AMD recently announced their Ryzen 7000 series, scheduled to be released on September 27. AMD CEO Lisa Su revealed four new Ryzen 7000 series SKUs based on the 5nm Zen 4 core architecture, with the flagship 7950X boasting boost speeds of up to 5.7 GHz. The new AM5 platform will of course only support DDR5 memory, with the Ryzen 7000 series offering native DDR5-5200 support and up to DDR5-6400 overclocking speed. Robert Hallock, AMD’s Technical Marketing Manager, confirmed that DDR5-6000 will be the sweet spot for Zen 4 CPUs, and this sweet spot is based on the best compromise of cost, stability, and performance. As per AMD’s official specifications, the native DDR5-5200 speed is only guaranteed when running one DIMM per channel, and there is a drop-off to DDR5-3600 when running two DIMMs per channel.
Responding to DDR5 queries on AMD’s Discord server, Hallock said that a 1:1:1 (FCLK:UCLK:MCLK) ratio is not essential anymore. Users can leave the FCLK on “auto” setting, merely overclocking the RAM and memory controller in a 1:1 ratio. At native settings, Ryzen 7000 will run in a 2:1:1 ratio or 1733:2600:2600, with a default FCLK of 1733 MHz. This is slightly different from Ryzen 5000, where an FCLK of 1800 MHz in a 1:1:1 ratio was the preferred configuration. Users that can push their samples to over 2000 MHz FCLK can naturally attain better performance, but Hallock said it’s “not a big priority.” It has been reported that X670 motherboards will support an FCLK of up to 3000 MHz. AMD also revealed their new EXtended Profile for Overclocking (EXPO) technology at the recent launch event, which is their alternative to Intel’s XMP. AMD EXPO allows for easy, one-click DDR5 overclocking on the AM5 platform. Similar to XMP, users can simply turn on the appropriate EXPO profile in the BIOS of their AM5 600-series motherboard. AMD expects to have over 15 EXPO memory kits ready at launch, and G.Skill has already unveiled their AM5-ready Trident Z5 Neo memory kit. We’ve seen DDR5 prices steadily decreasing throughout the year, a trend that will hopefully continue with the release of AMD Ryzen 7000 and Intel Raptor Lake on the horizon.
