I have a 4690K and my RAM is a 32GB EVGA DDR3 ram that I suspect was made by hynix or the other manufacturer of fast rams, that runs at speed up to par with the slowest DDR4 but with DDR3 latency, it is very awesome.
I wonder if DDR5 will be fast enough to compensate for the slower latency (or maybe they improved latency this time?)
To be honest I didn't felt yet any need to move off my current machine, I would only upgrade its GPU, but I can't do that because I can't afford a new GPU AND a new Monitor (I use a CRT monitor with VGA cable... it is a very good monitor so no reason to replace it, but newer GPUs don't support it).
>that runs at speed up to par with the slowest DDR4 but with DDR3 latency, it is very awesome.
AFAIK ddr4 having higher latency than ddr3 is a myth. It has a higher cl number, but that's measured in cycles, so the higher cl number of ddr4 is compensated by its higher clocks. The actual latency (measured in nanoseconds) is about the same, or slightly lower in ddr4 than ddr3.
I think that's what he's saying, that if the latency is equivalent on best ddr3 and lowest ddr4 and ddr3 is cheaper or you already own it maybe better to wait.
Latency is significantly impacted by the physical distance between RAM and CPU’s. Which combined with modern cache sizes means they get diminishing returns trying to minimize it and thus make different tradeoffs.
Core-to-RAM latency is in the neighborhood of 50 ns (well-tuned Intel system with low-latency memory) to ~80 ns (bottom-of-the-barrel system). At propagation speed, that's about 10 meters. A big chunk of this latency is internal to the CPU (so is not influenced by distance to the memory at all), another big chunk is the inherent slowness of accessing a DRAM array (10+ ns, independent of the location of the memory).
It's worth pointing out how little this has changed over the past decades. A 2006 AMD CPU is 100 % competitive in regards to memory latency with Intel's 2020 flagship desktop CPU.
10 meters one way = 5 meters round trip. Trace the longest physical path a signal travels from your CPU to a memory chip on the DIMM and back, it’s likely longer than you think. And yea on it’s own plenty of overhead, but everyone making latency tradeoffs bashing their design as part of a larger system with a single unavoidable limit.
Eurogamer did write a review about playing modern games on a (very good) CRT monitor [1]. It's better than any LCD and even OLED monitors according to them:
A point not mentioned there but that is a major reason for me to use CRT: Contrast.
The contrast in most flat screens I tried is just terrible, a classic example I use is trying to play Superhot and then watch Game of Thrones right after... Superhot was everything white, so I fiddled with the controls until it was playable.
Then Game of Thrones everything was black. So I fixed it... then went back to Superhot and everything was white again.
With CRT after I adjusted it, I don't need to adjust anymore.
Some of those last generation CRTs had amazing picture. I had one from 2003 or so that could do 2048x1564 with a picture better than anything you could get from an LCD until the late 2000s.
I wonder if DDR5 will be fast enough to compensate for the slower latency (or maybe they improved latency this time?)
To be honest I didn't felt yet any need to move off my current machine, I would only upgrade its GPU, but I can't do that because I can't afford a new GPU AND a new Monitor (I use a CRT monitor with VGA cable... it is a very good monitor so no reason to replace it, but newer GPUs don't support it).