DDR4 vs. DDR5 on Intel Core i9-12900K Alder Lake

[Shatun_Bear]

Ah, remember that its the timings that made the difference there - 3200 CL14 is basically not for sale in Au, period.

3200 C14/3600C16 seem to be ideal, beyond that the gains seem to be trivial.

I should have added 3200 'with decent timings'. But still, the differences are too small for me to concern myself with, but gaming is not my primary pursuit. As long as the timings are decent and I'm not putting 2400Mhz mem in my Ryzen set up, 3200 is the best for price - perf.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Ah, remember that its the timings that made the difference there - 3200 CL14 is basically not for sale in Au, period.

3200 C14/3600C16 seem to be ideal, beyond that the gains seem to be trivial.

It also depends a bit on the monitor you have. It seems to me that these perfect memory speeds/timings only make a real difference when the CPU is the bottleneck, and on a Zen2/3 this only happens at high framerates.
If your monitor caps at 60 or 75Hz then the additional investment gets little to no returns, but I guess for people with 120+Hz monitors it could make some measurable difference.


There's probably some variance on the L3 cache per CPU cores ratio too. More L3 for the same amount of cpu core clients means less trips to the system RAM.
This means the Ryzen 5600X with 32MB L3 for 6 cores and the 5900X with 64MB L3 for 12 cores should be less sensitive to RAM clocks/timings than the 5800X (8 cores / 32MB) and the 5950X (16 cores / 64MB).

By this logic, the upcoming Zen3 VCache models with up to 96MB L3 for 8 cores and 192MB for 16 cores might not care much for RAM speed, given how much they can do within the L3.

 

[Fleurious]

The 3600 CL16 kit looks like the real winner from these tests. May end up just going with a DDR4 board.

 

[Speedyblupi]

What happened to the DDR4-3600 kit in Cinebench? RAM shouldn't make a difference to that as Cinebench usually runs in cache, but it scored much lower than all of the other memory configurations. Did something go wrong with the testing, or is there just something weird about that RAM kit that messed up the performance in Cinebench specifically?

It's especially strange because that kit does so well in all of the other benchmarks.

 

[lexluthermiester]

What happened to the DDR4-3600 kit in Cinebench? RAM shouldn't make a difference to that as Cinebench usually runs in cache

Wait, what now?

 

[Axaion]

happy to test it if you send me such a kit

I would if i was made of money, sadly i use the decent kit i have myself

 

[MarsM4N]

So for gaming you're basically fine if you go the cheap DDR4 route. Or you wait another 9 months, availability of DDR5 will go up & prices go down.
Then you can buy a kit of DDR5 before the run for the Zen 4 (AM5) machine begins, wait for reviews & then decide if you go the AMD or Intel route.

Begs the question, has DDR5 any benefit in combination with PCIe 4.0 SSD's and Microsoft Direct Storage?

 

[Mussels]

So for gaming you're basically fine if you go the cheap DDR4 route. Or you wait another 9 months, availability of DDR5 will go up & prices go down.
Then you can buy a kit of DDR5 before the run for the Zen 4 (AM5) machine begins, wait for reviews & then decide if you go the AMD or Intel route.

Begs the question, has DDR5 any benefit in combination with PCIe 4.0 SSD's and Microsoft Direct Storage?

I would assume no, and that direct storage will 100% be limited by the read speeds of the NVME drive vs the write speeds of the VRAM
It's gunna be very interesting how that works with fast NVME and excessive VRAM on some cards, but look at how DX12 multi GPU panned out... we need this tech to actually appear, first

 

[BubbiSmith]

Late to the game here, hoping I can get a quick answer. I've got a 12900K and am looking for a MB
ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 or MPG-Z690-EDGE-WIFI-DDR4. I'm coming from a x99 6850K.
I want to use my memory from that machine, it's Trident Z - F4-3200C16Q-64GTZKW. I'm trying to figure out if I can run that memory which is quad-channel. I'd hoped to run the 64GB. Any idea if this might work? TIA - bubs

 

[Zubasa]

Late to the game here, hoping I can get a quick answer. I've got a 12900K and am looking for a MB
ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 or MPG-Z690-EDGE-WIFI-DDR4. I'm coming from a x99 6850K.
I want to use my memory from that machine, it's Trident Z - F4-3200C16Q-64GTZKW. I'm trying to figure out if I can run that memory which is quad-channel. I'd hoped to run the 64GB. Any idea if this might work? TIA - bubs

Quad-Channel kits are just binned to work better together. There is nothing stopping you from using it in dual-channel.
These are 3200 kit with modest timing, they should work fine on just about any current gen CPU / board.
https://www.gskill.com/qvl/165/168/1536286562/F4-3200C16Q-64GTZKW-Qvl
Basically every Z690 DDR4 board is on the QVL.

