[SOLVED] AMD's "future proof" design & motherboard questions

Hi there,

It's been AGES since I've been here. Have a question though. Now I'm an Intel fangirl so I'm familiar with Intels $$$/2 years but looking at AMD it looks more appealing. The idea of "future proofing" sounds neat. Get a motherboard with a X570 fancypants chipset and you're all set. Pair it with a Ryzen 9 3900x. Down the road, 4 years from now, pop a Ryzen 12 6900xx (double x) extreme with it's 200 cores in the motherboard. Sounds good right? So what's the catch? Besides the BIOS thing.

Does AMD change their socket every 5 years instead of Intels every 2 years or is AMD pretty solid on their design? Or, is AMD about to change their design like Intel does every 2 years?
How is AMD on their drivers? Typically I set it and forget it. If it works why break it?

Now not only am I an Intel fangirl but I'm also an Evga fangirl. They just know how to make solid products. Typically I get Evga motherboards. Evga doesn't make AMD motherboards though which is unfortunate. So who makes a good motherboard nowadays besides Evga ? Preferably something that has decent drivers. Nothing annoys me more than a vendor that doesn't know how to make their own products work.

I've been looking around but curious on actual experience from people. If you got time and would like to opine that would be cool.

Thanks!
 
Solution
I am very pleased with my B450 motherboard, but I have to say it that AM4 has not been all sweet and easy for upgrades. When it first came out for gen 1 Ryzen motherboard manufacturers really had very little idea what would be coming. As a result, most of the 300 series chipset boards pretty much were abandoned for users going to later CPU's. Not because they wouldn't work but because of limitations they had, whether perceived or real. So people bought 400-series board when they came out just to get the better features they provided, not for the socket support.

And even the 2nd generation AM4 boards (400 series chipset) had difficulties making the transition to 3rd generation CPU's as they all needed BIOS updates. If you didn't have...
I’ve run Intel in the past too.

AMD will be changing the socket but the current AM4 will be compatible with AMD’s 4000 series CPU’s releasing late this year.

The cpu you choose is relative to the resolution of you monitor.

The x570 is their first high end board. Do you need it? No but the B550’s being released in June should offer a better price point with PCIe 4.0 that may become relevant if Nvidia rumors pan out.

I upgraded from an x58 i7 960 to a 3800x, Asus TUF x570 and 2070S at 1440p. It’s a fantastic all around and gamin pc. Not one issue or regret.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Hi there,

It's been AGES since I've been here. Have a question though. Now I'm an Intel fangirl so I'm familiar with Intels $$$/2 years but looking at AMD it looks more appealing. The idea of "future proofing" sounds neat. Get a motherboard with a X570 fancypants chipset and you're all set. Pair it with a Ryzen 9 3900x. Down the road, 4 years from now, pop a Ryzen 12 6900xx (double x) extreme with it's 200 cores in the motherboard. Sounds good right? So what's the catch? Besides the BIOS thing.

Does AMD change their socket every 5 years instead of Intels every 2 years or is AMD pretty solid on their design? Or, is AMD about to change their design like Intel does every 2 years?
How is AMD on their drivers? Typically I set it and forget it. If it works why break it?

Now not only am I an Intel fangirl but I'm also an Evga fangirl. They just know how to make solid products. Typically I get Evga motherboards. Evga doesn't make AMD motherboards though which is unfortunate. So who makes a good motherboard nowadays besides Evga ? Preferably something that has decent drivers. Nothing annoys me more than a vendor that doesn't know how to make their own products work.

I've been looking around but curious on actual experience from people. If you got time and would like to opine that would be cool.

Thanks!

Yeah, for a long time, Intel and AMD both made it very easy to be an Intel fanboy/fangirl. The Ryzens, on the other hand, are far more appealing than the FX CPUs ever were and quite possibly even better than those fun Phenom II Blacks (great chips, but they didn't really battle Intel on the high-end).

I lean towards EVGA for GPUs because of their excellent customer service. For motherboards, MSI has had a lot of terrific AMD motherboards lately in their product stack. The MSI Tomahawks have become almost a standard recommendation for b450 motherboards.

Sadly, there will be a socket change so, the Ryzen 6000s at some point in the future will be on a new motherboard! AMD's made a good faith attempt to keep their current socket as long as possible, so I have no complaint about this.
 
