DDR4 and DDR3 duke it out
One of the nice things about Intel's Skylake microarchitecture is that it supports both DDR3 and DDR4 memory standards. That means you can dive into Skylake without having to buy new RAM, assuming you already own DDR3 memory. However, just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. The question is, what kind of performance benefits will end users gain from upgrading to DDR4?
We won't have the full answer until we get a chance to run and publish the results of our own comprehensive testing, but in the meantime, there are some benchmarks on the web that show how a Core i5-6400T performs when paired with DDR3 and DDR4 memory.
Unfortunately, it's far from an apples to apples comparison. Here are the two setups that were used:
- DDR4: ECS Q17-SF100 w/ 32GB of DDR4-2400 (16GBx2 SO-DIMMs)
- DDR3: ECS H110-SF100 w/ 8GB of DDR3L-2133 (8GBx2 SO-DIMMs)
It would have been better if the same amount of RAM was used in both configs, but that wasn't the case. As for the CPU, it's a quad-core part that runs at 2.2GHz base / 2.8GHz boost with 6MB of L3 cache and a 35W TDP.
The integrated graphics on the 6400T is a GT2 with 24 execution units and base clockspeed of 350MHz (boost speed isn't known).
It appears that the original source replaced the benchmark screenshots, likely due to hotlink abuse. However, WCCFTech managed to grab a few results before they disappeared. Here they are:
- DDR4 Cinebench: 37.33fps (OpenGL), 415cb (CPU)
- DDR3 Cinebench: 36.69fps (OpenGL), 417cb (CPU)
- DDR4 3DMark 11 Entry: 2,582
- DDR3 3DMark 11 Entry: 2,548
- DDR4 3DMark 11 Performance: 1,394
- DDR3 3DMark 11 Performance: 1,349
- DDR3 Resident Evil 5: 63.2fps
- DDR3 Resident Evil 5: 58.5fps
There's also a discrepancy in the DirectX version used to test Resident Evil 5 -- DX9 on the DDR4 setup and DX10 on the DDR3 system.
So, what can we gather from these benchmarks? Even though the test systems use different amounts of RAM that heavily favor the DDR4 config, the performance gains don't blow the DDR3 setup out of the water. That's good news if you're hoping to recycle your DDR3 system memory and want to upgrade to Skylake, and potentially bad news if you paid a premium on DDR4 expecting big performance gains.
That said, it's a bit early to really know how things will shake out. Higher end motherboards, mature drivers, and evening the playing field with the same amount of RAM could paint a different picture. However, if you're rooting for DDR3 to remain relevant, the above results are at least encouraging.
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