AM3+ Socket - Still warrent a purchase?

So after 3 years AMD is going ro revive an old chipset without DDR4 to what segment of the market? People who are struck by Alzheimer ?

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Hahaha, this is truly sig-worthy.

Indeed, those who truly believe that AM3+ isn't dead, but merely awaiting some sort of mythical stealth-upgrade need to do like James Sunderland and leave their delusions behind. The evidence that we have all but completely eliminates the chances of such a thing happening. AM3+ is left around purely to get rid of all the excess FX chips they have sitting around.

Meanwhile on AMD's very own slides they mention how they are "aggressively pushing" the FM2/FM2+ platform by depletion of legacy AM3 and FM1 stock.

The simple facts are that multiple up-to-date roadmaps have been released and/or leaked/spotted which clearly show that AM3+ will not be receiving any Steamroller or Excavator-based processors. On the server side, which is where all the FX chips originated from, the only new successor to the pre-existing Orochi chips is just a Piledriver-based refresh using Piledriver 1.5 (cRCM enabled, basically) cores. No Steamroller variant, no Excavator variant, therefore no FX variant.

And even Warsaw itself won't sprinkle down to AM3+, because it is only available in a MCM design for socket G34 (only 12-16 cores), so that is out as well.

AM3+ is dead in the water. It's a socket which has an outdated chipset which dates all the way back to goddamned AM2 of all things, it won't have DDR4 support, and it's even lacking things that FM2+ has.

I would stay away from Am3+ right now. There is simply no future for it right now. So unless you get a killer deal via microcenter or some other outlet I would pass on Am3+

If AMD did release a steam roller FX then I would have no problem with recommending am3+, but that is not going to happen.

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I have had this motherboard since 2011 and it has served me well. My rig still plays games like a champ! Crysis 3, Metro LL, BF3, BF4, Tomb Raider, Batman...you name it.

The last 3 gaming rigs I've built have all contained AMD CPUs (Phenom 9500, Phenom II 965@4GHz and my current [email protected]). That said, what AMD has done well in the past is provide an affordable option with a longer upgrade path than Intel which more often than not forces you to buy a new motherboard when you want to upgrade to the next generation of CPUs (since they change sockets/chipsets so often). Although, AM3+ and 990 chipset is definitely getting old and time for an update at least I've been able to stay current on the same motherboard since 2011!

I see what AMD is doing with their APUs and Mantle (I'm never going to buy an APU) but I really hope their next socket and chipset allows consumers an affordable long term solution as they have done so well in the past (up until now). If they don't, I guess Intel is the only choice...fingers crossed!

ebduncan said:

I would stay away from Am3+ right now. There is simply no future for it right now. So unless you get a killer deal via microcenter or some other outlet I would pass on Am3+

If AMD did release a steam roller FX then I would have no problem with recommending am3+, but that is not going to happen.

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This.

Dangman said:

You should also add "Both must happen in order for an AMD AM3+ setup to be viable".


You also have to factor which of those programs are ones that you actually plan to use the most. Yes, you may have only three applications that'll take advantage of the extra cores but if those three applications are the three programs you use the most, then you should note the FX's advantages. Though from your last thread in General Hardware, the only thing you posted under your planned use was "Gaming."

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More or less. Which is why after I took a look sadly an FX-8350 is still in second place though still tempting. I personally like AMD as its been all I've run since my very first system back in the Athlon days but a few factors came together to more or less cement things. So it does depress me a little that if I had to pull the trigger right now on my own personal system with no time for second guessing it'd be Intel based. As nice and attractive as the FX line is I just cannot justify the purchase.

1. Sadly most of what I do won't benefit greatly from multi-threading and BF4 nor its earlier incarnations frankly holds any interest. Also while I do often have multiple programs running at once the count appears to rarely go above four. So odds are I wouldn't benefit that much from having eight individual cores to tap. Then agian I used to wonder once upon a time how I'd ever fill up a 1TB HDD.

2. Given the AM3+'s age, lack of DDR4 support and aging chipset among others the fact it most likely will not be seeing any additional chip releases is pretty much a death sentence. An educated guess is that any future FX line will be on an FM descendent as the socket line is currently AMD's main focus and is thus the most likely to be updated to support DDR4 memory. While such a theoretical FX line on as of the moment theoretical socket would be nice thats some time away and playing the waiting game based on theory or rumor of something better "a few months from now" is a losers game. Short of an imminent release better to just buy and enjoy it now rather then stress over what ifs and maybes. While there is the possibility of partially upgrading my current rig (new psu, monitor, etc) then doing the final swap of internal guts (Mobo+Cpu+Ram+Gpu) come the summer for cost reasons there isn't anything tangible to indicate things will be any different five months from now. Even if I personally hope otherwise.

