News MSI CEO: Even Low-End AMD X570 Motherboards Will Be Expensive

[cryoburner]

I've also heard rumors that B550 wont' feature PCIe4.0. Is that still considered an accurate rumor?

Being a rumor, there's no guarantee of accuracy. : 3

Logically though, full PCIe 4.0 support is probably not yet a good fit for mid-range boards, at least when it comes to slots controlled by the chipset. It sounds like the feature is adding to both the cost of the X570 chipset and to the boards themselves, and for most people will be of little use for years to come. That doesn't sound like a feature you would see on boards targeting the $100 and below range.

It does seem probable that B550 would include 4.0 support for at least the first x16 slot though, and possibly for an NVMe slot. Those will use lanes provided by the CPU, so they won't be reliant on chipset support, so the boards can continue to use a less expensive chipset from ASMedia for additional 3.0 slots. That also means the chipset should require less power and in turn less cooling, and with the 4.0 slot(s) close to the CPU, the board may not need to be as resilient against interference either. A B550 board with 4.0 support on just those lanes probably wouldn't need to cost much more than a B450 board.

I really just want AMD to make a CPU that can hit 5 GHz or higher so I can chose either that or Intel for a gaming build.

Keep in mind that clock speeds are not everything. AMD actually released a CPU with 5GHz boost clocks almost 6 years ago, the FX-9590. Even first-gen Ryzen processors far outperform one of those despite having substantially lower clock rates though, since they can perform more instructions per clock. At least according to AMD, Ryzen 3000 should not only increase clock speeds a little, but more importantly boost IPC by around 15%. If that holds true in most real-world applications, then a 3000-series processor at 4.4 GHz would perform like a 2000-series processor clocked to over 5 GHz. And that could easily mean per-core performance that competes more directly with Intel's i7s.

 

[alextheblue]

Or is this an excuse by motherboard makers to bolster their bottom lines? After all, Intel boards just haven't seen selling.

That's probably a good bit of it right there. Another big factor is board complexity due to PCIe 4.0. The part where he mentioned chipset cost in particular made me snort, that smacks of deflection and finger-pointing. The chipset cost is a lesser factor... basically there are SOME real cost concerns but at the end of the day their profit margins on these boards are going to be a POOPLOAD higher, even on the "low-end" boards.

Maybe the B550 boards, whenever they show up, won't be so expensive. In the meantime there are 400 series boards if you don't need the upcoming megafast SSDs.

 

[CountMike]

If they don't outperform intel in gaming... 🙄

And if they do ??? Hell, top models from both sides are more than good enough for any gaming so few percent of better or worse benchmark scores do not matter. What matters most is performance for the price.

 

[Redneck5439]

AMD vendors seem to be overbuilding their X570 motherboards however I speculate its because they want their boards ready to support a R9 16 core 32 thread processor if AMD releases it anytime soon. The X570 motherboards are all sporting improved to greatly improved VRMs, and we don't know yet how much power the 12 core 24 thread 3900X will require, especially if overclocked. I think the new R7 line would be fine with 6 phase or even 4 phase VRMs but the 12 core may end up being handicapped if not on at least 6 phase, maybe 8 phase at a minumum. We just don't know the requirements of these new high core count processors and the 16 core 32 thread that is speculated would require even more.

Then there is PCIe 4.0 support. Its already been reported that PCIe 4.0 greatly increases the voltage through the chipset and heat is a big concern. This technology is in its very fist generation and improvements will doubtlessly be made, but in this fist generation we will just have to deal with excessive heat as a byproduct of higher voltage. Subsequent generations will doubtless require less voltage and run cooler which will mean less aggressive on board cooling and will reduce the cost of future boards.

In PCIe 4.0's first generation X570 boards may indeed be as expensive as high end Intel boards, however once Intel releases PCIe 4.0 their boards will probably also have a price increase making AMD's boards the cheaper option again. The prices will probably eventually show AMD to still be a good value but we have to keep in mind that this is the first time in history that AMD has beaten Intel in releasing the next gen technologies of both a newer process and PCIe 4.0. The board vendors have responded by making the X570 a premium option because they are now superior in many ways to anything that Intel has.

 

[Gillerer]

Honestly, even if all that B550 brought was guaranteed Ryzen 3000 support out of the box I think it'd be a good idea to release it. Nobody likes gambling on whether their new mobo has a recent enough BIOS to support their CPU.

AMD is doing the board partners a big favor by having the B series motherboards come later.

