No, You Don't Have to Use DDR5 for Intel 12th Ge

Intel recently announced its newest line of CPUs, the Comet Lake series, which are 12th generation chips that feature DDR5 memory. In this article, we will discuss whether or not you really need to upgrade to DDR5 from DDR4 with your new Intel 12th Gen CPU and tell you what you can expect when you do upgrade.

The New Chips

The new i7 and i9 chips will ship with one of three types of integrated memory controllers: DDR4, DDR4X, or DDR5. The technology behind them all is different (as you'd expect) but they're also not compatible with each other. If you want your next PC to have one of these new chips, be sure it can handle whatever memory controller you choose. However, that doesn't mean that swapping a different chip out later isn't possible; as long as your motherboard has access to those new technologies (either through built-in support or firmware updates), there should be no problem. It might take some research on your part, though.

The Current Memory Standard (DDR4)

This is what you are likely using on your PC now. With Intel Skylake and AMD Ryzen processors these chips make use of two kinds of memory: RAM for your operating system and applications (called DRAM), and a memory cache known as L3 (which is also DRAM). The L3 cache can be accessed much faster than any mechanical hard drive or SSD you may have installed in your computer; it’s made specifically to speed up certain processes.

LPDDR4

Although you may think of LPDDR4 as a newer version of DRAM, it is much more. It requires a new motherboard that supports it and has been built with LPDDR4 in mind. The most important thing is that while LPDDR3 supported clock speeds up to 2133 MHz and was designed with mobile devices in mind. On the other hand, LPDDR4 has doubled its data rate which means there is more memory bandwidth available for you to work with making things like video editing or 3D modeling much faster. Just don’t try using your older motherboard with new RAM as it may not be able to support it!

How much faster can DDR5 be?

If you're familiar with processor generations, then you know that each of them can be characterized by an update to a given standard. For example, 11th Gen processors were powered by DDR4 memory and 10th Gen processors used LPDDR3. The same has been true of computer memory standards over time—DDR3 was faster than its predecessor (DDR2), and now it's being replaced by even newer standards. So just how much faster is DDR5? Is it twice as fast as DDR4? Three times as fast? Ten times as fast? Well, we'll get into those details in a moment. First, let's take a look at what makes up these new memories.