Crucial Could Release DDR4 Memory Next Month

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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We told you some time back that DDR4 memory would be making an appearance sometime in 2014, but Crucial promos are putting the date as soon as next month. Slight problem though, the new architecture will also require new motherboards.

It's quite the improvement, and a bigger improvement than we had moving from DDR to DDR2, and even DDR2 to DDR3.
 
Any word on when the motherboards (consumer versions, not server/workstation) will be coming out?

Also, won't this be Haswell-E (or Skylake) only?
 
I for one won't be in too much of a rush to upgrade.
I'll wait to see how much better it actually is before planning on dropping what will probably total $1,000+ for the upgrade...
 
It's good that production level DIMMs are coming out for CPUs which are already well into development. It matters little for consumers since there are no PC systems with DDR4 memory controllers available yet.

Start saving your pennies for X99 and Haswell-E.
 
Well, summer 2014 is not that much farther away if you can wait for Haswell-E and its DDR-compatible boards. Skylake unfortunately isn't for another year or two.
 
Mmmm DDR4. So close to pulling the trigger on a system upgrade.
 
It would not really matter too much for the home market, but if prices and density are good, it might matter more for lower end graphics cards, and possibly also for the intergrated graphics chips.
 
I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to make little difference for gaming rigs.
 
With DDR3 having a base speed of 1066 and kits reaching 2800, I wonder what kind of speeds the top DDR4 kits will be able to reach...
 
With DDR3 having a base speed of 1066 and kits reaching 2800, I wonder what kind of speeds the top DDR4 kits will be able to reach...

Not much faster. At 2800 MHz, a signal moving at the speed of light (and electronic signals move more slowly) can only move 10 cm, about 3 inches. Getting RAM to run at a speed that is literally much faster than the CPU can ask for data seems mostly pointless.
 
I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to make little difference for gaming rigs.

Not much faster. At 2800 MHz, a signal moving at the speed of light (and electronic signals move more slowly) can only move 10 cm, about 3 inches. Getting RAM to run at a speed that is literally much faster than the CPU can ask for data seems mostly pointless.

Yeah, for consumer PCs, there isn't that much of a benefit from what I've read about DDR4. A lot of the benefits will be for servers. DDR3 is fine for the majority of us users for the foreseeable future. It would take some hard benchmarks and data to see any benefit between DDR4 and DDR3 for gaming.

The one nice thing I like about it: One DDR4 slot is a single channel. So, a 4 slot Intel/AMD board will be quad-channel DDR4 capable compared to the dual channel, 4 slot DDR3 boards.
 
Yeah, for consumer PCs, there isn't that much of a benefit from what I've read about DDR4. A lot of the benefits will be for servers. DDR3 is fine for the majority of us users for the foreseeable future. It would take some hard benchmarks and data to see any benefit between DDR4 and DDR3 for gaming.

Historically the move from DDR1 to DDR2 wasn't a big difference either. It most cases you'd be better off with DDR1 because of the lower latency. DDR3 was also in the same boat with DDR2, in that most benchmarks show little to no difference and you were better off with DDR2 because of lower latency.

Eventually the clock speeds for newer memory go up, and makes it very clear that sticking with new memory is better. Ultimately the reason I switch over to new memory is because old memory is suddenly twice as expensive. So it's either more old slow ram, or new fast ram and new motherboard.
 
Wow, like we really need more speed on Ram. Just like people need more Vram for 1080p resolutions to futureproof. LOL. I love how people get so geeked over ram these days. Would rather get geeked over a faster ssd, cpu, or gpu. Just goes to show how stagnant the pc world has become.
 
Where's GDDR5 memory? Seriously, with so many APU's shouldn't there be memory like this GDDR5 over DDR4?
 
Wow, like we really need more speed on Ram. Just like people need more Vram for 1080p resolutions to futureproof. LOL. I love how people get so geeked over ram these days. Would rather get geeked over a faster ssd, cpu, or gpu. Just goes to show how stagnant the pc world has become.

Im pretty sure people get "geeked" out over faster CPUs, GPUs, and SSDs. I think the extra hypes come from the fact that you need an entirely new motherboard to use it.
 
