News Report: DRAM Prices Set to Decline 3-8% in Q4 Due to High Levels of Inventory

From a consumer level market, why would anyone buy RAM right now?

DDR5 right around the corner. This is provided you can grab a GPU at a reasonable price. Otherwise the CPU boost for the consumers market would serve ZERO purpose. And that isn't happening.

I'm sure as heck not spending $500 on a poor performance GPU on a $2000 system high end CPU + Memory Your GPU will hold you back and there is no point in invested in these new systems. It makes absolutely ZERO sense to buy anything right now until you get a complete system at once. This hold over "GPU" nonsense is ridiculous. By the time affordable performant GPU's come around your CPU will be outdated.

I'm still staring at my 3400g and thinking if a 5700g upgrade is worth it for 8% uplift. The answer is "No" for $350. $350 could get you a 5700 graphics card at one point.
 

spongiemaster

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Dec 12, 2019
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It will probably be a couple years before there is a justifiable performance delta between DDR4 and DDR5. Beyond fringe cases we'll probably see highend ddr4 kits outperforming ddr5 with AlderLake at release.

Just because everyone who wants a gpu at a certain price can't get one doesn't mean a whole lot of people are getting gpu's. There are plenty of people here that have current gen gpu's.
 
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Traditionally, the first-release speeds of next gen RAM, DDR5 in this case, is barely faster, and sometimes even slower, than a performance (OCd) set of the previous generation. Add to that the flurry of BIOS updates, necessary tweaking, and incompatibilities that go along with the initial release of new technology, and the picture may not be as rosy. It will eventually be a worthwhile upgrade, but I don't think it is right off the bat.
 
Traditionally, the first-release speeds of next gen RAM, DDR5 in this case, is barely faster, and sometimes even slower, than a performance (OCd) set of the previous generation. Add to that the flurry of BIOS updates, necessary tweaking, and incompatibilities that go along with the initial release of new technology, and the picture may not be as rosy. It will eventually be a worthwhile upgrade, but I don't think it is right off the bat.
It will probably be a couple years before there is a justifiable performance delta between DDR4 and DDR5. Beyond fringe cases we'll probably see highend ddr4 kits outperforming ddr5 with AlderLake at release.

Just because everyone who wants a gpu at a certain price can't get one doesn't mean a whole lot of people are getting gpu's. There are plenty of people here that have current gen gpu's.

While I understand your arguments, there is a significant performance jump with platforms that do use DDR5. Early leaks and benchmarks prove this. Whether or not this is caused by DDR5 isn't the point. There's no point in investing this late in any DDR4 platform.

Earlier in the year I said you could create a stop gap platform (like I did with 3400g) until GPU cards came back. Well the GPU market never settled down, and in fact got worse.

I'm not chasing more bad money after bad waiting for GPU prices to come down. The bottleneck will always be the GPU side of things and that just doesn't make sense to update systems right now. New platform, bad GPU pricing. Sorry that just isn't going to fly with me. It's why I haven't bought a 5000 series CPU. And again, Zen 4 is looking to be a healthy leap. But without GPU's to justify it, there is no point.

While enthusiast community is small, we do contribute a significant percentage. If enough of us lose interest, there will eventually be a decline in other hardware component prices. Heck even hardware channels have stopped reviewing cards. "What's the point?" And I support them on this. What's the point of buying 4/5 a car?