AMD X570 vs. Intel Z390 Chipset: Which Mainstream Platform Is Better?

[Admin]

We’ve pitted AMD’s X470 chipset against Intel’s Z390 in the past. Now that AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs have arrived, alongside a new X570, it’s time for a chipset rematch.

AMD X570 vs. Intel Z390 Chipset: Which Mainstream Platform Is Better? : Read more

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

I'm so baffled how you can possibly give I/O as a tie when AMD has PCIE 4.0, even if many storage devices aren't on that standard yet. Also I think affordability should be a tie? Yes there are 99$ z390 boards, but those are garbage in comparison. Yes you COULD put an 9900k in them, but good luck with those VRMs. Meanwhile, the cheapest x570 VRMs could handle a stock r9 3900x no problem. Just because x570 on average is higher priced doesn't mean they lose out on value. Price to PERFORMANCE is better or about the same on x570. I will concur that the average COST might be higher, but features and performance relative to price is the same (perhaps even better on x570). I would give the win to x570 on I/O and a tie on affordability. In fact, I don't even think labeling these as mainstream is correct. X570 and Z390 are enthusiast platforms. Mainstream would be B450 (B550 when it comes out), and H370/B360.

 

[redgarl]

This site is continuing into the downward spiral of death. Another meaningless and biased analysis. Keep going toms, everybody left your site already. The health of the comment section is telling everything.

 

[rolli59]

What a stupid article!

 

[mitch074]

I find funny that motherboard availability is used in both CPU and chipset comparisons - especially since it was rather skewed toward Intel in the former (not taking into account previous generation chipsets, not considering lower tier platforms) to give team blue two wins when it deserved a single one - and a loss.

This article, by itself, is good though.

 

[Xajel]

It's all good till I saw the IO tie thing!!

PCIe 4.0 isn't doing a thing now and we have to wait? Have you heard of anything called future proofing? next gen GPU's will surly have PCIe 4.0 and while we don't get any benefit from this move is really questionable. I agree with that, but PCIe 4.0 storage are already here, even though the first gen. are not native PCIe 4.0 but they do bring the good. The PCIe 4.0 also brought the additional IO benefits for the chipset and all other slots and IO. The extra IO and flexibility came because of PCIe 4.0 and you tell is it's a tie !!

Guess what, you can now have a platform that will give you PCIe 4.0 that a future product will make use of, which will make you have a better system which can handle future products with ease and not being bottlenecked by it after 1 or 2 years!

 

[vailr]

Minor omission noted: a simple Crystal Disk Mark comparison test of read/write speed of AMD 570 (& 470) vs. Intel Z390 chipset boards, when using a "best in class" PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, such as the Samsung 970 Pro. The opinion of some reviews have indicated that Intel may still have the better numbers.

 

[AeroWB]

Wow Joe, you really need to fix this article.
A tie on I/O, really? I guess you were so baffled by the question whether PCIe 4.0 is an advantage or not you were missing the other important differences.
So forget about PCIe 4.0 for now and lets have another look at those diagrams, I will lead you through the pictures so you can't go wrong again.

First look at Intel, the CPU has 2 DDR4 memory channels and 20 PCIe lanes (remember that DMI 3.0 is just a x4 PCIe 3.0 link)

Now look at AMD where the CPU has also 2 DDR4 memory channels but 24 PCIe lanes and 4 USB 3.2 ports. So AMD has 4 extra PCI-e lanes and 4 USB 3.2 ports on the CPU. This is very relevant as all IO devices like PCIe SSD's or other PCIe cards, SATA devices, USB devices etc all need to communicate with the memory (with DMA) or the CPU itself (no DMA).

So with the Intel platform all SSD's, network and other PCIe cards, USB and SATA devices will need to communicate over that single DMI 3.0 bus (which is essentially a 4x PCIe 3.0 bus) I am assuming that the full x16 PCIe 3.0 port is used for graphics, which is what you would want for a high end graphics machine.
Now compare AMD, with AMD we can connect one NVMe SSD directly to the x4 PCIe port on the CPU and therefore bypass the busy link to the chipset. Also we have 4 USB 3 ports that bypass this.

So even without PCI 4.0 AMD has an advantage on Intel in IO. With PCIe 4.0 even when not using the PCIe 4.0 bandwidth for graphics there is a good advantage, because the bandwidth to the chipset also doubles. Which is important because the can be a lot of IO connected to this chipset.

Just for fun look at the Intel chipset again. The chipset supports 24 lanes of PCIe 3.0, 6 SATA ports, 16 USB 3 ports and 14 USB 2 ports a 1Gbps network adapter and some other stuff. Now for those who don't know, this looks impressive. Until you realize all this has to go over that x4 PCIe 3.0 lane to the CPU. They did name it DMI 3.0 for a reason, so people don't realize the bottleneck this is.

One last thing. Benchmarks with fast SSD's won't show AMD's advantage here until very fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD's are used. Benchmarks are always done with a single load on the system, so here that tiny DMI 3.0 bus won't saturate and everything looks fine. Now load up that machine with real life stuff, where you work on one thing while your downloading something in the background, writing to an USB drive, etc. Now add all these things up and your fast NVMe SSD will have a speedbrake applied to it due to the DMI 3.0 saturation.

So its clear I/O is a BIG WIN for AMD here. (The fact that Intel has more USB 2.0 ports and 2 more SATA ports is irrelevant and useful only for legacy stuff!)

 

[systemBuilder_49]

If you include the B450 motherboards that support PCIe 4.0 for as little as $99 and which can handle 12-core CPUs, I think AMD would win by a mile!

 

[randomizer]

Have you heard of anything called future proofing?

PCIe 4.0 is so late that it's debatable whether it's future proof anyway. Bring on PCIe 5.0!

 

[DavidDisciple]

AMD IS the clear I/O winner here!!! It has more PCIe lanes than Intel with PCIe 4.0. Are you guys afraid of losing followers by giving a win to AMD????? You are going to lose followers anyway if you don't give reviews that give credit where credit is due and for you to say "PCIe 4.0 is so late that it's debatable whether it's future proof anyway. Bring on PCIe 5.0! " What a way to bypass the truth that AMD has something Intel does not!!!! How about this......there are no PCIe 5.0 boards out yet to even prove it exists or is going to exist. You are trying to use an argument from silence. You as a Moderator should go with the 'actual existing hardware and interfaces' , not what does not yet exist.

 

[AeroWB]

PCIe 4.0 is so late that it's debatable whether it's future proof anyway. Bring on PCIe 5.0!

Wow, the moderators are just as bad as the article writers.
If you don't have anything true and useful to say its better to not say anything.

In fact your comment is in conflict with the article, but just as bad.
The article says that PCIe 4.0 has no merit yet as even a GTX2080 Ti is not saturating a PCI 3.0 x16 bus.
PCIe 4.0 might get an advantage in the future when we have more powerful cards to put in the X570 systems but not yet. So the article says that PCIe 4.0 is here before we need it, that is almost the definition of future proof. If PCIe 4.0 is not even needed at this moment, then PCIe 5.0 is not needed for many years to come.

P.S. Joe, you still need to fix your article dude!

 

[Jim90]

Well Tom's, par for the course...eh? Lying - so blatantly - in order to appeal to your Intel paymasters. Shocking, truly shocking.