AMD Releases Statement on Zen 2 IPC Performance Uplift Article

Zarathustra[H] said:
I thought chiplets were a Epyc (and possibly Threadripper) only thing. At least in this generation?

At least that's the impression I got from the combination of the New Horizons info and the other stuff that has leaked thus far.
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AMD in the last decade+ have almost exclusively had one main design for both server and desktop cpus. E.g. the only difference in the opteron of old vs the athlon was the opterons were cherry picked/wafer centres, hence why I could get 50%+ OCs on mine.. Durons were just cut Athlons (sometimes you could even enable the cut cache lol).
So I would expect them to use a different IO chip (maybe they won't if cheap enough?) but at minimum the same chiplets, this way they get maximum yields where it counts. IO chip is on cheaper 14nm process as analogue circuits don't scale so well, it's unnecessary to go 7nm there.
And I fully agree with DigitalGriffin on why they wouldn't do a desktop-only redesign just to put IO back in.
 
I mean they doubled the floating point effectively. to what was an already impressive fpu performance. What we will see in actual benchmarks is yet to be seen, but I expect some really solid numbers from zen 2.

I will likely swap out my R7-1700 for one of the new Zen 2 chips when they are available. It was hard not to make the switch the 2700x.
 
RPGWiZaRD said:
When a manufacturer talks about up to 29% perf increases in certain loads, my brain has a built-in automatic interpolation changing it to 15~20% tops in more realistic scenarios. ;) But even so that would be a huge deal. Let's say 10% IPC improvement and 10% clock speed increase, doesn't sound too far fetched to me.
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My expectations are a little tempered. I'm expecting 5-10% IPC improvements over Zen1+ and maybe a couple of hundred MHz improvement on clocks. AMD always seems to fall a little short on clocks.

To me the biggest disappointment of client Zen2 is that it is still AM4. The 24 PCIe lanes are to me still Ryzens biggest limitation, and in the end probably the only reason I won't wind up buying one.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
My expectations are a little tempered. I'm expecting 5-10% IPC improvements over Zen1+ and maybe a couple of hundred MHz improvement on clocks. AMD always seems to fall a little short on clocks.

To me the biggest disappointment of client Zen2 is that it is still AM4. The 24 PCIe lanes are to me still Ryzens biggest limitation, and in the end probably the only reason I won't wind up buying one.
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its really only 20 lanes, since 4 are for to the m2 slot a nvme ssd. Intel's mainstream socket isn't any better in that regard though. If you want more lanes then HEDT market is for you. Unless you have a more than a single high end gpu its not going to matter much for most folks.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
My expectations are a little tempered. I'm expecting 5-10% IPC improvements over Zen1+ and maybe a couple of hundred MHz improvement on clocks. AMD always seems to fall a little short on clocks.

To me the biggest disappointment of client Zen2 is that it is still AM4. The 24 PCIe lanes are to me still Ryzens biggest limitation, and in the end probably the only reason I won't wind up buying one.
Click to expand...

AMD had wonderful clocks on GF's vastly Superior to Intel's 32nm node (it wasn't just on time like all GF lines).

This is a cutting edge proven process from TSMC. The only reason you may fail to see 5Ghz clocks is the fact AMD doesn't need them to over take the desktop crown. The 2700x vs 95W 9900k tests already show AMD over 70% of where they need to be to win across the board, and I think AMD would like to do that AND keep the much touted efficiency of earlier Zen based SKUs.

4.5Ghz all core would give them the undisputed lead, with some minor OCing making that lead even wider IMO. I think it's truly going to be a GrandSlam A64 x2 moment for them (the launch of the vastily superior dual core models and the ushering in of the multicore era). In other words not as big as the A64 was, but a close second.
 
ebduncan said:
its really only 20 lanes, since 4 are for to the m2 slot a nvme ssd. Intel's mainstream socket isn't any better in that regard though. If you want more lanes then HEDT market is for you. Unless you have a more than a single high end gpu its not going to matter much for most folks.
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The problem is this. For whatever reason both Intel and AMD have decided that you need/want many cores to have a usage scenario for many PCIe lanes. That just isn't the case.

