We recently reviewed the cheapest DDR5 memory we could find to see if that impacted gaming performance and to our surprise it didn’t perform bad at all. In fact, in terms of value it was quite good plus with that our recommendation for anyone building a new PC right now, or at any point in the future… it’s time to move on from DDR4 .
That’s not to say DDR5 delivers the most bang for buck or that will those already using DDR4 should upgrade. Somehow this was the takeaway for some from that previous review, but all of us assure you that wasn’t what we meant.
What we did mean to say is that if you’re going to build a new PC right this moment, and that will requires a person to buy a new motherboard and memory, we feel you’re best off going DDR5 and choosing affordable entry-level 8GB modules, which you can upgrade in the future once DDR5 becomes the mainstream option.
We arrived to this conclusion after testing the particular cheap Crucial 8GB DDR5-4800 modules alongside the Core i5-12600K which you’d typically pair with a Z690 motherboard. That’s an expensive motherboard in order to begin along with and therefore $84 for some DDR5 means the memory is not a major factor there.
But what about those planning to buy what we should believe is the best value budget gaming PERSONAL COMPUTER right now: the Primary i3-12100 . This CPU costs just $130 (or $110 if you opt for the F-SKU). To find out we’re testing again with the DDR5-4800 modules as well as a few DDR5-6400 memory space for reference, plus a range of DDR4 configurations covering 2400, 3200 plus 4000 speeds.
One of the best value B660 motherboards out there is the MSI Pro B660M-A , which retails for $130 for the particular DDR4 version or $160 for DDR5. That’s a 23% premium simply for the DDR5 compatible motherboard. As noted earlier, a 16GB kit of the DDR5-4800 storage costs $84, while 16GB of DDR4-2400 starts at $45. Some premium DDR4-3200 CL14 we all like to use in our own benchmarks costs $100, and the popular DDR4-4000 CL19 kits cost about $100 as good.
So if you can get comparable performance from premium DDR4 out associated with the DDR5-4800, it would make sense even to go DDR5 even for budget processors such as the Core i3-12100.
Testing Notes
First a brief disclaimer: our test conditions are geared towards forcing CPU bound scenarios by using the particular GeForce RTX 3090 Ti at 1080p, often with dialed down quality settings in an effort to maximize frame rates. Depending on the type of games you play, this sort of testing can be unrealistic, but the idea is in order to highlight the differences within memory performance when you are PROCESSOR limited.
The kind of games where we’d say this screening isn’t realistic would predominantly be single player titles — video games where you don’t require hundreds of frames per seconds — like Shadow from the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Zero Dawn plus Spider-Man Remastered. When a person play these titles, the particular priority will usually be visual quality, so almost always you’ll end up being GPU limited, not CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT.
Games exactly where you’re often more CPU limited includes the likes of Rainbow Six, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, and basically any other competitive esports shooter. Keep this particular in mind as we go over the results as we’ll be using some of the solitary player game titles previously mentioned with regard to showing the performance differences between the various memory kits.
The graphics card used for all of this testing may be the RTX 3090 Ti powered by the particular Core i3-12100 as we’re interested to see how the most inexpensive DDR5 memory works with the more affordable CPU. For comparison, we have G. Skill’s Trident Z5 RGB 32GB DDR5-6400 CL32-39-39-102 kit plus G. Skill’s TridentZ RGB DDR4-3200 CL14-14-14-34 kit which will be tested along with two and four sticks for single-rank and dual-rank configurations, G. Skill’s TridentZ Neo DDR4-3600 CL14-15-15-35 and then we also have Corsair Vengeance RGB Professional DDR4-4000 CL19-23-23-45 memory.
Also please note that non-K 12th-gen Intel CPUs can’t run Gear 1 mode above DDR4-3600, so the DDR4-4000 kit will be forced into Gear 2 mode plus there’s nothing we can do about that. Therefore if you’re better off running at DDR4-3600 and we’ve recently updated these results to include a low latency DDR4-3600 kit, which is usually a best case regarding DDR4 when just loading XMP, which is what this feature is definitely centered around.
So with that let’s get into the results…
Benchmarks
Starting with Watch Dogs Legion, we see that the particular i3-12100 is good for 89 fps on average using the DDR5-4800 memory, which usually places this roughly on par along with the DDR4-4000 memory.
However , it might seem DRAM latency is important here as the CL14 3200 kit was faster than both the 4000 and DDR5-4800. Then when installing another two modules intended for dual-rank operation, the DDR4-3200 configuration was clearly faster, roughly matching the overall performance of the particular DDR5-6400 memory space.
Watch Dogs: Legion
Generally speaking, DDR4-3600 CL16 plus DDR4-3800 CL18 are comparable to that of our DDR4-3200 CL14 storage when it comes to video gaming performance, and that means in this particular example DDR5-4800 is comparable in terms associated with performance in order to popular DDR4 memory.
The point can be that the efficiency difference showed here is not significant, which is why we really feel the time is finally right to start moving to DDR5 for new system builds.
The particular DDR5-4800 memory doesn’t fare as well in Rainbow Six Extraction, yet we’re not really seeing significant performance variations anyway, especially since we are going to using an RTX 3090 Usted at 1080 pixels.
For a similar price, DDR4 memory can offer ~7% more functionality, so not exactly an earth shattering difference and we think most of you will certainly cope with well over 200 fps at all times.
Hitman 3
Hitman a few really benefits from DDR5 memory space, with the base 8GB 4800 package beating all DDR4 segments we tested, even the dual-rank low-latency DDR4-3200 storage.
When compared to DDR4-4000, the DDR5-4800 kit has been 6% quicker on average. Certainly not a large margin, but for similar money you might too opt for DDR5 now, at least based upon these outcomes.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Next we now have Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which is a good representation of typical gaming performance. Which to say you’ll generally become bound simply by your images card.
