AMD's AM4 Ryzen Chipsets

[IInuyasha74]

Ryzen is here, and with it comes a new generation of motherboard chipsets from AMD. Let's compare their features more closely.

AMD's AM4 Ryzen Chipsets : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Compared to when my 890FX board was new (back in the Phenom II days), it's hard not to be disappointed with this.

the chipset provides a total of 38 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_800_chipset_series#890FX

 

[joz]

wow, even their chipset naming is designed to compare to Intel's. Wow.

 

[Guest]

Ryzen chipset plain sucks. AMD had a good thing with Phenom and all these years they should have been working on improving that Architecture.

 

[burtman88]

what's with the pci x 2.0 slots ? taking a step backwards...

 

[Yandex63]

I have to laugh whenever something new comes out on the market and everybody thinks it has to be perfect yesterday. (typical snowflake attitudes) This launch is no different then any other that's occurred. Intel had all sorts of issues when the new CPUs and chipsets were released.... as with anything "computer", it takes a bit of time for the ecosystem to develop and everything to get "tweaked". 1/2 the cost for roughly the same performance as Intel? Nuff said.

 

[Giroro]

I wonder what the real cost to AMD is to manufacture a low end vs high end chipset? Having a low end X series and the A series just seems unnecessary at this point.

Why not simplify things down to the X370 and B350 with the built-in ryzen interfaces handing the "essential"category?

 

[IInuyasha74]

[quotemsg=19375784,0,1886042]I wonder what the real cost to AMD is to manufacture a low end vs high end chipset? Having a low end X series and the A series just seems unnecessary at this point.

Why not simplify things down to the X370 and B350 with the built-in ryzen interfaces handing the "essential"category?[/quotemsg]

Typically anymore a company makes one real chipset and then disables features to extend it across the line. This way they can take advantage of slightly defective dies. For example all of Intel's 100-series chipsets use the same physical die but with features disabled.

I haven't checked with AMD yet to see if they are doing this as well, but it is likely they are. It would be more expensive to create an entirely separate die for the A320 chipset than to just use defective X370 chipsets. As for why not to just cut A320 out completely, if they have dies that are too defective to work as B350 chipsets, it is more economical for AMD to simply sell them as a lower cost SKU than to toss them in the trash.

We haven't actually seen any A320 boards really make an appearance on the market, so I have doubts that A320 is really intended for the current Ryzen CPU. Although it is compatible with Ryzen, it will probably mostly be used by system builders on a tight budget using low-end Ryzen-based CPUs or APUs.

 

[Tithulta]

I was waiting and waiting only to be left in a quandary. To Ryzen or to lower cost Intel. So I just decided to wait some more. It's not like my system is on its last legs to begin with.

 

[James Mason]

oh boy more sata express ports that you can't use because sata express devices do not exist.

 

[ravewulf]

It can be slightly confusing, but don't forget that the PCIe lanes, SATA ports, and USB ports are split between the CPU and chipset. So to get the totals of those you need to add what the CPU or APU provides to what the chipset provides. Different CPU/APU ranges paired with different chipsets will give you different totals.

 

[LOWteck]

IInuyasha74 "AMD's AM4 chipsets also do not support RAID 5. This feature is crucial for users who need to store lots of data securely, and its absence could hamper AMD’s AM4 sales to small businesses."

NOPE.

Use Raid1 or Raid10 or
Google Raid5 URE if you really care about avoiding loss of data from single disk failures...

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=19376562,0,1536795]oh boy more sata express ports that you can't use because sata express devices do not exist.[/quotemsg]They also work as SATA connectors. IMO, all the SATA connectors should just be SATA Express. Then you could get some SATA Express drives and mount them in a drive bay. Or, just use them for SATA drives.

 

[IInuyasha74]

[quotemsg=19375678,0,516853]what's with the pci x 2.0 slots ? taking a step backwards...[/quotemsg]

[quotemsg=19376927,0,328798][quotemsg=19376562,0,1536795]oh boy more sata express ports that you can't use because sata express devices do not exist.[/quotemsg]They also work as SATA connectors. IMO, all the SATA connectors should just be SATA Express. Then you could get some SATA Express drives and mount them in a drive bay. Or, just use them for SATA drives.[/quotemsg]

That's the unfortunate problem, though. SATA Express drives never made it to market, and since they have a larger footprint and the physical connector takes up more space on the motherboard than M.2, they probably never will. I'm honestly surprised AMD didn't just mark them all as SATA-III ports.

