do i get zen 3 or wait for zen 4?
do i get zen 3 or wait for zen 4?
Hey! You're planning a big upgrade for Christmas. Zen 4 supports DDR5 RAM, which is supposed to be twice as fast as DDR4. You're thinking about getting around 32GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz, but you're currently using an i7-4790 with 16GB of DDR3 at 1600Mhz. Many worry they won't upgrade soon and might miss out on faster tech, but DDR5 RAM is expected to be very costly. Whether it's worth it now or waiting depends on your needs and budget.
No one tells you if it's worth holding off. If your device isn't keeping up, upgrade now. Be wary of thinking the next step is just near—waiting could become endless.
DDR5 is expected to be costly when it first launches, assuming current DDR4 prices. I shouldn't rely solely on RAM speeds when making my choice. The 4790K used DDR3 while the 6700k was used DDR4, but there wasn't a significant performance difference between them.
Several more benchmarks exist, which is why it was never suggested to overspend on RAM for Intel. AMD will receive the same consideration moving forward, as they largely resolved their latency problems between cores by merging the cache of their CCXs.
Thanks everyone for the fast responses! I had a small idea in my head but didn’t use it yet, especially with how fast technology is progressing now. I’m glad I’m right then! That’s pretty interesting, maybe it has to do with CPUs not being tuned for 5000Mhz since you mentioned 3600Mhz is considered ideal for Ryzen chips. You switched from English to computer science quickly!
Thank you for your time and expertise—it means a lot! I’m excited to join the team.
3600Mhz was ideal for Ryzen since it matched the Infinity Fabric perfectly. Going past that would slow down the fabric’s speed and hurt performance. Benchmarks don’t show big gains here, unlike Intel. Zen 3 is much closer to Intel, so memory speed has less impact on it.