ram Is there a big difference between a DDR3 and DDR4 8GB RAM Stick?

[Dominik999]

Hello!

 

As the title says, Is there a big difference between a DDR3 and DDR4 8GB RAM stick in performance, if we're talking about Gaming over here?

 

[Derrk]

get the one thats compatible with your motherboard

[Dominik999]

4 minutes ago, Derrk said:

get the one thats compatible with your motherboard

Is there a big difference between DDR4 and DDR3, or no?

[Derrk]

Just now, Dominik999 said:

Is there a big difference between DDR4 and DDR3, or no?

yes. DDR3 is only compatible with DDR3 motherboards/cpus. DDR4 is only compatible with DDR4 motherboards/cpus

[Enderman]

Yeah, the difference is that you can only use the one that is compatible with your motherboard.

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, Dominik999 said:

Is there a big difference between DDR4 and DDR3, or no?

Well yes. If your motherboard and CPU only accepts DDR4, you cant use DDR3 RAM, and vice versa.

 

For example, Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake Intel CPU's and Ryzen (AMD) CPU's use DDR4. Older CPU's use DDR3

[en1gMATIC]

If you mean performance wise it really depends on the frequency

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Skylake

Some Skylake boards have support for DDR3.

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Some Skylake boards have support for DDR3.

I believe it's only the H110, and even those are uncommon. For the sake of clarity I omitted that little asterisk 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

I believe it's only the H110, and even those are uncommon. For the sake of clarity I omitted that little asterisk 

All these will take DDR3: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#s=30&L=3

 

There's a couple B150, and at least one Z170.

[Jurrunio]

95% of the time, it's not like you get to choose anyway.

 

In just performance, DDR4 do get much higher transfer rate than DDR3, but similar latency. Also overclocked DDR3 can match DDR4 running at JEDEC specs.

[PatXioPC]

Well, under certain circumstances, both DRAM interfaces might give you similar performance. For example, a DDR3 DIMM (over)clocked at 2133mhz and a DDR4 DIMM clocked by its default divider, which is also 2133mhz. Theoretically, this makes the data transfer cycles at similar speeds through the memory bus but most of the time, DDR3 is being paird with an older cpu which surely has a slower FSB gate bypass speed which bottlenecks fast speeds DDR4 has. And apart from the performance, with every generation of DRAM technology, it is efficient to make the DIMMs clocked at higher frequencies than older gen which needed a huge voltage to clock at the same frequency. 

[Radium_Angel]

33 minutes ago, Dominik999 said:

Hello!

 

As the title says, Is there a big difference between a DDR3 and DDR4 8GB RAM stick in performance, if we're talking about Gaming over here?

 

I'm not certain you'd notice the performance difference. You would notice, however, if you went from HDD to SSD to nVME. Perhaps not what you are asking about, but with RAM, it's a subtle performance change, with storage media, it's much more noticeable. Ditto with video cards.