Here is what I currently have in my old x79 with my i7-3930 I'm still using 7 years later:

Slot 1: 16x, Gen 3, GPU
Slot 2: Empty (or GPU would drop to 8x)
Slot 3: 1x, Gen 1, Sound Card
Slot 4: 4x, Gen 2, 10 Gig Ethernet (Direct link to NAS)
Slot 5: 4x, Gen 3, Samsung 970 EVO 1TB (In PCIe Slot adapter)
Slot 6: 4x, Gen 3, Intel SSD 750 400Gig (only PCIe SSD I can get to boot on my pre-NVME motherboard)

Now, I don't think I'm that extreme. The 10 gig Ethernet may be a little unusual, but used server pulls on eBay are relatively cheap these days. And most people don't buy discrete sound cards anymore, but the Titanium HD is still a great card, and I don't want to give it up...

So, Ryzen gives me 24 lanes including m.2. Intel's LGA 1151 chips give you 16 lanes, but use some switching trickery to make more available, but overall bandwidth is still limited to those 16 slots.

No matter how I think of this, I can't make it work. Lets take Ryzen. Got to have 16 lanes tot he GPU, not willing to give that up. Now I have 8 lanes left. Lets say I can do without one of my SSD's, so I just keep the Samsung in the M.2 slot. (It sucks, I lose 400GB of storage, but I can live with it). Now I'm down to 4x lanes. So I'd have to drop the sound card too. (not that big of a deal, I do have an external DAC, but still, I like it) and I can use my last 4 lanes for my 10Gig ethernet, IF I can find a motherboard that allows me to div up the slots this way, which I may or may not.

So I could just barely make it squeak by, if I am lucky enough to find a motherboard with the slot layout I need, and am willing to sacrifice one of my SSD's and my sound card, but what if something else comes along and I want to install another PCIe card? I like to always have spare expansion abilities just in case. If I go with Ryzen I'm stuck.

Intel isn't much better. Their slot switching tech technically gives you - what - 24 more theoretical lanes off of the chipset? That is in theory a total of 40, but I've never seen a motherboard that would allow me to use all the devices I currently can, and I also worry about bandwidth constraints if I start hitting all of them at the same time.

So what choice do I have? Threadripper? I don't need a bazillion cores. I don't render/encode/run research simulations/whatever. I do basic desktop apps and some games. 8 would be more than I'd ever need. In last gens Threadripper lineup there was an 8 core offering, but I don't want to lose the incremental IPC and clock speed advantages of the latest gen. Now the fewest cores I can get are 12, so I'm overpaying for more cores than I'd ever need, and now I have to worry about game modes, and Infinity Fabric latency across dies and all that bullshit I don't wan't to deal with.

Intel's LGA 2066? The i7-7820x looks nice. Skylake-X IPC. Clocks are alittl bit on the low side, but I hear it overclocks well. I could do that. Oh wait. This model only has 28 lanes. To get the full 44 lanes, I need to move up to the 10 core model. Now I'm paying a grand for extra CPU cores I have no interest in, and whats worse, because of power and thermal envelopes, they are clocked lower than the 7820x...

I don't understand why it is so goddamned difficult for either of these two companies to release a product with a normal amount of cores (I'd be happy with 6 or 8) but also enough PCIe lanes to actually use more than just a GPU. The non-HEDT platforms have been dumbed down to suit to people who don't even use expansion anymore, and the HEDT models assume everyone is fucking interested in running massive core rendering or something.

My 7 year old 32nm i7-3930k is a 6C/12T model with 40 lanes. I want this, or maybe even an 8C/16T model (two extra cores won't hurt) just with modern IPC and clocks and m.2 slots and the ability to boot from them. Is this really too much to ask?

I see no reason what so ever I should have to buy a bajillion cores, wasting my money and sacrificing max clock speeds just because I want a few more PCIe lanes. Its just so damned moronic.

It's about time that every single gamer/enthusiast part gets 40+ lanes. Sure, if someone wants to buy an i3 or something, then give them 16 lanes, who cares. Everything else should be 40+ at this point. I hate feeling restricted and limited.
 
ccityinstaller said:
AMD had wonderful clocks on GF's vastly Superior to Intel's 32nm node (it wasn't just on time like all GF lines).

This is a cutting edge proven process from TSMC. The only reason you may fail to see 5Ghz clocks is the fact AMD doesn't need them to over take the desktop crown. The 2700x vs 95W 9900k tests already show AMD over 70% of where they need to be to win across the board, and I think AMD would like to do that AND keep the much touted efficiency of earlier Zen based SKUs.

