AM5 motherboards for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors will reportedly only get support for DDR5 memory. For Intel’s competing Raptor Lake processors, DDR4 motherboards are expected to appear.
It is not yet clear whether the memory controller of the AMD Ryzen 7000 processors has support for DDR4 memory at all, writes Tom’s Hardware. In any case, according to sources from the site, motherboards based on the X670 and B650 chipsets will only receive support for DDR5. That would leave open a possibility for DDR4 motherboards with an A chipset, but according to the site’s sources, that’s also unlikely.
AMD will release its Ryzen 7000 processors and corresponding AM5 motherboards in the second half of this year. It was already known that the new generation will receive support for DDR5, but the manufacturer has not yet commented on possible DDR4 support.
Intel offers support for both DDR5 and DDR4 with its current Alder Lake processors. Manufacturers make motherboards for both memory types. Also for the next Raptor Lake generation there would be support for both DDR5 and DDR4.
DDR5 memory has been available since last year, but is still about twice as expensive as DDR4 and the current sticks of the new memory offer relatively little speed advantage over the previous generation.
AMD steps up according to China Times for the new motherboards to a chipset design with chiplets. The chipset of X670 motherboards would consist of two dies, which ASMedia has made on a 6nm process from TSMC. Motherboards with B and A series chipsets would have one chip. The single chip would be good for eight PCIe 4.0 lanes. This would give X670 motherboards with a double chip sixteen lanes from the chipset. That’s equal to the number of PCIe 4.0 lanes of X570 motherboards.
DDR5 memory