merikafyeah]

I remember not too long ago many people with AMD APUs all said DDR4 would change the game and boost frame rates significantly since for APUs system RAM is a lot like VRAM. I said you wouldn't see noticeable improvements beyond DDR3-2133 because memory speed is still not a major bottleneck for graphics processing compared to GPU clock rate and shader unit count. I was shot down for saying that, but I still stand by what I said, since I have yet to see any compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. People seem to have this idea that the APU performance wall is farther than it actually is, and that the only thing keeping you from hitting that wall is the speed of your RAM. Reality check incoming.

 

[T_h_e_S_k_u_l_l]

merikafyeah,
You are 100% correct, just look to the AMD A10-7850K, going from 2133 to 2400MHz RAM also have minimal impact in performance, this is why i also say the game changer will not be faster RAM but color compression algorithms that already proved give a dramatic boost in dGPUs.
It will also do so in iGPUs.

 

[jimmysmitty]

...and the conclusion is that RAM in practice reached a brick wall , i.e. no real advantage for games.
It also makes us wonder WHY we need DDR4 *NOW* in 1st place when there is very decent DDR3 at 2133 or even 24000mhz that is cheaper....only reason is power drain but even DDR3 2133 can be slightly undervolted...i did it w/o problems.
Sure, it will still waste more energy, but DDR3 is cheaper and till you recover the difference, it will take a lot of time.

It is the same as when DDR3 came out at 800 and 1066/1333 yet we had DDR2 at those same speeds for far cheaper. It is to start it off then when production ramps up it will drop in price drastically, like DDR3, and give us even faster data rates than what DDR3 is capable of, up to a potential of 4266. As well, DDR4 can be manufactured at twice the density of DDR3 which will help overcome the size limits DDR3 currently has.

In the end, it is just another major benefit to servers that will slowly benefit desktops. Servers have a need for higher density and higher speed memory modules. We wont for some time but then again an OS can be optimized to take advantage of the extra RAM, much like Vista/7/8 use superfetch to preload most commonly used applications into memory that is not being used.

 

[firefoxx04]

Will you people who oppose DDR4 just accept it? Anytime newer and better products come out, there is always the idiots that say "more cores? my apps only use 2 cores, I dont need more EVER" "More RAM? Thats stupid, I never used more than 8GB".

Now we have a more efficient and higher performance (once the real deal ddr4 matures and is released) we get the idiots that say "but we have fast ddr3 and faster memory makes no difference in games!"

Its like, if something wont benefit games it is worthless. As if workstations and servers are irreverent. We would still have ddr2 (or worse) ram and dual core cpus if the industry acted like the idiots that post these comments. A ram standard improvement has been long overdue.

Im just sick of hearing people oppose faster PCI-E, faster RAM, more Cores, lots of graphics cards (more than 2 wont scale well in games!!!! *but they will in workstation taskts), multiple socket systems, etc.

If you cant afford it and if it wont help your stupid games. Thats the mentality and it is ridiculous. The same people complain when intel releases a CPU that *only* has a 10% ipc increase even though their precious games dont need anything better because their aging sandy bridge 5ghz i7 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Get over yourselves.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Just did a build, was considering 32GB of memory, kinda glad I didn't, for now and settled on 16GB. I think it'll be a few years before I have to worry about increasing my RAM.

 

[tigerwild]

I always recommend to people, when doing a build, go with the absolute maximum capacity of RAM you can afford. I always try to hit 32 GB minimum. If you have any experience with Windows systems, more RAM is always useful. This is especially true if you are using SSD (NAND flash) in the systems. You can dramatically reduce write cycle wear and tear on the drive if you setup caching and RAMDISKs properly.

If you are using photoshop or video editing software, then having more RAM is .....ALWAYS.....useful. It may not translate into a faster render but you will see it in your caching. For example, in Photoshop settings, tell it to use 90 percent of your RAM (assuming you have 32GB) and then you can really feel the difference in responsiveness when using unlimited undo, many layers, cached zoom levels, versus a machine with only 8 GB RAM. It is not always about improving the render time, sometimes it is simply the responsiveness of the system shifting between layers during the content creation and preparation for rendering. It also helps in multitasking.

There is also the issue that most people ignore; get the most RAM at initial build time so that you can buy matched pairs (all timings the same between all RAM modules) which can often have an impact on system stability and to a lesser extent, its' speed.

 

[Rouxenator]

Speed? Stuff speed give us 32GB modules. Capacity is the name of the game.

 

[mapesdhs]

oyoy, it depends on what kind of work you're doing in AE, etc. I've seen heavy
AE renders gobble 40GB RAM (in that instance, huge particle effects plus
lots of raytracing). I wouldn't build an AE system with less than 32GB (or 64GB
minimum for working with 4K+).

Ian.

 

[Christopher1]

like the other person said, its less about the ram and more about the cpus, though the ram being faster is always a nice bonus.

Order of importance in a gaming computer:
1. GPU (thing that limits gaming the most).
2. CPU (second thing that limits gaming though most processors are fast enough that a Core i7 is overkill even with the latest Nvidia and ATi offerings).
3. RAM (DDR3 RAM is good enough for gaming in the real world, DDR4 is only really necessary if you are running a server where milli-second improvements in response times are an issue).
4. Disk drive/SSD drive. If you can, get an SSD and put all your games on a spinny disk drive. If you can afford a LARGE SSD (I'm talking 1TB), then put all your games on that drive with your OS stuff, it will speed up response times/loading times in games a lot.

 

[Cons29]

i like crucial, but that thing is far from looking "premium" and it's even more expensive? i know looks is not everything, but i mean come on, if you're going to charge me that much, you should at least be a looker

 

[oyoy]

oyoy, it depends on what kind of work you're doing in AE, etc. I've seen heavy
AE renders gobble 40GB RAM (in that instance, huge particle effects plus
lots of raytracing). I wouldn't build an AE system with less than 32GB (or 64GB
minimum for working with 4K+).

While i do understand and agree with everything you wrote and yes, "I felt a great disturbance in the Force" on my Z97, i7-4970k, 32GB 2800GHz C11 running PS ~ ill ~ AE ~ PR. But, is this really the right time to jump on the X99 DDR4 wagon? No. Doesn't look that 2x Adata XPG V1 2400 would cause miracles. Will wait a little longer, maybe... when 1 stick 16GB (128GB!) DDR4-2800-3800GHz+ C11/12(?) eventually appear.

 

[AJSB]

firefoxx4,
LOL, you accuse others of be trolling/idiots and then you comment in such a way...

I don't oppose ANY new tech...*i* evaluate if its beneficial or not to *me* in *my* PC builds
taking in account the use intended for them...i.e. i only do mITX builds and last that i checked, there is no mITX MoBos with dual sockets and/or triple/quad channel RAM and/or dual PCIe connectors so , it really doesn't matter if those things are better (or not), if they scale well (or not) or if the power drain is too much (or not) because they don't apply for *my* PC builds.

So, for *you*, that seems have more interest in server use, DDR4 *now*, is a good option and i'm OK with that...but for *me* and people like me, we have *for now* very little interest in it.

So, get over yourself with what others think because they might have different PC needs that you and they have also right to have their opinions.