 

[BubbiSmith]

Thank you so much. That brings back some info I once knew! And also for pointing out and linking the QVL. I think I'll go with the MSI tomorrow.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thank you so much. That brings back some info I once knew! And also for pointing out and linking the QVL. I think I'll go with the MSI tomorrow.

I will offer an agreement with Zubasa, that kit you have is very unlikely to have problems and will run perfectly with your 12900k on any motherboard that supports that CPU & DDR4. No worries.

 

[BubbiSmith]

Thanks very much Lex for giving me an extra boost of confidence. I built the 6850 system just before AMD came back and started the many-core era. I've not upgraded any machines before, only built from scratch, but there seems to be a real benefit now, and I'm using some key parts from the previous system to save some $ and watch and hope prices and availability get sorted. I really appreciate you and Lubusa for timely replies. Cheers.

Well, since I'm on a roll here... I might as well ask: I need to pick a MOBO. I've most always have used ASUS, and some knowledgeable video people use this Asus in their builds:

ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI

ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

Buy ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard featuring ATX Form Factor, Intel Z690 Chipset, LGA1700 Socket, 4 x Dual-Channel DDR4 RAM Slots, 6 x SATA III, 4 x M.2, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 Slot, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) | Bluetooth 5.2, USB 3.2 Gen...

www.bhphotovideo.com

However, I have a Noctua NH-D15S, which is offset away from the PCIe slots. And Noctua says this regards the Asus:

• Cooler must be installed turned by 180° (offset towards the PCIe cards) in order to clear the plastic cover over the VRM heatsink.

I could certainly turn it around, but I don't like being forced into it for a really big looking cover on the Asus. I was thinking it's removable and otherwise I could 'make' it fit. Then I spotted the MSI which spec wise seems pretty similar. I don't know MSI much, only the good rep it has with Afterburner and their video cards. Any comments? There's no reviews on B&H yet.

MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4

MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

Buy MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard featuring ATX Form Factor, Intel Z690 Chipset, LGA 1700 Socket, 4 x Dual-Channel DDR4-5200 (OC), 6 x SATA III, 4 x M.2, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16, 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 Slot, Realtek ALC4080 Audio Codec, Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.2...

www.bhphotovideo.com

Thanks again

 

[Zubasa]

Thanks very much Lex for giving me an extra boost of confidence. I built the 6850 system just before AMD came back and started the many-core era. I've not upgraded any machines before, only built from scratch, but there seems to be a real benefit now, and I'm using some key parts from the previous system to save some $ and watch and hope prices and availability get sorted. I really appreciate you and Lubusa for timely replies. Cheers.

Well, since I'm on a roll here... I might as well ask: I need to pick a MOBO. I've most always have used ASUS, and some knowledgeable video people use this Asus in their builds:

ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI

ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

Buy ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard featuring ATX Form Factor, Intel Z690 Chipset, LGA1700 Socket, 4 x Dual-Channel DDR4 RAM Slots, 6 x SATA III, 4 x M.2, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 Slot, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) | Bluetooth 5.2, USB 3.2 Gen...

www.bhphotovideo.com

However, I have a Noctua NH-D15S, which is offset away from the PCIe slots. And Noctua says this regards the Asus:

• Cooler must be installed turned by 180° (offset towards the PCIe cards) in order to clear the plastic cover over the VRM heatsink.

I could certainly turn it around, but I don't like being forced into it for a really big looking cover on the Asus. I was thinking it's removable and otherwise I could 'make' it fit. Then I spotted the MSI which spec wise seems pretty similar. I don't know MSI much, only the good rep it has with Afterburner and their video cards. Any comments? There's no reviews on B&H yet.

MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4

MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

Buy MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard featuring ATX Form Factor, Intel Z690 Chipset, LGA 1700 Socket, 4 x Dual-Channel DDR4-5200 (OC), 6 x SATA III, 4 x M.2, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16, 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 Slot, Realtek ALC4080 Audio Codec, Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.2...

www.bhphotovideo.com

Thanks again

For Z690 MSI actually managed the best with DDR4 compatibility on launch. As for motherboard even the modest Pro Z690-A has a competent vrm for overclocking.
You will struggle to cool the cpu long before the board overheats.

 

[BubbiSmith]

Thanks Zubasa, I ordered an MSI MPG EDGE today, I couldn't resist and ordered a 980 Pro to go along with it. I'll post something after my build or during if I have a problem!

 

[gasolin]

How about 3600mhz cl 16 vs 6000 mhz cl 30 or 32 ?

 

[lexluthermiester]

3600mhz cl 16

Speed+timings work out to better performance. Remember, RAW speed for memory is only part of the story. Timings are as critical.

Example.

3200mhz with CL14 is actually faster than 5000mhz with CL30. This is because the number of cycles the RAM takes to respond to commands is just as important as the number of cycles per second the RAM runs at. So even though 3200mhz is much slower, the response rate is less than half, which means that the RAM will respond to commands MUCH faster.

