Back when nVidia was still in the chipset market they launched a certification project where RAM manufacturers were able to place an SLI sticker on their products to show that they were a good choice of RAM for nVidia’s chipsets. A couple of months into this project AMD (then ATi) released their own Crossfire Certification process to compete with nVidia. However, the joke was on the consumer as these “certified” kits of memory did nothing for performance.

Now the big deal is Intel’s XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile) these are actually very much like what nVidia tried to do with the SLI certified RAM. What you have is a base profile burned into the SPD (serial presence device) along with at least one additional profile that motherboards can identify and automatically adjust to by just selecting the profile. The fact that many overclockers have been doing this for years seems to go unnoticed by the general market. I can vividly remember threads on Xtreme Systems Forums [http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forum.php] about how to burn in a new profile and what equipment to use to do it.

Moving on from Intel’s XMP to this relatively new product lineup from AMD what we are getting now is a vision (no pun intended) that AMD has had for a very long time. Back in the days of the Dragon platform we listened to AMD Marketing types talk about the benefits of an all AMD platform. We have been told more than once that only by using an AMD CPU on an AMD motherboard and with what was to become an AMD GPU then we would see this magical effect that would turn these systems into power houses.

It is not surprising to see that goal now extend out to memory and we honestly would not be shocked to see an AMD branded power supply pop up shortly to complete the set. You see there is more to this move than just completing the platform. AMD knows they are behind in memory performance and that their boards and CPUs are a little… let’s say demanding, when it comes to power. By working with memory manufacturers to create an AMD product they can control the performance profile in a way that they cannot with just regular profile branding. With standard profiles manufacturers have to leave the JDEC spec in as default to ensure the best compatibility. Now AMD can “tag” their boards so that they recognize the AMD branded memory and automatically adjust to the best performance profile for that platform, which again is nothing new.

We would expect to see some BIOS updates crop up for AMD based motherboards very soon to cover the release of the new memory. The question now is going to be; will this actually help the AMD platform or will it be nothing more than a gimmick? Only time and a ton of reviews will answer that question. As always we will be working to get some of this in the lab to see what is really going on.

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