3. The prices for a decent quality gaming AM3+ motherboard does not appear to be much lower then a Haswell equivalents from what I've noticed. So that eliminates some of the potential savings for going AMD right there.

4. Microcenter has been running a regular special on i5 and i7 Haswells often with awesome motherboard bundles to top it all off that are on part if not cheaper then AMD. Previously I discounted it entirely for both sides as the nearest store was a six hour drive round trip which made AM3+ much more attractive in the other avenue's realistically available to me. However in the past two days an unexpected situation has come up so that in less then a months time either myself and/or my SO will be within 15 minutes of it anyway. While the combo specials will be different obviously considering past history its likely to be something decent and very likely heavily Intel based. As such thats more or less wiped out the last bit of potential up front savings which had been one of the main pushes towards AMD.

let me add to this and ask a question:

does intel offer a better bang for buck combo than the fx8320 + asrock 970 extreme3 which combined is $170 pre tax at MC?

mnewxcv said:

let me add to this and ask a question:

does intel offer a better bang for buck combo than the fx8320 + asrock 970 extreme3 which combined is $170 pre tax at MC?

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Where did you see that "deal"? The FX8320 isn't in MC's eCatalog anymore or on their page for AMD CPU + mobo bundles.

mnewxcv said:

let me add to this and ask a question:

does intel offer a better bang for buck combo than the fx8320 + asrock 970 extreme3 which combined is $170 pre tax at MC?

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I personally think my 4770k with Z87 G41-PC Mate for $270 OTD was a better bang/buck, even though it was + $100.

Can't find that deal now though....

Dangman said:

Where did you see that "deal"? The FX8320 isn't in MC's eCatalog anymore or on their page for AMD CPU + mobo bundles.

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http://www.microcenter.com/product/401796/FX_8320_Black_Edition_35GHz_AM3_Boxed_Processor

its an add to cart to see price item for $100. And the motherboard mentioned is $70 regular price.

mnewxcv said:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/401796/FX_8320_Black_Edition_35GHz_AM3_Boxed_Processor

its an add to cart to see price item for $100. And the motherboard mentioned is $70 regular price.

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Ahh. In that case:

For strictly gaming, IMO, the better deal would be the Core i3 4130 + AsRock H87M-Pro for $190 from Microcenter. Yes, IMO, the gaming performance difference is worth the extra $20. For a large amount of video, 3D, or audio editing/rendering or extensive virtualization, the AMD is the better deal.

4670k + H81M-HDS at microcenter is $199 + tax.

4670k should be leaps & bounds better than an i3, just due to being quad core.

Pretty good bang/buck there.

It's 2014.

The earliest I'd expect to hear more news about Excavator should be a little under a year from now. I would assume that like the Richland update, we should expect a Kaveri refresh before the end of the year.

If one can hold out until then, you can use whatever information is provided by AMD or leaked to the press on what Excavator will be-- what platform and socket, its supported features (DDR4, PCI-E 3.0, etc.), and what AMD technology it'll incorporate as an evolution from Steamroller-- hUMA, HSA, etc.

If one is deadset on a gaming platform, AMD still provides a decent gaming platform, though heavily outdated compared to Intel's offerings. It may be a few frames per second slower than whatever Intel can dish out, but the gameplay is still playable. I have a friend on an FX 6350 and another on an FX 8320, and I have yet to hear them complain about frame rate issues. What they're happy about? Saving tens of dollars over a hundred going to an AMD platform instead of an Intel platform.

However, if you want to have a system that's going to be a little bit more future proof, an Intel platform offers more PCI-E 3.0 options and SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. Highly doubt any new video card is going to take advantage of PCI-E 4.0 and DDR4 isn't something a lot of regular gamers will see obvious advantages over DDR3 unless they're using memory-bandwidth intensive and sensitive applications, or would like the power savings of DDR4. And, the majority of software and games have yet to be multi-threaded beyond two and four cores, and are still heavily single-threaded.

Hell, you can still run a game today on a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad, or Phenom II X4 or X6 and still have decent frame rates when paired with a good mid-range or high-end video card. It's when you get into games that are single-threaded dependent or games that run better on more than two cores like Battlefield 3 and 4, and the few rare PC exclusives that do take advantage of multi-threading.

