G.Skill has already pushed its DDR5 RAM to a whopping 7000MHz

(Image credit: G.Skill)

We’re only at the dawn of the DDR5 era, and yet already we’re seeing a race to ever higher DDR5 speeds. G.Skill proudly announced that it has achieved a DDR5-7000 overclock with its lovely looking Trident Z5 DDR5 memory. This speed is definitely impressive, but will such speeds benefit gamers? We don’t have long to go before we find out.

G.Skill memory is highly regarded among overclockers. The company has earned a reputation for delivering highly binned products with low latencies. G.Skill also revealed that its fastest DDR5 kits use Samsung memory chips, and given Samsung’s DDR4 IC prowess, we wouldn’t bet against Samsung being a leading DDR5 component supplier as well.

G.Skill didn’t specify which modules they used for the demonstration or whether it required a binned CPU with a highly capable memory controller. The modules were run at DDR5-7000 with 40-40-40-76 timings, perhaps with its fastest DDR5-6600 CL36 kit. No doubt we’ll continue to see faster and faster kits as the technology matures, too.

G.Skill DDR5-7000 CL40 screenshot — DDR5-7000 is impressive, but also note that it's stable! (Image credit: G.Skill)

How long will it be before someone breaks the DDR5-10000 barrier?

There’s no doubt that DDR5 delivers a huge step forward in raw bandwidth. This will surely deliver big benefits in many applications. Games tend to be sensitive to latency though, and this is an area that may count against it when compared head to head with a low latency DDR4 kit. We plan to answer that very question ourselves in a future article. In the meantime, do look out for PC Gamer’s 12th Gen CPU review, coming very soon!

Chris' gaming experiences go back to the mid-nineties when he conned his parents into buying an 'educational PC' that was conveniently overpowered to play Doom and Tie Fighter. He developed a love of extreme overclocking that destroyed his savings despite the cheaper hardware on offer via his job at a PC store. To afford more LN2 he began moonlighting as a reviewer for VR-Zone before jumping the fence to work for MSI Australia. Since then, he's gone back to journalism, enthusiastically reviewing the latest and greatest components for PC & Tech Authority, PC Powerplay and currently Australian Personal Computer magazine and PC Gamer. Chris still puts far too many hours into Borderlands 3, always striving to become a more efficient killer.