Many enthusiasts, given the choice and seeing the prices of these offerings, would opt to go for a reasonably priced B550 mobo, as long as it had "good enough" VRM and VRM cooling.

I think some motherboard manufacturer would make a killing if they released a X570 with all the bells and whistles and used PCIe3.0 instead of PCIe4.0 and all the expensive components it requires. I think the computer users might thank manufacturers for not having to worry about tiny fan failures, just for a feature that many can probably live without.

Cue "Why does my motherboard not work at PCIe 4 speeds even though Ryzen 3000 and X570 were supposed to support it?"

AMD would never allow such a motherboard to be advertised as X570, or use the chipset.

There are guidelines that AMD will have set. OEMs will not deviate from those.

 

[Redneck5439]

If they don't outperform intel in gaming... 🙄

To be honest I think its a toss up if the R9 3900X will outperform the 9900K in gaming as we just don't know if the two chiplet design will have a latency penalty like the Threadripper parts suffer. I know that AMD has made improvements to its Infinity Fabric so we will have to see if the latency issue still presists.

It may end up being that the bigger "gaming battle" comes down to the R7 3800X vs the i9 9900KS. Early reports seem to suggest that AMD only needs to hit 4.4Ghz to equal the 9900K @ 5Ghz (all core) but we will just have to see how things play out. I personally expect the new 3800X to edge out the 9900KS in gaming but have a greater advantage in productivity tasks. If this is the case then the 3800X be the go to processor for high end gamers who also want better content creation. The new 3800X will also have greater efficiency and doubtless require less extreme cooling. I expect AMD to take the "gaming crown" at least until Intel releases 10nm high end desktop processors then we will have to see where the chips fall yet again.

 

[Redneck5439]

I think some motherboard manufacturer would make a killing if they released a X570 with all the bells and whistles and used PCIe3.0 instead of PCIe4.0 and all the expensive components it requires. I think the computer users might thank manufacturers for not having to worry about tiny fan failures, just for a feature that many can probably live without.

You have that option right now- just buy an Asus Crosshair Hero VII or Asrock X470 Taichi Ultimate. Both of those boards support big VRMs and PCIe 3.0. They are basically X570 boards with PCIe 3.0... If your waiting for AMD to approve of a X570 board without PCIe 4.0, its not going to happen.

 

[Redneck5439]

I really just want AMD to make a CPU that can hit 5 GHz or higher so I can chose either that or Intel for a gaming build. This PCIe 4.0 seems to be making everything expensive and complicated, when I would prefer to put that extra money into a better graphics card, not the CPU and mobo.

We don't know the overclocking capabilities of the new Zen 2 processors yet, however early reports and leaks seem to suggest that Zen 2 @ 4.4Ghz is the equal of the 9900K @ 5Ghz all core in Cinebench. This doesn't mean that the same will hold for gaming, but does suggest that AMD may not have to hit the same clock speed to have the same performance, which being 7nm vs 14nm would make sense.

 

[mahone7]

To be honest I think its a toss up if the R9 3900X will outperform the 9900K in gaming as we just don't know if the two chiplet design will have a latency penalty like the Threadripper parts suffer. I know that AMD has made improvements to its Infinity Fabric so we will have to see if the latency issue still presists.

It may end up being that the bigger "gaming battle" comes down to the R7 3800X vs the i9 9900KS. Early reports seem to suggest that AMD only needs to hit 4.4Ghz to equal the 9900K @ 5Ghz (all core) but we will just have to see how things play out. I personally expect the new 3800X to edge out the 9900KS in gaming but have a greater advantage in productivity tasks. If this is the case then the 3800X be the go to processor for high end gamers who also want better content creation. The new 3800X will also have greater efficiency and doubtless require less extreme cooling. I expect AMD to take the "gaming crown" at least until Intel releases 10nm high end desktop processors then we will have to see where the chips fall yet again.

Looking at the latest leaked geekbench scores - R5 3600 @ 4.2ghz using 3000mhz ram only equals single core score of 8700k @ 4.2ghz while being a bit better in multi. Looks like they're again playing the catch up game like they did with Vega🙄

 

[alextheblue]

I think the computer users might thank manufacturers for not having to worry about tiny fan failures, just for a feature that many can probably live without.

Modern small fans running at low speeds will probably outlast the rest of your rig.

I really just want AMD to make a CPU that can hit 5 GHz or higher so I can chose either that or Intel for a gaming build.

