News Incoming AMD A620 Chipset Looks to Fulfill $125 Motherboard Pledge

[Jeffyj6700]

I have built every PC I have owned going back to K6-2. (I was on Amiga and Apple before that). I have never ever replaced a CPU that didn't fail. I typically upgrade a GPU mid-life for my PCs, but the price of a socket compatible CPU upgrade is always a minimal increase for a hefty price. A socket being EOL is irrelevant for almost everybody.

The jump from a 1800X to a 5800X3D is astronomical, and would be akin to upgrading from a 4770k to a 12900k in one go, especially in gaming. AM5 will see 2 more die shrinks to 3nm, a complete ground up architecture rework with 25% rumoured IPC improvements and almost certainly 32 core variants even if support ends 2025. All things equal, why would anyone prefer a dead end socket? Supporting sockets for only 2 generations is an anti consumer practice that should be called out for, especially if there is no other reason for the physical socket change. Changing one pin just to ensure incompatibility just pisses me off (i.e the 1150/1151 or 1155/1156)

 

[-Fran-]

I'll believe it when they have the boards on shelves consistently under $150 for the A620.

Also, I wonder what they'll take away from these... I hope they don't remove too much compared to B650. At least keep EXPO/XMP support and PBO. Then again, given how much higher the floor is, they should keep OC'ing in full and just allow OEMs/AIBs to use lesser VRMs to support up to 142W socket power (105W TDP) and keep costs low on both VRMs, power delivery and all that.

Then just make it PCIe4.0 for everything else, but with at least full lanes from the CPU and chipset like the higher chipsets.

Regards.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Considering most of the VRMs on B650 and higher boards are overkill even for a 7950x, these A620 boards can save a lot of money by bringing down that side of the MOBO to earth. There's no need for VRM and storage heatsinks so rip them off as well, add to that the little things like no IO shield, clr CMOS, BIOS flashback WiFi chip etc...

 

[gggplaya]

Unfortunately, this move by AMD can only address half of the issue.

The worst part of the pricing problems AMD are suffering with Zen 4 comes from DDR5 memory. Due to it being so new and, at this point, overly expensive almost everywhere.

This is not much an issue on the high end. If you are willing to spend thousands of dollars, it doesn't mater that much to spend a couple hundred more for DDR5 memory.

But in the mid/low end, where the Ryzen 5 and this new A620 chipset is expected to live, the difference from going DDR4 or DDR5 is, as of today, a killer, as the premium you must pay for DDR 5 can easily go instead to a beefier processor on Intel side which still support DDR4 on their latest Raptor Lake CPUs.

This is not true anymore. You can buy 32GB(2x16GB) sticks for <$100 now. That's not bad at all. Granted that's 4800mhz, so you won't get optimal ryzen 7000 performance, but it's still much faster than typical DDR4 ram.

I paid more than that for 16GB DDR4 when I built my Ryzen Zen 1 system back in 2017. Considering DDR5 is less than DDR4 prices in 2017, and considering inflation. The price of DDR5 is excellent.

 

[thisisaname]

Cheaper but far from cheap.

 

[lmcnabney]

The jump from a 1800X to a 5800X3D is astronomical, and would be akin to upgrading from a 4770k to a 12900k in one go, especially in gaming. AM5 will see 2 more die shrinks to 3nm, a complete ground up architecture rework with 25% rumoured IPC improvements and almost certainly 32 core variants even if support ends 2025. All things equal, why would anyone prefer a dead end socket? Supporting sockets for only 2 generations is an anti consumer practice that should be called out for, especially if there is no other reason for the physical socket change. Changing one pin just to ensure incompatibility just pisses me off (i.e the 1150/1151 or 1155/1156)

Can't just upgrade the CPU. The RAM from that 1800X build is going to be pretty slow - almost certainly not 3600 CL16. Odds are even that 1800X is GPU locked at 4K so spending $350 on a 5800X3D and $150 on fast DDR4 would be better spent adding $500 to the GPU.

