October 1 2019

DDR3 vs. DDR4 RAM

You might have heard DDR3 and DDR4 being discussed in the past few years, especially since we only fully transitioned to DDR4 a couple of years ago. As such, you may very well be wondering what the heck is all the difference, and why you should care (or which you should get).

Well, it’s actually a pretty important distinction, and the performance gains of DDR4 are reason enough, not to mention that high-quality DDR3 RAM is increasingly hard to come by, and therefore sometimes even more expensive than DDR4.


What is RAM

Random Access Memory, or RAM for short, is essentially your computer’s notepad, where it takes short notes to be used in various places of the computer, with an ability to wipe those notes and start fresh.

In a more technical sense, the RAM is the temporary memory of your computer, where it stores data that the CPU is going to be using regularly. This is compared to your hard drive, where information is stored permanently, and what you use for long-term storage and installation of files.

hyper x ram overclocked

How temporary is RAM? Well, every time your computer switches off, the RAM gets wiped completely, ready for it to be used afresh when you boot up your computer next time. This is why we don’t use RAM for long-term storage, especially since RAM itself is much faster and ‘closer’ to your CPU than your hard drive.

As for RAM’s effect on gaming, we focus more on VRAM than the DDR that’s used for system memory. For more information, we have a pretty cool guide on what RAM does for gaming.


What Are DDR3 and DDR4?

Double Data Rate 3, or DDR3, is a type of standard for RAM that came into usage in 2007. At the time, it was a pretty huge upgrade to DDR2 before and was used for nearly a decade, up until 2014 where DDR4 started to become a thing. Every upgrade in the standard increases the overall performance and quality of the RAM, from the capacity to the clock speed. Thus, making DDR4 the best RAM for gaming.

pile of ram sticks and cpus

That advance is pretty important because CPU performance is somewhat tied to the RAM, and the better RAM you have, the less of a bottleneck it becomes. This wasn’t really an issue back in the day of four-core CPUs, where DDR3 was enough to keep up with the processing requirements. That all changed when six, eight and even 16 cores in the i9, where DDR3 simply couldn’t keep up and that’s where DDR4 saved the day.


DDR3 vs DDR4: Performance

Obviously the biggest improvement that DDR4 offered was in performance.

Whereas DDR3’s data rate started at 800Mb/s it capped at a theoretical 2,133Mb/s. DDR4, on the other hand, starts at double the rate, 1600Mb/s to be exact, and caps out at 3200Mb/s, which is just incredibly fast.

Another thing that was improved was the clock-speed, with DDR3 capping at 2,133Mhz. DDR4, however, starts at 2,133Mhz and goes up to a theoretical 4800Mhz.

The only place that DDR4 doesn’t perform better than DDR3 is the latency, although that being said, the difference is only about 2%, so it’s not really something to be worried about, especially with the higher performance of the DDR4 in other areas.

close-up ram stick

The best part about the whole thing is that you can actually overclock RAM just the same way you can overclock a GPU or a CPU.


DDR3 vs DDR4: Power Usage

Again, the difference between DDR3 and DDR4 in terms of power draw is minimal, and yet it makes a difference when you’re talking in big numbers.

DDR3 runs at 1.5v whereas DDR4 runs at 1.2v. That might not seem like much of a difference, and for practical purposes, it essentially is a 15watt difference. Compared to a RAM’s base draw, and the draw of other components, 15watt might not seem like much of a difference, but if you’re running a large number of sticks, such as in a server, this begins to make quite a massive difference.

Not only that but imagine now that the whole world has pretty much moved to DDR4, so each person is saving maybe 15-30watts and maybe even more, over a few hundred million computer users, that makes quite a difference (so you can totally have a warm fuzzy feeling inside).


DDR3 vs DDR4: Capacity

One other big difference between the two RAM standards is the capacity that they can have.

DDR3s start at 500Mb and go all the way up to 8GB, whereas DDR4 starts at 4GB and can go up to 16GB on a single stick. What’s more though, is that modern processors that run DDR4 can support a much higher overall capacity, with modern CPUs being able to support up to a whopping 128GBs of RAM.

crucial dual ram build

Yeah, it’s impressive, to say the least.


What Is DDR5 Then?

DDR5 is the new standard on the horizon, and even though it isn’t currently available, we’re probably going to be seeing it appear on the consumer market sometime in 2020.

The improvements are actually pretty impressive. Clock speeds will go up to a theoretical 6400 Mhz (and probably start at 4800 Mhz), so it’s going to easily beat out DDR4 there. It’s also believed that capacity is going to be increased to a mind-boggling 64GB per stick, which is even hard for me to fathom. Power draw isn’t going to be affected as much, going down to 1.1v, although it’s still impressive given the other improvements.

So yeah, you can say that I’m really looking forward to when DDR5 comes out, although it’s likely going to make me very poor for some time.


Final Thoughts

As you can see, DDR4 is really what you should be aiming for these days, even though DDR5 might be on the horizon. In terms of performance per dollar, you’re better of spending money on a better GPU or CPU than DDR5, especially with how reasonably priced high-grade DDR4 RAM sticks are.

That being said, if you already have DDR4 and have been thinking of making an upgrade, I’d suggest you wait until 2021 or so when DDR5 prices will come down and they’ll be cheaper to get. Not only that, but there’s no point in getting DDR5 RAM unless you have a high-end CPU like an 8-core i7 or a 16-core i9.

Either way, whichever RAM strategy you use, always remember to keep your RAM clean . . . by restarting your computer from time to time.


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Author

Albert Bassili