Crucial RAM 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Desktop Memory CT2K8G48C40U5

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We really have no answer to this right now. We can say that during previous memory transitions, the price premium was rarely worth it to those looking for practical impacts. That was typically due to the newer RAM typically starting very conservatively with speed and timings, with the older RAM benefiting from years of being pushed as fast as it could go. Clearly DDR5 isn't worth it right now, but we already knew that. Pricing aside, DDR5 has little to offer over DDR4 in today's games with an Alder Lake processor for the most part. That being the case, budget conscious shoppers should only consider DDR5 at a 10%, or maybe a 20% price premium at most, when going for a flagship part like the Core i9-12900K. But wait... Raptor Lake will support DDR4 memory, and while it's possible DDR5 will be of more benefit in a year, it's still not going to be massive and gamers will almost always end up GPU limited in games, rather than CPU limited. The big issue with this future-proof argument is the same as before, they hinge on the investment paying off in the long run with very few short-term advantages.

In theory, this should reduce the complexity of the motherboard and give the individual module maker more control over as well as the ability to optimize power delivery for each module. The data does move around a bit. For example, War Thunder is now showing the best results for DDR5, along with Doom Eternal. But overall we're looking at very similar performance trends. StarCraft II is another CPU intensive game, but for all the wrong reasons. This old title only utilizes a single core heavily, but we see there is some benefit to feeding that core more bandwidth as performance was boosted by 7%, almost across the board. is set to be the year when DDR5 DRAM goes mainstream and Teamgroup has fired the first salvo. The company has announced it will release its first DDR5 product next year under the ELITE brand, with the launch potentially coming as early as the third quarter of 2021.Based on those figures, DDR5 does very little to aid the Core i9-12900K across a wide range of today's games.

So why do this at all? It’s mostly being done because you can’t really quadruple the density of the chip without additional safety layers. Today, you’ll mostly only find ECC used in servers and workstations, because it’s done for mission critical reasons. The on-die ECC in DDR5 is just something had to be done to make the high speed and high density a possibility.For a little while at least, DDR5 is best left to early adopters who are prepared for any unexpected behaviors and see it as the price you pay for playing with the latest tech. What’s the difference between SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 and DDR5? Discover and compare the different generations of RAM with Crucial.

Also, chances are 12th-gen Core series owners won't feel the need to upgrade until 14th-gen hits at the absolute earliest, and at that point you'd need a new motherboard anyway. With today’s DDR4 technology, the largest consumer modules top out at 32GB. DDR5 can quadruple that capacity. A typical mainstream PC with four DDR4 DIMM slots will max out at 128GB. A cutting-edge system built around four DDR5 DIMM slots can reach 512GB. And even higher-end systems with eight DDR5 DIMM slots should be able to reach a ludicrous 1TB of RAM. Do I really need 512GB of RAM in my PC? The first round of DDR5 is expected to appear at the same time as Intel's upcoming Alder Lake CPUs---the latter half of 2021. A number of companies are getting ready for the big RAM switch such as Corsair, Kingston, and TeamGroup. Counter Strike Global Offensive is a heavily CPU limited game, and here we see feeding the processor more bandwidth doesn't help improve performance at 1080p and 1440p, though we're only talking about a minor single-digit difference. But it appears as though lower latency memory is more important for this title. There were also games that ran slower with DDR5, by a 5% margin or greater, such as Age of Empires, Hitman 2, The Division 2, Valorant and Death Stranding.Finally, we take a look at War Thunder and here we're seeing pretty impressive performance gains at 1080p, though how useful a 24% performance boost is when you're already over 200 fps is hard to argue about. Still, even at 4K we're looking at up to a 9% performance boost. A few weeks ago we reviewed Intel's new Alder Lake architecture for the first time and with it we also got our first chance to play around with DDR5 memory. In our Core i9-12900K review, we tested both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a range of applications and games, to find that the faster, more expensive memory offered little extra performance for the most part, and this was particularly true for gamers. As expected, the margins close up at 4K where the GPU becomes the key limiting factor, but even so I was surprised to see a 9% boost to the 1% low and a 13% uplift for the average frame rate. So DDR5 is offering a clear performance advantage in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. As for AMD processors, it's not clear as of June 2021 when the company's processors will support DDR5. Most people expect that it will happen with new releases in 2022. If we recalculate using the memory tested here, the Trident Z RGB, DDR4-3600 CL14 and DDR5-6000 CL36 we find a similar margin using the Core i9-12900K and Aorus Elite AX, basically DDR5 ends up costing 20% more.