AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) allegedly failing to boost and clock past DDR5-5200

Today is a big day for AMD. That's because in a few hours, the company will be announcing its next-gen AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs based on the new Zen 4 micro-architecture. However, according to reports, the processors are not going to be available before September 15, and the motherboards are delayed even further and allegedly won't be out for another couple of weeks. This means Ryzen 7000 owners may not be able to get their hands on a compatible board for close to another two weeks if the report is actually accurate.

Earlier, a rumor claimed AMD is having issues with its firmware, which has allegedly forced, at least some reviewers, to re-sign their NDAs. Although the sort of issues and bugs encountered by AMD weren't available at the time, 1usmus, who is the developer of several use AMD tools like DRAM Calculator, HYDRA and CTR, alleges that there are microcode issues in Zen 4 at the moment which is causing the delay in the actual product launches related to Ryzen 7000 and AM5.

When asked to elaborate on the “issues” 1usmus says that there allegedly are issues related to core frequency boosting and DDR5 DRAM speeds are purportedly failing to reach above 5200MT/s.

Hence, the reported bug is related to AMD's new EXtended Profiles for Overclocking (EXPO) feature, which was formerly called AMD RAMP or Ryzen Accelerated Memory Profile. For those wondering, EXPO apparently is AMD's version of Intel XMP but interestingly, the feature is said to work even on mobile devices like laptops.