DDR5 – That’s all PC gamers can accept now that AMD Ryzen 7000 is coming out soon. Although Intel has supported DDR5 since the launch of its 12th generation Alder Lake processors, the Ryzen 7000 is the catalyst that will destroy the last generation of DDR4 for good. The next time you upgrade your computer, you’ll need DDR5, but paying for a faster memory pool may not translate to real-world performance gains.
One of the best DDR5 kits will still deliver a great gaming experience, but the delicate balance between speed and latency puts top-of-the-line DDR5 in a precarious position. On the one hand, faster DDR5 can offer practical differences in some games, but on the other hand, even the fastest kits can result in lower performance. And in some games, the speed of RAM does not matter at all.
Sounds like a lot, and it is. But stick with me and I’ll help you figure out what to consider when buying your first DDR5 kit so you can skip the fake marketing and have the best gaming experience possible.
Above Speed: An Introduction to RAM Speed
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
RAM is confusing. It has a specific nomenclature that does not apply to other components of your system, plus many details. The term “RAM” is not even the correct term to use, as it is used colloquially to describe DRAM even though it is a general term that can be applied to other types of RAM as well.
Gamers are primarily concerned with the number one selling spec for RAM kits: frequency. Frequency is actually the rate at which data is transferred in memory (expressed as mega transfers per second), but you can still think of it as a frequency just like you would with a CPU or GPU. This is one of the few specs that RAM shares with other components, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that higher frequency means faster speed. But this is not always the case.
Going one level deeper, you have RAM CAS latency (you’ll see it as “CL38” or something similar on DDR5 boxes). This is the time it takes for RAM to send data when requested by the CPU, and lower latencies are desirable. Using CAS latency and data rate, you can calculate the actual latency by dividing the CAS latency by the data rate and then multiplying by 2000. DDR4-3200 memory with a CAS latency of 14, for example, has a latency of 8.75 nanoseconds.
Memory speed is important for games. For how much is another question.
It’s important to consider both data transfer speed and CAS latency when choosing a RAM kit, as a faster and more expensive kit on paper can result in identical performance to a cheaper kit. I’ll talk more about this in the next section, so bear with me.
In the early days of a new memory standard like DDR5, you’re generally looking for high latencies so businesses can market high speeds (regardless of how that balance actually translates to performance). However, this is not the case with DDR5. It’s matured enough now that the performance improvements outweigh the higher latencies compared to DDR4. This means that the speed of your DDR5 really matters for gaming. For how much is another question.
DDR5 and real world gaming
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
With the technoword out of the way, let’s move on to the fun: benchmarking. I tested three DDR5 kits at different data rates and latencies to see if there were any differences in gaming performance and found some differences in some titles.
I ran all my tests using an Intel Core i9-12900K, a 12GB Nvidia RTX 3080, and an MSI Z690 Carbon Wi-Fi motherboard. The relationship between CPU and RAM is critical, so keep in mind that DDR5 performance with AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors may differ from what I found here. It should be very similar to previous generations from AMD, but with a similar architecture at the forefront.
I tested four speeds: DDR5-4800 CL38, DDR5-5200 CL38, DDR5-6000 CL40, and DDR5-6200 CL42.
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Most, if not all, DDR5 kits will run at 4800 MHz out of the box, so you’ll need to include Intel’s Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) or AMD’s new EXPO standard for the advertised speed. The inclusion of the DDR5-5200 kit was not an immediate improvement. In fact, I have seen slightly slower results team Tactics, but F1 2022 saw a solid 3% improvement.
That trend continued in DDR5-6000, with gear tactics a jump of 3% i F1 2022 for an additional 8 percent. But that quickly changed with the PNY XLR8 Gaming DDR5-6200 Kit. I have actually seen lower performance gear tactics and identical result in F1 2022. then it was Red Dead Redemption 2, which I’ll come back to that in a moment.
I should note that this PNY kit was the only one with three XMP profiles, including a DDR5-5600 option that matched my results for DDR5-6000.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
If you put on your math hat for a moment, these results make sense. The DDR5-6000 kit actually has the lowest real-world latency of the three, which is why it scores the best of these kits. Lower latency is not inherently better between memory generations, so always take it in the context of performance. Solid DDR4-3200 CL14 kits still have lower latency, but the reduced bandwidth means they are not as efficient as the higher latency DDR5 kits.
For the next generation, the balance between latency and CAS speed is important so you don’t buy equipment you don’t need. In the previous generation, we saw this dynamic between DDR4-3200 CL16 and DDR4-3600 CL16. The 3600 MHz set is faster, of course, but the latency is identical. This means that spending on a DDR4-3600 kit would be a waste of money.
That’s what we see here with DDR5-6000 and DDR5-6200. With nearly identical latency, you’ll see the same or slightly lower performance with a faster kit, especially depending on internal memory modules.
Like the raw data rate, you shouldn’t put all the value on latency. red dead redemption 2 it’s a great example that the games you play have the biggest impact on performance. I didn’t see any difference between the four DDR5 speeds tested, showing that this game isn’t particularly sensitive to memory speed (it’s GPU-bound in many cases, as is often the case with modern games).
What DDR5 kit to buy?
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
While it’s interesting to look at DDR5 speeds and how they affect gaming performance, that raw data doesn’t tell you which kit to buy. After all, you can’t just buy a bunch of RAM kits to find the best speed for the games you play.
The only place to start is the price. There’s no real difference between the basic DDR5-4800 kits you’ll find and DDR5-5200. The Corsair Vengeance DDR5-4800 2x16GB kit is $150, and the DDR5-5200 is just $2 more. What a thing. There are some DDR5-5600 kits between $160 and $200, but most kits are going towards RGB lighting rather than speed as prices rise.
If you want to move up to DDR5-6000, you’ll spend at least $220 for the same capacity. Other than that, anything is fair game, with some kits jumping to $300 or more. Clearly, an extra $70 won’t get you extra performance in every game, but as DDR5 prices continue to drop, we’re likely to see price adjustments between different speeds.
The DDR5 memory you buy comes down to the games you play.
So which DDR5 kit should you buy? At today’s prices, all most people need is a solid DDR5-5200 kit, offering solid CPU-limited gaming performance without costing much more than a DDR5-4800. AMD says that the sweet spot for upcoming Ryzen 7000 processors is DDR5-6000, so I’ll come back to this topic when we get new processors. You don’t have to climb that high for now.
As always with computer hardware, it all comes down to the games you play. As I wrote in my last post about upgrading your gaming CPU, you can learn a lot about which components to upgrade by looking at the games you play. A great open world game like red dead redemption 2 maybe you don’t mind the faster memory, but the CPU title is limited F1 2022 strongly favors it. At the end of the day, the games you want to play should be your cornerstone for informed PC upgrades.
This article is part of ReSpec, an ongoing bi-weekly column featuring in-depth discussions, tips, and reports on the technology behind PC gaming.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn