According to industry information collated by Tom’s Hardware, AMD’s next-generation AM5 platform will only support DDR5 memory, meaning users with existing DDR4 will not be able to carry over their RAM to a new setup.
It is already known the change from AM4 will also herald an LGA1718 socket – the pins are moved from the CPU to the motherboard, a la Intel – and provide PCIe 5.0 connectivity for storage and, depending upon chipset, GPUs.
Yet, if true, the decision to opt for DDR5-only is a precarious one; the current high price of DDR5 modules, which continue to attract substantial premiums over DDR4, will make it naturally more expensive to adopt a mid-range AM5 platform from the get-go.
Of course, we don’t know many details of the Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 Series processors taking charge of AM5. Could it be their memory controller only works with DDR5 from an architectural level, suggesting there can be no option for DDR4 in the first place? As usual, more details will surface in the weeks and months before official launch.
We can but hope that greater adoption of DDR5-supporting platforms, from both Intel and AMD, will decrease the price of modules through economies of scale and associated ramped production.
With pricing being in doubt, that Core i5-12400, B660 motherboard and DDR4 combination is looking awful tempting as an upgrade right about now.