On the other hand, when it comes to multi-threading, only AMD offers a naitve 8-core processor at less than $200. This is something I will never expect Intel do in the next five years or ever at all in their line up. If the future is going to be multi-threaded, an AMD 8-core FX processor would be a bit more future proof and more affordable than a 4-core/8-threaded Core i5 or i7 processor costing a little over $200. But, going down this route, just remember that Socket AM3+ and its platform are the equivalent of that retiree still working at Walmart hoping to make a few extra dollars to supplement their SS checks and retirement income, yet not offering anything new to advance their career up Walmart's chain of command due to age and lack of extra work-related skills.

I guess I've been out of the hobby long enough not to keep up with all the changes, or probably more so not to care as much.

I have 2 i7 rigs. one is an older i7 920 @3.6ghz, the other is a [email protected](z77mobo).

I just picked up 3 AMD combos(thx JCNiest5 for the help). 2 Kaveri 7850k APU/Asus A88XM-A mobos, and one 8320FX/Fatality 990FX killer board.

Is AM3+ dead? no it's alive. Now is it at EOL practically, yeah. But given the cpu choices and pricing I can't complain. The Kaveri's I bought to upgrade my daughter's Sempron single core HTPC/School pc, and to build a cheap pc for my son to play Diablo and BF4 on(will put in a Radeon 250 in that one for x-fire). I've only gotten around to building one so far but so far it's quite surprising actually. Granted, much of the "felt speed" or zippiness(yes technical term) is due to the Kingston SSD, but overall I'm very impressed with the performance given the amount of $ I put into that upgrade for my daughter, and later my son's PC... Throw a cheap SSD in and call it good. For the AM3+ I don't see any limitations for me. I don't upgrade that often anymore so even though the AM3+ is EOL as stated, it works fine and I have no worries about PCI 3.0, DDR4 etc... My bets are DDR4 will be so expensive at launch and for probably 1-2 years that DDR3 will still be the mainstream choice for most gamers/users other than the bleeding edge crowd. PCI xpress 3.0 is nice and all but for one GPU I don't consider the AM3+ platform limiting. Even in dual graphics it's not the end of the world IMO.

Personally, I'd like to see AMD get the heat/watts down and IPC up a bit and make another socket vs clinging to AM3+.

JNavy89GT said:

Personally, I'd like to see AMD get the heat/watts down and IPC up a bit and make another socket vs clinging to AM3+.

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Your in luck, for performance/watt is exactly what AMD seems to have targetted with Kaveri.

There is nothing in any way deficient about the FM2+ socket or its associated chipsets that would prevent the platform being host to a high(er)-end FX product from AMD.

As a platform it is as advanced as any other existing platform given that it permits PCIe 3.0 , high-speed DDR3, and SATA express, and includes native support for USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0.

The 100W headroom would easily allow an 8x core 28nm Steamroller, or a 6x core with 256 GCN shaders.

Whether they will actually do that, rather than wait for a DDR4 capable FM3 platform, is another matter entirely. More determined by internal design resources than platform limitations.

R3MF said:

Your in luck, for performance/watt is exactly what AMD seems to have targetted with Kaveri.

There is nothing in any way deficient about the FM2+ socket or its associated chipsets that would prevent the platform being host to a high(er)-end FX product from AMD.

As a platform it is as advanced as any other existing platform given that it permits PCIe 3.0 , high-speed DDR3, and SATA express, and includes native support for USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0.

The 100W headroom would easily allow an 8x core 28nm Steamroller, or a 6x core with 256 GCN shaders.

Whether they will actually do that, rather than wait for a DDR4 capable FM3 platform, is another matter entirely. More determined by internal design resources than platform limitations.

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Yeah, there seems to be a lot of headroom for a possible Kaveri FX on FM2+ platform for a 6-core or 8-core at 100W.

However, will AMD ever do it or consider it? Like you said, internal design resources than platform limitations is a factor. They don't have the resources to devote a separate team to design an FX processor given they seem focused on getting APU processors worked on. If they had more resources or as much as Intel's, I'm sure they'd probably consider it.

And then, a year after that they can release the Excavator APU with DDR4 and PCI-E 3.0 support if they wanted to, especially if on 20nm or smaller process with 6 to 8 cores max.

But, again, problem is resources, time, and money-- something AMD doesn't have a whole lot to spread around.

I don't think we'll see any FX APU's anytime soon. If such a product were to come, they'd have announced it by now and it would've been in development for several years now for it to release this year.

AMD is putting the focus on perf/watt, APU's, HSA, gaming (Radeon and Mantle), and retaining profitability. It's the best strategy for them right now.

