Skylake and DDR3 Ram

[mcmxcii]

Would there be any tangable real world performance loss when using 1600mhz DDR3 ram with skylake processors instead of DDR4?

 

Was just thinking that i could save a few £ if i could reuse my memory.

[JeffreyEagan]

No. You don't see any difference in gaming.

[Mooshi]

I'm not sure Skylake will even support DDR3?  There were some benchtesting on another thread that shown Skylake scaling with faster ram and there was a noted difference in underclocked slower DDR4 vs the faster stuff. The price for a decent DDR4 kit vs DDR3 of the same capacity isn't that drastic as it used to be. Case in point, check out this G.Skill kit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231888&cm_re=ddr4-_-20-231-888-_-Product - much cheaper than what I spent on my 16GB 1866mhz kit a few years back when DDR3 was considered cheap.

[mcmxcii]

I'm not sure Skylake will even support DDR3?  There were some benchtesting on another thread that shown Skylake scaling with faster ram and there was a noted difference in underclocked slower DDR4 vs the faster stuff. The price for a decent DDR4 kit vs DDR3 of the same capacity isn't that drastic as it used to be. Case in point, check out this G.Skill kit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231888&cm_re=ddr4-_-20-231-888-_-Product - much cheaper than what I spent on my 16GB 1866mhz kit a few years back when DDR3 was considered cheap.

 

 

hmm the point is that i already have the ram so it would save me around £110 to just reuse it, i'm thinking if i am going to have to go with ddr4 i might aswell commit and got haswell-e my 2500k with gtx680 has lasted me 4 years so haswell-e and a 980ti should last me some time too.

[TheMissxu]

Memory sticks are 'keyed' to prevent you from using incorrect technology. In other words, your DDR3 memory will literally not fit into a DDR4 slot. If you wanted to keep your memory, you would have to purchase a special motherboard that explicitly supports DDR3. Additionally, Skylake only supports DDR3L memory (Basically the same thing as DDR3, just undervolted to ~1.3v). This means that if you actually did get a motherboard that supports your current DDR3 memory, you would have to downclock it for it to be stable at such low voltages. All in all, it's not really feasible to reuse your memory.

[Glenwing]

You cannot pick and choose whatever type of memory you want, DDR3 and DDR4 are physically different. You will only be able to use DDR3 with Z170 motherboards that have DDR3 slots, not DDR4, which means you have a grand total of 1 choice for a motherboard.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132572

[mcmxcii]

Memory sticks are 'keyed' to prevent you from using incorrect technology. In other words, your DDR3 memory will literally not fit into a DDR4 slot. If you wanted to keep your memory, you would have to purchase a special motherboard that explicitly supports DDR3. Additionally, Skylake only supports DDR3L memory (Basically the same thing as DDR3, just undervolted to ~1.3v). This means that if you actually did get a motherboard that supports your current DDR3 memory, you would have to downclock it for it to be stable at such low voltages. All in all, it's not really feasible to reuse your memory.

Thanks, that pretty much told me everything i needed to know.

 

Guess i'll be going haswell-e

[S7117]

it says on intels website it supports 1600mHz of ddr3

[mcmxcii]

You cannot pick and choose whatever type of memory you want, DDR3 and DDR4 are physically different. You will only be able to use DDR3 with motherboards that have DDR3 slots instead of DDR4, which means you have a grand total of 1 motherboard choice.

Yeah i hadn't done much looking into it, but i heard that skylake support both ddr3 and 4, just had to find a compatible motherboard, didn't know there was only 1 ddr3 one though.

[Sakkura]

You cannot pick and choose whatever type of memory you want, DDR3 and DDR4 are physically different. You will only be able to use DDR3 with Z170 motherboards that have DDR3 slots, not DDR4, which means you have a grand total of 1 choice for a motherboard.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132572

 

DDR3L slots will probably be more common once the cheaper Skylake CPUs and chipsets are released.

 

There's also that UniDIMM BS going on though, so that may mess things up a little.

[-rascal-]

You cannot pick and choose whatever type of memory you want, DDR3 and DDR4 are physically different. You will only be able to use DDR3 with Z170 motherboards that have DDR3 slots, not DDR4, which means you have a grand total of 1 choice for a motherboard.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132572

 

 

Yeah i hadn't done much looking into it, but i heard that skylake support both ddr3 and 4, just had to find a compatible motherboard, didn't know there was only 1 ddr3 one though.

 

As @Glenwing mentioned, the motherboard physically needs to have DDR3 slots.

It is not "regular" DDR3; it is DDR3L (low voltage, 1.35V or less).

This makes sense, if you consider the standard voltage for DDR4 is 1.2V -- the Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) is built to handle lower voltages

 

For the time being, ASUS is the only one with a Z170 motherboard with DDR3L support, but I suspect a few more will emerge as we progress, and al the Day 0 smoke clears.

[Sakkura]

 

It is not "regular" DDR3; it is DDR3L (low voltage, 1.35V or less).

 

Then again, there's no particular cutoff between DDR3 and DDR3L, so it's just what the modules are rated at. Just like most faster DDR3 kits are actually only capable of hitting those speeds at 1.65V rather than standard 1.5V, the lower voltage is still usable for pretty much all of those kits. Compatibility with 1.35V may not be as ubiquitous, but should still be the norm. The main problem is with the default behavior on first boot, since the SPD will be set for 1.5V.