Stop WASTING Money on Fancy RAM

It seems this RAM crisis just won't

stop. Earlier today, a customer's wallet

was brutalized at the local computers

RS. Live at the scene is special

correspondent Riley Murdoch. Thank you,

Lionus. The scene here is chaos. There

is affected customers everywhere. Excuse

me. Excuse me, sir. I I see you're

holding a high-speed DDR5 kit there. Can

you explain why you paid extra for that

instead of a lower speed kit?

>> I don't know, man. Uh, everybody tells

me I need the more expensive stuff, but

I It's just so expensive. I'm just happy

they didn't take my other kidney.

>> Should we tell them?

>> Are you a gamer, sir?

>> Yes.

>> Then we've got some fantastic news for

you because we tested four CPUs at eight

different speeds of DDR5 running as slow

as 4,800 mega transfers per second. And

it turns out you might not need to spend

as much on memory as you thought.

Ooh, that does not look great. Good

thing he was born with two of them. But

hey, it's not all bad. Let me cheer you

up with this segue to our sponsor.

Can we get this guy some help?

>> Synergy. Synergy lets you use one

keyboard and mouse to control multiple

computers on your local network. You can

even do things like copy and paste in

between computers. Check them out with

our link in the video description. The

TLDDR of our extensive testing is that

while some CPUs do obviously benefit

from faster memory, AMD's recent

statement that their popular X3D gaming

CPUs are super down to shack up with

even the slowest memory seems to be

pretty much accurate. We found that at

typical gaming resolutions and settings,

there was almost no difference between

kits that run at industry standard or

JDEX speeds and faster overclocked

gaming RAM. Now, this is not going to

completely solve the problem. Even

slower memory has been impacted by

recent price increases, but hey, at

least it gives us some options. Let's

find out then how much performance we

might be giving up. Starting with Intel,

where unfortunately the story is not

quite as rosy as AMD's X3D chips. We

chose both a lastg and a current gen

representative, and we used our standard

labs test benches. Testing took forever,

by the way, because we had to use the

same memory kit across each platform,

which meant swapping out a lot of RAM.

Let's start with gaming on Raptor Lake.

Looking strictly at our Geo Mean across

all games at 1080p, it's pretty clear

that our 14900K loves fast DDR5. So, if

your grandma made a strategic DDR5

investment last year and you can get

some 8,400 megat transfer per second

CL40, to the moon it goes. At least in

certain games like Ashes of the

Benchmark, Cyberpunk, and Red Dead

Redemption 2. The good news is though,

as long as you don't pair it with the

slowest kit you can find, it won't

suffer too much. As for Intel's newer

Core Ultra 285K, good news, it couldn't

even run our fastest kit. And as for the

rest, as long as you're using something

that's faster than JDK, basically don't

worry about it. When we look at the

allimportant 1% lows, there is at most a

handful of FPS difference across every

game in resolution that we tested to the

point where I would say that unless you

have an FPS counter in the corner, you

would never know the difference. And

this is especially true as your

resolution and your in-game details

scale up. Now, you're probably wondering

at this point, if these differences are

so small, why were all of you reviewers

acting like RAM speed mattered before?

It's all about the context, guys. When

we were talking about 20 or 30 bucks to

get a few% performance improvement on

your $1,500 or $2,000 gaming PC, that's

a no-brainer. Who doesn't want bang for

the buck? But we're not talking 20 or 30

bucks. We're talking $200 or $300 for a

higher speed kit. That changes the math

completely. Or does it? Maybe

productivity will tell a different

story. Okay, not in Blender. But our

GDAU compile test does see a decent

improvement with higher speed memory on

the 14900 K. And that's not a completely

isolated case. While many of our

productivity tests do mirror our gaming

tests across both Intel's current and

last gen chips, there are a significant

number of results here where spending

far more on your memory can yield a

meaningful difference in performance to

the point where if you're making money

with your machine, you might want to

consider ponying up for a high-speed,

low latency kit, even at today's

extortionate pricing, which is exactly

the problem that consumers are facing

right now. You want to play video games

and you got to budget accordingly. Well,

Joe Workstation user, he's not playing

games. He wants to compile his code

faster. So, he submits a requisition to

the IT department who goes,

>> "Yeah, if it'll make you more

productive, go for it."

>> We're going to have a companion

lttabs.com article, by the way, that

dives a little deeper into which

business use cases might benefit and

which ones won't. On the subject of

business, check out the new sand colored

tech pants at ltstore.com. They offer

loads of utility with hidden pockets

galore while keeping you stylish on the

job. Now, let's change gears and talk a

little bit about AMD. Don't you guys

love it when twice a day the corporate

puffery clock gets it right? Just look

at those beautifully aligned graphs on

our 9800 X3D. Okay, there is a little

bit of variance. Our 4,800 megat

transfer per second kit does sit in last

place and 6,000 mega transfer CL30 is

still the sweet spot. But turn on ray

tracing or up the resolution and things

become even more seemier than before.

Like on Intel, Cyberpunk and Ashes show

the biggest spread in our 1080p results,

but it's a much smaller gap. And

realistically, there are cases here

where using 16 gig versus 24 gig modules

is going to make as much of a difference

or more. 3dB cache for the win. As for

the regular cache, it might be for the

win, too. It turns out that while our

9950X did stumble a little bit with our

slowest JDK kit, overall, as long as you

can get your hands on something,

anything with a tuned expo profile, you

probably won't notice a difference.

Especially at risk of sounding like a

broken record, at risk of sounding like

a broken record. Especially if you turn

up your in-game details or kick your

resolution up to 4K. Moving on to

productivity, we've got a similar story

to what we saw in Intel, just through a

different colored lens. The JDK kit is

definitely the slowest, demonstrating

that overclocked memory does have a

reason to exist, just not at the current

prices. Beyond that, there were

occasional cases where faster memory, or

especially sweet spot memory that runs

in sync with AMD's Infinity Fabric at

nice low latencies, did result in

measurable gains. But outside of those

specific use cases, like GDAU, the

differences are not going to be enough

to ruin your day. So, in conclusion,

don't be this guy. If you're a gamer and

high-speed memory is available for a

modest price delta, it can make a lot of

sense, especially if you're on an older

Intel platform. But right now, I just

can't recommend it, especially to the

tens of thousands of you that are buying

X3D processors for gaming. By the way,

we're going to have X3D processors and

all the stuff that we used on our

benches linked in the video description

if you guys wanted to check something

out for your next rig. Just uh don't

expect any great deals on the RAM down

there. As for the non-gaming folks, man,

I really feel for the cottage industry

professionals right now. The folks who

do work at home that requires faster RAM

or especially a lot of RAM. Like, it's

hard to care too much about corporates's

workstation budget, but if you're an

atome developer or you're a contract

creative professional, it is a super

sucky time to need an upgrade. The only

good news I have for you is that you can

shave a few bucks off of your budget for

now and then with the money you saved,

hopefully get something a little faster

once the bubble pops.

Anytime now would be nice.

All right. Well, I guess it's not

happening yet, but um while we continue

to wait, here's a word from our sponsor,

>> Synergy. If you have multiple computers

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your setup. Grab 50% off using code LTT

at checkout with our link down below. If

you guys enjoyed this video, make sure

to check out the last time we did this,

but with DDR4. So, if you want to pick

up like an older Intel 12th or 13th gen

chip and pair that with some nice fancy

DDR4, you can decide for yourself

exactly how much to spend.