Patriot is developing DDR5 RAM sticks that will run at 6400 speed and higher, no matter what the CPU can take

JEDEC is a standards organisation that's been responsible for laying the foundation for RAM clock speeds and timings for decades. In the case of DDR5, the most recent version of double data rate memory for PCs, the default speed is 4800MT/s and that's to ensure full compatibility with all AMD and Intel CPUs. However, Patriot Group is developing a type of DDR5 stick that pushes this to 6400MT/s and higher, even if the CPU itself doesn't normally support that speed.

While the JEDEC standard is DDR5-4800, all of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series of CPUs happily work with DDR5-5200, and Intel's 14th gen Core processors support DDR5-5600. Even then, you'll often be able to use even faster RAM, such as DDR5-6000, with these chips.

The problem is that to support those speeds, the integrated memory controller (IMC) has to run faster than it's designed to cope with and there's quite a lot of variation in the quality of IMCs.

Enter stage left Patriot and its CKD DDR5 project (via Tom's Hardware). This work involves creating RAM sticks that will run at a speed of up to 6400, even if the IMC is unstable at that setting. It's not magic, it's just engineering, or more specifically, the use of something called a client memory clock driver (or CKD for short).

This is a chip that buffers the clock signals between the IMC and the DRAM module, easing the strain on the IMC. Server-grade memory has featured such a thing for a good while now and Team Group has already beaten Patriot to the line, by adding a CKD to its Elite DDR5 range, to allow for stable running up to 6400. While that's the same target for Patriot's new modules, it's also looking to push things further, to as high as 7200.

Faster RAM means more memory bandwidth for the CPU, which ultimately results in better performance, especially in games. However, trying to get something like a Ryzen 7 7800X3D to work with DDR5-7200 is nigh on impossible, as AMD says DDR5-6000 is the sweet spot for its Ryzen chips. Intel's latest Core