DDR4 Memory at 4000 MHz, Does It Make a Difference?

Started by Kadri, May 23, 2016, 09:59:13 PM

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Kadri


http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/

Since many years i haven't seen much reason to buy fast memory modules.
The speed difference wasn't important enough. But this looks interesting.
Would like to see a test about software like Terragen, Lightwave etc. Curious how they would perform.

AP

I was not aware DDR4 was already out in the market place.

Kadri


Me too. Especially because as i said i did not paid any attention to RAM speeds at all since many years.

AP

Come to think of it, now I remember putting SDRAM together in Computers back then.    ;D

Upon Infinity

I think probably the introduction of SSD is likely of greater consequence to the application of improvements in response times than improvements in actual RAM speed.

Kadri

Quote from: Upon Infinity on May 24, 2016, 02:32:58 AM
I think probably the introduction of SSD is likely of greater consequence to the application of improvements in response times than improvements in actual RAM speed.

I doubt it. Sure performance improves with SSD especially with games or software that has to load many files-or big ones-.
But i am not sure if the improvements are related to that aspect only...

Kadri


If i see it correctly the only difference is different RAM's in the tests. So the SSD isn't the culprit of the speed difference.

Tangled-Universe

I think DDR speeds are mostly a marketing thing; differences are there, but only if you look for them carefully and especially if you think it's worth it.
In relation to rendering and/or TG, definitely not worth it.

Anyone who builds a new PC right now and chooses an HDD over an SSD has lost his/her mind, unless it's a financial impossibility (let's keep it real).
Having an SSD has a great impact on virtually everything you do with your PC, but not rendering itself of course.
I can't without one anymore. My PC is so fast at booting, loading apps, writing cache files, browsing, you name it...

Kadri


SSD is great for general PC performance i have a SSD too and i wouldn't want to go back to HD's too.

The thing is that this article kind of brought back my curiosity about RAM speeds.
In theory i tend to think the same as you Martin about rendering and RAM speeds.
Still would like to see a real world 3D software benchmark about this.

Oshyan

I agree with Kadri. I had generally considered faster RAM speeds to be pretty unimportant to most things I do, but some of those benchmarks do show interesting results that might hint at possible impact in rendering...

- Oshyan

Quote from: Kadri on May 24, 2016, 04:50:26 PM

SSD is great for general PC performance i have a SSD too and i wouldn't want to go back to HD's too.

The thing is that this article kind of brought back my curiosity about RAM speeds.
In theory i tend to think the same as you Martin about rendering and RAM speeds.
Still would like to see a real world 3D software benchmark about this.

reck

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 24, 2016, 04:29:56 PM

Anyone who builds a new PC right now and chooses an HDD over an SSD has lost his/her mind, unless it's a financial impossibility (let's keep it real).

True for boot drives but a lot of people still use standard HDD's for data drives as SSD's don't have the same capacities as HDD's yet. Also when you pass a certain point in capacity SSD become very expensive.

KlausK

Sure, you benefit from faster memory modules throughput. But don`t forget that you have to bring all the components to the same high performance level standards. If one of your components is not up to the "task" you do not gain much, if anything at all. I bought faster DDR 4 RAM which runs at lower speed as it is nominally possible because of the combination of cpu I have on my board. Found out  the hard way, so to speak.
For Terragen the shear cpu processing speed and number of cores is the most important factor in getting the final image faster, I would think.
A look at the results of the benchmark scene rendering times shows that, imho. Especially if you upgrade this one component alone.
That would make a greater impact on performance than upgrading to faster RAM, surely. But I`d be happy if proven wrong here.

cheers, Klaus

ps: I still use a few very old pata hdds occasionally...oh boy, trying to read or write data off of those almost always makes me think they are damaged or something. Sooo sloooow ;)

/ ASUS WS Mainboard / Dual XEON E5-2640v3 / 64GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 TI / Win7 Ultimate . . . still (||-:-||)

Kadri


Someone like Matt who knows how the software uses the hardware,
where the possible bottlenecks are, might be in the best position to make a guess about this.

I absolutely don't know how the RAM, CPU (and his own cache memories etc.) are working.
The CPU is the most important part for sure or GPU if the software uses it of course.

But after this article i have a feeling that especially with much bigger scenes, in the future,
memory might have a small but higher impact then in the past.
I had in the last year scenes that used 15-25 GB of RAM many times.
I don't know how many times or in which way that data is handled in Terragen.
But the CPU does have to access this data and when it has to do it more then one time for example,
faster RAM might be more important then it was. Especially with bigger scene files.
Even 5-10 percent speed difference is important if you ask me.
I don't remember a difference anything nearly like that in the past with RAM speeds.

But before seeing other articles, benchmarks it is really to early to say something.
Price performance ratio is another point too of course.

Upon Infinity

Absolutely, I agree that when it comes to rendering, RAM speed will matter much, much more, since everything is essentially happening within the RAM.  Calculations are calculated off the RAM and returned to the RAM.  And the longer the render, the more it will matter.  Speaking generally, and for general PC use, then the SSD will produce much more realized and noticeable results for general PC use.  Since I have never had a render deadline, I have never sat at my PC and thought "I really could use some faster RAM", nor have I ever considered RAM speed when upgrading it (in fact, I feel lucky when I can track down something that's actually compatible).

I do not doubt that faster RAM speed will produce better and measurable results for rendering.  Personally speaking, of course, whether a render takes 90 minutes or 65 minutes won't affect my workflow at all.