Why does the DDR memory speed effect FPS ?

[chaparral]

I know I posted this in the GPU section but am guessing you GPU guys would know more about FPS speeds then any other part the forum..


Now back to the thread title question
How does the PC DDR memory speed cause such a big effect on FPS as surely once the game is loaded into ram it shouldn't make any difference to the FPS

But going by these gaming benchmarks your PC memory speed can effect the FPS you get by over 20% eek: 41 minimum FPS to 61minimum FPS just from changing ram speeds )

More Benchmarks here http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page3.html

 

[chaparral]

Guessing the faster the RAM transferring data the less waiting the GPU needs to do resulting in higher performance.

That a good reason....

I didn't think of that ..

 

[chaparral]

DDR4 seems to have a little more effect on framerates than DDR3 on previous platforms but you still have to go to high end multi GPU systems and compare the fastest to the slowest RAM to see significant gains.

But a 38% FPS increase from just changing DDR4 2133 to DDR4-4000 is giving more FPS then upgrading from a 980ti to a 1080...

 

[chaparral]

I take it this only applies to Skylake..?
Perhaps due to the GPUs running at 8x/8x?

I'd love to give it a try myself on X99, but that's an expensive experiment

No It should apply to all CPU & memory setups but the amount you gain or lose would most likely be different..

 

[chaparral]

Turns out for the first time in ages, RAM speed is actually starting to make a significant difference in some cases. .

Wonder if it anything to do with games now days are using more & more memory ...

And it also be interesting to see what the results would be at different Resolutions like 1080p vs 4k to see if the DDR speeds also effect Vram usage amount