Does better DDR5 memory improve your gaming PC?

it's easy to spend a lot of money on the system memory inside your PC £300 £400 perhaps even £500 and the obvious question is what kind of memory should you buy and what do you get in return is it as simple as saying I want 32 GB of ddr5 6000 that will run a XMP for Intel or Expo for AMD and that's the end of the matter well no of course it isn't we've recently spoken to Dan Ragland of Intel and Martine Boonstra of AMD on this exact subject and the videos have gone down rather well so now it's time to actually look at the hardware now we rather cheeky put the question to Corsair we said memory does it much matter and Corsair a company that sells rather a lot of memory said yes it matters a great deal the memory we have here is Corsair Vengeance RGB in white it's a 64 GB kit so 2x 32 GB rate at dddr 55600 CL 36 and it's XMP for Intel we previously featured the dominated titanium first edition 64 GB kit which is DDR 56000 that's cl30 and XO for AMD we also have Dominator Platinum RGB that's a 32 GB kit dddr 57000 cl34 and XMP for Intel and then we have two Corsair Vengeance kits and this kind of brings us to the heart of the matter by ey can you tell me which of these kits is rated at 5200 and which is rated at 6800 and the answer of course is that you can't because the form factor of the modules is identical the heat spreaders are identical it's all about the ic's the integrated circuits under those heat spreaders and while the pricing of these two kits doesn't vary hugely the 5200 is rather slow and old costs £105 whereas the the 6800 is bang up to date and costs £130 you cannot of course be sure that 6800 memory will run successfully in your PC 5200 you can be sure that'll work but will it actually be any good memor is arranged in a grid you have to understand the row and the column configuration in order to address specific cells you also have to refresh those cells memory is not a persistent product unlike say this SSD from Corsair and this gives rise to the somewhat exotic names that you see in the bio screen of your PC and also within say CPU Z or ryzen Master for example Cass Casas column access strobe and then there's a latency after that Ras is row access strobe and then you get further timings TR rcd rcd is Ras to cast delay trp is row pre-charge time TR Ras row active time in other words how quick quickly can you refresh the different parts of the memory and allow your system to access that memory you also have different power settings that affect your memory Dam vdd Powers the memory chips Dam vddq Powers the input output for the memory chips CPU vddq is for the CPU memory controller I.E it's for the part of the processor that actually talks to the memory and the vccsa is for the system agent in other words there are a huge number of settings within your PC that both affect the memory directly and which talk to the memory and they all affect how well or otherwise your PC will perform let's hear what Dan Ragland of Intel had to say on the subject Dan who are you and what do you do at Intel yeah I I work at Intel's uh overclocking lab here in Hillsboro Oregon and um we we provide all the great overclocking capabilities to meet Enthusiast uh needs does faster memory make your PC or laptop faster or does it remove bottlenecks in performance well absolutely I mean it does both um increased memory uh frequency and lower latencies will improve your performance um and remove bottlenecks if you're playing games and you have lower latency memory you'll see improvements in your gaming and uh if you're a content creator moving large amounts of data through memory then the bandwidth will also um be greatly appreciated in terms of performance could you distill what is latency in the context of memory the C30 or whatever number yeah some people refer to it as as timings or it basically um it involves a number of parameters things like Ras Cass um all all these details and and it has to do with the timing essentially timing when the data is data is being called for and when data is moving and essentially the lower the latency the better the performance will be and now Martin Boon straw of AMD my name is Martin bowra I am a Enthusiast um gamer overclocker and fortunate to be working at AMD on these great products from both the client side and the radon side um product marketing um business development manager as well uh but also trying to tie everything together from our engineering meetings to Executive meetings to getting launch plans together for our Global sales and marketing teams um whenever we have new products and also work with the ecosystem Partners like Corsair for example to make that sure that their products are compatible and Performing well on our upcoming products does Foster memory make your PC or laptop faster or