How do you feel about the transition from DDR4 to DDR5?
AMD is betting on DDR5, there's no DDR4 support in Zen 4. In the last months, we talked to many component vendors, module makers, etc., to confirm their supply roadmap to confirm timings and avoid shortages. Everybody is coming back with very optimistic answers. DDR5 will be abundant in the lifetime of Socket AM5. The abundance and new demand from Socket AM5 will help bring pricing down.
At this time, the demand for DDR5 is limited because our competitor lets people skip DDR5 for DDR4. We think there will be cost parity, or very near parity, coming as a result of Socket AM5. We're so excited about DDR5 because the frequencies are fantastic, which is exactly what Ryzen loves. Just like Zen 3, Zen 4 is fabric-based, and we are seeing better overclocking characteristics as we're moving to Zen 4 on both the memory and fabric side. Memory validation is one of the last things we undertake because we need a nearly finished platform to do that kind of work. Even at this early phase, we're able to hit DDR5-6400, there's more to come, it's very encouraging.
There's a bit of confusion about the CPU's PCIe 5.0 configuration. We've seen 24 and 28 lanes mentioned. Could you clarify?
There are 28 total lanes from the CPU, all Gen 5, of which 4 are peeled off for downlink to the chipset and the remaining 24 are available to the user. On X670 Extreme that means graphics operates at x16 Gen 5 or x8/x8 Gen 5, and there's one M.2 NVMe x4 Gen 5. On the X670 (non-Extreme) only the M.2 NVMe slot is required to be Gen 5, the top slot for graphics will optionally be Gen 5. On B650, only M.2 storage will be Gen 5. Of course, other components, like companion controllers or additional NVMe devices, can connect to Gen 5 on the CPU.
All X670E boards use PCIe 5.0 PEG? Or are motherboard makers free to downgrade to Gen 4?
Yes, that is a requirement. It must be the top two slots as Gen 5; if you have one GPU, the top slot is x16, if you have two cards installed, both slots are x8.
With 28 Gen 5 lanes from the CPU, 16 PEG lanes, and 4 chipset lanes, 8 lanes are left. Is it possible for motherboards to have two M.2 slots wired to the processor?
Yes, that is a possibility.
Why the introduction of chipset E SKUs? Such as "X670E" vs. "X670"
It's actually a direct response to consumer feedback when we launched X570. We had some users who were still on Gen 3 graphics cards or storage devices. Additional PCI-Express generations are a cost-adder to motherboards, there are retimer and redriver components that must go on the board to extend the signal from the CPU. Customer feedback was that they liked the features and design, but they don't really need the Gen 4 stuff and would rather save the cost. As we were thinking about how to make motherboards more accessible at a wider range of price points, offering the premium motherboards with and without Gen 5 requirements made a lot of sense. It will offer more affordable options for those users who don't need Gen 5 graphics capability.
Is the X670E chipset fanless?
It's fanless.
You announced USB4 on Rembrandt, but we haven't seen anything about it on the Zen 4 slides.
We'll get into USB configurations later in the summer, but you should have already seen some motherboards announced with USB4 support, I think from Gigabyte this week.
AMD and MediaTek recently announced the development of new Wi-Fi 6E modules, are those a requirement for all AM5 motherboards?
Motherboard vendors have the freedom to choose modules, they will pick the module that makes most sense from a cost and feature point of view. We don't place any requirements on what they should use, but we do have an AVL, of course. [Approved Vendor List, a recommendation which components to use in a design]
