ddr4 memory. ddr3 is dead?

How long do you guys think that ddr3 will still be used on current and next generation of motherboards?
I guess what I want to know is will I be able to buy my next computer (say a 5960x) with ddr3 in it?

AndreRio said:

How long do you guys think that ddr3 will still be used on current and next generation of motherboards?
I guess what I want to know is will I be able to buy my next computer (say a 5960x) with ddr3 in it?

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No. DDR3 will stay mainstream for the next 1-2 years, but DDR4 is here to replace it.

AMD will continue using DDR3 for a some time, while Intel is going to start using DDR4 with Skylake in 2015. However, Intel will have something in place to transition the mainstream from DDR3 to DDR4, though the practicality of this implementation is probably very low.

LINK

I'm not jumping to DDR4 until Skylake-E, unless my current x58 board blows up in smoke. I thought Haswell-E would be it...but nope. x58 hexacore is still very viable for the next two or three years.

Until they get the price and latencies on DDR4 down, DDR3 is still a much better buy at this point. I'd personally give it another 2 years before I entertain the thought of doing a Broadwell-E/Skylake build with DDR4.

No way in hell your average bloke is gonna pay $350+ for 16GB DDR4 for a statistically invisible performance gain when the same amount of 2133+ DDR3 stuff is half the price or less and provides 98% of that DDR4 performance. Add in the whole new board, chipset, cpu thing and it's really out in left field.

Your average enthusiast who enjoys flaunting bleeding edge specs likely will see differently, but they don't represent the mainstream.

Decent rigs these days are limited by anything but the memory subsystems. This isn't 1999, lol.

atp1916 said:

No way in hell your average bloke is gonna pay $350+ for 16GB DDR4 for a statistically invisible performance gain when the same amount of 2133+ DDR3 stuff is half the price or less and provides 98% of that DDR4 performance. Add in the whole new board, chipset, cpu thing and it's really out in left field.

Your average enthusiast who enjoys flaunting bleeding edge specs likely will see differently, but they don't represent the mainstream.

Decent rigs these days are limited by anything but the memory subsystems. This isn't 1999, lol.

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Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner!

DDR4 is a step into the future, but its not exactly going from an Athlon 64 to the latest Intel chip. Its a marginal performance boost at best. Most of the limitations come from the graphics engines these days.

People who have been around a while have seen this same thing with the transitions between other memory technologies.

Mature previous gen is faster and cheaper than the new stuff... initially. Then the new stuff gains volume and manufacturing maturity and eventually becomes better. You don't buy a system with the memory in mind though, memory speed / type is largely an un-noticeable part of the system performance. You buy for the platform performance and get whatever memory is good price / performance that goes into that platform.

Thanks!