Regarding Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs and Z890 motherboards for the latest Core Ultra 200 Series processors, DDR5-8000 is the new 'standard.' This is according to MSI, who recently gave us a detailed look at its full line-up of Z890 boards coming soon from the return of the beast with the Z890 Godlike to the popular MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI.
DDR5-8000 kits are already here, but they're not the most popular kits. Over at Newegg, the most popular DDR5 memory kits as of October 2024 feature speeds of DDR5-6000 and DDR5-6400 - which is a definite increase from the DDR5-5600 or so from a few years ago.
AMD's new BIOS for X870 and other AM5 boards has recently added a DDR5-8000 one-click EXPO overclocking profile. So, the next generation of Intel CPUs (which will take a little while to gain a foothold in the market) will have no issue supporting DDR5-8000 as a default or standard XMP memory profile; it'll probably end up being the new standard for all DDR5 soon.
And with that, we also got word that MSI's new Z890 motherboards will feature improved DDR5 memory overclocking, to the point where we were told that DDR5-9000 would be pretty easy to achieve with a capable memory kit - which can, of course, be pushed even higher. With MSI's new Click BIOS X interface and firmware for its new motherboards, users will have easy access to a high list of XMP memory profiles covering various speeds and latencies that can be applied with one click.
Opening up access to faster DDR5 memory speeds to a wider audience will lead to lower prices, and we wouldn't be surprised if MSI's statement turned out to be true and DDR5-8000 was the new standard, the new average or baseline for memory in 2025.