Save your money by overclocking your DDR4 RAM instead of upgrading to DDR5

There was a time when DDR5 RAM was recommended only for enthusiasts who wanted nothing but the latest standard in high-performance memory. For everyone else, DDR4 RAM rated at 3,600MT/s was the sweet spot when building a new bang-for-your-buck PC. However, things are not the same anymore, as DDR5 RAM has all but replaced DDR4 as the de facto standard, except for budget builds.

That’s the situation for those building a new PC, but what about the users who already have decent DDR4 RAM in their builds? Is upgrading to DDR5 RAM — with accompanying motherboard and CPU upgrades — the only good option for them? It might actually be too soon to part ways with your DDR4 RAM, considering you can overclock it to extract some extra juice out of it.

With some luck, you might conclude that the extra performance of DDR5 RAM isn’t worth the investment. We hope that you will feel more confident in sticking with your DDR4 RAM for the near future.

DDR4 vs. DDR5 memory performance

Memory scaling is far from linear

DDR5 RAM brought a significant change in transfer speeds and capacities when compared to DDR4 RAM. 16GB RAM has mostly become the minimum capacity you can find for a single DDR5 DIMM. And from 3600-4000MT/s on DDR4, we can now find DDR5 kits rated for up to 8,400MT/s. This new memory standard brings increased bandwidth and power efficiency benefits over DDR4, but is the performance drastically better?

Let’s consider gaming first. Based on various benchmarks, it’s clear that DDR5 RAM does indeed perform better than DDR4 RAM in gaming, but the big question is — by how much? If we consider the “sweet spot” memory frequencies on both the standards, i.e. 3,600MT/s for DDR4 and 6,000MT/s for DDR5, it turns out that DDR5 is only around 5% faster than DDR4, on average, at 1080p.

For DDR4-4000 vs. DDR5-7200, this difference can climb to a 7-10% increase in speed. You’ll be able to see larger gains with DDR5 RAM on some CPU-bound titles, but on average, high-speed DDR4 RAM can still keep up with high-speed DDR5 RAM. As you increase the resolution to 1440p and 4K, these differences will reduce further, making DDR5 even less enticing for gaming workloads.

Coming to non-gaming workloads, the performance gains with DDR5 memory could be significant enough to justify the upgrade, but it again depends on your individual workload. Several workloads like Adobe Lightroom and compression-dependent jobs might show significant double-digit gains, whereas others like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere might not show a major difference between them at all. Memory capacity plays a more crucial role than memory speed and bandwidth here.

In summary, DDR4 isn’t left in the dust by any stretch of the imagination, at least for most people. If you’re a gamer and already have a DDR4-based system, you can easily use it for a few more years. If you’re a professional, you can make a call based on the kind of workload you regularly run. If every second saved is important for your job, the additional cost of a DDR5 system might be worthwhile.

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DDR5 isn’t value for the money (yet)

DDR4 still trumps DDR5 in performance per dollar

While it’s clear that DDR4 RAM is fairly competitive with DDR5 RAM in almost all workloads, is it that much cheaper? Comparing the prices of 32GB kits of DDR4-4000 and DDR5-7200 memory, you can see the newer memory costs around 50% more. In absolute numbers, this translates to only a $40 premium, but you also need to factor in the higher cost of a DDR5 motherboard and CPU (if you don’t have a 12th/13th/14th Gen Intel Core processor).

Retaining your DDR4 RAM, and by extension, your entire build for a few more years seems like the better choice, not just for budgetary reasons, but also from a performance standpoint. Another potential concern with high-speed DDR5 kits is system stability. Coming across failed boots in DDR5 systems, even at XMP/EXPO settings, is fairly common, especially when using 4 DIMMs. DDR4, being a more mature standard, fares better in this department.

DDR5 RAM will eventually get rid of stability concerns and feature tighter timings along with higher frequencies (it’s just the lifecycle of a new memory standard), but until then, it isn’t the slam dunk that some people believe it is. Your DDR4 memory is plenty powerful, and has a lot of life left in it, especially if you consider the ace up your sleeve i.e. overclocking.

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A little tweaking never hurt anybody

So, you’re taking comfort in the realization that your DDR4 RAM has miles to go before it sleeps, but how about taking it up a notch? Overclocking your RAM by running it at a higher frequency and lower latency can extract some more performance from it without spending anything. Enabling XMP or EXPO settings is the first step in optimizing your RAM, but manual overclocking can yield additional gains if done successfully.

Manual overclocking is a bit more advanced than simply switching to XMP or EXPO settings in the BIOS/UEFI. However, you can first experiment with overclocking your RAM without BIOS using AMD Ryzen Master, if you have a Ryzen processor. When you’ve landed on a stable overclock, you can simply dial in those settings in the BIOS for a permanent memory overclock.

Those running Intel CPUs can head into the BIOS directly and tweak frequency and timing settings to try and find a stable overclock. You might need to go through several failed boots before you find stable settings. Always increase frequency and voltage in small increments until you encounter an unstable system. At that point, take the settings down a notch and see if the system is stable.

It’s always better to run a few real-world tests such as games, in addition to synthetic tests like Cinebench or AIDA64. Overclocking your RAM might not yield huge returns for every application, but you can still gain some extra performance without spending a dime.

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DDR5 is still in its infancy

DDR4 launched way back in 2014, and took a few years to become the highly stable standard that it’s known as today. DDR5 launched in late 2021, and while we’ve come a long way since then, in terms of higher frequencies and lower latency, we’ve still not seen the peak of the technology. In a few years, DDR5 RAM will attain the stability crown as well, and we’ll see even faster kits running comfortably at tighter timings.

Until then, your DDR4 RAM is powerful enough to last you in both gaming and professional workloads, and overclocking can help you squeeze some extra performance out of it. If you’re building a new system, it makes more sense to go with DDR5 as a forward-looking standard, but for those already on DDR4, an upgrade is anything but urgent at this point.