DDR4 - awesome or meh?

[jibberegg]

So DDR4 is just on the horizon. To me 4 is a higher number than 3, by 33% in fact, so this seems awesome. However are we really going to see much real world benefit? In the light of articles like this on memory scaling I'm not sure how much the extra MHz will be of use. Am I missing something else about DDR4 that I should be excited about?

 

[ctk1981]

Its not all about mhz..in fact that would probably be the smallest advantage to DDR4 initially.

http://www.micron.com/products/dram/ddr3-to-ddr4

Theres a nice table/summary.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

It depends on your real world usage. If you're running a server, or running a bunch of virtual machines, or doing anything else that requires a lot of RAM, then DDR4 might excite you for its higher capacities. For the general user, DDR4 is likely to be more meh, because DDR3 RAM is fast enough and has enough capacity for the general user.

I'm partially excited and partially meh about DDR4. The excited part of me is looking at the capacities of DDR4. 128GB stick of RAM, drool. But I'm not going to jump on it unless the prices are dirt cheap, because my 4x4GB=16GB of DDR3 RAM is way more than enough for all that nothing that I do on my PC. The meh part of me is telling me that I would need to build a new computer for DDR4, and I already have enough functioning computers with plenty of CPU and RAM power, so I'm in no hurry for a new build anyway.

 

[ShintaiDK]

DDR4 is mainly about IGP and density. Its a evolution, nothing special.

 

[BrightCandle]

Twice as much bandwidth and point to point architecture instead of a bus. Its a necessary step forwards to increase sizes and performance further. Whether it will make a big difference on haswell e remains to be seen but its certainly going to be on everything soon.

 

[Deders]

In the future I'm sure it will make an impact but for now, especially in gaming, dual channel DDR3 is more than enough.

Might be a few years before it comes into its own so no point rushing out to buy a new system just because of DDR4.