I'm considering replacing my current gaming system with one using 32GB of DDR5-5600 CL46 instead of my current 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL16. I'm mainly playing graphics- and shader-intensive games, especially heavily modded Minecraft with demanding shaders.
The current system has an Intel i7-10700K and Radeon RX 6600 XT. The potential replacement has an Intel i9-14900KF and GeForce RTX 4080 Super. The higher DDR5 CAS latency caught my attention, so I'm wondering whether the new memory could actually perform worse despite its higher transfer rate.
4 Answers
DDR5-5600 CL46 has higher raw latency than DDR4-3200 CL16: roughly 16.4 ns versus 10 ns for CAS latency alone. However, DDR5 provides much more bandwidth, and CAS is only one part of total memory latency. The memory controller, secondary timings, rank layout, and CPU platform all matter too. In real-world gaming, the difference between those memory kits is usually much less important than the CPUs and GPUs being compared.
The replacement system will be dramatically faster overall, but mostly because the i9-14900KF and RTX 4080 Super are far more powerful than the i7-10700K and RX 6600 XT. For shader-heavy games, the GPU upgrade should be especially significant. In modded Minecraft, CPU performance and game-specific engine limits can matter as well, but the DDR5 kit itself is unlikely to be the factor that determines whether the new system is faster.
Don’t compare the two computers based on RAM specifications alone. Memory performance depends heavily on the workload: competitive games can show measurable gains from faster, lower-latency RAM, while many single-player games are GPU-limited. With an RTX 4080 Super, shader-heavy games should see a major improvement regardless of the DDR5 kit’s relatively high CL rating.
DDR5-5600 CL46 is a fairly loose-timing kit. If you’re choosing the parts yourself, something around DDR5-6000 CL30 or CL32 would generally offer a better balance of bandwidth and latency, assuming the motherboard and CPU support it. Still, DDR5-5600 CL46 won’t cancel out the huge performance advantage of the newer CPU and graphics card.
So the memory is not ideal, but it shouldn’t be a reason to reject the system by itself. I’d only pay extra to replace it if the upgrade is easy and reasonably priced.