One of many key points with buying a contemporary Alder Lake system at present is the price of the reminiscence, particularly when an fanatic needs to make use of DDR5. Because of part shortages, significantly the facility administration controllers that every DDR5 module wants, prices of DDR5 are rapidly rising, with some scalpers in search of $1000+ for fundamental reminiscence kits. The answer to this has been to advocate that customers look to pair Alder Lake with DDR4 reminiscence, which though it isn’t the most recent, is the more economical situation. The draw back to this answer is that the consumer has a DDR4-only motherboard, and never the following era DDR5. That may turn into a solved challenge quickly sufficient, nevertheless.
In a preview video on YouTube posted at present by Bing, who I imagine is an ASUS ROG worker, the corporate has been engaged on an answer to permit customers that purchase ASUS Z690 motherboards constructed on DDR5, to run DDR4 in them. As a result of Intel restricted the platform to both DDR5 or DDR4 per motherboard, there’s no approach to run each, till now. Within the video, Bing describes the brand new add-in card they’ve been prototyping.
The use case is pretty easy – have a DDR5 board just like the ROG Apex, put the service card in a reminiscence slot, and place the certified DDR4 within the high.
Clearly, the scenario right here is extra advanced than merely utilizing this service card. DDR5 and DDR4 are greater than merely a notch distinction between them – DDR4 is a single 64-bit reminiscence channel per module, whereas DDR5 is twin 32-bit channel per module. The important thing challenge is that DDR5 does energy administration per module, the place DDR4 depends on energy administration on the motherboard, in order that must be considered. Additionally, including in a service card extends reminiscence traces, which might degrade the standard of the sign.
What ASUS does right here is use a particular BIOS revision to permit the ROG Apex DDR5 to run in DDR4 mode. Which means that the traces to the reminiscence slots, though laid out for DDR5 operation, are switched into DDR4 mode. Then, on the service card, this takes the 5V energy sign and runs it via the equal of motherboard energy administration, and controls the info traces to take care of integrity for sign, latency, energy, and many others.
Bing explains within the video that that is nonetheless very a lot a prototype. It seems like they’re focusing to get it to work on one motherboard with one reminiscence equipment first, earlier than optimizing it. Bing states that the service card could be very tall, and there’s room for optimization to make it smaller sooner or later earlier than ASUS may provide it as a retail product. Additionally a wider vary of validation is probably going wanted as effectively.
The video goes to point out with a single DDR4 module within the service card the system operating at DDR4-4400 with a Core i5-12600K. To substantiate DDR5 nonetheless works, the system is proven operating twin modules of DDR5-4400, at the very least to the BIOS display screen. If these modules come to market, they’re nonetheless in early prototypes, and ASUS will seemingly decide feasibility and demand for them for pricing.
Supply: YouTube (in Mandarin)