When Should You Spend More for Faster RAM?

Having seen bolder than expected performance gains when using high clocked DDR4 memory, particularly on some gaming titles, we worked nether the supposition that a lesser GPU configuration wouldn't be able see the same gains as the clogging would lie elsewhere.

Before wrapping upwardly benchmarking we tested this theory using a single GTX 980 Ti graphics bill of fare in The Witcher three.

As you can see a single GTX 980 Ti is fully tapped even with DDR4-2133 memory. The ultra-quality settings paired with HairWorks are as well much for this GPU configuration to take advantage of the CPU processor ability provided by all that boosted bandwidth.

Gaming aside, nosotros saw gains in a number of applications, most notably HandBrake and Photoshop CC. The HandBrake functioning was remarkable with a massive leap in performance every step of the way. For case, going from DDR4-3600 to 4000, a 11% jump in frequency netted us 10% more performance.

Faster DDR4 retentiveness does not come up inexpensive but it'south easier to justify on high-cease systems where it accounts for a smaller per centum of the overall cost

8GB 16GB
DDR4-4000 $105 $195
DDR4-3600 $65 $130
DDR4-3000 $45 $lxx
DDR4-2400 $36 $58
DDR4-2133 $32 $54

It'due south great to meet how much of a step forward the Skylake retentiveness controller is, even if the IPC performance was underwhelming when compared to Haswell. It is unlikely DDR4-4000 memory will command such a cost premium for the life of the platform, then it's possible we volition run across high speed retentivity at more affordable prices down the rails.

The Asrock/G.Skill combination used for our testing behaved impeccably. In the past nosotros've wasted hours messing around with memory claiming blistering fast speeds never seen earlier, only to run into instability and boot problems. This wasn't the case here. After booting into the UEFI the XMP memory profile was selected, which loaded the 4000 MT/south setting, then rebooted the system and got down to benchmarking and over a week of gaming on this GTX 980 Ti SLI rig at 4K.

On the bailiwick of memory timings, we didn't run into a huge affect on performance when going from , say CAS16 to CAS19, and while the latency does kickoff to pitter-patter upward this is solved by going to the next speed course. In short, low-latency DDR4-2400 won't match the performance of slacker DDR4-3000 memory.

We recommend Skylake builders aim for DDR4-3000 retention, merely if y'all tin can become faster without paying much more than then feel complimentary to do and then.