DDR5 versus DDR4
daveso
Posts: 7,026
I've been looking at systems for too long. When one gets to my price point, there is always something that doesn;t fit my needs, be it GPU, CPU, memory, hard drive size, cooling, etc ...
Now I see a system that fits overall, has an RTX 4070Ti, a 2TB HDD, and 1TB SSD...I can live with the 2 for now.
32gig DDR4 ram. I've been looking for DDR5, but my question is, how much actual performance difference in DDR4 v. DDR5? Is it even all that much of a difference in the overall scheme of system speed?
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I believe the default clock speed for DDR4 is 2133MHz, and I think the default rate for DDR5 is 4800MHz, So the DDR 5 would be the faster option. DDR4 will not even get close to DDR5. The tech is only a few years old. I do also believe that you need a 12th-gen and 13th-gen CPU. AMD Ryzen 7000 series.
I highly doubt the DDR will affect DS performance much, but here is a review https://www.tomshardware.com/features/ddr5-vs-ddr4-is-it-time-to-upgrade-your-ram
thanks to both of you. Yeah, I've been looking at the newer CPUs. AMD 7950 would be a nice touch. 7900 too. the intel Core i9-13900KS for single thread operation ... It appears to me tha pricing of systems has increased a bit again. I'm trying to stay under $2400, but it just seems near impossible. I though about piecing my own system using parts builder, but there are too many variable with compatibility and I don;t want to spend months trying to figure this stuff out,
Another part of the equation I see cut back on, is the wireless set, if it even has wireless. I run 6e Eero routers so would like to have that speed on my system,
And what's with the lack of an HDD? They all have SSD OS drive, but I've seen some that have 512gig SSD and NO HDD. Pretty much useless, at least in the 3D world, especially with all the content for DAZ.
Export curbs on crucial raw materials from China are causing this spike.
bummer. Maybe I'll wait longer and longer. I could have been an expert on PC build your own if I had taken the time to figure it all out over the last 1 plus
I'm continually learning though.
I agree and that has been the biggest obstacle for me on a new system, finding one with at least 4 TB of HD space. I know I can add, but that kind of defeats the point of getting a new PC for me. I found a great one on sale the other day, but it needed more HD space and an upgrade on the PSU.
Aside from GPU prices, it is actually a good time to build a PC. You will not find any prebuilds with HDD anymore, they are simply getting phased out. But the memory is the least important thing for prebuilds, IMO. That's both RAM and storage. You can always buy these yourself and save a lot of money.
I would not want to put my Daz assets on the OS drive, either. It just makes life easier, and if your OS ever gets totally messed up, you can at least spare any damage to your asset drive. Additionally, you can move your asset drive to any other PC super easy. If you upgrade you take it with you.
So buy a PC with an ok OS drive and buy your own drive for your Daz content. If you are into DS, I would keep this 2nd drive exclusive to DS content. You will live happier this way, trust me.
Then you can choose what drive works best for you. At this point in time, SSDs are getting fairly cheap, especially small ones. I bit the bullet on a 4TB SSD and boy am I glad I did. I still have tons of space on it, and this drive will possibly out live me. The larger a SSD, the higher lifespan can be. A 4TB SSD has double the life of a 2TB one, because of the way SSDs move data around. They move data around because this wears the cells out evenly. You do not have to ever worry about defragging SSD, and they are just wonderful.
Today I only use one HDD as my backup drive. But in reality, my SSDs should actually outlive it. In time I plan on replacing it with a SSD as well.
These days you can grab a 4TB SSD for less than $200 if you watch for sales. You can even find M.2 versions for almost the same price. The M.2 versions are faster than SATA SSDs. Though this isn't a big deal for Daz Studio. Just having DS and your assets on any SSD will help the program run a bit smoother. You know how most products have icons that appear in your content tab? Well those icons need to load, too, and modern Daz products often have larger images for their icons compared to those of the past. They can make a tiny icon with a separate larger image for when you hover your mouse over it, but a numbers of PAs don't do this anymore (or rather, they don't know why it matters.) So as your library gets bigger DS needs to be able to load all these images in the content tabs. That is just one thing that can slow down DS!