Why? Frequency doesn't mean much by itself. An unlocked next-gen hexacore for $200, that's got my interest. Don't need 8+ cores for gaming yet.

 

[alextheblue]

geekbench

Oh man it can "play" Geekbench as good as an 8700K? Nice! So uh, yeah we'll get some actual gaming benchmarks in a little while. I'll be pretty impressed if a $200 AMD chip can do that well!!

 

[hannibal]

The X570 motherboards are all sporting improved to greatly improved VRMs, and we don't know yet how much power the 12 core 24 thread 3900X will require, especially if overclocked. I think the new R7 line would be fine with 6 phase or even 4 phase VRMs but the 12 core may end up being handicapped if not on at least 6 phase, maybe 8 phase at a minumum. .

If the board makers Are right, the 16 core will eat 300w when extremely owerclocked with water. That would mean that 8 core would eat abou 150w and 12 core 225 w. It does not go exactly this easily, but this is a cruel estimation.
And even 16 core does not need 16 phases, 8 phases would do. They just did make most x570 hugely owerkill build! The pci 4.0 is real problem. You really need more money to make that work. So it is possible that 550 will be pci 3.0 only. If it is not, then 470 boards may be much better investement than 550 boards... for the bang for the buck vice.
The good 470 can owerclock even 16 core cpu just fine. You just miss the pci 4.0!

 

[Redneck5439]

If the board makers Are right, the 16 core will eat 300w when extremely owerclocked with water. That would mean that 8 core would eat abou 150w and 12 core 225 w. It does not go exactly this easily, but this is a cruel estimation.
And even 16 core does not need 16 phases, 8 phases would do. They just did make most x570 hugely owerkill build! The pci 4.0 is real problem. You really need more money to make that work. So it is possible that 550 will be pci 3.0 only. If it is not, then 470 boards may be much better investement than 550 boards... for the bang for the buck vice.
The good 470 can owerclock even 16 core cpu just fine. You just miss the pci 4.0!

I hope that you are right, as PCIe 4.0 right now really isn't worth it on its own. The new M.2 SSDs (that use 4.0) will be expensive and I can already foresee some "teething issues" like corruption of data that usually happens with brand new technology in its fist generation. As far as GPUs go it will be well into 2020, more likely 2021 till we see high end GPUs really utilizing PCIe 4.0. The current extreme end RTX GPUs opted to have PCIe 3.0 controllers and aside from the "Super" refresh I can't see Nvidia releasing a new arch till at least the end of 2020. PCIe 4.0 in this generation will be an extreme enthusiasts niche.

If the new R9 3900X doesn't suffer from an unforeseen latency penalty in gaming I'm hoping to upgrade to it with my ROG Strix X470-F motherboard. It has 6+2+2 phase VRMs and I'm hoping it can handle the new 12 core 24 thread R9. If not then I'll still be happy with the 15% IPC gain and increased frequency of the R7 3800X over my current 2700X. I'll make a new build for my mother with the 2700X as its too good of a processor to just go to pasture, the kids will be glad to be able to run their favorite programs when visiting grandma.

 

[Redneck5439]

Looking at the latest leaked geekbench scores - R5 3600 @ 4.2ghz using 3000mhz ram only equals single core score of 8700k @ 4.2ghz while being a bit better in multi. Looks like they're again playing the catch up game like they did with Vega🙄

It's really hard to speculate anything at this early stage. All we have is "leaks" which could be real or fake, and even if real could be an engineering sample without final tweaks, or even worse an engineering sample with the RAM set very loose. Ryzen doesn't perform worth a crap with loose timings/ sub-timings on the RAM. Tightening up the timings/ sub-timings and increasing the RAM frequency has a big effect on Ryzen's performance due to the Infinity Fabric interconnect.

I suspect that Zen 2 willl have better performance that that when we finally get independent reviews. Heck my R7 2700X scores 2020 in Cinebench R15 @ 4.35Ghz and we know the new Ryzen has a 13 - 15% IPC advantage over that. I think that the Zen 2 line will take the "performance crown" at least until Intel gets the mainstream desktop 10nm on the market. I can see AMD and Intel going back and forth for a while- ie Zen 2 tops Intel 14nm, Intel's 10nm tops Zen 2, Zen 2+ tops Intel.... ect, ect, ect... If this happens it will be good for everyone as neither company can just sit on their hands with >5% IPC gains in a generation and actually have to innovate. It should also help to keep costs down as there will be real competition.

 

[bit_user]

Never overplay your hand.

