Upgrading now: Stay with DDR3 or go with DDR4?

[HDN]

Black Friday is upon us and I have decided to take advantage of that to upgrade my system. This is what I currently have:

AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition OC'd to 3.7 GHz
Cryorig H7 CPU Air Cooler
Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2P Mini ATX Board
G.SKILL Ripjaws 2x4 GB DDR3-1066 RAM
MSI NGTX760 Twin Frozr
OCZ Modular 80 Plus 600W PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I'm planning on replacing the motherboard and CPU. But the RAM is what my hangup is.

I was initially thinking of getting an Intel i5 4690k with a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 board and reusing my DDR3 RAM. But I know that DDR4 RAM has been out for about a year and that it's going to be mainstream moving forward.

To accommodate a DDR4 setup, I would go with an i5 6600k with a Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 and G.SKILL Ripjaws 2x4 GB or 2x8 GB at 2133 or 2400.

I'm planning on keeping the system as-is for at least three years (except for the graphics card and any RAM expansion), so I'm wondering if it's worth saving money on RAM right now and sticking with DDR3 for the next three years, or going in on DDR4 and upgrading the RAM capacity as needed. Any thoughts?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

Go with DDR4

 

[lifespill]

The difference is minimal,i'd say go with the cheapest option.

 

[Dragos Manea]

The difference is minimal,i'd say go with the cheapest option.

Actually is ddr3 1066 which is pretty low frequency, it is proven (if you google a bit) that high frequency ram helps with minimum fps in new games. Go for ddr4 and skylake.

 

[HDN]

Is that still true with the higher latency on the current DDR4 RAM?

 

[Dragos Manea]

The DDR4 process matured, the 2800, 3000 and 3200 modules surpasses the ddr3 in speed and latency. In other words DDR4 just got better then the DDR3

 

[USAFRet]

If you're changing the whole system, there is no reason to stay with DDR3.

 

[HDN]

I ultimately decided to order components around DDR4. While, based on my research, RAM speed doesn't seem to make a big difference at this point with my gaming habits (Armored Warfare, MechWarrior Online, World of Tanks), I do see that LGA 1150 is obsolete in the way there won't be any new chips for the socket. And of course the LGA 1151 chips will all likely require DDR4 to work, so going this route gives me the opportunity to upgrade in the future if I so choose.

I ended up purchasing two G.SKILL 8 GB DDR4 2666 modules with the Newegg coupon. I doubt I will overclock my RAM at all unless big benefits are there in the future, but I'm happy to know the OC headroom is there.

I also ended up purchasing the Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 board with another Newegg coupon.

A couple times when one of my two 4 GB modules failed, I found that my system was somewhat struggling with just 4 GB available. I feel that getting two 8 GB modules will give me some more robust redundancy if one of the modules fails. And G.SKILL's lifetime warranty is really great!