4.5Ghz all core would give them the undisputed lead, with some minor OCing making that lead even wider IMO. I think it's truly going to be a GrandSlam A64 x2 moment for them (the launch of the vastily superior dual core models and the ushering in of the multicore era). In other words not as big as the A64 was, but a close second.
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I may be in a shrinking minority, but to me max few-cure performance still matters more to me than all core performance. The numbers to beat are Intel's 5ghz turbo clocks on coffee lake IPC. Sure, it may only be on two cores at a time, but usually only one or two cores are fully loaded at a time, the rest only getting light loads.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The problem is this. For whatever reason both Intel and AMD have decided that you need/want many cores to have a usage scenario for many PCIe lanes. That just isn't the case.

Here is what I currently have in my old x79 with my i7-3930 I'm still using 7 years later:

Slot 1: 16x, Gen 3, GPU
Slot 2: Empty (or GPU would drop to 8x)
Slot 3: 1x, Gen 1, Sound Card
Slot 4: 4x, Gen 2, 10 Gig Ethernet (Direct link to NAS)
Slot 5: 4x, Gen 3, Samsung 970 EVO 1TB (In PCIe Slot adapter)
Slot 6: 4x, Gen 3, Intel SSD 750 400Gig (only PCIe SSD I can get to boot on my pre-NVME motherboard)

Now, I don't think I'm that extreme. The 10 gig Ethernet may be a little unusual, but used server pulls on eBay are relatively cheap these days. And most people don't buy discrete sound cards anymore, but the Titanium HD is still a great card, and I don't want to give it up...

So, Ryzen gives me 24 lanes including m.2. Intel's LGA 1151 chips give you 16 lanes, but use some switching trickery to make more available, but overall bandwidth is still limited to those 16 slots.

No matter how I think of this, I can't make it work. Lets take Ryzen. Got to have 16 lanes tot he GPU, not willing to give that up. Now I have 8 lanes left. Lets say I can do without one of my SSD's, so I just keep the Samsung in the M.2 slot. (It sucks, I lose 400GB of storage, but I can live with it). Now I'm down to 4x lanes. So I'd have to drop the sound card too. (not that big of a deal, I do have an external DAC, but still, I like it) and I can use my last 4 lanes for my 10Gig ethernet, IF I can find a motherboard that allows me to div up the slots this way, which I may or may not.

So I could just barely make it squeak by, if I am lucky enough to find a motherboard with the slot layout I need, and am willing to sacrifice one of my SSD's and my sound card, but what if something else comes along and I want to install another PCIe card? I like to always have spare expansion abilities just in case. If I go with Ryzen I'm stuck.

Intel isn't much better. Their slot switching tech technically gives you - what - 24 more theoretical lanes off of the chipset? That is in theory a total of 40, but I've never seen a motherboard that would allow me to use all the devices I currently can, and I also worry about bandwidth constraints if I start hitting all of them at the same time.

So what choice do I have? Threadripper? I don't need a bazillion cores. I don't render/encode/run research simulations/whatever. I do basic desktop apps and some games. 8 would be more than I'd ever need. In last gens Threadripper lineup there was an 8 core offering, but I don't want to lose the incremental IPC and clock speed advantages of the latest gen. Now the fewest cores I can get are 12, so I'm overpaying for more cores than I'd ever need, and now I have to worry about game modes, and Infinity Fabric latency across dies and all that bullshit I don't wan't to deal with.

Intel's LGA 2066? The i7-7820x looks nice. Skylake-X IPC. Clocks are alittl bit on the low side, but I hear it overclocks well. I could do that. Oh wait. This model only has 28 lanes. To get the full 44 lanes, I need to move up to the 10 core model. Now I'm paying a grand for extra CPU cores I have no interest in, and whats worse, because of power and thermal envelopes, they are clocked lower than the 7820x...

I don't understand why it is so goddamned difficult for either of these two companies to release a product with a normal amount of cores (I'd be happy with 6 or 8) but also enough PCIe lanes to actually use more than just a GPU. The non-HEDT platforms have been dumbed down to suit to people who don't even use expansion anymore, and the HEDT models assume everyone is fucking interested in running massive core rendering or something.

My 7 year old 32nm i7-3930k is a 6C/12T model with 40 lanes. I want this, or maybe even an 8C/16T model (two extra cores won't hurt) just with modern IPC and clocks and m.2 slots and the ability to boot from them. Is this really too much to ask?

