News DDR5 Memory Shortage Intensifies, Power Management Chips to Blame

ikjadoon

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Feb 25, 2006
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is there even demand for DDR5?

Today, the same consumers buying obscene $500+ motherboards. Is there even demand for those? Somehow, large enough quantities to justify a dedicated SKU. It's like the first Blu-ray players that cost $1000: the bleeding edge is always ready to cut wallets.

In the enterprise / datacenter: yes and likely the dominant market per bits in 2021. Intel's newest Xeons, Sapphire Rapids (Golden Cove cores / Alder Lake P-cores), use DDR5 exclusively . The first "customer-ready" shipments are this month and next. Sapphire Rapids is incompatible with DDR4, so sustained demand for DDR5 is already here.

Intel-Architecture-Day-2021-Sapphire-Rapids-SoC-Key-Building-Blocks.jpg



Everyone is moving to DDR5: AMD, Apple, Ampere, IBM Power10 mainframes, etc. It's the next DDR revision: any supply chain & inventory investment now is welcome. It's not like DDR4 will become more popular after 2021.
 
The "Enthusiast" segment who have to have everything that's brand new, but I imagine a good number of the people buying it are simply people looking to scalp. If you want a laugh look at all the "Sold" listings for DDR5 on eBay.
ill just patiently wait :)
as for me with DDR version transitions, when i was on DDR1, it used to run overclocked at 750MHz CL3, which was way faster than any DDR2 (bandwith x latency)..and it was even catching DDR3 in sisoft sandra back then, so i essentialy skipped DDR2, then i moved to DDR3 once it got some reasonable performance (2000MHz CL9)
looking at DDR4 vs DDR5 performance diff...no big diff atm so no rush :)
but that swap will be..maby 1-2 years from now when memory controllers would be tunned better, ram is the only thing which i buy only one time, while rest of computer keeps changing
 

hannibal

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Yeah... No hurry to move to ddr5. It will get cheaper and faster in two three years. In the meantime... quite meh, unless you use very specific applications and you use those at work!
 

Astralv

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Yes, but you need to purchase a DDR4-specific 600 series mobo, like these: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#L=4
DDR4 and R5 are physically different, so aren't interchangeable on the same board.
I am planning to use it with Asus Proart because I need Thunderbolt, both actually not available. I have all my other parts sitting here, even mounting kit for CPU cooler came. I have I9 Intel CPU, so obviously I wanted DDR 5, but if it not going to become available any time soon... Thank you.