Also, if your store your renders on SSD you will be able to retrieve them much faster as well, especially if they are larger in file size. Just browsing my renders is way faster than it ever was on HDD. Trust me guys, once you have a SSD you will never want to use HDD ever again. They are outdated technology.
RAM is easy...it basically means little to DS. So you don't need to worry about it much at all, only that you have enough of it. The only time RAM speed might be an issue is if you CPU render, but even there you do not want to be CPU rendering, period. I would consider looking at 64gb. It depends on how much you use. Maybe 32 is fine. But with 12gb of VRAM, it is possible to run out of 32gb RAM before running out of VRAM depending on how your scenes are made. and what Iray compression settings you use. If you want to save, populate your RAM so that you can add more later if you need it. Meaning, but two 16gb sticks, which should leave you two empty RAM slots on most motherboards. If you need more, you can buy more and simply drop it in. Otherwise, you get four sticks of 8gb, then you have no empty slots left to expend. So if you run out of RAM at some point, your only option is to buy all the RAM again. Not good! So try to leave yourself some options as you build.
I've talked about how good it is to build now before, but now HUB has a video that goes into some detail on things. Obviously HUB is gaming focused, so not everything applies to DS. Like you do not need to build for balance so much, so you can go cheap on a CPU and be perfectly fine. But they show price histories of RAM and SSDs and other things. If you go DDR4, you can build a shockingly cheap system for Daz now, with the GPU being the only 'painful' part to obtain. And of course, you cannot use any AMD GPU for Iray, so the GPU advice does not apply at all. But it is worth looking at to see just how things have changed in 2023.
thanks. Yes to DDR4 being cheaper. Its one of the reasons I asked the question originally, as well as the speed, but most things I read say to populate with DDR5. As FSMCDesigns states up above, I dont want to have to buy stuff after just buying a system. Would highly prefer it to be what I want and need right out of the box. I do have a couple externals for backup and storage already though. I'm still not convinced I would see all that much change in system speed with DDR4 ram though, but I would prefer to get the most bang for my buck as possible. A system that will be around and usable for a few years. The system I'm using now is pushing 4 years old and overall does its job, but I have had several failures and weird lockups, loss of HDD files, etc. Not sure if its the drive or my mobo, but so far its come back and runs O. How many times before it just crashes and stays crashed.
I agree. For DS and Iray, fast memory on the GPU is far more important than fast memory on the main processor. For anyone still using 3Delight, the opposite applies.
Cheers,
Alex.
DDR 5 has potential in the future, but today you will barely notice a meaningful difference.
For example in games you might notice 3-5fps more using DDR 5 over 4. For a dated application like Daz that can't even utilizie your CPUs multi cores/threads while editing (unless rendering on CPU), I highly doubt it will be optimized to take advantage of DDR 5. So if your CPU has 16 cores, Daz still only uses 1 while editing. It's a very poorly optimized application that wastes hardware.
DDR 5 has dropped in price to make it an easier future proof choice, but if all you did was upgrade from DDR 4 to 5, you most likely wouldn't even notice.
DDR5 would help you for some AI apps that get loaded up into memory and then crunch away for a very long time and similar apps, or similarly with renders that exceed your video RAM.
Don't forget to factor in CL. All about latency x bandwidth (speed) with RAM. The lower the CL, the better. WIth DAZ Studio, this matters much less. RAM amount is much more important.
That said, DDR5's low is actually 4400MHz and I was fortunate enough to snag a 96GB kit (2x48) at 6800MHz this month. I was on 128GB with DDR4, but 5 still struggles a bit with four sticks exceeding 5200MHz, so I opted for the next best thing and will upgrade to 192 when they get their speed chips in order (you can already do 4x48GB at 5200MHz).
For me, upgrading the CPU to one with superb single core performance has made such a difference on my DAZ work flow. Yes, the graphics card handles fast rendering (3090 Ti), but everything else from figure/scene loading, to pose applications has sped up significantly vs the 10980XE I was on (a proc notoriously bad for single core perf despite its huge benefits elsewhere). Once DAZ gets multi-threading in order, it should be quite the program!