With DDR5 RAM prices skyrocketing, some mid-range laptops could soon ship with budget-level specs. TrendForce expects companies like Dell and Lenovo to stock more notebooks with 8GB of memory. These reasonably priced options may no longer handle intense office and gaming tasks.
I… ok.
Am I an idiot, or… at least when it comes to system RAM…
Do you really need DDR5 RAM, instead of DDR4?
Like, say I have 32 GB or DDR4 vs 32GB of DDR5.
Beyond I guess crushing some benchmark software harder… what are the actual practical benefits of this?
For an average person?
What can I do with 32 gigs of DDR5 that I can’t do with 32 gigs of DDR4? Or 16? Or 24?
Typically the CPU and motherboard are both tied to a specific generation of RAM, which is keyed and traced differently on the motherboard for DDR 4 vs 5.
For example the current AMD socket AM5 requires DDR 5. You’d have to go back to AM4 Ryzen 5000 series for DDR 4 support.
I mean… I know that…
But my question still stands.
Ceteris paribus, keep as much else the same, same GPU, similar CPU by benchmark scores… swap the mobo and the sys ram…
What do you actually gain by going from DDR4 to DDR5, in total, end-state capabilities?
DDR5 is faster.
What kinda stuff actually needs that being faster, actually benefits from it?
It’s just the fact that, at some point, if you want a faster computer, you’re bound to have DDR5.
AMD 5000 is fast, but how does it compare to last gen? Is there a 5000 CPU that can get the same score as a high end 9000 CPU?
What if you have a homelab server to upgrade but find out you need more PCIe lanes?
Other than that, yeah, you don’t need DDR5, but DDR4 is slowly going out of production and is also rising in price… so you’re screwed either way.
Alright, alright, that just took two people explaining it for it to sink in for me.
Thanks, I got too hung up on the specifics and missed the bigger picture.
IGPs are very dependant on memory speed. Many uses gains from faster memory speed (but I can’t give you one out of memory), but most games gains more from memory latency than raw speed (with some exception, like Stellaris).
Usually, if your app is CPU heavy, you’ll gain from RAM speed.