What’s the difference between DDR4 and DDR5 RAM?
Discussion
Different generations
DDR5 is the next faster generation of pc ram. the motherboards for ddr4 and ddr5 are different and not interchangeable. you will see higher values like 6000mhz on the ddr5 kits and with that also higher/looser primary timings, where 3600mhz cl16 was considered decent DDR4, with DDR5 the equivalent quality would be 6000mhz cl30
In what kinds of applications would the speed difference be noticeable?
Depends on what you would consider noticeable =P
It's all relative, for now there is no reason to feel pressured to move from ddr4 to ddr5 just for the sake of it.
For end users, most performance gains come from generational upgrades- meaning the average uplift from the parts that support ddr5 vs ddr5 in isolation.
The new chips require the faster standards of ddr5 motherboards and memory design, but the memory itself might only be contributing something like 5-10% of the performance increase, where the parts that require ddr5 might be 50-100% faster than an average ddr4 part.
Enthusiasts can isolate and recommend the most meaningful upgrades (gen4/5 nvme SSDs) depending on your use-case but most of the logic gets lost in the marketing lol.
for a more direct comparison, there is a recent intel cpu generation that supported both ddr4 and ddr5 at the same time (on different motherboards) so we can see the difference in 3d gaming workloads most clearly here:
it's one more
increase the databus speed reaching higher frequency in megahertz, so the data travel betweeen CPU<>RAM<>SSD at high velocity minimizing time of latency.
DDR3: 400~1200MHz
DDR4: 800~1600MHz