News AMD Ryzen 9 7900, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 5 7600 Review: Zen 4 Gets More Affordable

[salgado18]

The thing about long-term support and upgradeability is that a user with an old quad-core system (Sandy Bridge f.ex.) could get a decent AM5 motherboard ($230), then save on 16gb of DDR5 ($85) and a Ryzen 7600 ($229), for a total of $545. Let's call that year one.

Year two you change the stock cooler for a powerful one ($150) and 64gb DDR5 ($300 for a good kit, hopefully cheaper than today), total $450. Year three you get a Ryzen 9900X3D for maybe $450, and just slot it into the motherboard (update bios, obviously).

If you do this with Intel today, it means you would get an i5-13400 with a bad cooler, then you would have to upgrade in the future to an i9-13900k, which will be a lot slower than the Ryzens of two years forward. Either that, or swap the motherboard for another added cost, and if you went DDR4 now that mid-term upgrade wouldn't happen, or you'd lose it on the swap.

"But nobody does that, people buy whole systems" well I did, got an X570 with a Ryzen 3600, swapped the cooler, upgraded ram, and then changed to a 5900X. Best PC investment I've ever made.

If companies buy stuff expecting long-term support for better cost-benefits, why should we settle for programmed obsolescence? I want my money to be well spent down the road, and upgradeability is essential for that.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Dr. Lisa Su said it herself. There are several articles quoting her. Here's one - https://dotesports.com/hardware/news/amds-new-am5-platform-will-be-supported-for-as-long-as-am4


5800X3D, released April 2022, puts the AM4 lifespan at 5 years 7 months. You need to count to the end of the 5K chips release.


That's not a quote from an AMD representative, as far as I can tell.

In general I'm going to disagree with counting until the last SKU come out, because AMD (and Intel) will dribble out SKUs with slightly tweaked frequency/power for months or years after the initial release, that don't really offer anything that the original release didn't. E.g. the 5700X coming out 1.5 years after the main Ryzen 5K release. I'll admit that the 5800X3D was different, in that it did offer something noticeably different than the rest of Ryzen 5K. Even then, they launched one chip, based on the same microarch, a year and a half later. A chip that performed no better (or worse) than the original chips, except in gaming. That is a far cry from being supported by an additional CPU gen.

Not to mention there was a period where it looked like Ryzen 5K chips (the originals, nevermind the 5800X3D) weren't going to be supported on either 1st or 2nd gen AM4 mobos (or such support was only at the mobo manufacturer's discretion). AMD only changed their tune after considerable backlash, and it looks like it still took over a year from Ryzen 5K's release before it was officially supported on 1st gen boards.

Regarding statements on AM4 longevity, even if that wasn't a direct quote from AMD it was widely reported, it's not like Arstechnica just made it up. Here's another article later in the year: https://www.techpowerup.com/239343/...ryzen-pinnacle-ridge-confirmed-to-support-am4

In the interview, AMD representative James Prior confirmed that the company plans to keep AM4 its mainstream-desktop processor socket all the way up to 2020

 

[-Fran-]

In general I'm going to disagree with counting until the last SKU come out, because AMD (and Intel) will dribble out SKUs with slightly tweaked frequency/power for months or years after the initial release, that don't really offer anything that the original release didn't. I'll admit that the 5800X3D was different, in that it did offer something noticeably different than the rest of Ryzen 5K. Even then, they launched one chip, based on the same microarch, a year and a half later. A chip that performed no better (or worse) as the original chips in most regards other than gaming, That is a far cry from being supported by an additional CPU gen.

Not to mention there was a period where it looked like Ryzen 5K chips (the originals, nevermind the 5800X3D) weren't going to be supported on either 1st or 2nd gen AM4 mobos (or such support was only at the mobo manufacturer's discretion). AMD only changed their tune after considerable backlash, and it looks like it still took over a year from Ryzen 5K's release before it was officially supported on 1st gen boards.

That doesn't make much sense. The 5800X3D could be considered a Zen3-refresh and I'd argue it qualifies as its own thing, given how disruptive it was when launched. By that token, what do you call the Skylake siblings? That is Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Comet Lake. Architecturally, they were the same. Each gen just sucked more power and added a few more cores. Other than that, nothing much else that I remember? Maybe a better IMC and higher JEDEC speeds? The 5800X3D adds cache and I believe it did require a BIOS update to lock some stuff in it, but that's it. More or less the same as Intel, except Intel forced everyone to also upgrade the platform alongside the CPU.

And AMD made a mistake (and they did it again) when talking about socket instead of chipset. What they support are not the sockets, but the chipsets. That is why they had to go back and support the 300-series motherboards, because execs always put their foot (and then some more) in their mouths when trying to sound "technical".

Regards.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

why should we settle for programmed obsolescence?

Planned obsolescence is related to products that are specifically designed to break or become unusable over time.

That's not what is going on with motherboards. Motherboards become obsolete so fast due to technological advancements.

Motherboards are evolving rapidly nowadays. Much faster than in the past now that feeding data to those multicore CPU and GPU has increasingly become the bottleneck.

-USB 3.1 gen 2
-USB-C
-PCIe 5.0
-DDR5
-Ethernet 10Gbit/s

That's all new stuff you can't find on an average mobo even 2 years ago.

PCIe 6.0, DDR6 and USB 4.0 specs are already finalized.

There is no such thing as a "future proof" motherboard in 2023.

If you were using a 5-year-old entry level mobo today, you would have old USB 2.0 ports, no USB-C, PCIe 3.0, you wouldn't have TLP2.0 to run Windows 11 etc.

Motherboards are simply not very future proof, because of all the technology tied to them. They're not like a CPU or GPU.

Motherboards in 5 years will likely look very different. I imagine most USB connections will be USB-C because of ease-of-use, regulations forcing companies to use common charging connections, etc. That's not planned obsolescence, that's technological advancements.

If motherboards barely evolved and CPU makers purposely broke compatibility for every CPU generation, I would fully support your argument, it would be planned obsolescence. But that's not what is going on.

 

[-Fran-]

If motherboards barely evolved and CPU makers purposely broke compatibility for every CPU generation, I would fully support your argument, it would be planned obsolescence. But that's not what is going on.

Overall I don't disagree with your argument, but this last tidbit is what Intel did after Ivy* Bridge under the "but we need to" excuse when it was demonstrated for some of those generations it worked fine. See the Z290 and Z390 kerfuffle. That was honestly embarrassing. Technologically speaking, they only introduced DDR4 support in one generation and then NVMes, but if you look at the motherboards since 2012 up until 2019, they did not change majorly or in a significant enough way to say "yeah, totally justified to make people pay full price for an upgrade".

Regards.

 

[Brian D Smith]

"Overall, AMD has superior power consumption, efficiency, and thermal output, so you'll end up with a cooler and quieter system of you opt for Ryzen 7000. " - from the article.

So...could you give a good idea of what kind of cooling one would need? I mean at 65W is a nice big CPU cooler okay for extended max use...like for a few hours? How about at 80 W or whatever the next level was?

Oh, and if price is not a problem, why not get the 'x' version and use Zen Master to run at the lower wattage...is there a difference other than price?
Its the need for watercooling that is keeping much of these processors from becoming 'mainstream'...so it's all very relevant to those readers.