Question B550 future proofing

[LighterST]

Hey, just wanted to clarify - will this chipset's last line of AMD processors be the 5XXX series, Zen 3? If so, does this mean I'm buying a motherboard with no future CPU to upgrade it with without going over to the new chipset?

 

[logainofhades]

No future upgrade depends on what you start with. If you go with a 5600x, you can go up to a 5950x, in the future. It is believed that the next gen Ryzen will be on a new socket, using DDR5 ram. Intel is the same way, at this time.

 

[LighterST]

The thing is that I'm currently on B350 with 1600 and I'm not sure whether I should spend additional money on B550 to get 5600x or B450 will be enough. Or maybe even just upgrade to 3700x staying on B350 :/ Anyway, thank you for your answer!

 

[logainofhades]

I would go with B550, if going with a 5600x. You can take advantage of faster I/O, and PCI-E gen 4, for the top NVME drive. The 3700x would be a good jump, from a 1600, and in multithreaded tasks, the performance should be a bit better, even, at worst, vs a 5600x.

 

[drea.drechsler]

The thing's that I'm currently on B350 with 1600 and I'm not sure whether I should spend additional money on B550 to get 5600x or B450 will be enough. Or maybe even just upgrade to 3700x staying on B350 :/ Anyway, thank you for your answer!

There's not a whole lot of speculation on the Zen4 platform, at least not much beyond a new socket, DDR5 and PCIe gen 5. What all that means is the future is uncertain enough, and far enough off, that it's pointless to even consider the usual 'should i buy now...or wait til later' question. Right now more than ever, buy what's available and supports your requirements and don't look back.

Upgrading to a 3700X is certainly a possible way to improve performance a lot even on B350 without putting out a lot for the upgrade. But it depends a lot on what the motherboard is.

And memory too, although any memory upgrade considerations would apply equally if you move to a B450 or B550 motherboard. Ryzen 3000 benefits greatly from it's improved IMC that makes it pretty easy to get memory up to 3600. Even on B350, although not quite so reliably so you may have to settle for 3200. Which is still much better than the typical 2400-2666 most people with Ryzen 1st gen settled at.

 

[sizzling]

What do you use the pc for? What is it that you find your 1600 is not doing well enough?

 

[LighterST]

What do you use the pc for? What is it that you find your 1600 is not doing well enough?

Mainly for gaming. I have a 144hz monitor and gtx 1080, so r5 1600 is desperately not enough for the rig, especially for some older titles where all multithreaded benefits are lacking. I often find my card working at 50-80%

 

[sizzling]

Mainly for gaming. I have a 144hz monitor and gtx 1080, so r5 1600 is desperately not enough for the rig, especially for some older titles where all multithreaded benefits are lacking. I often find my card working at 50-80%

Ok. The 1600 has enough threads but it’s single core performance is lacking. What RAM do you have, RAM speed can have a material impact on FPS. If you want the highest possible FPS then the 5000 series is a better choice, the 5600x with less threads will outperform a 3700x. The GTX 1080 probably isn’t strong enough to take advantage of the 5600x but the 5600x should meet your needs for longer and possibly last for more gpu upgrades.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Mainly for gaming. I have a 144hz monitor and gtx 1080, so r5 1600 is desperately not enough for the rig, especially for some older titles where all multithreaded benefits are lacking. I often find my card working at 50-80%

I would suggest a 3600X on your current motherboard, 3700X's seem a bit easier to find. But it all depends...what's your motherboard?

But if you're settled for a B550 then by all means 5600X is the gaming choice.

 

[LighterST]

Ok. The 1600 has enough threads but it’s single core performance is lacking. What RAM do you have, RAM speed can have a material impact on FPS. If you want the highest possible FPS then the 5000 series is a better choice, the 5600x with less threads will outperform a 3700x. The GTX 1080 probably isn’t strong enough to take advantage of the 5600x but the 5600x should meet your needs for longer and possibly last for more gpu upgrades.

I have 2x8 3000 Mghz RAM with 15-17-17-35 timings (cmk16gx4m2b3000c15). In case of upgrading to 5600x, would you settle for B450 or go all the way to B550?

 

[LighterST]

I would suggest a 3600X on your current motherboard, 3700X's seem a bit easier to find. But it all depends...what's your motherboard?

It's ASUS PRIME B350-Plus

 

[drea.drechsler]

It's ASUS PRIME B350-Plus

I'd have no problems putting even a 3700X on that...but if you can find a 3600X for a few bucks cheaper it would be just as good as a gaming CPU.