I'm not sure if we'll see a Kaveri refresh since we haven't heard any new codenames or seen it on any roadmaps. Then again, AMD is very VERY quiet nowadays, only announcing things at press events and investor hearings rather than allowing things to leak out so much anymore. We probably won't hear anything about Excavator and Carrizo until next year, right before they're about to come out!

My AMD rep said that the FX line is not dead. I asked him about where we might expect newer FX chips in regards to platform and he was quite ambiguous.

The way I translate that is that we may see FX chips on the FM platform.

KazeoHin said:

My AMD rep said that the FX line is not dead. I asked him about where we might expect newer FX chips in regards to platform and he was quite ambiguous.

The way I translate that is that we may see FX chips on the FM platform.

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I've heard the same thing from other sources. No idea what it means, but since FX is just a brand name, it's possible to see it hit FM2+ or FM3 in the future.

KazeoHin said:

My AMD rep said that the FX line is not dead. I asked him about where we might expect newer FX chips in regards to platform and he was quite ambiguous.

The way I translate that is that we may see FX chips on the FM platform.

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Maybe you get some FX bubblegum with that APU
Sorry guys but how old were you when you realized when your parents told you "maybe" it was really no .

The term FX is kinda misleading because of the bubblegum and other things, what we "need" to hear is will there be 8 core or 6 core coming to the FM2+ platform. That would make it interesting. That AMD will update AM4 could be another good sign but all these things are not short term they will all be in 2015 otherwise they would have been announced already.

Let's humor ourselves here for a minute or two:

If AMD is being hush-hush on all their future plans for future processors given how they're barely leaked nowadays and revealed only during earnings reports, conferences, etc., when can we or should we expect to hear an announcement on the next processor?

And, if there is a possible Kaveri refresh or a 6-core or 8-core Kaveri FM2+ APU in the works, when can we expect AMD to announce that given how long it takes to plan out and design a CPU beginning since the first Kaveri APUs were officially revealed?

The next announcement of anything might not be until the next Computex, which is in the Summer, I think.

If there will be models with more cores coming, it will definitely be a huge shock, since there have been no leaks at all even hinting at such a thing, and it'd mean it was in the works for a while. Such a shame they scrapped the old plan of having six cores/three modules, as that would've enticed a lot of AM3+ stalwarts to switch to FM2+ much faster.

Depends.

If you are looking for a very good performing system and are working with a pretty strict budget, then absolutely it's a great option.

NaroonGTX said:

The next announcement of anything might not be until the next Computex, which is in the Summer, I think. .

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Yup: June 3 to June 7, 2014.

AMD did announce the release of their Richland APUs during Computex 2013. So there is a slight possibility that they might do it again in 2014.

AM3+ and the AMD 900 series chipsets are about three years old now. It might be viable for some applications, but for me, my next build won't be AM3+.

The only reason AMD isn't declaring the AM3+ CPU line officially dead, is because the chips would be officially "EOL" and prices would plummet. AMD stills hopes to squeeze a little bit more juice out of them, so postpones the official "death label"...

This said, if someone finds a good bargain and is conscious of what he is buying and if it suits his needs, then it's still an option. It simply doesn't have upgrade future as a platform. Hence i voted "depends".

AM3+ is still the most recent consumer platform with full virtualization and ECC support as far as I know. So, I guess there are still cases like low-cost WMware servers where AM3+ might make sense.

Faethon said:

The only reason AMD isn't declaring the AM3+ CPU line officially dead, is because the chips would be officially "EOL" and prices would plummet. AMD stills hopes to squeeze a little bit more juice out of them, so postpones the official "death label"...

This said, if someone finds a good bargain and is conscious of what he is buying and if it suits his needs, then it's still an option. It simply doesn't have upgrade future as a platform. Hence i voted "depends".

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Windreaper said:

AM3+ is still the most recent consumer platform with full virtualization and ECC support as far as I know. So, I guess there are still cases like low-cost WMware servers where AM3+ might make sense.

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Both of these reasons make sense to keep the AM3+ platform alive for now.

It is, honestly, the cheapest form of entry into an 8-core, virtualization workstation or server. And, there are [H] users who have done just that.

AMD may very well be planning an update or successor to the current Vishera processors but won't reveal their cards just yet. Will they wait until Computex 2014 or when Excavator is ready to be revealed? Who knows? It's much too early to tell.

However, an at minimum 6 core Steamroller-based FM2+ APU with full HSA extensions and capability with a smaller GCN-based GPU on-die would make moving to the FM2+ platform an ideal way to demonstrate what Excavator may give us in the future.

octoberasian said:

However, an at minimum 6 core Steamroller-based FM2+ APU with full HSA extensions and capability with a smaller GCN-based GPU on-die would make moving to the FM2+ platform an ideal way to demonstrate what Excavator may give us in the future.

