Is DDR3 RAM outdated

jkarateking

Honorable
Jun 5, 2014
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I am building a gaming pc on a medium budget. I am looking at ram.
Ddr3 ram is cheaper but is it outdated and ineffective now?
If it is outdated then what is newer and more effective?

Thanks in advance
 
Solution
Nope, DDR3 is fine.
The premium price of ddr4 means you have to upgrade to x99 chipset, and the cpu's that go with it. They are not needed for the average person.
Only go x99 if you are a content creator. They are more workstation Pc. More cores=less time rendering.

Common suggestion for gaming is i5-4690k cpu combined with z97 chipset motherboard. This is even a bit overkill, you can get away with an i5-4460.
Then spend more money on a graphics card, common high end suggestion for 1080p gaming is gtx970.
Nope, DDR3 is fine.
The premium price of ddr4 means you have to upgrade to x99 chipset, and the cpu's that go with it. They are not needed for the average person.
Only go x99 if you are a content creator. They are more workstation Pc. More cores=less time rendering.

Common suggestion for gaming is i5-4690k cpu combined with z97 chipset motherboard. This is even a bit overkill, you can get away with an i5-4460.
Then spend more money on a graphics card, common high end suggestion for 1080p gaming is gtx970.
 
Solution
Not really. DDR3 provides plenty of memory performance for any CPUs currently on the market, there's basically no performance benefit from DDR4. It does use a little more power, but that's really a negligible difference on a desktop computer.

DDR4 is more about the server and laptop markets than the consumer desktop.

Anyway, all current platforms lock you into one particular memory type anyway, so once you pick your CPU/motherboard you've also picked the memory type by default.
 
DDR4 is just a continuation of DDR3 and made to run at lower voltages. DDR3 originally wasn't to go higher than a 1600 data rate, the DRAM manufacturers took it above and beyond, and JEDEC, who writes the 'Standards' for DRAM were scrambling to keep up, 1866, 2133, 2400 and even 2666 sticks were available before JEDEC ever even published 'standards' for 1866 or 2133