It seems this RAM crisis just won't stop. Earlier today, a customer's wallet
was brutalized at the local computers RS. Live at the scene is special
correspondent Riley [music] Murdoch. Thank you, Lionus. The scene here is
chaos. There is affected customers everywhere. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. I
I see you're holding a high-speed DDR5 kit there. Can you explain why you paid
extra for that instead of a lower speed kit? >> I don't know, man. Uh, everybody tells
me I need the more expensive stuff, but I It's just so expensive. I'm just happy
they didn't take my other kidney.
>> Should we tell them? >> Are you a gamer, sir?
>> Yes. [laughter] >> Then we've got some fantastic news for
you because we tested four CPUs at eight different speeds of DDR5 running as slow
as 4,800 mega transfers per second. And it turns out you might not need to spend
as much on memory as you thought.
Ooh, that does not look great. Good
thing he was born with two of them. But hey, it's not all bad. Let me cheer you
up with this segue to our sponsor.
Can we get this guy some help? >> Synergy. Synergy lets you use one
keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers on your local network. You can
even do things like copy and paste in between computers. Check them out with
our link in the video description. The TLDDR of our extensive testing is that
while some CPUs do obviously benefit
from faster memory, AMD's recent statement that their popular X3D gaming
CPUs are super down to shack up with
even the slowest memory seems to be pretty much accurate. We found that at
typical gaming resolutions and settings, there was almost no difference between
kits that run at industry standard or JDEX speeds and faster overclocked
gaming RAM. Now, this is not going to completely solve the problem. Even
slower memory has been impacted by recent price increases, but hey, at
least it gives us some options. Let's find out then how much performance we
might be giving up. Starting with Intel, where unfortunately the story is not
quite as rosy as AMD's X3D chips. We
chose both a lastg and a current gen representative, and we used our standard
Labs test benches. Testing took forever, by the way, because we had to use the
same memory kit across each platform, which meant swapping out a lot of RAM.
Let's start with gaming on Raptor Lake. Looking strictly at our Geo Mean across
all games at 1080p, it's pretty clear that our 14900K loves fast DDR5. So, if
your grandma made a strategic DDR5 investment last year and you can get
some 8,400 megat transfer per second CL40, to the moon it goes. At least in
certain games like Ashes of the Benchmark, Cyberpunk, and Red Dead
Redemption 2. The good news is though, as long as you don't pair it with the
slowest kit you can find, it won't suffer too much. As for Intel's newer
Core Ultra 285K, good news, it couldn't
even run our fastest kit. And as for the rest, as long as you're using something
that's faster than JDK, basically don't worry about it. When we look at the
allimportant 1% lows, there is at most a
handful of FPS difference across every game in resolution that we tested to the
point where I would say that unless you have an FPS counter in the corner, you
would never know the difference. And this is especially true as your
resolution and your in-game details scale up. Now, you're probably wondering
at this point, if these differences are so small, why were all of you reviewers
acting like RAM speed mattered before? It's all about the context, guys. When
we were talking about 20 or 30 bucks to
get a few% performance improvement on your $1,500 or $2,000 gaming PC, that's
a no-brainer. Who doesn't want bang for the buck? But we're not talking 20 or 30
bucks. We're talking $200 or $300 for a
higher speed kit. That changes the math completely. Or does it? Maybe
productivity will tell a different story. Okay, not in Blender. But our
GDAU compile test does see a decent improvement with higher speed memory on
the 14900 K. And that's not a completely isolated case. While many of our
productivity tests do mirror our gaming tests across both Intel's current and
last gen chips, there are a significant number of results here where spending
far more on your memory can yield a meaningful difference in performance to
the point where if you're making money with your machine, you might want to
consider ponying up for a high-speed, low latency kit, even at today's
extortionate pricing, which is exactly the problem that consumers are facing
right now. You want to play video games and you got to budget accordingly. Well,
Joe Workstation user, he's not playing games. He wants to compile his code
faster. So, he submits a requisition to the IT department who goes,
>> "Yeah, if it'll make you more productive, go for it." >> We're going to have a companion
lttabs.com article, by the way, that dives a little deeper into which
business use cases might benefit and which ones won't. On the subject of
business, check out the new sand colored tech pants at ltstore.com. They offer
loads of utility with hidden pockets galore while keeping you stylish on the
job. Now, let's change gears and talk a little bit about AMD. Don't you guys
love it when twice a day the corporate puffery clock gets it right? Just look
at those beautifully aligned graphs on our 9800 X3D. Okay, there is a little
bit of variance. Our 4,800 megat transfer per second kit does sit in last
place and 6,000 mega transfer CL30 is
still the sweet spot. But turn on ray tracing or up the resolution and things
become even more seemier than before. Like on Intel, Cyberpunk and Ashes show
the biggest spread in our 1080p results, but it's a much smaller gap. And
realistically, there are cases here where using 16 gig versus 24 gig modules
is going to make as much of a difference or more. 3dB cache for the win. As for
the regular cache, it might be for the win, too. It turns out that while our
9950X did stumble a little bit with our
slowest JDK kit, overall, as long as you can get your hands on something,
anything with a tuned expo profile, you probably won't notice a difference.
Especially at risk of sounding like a broken record, at risk of sounding like
a broken record. Especially if you turn up your in-game details or kick your
resolution up to 4K. Moving on to productivity, we've got a similar story
to what we saw in Intel, just through a different colored lens. The JDK kit is
definitely the slowest, demonstrating that overclocked memory does have a
reason to exist, just not [clears throat] at the current prices.
Beyond that, there were occasional cases where faster memory, or especially sweet
spot memory that runs in sync with AMD's Infinity Fabric at nice low latencies,
did result in measurable gains. But outside of those specific use cases,
like GDAU, the differences are not going to be enough to ruin your day. So, in
conclusion, don't be this guy. If you're
a gamer and high-speed memory is available for a modest price delta, it
can make a lot of sense, especially if you're on an older Intel platform. But
right now, I just can't recommend it,
especially to the tens of thousands of you that are buying X3D processors for
gaming. By the way, we're going to have X3D processors and all the stuff that we
used on our benches linked in the video description if you guys wanted to check something out for your next rig. Just uh
don't expect any great deals on the RAM down there. As for the non-gaming folks,
man, I really feel for the cottage industry professionals right now. The
folks who do work at home that requires
faster RAM or especially a lot of RAM.
Like, it's hard to care too much about corporates's workstation budget, but if
you're an atome developer or you're a contract creative professional, it is a
super sucky time to need an upgrade. The only good news I have for you is that
you can shave a few bucks off of your budget for now and then with the money
you saved, hopefully get something a little faster once the bubble pops.
Anytime now would be nice.
All right. Well, I guess it's not happening yet, but um while we continue
to wait, here's a word from our sponsor, >> Synergy. If you have multiple computers
on your local network and you have to run from system to system to get any
work done, you should check out Synergy. They let you use a single keyboard and
mouse to control multiple computers. And you can move your cursor in between
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unlike KVM switching, there isn't those few seconds of waiting. It supports
hotkeys, TLS encryption, and clipboard sharing. Synergy isn't a subscription
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less clutter and confusion. With Synergy, one keyboard and mouse is all
you need to control every computer in your setup. Grab 50% off using code LTT
at checkout with our link down below. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure
to check out the last time we did this, but with DDR4. So, if you want to pick
up like an older Intel 12th or 13th gen chip and pair that with some nice fancy
DDR4, you can decide for yourself exactly how much to spend.