AMD officially announces Ryzen 7 CPUs

[kompukare]

The 5 gigabit standard was approved precisely so that there was an easier and cheaper transition to faster ethernet for home networks.

I had to actually both (2.5G and 5G) of them up as all the ‘normal’ Ethernet standards have been base 10
Both came long long after 10GBASE-T and it seems for one reason only: 2.5GBASE-T can run on old existing Cat5e cables so the idea is that a business could upgrade some of their network to that without the expense of upgrading all the old cables to Cat6 or Cat6a.
However, 5GBASE-T really makes no sense whatsoever as it needs Cat6 cable (not ‘a’ so good for 55m at 10GBASE-T) so why not go all the way to 10G in the first place?
Unless 5G hubs, switches and routers are going to be a lot cheaper than 10G it really makes no sense. 10G stuff has been around for ages so has a had to come down whereas 5G is all new.
Either way, nothing for home users where existing cables are seldom a concern.

[CAPTAIN_ALLCAPS]

I had to actually both (2.5G and 5G) of them up as all the ‘normal’ Ethernet standards have been base 10
Both came long long after 10GBASE-T and it seems for one reason only: 2.5GBASE-T can run on old existing Cat5e cables so the idea is that a business could upgrade some of their network to that without the expense of upgrading all the old cables to Cat6 or Cat6a.
However, 5GBASE-T really makes no sense whatsoever as it needs Cat6 cable (not ‘a’ so good for 55m at 10GBASE-T) so why not go all the way to 10G in the first place?
Unless 5G hubs, switches and routers are going to be a lot cheaper than 10G it really makes no sense. 10G stuff has been around for ages so has a had to come down whereas 5G is all new.
Either way, nothing for home users where existing cables are seldom a concern.

Yep, that is the expectation; 10G switches after all these years are still very expensive, whereas 5G switches are expected to be much cheaper and should fit in a home premium sort of price bracket.

The cost of Cat 6 cables for 5G ethernet isn't really a significant factor for home users since few homes have long runs of cabling (most would use powerline ethernet or wireless instead - and mostly due to the expression on the wife's face as you start drilling holes in the wall rather than the cost). Hence, as you pointed out, 2.5G over Cat 5e is more for businesses.

[Junjunelephant]

When will they be releasing Ryzen APUs?

[DanceswithUnix]

When will they be releasing Ryzen APUs?

You can pre-order now, you can get your hands on one March 2nd.

[DanceswithUnix]

Yep, that is the expectation; 10G switches after all these years are still very expensive, whereas 5G switches are expected to be much cheaper and should fit in a home premium sort of price bracket.

The cost of Cat 6 cables for 5G ethernet isn't really a significant factor for home users since few homes have long runs of cabling (most would use powerline ethernet or wireless instead - and mostly due to the expression on the wife's face as you start drilling holes in the wall rather than the cost). Hence, as you pointed out, 2.5G over Cat 5e is more for businesses.

2.5G is a nice multiple of 25G, which in turn is a nice multiple of your 100Gbit backbone network

40Gbit seems to be getting popular, but is still expensive so I gather people get a pair of 25Gbit ports for the same price giving them 20% more bandwidth for free.

But for most home users, they are on wifi with miserable throughput and reliability. Gigabit is way more than they have and more than they realistically need. Perhaps when network chips start getting made on 10nm silicon it will become cost effective to have faster ports as it won't cost much more to make, but I'm struggling to see a demand from the average user.

[Jonj1611]

Anyone got a comparison between the AM4 chipset's, I'm struggling to find one or just haven't had enough coffee yet

[scaryjim]

Anyone got a comparison between the AM4 chipset's, I'm struggling to find one or just haven't had enough coffee yet

HUh, I'd swear Hexus had those slides in an article somewhere but I also can't find it.

Here's the relevant slides on PC Perspective: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Mother...-AM4-Continued

The chipset comparisons for AM4 are somewhat muddied because the chip that sits in the socket is actually an SoC, rather than just a CPU - as well as the memory controller and PCIe lanes (16 Gen 3 for Ryzen) it includes a southbridge that supports a variety of SATA, PCIe and USB configurations. So the exact combination of IO available depends on both the chipset used and the CPU/APU in the socket. AMD have even confirmed that motherboards without a chipset - described as X300 or A300 (depending on whether overclocking is possible) - are allowed, and these will derive all their IO from the CPU/APU (which will make for some very clean, simple and hopefully cheap mITX boards!).

[Jonj1611]

Cheers Jim appreciate that. It was the SATA I was interested in as have 7 sata devices but currently see a lot of boards supporting 6 and looks like its just the top end chipset that supports above that. Well the ones I have looked at, I do have a SATA add in card but trying to reduce the amount of cards in the pc currently.

[scaryjim]

A lot of boards manufacturer appear to have gone for both an M.2 NVME PCIe slot and an M.2 SATA slot. If you can find one with 6 SATA + SATA M.2 (The ARock X370 Killer SLI seems to offer this), you can get cheap passive M.2 -> 7 pin SATA adapters that would allow you to use 7 standard SATA devices...

B350 and A320 motherboards could technically support up to 8 SATA devices if both SATAe ports were dedicated to 2 SATA 3 ports and the CPU/APUs storage controller also provided 2 SATA 3 ports. In fact, they could also support a PCIe NVME at x2 in that scenario, so the possibility is there (should any manufacturer feel so inclined) to offer a storage focused board that could take an NVME SSD as a boot drive and 8 SATA drives (although I'm not entirely sure if you could raid across the whole array or if the two drives hanging off the [CA]PU would be separate).

EDIT: The ASRock AB350M Pro4 also offers 6 SATA3 + M.2 SATA at a more palatable £94...

[Jonj1611]

Thanks Jim, going to look into that then I think. If the benchmarks pan out and I can see a real improvement over my i7 then will be moving to the AMD platform.

[scaryjim]

If money's no object, ASUS' just announced Crosshair VI HERO has 8 SATA 3 ports natively (and no display outputs, interestingly). Mind you, it will set you back £260...

EDIT: turns out the Prime X370 Pro does too - that's a far more reasonable £160....

[Jonj1611]

Yeeeeaaahhhh think I will probably be avoiding that one

Edit : And the other one lol

[shaithis]

You can add sata cards from as little as £5.....no point spending through the nose for a couple of extra SATA connectors....

[Jonj1611]

Thats what I have now, a PCIe Sata card but its right up next to my 970 as the other slot is occupied by an Intel nic so was trying to see if there was any better options with the AMD but seems 6 sata on low/mid range boards seems the norm.

However from looking at it I may get away with not needing the Intel nic anymore so could move the sata card to their I guess

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the Ryzen 5 1600X is a 3.6GHZ to 4.0GHZ part and not a 3.3GHZ to 3.7GHZ one as leaked before!!

[scaryjim]

It seems the Ryzen 5 1600X is a 3.6GHZ to 4.0GHZ part and not a 3.3GHZ to 3.7GHZ one as leaked before!!

That sounds more reasonable, actually. Presumably the leaked spec is a non-X part, or maybe a 1500X? (like the R7 has 1800X, 1700X and 1700). That'd essentially make the 6 and 8 core variants 95W processors with low-power variants (1700 and 1500), while the 4 core parts are inherently 65W.