But if you're committed to a full Monty then B550 with 5600X can't be beat for gaming...if you've the GPU to make it worth while, of course.

Forgot to add....don't overclock the 3700X on it. You could probably get away overclocking a 3600X, but there's rarely any point in it with Zen 2 and Zen 3 as it only gives a tiny bit of multi thread improvement and usually at the expense of single thread, important for gaming.

 

[LighterST]

I'd have no problems putting even a 3700X on that...but if you can find a 3600X for a few bucks cheaper it would be just as good as a gaming CPU.

But if you're committed to a full Monty then B550 with 5600X can't be beat for gaming...if you've the GPU to make it worth while, of course.

Well, my GTX 1080 would certainly not use 5600x to its full potential. But I would have some space for future GPU upgrades. Although I'm not sure how big of a difference would be between 3700x and 5600x when I have GTX 1080 on board :/

 

[drea.drechsler]

Well, my GTX 1080 would certainly not use 5600x to its full potential. But I would have some space for future GPU upgrades. Although I'm not sure how big of a difference would be between 3600x and 5600x when I have GTX 1080 on board :/

The e-sports gaming guru's would have more to say, but there are those who look for FPS and don't care about eye candy so it might make a difference at 720P, low settings when trying to match the refresh rate of a 144Hz (or faster) monitor.

 

[Deleted member 1560910]

There is no such thing as future proof

 

[sizzling]

I have 2x8 3000 Mghz RAM with 15-17-17-35 timings (cmk16gx4m2b3000c15). In case of upgrading to 5600x, would you settle for B450 or go all the way to B550?

The RAM ok. As for B450 versus B550 that is tough. For gaming there are zero benefits today from PCIe 4.0 for gpu or storage. It’s impossible to say how far in the future 4.0 might become beneficial and if any cpu out now would be strong enough to utilise those benefits. If it was me I’d probably go B550, the price difference is tiny compared to the cost of the pc.

 

[logainofhades]

B550 also gives you PCI-E 3.0, for the lanes connected to the chipset, vs the 2.0, of B450. That can affect storage speeds, if you run more than one Nvme drive.

 

[sizzling]

B550 also gives you PCI-E 3.0, for the lanes connected to the chipset, vs the 2.0, of B450. That can affect storage speeds, if you run more than one Nvme drive.

As the build is for gaming this doesn’t do anything today, maybe in the future. Today there is negligible difference between a good SATA drive and the fastest NVMe drives for games. If doing something that could take advantage of the extra speed then it could be useful.

 

[logainofhades]

Actually, I think with very large scale games, like those that take up 200GB+, an NVME can show an improvement in load times. No sense in hamstringing the system. B550 is more easily able to handle faster ram, than B450. B450 can kinda be hit and miss, on speeds above 3200, and 3600CL 16 is the price/performance sweet spot.

 

[TommyTwoTone66]

The idea that you buy a PC with the intention of upgrading the CPU later is very outdated. That hasn't really worked since around 2006 / 2007 where the performance increase between each CPU generation was still significant.

These days, each new CPU that intel or AMD puts out is only 5-10% faster than the last, so in order to get an actually worthwhile performance boost from upgrading, you have to wait 4 or 5 generations. Guess what, after 4 or 5 generations, you absolutely need a new motherboard anyway.

We really should stop thinking about "what are my upgrade options" for everything other than GPU, it's kind of silly.

All that matters is the system you have now. The system you have 2 years from now will be pretty much the exact same only with a better GPU and maybe more storage.

 

[logainofhades]

The idea that you buy a PC with the intention of upgrading the CPU later is very outdated. That hasn't really worked since around 2006 / 2007 where the performance increase between each CPU generation was still significant.

These days, each new CPU that intel or AMD puts out is only 5-10% faster than the last, so in order to get an actually worthwhile performance boost from upgrading, you have to wait 4 or 5 generations. Guess what, after 4 or 5 generations, you absolutely need a new motherboard anyway.

We really should stop thinking about "what are my upgrade options" for everything other than GPU, it's kind of silly.

All that matters is the system you have now. The system you have 2 years from now will be pretty much the exact same only with a better GPU and maybe more storage.

The 5-10% thing is a bit outdated information wise.