does it remove bottlenecks in performance it really depends on the application right so um faster memory can certainly make things feel snappier or give you additional let's say frame rate in games uh we typically see that in many workloads like gaming where um not just faster memory but also tighter timings or lower latency uh really rewards you with more performance so it can be definitely a lot um um you know adding to the experience overall or it can become a bottleneck if you're choosing let's say a configuration which is which is suboptimal which is more important clock speed or latency again that really depends on the application in in most scenarios like gaming um they will favor latency um due to the nature of how games are being developed whereas for example applications or content creation apps that are influenced by memory usually benefit from speed or bandwidth um and I think if we tie this to AMD products like for example am5 uh most games are us most gains are usually found in um tightening timings and having the right balance between um the system uh that you've chosen to configure with we have five kits of memory they're all ddr5 they're all dual channel in other words two modules two of them are 64 GB three of them are 32 GB we have have two test platforms this gigabyte board is a socket am5 that has a ryzen 7 7700x this Intel board has a core i5 14600 K yes we can get more performance with an I9 or a ryzen 9 but these are mainstream platforms aimed at the typical PC Gamer so the next question is how can we actually differentiate one memory kit from another it's worth noting there are three manufacturers of D R5 memory chips that we come across the poorest at the moment Micron Samsung is in the middle SK hinck at the top of the stack if you're buying slower memory it doesn't much matter what the chips are if you're buying faster memory it's almost certain to be SK hyx but the thing is companies such as Corsair don't make a song or dance about the ic's inside your memory after all Corsair is selling you some Dominator RGB memory That's rated at a certain speed and guaranteed to perform on either AMD Intel or both platforms and that's the end of the story story which chips are inside it that's their business however you can if you choose dig in to the information so once you're running the memory you can use for example CPU Z or ryzen master and that will probably tell you a great deal more about the memory than you can find on the product page however if you head over to the website of your motherboard manufacturer you can find the qvl list qualified vendor listing and this will tell you a huge amount about memory that they have tested on a particular motherboard with a particular processor with a particular bias revision and the board manufacturer saying this will work correctly and naturally we asked Dan Ragland of Intel about manufacturers qvl lists do motherboard qvl lists tell the full story or not well um the motherboard um qvl list that kind of list out uh boards and memory modules tested together are extremely helpful and and we definitely need them and they're valuable um there's a lot to be told in the overall story right like um how much much margin did you have in the memory module using and where on the Spectrum was the memory controller so there is more depth that could be available but honestly those qvs are are you know very helpful as a great starting point to know what's been tested on the board you have in front of you the general rule to thumb is that for mainstream memory you don't need to pay much heed to qvl lists although they do have interesting information in them however for edge cases you want to pay close attention to the qvr list this is particularly true of fast memory on AMD the rule of thumb recently for zen4 processors has been to use digitar 56000 have decent timings stop right there going Beyond 6000 risky because potentially the memory just won't work at Expo settings however this gigabyte qvl list has a huge amount of very fast memory that has been tested and is certainly compatible with this platform I must confess I was shocked to see such a long list but when you pay closer attention to the details you'll notice something they all have in common yep every single one of these kits uses the same memory ic's and that's the explanation if the memory is on this list according to gigabyte you're safe up to 8,000 megat transfers and what you might wonder is Mega transfers megahertz is what you mean isn't it Leo well no we're talking here about DDR or double data rate memory so the clock speed say 3,000 mahz is described as 6,000 megga transfers the clock speed and the data rate is a ratio of 2:1 the other point to make crystal clear is that every ddr5 memory kit should run safely at default speed when you install it on any platform