Filling all four DIMM slots on a motherboard while satisfying unfortunately limits speed in favour of capacity. However, in a bid to bridge the gap, MSI has announced a new BIOS that bolsters its X870 boards to handle higher transfer rates with four sticks running in parallel.
The brand claims support for up to 192GB (4x48GB) of DDR5 RAM running at 6,400MT/s. This rise in transfer rates hits the sweet spot for current generation AMD processors including Ryzen 7 9800X3D. In practice, it allows systems to run at a 1:1 ratio with the CPU’s infinity fabric with reduced latency and higher levels of performance.
Push your rig to the max with massive memory capacity and exceptional performance! The MSI AMD X870E and X870 motherboards now support a massive 192GB (4x48GB) DDR5 memory, running at lightning speeds of 6400MHz.
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Upgrade and experience the difference: https://t.co/qYjnzCGGn4 pic.twitter.com/vkrgJAI9TS— MSI Gaming (@msigaming) December 13, 2024
While there are few systems lucky enough to rock 192GB of RAM, it’s great to see MSI pushing the performance envelope. AMD doesn’t officially support 64GB RAM sticks for now, leaving 256GB off the table for the moment. However, I hope further updates can remove this limitation or learnings here will manifest on future chipsets.
You can download this BIOS update now directly from MSI, just head over to your X870 motherboard’s support page. At the time of writing, the only model not to receive this patch is X870 Gaming WiFi Plus.
Even with this change, AMD is still behind Intel in terms of RAM support. The latter’s latest Z890 platform arrives with support for CUDIMM modules out of the box, freeing its processors to work in tandem with sticks approaching five-figure transfer speeds. This difference probably in part explains why we haven’t seen an X870 version of MSI’s MEG Z890 Unify X.
I don’t expect to see these credentials trickle down to B850 chipsets due in the near-future, but I’ll continue holding out hope all the same. We should learn more about these prospectively more affordable motherboards at CES 2025, alongside other Ryzen 9000X3D processors and Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards. Club386 will be at the show reporting on all the announcements, so be sure to stay tuned!
