The NeoX DDR5-6000 CL26 kit, for example, has jumped up $50 to $1,150 — yes, that's for a 2 x 16 GB kit still — while the CL28 kit has jumped up to $1,030 (a $30 price increase). Two weeks ago, we saw non-ULL kits selling at $560 and $700 for CL28 and CL26, respectively, creating a large delta in price between ULL and non-ULL kits. Now, those kits are selling for $700 and $900, respectively.
The introduction of ULL couldn't have come at a worse time, as the ongoing DRAM shortage continues to raise the cost of building a PC around the world. Adding a premium on top of those already inflated prices is tough to justify, even if that premium is modest — especially for mainstream CL36 and CL30 kits, the "ULL tax" is essentially null. The good news is that you can largely achieve what ULL offers on your own, at least given that you have the patience to sit through tuning your memory for single-digit gains.
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Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom\u2019s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Jake Roach Social Links Navigation Senior Analyst, CPUs Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.
TechieTwo Buying premo priced DRAM that provides no tangible system improvement is for the technically challenged who have failed to educate themselves. Reply
Zaranthos It's just premature to buy ULL now because the real benefits don't come until you pair it with a next generation AMD processor and ULL CUDIMM kit. The real benefits don't come until the next gen memory controller can fully take advantage of both CUDIMM and ULL. The performance difference will be night and day. Currently with ULL you're likely to get 6000 – 6400 MT/s at best and still maintain a 1:1 ratio. With CUDIMM ULL and the next generation AMD CPU's you can maintain a 1:1 ratio and push 7200 – 8000+ MT/s while still hitting lower ULL latency settings. We're talking about going from 52ns to 45ns while at the same time increasing memory bandwidth by nearly 2000 MT/s with no 1:2 ratio penalty. When you have a next gen AMD chip, CUDIMM ULL kit and ULL the numbers will look completely different. You'll still be paying a fortune for RAM, unless supply catches up with demand, but you won't be talking about a meager 4% performance gain, you'll be getting some serious performance gains across the board. Unfortunately CUDIMM + supply shortage = even more expensive memory kits. Hopefully fab expansion projects get completed ahead of schedule or yields are better than expected to relieve the supply pressure of AI expansion, but I'm not holding my breath. Reply
VizzieTheViz Zaranthos said: It's just premature to buy ULL now because the real benefits don't come until you pair it with a next generation AMD processor and ULL CUDIMM kit. The real benefits don't come until the next gen memory controller can fully take advantage of both CUDIMM and ULL. The performance difference will be night and day. Currently with ULL you're likely to get 6000 – 6400 MT/s at best and still maintain a 1:1 ratio. With CUDIMM ULL and the next generation AMD CPU's you can maintain a 1:1 ratio and push 7200 – 8000+ MT/s while still hitting lower ULL latency settings. We're talking about going from 52ns to 45ns while at the same time increasing memory bandwidth by nearly 2000 MT/s with no 1:2 ratio penalty. When you have a next gen AMD chip, CUDIMM ULL kit and ULL the numbers will look completely different. You'll still be paying a fortune for RAM, unless supply catches up with demand, but you won't be talking about a meager 4% performance gain, you'll be getting some serious performance gains across the board. Unfortunately CUDIMM + supply shortage = even more expensive memory kits. Hopefully fab expansion projects get completed ahead of schedule or yields are better than expected to relieve the supply pressure of AI expansion, but I'm not holding my breath. I don’t doubt the numbers will be better on zen 6 with cudimms but expensive memory almost never makes an actual noticeable difference unless you have an extremely specific workload to take advantage of it. You can probably *measure* it in gaming, but you’ll never actually notice it while playing a game. The only place you’ll really notice it is in your bank account. For gaming just get enough reasonably fast memory and call it a day. Reply
blitzkrieg316 RAM speed is moot for most. The difference is a few percent in any generation. It's not like going from single to dual channel… Especially when a 3% increase double the cost… Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/amd-expo-ull-shows-middling-performance-gains-in-initial-tests-despite-price-increase-first-benchmarks-show-up-to-a-4-percent-improvement-with-ddr5-6000-cl36#main
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