News AMD's Mid-Range B650/B650E Platforms for Zen 4 Coming in October

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Kind of wish AMD, Intel and Nvidia would cut back on marketing pre-pre-pre-announcement of product launches (not necessarily availability) in favor of lowered prices or packing more value per dollar.

I suppose there isn't much else they can do when the majority of their target audience already has PCs 2-3X more powerful than needed for most everyday needs, got to play the FOMO card with big marketing campaign to get more people to upgrade prematurely despite rising costs and diminishing real-world benefits.
 

lmcnabney

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Not having a DDR4 option is going to kick AMD right in the midrange market. If the recommended DDR5 is 6000 with a latency of at least 32 it is going to add at least $170 compared to equivalent speed DDR4 for a 32GB set.
That means Intel is going to be able to offer a better value proposition. AMD will need to cut $100 or more across the board (or offer a memory bundle at DDR4 prices) to be competitive.
This will be demonstrated in obvious charts on a hundred websites (including Tom's) once the embargo is ended for Zen4 and Raptor Lake. The decision to go all-in on DDR5 is going to hurt.
 

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Not having a DDR4 option is going to kick AMD right in the midrange market. If the recommended DDR5 is 6000 with a latency of at least 32 it is going to add at least $170 compared to equivalent speed DDR4 for a 32GB set.
Although prices have improved, I doubt the 'midrange' market can be bothered with anything much faster than 5200-36 or 5600-38 at the moment as that is the point where the number of affordable options drops drastically. 6000-32 is far too deep into enthusiast territory to be called mid-range.
 
I remember when am4 came out, you could get a ryzen 3 for about 99 dollars, when I bought my Asrock ab350 pro 4 board, it was about 70-80 dollars.

High end is fine but they also shouldn’t leave out budget buyers. I’ve usually purchased amd in the past but honestly if I were building with a low budget an i3 12100 with a budget board is a pretty decent value.
 
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lmcnabney

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Although prices have improved, I doubt the 'midrange' market can be bothered with anything much faster than 5200-36 or 5600-38 at the moment as that is the point where the number of affordable options drops drastically. 6000-32 is far too deep into enthusiast territory to be called mid-range.

Which is a mistake. AMD already revealed that 6000 is the necessary speed because of the infinity fabric which I believe runs at a 3000 cycle. Anything not at a multiple is going to stagger the cycle and waste clocks.
 

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Which is a mistake. AMD already revealed that 6000 is the necessary speed because of the infinity fabric which I believe runs at a 3000 cycle. Anything not at a multiple is going to stagger the cycle and waste clocks.
Based on the Raphael leaks, it seems Zen 4 fabric clocks are still in the 1600-2000MHz range.

Also, even if maximum fabric clocks do go up to 3000 from 2000, remember that they aren't set in stone and just because the maximum is 3000, you don't have to run it at maximum possible. If you insist on running 1:1 mem:fabric at 5600MT/s, you can still run the fabric clock at 2800MHz instead. You don't have to pay almost twice as much for memory beyond 5600-36 for 0-10% more performance.
 
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wifiburger

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Which is a mistake. AMD already revealed that 6000 is the necessary speed because of the infinity fabric which I believe runs at a 3000 cycle. Anything not at a multiple is going to stagger the cycle and waste clocks.

1733 is stock and goes up to 2000IF when ddr5 6000 is used

You won't get IF to 3000Mhz. Zen4 IF links are doubled now for bandwidth support to ddr5.

So you have 2 IF links x 32bits each to the ccd; so your OC chances to 3000Mhz is very slim to none.

Especially on 12,16 cores with 4 IF links going through the cpu PCB; there's no way you're pushing 3Ghz stable.
 

lmcnabney

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Based on the Raphael leaks, it seems Zen 4 fabric clocks are still in the 1600-2000MHz range.

