DDR4 or DDR5 for Turned Based Strategy Games

Author_25 · 21 Apr 2022 at 17:07

In the Next Month planning a new build and based in Intel 12th Gen and as I predominately play turned based strategy games like, Civ 6 or Total War, would DDR5 be better than DDR4 or vice versa?

Build I am looking at is,
i7-12700K
MSI Z690 Edge (comes in DDR4 and DDR5 versions)

Ram would be Kingston Fury Beast, 16GB for DDR4 or 32GB for DDR5.

Tetras · 21 Apr 2022 at 17:37

Techpowerup have a ddr5 memory scaling article which included civ 6 and hardware unboxed included starcraft 2 and total war: warhammer 2 in their 41 game roundup. From what I can see, there doesn't seem to be much difference for these games between DDR4 and DDR5. Reasonably priced 3200 or 3600 seems to work fine for now, like it does in other games.

Author_25 · 21 Apr 2022 at 18:41

@Tetras. Thank you for the links above, very helpful.

Dave2150 · 22 Apr 2022 at 10:45

DDR5 kits at 6400Mhz or the upcoming 6600Mhz add much improved gaming performance. It's a no-brainer to go for a DDR5 motherboard at this point.

You also save electricity, as DDR5 runs at lower voltages compared to DDR4.

Author_25 · 22 Apr 2022 at 12:34

Dave2150 said:
DDR5 kits at 6400Mhz or the upcoming 6600Mhz add much improved gaming performance. It's a no-brainer to go for a DDR5 motherboard at this point.

You also save electricity, as DDR5 runs at lower voltages compared to DDR4.

DDR5 does tempt me but I do not need 32GB of RAM, yet anyway, and I do not like spending money for something I will not use, in this case to its full potential, and the lack of 16GB (2x 8GB) kits, is a let down as this is the most common size people use.

I will search to see if I can find any 16GB DDR5 kits, to help make a balanced decision on RAM type.

Tetras · 22 Apr 2022 at 13:19

Dave2150 said:
DDR5 kits at 6400Mhz or the upcoming 6600Mhz add much improved gaming performance. It's a no-brainer to go for a DDR5 motherboard at this point.

You also save electricity, as DDR5 runs at lower voltages compared to DDR4.

Does it really make any noticeable difference? Most gaming kits use 1.2v or the high-end kits use 1.25v, so I can't imagine it would save more than a few watts, 5 would be impressive, but happy to be proved wrong.

Author_25 · 22 Apr 2022 at 15:07

Looking at the problems with DDR5 at present, like 4 DIMMs not posting and 2 OK, and issues with the XMP profile, the lack of variety of DIMM sizes, compared to DDR4, as well as no huge gains, so far, with DDR5 over DDR4 I will go with DDR4 and look to upgrade to DDR5, 1-2 years down the road.

Also, half the fun of owning a PC is being able to upgrade and getting DDR4 now lets me enjoy the planning for a DDR5 upgrade.

Pro4TLZZ · 8 May 2022 at 17:45

Tetras said:
Does it really make any noticeable difference? Most gaming kits use 1.2v or the high-end kits use 1.25v, so I can't imagine it would save more than a few watts, 5 would be impressive, but happy to be proved wrong.

no ram doesn't use much power, anyway when you are overclocking ram you should disable power down mode. increases powerdraw but cuts latency significantly

Pro4TLZZ · 8 May 2022 at 17:47

Tetras said:
Techpowerup have a ddr5 memory scaling article which included civ 6 and hardware unboxed included starcraft 2 and total war: warhammer 2 in their 41 game roundup. From what I can see, there doesn't seem to be much difference for these games between DDR4 and DDR5. Reasonably priced 3200 or 3600 seems to work fine for now, like it does in other games.

its a shame no one does comparisons with highly overclocked bdie, i'm not talking about 3800mhz cl14 on ryzen