True, but they also gotta get paid.

When they're offering a premium product, it'd be bad business not to sell it at a healthy profit. They just need to be sure that the price/performance ratio is still good. As soon as Intel leap-frogs them, again, they'll have to resort to price cutting, like they usually do.

No matter what, I trust them to offer their products at a fair price. As long as that's true, people might grumble but it shouldn't cost them much business.

 

[bit_user]

I would love if AMD motherboards supported raid 6.

If you're using mechanical disks, software RAID is plenty fast. Even for SSDs, it should be pretty good.

 

[SteveRNG]

Edit: @SteveRNG actually, where do you see that feature for the Strix X470-F? I only see it listed for the Crosshair VII.

I'm sorry. It looks like I got confused when I went to verify that the first time. It looks like it does not. Sorry about that!

 

[tennis2]

It does seem probable that B550 would include 4.0 support for at least the first x16 slot though, and possibly for an NVMe slot

That sounds perfect! That's all that 90% of users NEED anyway.

 

[alextheblue]

The pci 4.0 is real problem. You really need more money to make that work. So it is possible that 550 will be pci 3.0 only. If it is not, then 470 boards may be much better investement than 550 boards... for the bang for the buck vice.
The good 470 can owerclock even 16 core cpu just fine. You just miss the pci 4.0!

You could build a board with a 400 chipset right now that supports PCIe 4.0 on the first couple full size lanes and the primary NVMe slot no problem... since they're all fed by the CPU. A hypothetical ASMedia B550-based board will likely support PCIe 4.0 at least for the CPU-chipset lanes, which honestly would be more than adequate for a consumer board. I mean even without that, the 20 direct 4.0 lanes and 4 direct USB 3.2 Gen 2 off the CPU gives Zen 2 a big I/O advantage over Intel's platform... but having more bandwidth to the chipset would still be a boon.

 

[derekullo]

If you're using mechanical disks, software RAID is plenty fast. Even for SSDs, it should be pretty good.

To my knowledge Windows only supports up to RAID5 with its software raid.

AMD motherboards only support RAID 0, 1 and 10 with hardware raid.

I've seen countless articles saying that; RAID5 is bad, Don't use RAID5, Raid 5 is for 3,2,1 your data is gone.

If AMD supported RAID6 on the high end x590 motherboards or even Threadripper then it would be one more feature AMD has that Intel doesn't.

I am considering a RAID10 with the Ryzen 3900x when it arrives, but would have much rathered a RAID6.

A RAID6 with 6 - 10 terabyte WD Gold is 40 terabytes usable with 2 drive failure resilience.

A RAID10 with 6 - 10 terabytes is 30 terabytes usable with 3 drive failure resilience as long as each failure is on a different array. (2 failures on the same array is a broken raid10)

 

[bit_user]

To my knowledge Windows only supports up to RAID5 with its software raid.

My only experience with SW RAID is on Linux, where it runs fine on a lowly dual-core Phenom II.

I've seen countless articles saying that; RAID5 is bad, Don't use RAID5, Raid 5 is for 3,2,1 your data is gone.

Yeah, I wouldn't use it on more than about 4 disks. Also, ensure that you either do regular scrubbing or have got patrol scrub enabled. Otherwise, you could suffer from bit rot that goes undetected until you attempt a rebuild.

I am considering a RAID10 with the Ryzen 3900x when it arrives, but would have much rathered a RAID6.

Agreed. As you say, with RAID 10, there are 2-disk failures that could kill the array, whereas RAID 6 can handle any two disks failing.

You could do what I did - build a budget Linux-based fileserver with software RAID 6. I recommend getting a cheap Ryzen 3 ($65, last I checked!), unbuffered ECC RAM, and a mobo that supports it. The budget Intel option is to do the same with an i3 (otherwise, you have to use an E-series Xeon). Either way, the most expensive part will probably be the motherboard, since the cheaper models don't support ECC.

Here's all the 14 nm dual & quad -core Intel CPUs that support ECC memory:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...x=4&3_Lithography-Min=14&3_Lithography-Max=14​

The only downside with the Ryzen option is that you'll have to use a dGPU. Hopefully, you've got an old one lying around. Except for the Pro variants, AMD's APUs don't support ECC. And you cannot buy the Pro chips, except inside a pre-built system.
: (

Update: Here's an interesting AM4 server board with onboard graphics (also remote management controller):

ASRock Rack > X470D4U2-2T

www.asrockrack.com