Skylake + DDR3 memory?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Will I see a performance drop if I use DDR3 memory on Skylake vs DDR4 memory?

[Lurick]

On what motherboard?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Lurick said:

On what motherboard?

I'm currently looking at this one: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VPnG3C/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz170hd3ddr3

[Lurick]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'm currently looking at this one: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VPnG3C/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz170hd3ddr3

The performance difference shouldn't be too huge, maybe a frame or two, if you've got some fast RAM in the board.

[danrey84]

Quote

 

SkyLake supports DDR4 or DDR3L only 

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, danrey84 said:

SkyLake supports DDR4 or DDR3L only 

I've found Skylake boards that have DDR3 slots. PCPartPicker isn't giving me a compatibility error when I add DDR3 memory either. The only "problem" they give me is that the memory runs at a voltage higher than Skylake recommended speeds. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/d6fBXH

[Cyracus]

indeed that board uses ddr3 and skylake cpus. Difference will be small if anything, especially if you get fast ddr3 with low cas latency

[ARikozuM]

The timings on DDR3 are lower compared to DDR4 which cancels out the total bandwidth and throughput of the DIMM's. You shouldn't lose any performance, but you should take advantage of faster memory for DDR3 if your chipset allows it. 

 

2133MHz is as high as you should go with DDR3 since cost goes up significantly unlike DDR4's 3000 from 2133. 

[JoostinOnline]

Use DDR4 if you can.  If you ever decide to switch to a different board/CPU, you don't want to risk having to replace your RAM too.

[Sakkura]

29 minutes ago, danrey84 said:

SkyLake supports DDR4 or DDR3L only 

DDR3L is still DDR3. There's no fundamental difference, it's the same thing just set to a lower voltage (which you can override in BIOS).

9 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

The timings on DDR3 are lower compared to DDR4 which cancels out the total bandwidth and throughput of the DIMM's. You shouldn't lose any performance, but you should take advantage of faster memory for DDR3 if your chipset allows it. 

 

2133MHz is as high as you should go with DDR3 since cost goes up significantly unlike DDR4's 3000 from 2133. 

The timings do not cancel out the bandwidth, and in fact the latency is typically about the same once you convert to nanoseconds. So DDR4 ends up with higher bandwidth and similar latency, resulting in higher performance.

[Cyracus]

37 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

The timings do not cancel out the bandwidth, and in fact the latency is typically about the same once you convert to nanoseconds. So DDR4 ends up with higher bandwidth and similar latency, resulting in higher performance.

I saw some videos before kaby lake launched that tested performance with ddr3 and ddr4, showed no difference in real world performance, don't remember if synthetics were different, but we all know synthetics don't matter

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

Use DDR4 if you can.  If you ever decide to switch to a different board/CPU, you don't want to risk having to replace your RAM too.

In case you saw the parts list I linked, that CPU is on there for the sole purpose of being a Skylake CPU. I'm not planning on using that in a build, I was just using it as an example CPU of sorts for what kind of question I had.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Cyracus said:

I saw some videos before kaby lake launched that tested performance with ddr3 and ddr4, showed no difference in real world performance, don't remember if synthetics were different, but we all know synthetics don't matter

The performance difference in games doesn't always show up, and even when it does it's often pretty small.

 

I don't have any DDR3 vs. DDR4 reviews handy, but here is one showing a difference between different DDR4 speeds with Skylake. DDR3 would show similar results to the slower DDR4 kits, because most DDR3 is similarly slow.

[JoostinOnline]

14 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

In case you saw the parts list I linked, that CPU is on there for the sole purpose of being a Skylake CPU. I'm not planning on using that in a build, I was just using it as an example CPU of sorts for what kind of question I had.

I get that.  I'm just saying pick a motherboard that uses DDR4 and get DDR4 RAM.  It's a bad idea to use DDR3.  You'll get lower compatibility and less performance.  Skylake is shown to be more affected by memory speed than past generations.  Whenever the game is CPU bound you'll see a difference.

 

 

[HeavyOne]

17 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I've found Skylake boards that have DDR3 slots. PCPartPicker isn't giving me a compatibility error when I add DDR3 memory either. The only "problem" they give me is that the memory runs at a voltage higher than Skylake recommended speeds. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/d6fBXH

The Skylake memorycontroller supports both - DDR3 and DDR4,