[Hardware] RAM Benchmark Hierarchy 2025: DDR5, DDR4 for AMD, Intel CPUs

[Mr.Ares]

Our RAM benchmark hierarchy assists you in locating the fastest DDR5 and DDR4 memory kits for your system. People frequently underestimate RAM (Random Access Memory), yet it is among the most vital hardware components. Choosing the appropriate or inappropriate memory kit can significantly influence your system's performance in gaming, productivity, and, if insufficient, overall sluggishness. Remember, consult our Best RAM list for the best memory deals.

Companies regularly release new memory kits with different speeds, timings, capacities, and ranks, making sifting through seemingly endless models surprisingly time-consuming. Our RAM benchmark hierarchy aims to provide a simple database that ranks the best memory kits based on pure performance.

We use a geometric mean of our memory benchmarking results to keep the ranking objective and discard the intangibles, like aesthetics and overclocking headroom. We've got those details in the individual RAM reviews. Furthermore, we suspect many of you would value performance over anything else. However, the geometric means don't always tell the whole story: If you're looking for performance in a specific workload or gaming, we recommend looking at the full review of the memory kit you have in mind.

The score results originate from the geometric mean from our RAM benchmark suite, which consists of scripted and real-world tests. They include Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Lightroom, Cinebench 2024, Corona 12 benchmark, Blender 4.0 benchmark, V-Ray 6 benchmark, 7-Zip compression and decompression, HandBrake x264 and x265 conversion, LuxMark v4, Windows AI inference, and Y-Cruncher.

For simplicity, we've separated the memory kits into different categories according to their densities. Then, we ranked the memory kits for each capacity from best to worst for both Intel and AMD systems. The score in our hierarchy might vary somewhat from the geometric mean indicated in the individual review. This difference arises as we aim to deliver results based on the latest and most relevant Intel and AMD platforms. We retest each memory kit to ensure that the metrics in the table are as current as possible. We conduct retests when there are significant updates to either of our testing systems, including new processors, motherboards, graphics cards, or firmware revisions.

Memory pricing is very volatile. We've restrained ourselves from providing a price-to-performance value since it only captures the pricing for one static moment, and memory pricing fluctuates far too much. So, while you can see up-to-date pricing in each table below, the performance measurements don't consider the price tag.

If you're torn between two specific kits, you can easily compare the choices by calculating the real-time pricing divided by the geometric mean. Ideally, you'll aim for the lowest value, as a lower figure indicates better value for your money.

Link: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ram-benchmark-hierarchy