Depending on the games you play, DDR5 memory can offer little to no performance gain, and this will be true for most titles. The best performing examples show up to a 20% boost which is significant, and here we're comparing premium DDR4-3600 memory to premium DDR5-6000, with the DDR5 kit coming in at a ~70% price premium. The idea of this test is not to take a few premium kits and then manually adjust timings and frequencies, which is what we've done in the past. Instead we want to test memory kits you can actually buy and see how those perform and compare. We reached out to Corsair and submitted a long shopping list of kits that we wanted to test and they were gracious enough to help us out. When it comes to DDR4 memory, we see again that the sweet spot is around the 3600 mark, with DDR4-4000 barely reducing latency from what was seen with the CL16 3600 kit. DDR5 does move performance along a little bit, DDR5-4800 was 4% faster than DDR4-4000 and 3600 and we continued to see around a 3-4% gain with each step up to DDR5-6200, hitting 178 fps on average. In the end, that meant DDR5-6200 was 13% faster than DDR4-4000. For anyone looking to maximize the value of an Alder Lake processor, DDR4 memory is what you'll be after, and there isn't any point as far as we can tell going beyond DDR4-4000. So if DDR4-3200 CL16 and DDR4-4000 CL18 are priced fairly similarly in your region, you might as well go with 4000.

DDR5 DRAM 6400MHz C32 - CORSAIR VENGEANCE® RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 DRAM 6400MHz C32 - CORSAIR

In total we spent a few weeks testing 41 games and we'll take a look at the side-by-side comparison across all those games in a second. But if we look at an average graph, calculated using the geomean, we see that on average DDR5 memory offered just a 3% boost at 1080p, 2% at 1440p and then one percent at 4K. g33b4vqccuqwcx5bx22q-p8kovq-e038e0c0c-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vqccuqxax5bstpa-p4rsfx-bd0382a30-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vqccuqxax5btyeq-poz8cc-9955b8a36-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vqxzp4swx5bu27q-pxv1vf-89db7a111-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vqxzp4swx5bv25q-pt8447-731cc407d-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vsy3wdkax5bswnq-plqmrf-ff7289811-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vsy3wdkex5bsuoq-p56ka1-9bf23f300-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net,

Counter Strike Global Offensive is a heavily CPU limited game, and here we see feeding the processor more bandwidth doesn't help improve performance at 1080p and 1440p, though we're only talking about a minor single-digit difference. But it appears as though lower latency memory is more important for this title. The FURY Renegade 32GB 6400MT/s kit costs ₹21,700. The same kit at a lower speed of 6000MT/s costs ₹17,999. Without RGB, both kits comes ever cheaper. Spending ₹3,200 extra for around 1-2% performance is a decision one has to make for themselves. Comparing with other OEMs, there are hardly any competitors for the 6400MT/s variant. G.Skill offers 7200 CL34 RAM for around ₹26,000. That is a good ₹3,300 above the FURY Renegade. In perspective, only G.Skill has a competitive RAM.

DDR5 RAM | Single/Dual Channel DDR5 | SCAN UK DDR5 RAM | Single/Dual Channel DDR5 | SCAN UK

However, with the rest of the memory kits offering either strong bandwidth performance or respectable latency, we're looking at no more than an 11% difference between the fastest and slowest kits. DDR4-4000 CL18 using gear 1 did provide the best results, but DDR4-3200 and 3600 CL16 also beat out all DDR5 kits. The second tab in the chart above aggregates selected benchmarks that represent real-world applications, such as the App Startup subtest from PCMark 10, the Premiere Pro result from UL Procyon, all the apps from our timed workloads chart, and F1 2021. The combined figures are an average of those results. Thanks to its huge lead in 7-Zip file compression, the DDR5-4800 wins over DDR4-4000 by 1.5% overall. We also experimented with removing the timed benchmarks from this data set (not charted here), and in that scenario, the DDR4-4000 kit would have led by 1.3% without that additional data. You could argue that a 20% premium is worth it given we're already seeing examples of 20% gains in games. But you're better off saving the money for a future upgrade because the DDR5 available right now is going to be terrible when compared to DDR5 memory in a year or two. We saw the same thing happen with DDR4, and DDR3 before it.

But wait... Raptor Lake will support DDR4 memory, and while it's possible DDR5 will be of more benefit in a year, it's still not going to be massive and gamers will almost always end up GPU limited in games, rather than CPU limited. The big issue with this future-proof argument is the same as before, they hinge on the investment paying off in the long run with very few short-term advantages. clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 176-34-86-175_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604432488-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 176-34-86-175_s-23-203-249-90_ts-1604428164-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 176-34-86-175_s-95-101-143-18_ts-1604428258-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 176-34-86-175_s-95-101-143-24_ts-1604428321-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, 34-242-207-243_s-23-203-249-81_ts-1604425495-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net, From DDR4-4000 to DDR5-4800 we see a 16% increase in throughput and now we're almost at 70 GB/s. Then from 4800 to 5200 we're looking at a 9% boost, 5200 to 5600 a 6% boost, and finally an 11% boost to 6200, reaching an impressive 88 GB/s transfer speed. But memory bandwidth isn't everything and for a lot of workloads memory latency is more important, so let's take a look at that. As for DDR5, there's little point investing in it right now unless you simply want the best of the best, at which point you're going for 6000+ spec memory which costs roughly the same amount as the 12900K processor. We see little reason to go with the more affordable 4800 to 5600 memory if you're gaming, especially given you're probably going to be GPU limited more often than not.

DDR5 | DRAM | Samsung Semiconductor Global DDR5 | DRAM | Samsung Semiconductor Global

g2nlvmqcchiscx5bva5a-pwotro-14b66ca5a-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g2nlvmqccuqvax5bs7hq-p4vzcl-ad59a5fd9-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g2nlvmqccuqxax5bsz6q-pm3a6a-3feb7d021-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g2nlvmqxzp4swx5bs5uq-pd12b9-62c8cb38d-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g2nlvmqxzp4swx5bt3va-p7puv0-d4fafcfea-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g2nlvmsy3wdkax5bs5zq-p675cj-d0b1fd299-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, g33b4vqccuqvax5btwhq-pfp8ei-5c0ea4329-clientnsv4-s.akamaihd.net, Also, chances are 12th-gen Core series owners won't feel the need to upgrade until 14th-gen hits at the absolute earliest, and at that point you'd need a new motherboard anyway. In a previous benchmark feature, we already took a look at DDR4-3600 vs. DDR5-6000 memory across 41 games and found that the newer and more expensive DDR5 memory was a mere 4% faster on average, though it was up to 20% faster in a few select titles. Both the DDR4 and DDR5 memory used in that testing was very expensive, so today we want to compare a range of memory kits covering a wider range of price points, all of which have been supplied by Corsair.

For now, we have this less demanding part of the game and here DDR5 offers very little over DDR4, though I suspect this will also be true for more demanding scenes as well.