[SOLVED] 12th Gen Alder Lake Both DDR4 + DDR5 on single Mobo?

[Dylan Beckett]

Hi

I was wondering are there any 12th Gen/Alder Lake Motherboards that support BOTH DDR4 + DDR5 "on the same Motherboard (eg one board you hold in your hands that can do either - NOT that there are two different versions of one board design)"?

If there is - can you please list some Models/prices or at least the brands that do them?
If there aren't - do you think there will be in the future for this gen? Have they done this in the past?

Cheers

 

[Lafong]

As far as I've heard, any given motherboard is either DDR5 only or DDR4 only.

I think what you want has happened in the past, but not very often.

Not positive, but I think I read that it is NOT possible with 12th generation boards.

 

[Zerk2012]

Hi

I was wondering are there any 12th Gen/Alder Lake Motherboards that support BOTH DDR4 + DDR5 "on the same Motherboard (eg one board you hold in your hands that can do either - NOT that there are two different versions of one board design)"?

If there is - can you please list some Models/prices or at least the brands that do them?
If there aren't - do you think there will be in the future for this gen? Have they done this in the past?

Cheers

From everything I have seen and read not going to happen this time.

 

[Eximo]

There were certainly DDR1/DDR2 boards, and even some DDR2/DDR3 boards. I don't recall any dual DDR3/DDR4 boards, though Skylake did support both as we see with Alder Lake.

It would make for an overly complicated motherboard these days. I'm sure it is technically possible, but not financially feasible. Given the fundamental design differences between DDR4 and DDR5, not sure that both types could be crammed together next to the CPU without some issues caused by the traces of the other memory type. Might be that adding a circuit between the CPU and Memory traces to switch between them just adds too much latency for proper operation. Or because the CPU itself already has such internal switching, you can't have another. But you certainly wouldn't want the unconnected memory slots connected to the memory controller, they would probably cause a lot of interference.