In this game everything above DDR4-2400 is fine using the Primary i3-12100. Of course, this might not end up being the case with more powerful CPUs, visuals cards plus future games, but today many games, especially singer-player titles will be GPU certain and this is what the particular results will look like… all much the same.
F1 22
Moving on to F1 22, despite the check conditions which should see the CPU become the performance limiting component, with the particular exception associated with the DDR4-2400 configuration, the game had been largely GPU bound.
Sure, average frame rates were a bit higher along with the DDR5-6400 memory — 1% lows were close to 12% better — but we’re only looking in single-digit gains from DDR4 to DDR5-6400.
The 8GB 4800 sticks were a little weaker here, yet given most likely basically getting DDR4 overall performance you may as well make the switch for the new develop as it ensures a superior upgrade path.
Spider-Man Remastered
As noted within our previous budget DDR5 review , most gamers using a high-end GPU like the RTX 3090 Ti will want to game at 4K when playing Spider-Man Remastered and in this scenario you will be almost entirely GPU bound.
Still, using this game as an example of CPU-bound performance (at a lower resolution) all of us see that DDR5-4800 is able to match DDR4-4000 as well as our low-latency DDR4-3200 memory. That’s a positive result in spite of the truth that the particular 6400 stuff was almost 30% faster when looking at 1% lows.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Darkness from the Burial place Raider is certainly another PROCESSOR demanding title, though the Core i3-12100 is more compared to powerful enough and will enable well over 100 fps should your graphics card be capable of such framework rates.
We find again that will DDR5-4800 is comparable to DDR4-3200 low latency up to DDR4-4000. It’s not until you go as low while 2400 that you’ll see a noticeable efficiency decline.
Although DDR5-4800 is a good bit slower than 6400, it’s not really worth paying the premium for high-speed DDR5 just yet, however for those of you building a new COMPUTER from the particular ground up at this time, these types of 8GB modules are a pretty good stop-gap.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn shows that will even spending budget DDR5 memory space can provide the performance advantage over DDR4 — it’s not a big one — but even so, the worth for money that we’re seeing from the 8GB 4800 memory is impressive, beating all tested DDR4 configurations.
Cyberpunk 2077
It’s a similar story inside Cyberpunk 2077. Here the DDR5-4800 kit was a whisker quicker than all tested DDR4 kits, though overall performance was very similar.
Assetto Corsa Competizione
Because seen before, ACC is one of those games where memory latency really matters, though again if we cranked up the high quality settings or even used the lesser GPU, you’d certainly see these margins tighten.
In any kind of case, the particular DDR5-4800 storage wasn’t that will impressive here as the DDR4-3200 single-rank configuration was 13% faster. If these types of results were the particular norm then it would be hard to state if you should take the plunge with these budget 8GB DDR5 sticks and hold out to get 6 – 12 months prior to DDR5 pricing improves further for the more premium stuff.
The Riftbreaker
The DDR5 memory performs well in the The Riftbreaker. We’re running the canned CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT benchmark with ray tracing disabled right here and inside short DDR5-4800 is just like low latency DDR4-3200 as well as DDR4-4000, while DDR5-6400 offers a ~15% performance bump under these conditions.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
CS: GO performance isn’t influenced too heavily by memory functionality. The DDR4-3200 dual-rank configuration along with DDR5-6400 provided the particular best results, but wish talking about a ~9% margin between DDR4-2400 plus DDR5-6400, so memory performance doesn’t really matter. It can all about single-core performance and for that DDR4-2400 generally provides enough bandwidth.
12 Game Average
Here’s a look at the 12 sport average, calculated using the geomean, plus as you can see the 8GB DDR5-4800 modules are similar to DDR4, whether that’s DDR4-4000 or even low latency DDR4-3600 memory where it was simply 5% reduced.
As a side notice, it’s interesting that through 2400 in order to 3200 jooxie is looking at the 33% frequency increase, while the higher clocked memory space operated from much tighter timings and overall that will netted us 12% a lot more performance.
After that from 4800 to 6400 is another 33% rate of recurrence increase plus that saw a 10% boost to frame prices. It stands to reason that later on with more demanding online games, DDR5 may look a lot more impressive. Should that be the case, investing now in a DDR5 platform without blowing the spending budget on high quality modules might not be a bad idea.
What We Learned
Does it seem sensible in order to go DDR5 now, actually for budget builds? If the aim is to save every last dollar, then no . But in case you’re looking with purchasing a decent motherboard and some half decent storage, then we think yes, it is worth this.
As noted in the introduction, the DDR5 version associated with the MSI Pro B660M-A motherboard expenses $30 more, but a person stand to save about half that on the particular cheaper DDR5-4800 memory compared to DDR4-4000 or quality DDR4-3200 CL14. So in this example, once you factor in the price of the CPU and hauptplatine, the DDR5 option ends up costing no a lot more than 5% more.
The advantage of doing that is that once DDR5 prices settles straight down and higher quality low latency kits arrive, you may upgrade your memory which could potentially unlock additional performance within future video games, or allow you to better utilize a next generation GPU.
None of this is to say you should update to DDR5 if you currently have a perfectly capable PC making use of DDR4. Moreover, with next-gen hardware on the horizon, waiting now is probably the particular best strategy. But almost all that aside, it’s great to observe DDR5 pricing nudging closer to that of DDR4 and it appears in order to be happening rapidly along with massive price drops over the past few months.
In closing, when we had been building the new Intel Alder Lake PC nowadays, we’d nearly certainly grab a DDR5 board, throw two cheap 8GB 4800 sticks on it and get gaming.