Will the RTX 4090 work with DDR4 RAM?

The true king of modern day GPUs is Nvidia’s RTX 4090, this behemoth of a graphics card packs some serious punch when it comes to graphical horsepower, and makes 4K gaming a reality. Yet, with 24GB of GDDR6X RAM, well over 16,000 CUDA cores, and a hefty price tag to boot, you might well be asking yourself: “What exactly does your system spec need to be to run this mighty GPU?”.

In fact, that proposes a good question: If you’re buying a graphics card of this caliber, do you need the latest and greatest DDR5 to run it at its full potential, or can you save a bit of cash with DDR4 instead for your next system build?

RAM Recommendations

The short answer is, you absolutely can run it with DDR4 RAM.

Now, although the performance of your GPU is predominantly determined by the card itself, there are a few minor variables and use-cases that impact that performance. The big caveat here is on that use case scenario. And it’s all dependent on the number of frames you generate.

For instance, if you’re gaming at 4K or even 8K with a card like the 4090, you can expect average frame rates in main-stream AAA titles to hover around the 60–80 fps mark. Your CPU has to compute these frames, and the more frames there are, the more load it generates for your main processor. To that end, the 60–80 fps mark is generally considered pretty doable by most mainstream processors post 8th Gen Intel or 3rd Gen Ryzen.

ESports and 1080p?

However, if you’re a competitive esports player, or prefer to play at 1080p with 300+ fps, that’s where things get a little tricky. As all of a sudden, your CPU now has to keep up with the number of frames your GPU can generate. And if it goes past that capacity to run everything on your system +200 fps, then your RTX 4090 will suddenly become bottlenecked because of it. To that end, something like those processors we mentioned, might not be able to keep up. This is where good DDR4 RAM can come into play, particularly for Ryzen processors. Ryzen CPUs use something called Infinity Fabric to communicate between each core complex on its processor. That fabric, or interface, effectively runs at the same speed as your memory up to a certain point. So having good quality DDR4 RAM operating at a high-speed is tantamount. For any Ryzen 3rd gen and above that supports DDR4 RAM, the sweet spot is 3,733MT/s or 3,600MT/s. You can find our full DDR4 memory range here, if you need a sweet upgrade today.

Alternatively, it might be time to jump up a processor rank, and move to something that supports DDR5 RAM because of it. And similar to the above Ryzen 7000 series, also loves fast memory as well. In fact, you can find our full DDR5 RAM line-up here too if you’d like to learn more.

What about 8K textures?

8K gaming, although niche right now, is the last piece of the puzzle we wanted to comment on, and that’s basically because as the resolution of the game increases, so to do the textures required to render each object in-game. For AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077 or Hogwarts Legacy, those 4K and 8K textures can add up quickly, and take up the vast majority of your RTX 4090’s super quick GDDR6X VRAM in the process. Although the 4090 does have 24GB of RAM available, at 8K some testing AAA titles may use all of that. In that case, although your processor may be fine, you’re going to want DDR4 RAM with a high-speed and large capacity to help transfer those files back and forth between your system and the RTX 4090, as any excess texture files will then be stored on that system RAM directly.

The Sweet Spot

To conclude, the ideal resolution for an RTX 4090 is gaming at 4K. At that level you shouldn’t have any worries about either your processor or whether you’re running DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. At least for the next few years. If you’re looking at higher resolutions, you might want to consider additional DDR4 capacity, and if you’re looking at 1080p competitive gaming at high refreshes, then a new processor and DDR5 RAM is likely the best bet.