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

[PaulAlcorn]

We heard from MSI CEO Charles Chiang and others at Computex that AMD's third-gen Ryzen CPUs are going to bring higher-priced motherboards along with them.

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

 

[digitalgriffin]

This is dangerous territory.

The home brew market is where AMD is making inroads because they are delivering value after Intel has screwed over enthusiast for years. Corporate and PC Vendor (ie: Dell) uptake has been much slower.

AMD's growth is based on a is a grass roots/groundswell sentiment. To kick the primary reasons for their growth to the curb is "risky." Fan bases can be fickle, and this could bite them in the tail.

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

Never overplay your hand.

 

[TJ Hooker]

This is unfortunate given that there's been no news about B550 boards being available any time soon. Myself and others have been recommending to a lot of people who are planning builds soon that they wait for the Ryzen 3K release. But if the cheapest boards available for the foreseeable future might be 150-200+ USD that'll turn a lot of people off.

 

[derekullo]

I would love if AMD motherboards supported raid 6.

 

[husker]

Overall prices look to increase in the short term, but I would think that Intel based motherboards are going to have the same cost pressures (such PCIe 4.0 support) so I don't expect much change in the relative differences in pricing out AMD system vs. Intel.

 

[tennis2]

B450 was released....3-5 months after X470. I'd expect a similar roll-out with B550. With X570 purportedly costing so much though, it seems foolish on AMD's part to hold back B550 unless this is a stall tactic to allow better yields / more supply capacity to evolve for Ryzen 3000.

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

Backward compatibility be damned. Unless consumers are upgrading, I don't care to play the "is the BIOS flashed to support the newest CPU" lottery when buying a new mobo+CPU.

 

[AnimeMania]

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.

 

[TJ Hooker]

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.

PCIe version is largely a function of the CPU and chipset, neither of which are made by the motherboard manufacturers.

 

[hotaru251]

if performance is within 10% on intel and pricing is similar to intel or higher....this may harm their fanbase in long run.

i guess the saying goes...."You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain"

also they could make low end sku with 3.0 and not 4.0 (since tbh...not many ppl WILL benefit from it)

 

[salgado18]

B450 was released....3-5 months after X470. I'd expect a similar roll-out with B550. With X570 purportedly costing so much though, it seems foolish on AMD's part to hold back B550 unless this is a stall tactic to allow better yields / more supply capacity to evolve for Ryzen 3000.

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

Then it would only make sense to launch a B550 chipset if there are other notable changes from B450/X470, like new USB support, XFR3, etc., like from X370 to X470 (improved XFR2 was a great feature, imo).

Which is an important question: does anyone know what other changes the 5-series chipsets will bring?

 

[SteveRNG]

From what I understand, the Ryzen 2 (3000 series) CPUs will overclock equally well on an X470 and X570. Whatever they call their automatic over clocking (too lazy to look it up) will not be updated on the X570. Of course, better VRMs and cooling can be applied to both. But the underlying overclocking tech will not change.

With that in mind, I'm probably going to get an X470 for my next gaming rig. It will overclock well, I don't need PCIe 4.0 speeds for my SSD or GPU. And most everything else will be the same.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Then it would only make sense to launch a B550 chipset if there are other notable changes from B450/X470, like new USB support, XFR3, etc., like from X370 to X470 (improved XFR2 was a great feature, imo).

Which is an important question: does anyone know what other changes the 5-series chipsets will bring?

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.

 

[SteveRNG]

...Nobody likes gambling on whether their new mobo has a recent enough BIOS to support their CPU.

Unless the Mobo has something like a BIOS Flashback option. I'm not worried about getting an Asus Strix X470-F because I can flash the new BIOS without connecting anything other than power.
EDIT: I'm sorry. It looks like I got confused when I went to verify that the first time. It looks like the Strix X470-F does does not have BIOS Flashback. Sorry about that!

 

[TJ Hooker]

For sure, but I think that a relatively small amount of motherboards have the Flashback (or equivalent) feature(?) And I think the ones that do generally tend to be more high end, meaning an even larger proportion of B450s wouldn't have it.

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

 

[AlistairAB]

Except unlike Intel I already have a nice motherboard from Asus that I paid $80 for that will OC Ryzen 3000 just fine

 

[junglist724]

PCIe version is largely a function of the CPU and chipset, neither of which are made by the motherboard manufacturers.

