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When will DDR4 builds be cost effective?

z1ggy

z1ggy

Lifer
Forgive me if this topic has been covered already in the past, but I wanted some of your opinions. I know right now DDR4 systems are going for a super high premium- which makes sense.

A while back I posted a thread here about going for an updated build to hold me over for a while, but I decided to not build it because I stopped gaming for a bit and found the money to be spent better for other things. My i3 was good enough for what I did and really only needed a GPU upgrade

I am now back into gaming and looking to upgrade my system, but I can wait longer for a whole system upgrade. I am picking up a 970 once a non ref becomes available on newegg (I only check once a week or so) to help hold me over as I'm only playing Warframe right now.

I noticed the builds that utilize DDR4 ram are about 30-40% more expensive but don't provide that much % increase in performance. Is there ever going to be a point in time where buying DDR4 systems over DDR3 will make sense (at least for gamers)?
 
Until a mainstream chipset comes out that supports DDR4 I would say no. DDR4 is currently only used in enthusiast class systems based on the X99 chipset which already costs more when it comes to purchasing the CPU & motherboard. Skylake is planned to support both DDR4 and DDR3 so there's a good chance that even with its release along with the 100 series chipset that DDR4 prices may not dip all that much. So if you want you can wait another year and see what happens with Skylake or you can go ahead and build a Z97 based system. In all honesty when it comes to gaming it's highly unlikely that you'll see a difference between DDR4 and DDR3.
 
I think it is a pretty safe bet that DDR4 will be cost effective when Intel's next mainstream chipset is released to support it - and thus demand will go way up, driving the price down.

The real question is: is it worth waiting for? In my mind no:
We just go Intel's speed increase chips this year, so DDR4 will be coming with the next die shrink. Considering the current one runs just fine with DDR3, it may be 6 months after that when we will have any hope of seeing a speed increase for it. And by then, we will probably be on another core, so everything would need to be upgraded anyway.

Just an educated guess though. Curious as to what others are thinking here. In my mind: upgrade now and enjoy!
 
nsafreak said:
Until a mainstream chipset comes out that supports DDR4 I would say no. DDR4 is currently only used in enthusiast class systems based on the X99 chipset which already costs more when it comes to purchasing the CPU & motherboard. Skylake is planned to support both DDR4 and DDR3 so there's a good chance that even with its release along with the 100 series chipset that DDR4 prices may not dip all that much. So if you want you can wait another year and see what happens with Skylake or you can go ahead and build a Z97 based system. In all honesty when it comes to gaming it's highly unlikely that you'll see a difference between DDR4 and DDR3.
Click to expand...

The plan was to build a Z97 using a broadwell next year when it comes out, along with the 970 (might go SLI later) I plan on buying pretty soon. Sounds like my plan is going to be the right move.

Thanks and sorry if it was a seemingly obvious answer.
 
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