whether AMD or Intel Now default speed might be really slow 4,800 megga transfers for example I.E 2,400 MHz that is not what you're paying for but that should get your PC up and running in order to get the speed you're actually paying for you need to enable XMP or Expo XMP for Intel Expo for AMD that of course might be problematic if you have an XMP kit and you're using AMD in other words it doesn't have an expo profile built in alternatively when you hit the switch in the bias and turn on Expo or XMP you might suddenly find the system crashes and refuses to post and that will mean the system is not happy with the memory or not happy on that particular bias with that particular memory and that is you should be using your qvl list okay so you've installed your memory you've enabled XMP or Expo is that the end of the story or does Dan Raglin think there's more going on if the customer enables either Expo or XMP for their given kit of memory is that the end of the job or in the world of Dan Ragland is that just the beginning okay for a typical overclocker that can be as far as you go simply enable XMP um but for advanced overclockers who who just want every every last bit of performance they may choose to go manual and uh and adjust timings beyond that I'm assuming you're familiar with um Bild Zoid yes the yes and he he appears to enjoy tormenting himself um and attempting to to do things that frankly are Beyond most people's comprehension when you watch his work is it um something that is of General technical interest or is it uh is it more and I don't wish in anyway to pick up builds side he's a great guy or is it more of something to do with almost uh a driven need to try and get the best out of the think I'm hell high water because I imagine you go through similar processes yourself but not on video yeah I I appreciate his work uh he does a lot to ex uh explain the those details that I was just telling you that I couldn't summarize briefly and concisely and watching his video you'll see why um um it can get very involved in fact you know um when you when you establish these latency values and and uh all manually and and the voltages um it is there's a lot involved and um and so he if if anybody hasn't seen that they should check it out because it really will give you an appreciation for what goes into it build Zoid of actually hardcore overclocking is fabulous you might have noticed that what I've been saying so far applies to ddr5 from all manufacturers so it's time to give Corsair some love let us start with this Vengeance so this is the plainest memory in the Corsair range the heat spreaders stand 30 mil tall above the memory slots and it has no Lighting in many respects it's analogous to this older Vengeance lpx which is ddr4 memory if you want lowprofile memory that's going to fit under any CPU Cooler on the market this is the memory to go for despite the understated appearance of this Vengeance memory this is a 5200 kit but we also have Vengeance 6800 here and you'll see the performance of that memory very shortly so it doesn't have to look particularly flash to perform well I've turned off one of the lights to give us a better look at the light show this Vengeance RGB it happens to be white in color available in both white and black the heat sinks stand taller 44 mil and that's to accommodate the 10 LEDs as you'd expect the lighting is controlled by corsair's IQ software technically this memory is like a regular Vengeance kit except it has added RGB Dominator Platinum RGB rated at 7,000 megga transfers on XMP and you can take it from me this did not run on the AMD platform taller again than the Vengeance RGB standing 52 mil High looks absolutely superb but the key Point here is tight timings this memory runs at cl3 4 where the vengeance is CL 36 or cl40 while this memory looks good it also delivers on performance we featured this Dominator titanium kit on kit Guru a couple of months ago when I looked at the IQ link Hardware it's exotic it's also different because you can actually remove the RGB tops and if you choose install these alternate tops or other tops with your accessories so you can add Cooling and remove RGB and you don't often hear that from Corsair this Dominator titanium actually has 11 LEDs where the Dominator Platinum has 12 and that's because one of the LED locations is taken up by the mounting hole for the tops this kit is rated at 6,000 megga transfers on AMD Expo and I am indeed running it on Intel however I have as you might expect have also run it on the AMD I'll be showing you the figures very shortly at 6,000 Mega transfers it has cl30 lat lency and the ic's are SK hyx so this is corsair's topnotch AMD memory we've got five kits of ddr5 on two platforms all five kits ran on the Intel platform correctly the three slower kits were happy to run