And no, not even close to 4770K to 12900K. I'm writing this on a 4670K. There is also a fair likelihood that the benefits of 3D cache will diminish. Has anyone seen how the UE5 games perform on those chips?

 

[-Fran-]

Can't just upgrade the CPU. The RAM from that 1800X build is going to be pretty slow - almost certainly not 3600 CL16. Odds are even that 1800X is GPU locked at 4K so spending $350 on a 5800X3D and $150 on fast DDR4 would be better spent adding $500 to the GPU.

And no, not even close to 4770K to 12900K. I'm writing this on a 4670K. There is also a fair likelihood that the benefits of 3D cache will diminish. Has anyone seen how the UE5 games perform on those chips?

Nope. That assessment is pretty much on point.

I think you're still looking at your i5 through rose coloured glasses. Not saying it's not enough for you, but don't kid yourself. Any CPU from past 2020 will blow it out of the water on any metric.

And you do not need faster RAM from what you'd originally have used for a 1800X (3200MT/s) in order to have great performance with the 5800X3D. I can say that very confidently from having a 2700X, 3800XT and a 5900X with 3200MT/s using a Smasung B-die. In fact, that's the whole point of the extra L3 cache: it hides the memory latency (up to a point) when and where it matters.

Regards.

 

[lmcnabney]

Nope. That assessment is pretty much on point.

No it isn't.

Moving from an a 4770K to a 12900K is a 480% performance improvement while going from 1800X to 5800X3D doesn't even double the performance. I know that my 4th gen is old and outdated. Going from the first Zen to the first with 3D cache isn't even close to the improvement as going from 4th to 12th gen on Intel.

 

[King_V]

Can't just upgrade the CPU. The RAM from that 1800X build is going to be pretty slow - almost certainly not 3600 CL16. Odds are even that 1800X is GPU locked at 4K so spending $350 on a 5800X3D and $150 on fast DDR4 would be better spent adding $500 to the GPU.

Assuming there is actually a significant performance gain from upgrading whatever RAM was with the 1800X to 3600MHz, and assuming that it must be CL16 instead of CL18 (why? How much are you losing with CL18?), then in what universe do you have to spend $150 to get 3600 CL16 DDR4?

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#Z=32768002&S=3600,8000&L=25,160&sort=price&page=1

I'm seeing a half dozen options, of known name brands, from $100 to $115.

Is there something to be said for a better GPU? Maybe. But you don't know what games are being played, what monitor resolution and refresh rate, detail settings, etc., are involved, or what sort of productivity work that @Jeffyj6700 might be dealing with in the example given.

I suspect the jump from 1800X to 5800X3D is not quite as much as the analogy of Haswell to Alder Lake, but it's still a very big leap.

 

[-Fran-]

No it isn't.

Moving from an a 4770K to a 12900K is a 480% performance improvement while going from 1800X to 5800X3D doesn't even double the performance. I know that my 4th gen is old and outdated. Going from the first Zen to the first with 3D cache isn't even close to the improvement as going from 4th to 12th gen on Intel.

Uh...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRykaeQonUw


It's over 2x the performance on games (because some are FPS capped or hit a GPU bottleneck), so the analogy is not far off the actual truth if you only look at games, which I'd imagine is not an unfair thing to say. As long as you can make use of the cache, more generally speaking, the 5800X3D runs around in circles on pretty much anything else on the market at the time.

When you talk more general things, where we all know the 5800X3D is not the best of the gen for, then you're correct. That is why I got a 5900X instead of it for my main PC, since that for the same price it made more sense to get the extra cores in my use case. I do have the 5800X3D for VR in another PC though.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NltosQfxrtg


Regards.

 

[kerberos_20]

Can't just upgrade the CPU. The RAM from that 1800X build is going to be pretty slow - almost certainly not 3600 CL16

ive got 3200cl14 with 1600x build, ram still kickin fine at 3600 cl 16 with zen2
you know that ram can be overclocked, right?

