Crucial DDR4 Available for Pre-Order at OverclockersUK
by Ian Cutress on August 2, 2014 4:58 PM EST
While browsing the internet this evening I found a news post that started quoting UK pricing for DDR4. Given the length of time between now and the official DDR4 launch, and given that DRAM manufacturers are already announcing their kits, a quick trip to the shopping part of Google gave some interesting numbers. Several DDR4 kits had prices listed, all from one UK retailer and all from Crucial.
All the kits on offer are quad channel, with 4x8 GB and 4x4 GB kits. Notice they are all pre-order, stating a 29/8/14 ETA (or 8/29 for the US) – the end of August.
The kits at hand are offered in several speeds and price points. Note the prices above in orange are UK pricing, which includes our 20% sales tax: the black price underneath is excluding sales tax. Here is the price comparison without tax:
2133 C16: £141.66 for 4x4GB, or £8.85 / GB
2133 C16: £274.99 for 4x8GB, or £8.59 / GB
2400 C16: £149.99 for 4x4GB, or £9.37 / GB
2400 C16: £299.99 for 4x8GB, or £9.37 / GB
2666 C15: £199.99 for 4x4GB, or £12.50 / GB
2666 C15: £399.99 for 4x8GB, or £12.50 / GB
3000 C15: £274.99 for 4x4GB, or £17.19 / GB
3000 C15: £555.55 for 4x8GB, or £17.36 / GB
Aside from the obvious price premium over DDR3, as is normal for a new technology, it is worth noting that 4x4 GB of the 3000 C15 is the same price as 4x8 GB of the 2133 C16. If Crucial are this early out of the gate with online listings, the other DRAM manufacturers should not be far behind.
Source: OverclockersUK
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mapesdhs - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
IMO more important for X99 that speeds is capacity. If X99 is stuck with the same 64GB
limit as X79, then a lot of potential solo professionals won't bother with it because 64GB
just isn't enough these days, not when imaging/video demands are starting to move up
to 4K. AE users inparticular need a big step up the scale, preferably at least 256GB max.
Ian.
mapesdhs - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
(sorry for the typos... really, we still can't edit our posts??...)Kevin G - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Except that DDR4 will support much larger module sizes than DDR3 down the road. 16 GB DDR4 modules should be here next year. I believe 32 GB unregistered, non-ECC DIMMs are eventually planned, though several years away.wireframed - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Actually, there has already been 128GB modules (yes, modules, not kits) demoed. Since a lot of X99 boards will have 8 slots (2 slots per channel), you're looking at about a terabyte of memory on a board, provided the memory controller can handle it.Another thing people are forgetting: Even at the same speed, X99 is quad-channel, X79 was triple channel. So there's a 33% increase in bandwidth, even at the same speed. Add to that DDR4 starts off at a bit higher speed (looks like 2666MHz is going to be common right off the bat, and 3000MHz within reach for those who need it), and DDR4 boards ARE going to see an increase in performance for those applications that can use it.
That said, I'm not sure most people are bandwidth constrained? I know most of what I do (3D rendering) taxes the CPU. Some things will benefit, but no where linearly with the bandwidth increase. I'm mostly looking at Haswell-E to get faster rendering, for those 10-20 hour renders. (Or 1 week+ for animations).
Onboard video uses up a lot of bandwidth, but who buys a hex-core chip for that? (Especially considering they aren't going to have iGPU, AFAIK).
mapesdhs - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Alas just because large capacity DIMMs exist, that doesn't mean a mbd can use them.
Depends on the CPU, chipset, BIOS, etc. Indeed, Intel may greatly limit the max RAM
of consumer HW-E in order to prevent their use from eating into XEON sales.
Btw, X79 is quad-channel. Dunno where you got triple from, that was X58.
Also, although the RAM clocks are up, the latencies are higher; I'm yet to be convinced
DDR4/3000 @ CL15 (or whatever it is) will offer anything over DDR3/2400 @ CL10. It'll
likely depend on the task, but the initial cost of DDR4 will also be horribly prohibitive.
RAM has become so expensive in the last 18 months, the RAM cost alone may end up
holding some people back from upgrading, even if the CPU & mbd costs are reasonable,
eg. an 8GB 1600 kit costs 50% more now than what I paid for an 8GB 2133 kit in Feb/13.
AE uses a lot of bandwidth; for those who can't afford costly XEON setups, X79 with an
oc'd 6-core has been an ideal medium-cost intermediate build. I've constructed three such
systems for people so far, all with combinations of Quadro 4K or K5K, multiple GTX 580s for
CUDA, two with a 3930K, one with a 3960X, all running at 4.7GHz, two with 64GB RAM,
one with 32GB RAM.
Mine is a 3930K @ 4.7, 64GB/2133 (haven't yet optimised the RAM), 4x GTX 580 3GB
(2X faster than a Titan Black for CUDA). It's fine for HD (though I've seen some scenes
grab 40GB during processing), but to move up to 4K, that needs at least a doubling of
the max RAM, preferably 4X.
I know what you mean about rendering; friend of mine created a hefty AE/CUDA test
which takes 15 mins to compute on my quad-580, the output looks like this (change the
suffix to tga for the original 6MB Targa):
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/cuda.101_Frame96.jp...
As for CPU-heavy renders, I'm still looking for a suitable AE-based stress test. I found
one benchmark, but it finishes in less than a minute, far too quick for useful testing.
Ian.
PS. The other big plus of X99 is the long awaited update to have lots more native Intel
SATA3 ports, and other newer storage tech. The 3rd-party controllers used to provide
non-Intel SATA3 on X79 boards are generally pretty awful.
Kevin G - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
The 128 GB modules are load reduced ECC modules which may not work in consumer systems. Intel has a habit of removing registered (and thus load reduced) support in their consumer systems.