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Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Biostar has promised to show off next-gen AMD motherboards at Computex in June, rumoured to be 900-series chipsets headed by the X970E flagship. The AM5 socket will return, so Ryzen 7000 and 9000 chips will be compatible with the new boards, but memory support will be overhauled to support faster CUDIMM and CAMM DDR5 RAM.
CUDIMM is essentially a DDR5 update that adds an on-board client clock driver to support higher speeds, while CAMM is a thinner form factor with a compression connector, mostly designed for laptops or high-volume OEM desktop designs. Both types are already supported by Intel Z890 platform and 200-series Intel Core Ultra processors, though only a handful of existing motherboards support the CAMM connector, so it's not too surprising to see AMD pull level with their next motherboard platform.
It's thought that new Zen 6 "Olympic Ridge" processors (Ryzen 10000?) will be needed to benefit from the new RAM types, with older Ryzen 7000 and 9000 CPUs being limited by their memory controller and therefore only supporting a "bypass mode" which allows for compatibility at speeds of 6000MT/s or below.
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The new Zen 6 CPUs should have a new 4nm memory controller, allowing for higher speeds (over 9000MT/s) and improved timings. However, these CPUs aren't expected to arrive until the end of the year, and potentially not until 2027.
Leaker MEGAsizeGPU has stated that the new 900-series chipset could be based around the same Promontory 21 family as existing 800-series motherboards, with new features being restricted to those implemented in the BIOS software and board routing, in addition to the aforementioned new RAM support. That means we're unlikely to see more PCIe lanes from the new generation of motherboards, which is a pain when finding a board that supports multiple add-in cards and plenty of attached storage is already a challenge.
Are you looking forward to AMD's next-gen CPUs and motherboards? Let us know in the comments below.