 

[bit_user]

But there's still no reason to choose Socket AM5 over Socket AM4 for pretty much anyone, that's Socket AM5's biggest issue. Games are GPU limited, especially at high resolutions and detail levels, and Zen 3 is 4k60+ chips. Applications may run faster on AM5, but how many consumers need the potential 20% faster than Zen 4 that they would invest hundreds into a Socket AM5 system?

Um, wut? First, a lot of machines aren't used for gaming. And wherever did you get that 20% figure?

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-5-7600x-cpu-review/8

By my math, the 7950X (stock) is a whopping 43.4% faster than the 5950X (stock). That's quite literally a huge difference, especially for gen-on-gen performance and with the same core count!!
​

And here's an aggregate application score, from the same article:

Again, comparing stock 7950X to stock 5950X, that's a 45.5% speedup! And for a launch price that's lower than its predecessor's (which launched at $799)! In this day and age!
​

Back in the sad, old days of Intel's quad-core era, we'd only see generational improvements around 1/10th of that!!

My, what a spoiled lot we've become.
: (

 

[bit_user]

Heh, I always said PCIe 5.0 would come at a high cost.

Crippled crap from AMD - AGAIN! When will they ever learn?

Most of it isn't really important, though. Nobody needs PCIe 5.0. I'll admit the chipset link being downgraded to PCIe 3.0 hurts a little, but they aren't bad compromises for an entry-level board.

what is the point of getting a new system if you end up with no PCI Gen 5,

Because then you can run a fast CPU like 7600X. Nobody needs PCIe 5.0, especially not at the low-end.

I wonder what they'll take away from these... I hope they don't remove too much compared to B650. At least keep EXPO/XMP support and PBO.

I've heard they're keeping memory overclocking but not PBO.

 

[bit_user]

I have never ever replaced a CPU that didn't fail.

That's either because:

• you can afford to buy the best CPUs available at the time
• you simply don't have CPU-intensive workloads
• you use Intel platforms that change every 2 years anyway
• you're thinking mostly of a time when we'd get single-digit % generational improvements

If you consider someone who can afford only a low or mid-range CPU (or simply can't justify paying for a faster model, initially), then it makes a lot of sense to upgrade to a higher-tier model only a few generations later.

Also, there's what I said above, regarding the slow pace of generational improvements for much of the past decade. We never saw things like 45% generational improvements between the launch of Core 2 and Alder Lake or Zen 4.

 

[bit_user]

Moving from an a 4770K to a 12900K is a 480% performance improvement while going from 1800X to 5800X3D doesn't even double the performance.

It is approximately double the multithreaded performance. I didn't find a direct comparison between those two models, but I found this comparison between 2700X and 5800X3D:

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2907?vs=2671​

However, it's weird that you picked a 4-core and 16-core Intel CPU, and on the other hand you're holding AMD at 8-cores. Moreover, with a stat like 480%, you're definitely looking at just multithreaded performance and not gaming. In that case, an analogous comparison would be between the 1800X and 5950X. Again, I didn't find such a comparison, but I did find this comparison between the 2700X and 5950X:

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2673?vs=2671​

The 5950X achieved a 2.3x speedup in SPEC2017 nT Geomean Total.

According to this article, the 1800X got a Cinebench R15 MT score of 1628:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1117...review-a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700/18​

By comparison, the 5950X is 2.67x as fast.

Going from the first Zen to the first with 3D cache isn't even close to the improvement as going from 4th to 12th gen on Intel.

Finally, I can't ignore how you're comparing Intel CPUs over an 8-year span with AMD CPUs over a 3.5-year span. We must acknowledge that AMD's rate of improvement was far higher than Intel's.

 

[King_V]

I have built every PC I have owned going back to K6-2...
but the price of a socket compatible CPU upgrade is always a minimal increase for a hefty price. A socket being EOL is irrelevant for almost everybody.

That's outright false and you know it.
Or you SHOULD know it... Did you forget that the K6-2 was socket 7?

Are you trying to claim that someone running a Pentium 133, then eventually being able to swap in a K6-2 or K6-3 at 400-500 MHz isn't going to see much of a performance increase?

Are you trying to claim that those of us who had, oh, say, a 1600AF Ryzen didn't have much to gain from upgrading to a 5600?


