Intel 13600K and 13900K DDR4 vs DDR5 Showdown
Introduction
Any new technology is going to come with a hefty adoption cost, and the Z790 and Intel 13th Generation of processors is no exception.
However, during our time with the various motherboards we had on hand we noted that a few of them support DDR4 rather than demand you invest in DDR5. Considering that most of us probably have a DDR4 system sitting next to us, that makes it an attractive upgrade proposition. That is before you consider how much more affordable a decent DDR4 kit is over its, still relatively new, DDR5 sibling. Additionally DDR4 is a very mature technology which has overcome its initially average MHz rating to keep the tight timings but get darn close to the majority of DDR5 kits. As we saw from the DDR2 and DDR3 days, memory is one of the few technologies which continues to improve throughout its lifespan, until the crossover between one tech and the newer one is extraordinarily long. In comparison we all leapt on SSDs and then M.2s as quickly as we could, and few people will buy an older GPU when a more recent one is on hand.
Our testing showed how close both options can be, and where each relative strengths and weaknesses lay. We knew you’d be interested if the previous time we did this is anything to go by. We know we’ve given you a lot of a content today, so we’ll keep this as brief as we can. Onwards.
Test Setup
ASUS ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi D4
ASUS Prime Z790-A WiFi
Intel Core i9-13900K
Intel Core i5-13600K
DDR4 – G.Skill TridentZ Royal Elite
Kingston Fury Renegade 6000Mhz 32GB
Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti
Sabrent Rocket 2TB
Corsair 5000T
Corsair RM1000i
Corsair H170i 420
Windows 11
Both the Strix Z790-A D4 and the Prime Z790-A are extremely similar in specification and power stages. In fact if it wasn’t for the difference in memory support they could be twins. Thus they make for the perfect comparison in todays test. We’ve also checked out both our Core i5-13600K and Core i9-13900K, just to see if one prefers one type of memory over another. Also because we know how wildly popular the new i5 will be.
Strix and DDR4
Prime and DDR5