 

[karakarga]

According to Wikipedi:

990FX Chpset: Four physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slots @ x8 electrical which can be combined to create two PCIe 2.0×16 slots @ x16 electrical, one PCIe 2.0×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 38 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge

X370: 1x16 or 2x8 + [Unusable (No product by vendors) SATA Express] + [Still 6 x SATA-III (6Gbps) Ports like at being 990FX chipset]

Ha Ha Haaaa, like a baby toy, not for enthusiast classs!

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=19377403,0,290408][Unusable (No product by vendors) SATA Express] + [Still 6 x SATA-III (6Gbps) Ports like at being 990FX chipset][/quotemsg]Like we were saying, you can use SATA Express ports like normal SATA. So, it should be like 8x SATA 3.

Anyway, I'm one of the rare few to have actually used 8x SATA ports. I used 5x for RAID-6, 1x for boot SSD, 1x for home+var+tmp+swap drive, and 1x for optical drive. That was on my Phenom II system, actually. It had a JMicron SATA 2 controller, for 2x additional ports. In the future, I'd only go with 4x RAID drives and I'd consolidate the boot/OS and write-oriented drive. I still put optical drives in every PC I've built. Whenever I've tried to leave one out, I end up needing it for something.

 

[firefoxx04]

CAN YOU PLEASE STOP PUTTING VIDEOS UP AND PLAYING THEM BY DEFAULT!

 

[IInuyasha74]

[quotemsg=19377617,0,328798][quotemsg=19377403,0,290408][Unusable (No product by vendors) SATA Express] + [Still 6 x SATA-III (6Gbps) Ports like at being 990FX chipset][/quotemsg]Like we were saying, you can use SATA Express ports like normal SATA. So, it should be like 8x SATA 3.

Anyway, I'm one of the rare few to have actually used 8x SATA ports. I used 5x for RAID-6, 1x for boot SSD, 1x for home+var+tmp+swap drive, and 1x for optical drive. That was on my Phenom II system, actually. It had a JMicron SATA 2 controller, for 2x additional ports. In the future, I'd only go with 4x RAID drives and I'd consolidate the boot/OS and write-oriented drive. I still put optical drives in every PC I've built. Whenever I've tried to leave one out, I end up needing it for something.[/quotemsg]

10 actually. X370 has two SATA Express connections, which break out into two SATA-III each. Then it can have two more from the CPU. So it is one of the most capable boards in terms of SATA connection option.

Another note on the PCI-E connectivity, the older AM3+ CPUs did not have PCI-E lanes. So to be fair, you would have to compare the total PCI-E lanes for the entire platform. For AM4 with a Ryzen 7 CPU, there are 16 @ 3.0 (for GPU) + 4 @ 3.0 (total designated for NVMe that can be used for other purposes) + 8 @ 2.0 (from chipset). 28 total lanes is still less than the AM4's predecessors, but the difference isn't quite as significant if you examine it that way. Plus, 20 lanes have been upgraded to 3.0 speeds, which more than makes up for it.

 

[jimmyEatWord]

Basically only 3 chipsets , expert X , intermediate and amateur , more straightforward than intel if i'm asked

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=19377967,0,1312467]So to be fair, you would have to compare the total PCI-E lanes for the entire platform. For AM4 with a Ryzen 7 CPU, there are 16 @ 3.0 (for GPU) + 4 @ 3.0 (total designated for NVMe that can be used for other purposes) + 8 @ 2.0 (from chipset). 28 total lanes is still less than the AM4's predecessors, but the difference isn't quite as significant if you examine it that way. Plus, 20 lanes have been upgraded to 3.0 speeds, which more than makes up for it.[/quotemsg]I see your point, but what interests me most is PCIe from the CPU. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think AM4 supports 20 PCIe 3 lanes from the CPU + the x4 link to the chipset. I believe that's how Wikipedia arrives at 24 PCIe 3 lanes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM4

If you compare that to LGA 1151 (Skylake, Kaby Lake), it has 16 PCIe 3 lanes + the DMI 3 (x4 PCIe 3) link to the chipset. So, to be fair, it does seem like AM4 beats Intel's desktop offerings, in this area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151

