AMD Ryzen 7000 could be in a tight spot as Intel Raptor Lake slide confirms DDR4 support

Intel and AMD are on a collision course as both the camps are preparing to launch new silicon soon. While AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) and Socket AM5 are allegedly launching in September per a leaked release date, Intel is rumored to release its 13th Gen Raptor Lake-S desktop CPUs a month later in October. An early Core i9-13900 review suggests that AMD Ryzen 7000 could have the upper hand. However, things could be very different thanks to a Raptor Lake feature which has seemingly been confirmed courtesy of a presentation slide leak.

As per the leaked slide which is showing a Raptor Lake-S platform overview and its upcoming features, the next-gen Intel architecture will also be supporting DDR4 memory, just like 12th Gen Alder Lake-S did. As you can see below, the slide lists DDR5-5600 as well as DDR4-3200 official memory support, though most kits on decent boards are typically able to run at much faster speeds.

What this means is that Raptor Lake-S could have a significant advantage over Ryzen 7000 and AM5 as the latter only support DDR5 memory. This is because DDR5 DRAM is still quite expensive compared to DDR4 and the performance difference does not often yield tangible benefits as of now.

Rumors do point towards AMD possibly bringing more DDR4-based Zen 4 CPUs to its evergreen AM4 platform and that could help Team Red quite a lot in this situation. However, as stated, this is still a rumor and there is no confirmation of it yet.

The platform overview slide also confirms "Enhanced Core & Memory overclocking" which is likely going to be via Intel's XTU software version 7.8.0.21 which adds OC support on Windows 11 22H2 systems.

The slide was a part of the Intel 1H 2022 NAS Workshop event at Shenzhen China discussing Intel's roadmap for NAS products. You can view the other leaked images on the Weibo user's page at the source link below.

Source and image: 无情的滑稽 (Baidu) via HXL (Twitter)

AMD Ryzen 7000 could be in a tight spot as Intel Raptor Lake slide confirms DDR4 support