DDR3 seemed plenty fast when it first showed up 19 years ago. Who could say no to 6400 Mb/s transfer speeds? Of course compared to the modern DDR5 that’s glacially slow, but given that RAM is worth its weight in gold these days– with even DDR4 spiking in price– some people, like [Gheeotine], are asking “can you game on DDR3“? The answer is a shocking yes.
[Gheeotine] builds two budget-friendly PCs for this video, using some of the newest DD3-supporting motherboards available. That’s not exactly new: we’re talking 12 to 15 years old, but hey, not old enough to drive. We certainly didn’t expect to hear about an x79 motherboard hosting an Ivy Bridge processor in 2026, but needs must when the devil dances. The only concession to modernity is the graphics cards: the x79 mobo got an RX6600XT 8GB, and the other build, using a z97 motherboard got an NVIDIA RTX 4060. The z97 motherboard allowed a slightly newer processor, as well, an i7 4790, with the new and exciting Haswell architecture you may have heard of. Both boards are maxed out on RAM, because at less than one USD/GB, why not?
[Gheeotine] puts a few new titles through their paces on these boxen, and while the results aren’t amazing, everything he tries comes out playable, which is amazing in and of itself. Well, playable unless you’re one of those people who can’t stand playing at resolutions under 4K or FPS under 100. Those of who spent their formative years with 29.7 FPS or 25 FPS in NTSC or PAL regions aren’t going to complain too loudly if frame rates dip down into the 30s playing at 1080p for some of the more demanding titles. Ironically, one of those was the five-year-old Crysis Remastered. Given the age of some of this hardware “Can it Run Crysis” is a perfectly reasonable question, and the answer is still yes.
If you want modern games, you’re much better off with a z97 chipset motherboard if you chose to go the DDR3 route, since you won’t run into issues related to the AVX2 instruction, which first appeared with the Haswell microarchitecture. Here at Hackaday our preferred solution to the rampocalypse is software optimization, Since holding your breath for that would probably be fatal, cost-optimizing PC builds is probably a good plan, even if some might balk at going all the way back to DDR3.
Of course if you’re going to use nearly-retro hardware like DDR3, you might as well go all-out on retro vibes with a nostalgic 80s-style, or even 50s-style case.
I don’t care about games, but I do use DDR3, and this even before prices went crazy : mostly because we need servers with lot of RAM (total of several TB), and both DDR3-era servers and DDR3 ECC modules are dirty-cheap, around 0.5~0.6 €/GB. Or at least were until recently !
Not anymore unfortunately. :/
You could do much better than ivybridge. Even broadwell supported DDR3, with much higher clocks. You can also supposedly run DDR3L on some skylake boards, thought reports are that running DDR3 (non-L) will overvolt the CPU’s memory controller.
Kaby Lake CPUs for LGA1151 also support DDR3L.
This doesn’t surprise me because my gaming PC still has an older mainboard with DDR3, and in terms of gaming performance the memory speed doesn’t seem to have inconvenienced it in the slightest. Even runs Assetto Corsa with the usual modern graphical mods at 4K resolution around 60fps.
Ram too expensive? Just buy F150.
Just wait a little for AI bubble burst and get RAM for free.
Or try RAID memory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR6ag8M68nk
There are some modern-ish SBCs like the Zimablade using old DDR3L/similar. I wonder if they’ll sell out, too, as we try to scavenge everything left of value from the marketplace.
It’s a good time for experimental or mechanical RAM. Luckily, MCU prices have not budged much; not much AI demand for 400kB modules.
(I think some of these prices, especially in stock market, might be more bubble than “economics”; I don’t see why Intel stock should rise due to RAM becoming unaffordable; you would not look at tires becoming unaffordable and adding high cost to vehicles and think it’s a good time to buy a chassis manufacturer. It wasn’t too long ago we went through consumer panic cycles during covid, and it seems notable manufacturers are frequently hyping a forecast for a long-term shortage — make sure to buy everything you can!)
Silksong, a 2025 game of the year, lists as the recommended hardware:
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5-3470
MEMORY: 8 GB RAM
GRAPHICS: GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB), Radeon R9 380 (2GB)
DIRECTX: Version 10
STORAGE: 8 GB available space
so get a PC off craigslist for $70, and catch up on all the stuff in your steam library that you’ve never finished, and in a couple of years when all of the data centers are dumping their hardware for cheap, upgrade, and pick up whatever AAA trash actually stands the test of time, on sale. stop letting a bunch of rich kids on r/battlestations or whatever FOMO you into thinking you’ve got to spend thousands on a PC to have fun.
A month ago I upgraded my Z87/i7 4790 32GB to a Z790/i7 14700 32GB DDR5 due to a dead motherboard. Bitter pill as the RAM was the most expensive part.
Not exactly overwhelmed by the performance of the new system but at least it runs W11 without fuzz.
I could have lived with the old system a few years still.
I was rocking an i5-2500k gtx970 with 4x4GB DDR3 1866 up until about 6 years ago. Everything was totally playable.
I’ll keep running my 5800X3D a few more years with mediocre DDR4 3600 C18 thankfully X3D chips don’t really care about CAS latency.