WEBVTT

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did you ever suddenly wake up and realize holy smokes that thing that felt like

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yesterday was seven years ago that's

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ddr4 i know right 2014 this stuff came out

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see you later cause there's a new kid in town ddr5 desktop platforms are right

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around the corner and it's time to meet the fifth generation memory technology

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that's going to be juicing up our speeds and our capacities for at least the next

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few years starting with a physical look at what's different followed by a deeper

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dive into what makes this new breed of RAM stand out just like our sponsor

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glasswire stands out keep track of the weird stuff that's connecting to your pc

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even when you aren't using it with glass wire if a strange device joins your Wi-Fi

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you'll be notified instantly get 25 off using code Linus at the link below

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this is it my first hands-on with a full retail kit

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of ddr5 memory on the surface it really

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doesn't look very different in fact it even has the same 288 pins as ddr4

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memory but don't imagine that you're going to be fitting it into the same slot the key has been moved to prevent

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any but the most determined users from managing to mix up their memory

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generations and for good reason one of the biggest

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changes from ddr4 is immediately visible

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on our bare board here look at this the power management integrated circuit or

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pmic has been moved from the motherboard to the memory module itself now the pmix

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role is to take one of the standard output voltages from your computer power

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supply in this case 5 volts and convert

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it to the lower 1.1 volts that are required by the ddr5 chips here on the

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module this move was absolutely key to making the signal integrity improvements

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that were required to ramp ddr5 up to speeds 50 higher than last gen and even

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beyond if this alleged leaked roadmap is to be believed one curious side effect

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of this though is that even though ddr5 runs at nearly 10 percent lower voltages

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than ddr4 which should lower power draw the onboard pmic is not going to operate

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at 100 efficiency meaning that we could actually end up needing to deal with a

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small amount of waste heat on each module g-scale assures me though that

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it's unlikely we'll see a return to those clip-on RAM fans from the ddr2

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days those things really sucked they were loud and the fans failed all the

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time another side effect of moving the pmic on module is that it adds cost to

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the individual modules so once you also

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account for the more complicated pcb design and the early adopter tax you can

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expect ddr5 modules to be significantly more expensive than ddr4 modules of the

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same capacity now in theory some of this

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cost should be offset by removing power management from the motherboard but i've

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only rarely seen motherboards get cheaper from one generation to the next

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and in light of the ongoing worldwide semiconductor shortage not to mention

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the inclusion of pci express gen 5 on these upcoming platforms which has its

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own costly trace routing challenges i will be pretty surprised if it happens

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this time the good news though is ddr5 comes with some pretty spectacular

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benefits that aren't immediately obvious on a spec sheet like i'd forgive you for

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looking at the launch jdeck ddr5 frequency of 4 800 mega transfers per

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second and thinking wow that sounds pretty unexceptional

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compared to something like this g skill kid on new egg that's rated at a

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blistering 5300 mega megatransfers per second especially considering that cast

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latency or the number of RAM cycles to fulfill a data request is expected to be

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in the neighborhood of double compared to last gen but here's the thing

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remember that video we did recently explaining how frequency alone doesn't

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paint the full picture of performance well for one thing the memory controller

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in your ddr4 compatible CPU it wasn't designed with these kinds of speeds in

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mind so as with any form of overclocking it's a bit of a crap shoot whether it'll

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even work with super fast modules like those ones and for another past a

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certain point there are actually internal bottlenecks on the memory ics

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that's the chips on the module that would prevent them from properly taking

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advantage of any additional speed anyway this part's a little complicated but

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bear with me internally each ic has these two-dimensional grids of bits you

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know zeros and ones and they're called banks these banks get bundled into bank

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groups and to explain it simply whenever a bank group fires off the data

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requested by the CPU that bank group needs a little bit of time to recover

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during that time the other bank groups fire one after the other to fill up a

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burst buffer you can think of it kind of like a minigun where each barrel is a

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bank group and the bullets are data bits firing into the buffer except

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what happens if the module is running at such a high speed that we roll back

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around to our first bank group before it's recovered that's a problem