I wonder how much difference DDR4 will make for run of the mill systems with shared memory.
Since I can't afford to upgrade often, but could use to relatively soon (still on C2D), I plan to make the most of it and hold out for DDR4 enabled Haswell. Will be interesting to see if graphics have progressed at that time (gonna need something nice in that dept. as well).
 
With DDR3 having a base speed of 1066 and kits reaching 2800, I wonder what kind of speeds the top DDR4 kits will be able to reach...
The highest spec for DDR3 is 2133MHz. Anything higher than that is not in the current standard.

DDR4 is designed to reach much higher official top speeds: initial specs are up to DDR4-3200 (although DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3200 specs are still evolving). http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/docs/jesd79-4
 
Could in theory be a huge boon to AMD's APU line, help eliminate those memory bandwidth bottlenecks on the IGP.
 
Could in theory be a huge boon to AMD's APU line, help eliminate those memory bandwidth bottlenecks on the IGP.
DDR4 pricing will probably have a huge premium to it vs performance like niche out of spec DDR3 currently does for the same non-mainstream/volume reasons. It wouldn't surprise me if APUs stick with DDR3 memory interfaces for a significant amount of time after DDR4 reaches the desktop just because of that particular value proposition.

At some point it's better to just buy more commodity memory and spend the large price difference on a discrete GPU, for DIY system builders at least. It never made much sense to me that someone will spend 3-4x as much per GB on memory just to help an integrated GPU.
 
DDR4 pricing will probably have a huge premium to it vs performance like niche out of spec DDR3 currently does for the same non-mainstream/volume reasons. It wouldn't surprise me if APUs stick with DDR3 memory interfaces for a significant amount of time after DDR4 reaches the desktop just because of that particular value proposition.

At some point it's better to just buy more commodity memory and spend the large price difference on a discrete GPU, for DIY system builders at least. It never made much sense to me that someone will spend 3-4x as much per GB on memory just to help an integrated GPU.

Oh no doubt it will be expensive as all hell for the first 3 odd years, still eventually the prices will hit around where DDR3 is sitting at the moment which should make things reasonably interesting. Although there may still be additional costs involved depending on the number of dimm's the platform support at that point, what with each DIMM having it's own memory channel to itself.
 
Great, so how long until DDR3 prices start to skyrocket due to lower production volume...
 
^with prices so high for DDR3, I wonder what the basic DDR4 will be.
 
I'm about to build my main PC replacement and without any doubt whenever I get the latest memory technology, it dies and locks me out of a reasonable upgrade path. Cases in point are, Rambus memory & Triple Channel.

Let's see if I kill DDR4, too.
 
I am set on DD3 for life, stocked up way back when the memory prices were so cheap so I don't care. Also all the DD4 in the world won't matter if intel or AMD wont produce CPUs that are worth upgrading too. Still sitting on sandy bridge, it over clocks as well as any of the newer CPUs, could care less about power draw in a desktop.
 
I hope Intel will deliver better prices on 6 core Haswell-E so I'll have incentive to upgrade.
 
I hope Intel will deliver better prices on 6 core Haswell-E so I'll have incentive to upgrade.

Unlikely. This is Intel we're talking about. With AMD's performance gap pretty large behind Intel and no definitive upgraded FX line in 2014, Intel can "casually" release desktop processors whenever they so choose and price them accordingly. Look at Broadwell, it's delayed. And, there hasn't been a significant-- over 15-20%-- performance boost between generations of Intel processors.

A small price bump in an Intel Core i7 5930K (??) (Haswell-E) processor with DDR4-compatibility and a re-specced server processor for enthusiast PC users along with limited production runs for a niche market, they can price it however they want. I wouldn't be surprised it's $50 to $100 more than the Socket 2011 Ivy Bridge-E processors per model.

I am set on DD3 for life, stocked up way back when the memory prices were so cheap so I don't care. Also all the DD4 in the world won't matter if intel or AMD wont produce CPUs that are worth upgrading too. Unlikely sitting on sandy bridge, it over clocks as well as any of the newer CPUs, could care less about power draw in a desktop.

Like I said in my previous reply, very unlikely many normal consumers will see any benefit in DDR4 memory. And, it'll take some actual benchmarks to see if it benefits gaming at all.

