13600K DDR4 vs DDR5 – RTX 3060 Gaming & CPU Performance Testing!
Are you wondering if you should splash out for DDR5 on a new 13600K? Me too, so let’s test it. Let’s jump straight in, starting with the gaming results. To make it clear, I’m testing with an RTX 3060 as that’s the most reasonable GPU I have my hands on right now, and at 1080p with realistic settings. For competitive games like CSGO that means low, for the rest it’s general medium or high. As for the RAM, I’m using HyperX DDR5-5600 CL40 with the Asus Z790 STRIX-E, and a B660 PLUS WIFI D4 and Lexar Ares DDR4-4000 CL18.
Starting with CSGO then, it seems like DDR4 has a slight edge here. It’s not too much, and certainly not something you’ll notice, although the extra 20FPS in the 1% lows might have more hope of actually reaching you there. My only guess here is that the lower latency of the DDR4 is more beneficial than the higher speed from the newer DDR5. Moving onto Cyberpunk, that’s the reverse! The DDR5 pushed over 10FPS more performance on average, and around 7FPS more in the 1% lows. That’s a pretty significant win for the newer RAM!
Shadow of the Tomb Raider sees the DDR4 result just about edge out the DDR5 run, but barely. I’d call these functionally the same, especially since the 1% lows are under an FPS apart. This isn’t what you’d call a noticeable difference for sure. Microsoft Flight is an interesting one as both results averaged pretty much identical performance, but the DDR4 offered 8 FPS more in the 1% lows, meaning it should be a smoother playing experience. Finally in Fortnite the difference is pretty negligible, with the DDR5 result coming out ever-so-slightly ahead in both the average and 1% low results. There really isn’t much in it though, at least with this chip, graphics card, settings and resolution.
As for the CPU specific tasks, in Cinebench R23 multi-threaded, DDR4 runs slightly slower than DDR5. This makes pretty good sense, and is very much what I’d expect to see here. Intel recommends DDR5 for these chips and I can see why. As for single threaded, that’s a little different. DDR5 runs a touch slower than the older DDR4 – not by all that much in the grand scheme of things, but slower nonetheless. Again I’d assume that in single threaded loads the lower latency is preferable to throughput. In Blender and the BMW scene, again the newer DDR5 is a touch faster – just two seconds here, although in the Gooseberry scene while the percentage remains the same, the actual time loss with DDR4 is more significant. It takes 19 seconds longer to render the single frame – if you were trying to render an animation with this chip you’d see considerably better performance overall from using DDR5.
As for the Adobe suite, in Premiere DDR5 again takes the performance crown. It’s not an insane margin, but it’s a healthy lead. After Effects always offers strange results – and this is no different. The DDR4 result royally thrashes the DDR5 result, by almost 30%. That’s a crazy lead, and again I can only imagine because After Effects is pretty memory (and latency) intensive, that means a better score in the PugetBench test. Photoshop returns things to normal though, with a very healthy lead for DDR5, with a little over 10% higher score.
So for gaming, especially for more CPU bound titles, you might find that DDR4 is the better option (if only slightly). In more GPU bound games you might find that DDR5 has the slight edge, although if you look at the percentage gained and lost between the two, DDR4 generally gains more than DDR5 does. For CPU specific tasks, it’s pretty clear you’ll want the newer stuff. The performance gain isn’t massive in most cases, but it’d be enough to sway me. Of course, that ignores the cost and longevity arguments. If you already have some decent DDR4, the cost of an upgrade to something like this 13600K is considerably lower if you go with a DDR4 board instead. But you can also make the argument that splashing out for DDR5 now means for the next 3, 4, 5 plus generations you’ll be able to drop in an upgrade without replacing the RAM then. Personally I’d say if you already have good DDR4 you won’t be using after the upgrade, stick with that. If you are building from new or haven’t upgraded in so long that you only have say DDR3, then I think especially since the price of DDR5 has come down a lot since the 12th gen launch, I’d opt for that instead.
