AMD revealed its Ryzen 7000 CPUs at Computex 2022, and as expected, the new generation exclusively supports DDR5. That’s a bit of a problem considering the massively inflated prices of DDR5 memory at the moment, but AMD says it doesn’t expect pricing to be an issue once launch rolls around.
Following AMD’s keynote presentation, director of technical marketing Robert Hallock said the company is “all-in on DDR5.” When asked about the high prices of DDR5, Hallock seemed confident: “The supply looks really good. The memory vendors are bullish about being able to enable our supply forecast for the year, for next year. And so we don’t see any real challenges here [with pricing].”
After sustained high pricing in 2021, experts say that DDR5 prices will drop throughout 2022. At the moment, though, they’re still much higher than DDR4. A 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5 kit — among the best RAM you can buy — sells for about $310, while the same DDR4 kit is only $180.
The concern surrounding high prices comes from Intel Alder Lake, which supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Ryzen 7000 is exclusive to DDR5, which could make for a much more expensive upgrade if prices stay high. AMD says Alder Lake is part of the problem with high prices, and that the launch of Ryzen 7000 could bring prices down.
“It’s people just aren’t buying [DDR5]. And there is a reason, a big one, named Alder Lake,” Hallock said in an interview with Digital Trends. “That creates something of a weird chicken and egg demand problem for DDR5 in that it exists, but there’s another option that caused people to not choose it. We think we can help break that stalemate.”
Although AMD was careful not to say that DDR5 prices will drop, the company seems confident that Ryzen 7000 and the increased demand for DDR5 will balance the scales of supply and demand. That could be a big deal for upgrading, as upcoming X670 motherboards use an LGA socket that could increase the cost of buying a new motherboard.
“I’m not going to say that DDR5 is going to be cheaper than DDR4, but we certainly expect that the increased demand from having a bunch of new Ryzen customers exclusively on DDR5 will absolutely bring pricing down,” Hallock said.
In our interview with AMD, the company also revealed that its Ryzen 7000 processors will come with only two RDNA 2 graphics cores, and that they won’t replace the long-standing range of APUs that are focused on gaming.
Ryzen 7000 processors are slated to launch this fall with the new AM5 socket. DDR5 is certainly the largest platform improvement, but the new generation also brings PCIe 5.0, and we have already seen some ultra-fast SSDs taking advantage of this new interface.
We don’t have concrete details on the range yet, but AMD has confirmed that the flagship chip will come with 16 cores and will be capable of hitting clock speeds well above 5.5GHz on a single core. We expect to hear more in the coming months as the launch gets closer.
