AMD - Zen chitchat

[kalniel]

That motherboard is a bit overkill! Not just 8+4 for the CPU, but 8+8. I'd love a similar analysis for the slightly cheaper range.

[timread]

I've been waiting for Zen 2 to upgrade my aging i5 2500K CPU/motherboard/RAM combo. However I read on Toms Hardware that AMD's PCIe4.0 chipset has increased the chipset's power draw from 3.5W to 10W. According to the article, Motherboard manufacturers are going to utilize more expensive power circuitry design in the X570 range and as a result these motherboards will be more expensive, in the Z390 pricing range or maybe higher. Source: https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/msi-a...ews-60894.html

If building a Zen 2 rig around a Zen 2 3600 and X570 board will be considerably more expensive because of this then perhaps building a Ryzen 5 2600 + X470 board is a solid budget choice at the moment?

[Xlucine]

If you can wait, I'd wait for Zen2 reviews to consider the 3600 and X470 (or B450, if you can live without SLI). It'll likely cost more than a 2600, but the 2600 will only get cheaper (especially with the claimed performance). No PCIe 4.0 on a 400 series motherboard, but other than that it'll perform the same

[watercooled]

I wonder what the pricing will be like for the reminder of the chipset range, it would seem a bit unnecessary to have an overkill VRM on a board not intended for overclocking.

[DanceswithUnix]

If building a Zen 2 rig around a Zen 2 3600 and X570 board will be considerably more expensive because of this then perhaps building a Ryzen 5 2600 + X470 board is a solid budget choice at the moment?

It really depends on your budget.
TBH I'm not that concerned about the increased power draw in the chipset, it's on par with the power used by all the RGB junk and I suspect only happens when you plug in all the PCIe cards that I don't own (yet)

The cost does sound significant though, so I suspect I will stick with my X470 board for now. Maybe that means I can't have the 16 core, but I can't afford one of those anyway so no loss. But as others have said, the reveal should be under a month now so I'm not making any rash decisions.

I wonder what the pricing will be like for the reminder of the chipset range, it would seem a bit unnecessary to have an overkill VRM on a board not intended for overclocking.

Has there been *any* news of other chipsets yet? I've only heard of X570, which makes me wonder if there is still a ton of 4x0 based boards waiting to get sold off before they will release lower end 5xx series boards.

[watercooled]

I don't recall reading about any but I've not been paying all that much attention to be honest. FWIW though I can't see a 400-series board being an issue, I don't imagine most people are struggling for PCIe bandwidth on that platform anyway.

[Xlucine]

"power contour"
"game cache"
AMD engineers are such dorks, I love it

Has there been *any* news of other chipsets yet? I've only heard of X570, which makes me wonder if there is still a ton of 4x0 based boards waiting to get sold off before they will release lower end 5xx series boards.

The low end 4XX boards were slow to appear last time too

[Corky34]

[scaryjim]

… The low end 4XX boards were slow to appear last time too

The *low* end didn't get a 400-series board - there's still no replacement for A320 at entry level.

I'd seriously question whether B550 is necessary - the only thing X570 really brings to the table is PCIe 4, and that's not exactly mainstream. At launch you'll already have the choice of X570, X470, B450 and A320 motherboards. I find it hard to believe there's a market out there of people who desperately want PCIe 4 but want it on a no-frills entry-level motherboard? If you're in the market for a mainstream motherboard surely the lack of PCIe 4 isn't going to be a deal-breaker for B450?

[Corky34]

Going on what people have said they seem to have put more effort into X570 boards so people expect they'll be able to clock higher on both the CPU (better VRM) and RAM (better trace layout), how much better though remains to be seen, i guess only those with deep pockets will be willing to fork over an extra £100-200 for maybe an extra 100Mhz.

I was considering an X570 and a Ryzen 7 3800X but now I'm wondering if i wouldn't be better off dropping down a tier.

[DanceswithUnix]

The *low* end didn't get a 400-series board - there's still no replacement for A320 at entry level.

I'd seriously question whether B550 is necessary - the only thing X570 really brings to the table is PCIe 4, and that's not exactly mainstream. At launch you'll already have the choice of X570, X470, B450 and A320 motherboards. I find it hard to believe there's a market out there of people who desperately want PCIe 4 but want it on a no-frills entry-level motherboard? If you're in the market for a mainstream motherboard surely the lack of PCIe 4 isn't going to be a deal-breaker for B450?

I think having PCIe4 traces from the CPU to an NVMe M.2 slot and GPU with a decent but not optimised for lunatic LN2 overclocking VRM would seem a good market. The B450 chipset would allow that, but it would be nice to know that it is PCIe4 enabled. I guess like with AM3 we got lots of "USB3" motherboards we might start seeing B450-PCIe4 boards turning up if we don't get a proper B550 some time soon.

X570 just seems OTT for most users, though frankly I like seeing AMD aiming high for once.

[kalniel]

It might be that they're expecting users to overclock a poor silicon 3800X - which might have been binned poor on thermals/power but able to slurp it to high levels provided the motherboard is beefy enough.

[Xlucine]

Would they be keeping all the best chips in stock for the few months between july and september?

[DanceswithUnix]

Would they be keeping all the best chips in stock for the few months between july and september?

If they just cream off the very best silicon it might take a few months to get enough for a launch, and they would have been stockpiling for a few months already if most of the line is launching in a few weeks.

On the other extreme, it usually takes a few months before they have enough die with a few dead cores to know what to release as salvage products.

[scaryjim]

Would they be keeping all the best chips in stock for the few months between july and september?

Also it's worth remembering that Threadripper was meant to be the top … was it 5%? certainly low single digits … binned dies, which is why they could run multiple dies at high clocks in a "reasonable" "desktop" TDP, and TR didn't release until well after Ryzen in both 1st and 2nd gen products.

Of course, with the chiplet design they'll be making so many dies per wafer, and such small dies, that I suspect they'll have uncommonly high yields compared to modern monolithic CPU designs, allowing for tighter qualification for particular bins. I'd tend to support kalniel's speculation that the 3800X will be binned for ability to reach very high clocks almost regardless of TDP/voltage, while 3950X will be binned for hitting target sustained clocks at low voltage. AFAIK binning nowadays is much more complex than "must hit X GHz at Y volts" pass or fail....?

[Corky34]

I've not got the time to find the link but IIRC AMD reported they're getting around 70% yields on 7nm.

That's much higher than you'd typical get when moving to a new node, i guess it's mainly because of the small die thing scaryjim mentioned.