AMD’s Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” Desktop CPUs Geared For Memory Overclocking, Recommends DDR4-4000 As The Sweet-Spot In Leaked Slide

AMD’s Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” Desktop CPUs are less than a month away from launch and as per a leaked slide, they are designed to offer great memory overclocking support. In a slide published over at Technopat, it looks like users who plan to purchase Ryzen 5000 CPUs can leverage from even higher performance with higher-spec’d DDR4 memory kits.

AMD Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” Desktop CPUs Offer Great Memory Overclocking Capabilities, DDR4-4000 MHz Recommended As Sweet Spot

This one slide is part of the AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU NDA which is being shared with the press under a strict embargo however someone decided to leak it and give us a glimpse of what to expect when it comes to memory overclocking. The slide starts off with the details that we already know & that is the three clock speeds beyond core frequency which AMD Ryzen Desktop processors support. Just to recap, they are as following:

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  • Infinity Fabric Clock (FCLK): Governs how quickly CPU cores can communicate across CPU dies and with SOC controllers (e.g. PCIe, SATA, USB)
  • Memory Controller (UCLK): Governs how quickly the memory controller can ingest/exgest commands from RAM.
  • Memory Clock (MCLK): The frequency of your main system memory.

All three of the clocks are set in a 1:1:1 relation and configured based on the memory speeds that the system is equipped with. For instance, if the memory features a speed of DDR4-3600 MHz, then these clocks will be set at 1800 MHz for FCLK, UCLK, and MCLK. We have seen that Renoir desktop APUs offer a 1:1 FCLK ratio when it comes to memory and memory overclocking support and given us some spectacular numbers but the standard Ryzen Desktop CPUs rely on a Chiplet design while the Ryzen Desktop APUs feature a monolithic design with a vastly different chip hierarchy even if the underlying core is fundamentally the same.

According to AMD, the memory/fabric is the biggest return on investment for users who want to overclock and tweak their systems. In that regard, AMD is suggesting that DDR4-4000 MHz will be the sweet spot for all AMD Ryzen 5000 Series “Zen 3” Desktop CPUs while DDR4-3800 MHz was the sweet spot for all AMD Ryzen 3000 Series “Zen 2” Desktop CPUs. Users running DDR4-4000 kits can expect great performance and even higher overclocking capabilities when running a Vermeer CPU.

AMD Ryzen 5000 Series “Vermeer” CPU Lineup

CPU Name Cores/Threads Base Clock Boost Clock Cache (L2+L3) PCIe Lanes (Gen 4 CPU+PCH) TDP Price
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16/32 3.4 GHz 4.9 GHz 72 MB TBA 105W $799 US
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12/24 3.7 GHz 4.8 GHz 70 MB TBA 105W $549 US
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8/16 3.8 GHz 4.7 GHz 36 MB TBA 105W $449 US
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6/12 3.7 GHz 4.6 GHz 35 MB TBA 65W $299 US
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6/12 TBA TBA 32 MB TBA 65W $219 US?

The AMD Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs, codenamed Vermeer, will be launching on the 5th of November. The launch lineup will include the 16 core Ryzen 9 5950X, the 12 core Ryzen 9 5900X, the 8 core Ryzen 7 5800X, and the 6 core Ryzen 5 5600X. You can learn more about these SKUs here. All 500 series motherboards (X570/B550) will be receiving BIOS updates to support the next-gen lineup so if you’re planning to get a Ryzen 5000 CPU at launch, you better head over to this link and grab one that’s supported for your motherboard (do note that 400-series support comes later around January 2021).