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Will DDR3 last?

DDR4 is already out and being used in the latest motherboards.
DDR3 is fading. It will take a decade or more for it to be gone, but the writing is already on the wall. It will never go faster than it does today because all the money now is working on DDR4.
 


Are you saying my 4790k should still be high end for the next 3 years at least?
 
You can look at this from a few perspectives.

1. Single vs. dual channel memory makes no difference in today's machines as far as gaming is concerned. You can cut the bandwidth in half and it does nothing. The important memory system as far as games go is with the GPU.

2. In every upgrade generation where 2 standards existed at one time, it made little difference in performance. Check out these benchmarks comparing DDR2 to DDR3 on the LGA 775. Keep in mind these gaming benchmarks are run to keep the CPU as the bottleneck. In actual gaming performance, where the GPU would be the bottleneck the difference would be less.

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_p5k_vs_asus_p5k3_benchmarks_ddr2_vs_ddr3/5

3. You don't really have a choice in what you wind up with. If you already have a modern system it would be stupid to upgrade just for ddr4. If you are looking to buy a system then get ddr4. Otherwise if your budget doesn't allow for it you will wind with ddr3.
 
Short answer, yes your 4790K will probably be fine for the next 3 years, as will DDR3. Depending on how games progress in their developement you may be finding your self looking to increase the amount of DRAM and the data rate (of course that's dependent on what you have, for gaming I'd say 16GB of 2400 will suffice for 2-3 years) 😉
 


How long can I stick with my 2x4gb 1866 HyperX Fury and not have problems playing games without tabs in chrome or anything like that?
 
Well 2006 or so people were saying 1GB, 2009 i was 2 GB (is all you ever need) around 2011, "4 GB is all you'll ever need", 2013 "you'll never use 8GB", and as mentioned already games using 8GB, heard of one coming the end of this year calling for 12 GB (which for most means get 16GB on a dual channel mobo (the predominant mobos out there), guesssing 16 will be entry level in all new rigs within a year or so