The price of memory is exploding, DDR5 is at its highest, DDR4 has followed suit. big strong point for the latter. It is already massively in place on the vast majority of PCs. To deal with the current crisis, the two giants, AMD and Intel, do not have many solutions. One of them is not to change everything.
And don’t change shock in IT. Everyone has been fed the talk of technical updates and permanent obsolescence. Manufacturers and chip founders have all made the cadenced and annual rhythm of their products a tempo to follow to stay at the best level. The fact remains that behind these announcements of permanent productivity and efficiency gains, real uses have not necessarily progressed everywhere. In the business world, for example, certain development reflexes are more accounting than technical. We change because it’s the right time, because everything is amortized, because the competitors have changed or out of fear of no longer being up to date. But behind it we will open the same office suite and we will send the same emails without using much more memory or processor power.
Intel and AMD know this, so they understood that it was possible to make their ranges last with a little cosmetic to meet business needs. The program for 2026 therefore seems to be confirmed with the return of certain generations of chips.
At Intel for example, we will find 14th generation Core chips. “Raptor Lake Refresh” models which will take another lap on their LGA1700 platform. The founder has confirmed the continuation of their parallel production of the new Panther Lake chips. The info comes from Robert Hallock, a vice president and general manager of customer technical marketing at Intel.
The reason is quite simple, the chips are completely sufficient to drive a classic computer in 2026. If certain uses will seek the most efficient performance possible, many other users barely touch the calculation capacities of these processors. Whether individuals or professionals, a large majority of processors in 2026 are not exploited to their full potential.
The benefits of these Raptor Lake Refresh processors for both Intel and customers. Firstly they are engraved in Intel 7 which does not make them enter into head-on competition with the 18A production lines. The two ranges can be produced in parallel. The new generation Arrow Lake-S chips benefit from cores still produced by TSMC but in an agglomeration of tiles then assembled by Intel. Nothing that will prevent their production. On the contrary, this allows the Intel 7 lines to be fully profitable during this complicated period.
This also allows you to take advantage of two important technical elements. Raptor Lake Refresh is both mounted on an LGA1700 socket but it is also capable of supporting DDR4 memory like DDR5. For Intel, this is a godsend right now. Whether it’s assemblers or end customers, keeping this platform means being able to upgrade millions of PCs from one chip to another without having to change everything. This also allows technical bases to last longer: motherboards, cooling systems and even power supplies adjusted to the maximum for machines from major international brands.
Maintaining DDR4 memory will also help reduce the rating in the event of a transition. A contact who manages a company for recycling corporate machines, whose work consists of offering data destruction certificates for fleets of corporate PCs on the one hand and the revaluation of these machines to a new public on the other, confided to me that the market had changed a lot in recent months. Fewer machines available, equipment in poorer condition and above all… no more RAM on board. All RAM sticks were now kept by the companies whereas they were previously left in place. Not only is the source drying up, but the machines that reach it are no longer as easily recyclable.
And we understand that for a company with an IT department that can recycle the RAM of its workstations, the technical expense can be much lower with a Raptor Lake Refresh processor. We could possibly just change the chip, but if the purchase of a new computer is obligatory, it could be chosen without RAM by simply recycling the existing one. Even considering only the purchase of a new PC, DDR4 remains much more available and less expensive than DDR5 currently.
And M Hallock specified that motherboard manufacturers would offer original platforms, capable of supporting both DDR4 and DDR5. ASRock would already be in the running and others should follow. In any case, using a Raptor Lake Refresh with DDR4 will not change much for an average user. Even for an expert user, actually. The majority of uses will not be that different from one machine to another to the naked eye. If the benchmark software will indeed attest to an unbearable difference for some, it will always be possible for them to spend the sums necessary to bring together the best of each component.
Given the current context, I doubt that everyone will want to change a PC purchased at the beginning of 2025 with 32 GB of DDR4 for a pittance for a similar model with 32 GB of DDR5 for a huge piece of cake.
At AMD, same fight to maintain DDR4
We saw a first decline in the race for “always more” some time ago. In January, AMD began by saying that ultimately, using DDR5-4800 RAM compared to DDR5-6000 RAM was not so serious. That the gains were below 2% in all the scenarios in play. A change of discourse which appeared while the prices of the most efficient memories were soaring at full speed.
AMD now announces that it will extend its AM4 platform. A veteran of the PC world, which is not a fault. AM4 was released in 2016 and is therefore celebrating its tenth anniversary. She experienced the microarchitectures of the brand’s renewal: Zen, Zen+, Zen2 and Zen3. This socket is ultra cost-effective and benefits from a huge installed base even if not all chipsets will necessarily be compatible with the latest chips deployed.
For AMD the transition is based on a strategy of refreshing its ranges with updated chips by adding memory on board the processors. The famous 3D V-Cache technology. The chips are boosted with more of this cache added literally on top of the chip. A stack that gives the right to this fabulous “3D V-cache” marketing find.
We find for example the brand new Ryzen 5 5500X3D, a chip developing six Zen 3 cores, for twelve Threads with frequencies up to 4 GHz and above all a 96 MB L3 cache. Everything is engraved by GlobalFoundries in 12 nm. Not the sexiest processor on paper, but which will do an excellent job of transition for this very complicated 2026 period One of its major advantages? Support for DDR4 memory up to 128 GB in dual channel. A CV which gives it a place of choice to replace an aging processor in a tower without having to change everything inside.
You will have understood that when the market is bad, brands change their perspective. From a positioning pushing towards a future of ever higher performance, they are now also interested in a much more realistic present. It is better to sell chips on an older, less glamorous platform, compatible with technologies already in place, rather than to sell nothing at all.
Source : Wccftech
