DDR5-6400 vs. DDR5-4800 R-DIMM Performance For Threadripper 9980X / 9970X CPUs
Long story short, this DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6400 comparison for the Threadripper 9000 series was done on 220 benchmarks. When taking the geometric mean of that diverse array of workloads, it came down to:
Going from DDR5-4800 to DDR5-6400 R-DIMM speeds with the Threadripper 9980X increased the performance by about 9%. With the 32-core Threadripper 9970X, trading DDR5-4800 for DDR5-6400 yielded a 5% gain overall. Even at DDR5-4800 speeds, the Threadripper 9980X was still about 20% faster than the prior generation Threadripper 7980X and the Threadripper 9970X with DDR5-4800 was around 22% faster.
It largely comes down to the workloads though most important to you as shown from the wide variety of Linux benchmarks carried out, there are many areas where DDR5-6400 memory was paying off handsomely especially for the 64-core Threadripper 9980X and then other workloads where you could still justify sticking to already owned DDR5-4800 R-DIMMs if upgrading your system slowly as budget allows.
Hopefully these numbers were useful for those wondering about the DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6400 impact for the Threadripper 9000 series. Other interesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 tests continue to be explored at Phoronix.
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