With the rising prices of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, some may consider turning to DDR3. The author of the YouTube channel RandomGaminginHD decided to test the capabilities of a PC equipped with such memory. He assembled a system based on a Core i7-4790K, 32 GB DDR3, and a GeForce RTX 2060 Super. It’s possible to install a more powerful video card, but it must be remembered that the processor will limit the GPU’s performance boost.
Overall, playing in Full HD, such a configuration can handle modern games quite well. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, at medium-high settings and naturally without ray tracing, the system outputs 55-70 fps, and this is without DLSS. In Baldur’s Gate 3, one can achieve 60-70 fps, Battlefield 6 shows 70 fps, Counter-Strike 2 delivers nearly 120 fps, and around the same range is seen in Fortnite. The well-optimized Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2 deliver roughly 70 fps each. In all these cases, DLSS was disabled, so it can increase performance a bit without significantly harming image quality.
Interestingly, the demand for DDR3 has seen a noticeable uptick in the secondary market. According to recent observations, sales of DDR3 memory have surged by threefold as consumers look for cost-effective alternatives amidst the price hikes of newer alternatives. Although assembling a new PC with such components is not possible, acquiring parts in the secondary market is very affordable. It is crucial to remember not to choose Intel Core processors without Hyper-Threading for such builds. Where the Core i7-4790K with its four cores and eight threads performs fairly well, a newer Core i5-6600K, despite being newer, will perform worse due to having only four threads.