I am very pleased with my B450 motherboard, but I have to say it that AM4 has not been all sweet and easy for upgrades. When it first came out for gen 1 Ryzen motherboard manufacturers really had very little idea what would be coming. As a result, most of the 300 series chipset boards pretty much were abandoned for users going to later CPU's. Not because they wouldn't work but because of limitations they had, whether perceived or real. So people bought 400-series board when they came out just to get the better features they provided, not for the socket support.

And even the 2nd generation AM4 boards (400 series chipset) had difficulties making the transition to 3rd generation CPU's as they all needed BIOS updates. If you didn't have an older CPU to do the upgrade, your newly purchased kit was useless.

There were countless methods (including AMD providing loaner CPU's) for overcoming that problem. But it raised huge amount of anxiety and drama during a product release that has it's own problems.

You have to see there's a logic to it: if you force everyone to buy a new motherboard to get a new socket which will automatically come with a supporting BIOS for the CPU the drama surrounding new releases are much smoother.

If just they wouldn't price gouge on the darn things. You can get extremely capable AM4 boards for very cheap, and overclock on every one (excepting ones with the A320 chipset).
 
Solution
Well right now I'm running a very laughable system. Everything needs an upgrade so I'm debating on what to do. This system was suppose to be temporary but life got in the way and made it more permanent. I can at least play world of warcraft at very minimal settings lol.

Core i3 8100
Evga Geforce 1050ti SC
Evga 370 FTW
16GB RAM

With everything needing an upgrade I figure maybe I could give AMD a try. Intel tends to be very expensive.
I could also upgrade the CPU but then I'd be investing into a dead system. The cost of a motherboard isn't very expensive compared to all the other parts.

I’ve run Intel in the past too.

AMD will be changing the socket but the current AM4 will be compatible with AMD’s 4000 series CPU’s releasing late this year.

The cpu you choose is relative to the resolution of you monitor.

The x570 is their first high end board. Do you need it? No but the B550’s being released in June should offer a better price point with PCIe 4.0 that may become relevant if Nvidia rumors pan out.

I upgraded from an x58 i7 960 to a 3800x, Asus TUF x570 and 2070S at 1440p. It’s a fantastic all around and gamin pc. Not one issue or regret.
 
Hi there!

Thought I'd share what I ended up doing :)

Did end up going with AMD.
  1. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, 16-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler
  2. MSI Meg X570 Unify Motherboard (AMD AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA 6GB/s, M.2, USB 3.2 Gen 2, Ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, ATX)
  3. Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 3200 - I run VMs using vmware workstation pro so I need the RAM. Actually I have a server but the RAM is filled up between Vmware vcenter, vsan, plus an Active Directory server.
  4. MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB GDRR6 256-Bit HDMI/DP Nvlink Twin-Frozr Turing Architecture Overclocked Graphics Card (RTX 2070 Super Gaming X)
Feel free to opine or critique the build :)

Kk,
Cya!
 
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DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Hi there!

Thought I'd share what I ended up doing :)

Did end up going with AMD.
  1. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, 16-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler
  2. MSI Meg X570 Unify Motherboard (AMD AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA 6GB/s, M.2, USB 3.2 Gen 2, Ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, ATX)
  3. Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 3200 - I run VMs using vmware workstation pro so I need the RAM. Actually I have a server but the RAM is filled up between Vmware vcenter, vsan, plus an Active Directory server.
  4. MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB GDRR6 256-Bit HDMI/DP Nvlink Twin-Frozr Turing Architecture Overclocked Graphics Card (RTX 2070 Super Gaming X)
Feel free to opine or critique the build :)

Kk,
Cya!

Nothing to complain about here! Though I reserve the right to be snobby about your power supply.

Also, you're the rare builder who actually has a need for lots of RAM. I'm guessing that you would have actually figured things out just fine without our help!
 
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Nothing to complain about here! Though I reserve the right to be snobby about your power supply.

Also, you're the rare builder who actually has a need for lots of RAM. I'm guessing that you would have actually figured things out just fine without our help!

Actually these responses were really helpful. Hearing about personal experiences were great. I'm not familiar with AMD at all. So that's what I was looking for. Your comment here "MSI has had a lot of terrific AMD motherboards lately in their product stack. " is why I chose MSI to begin with. Not familiar with MSI but never heard anything bad about them either. The reviews for the parts above were good too so here's hoping it works out. Couldn't have pulled the trigger otherwise. Went with the MSI video card because of the reviews and LEDs. For EVGA a lot of reviews had a common problem and that was a high twine from the video card and lots of plastic I guess. Plus that MSI video card is pretty cool lol.

This is what I have for power supply. OCZ-ZX850W It's old but should be fine.