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that could be the bottleneck so to solve it ddr5 doubles the number of bank

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groups from four to eight that gives each bank group way more time to cool

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down and pretty much guarantees that we'll be able to properly take advantage

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of speeds well beyond the 6 000 or so

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mega transfers per second of first generation oc kits like this trident z5

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here and it gets even more interesting if you're into this sort of thing which

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you obviously are because you've made it this far the thing is while the minigun

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analogy helps us to understand bank group cooldowns in the real world it

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would be terribly inefficient to transfer ones and zeros to the CPU

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individually so instead let's imagine that our minigun is shooting all of

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these bits into an intermediary buffer called the burst buffer and we can think

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of this kind of like firing a single shotgun

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shell full of bits over to the CPU all at once a bit more impactful right now

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ddr4 modules are linked to the CPU with

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a single 64-bit bus or communication

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channel and they have a burst length of eight so we could say that our fully

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automatic ddr4 shotgun here fires 64

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pellet rounds with an eight round magazine bang bang bang bang bang bang

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bang bang so 64 bits times eight rounds gives us a

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total of 64 bytes of data per burst

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before it needs to be reloaded by our bank groups follow so far

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good ddr5 modules change this up in a

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big way instead of that single 64-bit

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bus we actually have two 32-bit

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sub-channels that can operate independently so back to our shotgun

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here we fire smaller shells with only 32

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bits each but we double our burst length

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or our magazine capacity to 16 per burst

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so if we math it up here again 32 bits

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times a burst length of 16 that is 64

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bytes per burst just like ddr4

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except now we've got two barrels that

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can fire independently each with its own

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16 round magazine but don't get carried away this isn't

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dual channel and you don't get to just add that total theoretical capacity

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together to boost your memory bandwidth you're still going to want to run

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multiple ddr5 modules in dual channel mode or

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more channels in the workstation and server space the real benefit of these

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independent sub channels is efficiency and latency in ddr4 if you only have 32

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bits of data in the burst buffer you just have to fill the rest with junk

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before you ship it out to the CPU that takes time and it means that the CPU has

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to wait around well now you don't have to wait you can just send 32 bits if

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that's all that's needed right now and the CPU won't have to wait around and

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there's more ddr5 ics so again that's

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the individual memory chips themselves now contain a basic form of ecc or error

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correction that operates completely transparently to the end user it can't

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be disabled and it serves to improve stability during high speed data storage

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and transfers within the ic honestly

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this was way overdue in my opinion but i'm still grateful we're finally getting

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it especially considering that unregistered ddr5 dimms you know the

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kind that just goes in your regular desktop computer are expected to hit

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capacities of 128 gigabytes on a single stick

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and load reduced dimms are potentially able to go as high as four terabytes per

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module with a combination of improved density and dye stacking in the coming

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years but let's slow down for a second in spite of its benefits ddr5 isn't some

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kind of magic silver bullet either and at the same frequency let's say 4 800

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mega transfers per second overclock spec ddr4 is actually expected to outperform

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this bass spec ddr5 well no problem you might think you'll just want to

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overclock the snot out of your ddr5 and go faster right

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might not be quite that simple remember the on module power management ic well

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as it turns out there are two different types of them

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one is not designed to go higher than

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the default of 1.1 to about

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1.435 volts the other kind which has to

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be specifically built onto your module at the time of construction is a

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programmable mode one that can go as high as well there doesn't seem to be a

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set limit for that one so expect to see some pretty exotic modules down the line

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and some pretty exotic cooling on them truthfully even the non-oc modules

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should end up being pretty interesting since ddr5 is also getting an spd or

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speed chip facelift instead of just storing default

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frequency and latency values which is usually going to contain both a stock

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and an overclocked or xmp setting it now also handles signaling to the power

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management ic and to any other microcontrollers on the module like RGB

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lighting controllers so i'm expecting that to directly result in more creative

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lighting implementations than we've ever seen before and

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lord knows that is what the industry needs more RGB i saved the best for

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watch maybe check out our most recent look into how memory speed impacts

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performance particularly in gaming