A lot of DDR4's newest features over DDR3 is going to benefit servers more than consumer desktop PCs. And, if AMD adds DDR4 to Carizo or Excavator, their APUs will benefit tremendously with DDR4. Intel's HD Iris graphics could see some benefit as well. The lower voltages of DDR4 could benefit laptops and very likely tablets and smartphones when LPDDR4 are released (low-powered DDR4).

Other than that, DDR3 is fine in the long run until there is some actual benefit to it outside the enthusiast PC, mobile PC, and server market.

Adding to that, the newer processors show no new benefit over current ones because current processors and past processors can run the majority of software and games out there for the next several years. Software has lagged behind CPU advancement. And, any new instruction set feature Intel and AMD adds to their processors like Intel's TSX still needs to be adopted by software developers.

^with prices so high for DDR3, I wonder what the basic DDR4 will be.

Seeing that the lowest priced 8GB DDR3 module is about $120 to $130, I'd expect an 8GB DDR4 module to come in at closer to $200 new. 16GB modules for servers are $200 to $250, so probably closer to $300 or $400 new.

If it comes in lower than my estimates, I'll be surprised.
 
Unlikely. This is Intel we're talking about. With AMD's performance gap pretty large behind Intel and no definitive upgraded FX line in 2014, Intel can "casually" release desktop processors whenever they so choose and price them accordingly. Look at Broadwell, it's delayed. And, there hasn't been a significant-- over 15-20%-- performance boost between generations of Intel processors.

A small price bump in an Intel Core i7 5930K (??) (Haswell-E) processor with DDR4-compatibility and a re-specced server processor for enthusiast PC users along with limited production runs for a niche market, they can price it however they want. I wouldn't be surprised it's $50 to $100 more than the Socket 2011 Ivy Bridge-E processors per model.

Intel has way bigger competitor than AMD - that competitor is Intel itself - if they can't give people a reason to upgrade every x generations they will be loosing sales.
 
A 256bit wide bus on the CPU's for DDR3 would do more to improve performance than trying to get more speed out of the ram on a 128bit bus. :eek::rolleyes::p
 
Mmmm DDR4. So close to pulling the trigger on a system upgrade.



I wouldn't even have it as a consideration. Memory speeds have hardly been relevant in the consumer world for quite some time. DDR4 is specifically designed with the Datacenter in mind and the price is going to be insane even when it finally reaches the consumer market in late 2015 (earliest).
 
A 256bit wide bus on the CPU's for DDR3 would do more to improve performance than trying to get more speed out of the ram on a 128bit bus. :eek::rolleyes::p
Under certain data access patterns a single wider bus could help if the caches are struggling to stay filled, but with the frequency increases in DDR4 and the move to point to point 64-bit memory channels I'd bet that DDR4 (when 2666 and 3200 flavors arrive) will show significant improvements in all types of data accesses.

When you see a GPU with a 256-bit or 512-bit memory bus, it's actually a collection of memory interfaces, usually organized in multiples of independent 64-bit memory channels (each channel controls one or two ranks or 2 32-bit memory chips). On GPUs, 256-bit memory interfaces are typically 4 64-bit channels, 384-bit use 6 64-bit channels and 512-bit use 8 64-bit channels, which work more efficiently on GPU data access patterns than a single wide "dual/tri/quad channel" system memory type interface.
 
I wouldn't even have it as a consideration. Memory speeds have hardly been relevant in the consumer world for quite some time. DDR4 is specifically designed with the Datacenter in mind and the price is going to be insane even when it finally reaches the consumer market in late 2015 (earliest).

It will most likely be like everything else, it will be released and then it will be sold to the masses for a while because every random idiot with a computer is gonna want a bigger number for their memory even if it doesn't do anything different.
Then once the prices come down a little bit then we step in and pick some up.
 
is it not more than 32gb/64gb of ram... enough (today)?

Historically, the answer is NO. Programs and OS's require ever larger memory footprints. And datasets are getting increasingly large as well. You always need huge amounts of physical memory, and even larger amounts of virtual memory.

Hell, i remember when 16K of 8 bit memory was the shit. Now if you aren't rocking 16G of memory you aren't an enthusiast.
 
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