It really, REALLY sounds like you're trying to shill for Intel, and insisting that dead-end platforms, by design with Intel, aren't something to worry about.

 

[lmcnabney]

ive got 3200cl14 with 1600x build, ram still kickin fine at 3600 cl 16 with zen2
you know that ram can be overclocked, right?

We aren't talking about overclocking. We are talking about straight replacement of fully functioning CPUs which is exceptionally rare. It still happens just like some people buy the top of the line GPU every single year.

 

[kerberos_20]

We aren't talking about overclocking. We are talking about straight replacement of fully functioning CPUs which is exceptionally rare. It still happens just like some people buy the top of the line GPU every single year.

not talking about overclocking, but youre suggesting replacing ram with factory overclocked 3600 cl16

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I remember buying an MSI B350 PC Mate, a fully ATX b series board for like $65 new.

$125 for a series is absurd.

 

[King_V]

We aren't talking about overclocking. We are talking about straight replacement of fully functioning CPUs which is exceptionally rare. It still happens just like some people buy the top of the line GPU every single year.

If you're talking about a straight replacement of a fully functioning CPU (which is NOT exceptionally rare), then don't talk about having to buy faster RAM, and then inflating the cost of that RAM.

And nobody buys a top of the line GPU every year because a new top of the line GPU does not come out every year.

 

[lmcnabney]

If you're talking about a straight replacement of a fully functioning CPU (which is NOT exceptionally rare), then don't talk about having to buy faster RAM, and then inflating the cost of that RAM.

And nobody buys a top of the line GPU every year because a new top of the line GPU does not come out every year.

A lot has changed since Zen 1. If you bought the first gen you would be running DDR4 -2666. You would also NOT have PCIe4 (or 5 as found on AM5). Putting a 5800X3D in this would be a waste. You would never be able to get the same experience as you would putting it into a board that came with Zen3 so don't compare what 5800X3D is capable of if you think anyone is going to put one into a first generation AM4 board.

Tons of people are getting new cards as often as every year. A buddy and I bought our 1080s at the same time (on sale for $500 in 2017). Since then he has bought a 2080ti, 3080, 3080ti, 3090, and finally a 4090 last fall. Six cards in five years. The benefits of no spouse or kids. These are the jokers that are keeping GPU prices so high. I'm still running the 1080. He also built new PCs too - he has a 13700 now which replaced 5900X.

 

[bit_user]

Tons of people are getting new cards as often as every year. A buddy and I bought our 1080s at the same time (on sale for $500 in 2017). Since then he has bought a 2080ti, 3080, 3080ti, 3090, and finally a 4090 last fall. Six cards in five years.

I think your buddy is either a hardware addict or a framerate junky. Nothing really wrong with that, as long as he can still meet his financial obligations. But, you really can't argue that it's either the norm or a cost-effective upgrade strategy.

The only way it's even sane is if he was into crypto mining or some other secondary use for them (AI, etc.), or if he was somehow a virtuoso at playing the GPU market dynamics.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

3080, 3080ti, 3090

For real? This is not a good upgrade strategy in any way at all. More just splurging on a 10% avg increase on the previous model. Doesn't make sense.

General consensus is to upgrade by at least 2 gen to feel any real difference. Yes, the 3090 over the 3080 would be a big increase. Still, it just doesn't justify that spending on so little a bump. Of course they can sell the weaker card to offset the cost....

 

[bit_user]

General consensus is to upgrade by at least 2 gen to feel any real difference. Yes, the 3090 over the 3080 would be a big increase.

I'd usually say either 2 generations @ the same tier, or one generation + one or more tiers. So, like a 3070 -> 4080. I guess like 3070 -> 3090 would also be a worthwhile upgrade, if you were really hurting for performance.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

I'd usually say either 2 generations @ the same tier, or one generation + one or more tiers. So, like a 3070 -> 4080. I guess like 3070 -> 3090 would also be a worthwhile upgrade, if you were really hurting for performance.

Yeah, that's as good a measure that can be.