AM4 with DDR5 :: Hardware and Operating Systems

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x 8 hours ago

AM4 with DDR5

Hi,

I was kind of curious to see if there were any boards for AM4 CPU and DDR5. I know there are significant differences, including "physical" and I wasn't expecting to find any. But sometimes there are niche needs and here and there someone makes an oddball piece of tech that makes sense to a very limited number of people.
I'm not talking about shoving a DDR4 comb into a DDR5 slot. But actually boards for AM4 processors with proper DDR5 channels and slots.

But I found some texts online that smell just like a bunch of BS and claiming they exist. They even post some examples and I checked some and they don't (as much as I could find). Both the texts below appear conspicuously similar including going back and forth between DDR4, DDR5 and even DDR3.

https://cybertechnosys.com/do-am4-motherboards-support-ddr5/

https://vtechinsider.com/what-amd-motherboards-support-ddr5/

Just goes to show you can't trust any choom off the internet.

P.S.
In the niche tech group I always include my Ryzen 5 3400G processor with the Vega11 GPU. I know it sold actually very well. In fact, IMO, it sold too well. Later AMD models rolled out with much inferior iGPUs in them (my opinion at least).

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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments

A&A 8 hours ago

I don't know how the memory controller will be able to handle the burst operations considering they're 2x the lenght. Might be possible if you have a logic layer in between them but the controller is a limit. It will just work as effective DDR4 but worse than a dimm with Samsung B dies.

Last edited by A&A; 8 hours ago

nullable 8 hours ago

I mean it's not impossible. But the cost of adding support for a new RAM standard that didn't exist when the AM4 socket was developed isn't zero. AM4 was being replaced so demand would be somewhat lessened in the face of AM5, while AM4 has no real future.

So some kind of expense, with little demand, on a dead/dying platform would limit any options. It's a fun idea, but maybe not so practical.

Plus, when AM5 and DDR5 first became available DDR5 was pretty expensive compared to DDR4, like nearly 2x the cost, which would further limit the demand for support on a aged socket that's being replaced.

Originally posted by A&A:
I don't know how the memory controller will be able to handle the burst operations considering they're 2x the lenght. Might be possible if you have a logic layer in between them but the controller is a limit.

I think the cost of development, plus minimal demand is probably the bigger impediment. I mean it's not really a herculean task to get something to run slower and under perform, and that's ultimately what's gonna happen on a DDR5 + AM4 socket.

_I_ 7 hours ago

am4 cpus only have the ddr4 memory controller

am5 cpus only have the ddr5 memory controller

intel 12th, 13th, and 14th gen (socket 1700) have both ddr4 and ddr5 memory controllers on them
the boards determines which memory type to use

A&A 7 hours ago

Originally posted by nullable:
I think the cost of development, plus minimal demand is probably the bigger impediment. I mean it's not really a herculean task to get something to run slower and under perform, and that's ultimately what's gonna happen on a DDR5 + AM4 socket.

It requires re-design and what you're saying it's preaty much the point, unless it's for small project, using CAMM2 instead of DIMM is more beneficial than using DDR5 instead of DDR4, but the infinity fabric is limiting factor so the memory wall stays there.

Last edited by A&A; 7 hours ago

x 2 hours ago

Many years ago there were some boards that could handle both AMD and Intel processors. They literally had two CPU slots, so someone did take the time to mess about.

PopinFRESH 1 hour ago

Originally posted by x:
Many years ago there were some boards that could handle both AMD and Intel processors. They literally had two CPU slots, so someone did take the time to mess about.

This only existed in your mind? Unless you are referring to way back when AMD were still just Intel clones and everyone was using socket7? Otherwise this hasn’t been true since the Athlon and Pentium 3 / Celeron using Slot A and Slot 1 respectively.

Everyone used the socket that Intel made at that time because they were all intel clones. VIA, AMD, SIS, Cyrex, etc all used whatever socket Intel made for their clones with socket5 and socket7.

All of that was also back prior to DDR memory anyway and the memory controllers were not integrated in the CPUs and were in the northbridge chipset on the motherboard; so the boards fully determined what memory was supported

_I_ 1 hour ago

Originally posted by x:
Many years ago there were some boards that could handle both AMD and Intel processors. They literally had two CPU slots, so someone did take the time to mess about.

those were socket 7 boards, when amd, intel and cyrix had the same pinouts

the boards with 2 sockets were for dual cpu, and needed 2 identical cpus, for use with windows nt or unix

*edit

the first cpus with the memory controller on the cpu die were intel i series, and amd am2 (opteron, sempron, phenom, a64, a64x2, a64 fx)

all cpus before that, intel socket 775/771 or amd 939/940 and earlier had the memory controller on the board or in the nb, which was moved to the cpu die too

and how the socket 7 dual cpu boards work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruwltdtff-g

Last edited by _I_; 55 minutes ago