Zen2 to Zen3 was about a 19% increase, in IPC. Intel's 10th to 11th gen was a similar increase. Expectations are next gen will see similar results for Zen4 and Alder Lake. People still do CPU upgrades, to their existing system. That was the whole purpose of AM4 lasting so long. 1st gen ryzen owners upgrading to 3rd gen is quite common.

 

[sizzling]

Actually, I think with very large scale games, like those that take up 200GB+, an NVME can show an improvement in load times. No sense in hamstringing the system. B550 is more easily able to handle faster ram, than B450. B450 can kinda be hit and miss, on speeds above 3200, and 3600CL 16 is the price/performance sweet spot.

Id be interested in any benchmarks, I've seen nothing but a few seconds in the ones I have seen. Even the really heavy Flight Sim 2020 has negligible difference, here a 6 second difference on a 2 minute load time between SATA and NVMe

(1) Microsoft Flight Simulator M.2 NVMe vs SATA SSD vs HDD Game Loading Time and FPS Benchmarks - YouTube

 

[logainofhades]

MSFS 2020 is also 150gb game vs 250gb of something like Call of Duty: Warzone. 6 seconds can mean a lot in a competitive FPS game. NVME has become so cheap, there is 0 reason to buy SATA, unless you lack the needed slot to install one.

 

[drea.drechsler]

The idea that you buy a PC with the intention of upgrading the CPU later is very outdated. That hasn't really worked since around 2006 / 2007 where the performance increase between each CPU generation was still significant.
...

You must have been sleeping since 2017 and missed the entire development of the AM4 ecosystem. Buy a motherboard for a 1400 CPU...upgrade to a 2600X...then a 3700X. Coupled with memory upgrades along the way (from 2666 support to 2933 then 3200) to make it even nicer. But you were well advised to have gotten something 'future proofed', with decent VRM's and layout, or your upgrades will be dissappointing.

If you only entered upgrade train with the 400 series motherboards then it's nicer still: start with a 2600X, then a 3800X and end up with a whopping powerful 5900 or 5950X on the same motherboard. Those are upgrades, some more significant than others, but from a 2600x to a 5900x is a massive increase in performance, as is a 1400 to a 3700X, no matter how you cut it.

If you really want to look back into history then consider that future proofing has two aspects: hardware as well as software capabilities. The idea came about back in the wee early years of PC's when companies like AMD and Cyrix sold CPU's and interposers you could put in Intel socket motherboards after Intel had abandoned them to push their next generation. You could get fairly decent performance improvements, often times very close to Intel's best on the next, with old hardware (so long as you could manage the stability issues). So people would frequently want to buy new with an eye to what might be do-able when Intel abandoned another platform...they frequently called that 'future proof'.

Then there was the march of Windows and ever more demanding software: people wanted something that would not just run Windows 3.1, but Windows 5.0 so they wanted something 'future proofed'.

 

[LighterST]

You must have been sleeping since 2017 and missed the entire development of the AM4 ecosystem. Buy a motherboard for a 1400 CPU...upgrade to a 2600X...then a 3700X. Coupled with memory upgrades along the way (from 2666 support to 2933 then 3200) to make it even nicer. But you were well advised to have gotten something 'future proofed', with decent VRM's and layout, or your upgrades will be dissappointing.

If you only entered upgrade train with the 400 series motherboards then it's nicer still: start with a 2600X, then a 3800X and end up with a whopping powerful 5900 or 5950X on the same motherboard. Those are upgrades, some more significant than others, but from a 2600x to a 5900x is a massive increase in performance, as is a 1400 to a 3700X, no matter how you cut it.

If you really want to look back into history then consider that future proofing has two aspects: hardware as well as software capabilities. The idea came about back in the wee early years of PC's when companies like AMD and Cyrix sold CPU's and interposers you could put in Intel socket motherboards after Intel had abandoned them to push their next generation. You could get fairly decent performance improvements, often times very close to Intel's best on the next, with old hardware (so long as you could manage the stability issues). So people would frequently want to buy new with an eye to what might be do-able when Intel abandoned another platform...they frequently called that 'future proof'.

Then there was the march of Windows and ever more demanding software: people wanted something that would not just run Windows 3.1, but Windows 5.0 so they wanted something 'future proofed'.

Yeah, see, the whole upgrade train goes smoothly for the 300/400 series motherboard. But if you were switching over to the 500 series motherboard now, wouldn't the train for you come to a stop as if you were jumping aboard just one station before the last one?