In the case of your choice above, 3600mhz CL16 is going to be faster than 6000mhz CL30 by about 12%ish.

My rule of thumb, I also choose the RAM kits with the best timings, even if slower in mhz, as they generally perform better.

 

[gasolin]

I have 3600mhz cl 16 memory,ram doing ddr 4 vs ddr 5 it's always high cl 38.40 ddr 5 vs something like ddr 4 cl 18

I was considering ddr 5 while i still could return my mb, ddr 5 6000 mhz cl 30 and 7200 mhz cl 34 is alot cheaper then 3600mhz cl 14, im not shure i could run 4000 mhz 16 at 4000mhz cl 16 with my mb

new low budget b760 mb is cheap and i wouldn'd mind 2 more usb ports and the usb c 3.1 or 3.2 for the front of my corsair 5000d airflow tg

 

[bug]

Speed+timings work out to better performance. Remember, RAW speed for memory is only part of the story. Timings are as critical.

Example.

3200mhz with CL14 is actually faster than 5000mhz with CL30. This is because the number of cycles the RAM takes to respond to commands is just as important as the number of cycles per second the RAM runs at. So even though 3200mhz is much slower, the response rate is less than half, which means that the RAM will respond to commands MUCH faster.

In the case of your choice above, 3600mhz CL16 is going to be faster than 6000mhz CL30 by about 12%ish.

My rule of thumb, I also choose the RAM kits with the best timings, even if slower in mhz, as they generally perform better.

Except that's not the whole story. DDR4 may be a little faster to initiate a command, but once initiated, DDR5 will move data around much faster. Since real-world workloads are neither 100% random nor 100% sequential, you can't judge performance by speed and timings. You look at reviews and see whether your favorite apps like DDR4 or DDR5 better.
However, the above is valid when looking at DDR4 vs DDR5. When deciding between 2 kits of the same generation of RAM, lower timings usually win.

 

[Mussels]

Memory is indeed super complex as the other guys covered.
JEDEC standards try to keep things roughly balanced so as memory MT/s goes up the latency can't get so bad that performance ever regresses.

Late DDR4 systems have better latency than most DDR5 setups, but the DDR5 systems smash them on raw bandwidth.
Which is more important? That varies on workload.

With the ryzen 3D chips (more cache) the latency penalty matters less so throughput helps them a lot - i can run DDR4 3866 at C18 and get extremely good performance, where a 5800x might have 0.1% lows feeding a GPU under some circumstances. A low VRAM GPU is more sensitive to latency since it needs to be fed *faster* while a high VRAM card would be held back waiting on data from DDR4 2133

There is no real final answer, other than finding out what other people have already learned is the 'sweet spot' for the CPU you're buying and what you need to do, to keep that stable like with SoC/SA voltages.

AM4 would be DDR4 3600-3800 at around 1.15v SoC with a 1:1 IF, DDR5 6000 on AM5 with 1.25v SoC and MCLK at 2000 and then getting the lowest timings you can afford/justify at those speeds.

I can't give intel specific examples here because I don't have a 12th or 13th gen system to play with - but google will find you memory overclocking guides and their comments, and you'll be able to figure it out from there. I know there is an upper limit for Gear 1 on the RAM and once you pass it performance gets worse, so there is a range of speeds that suffer (Too high on DDR4, too low on DDR5)

 

[Wirko]

Except that's not the whole story. DDR4 may be a little faster to initiate a command, but once initiated, DDR5 will move data around much faster. Since real-world workloads are neither 100% random nor 100% sequential, you can't judge performance by speed and timings. You look at reviews and see whether your favorite apps like DDR4 or DDR5 better.
However, the above is valid when looking at DDR4 vs DDR5. When deciding between 2 kits of the same generation of RAM, lower timings usually win.

Also, the architecture with 32-bit subchannels should give DDR5 some small advantage in random reads and writes (but no advantage in sequential). Do they? I'm still wondering if those subchannels actually work independently. Probably not, given that the industry (Intel, AMD, mobo makers) always says "two channels" in specs.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Except that's not the whole story.

True! I was trying to keep the explanation simple and easier to understand. I hit the highlights, unless anyone disagrees...

 

[Mussels]

It's just stupidly complex, and it's only getting worse.

I mean look at how we've got downright factually incorrect advertising on the RAM themselves, doesnt help
Just look for the word "MHz" when it's MT/s and has been since DDR1 - it's not just resellers screwing it up but actual companies who know better labelling it wrong on packaging, leading to a lot of consumer confusion (every single new person loading up CPU-Z or GPU-Z, WHY IS MY RAM AT HALF SPEED?!?)

Oh and GDDR being 1/4 speed, because... MARKETING

 

[lexluthermiester]

It's just stupidly complex, and it's only getting worse.

True!