We've known for a while that AMD plans to offer very sophisticated DDR5 overclocking features with its next-gen Ryzen 7000-series 'Raphael' platform, but we still don't know all the details. However, now that the CPUs are weeks away, motherboards and their BIOSes are starting to float around the globe, revealing details about the new overclocking features. And they look quite impressive. The latest information comes from Yuri Bubliy, the developer of DRAM Calculator for Ryzen application, who, for obvious reasons, has access to BIOSes for some of the upcoming X670E motherboards.
According to Bubliy, AMD's next-gen platforms will reportedly feature unprecedented memory overclocking capabilities. In particular, BIOSes will offer two kinds of profiles for XMP/EXPO modules: high bandwidth and low latency. This probably refers to whether or not the modules run in coupled mode (1:1) with the memory controller and fabric, but only time will tell if that's the case. It also appears that the Infinity Fabric can be dialed up to 3 GHz, but it isn't clear if that will be attainable. The EXPO feature is much like XMP, so it will set in pre-assigned overclocking values to simplify speeding up your memory. Meanwhile, for those who do have time, AMD's upcoming platforms will let you set timings for each channel separately.
Indeed, AMD's Ryzen 7000-series platforms with the X670E chipset look to be an ultimate enthusiast platform, as it will allow owners to set asynchronous CPU and PCIe clocks, maximize CPU clocks for overclockers, and, perhaps more importantly, allows easy overclocking. The platform will also support CCX clock control (Zen 4 will feature four cores per CCX), making it possible to set clocks for the different CCXes independently. Furthermore, you will be able to control the host clock.
For those who want to go even further, AMD's Ryzen 7000-series systems will let you manually set the impendence for CPU ODT and DQ drive strengths as well as a variety of DRAM impendences to maximize memory overclocking further. Also, next-generation AMD platforms will allow manual adjustment of the CPU CK, CA, and CS drive strengths, again, to boost memory transfer rates.
This is certainly an unofficial source, and the information is preliminary, so you should take it with a grain of salt. However, AM5 motherboards are just weeks away, so we expect most of the aforementioned features to be available at launch.