You still have to carry the signal with something(motherboard traces) and with gen 4 they didn't do much other than double the clock rate, which basically halved the distance they could carry the signal without boosting it. Pcie gen 4 can only go 10-12 inches without retimers vs the 16-20 inches of gen 3, plus transmit and receive need to be on different pcb layers now to minimize crosstalk. Add in other motherboard components and traces they have to go around that create their own interference and you can only safely go 6 inches.

If you've ever tried using HDMI or ethernet(or even worse, HDMI over ethernet) over long distances you'd know how much of a pain it is to maintain signal integrity with bleeding edge standards like 4K60hz or 10GBase-T. PCIe 4.0 has reached that point where the physical layer is the main limiter. Insertion loss is huge for gen 4, but they can't change the slot much because they have to maintain mechanical compatibility with previous gens so every improvement has to be done with traces, both at the connector on the peripheral and the traces carrying the signal to and from the cpu/pch.

 

[TJ Hooker]

@junglist724 Oh, I wasn't trying to say that motherboard manufacturers themselves don't have to do anything in order to support PCIe 4. I'm saying they may not have the freedom to (easily) make an X570 board that runs PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, because that would depend in part on factors outside their control, i.e. the CPU/chipset. Maybe it's easy for the mobo manufacturers to configure the CPU/chipset to only run at 3.0 speeds via their firmware, but if that sort of stuff is part of the AGESA microcode that AMD provides I don't know how much control they have over that.

 

[junglist724]

@junglist724 Oh, I wasn't trying to say that motherboard manufacturers themselves don't have to do anything in order to support PCIe 4. I'm saying they may not have the freedom to (easily) make a 500 series board that runs PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, because that would depend in part on factors outside their control, i.e. the CPU/chipset. Maybe it's easy for the mobo manufacturers to configure the CPU/chipset to only run at 3.0 speeds via their firmware, but if that sort of stuff is part of the AGESA microcode that AMD provides I don't know how much control they have over that.

Oh OK, sorry I jumped to conclusions there.

For my X470 crosshair vii I can control the chipset's pcie link version, but I have a feeling AMD wouldn't supply them with the chipset if they tried to make an X570 board that couldn't handle 4.0. I think AMD really wants X570 to truly be the enthusiast platform unlike X370, or to a lesser extent X470, where a lot of X series boards were almost identical to the mainstream B series. They've always marketed the X series boards as the enthusiast platform but until now they haven't been in a position to make demands from their board partners. For 1st gen they had so little market share they just had to make do with whatever the motherboard manufacturers were willing to provide.

Budget buyers will just have to wait for B550 or use a previous gen board. Hopefully AMD will still provide bootkits free of charge.

 

[AnimeMania]

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.

 

[Phaaze88]

It already requires more expensive, faster ram for the best performance, although Intel users can cheap out in this area with a less significant performance hit. Granted, ram prices have come down a long way from what they once were - I recently ordered a new kit that would've cost over $500 a year ago.
Ryzen 3000 should still have the best value/perf, but with this recent news on upcoming motherboards, that edge over Intel setups is just a tad smaller.
Perhaps this is a move to get rid of older Ryzen 1000/2000 & 300/400 series mobo stock? Many were expecting the prices to be lower than what was recently announced.

 

[TJ Hooker]

It already requires more expensive, faster ram for the best performance

Well, we don't know that yet. It's possible AMD has managed to make Zen 2 less reliant on memory speed.

 

[Phaaze88]

Well, we don't know that yet. It's possible AMD has managed to make Zen 2 less reliant on memory speed.

Is this not enough to go on?
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-3000-series-matisse-zen-2-ddr4-3200-ddr4-4400,39422.html

https://www.amd.com/en/product/8456

https://www.amd.com/en/product/8451

 

[TJ Hooker]

Is this not enough to go on?
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-3000-series-matisse-zen-2-ddr4-3200-ddr4-4400,39422.html

https://www.amd.com/en/product/8456

https://www.amd.com/en/product/8451

The fact that they support higher speeds means they must require higher speeds? I mean, Intel typically raises their rated RAM speed every generation too, doesn't necessarily say anything about how dependent they are on RAM speed for performance.

 

[Phaaze88]

Ah. My mistake, then.
Well, if the new models aren't as picky, that's good. More flexibility for us consumers.

 

[mahone7]

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