Question AM4 or wait a bit for AM5?

[feca1020]

I have a B450 motherboard and I am wondering if it is worth to get a B550 one now because I would like the PCI 4 speed for the M.2 and GPU and other potential improvements without needing to upgrade most other things, or would it be better to wait a while more ans upgrade to the latest AM5?

 

[drea.drechsler]

I have a B450 motherboard and I am wondering if it is worth to get a B550 one now because I would like the PCI 4 speed for the M.2 and GPU and other potential improvements without needing to upgrade most other things, or would it be better to wait a while more ans upgrade to the latest AM5?

PCIe gen 4 is not nearly as great is it may seem. GPU gaming does not benefit from it except in a few instances and so small as to be missed by all but the benchmarkers. Only a few specific applications might benefit from the transfer rate for NVME's, mainly ones that do seriously large and frequent sequential data transfers. Windows doesn't work that way, and neither do games, as both use random data access which even a common SATA SSD can provide like 90% of the user experience benefit.

I think it's interesting that this far after launch of Intel and AMD PCIe gen 5 systems there are very few PCIe gen 5 NVME's and no gen 5 GPU's that I'm aware of. And the gen 5 NVME's are more noteable for their extremely high heat output than user experience improvements. It might be that the user experience benefit can't be justified by the problems design and manufacturing are experiencing. Or maybe they simply realize consumers won't flock to it if it doesn't actually perform for them.

 

[DSzymborski]

I have a B450 motherboard and I am wondering if it is worth to get a B550 one now because I would like the PCI 4 speed for the M.2 and GPU and other potential improvements without needing to upgrade most other things, or would it be better to wait a while more ans upgrade to the latest AM5?

If that's all you need it for, then wait. PCIE 4 really only matters at all in workstation applications. It won't make any GPUs faster for gaming and the faster storage won't make your normal Windows usage any faster except for benchmarks and those workstation needs.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I agree if you’ve already got a b450 board update to a zen 3 cpu if your board has a bios update to do so. I’m running an older b350 board. If it’s for gaming, stuff I’ve seen doesn’t suggest pci e 4 is a lot faster. I suppose storage might be faster but I don’t know if you’ll see a huge difference day to day unless you are looking at two machines side by side.

 

[feca1020]

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600X I think its enough for now, but do you think in a year or two will it be better to switch to AM5 or maybe a R 9 5000 series? Also the board is an Asus Prime B450M-A and how well would this be able to handle a higher end CPU or is it even worth staying here?

 

[DSzymborski]

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600X I think its enough for now, but do you think in a year or two will it be better to switch to AM5 or maybe a R 9? Also the board is an Asus Prime B450M-A and how well would this be able to handle a higher end CPU or is it even worth staying here?

Honestly, the best time to make this evaluation is in a year or two. Since you already have the hardware you'd be upgrading from or replacing, there's no real benefit for deciding what CPU/platform to replace it with in two years.

 

[feca1020]

Fair enough

 

[drea.drechsler]

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600X I think its enough for now, but do you think in a year or two will it be better to switch to AM5 or maybe a R 9 5000 series? Also the board is an Asus Prime B450M-A and how well would this be able to handle a higher end CPU or is it even worth staying here?

Honestly, the benefit I see that gen 5's bandwidth offers is the flexibility it can give motherboard designers. AM5 Motherboard prices are high in large part because of the strict technical requirements for high-bandwidth PCIe gen 5 data path routing. 8 lanes of gen 5 offers the same bandwidth as 16 lanes of gen 4 which even today gaming doesn't saturate either. So instead of forcing 16 lane GPU sockets on us wire them for 8 lanes only easing the data path routing problem significantly.

In the same way NVME's could be 2 lanes of Gen5 and provide the same underutilized performance as 4 lanes of Gen4 do now, further easing the data path routing problem and motherboard costs. By freeing up crowded space under and around the CPU socket this should also ease the design problem of routing the DDR5 data paths to memory which are also more demanding.

Taking an approach like this could be a way to offer lower priced motherboards without compromising actual gaming performance. Or alternatively designing motherboards supporting much higher device counts: multiple 8 lane GPU's, for instance, more expansion sockets, more NVME's, more USB gen 3+ to service those market segments that need them while still providing top-end gaming performance.

The main problem is changing the average computer user's mindset that high FPS gaming demands 16 lane GPU's and 4 lanes for NVME which it already doesn't with Gen4 and certainly would not with Gen5. This approach should allow fully performant low-mid and upper tier gaming boards at much reduced prices. But further, it also allows servicing the money-no-object crowd with full lane counts everywhere as they do currently so they can run the synthetic benchmarks to convince themselves the prices they pay are justified.