Evaluate the DDR5 performance potential carefully—building a PC right now might not be practical.
Evaluate the DDR5 performance potential carefully—building a PC right now might not be practical.
DDR5 RAM is expected to become available by the end of this year or early 2022, alongside new Intel and AMD systems. I'm curious about the practical performance changes we can anticipate—gaming, everyday tasks, etc. With DDR5 on the way, challenges like trade issues, supply problems, high prices, and pandemic effects might make investing in PC parts less appealing right now. Would it be better to avoid 2021 altogether? What are your thoughts on this situation?
The cost of GFX cards is currently unsustainable or unlikely to improve soon.
i would personally let people try it out first, i wont be the first wave to buy it, maybe few months later if it's nice. if you upgrade often, waiting for DDR5 for AMD's long(er) upgrade path might seem viable, you get more use out of your RAM + board if you dont upgrade often (once every... 5-7 years?) then you can just buy one now, and by the time you need an upgrade, DDR5 will be very mature or it'll be DDR6 already.
Traditionally, new generation RAM began slower compared to older high-end models. Factors like timing and clock speeds often limited performance. Usually, it takes a year or more to close the gap. Voltage tends to be higher initially, leading to more heat, less overclocking, and more expensive motherboards with additional layers. While RAM was always a consideration, it wasn’t the biggest issue. With today’s challenges, I’m skeptical about seeing consumer RAM releases this year. It’s been happening in servers for some time, so you might want to look at server test data if you’re serious.
I believe the real turning point will come when memory and system memory blend together completely. Imagine all those old connectors disappearing and everything shifting to a PCIE-based setup, whatever new technology emerges. This would eliminate the need for extra RAM on GPUs and push us toward unified storage solutions—maybe with slower legacy options as a backup. We’re already seeing this trend in high-end servers that rely heavily on PCIe storage, though their software is often flawed. If this happens, we’ll have to rethink our coding approaches. It seems current consoles are moving toward shared memory for CPU and GPU, using fast SSD streaming versus traditional RAM buffering. CDPR supposedly cites this as a reason why Cyberpunk struggles on older systems. The speed of storage is just too limited for efficient asset streaming.