Memory speed or memory amount?

TheCSSDoctor

TheCSSDoctor

TheCSSDoctor

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Been out of the building loop for so long, I have a question - In general terms, which would be better from the following

16GB 5200 DDR5 or 32GB 4800 DDR5

Would the 16GB faster speed give better results than the 32GB slower speed - I have only given those speeds as an example and could substitute the speeds for any other
Is it better to have more memory, or can less memory at a better speed provide more benefits?

If they were the same price, then I would have automatically picked the more memory option, but is that always the best option?
 
Timings are important when it comes to memory for example 5200mgz high Timings will perform simmlar to 4800mhz lower timings . You ideally want 5600mhz to 6000mhz which is the sweet spot for DDR5.

Depending what you do not having enough will limit performance , Gaming 16gb is ideal but some games are using more than that and ram has become cheap so 32gb is affordable.

Teamgroup 32gb of 5600mhz can be had for £150 .
 
Generally speaking the rule is pretty simple: do you NEED the memory for whatever game/app you're using? If the answer is yes, then you're way better off having more slower memory, than less faster memory.

I don't know your usage, so it's hard to comment in your case.

With DDR5, there are a few issues:
- buying lower than 5600 is often not worth it for the relatively small price benefit (if you're buying the most keenly priced 5600 stuff anyway)
- buying 4800 is hardly ever worth it, because there is a price floor for memory (and other tech, I guess)
- (also applies to DDR4) 8GB sticks with 16Gbit density are slower than 8GB sticks with 8Gbit density & DDR5 usually performs more consistently in 16GB or 32GB capacity
- the benefit of performance above low(ish) latency 5600 is pretty limited, especially if you're paying a lot more for it
- we don't know what future CPUs will require, since DDR5 is likely to get a lot faster in the near future

Due to the above (and the price of memory being fairly low right now), I would personally not buy 4800 memory, 8GB sticks, or a 16GB kit, unless it's just a basic browsing machine.
 
TheCSSDoctor said:
Been out of the building loop for so long, I have a question - In general terms, which would be better from the following

16GB 5200 DDR5 or 32GB 4800 DDR5

Would the 16GB faster speed give better results than the 32GB slower speed - I have only given those speeds as an example and could substitute the speeds for any other
Is it better to have more memory, or can less memory at a better speed provide more benefits?

If they were the same price, then I would have automatically picked the more memory option, but is that always the best option?
Click to expand...
If the 5200 16GB set is 2*8GB it would probably be slower than 4800 2*16GB as the number of banks/ranks would be lower which can cut the bandwidth in half. This is not always the case, depends on how many chips are on the dimm’s. Anyway, I would get the 4800 32GB kit or wait for cheaper 5200/5600 32GB kits. The difference between 4800 kit and a 6000 kit outside of benchmarks will not be much but the difference between 16GB and 32GB can be very noticeable depending on usage.
 
If you're playing games that never exceed 16Gb (including Windows usage) then that will always be faster then slower 32Gb.

However, you play a game that exceeds 16Gb then surely slower 32Gb will always be faster than 16Gb becasue the game will be using the swap file as memory.

Anyway, 5200 is only 8% higher than 4800 so you wont even notice unless the banks are configured like in FredFlints worse case scenario.
 
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I'm in a similar scenario but the next step up in terms of capacity.

I'm trying to decide between 32GB @ 5600 36CL or 64GB @ 5200 40CL
I game so the 32GB kit would be better for that, but when encoding 4K HDR content (ripping my blu-rays and re-encoding them for my plex server) I often fully saturate 32GB so 64GB could be useful :confused:
 
no_1_dave said:
I'm in a similar scenario but the next step up in terms of capacity.

I'm trying to decide between 32GB @ 5600 36CL or 64GB @ 5200 40CL
I game so the 32GB kit would be better for that, but when encoding 4K HDR content (ripping my blu-rays and re-encoding them for my plex server) I often fully saturate 32GB so 64GB could be useful :confused:
Click to expand...

In that case I'd go 64GB, there's not much noticeable difference in games between those speeds (especially at 4K or 1440 Max/Ultra), but you'll sure notice it if you're running out.
 
no_1_dave said:
I'm in a similar scenario but the next step up in terms of capacity.

I'm trying to decide between 32GB @ 5600 36CL or 64GB @ 5200 40CL
I game so the 32GB kit would be better for that, but when encoding 4K HDR content (ripping my blu-rays and re-encoding them for my plex server) I often fully saturate 32GB so 64GB could be useful :confused:
Click to expand...

I'm in the exact same boat at the moment.

Planning on pulling the trigger any day now on a new gaming PC and I'm deciding between 32GB 5600MHz or 64GB 5200MHz for gaming.

At the moment I'm thinking of going 32GB because that's still a lot of RAM and when the day comes when more RAM is needed then it's going to be relatively inexpensive to go up to 64GB of faster RAM.
 
Chris5626 said:
At the moment I'm thinking of going 32GB because that's still a lot of RAM and when the day comes when more RAM is needed then it's going to be relatively inexpensive to go up to 64GB of faster RAM.
Click to expand...

I suspect you won't be gaming on that PC anymore by the time 64GB is needed :D
 
Chris5626 said:
I'm in the exact same boat at the moment.

Planning on pulling the trigger any day now on a new gaming PC and I'm deciding between 32GB 5600MHz or 64GB 5200MHz for gaming.

At the moment I'm thinking of going 32GB because that's still a lot of RAM and when the day comes when more RAM is needed then it's going to be relatively inexpensive to go up to 64GB of faster RAM.
Click to expand...

I have gone with 32GB for now.
Most of my encoding is already done so 32GB will still be fine for the odd encode and will be better for gaming. Plus even though 32GB gets fully saturated it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on the encodes

I'll upgrade to 64GB when those kits become faster and cheaper.
 
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