AMD will launch their upcoming Ryzen 7000 series CPUs and new AM5 socket later this year. According to various sources, AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs will only support DDR5 RAM. Now Tom’s Hardware has also confirmed the news via their sources. If true then dropping support for DDR4 will make many people unhappy.
AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs are based on Zen 4 architecture and built on TSMC’s 5nm node. These new CPUs will bring two new features DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 which are already supported by Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs launched late last year. But unlike Ryzen 7000 series Alder Lake CPUs also support DDR4 (either DDR4 or DDR5 based on Motherboard). Even Intel’s upcoming 13th gen Raptor Lake CPU will also support DDR4.
Given the situation AMD’s this decision if found true will not sit right will many customers. DDR5 RAM is also 2-3x more expensive than DDR4. But many benchmarks have shown that the performance difference between DDR4 and DDR5 is very small. But the price of DDR5 RAM may decrease in the latter half of 2022 if PMIC and VRM supply improve. But given the current circumstances, that scenario is far-fetched.
Tom’s hardware has said that according to their sources X670 and B650 Motherboards will not support DDR4. But there is a chance that lower-end A series Motherboard may support DDR4. AMD will use a dual-chiplet design for AM5 platforms. dual-chipset design applies only to the X670 platform, while B650 motherboards (and presumably A-series) will come with only one chip.