Question How soon until fast DDR5 6000-6400MHz will matter with Alder Lake for gaming

[Wolverine2349]

I was on fence of getting DDR5 or staying with DDR4. I would have gone with DDR5 just for more future proof, but the 10-15C higher temps at exact same settings on multiple Asus motherboards scared me off. SO I am staying with low CL14 DDR4 3600MHz. AM I going to miss out on anything or no? Its mostly high end gaming I am concerned about. Not concerned about memory bandwidth sensitive apps. But are games going to become like that and will future video cards need fast DDR5 for massive performance improvements?

I basically want this system with a 12900KS to be future proof as in be able to run latest games down the road smoothly with video card upgrades without having to chang3e CPU or mobo for next 3-4 years. Will DDR4 be more than enough or will DDR5 make a difference for this generation down the road.

 

[logainofhades]

Stay with DDR4. You can get twice the capacity, at half the price. Performance differences aren't huge.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Games are more or less going to be designed around PCs that are at least 3-4 generations behind because what's the point of spending a lot of money making a game that 0.01% of your market can actually run?

 

[Wolverine2349]

Stay with DDR4. You can get twice the capacity, at half the price. Performance differences aren't huge.

Yeah thats what I am going to do just because the higher 12700K temps in 2 different tests with an Asus Z690 Maximus Hero and Asus Z690-A Prime temps were 10-15C hotter using OCCT Variable Large Data set test with same exact LLC and same locked fixed clock speeds as Asus Tuf DDR4 mobo.

Money is not really a concern to me, but I only air cool and hate liquid cooling including AIOs.

But doesn't DDR4 provide benefit to being able to run in Gear 1. And isn't DDR5 held back by that, but compensates with much faster speeds, so kind of a wash unless you run rare apps that are memory bandwidth sensitive?? Especially until DDR5 matures and has future CPUs that can run Gear 1 with it and also DDR5 latency times come down a bit.

 

[Wolverine2349]

To sum it up, would you say that currently there is not much of difference overall between DDR4 and DDR5 for Alder Lake?? But in the future there will be where DDR5 will pull way ahead as it matures and advances like all memory generations??

And getting a DDR5 board to future proof will not work because by the time better and faster DDR5 comes out that is worth it and leaves DDR4 in the dust, newer motherboards will only support it with XMP at those speeds and today's even high end DDR5 boards will not be able t run the future DDR5 at future DDR5 latency and speed??

 

[hotaru.hino]

To sum it up, would you say that currently there is not much of difference overall between DDR4 and DDR5 for Alder Lake?? But in the future there will be where DDR5 will pull way ahead as it matures and advances like all memory generations??

And getting a DDR5 board to future proof will not work because by the time better and faster DDR5 comes out that is worth it and leaves DDR4 in the dust, newer motherboards will only support it with XMP at those speeds and today's even high end DDR5 boards will not be able t run the future DDR5 at future DDR5 latency and speed??

I don't think it matters in the end. If the work the application is doing isn't memory bandwidth bound now or even close to it, it's not going to be memory bound in the near future. I've yet to encounter a workload aside from file compression that is actually memory bandwidth bound.

 

[Wolverine2349]

I don't think it matters in the end. If the work the application is doing isn't memory bandwidth bound now or even close to it, it's not going to be memory bound in the near future. I've yet to encounter a workload aside from file compression that is actually memory bandwidth bound.

Yeah true. Though I mean is DDR3 still enough for gaming with a high end 6-8 core CPU from 5-7 years ago for today's video cards for 1440p or 4K.


Eventually it may matter but like you said not for a long long long time.