However, it falls well short of the i7-6900k's 40x CPU-direct PCIe 3 lanes. And even a bit short of i7-6800k's 28x PCIe 3 lanes. And it's this segment which AMD really seems to be trying to put Ryzen 7 up against, whenever possible. BTW, if you count the chipset (DMI 3) link, I think these totals grow to 44 and 32 lanes, respectively.

http://ark.intel.com/products/94196/Intel-Core-i7-6900K-Processor-20M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/94189/Intel-Core-i7-6800K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

So, putting aside past AMD platforms, and looking only at current offerings, its I/O connectivity is much closer to LGA 1151 than LGA 2011 v3.

Now, I have a LGA 2011 (Sandybridge-E) and I'm looking towards my next upgrade. I've been very intrigued by Intel's Purley platform (LGA 3647), but it's looking like that's going to be restricted to server applications.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xeon-skylake-purley-3d-xpoint,32891.html

If you examine the picture, you can see x36 PCIe lanes. This matches the spec on the Xeon Phi 7290:

http://ark.intel.com/products/95830/Intel-Xeon-Phi-Processor-7290-16GB-1_50-GHz-72-core

For us mere mortals, it looks like this will be the high-end option (with possibly the same 40x and 28x options of LGA 2011 v3 ...and 16x, for Kaby-X???):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_2066

 

[mapesdhs]

[quotemsg=19377673,0,211300]CAN YOU PLEASE STOP PUTTING VIDEOS UP AND PLAYING THEM BY DEFAULT![/quotemsg]

Hear hear! It keeps blocking the article text, navigation menus, etc.

Ian.

 

[IInuyasha74]

@bit_user: Yup correct on all fronts. There are another 4 PCI-E 3.0 lanes in the CPU that connect to the chipset, I just left those off because they can only be used for that one purpose. Either way, Ryzen really doesn't quite match up to X99 in terms of connectivity.

It does compare well with Z270 and Z170 though. Z270 has 28 lanes max, but drops 6 of those for SATA-III, up to 10 for USB 3.0, and one for LAN. So that gives Z270 just 11 lanes if all of those are used, whereas X370 has 12. So they are rather close.

 

[DerekA_C]

I want full 16x 3.0 for a power hungry GPU and it to fully utilize those 16 lanes @ 3.0 unlike current offerings still don't truly use all 16 lanes to full potential, shoot GPU's had a hard time utilizing all 16x @ 2.0. For nvm-e once 10Tb becomes an option and affordable who needs SATA i mean really, so that would be one hell of a system leaving room for usb 3.0 crap and usb 2.0 crap that could be blue-toothed like mice and keyboards.I want 10Gb to 100Gb connections as well, I want to future proof my house for another 7 years ish. Already in the process of replacing cat5e wiring with Cat7 with a nice media center hub in the center of my house. Then I need my ISP to catch up for crap sake.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus

just for anyone who wants to dispute my claims of not using full 16x 3.0 lanes for crying out loud even a 1080 uses in reality only 8x lanes at 3.0 lanes.

 

[LORD_ORION]

I would wait until Black Friday 2017... price competition will heat up.
Intel will cut prices, AMD will undercut them.

If you are really patient, you'll wait for Intel to release a next gen chip. Bloomfield blew AMD out of the water. For certain Intel has been letting AMD catch up because they don't want AMD to go out of business and have the Anti-trust goon squad ramming them in the rear every chance they get.

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=19385710,0,2428111]http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus

just for anyone who wants to dispute my claims of not using full 16x 3.0 lanes for crying out loud even a 1080 uses in reality only 8x lanes at 3.0 lanes.[/quotemsg]I will dispute your claims, because they didn't cover VR. Speed is about more than just throughput - latency also matters! The higher the bandwidth, the less time it takes the copy to complete = lower latency.

There's another point, as well. Games are designed around lower-spec systems. Once the world migrates to PCIe 4.0 and graphics memory continues to grow, will we see better games? Who can say? But I know they'll be able to copy game assets to the GPU that are 2x as big in the same time.

So, one could argue that by coming out with a new platform that'll be around for a few years and wihch continues to keep most dual-GPU users at x8, they might start to hold back the state of the art.