After a small mention in its Computex announcements, AMD’s David McAfee provides a bit more color on what exactly EXPO ULL is.
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“Expo has evolved, and we've been working with all of the module vendors. We've seen an opportunity with adding more sub timings to the SPD profile, and just getting a little bit lower latency,” McAfee told Tom’s Hardware.
Beyond what EXPO ULL is doing, AMD says that it will work with existing chipsets and motherboards, but McAfee clarified that he wasn’t sure if it would require a BIOS update (that seems likely). Regardless, McAfee said: “My advice to all of your readers and viewers is: update your bios.”
EXPO ULL kits will come with different branding on them, including a new badge, so “it’ll be noticeable that these kits are different.” McAfee also says that, although AMD doesn’t control memory or module prices, “[AMD’s] understanding from the partners is [that] they expect to bring these in at effectively the same price points that the current kits are at.”
Those price points, at the moment, are inflated due to ongoing memory shortages. But McAfee isn’t being coy here about pricing. The executive says ULL is “simply about extending the sub-timings and really getting every little bit of OC performance out of those DIMMs,” so there’s nothing specifically about ULL that would cause the DIMMs to be radically more expensive.
AMD promises 13% uplift with new EXPO ‘Ultra Low Latency’ overclocking on DDR5 DIMMs
AMD's memory-boosting EXPO 1.2 is here, adds support for three Chinese memory vendors
EXPO 1.2 will come to 600-series AM5 motherboards later, tech only enables partial CUDIMM support
Across a test suite of 30 games with the Ryzen 7 9700X, AMD says ULL delivered a 4% uplift compared to standard EXPO, with both running at DDR5-6000, and a 13% uplift compared to JEDEC-standard DDR5-5600. 1% lows, as expected, see more of an improvement, with a 15% uplift compared to JEDEC and the same 4% compared to standard EXPO.
AMD says that EXPO ULL is “coming soon,” but it hasn’t said anything beyond that for a release window. Regardless, it already has partners lined up to support the feature, including G.Skill, Kingston, Lexar, XPG, and TeamGroup.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/amd-says-new-expo-ultra-low-latency-ddr5-memory-should-be-effectively-the-same-price-as-current-kits-feature-will-work-on-existing-chipsets-but-will-require-new-dimms#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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