Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back to hardware unboxed today's video is all about memory namely the ddr4 variety when it comes to buying ddr4 memory there's a few things you want to keep in mind such as speed capacity latency and what was I talking about again oh that's right memory anyway for today's video I'm going to assume you've taken the plunge and by that I mean you've decided to buy an Intel KB Lake processor perhaps you're coming from a Sandy Bridge or even an AMD FX processor well whatever the case is for some crazy reason you've decided to upgrade now and not wait for amnesia Rison if that is the case then ddr4 memory might be new to you as the aforementioned platforms use the older ddr3 memory standard so in this video I'm going to show you what kind of ddr4 memory you should be on the hunt for this guide will also apply for skylake owners as well since kb lake and skylake processors have pretty much the same memory requirements the focus is really going to be on memory frequency and latency rather than capacity testing capacity is kind of its own kettle of fish if you will it really how much memory you will require depends on the rest of your system specifications and probably more importantly what it is that you plan on doing with the computer as a rule of thumb in 2017 we would suggest a minimum of eight gigabytes of memory for gamers while 16 gigabytes should be the new target 16 gigabyte kits are actually better value anyway as pricing starts at 70 us meanwhile the cheapest dual channel 8 gigabyte kit started about $45 as always it really comes down to your budget if you're going with a pentium or Core i3 processor then skimping on an 8 gigabyte kit might make sense on that note if you're buying a budget process or even an ankh a core i5 slash i7 processor and pairing it with a non z set that is to say anything that isn't these e170 or z 270 then memory frequency becomes less of an issue the h1 70 h1 10 and be 150 chipsets for example also for a maximum ddr4 memory speed of just 20 133 megahertz the h2 70 and b250 chipsets are also memory frequency limited these six gen Intel processors are again limited to 21 33 megahertz while the seventh gen processors can use ddr4 2400 memory as a side note ddr4 2133 memory doesn't actually operate at 21 33 megahertz as advertised by pretty much every manufacturer and board partner as this is double data rate memory it actually operates at 1066 megahertz but rather than be technical and go against the grain we will submit to the marketing lingo and just call it 21 33 megahertz to avoid confusing anyone right so assuming you have either a Zed 170 or z2 70 motherboard then there is going to be a huge range of ddr4 memory speeds available to you speeds ranging from ddr4 2133 all out to ddr4 4000 and even faster realistically though you're really going to be deciding between modules rated at 2400 megahertz to about 3400 megahertz the other things to consider here are the price and latency the latter of which is often described as memory timings anyway giving us a clearer picture of how timings and frequency impact performance of the new cable 8 processors I have done a little benchmarking before we jump to the game results here's a quick look at the impact memory frequency has on bandwidth using ddr4 2133 memory we are limited to twenty two point eight gigabytes per second meanwhile moving to 2666 memory the bandwidth increased by 21% we see a further 20 percent bump in bandwidth when jumping to the ddr4 3,600 memory that said this sweet spot does appear to be ddr4 3400 memory this is the last test we're going to be looking at before the gaming benchmarks I promise it's interesting to see how the increased bandwidth impacts performance in the 7-zip application although the gains are consistent we only see a three percent improvement in performance when jumping all the way from ddr4 2133 memory to the fastest memory tested ddr4 3600 so not all applications will benefit greatly from the increased memory bandwidth okay so first that we have battlefield one which we are testing with a Titan XP at 1080p we deucey consistent gains as the memory frequency increases though it has to be said that there is just a 7% increase in performance for the minimum frame rate when going from ddr4 2133 all wipe the ddr4 3600 another game I tested was Call of Duty infinite warfare and unfortunately it didn't become apparent that there was a 125 FPS cap until I was well into the testing since I had the results I decided to include them anyway as they could be useful once we move to the 4k resolution finally the last game I tested was Gears of War 4 which is known to be a very demanding game on the CPU here we see a reasonable 13% boost in performance when going from ddr4 2133 to ddr4 3600 still I was using a Titan XP here at 1080p so you do have to wonder what the gains would be like under more realistic conditions well these numbers look quite different to the battlefield 1 results in previously here we see virtually no difference in performance between the ddr4 2133 and ddr4 3,600 memory when gaming with the Titan XP at 4k Call of Duty infinite warfare has now dropped down to 75 FPS and while that is well below the 125 FPS cap we previously saw increase in the memory speed didn't improve the framerate even in Gears of War 4 where we previously saw a 13% performance boost from the lowest clocked memory to the fastest we now just see a three and a half percent variation in performance at 4k so the moment the GPU becomes the performance limiting factor which is almost always when gaming increased in the CPUs memory bandwidth does little to nothing to aid system performance for the most part high-speed ddr4 isn't really going to improve the gaming experience perhaps those rocking a higher refresh rate monitor might benefit from the high memory frequency but for everyone else it isn't really necessary one last thing I just want to look at briefly are memory timings as you can see as the memory timings are relaxed the memory balance slowly falls away the impact timings have on bandwidth isn't nearly as significant as the frequency though from CL 16 to CL a team we only see a 2% reduction in bandwidth meanwhile previously we saw a 4% reduction when going from ddr4 3400 to 3200 and then from 3200 down to 2800 a reduction in bandwidth by further 7% here we see well under a one percent reduction in performance when testing the various memory timings using 7-zip finally using Gears of War 4 we see virtually no difference in performance when tweaking the memory timings so in the end memory timings and frequency don't have a great impact on gaming performance therefore it really comes down to price given that there are quite large bandwidth gains to be had when going with faster memory I would still recommend buying the fastest memory possible I just don't recommend hitting yourself with any kind of serious price premium to get it for example g.skill ripjaws for 16 gigabyte dual-channel ddr2 NT 133 kit starts at $85 u.s. but for five dollars more you can purchase their Ripjaws v ddr4 3000 kid and for another five dollars lands you the Ripjaws v ddr4 3200 kit beyond that though things do start to get a bit out of control the cheapest ddr4 3400 kit which is another Ripjaws v memory kit cost $130 not outlandish but that's almost a 40% premium over the ddr4 3200 stuff for no real gain as a side note I'd just like to point out that g.skill hasn't sponsored this video but they have sent us a shipload of memory in the past and with being so competitively priced it works well for these examples so in summary of pricing in your region reflects what we just saw then I recommend pairing your KB lake or skylake processor with ddr4 3,000 to 3,250 we've used ddr4 3,200 memory in our core i7 6700k test machine and it's worked out very nicely I will provide some links in the video description for some memory over at Amazon I recommend checking out anyway that's all from me on this one just remember get the fastest memory you can while avoiding spending a huge premium over the 2133 stuff I'm your host Steve and I hope to catch you on the next one