What Is AMD EXPO? One-Click Memory Overclocking, With a New Name
At AMD's press and analyst event for "Zen 4," detailing the launch of the Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU family, the company unpacked its first official details around AMD EXPO. EXPO—nothing to do with a conference, or Montreal's defunct baseball team—is new memory-overclocking technology that it will be rolling out with the Ryzen 7000 CPUs and their supporting AM5 motherboard platform. EXPO had been mentioned in the run-up to today by third parties (such as MSI), but it had never been officially confirmed until today. Now, EXPO gets real.
EXPO stands for "Extended Profiles for Overclocking," and if that sounds an awful lot like Intel's long-running XMP, well, they do have a lot in common. Here's what we know so far.
The Ryzen 7000 platform launch brings with it AMD's full-throated support for DDR5 memory modules on desktop systems, and AMD EXPO is an initiative that some DDR5 memory DIMM makers will be behind on day one of Ryzen 7000's life. (As noted in the story linked above, the first four Ryzen 7000 processors are slated to launch on Sept. 27.) As an AMD-branded version of what Intel's XMP (now in version 3.0) essentially is, it allows for easy, one-click memory overclocking. Assuming you equip your AMD Ryzen 7000 PC build with an EXPO-ready memory kit, you can go to the BIOS of an AM5 motherboard, turn on the appropriate EXPO profile, and you've got one-and-done memory OC in effect.
AMD EXPO is new with the AM5 platform and replaces earlier AMD-servicing alternatives to XMP used on Ryzen motherboards. Those previous memory-clocking solutions, such as DOCP and EOCP, were implemented by individual motherboard makers in the absence of an established standard. EXPO, in essence, is AMD grabbing the memory-OC bull by the
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