Does ram ever get improved?

[Daethz]

Seems to me all of the current Ram sticks where designed and released several years ago, shouldn't it be possible now to make substantially faster ram, or even just take the 3200mhz set and dramatically lower the CL timing using several years newer tech?

[Tayonas]

I think it's probably because they don't need to. There really is no need for faster PC RAM just now. RAM is just like a fuel tank and if the CPU only deals with so much.

 

If anything it will be when we see true multi core implementation and load spreading across the cores/threads.

 

We're gonna need a thicker motherboard.

 

I'm just guessing though, I really haven't kept up much over the last 10 years other than a few builds.

 

With GPU's it's different because they are ultrafast parallel processing firing a gajillion things at once so the memory has to put out about 15 things up front.

 

I think that's right anyway ... like I said it's been a while and my brain doesn't work properly anymore.

 

BTW, I've been through EDO, RIMM's, DIMM's, DRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR and now DDR4. Probably missed some out because I upgraded my Amiga etc. :D But yea it changes.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Tayonas

[Infin1tum]

DDR5 is expected to release later this year, apparently starting at DDR5-3200 and I've heard it's supposed to be going to DDR5-8400.

[c-attack]

DDR4 has not become substantially faster? When it launched and we were all trying to run it on X99 platforms, a good target speed was 2666 and there was a mountain to climb at 3000-3200. Now you can go buy a 5000 MHz 2x8 kit. If you are wondering why a 3200 kit that was 16-18-36 three years ago is still 16-18-36, it is likely because there isn't a large benefit to using premium materials to make it versus using it for high frequency kits. There certainly are 14-14-14 3200 MHz kits out there and that is a peg lower than where we were. A 17-17-17-37 4000 MHz kit at only 1.35v is nothing to sneeze at.

 

The supply and manufacture of semi-conductor material is complex to say the least, but there has to be a market for the product. How many batches would you need to go through to find an 12-12-12-24 3200 kit? This is never going to be cost effective and some kid with a XMP 4000 kit will still blow your doors off for bandwidth.

 

DDR5 is scheduled for later this year. That will shift the baseline minimum up quite a bit and it will probably follow the same patterns as the previous DDR releases in terms of relatively rapid evolution followed by manufacturing and price stability, as well as stretching the upper limit.

[Tayonas]

Aren't all the extra speeds really for CPU clock speed though?

 

You get to a point where bottlenecks make improvements useless.

 

I need to brush up though, I mainly came back to this forum to complain to Corsair about a couple of niggles :D

[LeDoyen]

CPUs are spec'ed much lower. the curent generations are 3000 - 3200, the rest is overclocking.

The rest is for overclockers and enthusiasts, and as usual, the performance gains are to small to be worth it for most people. a few %, a few FPS..

And there's other limitations in the platform that makes better memory pretty useless.

Intel has limited IPC right now, and AMD still struggles with memory overclock as you can see by reading this forum here.

 

DDR4 is currently as good as it can get, time to go DDR5. DDR4 has had a very long life because of Intel's stagnation, and the late arrival of Ryzen, but i imagine we'll see standards change a lot more regularely now. DDR6 is already being worked on

[Pocah]

You get to a point where bottlenecks make improvements useless.

 

I am not a RAM expert but I think this is true. The problem is as much down to the motherboard and CPU as it is anything else. They need to remove the current bottlenecks to allow things to go faster and this is not just changing the RAM.

Intel tried to do this some years ago by creating serial RAM. A bit like the SATA interface it seemed illogical but it actually increased access times to disks because serial interfaces can run much faster than parallel interfaces.