Also, even if maximum fabric clocks do go up to 3000 from 2000, remember that they aren't set in stone and just because the maximum is 3000, you don't have to run it at maximum possible. If you insist on running 1:1 mem:fabric at 5600MT/s, you can still run the fabric clock at 2800MHz instead. You don't have to pay almost twice as much for memory beyond 5600-36 for 0-10% more performance.

That sounds like a great plan. Buy a current-gen board and UNDERclock it. Just take ~15% off of the potential speed of Zen 4 chips. Save the money on DDR5 by making your system slower than Zen 3. Yeah, you can do that.

There is amazing value to be had in AM4 boxed processors. AMD continues to compete on both price and performance when one "bundles and saves"

Yes they do. Their AM4 options will beat Intel's 11th generation, but lose to their 12th. Currently Intel's i5-11400 beats the 5600 on both price ($20) and performance (3%ish). Should 5600 be cut down to $150?
 

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That sounds like a great plan. Buy a current-gen board and UNDERclock it. Just take ~15% off of the potential speed of Zen 4 chips. Save the money on DDR5 by making your system slower than Zen 3. Yeah, you can do that.
Besides straight-up memory benchmarks, a 10% difference in fabric+memory clocks only makes a 1-3% difference in most games and applications on Zen 3 beyond DDR4-3000 and Zen 4 is supposed to decouple memory clock from everything else even more than Zen 3.
 

lmcnabney

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Besides straight-up memory benchmarks, a 10% difference in fabric+memory clocks only makes a 1-3% difference in most games and applications on Zen 3 beyond DDR4-3000 and Zen 4 is supposed to decouple memory clock from everything else even more than Zen 3.

It isn't just memory. DDR5 under 6000 will downclock the Infinity Fabric to align. That means everything is clocked-down. Every benchmark released has been on 6000. There will eventually be testing showing the impact of different RAM speeds on performance using the same CPU. We all remember the black-eye that Alder Lake got trying to run slow DDR5...
 

TJ Hooker

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It isn't just memory. DDR5 under 6000 will downclock the Infinity Fabric to align. That means everything is clocked-down. Every benchmark released has been on 6000. There will eventually be testing showing the impact of different RAM speeds on performance using the same CPU. We all remember the black-eye that Alder Lake got trying to run slow DDR5...
Default FCLK is 1733 MHz for Ryzen 7K. Default memory speed is 5200 MT/s. According to Robert Hallock it's no longer important to maintain an 1:1 FCLK:UCLK ratio for Zen 4 (which makes sense given that they won't be running 1:1 at default speeds), and OCing FCLK to 2+GHz isn't likely to make much difference. I haven't seen anything to indicate that an FCLK of 3 GHz (required to run 1:1 at 6000 MT/s DDR5) is even realistic in the first place.

And if FCLK is no longer tightly couple to UCLK, then your statement that running DDR5 slower than 6000 MT/s will automatically downclock the IF and 'everything else' is incorrect.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-confirms-ddr5-6000-ram-is-the-sweet-spot-for-ryzen-7000-cpus
 

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We all remember the black-eye that Alder Lake got trying to run slow DDR5...
What black eye? Besides synthetic memory benchmarks, there isn't too much of a performance penalty between slightly above-average DDR4 and top-of-the-line DDR5. Where DDR5 gets a black eye is the atrocious latency on entry-level kits. It isn't Alder Lake's fault that 4800-40 is 6ns (60%) worse access latency than today's bog-standard 3200-16 or 3600-18.
 

Math Geek

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I just wanna say a giant FU to Intel for naming their chipsets to match what AMD was clearly going to do with am5.

hard enough to keep up with all the ____lake names coming out every week so i got no idea what cpu is what anymore. now they have to make sure i can't even tell if it is an intel or AMD mobo without making my brain smoke.
 
Oh well. I’ve got a new to me 5900x that just arrived in the mail today to install. Putting that in my trusty old b350 board that updated for 5000 series. If all goes well this should hold up a couple of years or so, or at least until prices drop a bit.