on the AMD platform the 6 87000 would not run on AMD however as those profiles are XMP there was no expectation that they would run an AMD so that's five kits of memory but eight test results let's go to the charts and see how they performed let's start with a reality check cinebench R23 multicore which is pretty much a CPU test and nothing else at the bottom of the chart we've got the three AMD figures and there's very little to separate them indeed the 6,000 memory which is the most expensive is actually at the bottom of the chart and then we have the five Intel figures and realistically these are all within margin of error in cinebench R2 23 it is safe to say the memory makes very little difference 7zip version 23 Benchmark in three of the four bottom places we have the ryzen 77700 X although the best of the AMD figures just overtakes the worst of the Intel figures you can see with AMD there's a separation between compressing and decompressing whereas with Intel it's pretty much the same figure then as we climb the chart and move from AMD to Intel we see C ious stuff at the bottom of the Intel figures we have the 5200 CL 38 but the next figure up for Intel in the middle of the chart is Dominator Platinum RGB DDR 57000 above that we have the DDR 56000 and then the DDR 56800 at the top of the chart and it's not at all clear why Vengeance RGB ddr5 5600 Ada 64 memory bandwidth no surprises here at the bottom of the chart we have the three AMD figures and they are in order 5200 566,000 then we move on to Intel 5200 5600 6, 6800 7,000 as I say there are no surprises here gaming and this is where things get interesting so we're using RTX 480 Graphics at the bottom of the chart we have the ryzen 7 and there is some separation between those three memory types the 5200 is certainly holding the system back the 5600 looks perfectly okay but that dddr 5 6000 dominated titanium Expo that definitely gives the AMD system a bit of a lift moving up to the Intel figures in Marvels of the Guardians of the Galaxy at 1440 we have DDR 55200 no surprise there however the next up is the DDR 56800 then we have dddr 57000 and then biz zly the Vengeance RGB did R 55600 Top of the chart Dominator titanium did R 56000 remember that kit is Expo rather than XMP and yet it performs like a champ Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy at 1080 bottom of the chart the three ryzen 7 figures again ranked in order 5200 566,000 then we move on to the Intel figures and once again they're ranked as they were at 14 40 5200 6800 7,000 and then that Vengeance RGB did it R5 5600 top of the chart once again Dominator titanium Far Cry 6 at 1440 the three AMD figures at the bottom of the chart quite a lot of Separation once again we can see the Vengeance 5200 is holding the system back 5600 looking good but that dominated titanium is performing really well on AMD then we move on to the Intel figures 5200 00 looks okay did R 56800 next then it's dominated titanium did r 56000 in the middle after that we have the Vengeance RGB did R5 5600 top of the chart hurrah Dominator Platinum RGB did it R 57000 and in Far Cry 6 at 1080 it's a similar story so the 3 amds down the bottom quite a bit of a spread in frame rates and then we move on to Intel DDR 55200 DDR 56 6800 Dominator titanium 6,000 Vengeance RGB 5600 and once again Dominator Platinum RGB did it our 57000 at the top of the chart before I started my benchmarking runs I could not have predicted those results the adaa 64 was a deader but the rest of them that was a shot in the dark and the gaming scores in particular very interesting we understand that the game engine is what makes all the difference but until you find out how your system performs on any particular game engine obviously the game engine that's most important to you is what counts you won't really know how to get the best out of your gaming PC certainly we have established your choice of memory makes a big difference even when we're talking about dual Channel dddr 5 there's an awful lot of detail to dig into so this video has turned out to be something more of an adventure than I expected and that seems like a jolly good way to end 2023

Channel: KitGuruTech

Views: 173,394

Keywords: kitguru, technology, news, reviews, exclusive, join kitguru, Vengeance RGB White 64GB, corsair DDR5 memory showcase, Dominator Titanium First Edition 64GB, Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB, Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6800, Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-5200, DDR5-5600 CL36 XMP, DDR5-6000 CL30 EXPO, DDR5-7000 CL34 XMP, Corsair DDR5 memory, best DDR5 memory 2023, tech reviews, uk tech reviews, best DDR5 for gaming, ddr5 vs ddr4 gaming, best DDR5 for intel, best DDR5 for AMD

Id: wmF6qirM-t4

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023