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This. Would it have really been that hard to put another module on this chip?

Adding another module would've impacted the power consumption, which would've impacted the clocks. We see how this version of Kaveri doesn't scale well at high TDP's due to the process lithography, so we would've seen even lower clocks than what we have now, which wouldn't have been good for the benchmarks when it gets revealed that at stock, Kaveri is universally slower than it's previous-gen counterpart. They dropped clocks with this Kaveri and were mostly on parity or slightly faster than Richland due to the IPC gain.

NaroonGTX said:

Adding another module would've impacted the power consumption, which would've impacted the clocks. We see how this version of Kaveri doesn't scale well at high TDP's due to the process lithography, so we would've seen even lower clocks than what we have now, which wouldn't have been good for the benchmarks when it gets revealed that at stock, Kaveri is universally slower than it's previous-gen counterpart. They dropped clocks with this Kaveri and were mostly on parity or slightly faster than Richland due to the IPC gain.

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I wonder if such issues with the fab process might be part of the reason why AMD has been mum about any future FX chips besides 'we're not axing the line'.

I think it had a huge part in it. It wasn't until recently that people figured out that the "GloFo 28nm SHP BULK" process was tailor-made for AMD. I'll try to dig up an old roadmap image which shows that AMD did indeed plan SR and EX successors for their high-core-count server chips:

Late 2012 roadmap, showing Steamroller Opteron still on track: (20nm is listed on the chart, and would've presumably been put to use for an Excavator successor)


Even older roadmap:


Here we can see this was when Piledriver was still gonna have 5 modules total, and would've been on Socket FM2 for consumers. Steamroller Opteron would've followed for both servers and FX in 2013 according to this older map. At the time, no mention of 20nm or Excavator.


Aforementioned FM2 Piledriver FX 10-core via the "Komodo" platform, which got canned.


Old GloFo process node roadmap. 28nm SHP was originally scheduled for 2012, but for unknown reasons got pushed back. Could this have played a large factor in Kaveri being taken back to the drawing board and delayed so long? I think so.

Flash to present-day, and we have this:


Warsaw, enhanced-Piledriver lasting for all of 2014 and 2015, which Steamroller and Excavator being relegated to APU's and gimped CPU-only chips made via die-harvesting.

NaroonGTX said:

Adding another module would've impacted the power consumption, which would've impacted the clocks.

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welcome to Intel:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7744/intel-reveals-new-haswell-details-at-isscc-2014

Magic words from the graphics above:

"Comodo CPU - FM2 infrastructure"

All that needs be said.

If I recall, when the current CEO, Rory, took over lead at AMD, didn't he delay future products in exchange for other products to be brought first to market?

For example, delaying future Excavator processor and moving forward on APU enhancements, etc.

With that said, a lot of the roadmaps above in Naroon's post are outdated except for the very last slide. A 10-core Piledriver FX may well be in the works but with Rory at AMD, I would not be surprised now that that was delayed to a later release date or canceled entirely. The same could be said of Steamroller-based FX processors-- delayed indefinitely, postponed until a later release date, or plans changed to utilize a new socket and platform.

but even under the old plans the 10x core comodo was due to arrive on FM2 architecture, not AM4.

R3MF said:

but even under the old plans the 10x core comodo was due to arrive on FM2 architecture, not AM4.

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I've seen that and I wonder if that was delayed or postponed or canceled like everything else mentioned in these slides.

The current, most recent slide only seems to indicate low power APU and server APU in both X86 and ARM form. That's it.

When AMD, or Read, decided to delay products and projects, he probably delayed a large amount of what was planned years ago a la carte to save the company money and focus on a few core products-- APU, server, and graphics.

Most of the stuff in those older maps were outright canceled, rather than delayed. If there would've been more upcoming Opterons and FX chips based on Steamroller/Excavator, we would've seen them on the newer roadmaps. Read decided to get rid of products that would've had poor ROI, and otherwise would've just been burning through funds that the company needed to save. So he basically put the focus on APU's and returning the company to profitability.

Komodo platform got canned some time ago, because AM3+ originally was only meant for Zambezi. There weren't gonna be any Piledriver chips released on AM3+ period. It seems that FM2 was meant to be the unified socket back then, because both the Trinity APU's and Vishera CPU's would've been on it. Then when plans for the five-module Vishera/Opteron got canned, they shifted it back to AM3+.