AMD's forthcoming Ryzen 3000-series processors, codenamed Matisse, will reportedly arrive with support for DDR4-3200 memory modules right out of the gate. This new information comes by the hands of VideoCardz, who got the tip from a motherboard manufacturer, and was later confirmed by prolific leaker momomo_us.
Whenever a chipmaker announces a new processor, it's easy to get fixated towards the core counts or operating clocks. Memory support is one aspect that's often overlooked. Memory support on Ryzen desktop processors has gone through a gradual, evolutive process.
Product | Codename | Architecture | Memory Support | Lithography | Manufacturer | Socket | Launch Date |
Ryzen 3000-series | Matisse | Zen 2 | DDR4-3200 | 7nm | TSMC | AM4 | 2019 |
Ryzen 2000-series | Pinnacle Ridge | Zen+ | DDR4-2933 | 12nm | GlobalFoundries | AM4 | 2018 |
Ryzen 1000-series | Summit Ridge | Zen | DDR4-2666 | 14nm | GlobalFoundries | AM4 | 2017 |
The first wave of Ryzen desktop chips officially supported DDR4-2666 memory modules while the second wave came with support for the much faster DDR4-2933 standard. VideoCardz's latest intel seemingly points to AMD raising the bar to DDR4-3200 on the upcoming Ryzen 3000-series chips.
While many might not know, AMD already has a couple of processors that support DDR4-3200 out of the box. Those chips are the AMD Ryzen Embedded V1756B and V1807B parts. So when you really think of it, it's not improbable that Matisse could feature support for the DDR4-3200 specification as well. Yuri "1usmus" Bubliy, the developer of DRAM Calculator for Ryzen, has reason to believe that DDR4-5000 will be the upper setting for X570-based motherboards.
The big takeway here is that AMD has made tremendous improvements to the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) inside the Matisse processors. The chips purportedly possess the potential to support memory speeds up to 4,400 MHz and faster. However, we would expect this to be on a chip-to-chip basis since not all processors are made equal, and the IMC will surely vary from one sample to the next.
The leaked specifications also suggest that Matisse chips could only accommodate up to 64GB of DDR4 memory in a dual channel configuration. Now that 32GB DDR4 modules are a thing, we could possibly see that limit pushed to 128GB through a simple BIOS upgrade.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.