I see no reason what so ever I should have to buy a bajillion cores, wasting my money and sacrificing max clock speeds just because I want a few more PCIe lanes. Its just so damned moronic.

It's about time that every single gamer/enthusiast part gets 40+ lanes. Sure, if someone wants to buy an i3 or something, then give them 16 lanes, who cares. Everything else should be 40+ at this point. I hate feeling restricted and limited.
Click to expand...


So, I went poking around again to see if there are any good options for PCIe lanes.

The likes of the Asus x470 Prime Pro look nice on the surface:

asus_prime_x470_pro_amd_am4_1403986.jpg


Look at all of those healthy PCIe slots.

Slot 1: 16x
Slot 2: 1x
Slot 3: 1x
Slot 4: 16x
Slot 5: 1x
Slot 6: 16x


But then we get back to the reality of the limitations and how these things work.

Slot 2 will be covered by your GPU, so it will never get used.

If you stick anything in slot 4, your GPU slot drops down to 8x, so that slot will never get used either.

Slot 6 maxes out at 4x (gen 2), however, if you use Slot 2 (covered anyway) or Slot 3, it gets demoted to x2. (I've never seen an x2 card...)

If you use slot 1 or slot 3, the m.2 slot can only be used for sata.

That, and the M.2 Slot apparently only supports x2 gen 3 mode... Aren't most PCIe SSD's x4?

And all this was somewhat confusing to gleam from the manual.

So, it' looks like it actually has the goods in pictures, but if you try to actually use any of those slots, you are in for a surprise.

Still, I could mostly make this work.

Slot 1: GPU
Slot 2: Nothing (it's covered by the GPU, and would sabotage M.2 if used anyway),
Slot 3: Sound Card
Slot 4: Nothing (it would drop GPU down to 8x)
Slot 5: Nothing (It would sabotage M.2 slot if used)
Slot 6: 10 Gig NIC
M.2 Slot: Samsung NVME Drive (limited to only 2x lanes)

So, this would be borderline doable, but with too many senseless compromises for me, and absolutely no room to grow.

I got out of building small form factor systems because I was annoyed at the limited expansion. These very few PCIe lanes in consumer parts essentially turns every system into the capability of a small form factor system, regardless of how big you make it.


I know I'm getting old and yelling at clouds and all that, but seriously, this shit was way better thought through years ago. Modern CPU's may have the IPC, clock and core advantage, but other than that, the old systems are way more configurable and usable. So sad to see this stuff get constricted and limited. Kind of ruins it for me.
 
ebduncan said:
I mean they doubled the floating point effectively. to what was an already impressive fpu performance. What we will see in actual benchmarks is yet to be seen, but I expect some really solid numbers from zen 2.

I will likely swap out my R7-1700 for one of the new Zen 2 chips when they are available. It was hard not to make the switch the 2700x.
Click to expand...

Same, hoping this time we get some newer options for MB's. Pretty pumped for Zen 2.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, I went poking around again to see if there are any good options for PCIe lanes.

The likes of the Asus x470 Prime Pro look nice on the surface:

Look at all of those healthy PCIe slots.

Slot 1: 16x
Slot 2: 1x
Slot 3: 1x
Slot 4: 16x
Slot 5: 1x
Slot 6: 16x


But then we get back to the reality of the limitations and how these things work.

Slot 2 will be covered by your GPU, so it will never get used.

If you stick anything in slot 4, your GPU slot drops down to 8x, so that slot will never get used either.

Slot 6 maxes out at 4x (gen 2), however, if you use Slot 2 (covered anyway) or Slot 3, it gets demoted to x2. (I've never seen an x2 card...)

If you use slot 1 or slot 3, the m.2 slot can only be used for sata.

That, and the M.2 Slot apparently only supports x2 gen 3 mode... Aren't most PCIe SSD's x4?

And all this was somewhat confusing to gleam from the manual.

So, it' looks like it actually has the goods in pictures, but if you try to actually use any of those slots, you are in for a surprise.

Still, I could mostly make this work.

Slot 1: GPU
Slot 2: Nothing (it's covered by the GPU, and would sabotage M.2 if used anyway),
Slot 3: Sound Card
Slot 4: Nothing (it would drop GPU down to 8x)
Slot 5: Nothing (It would sabotage M.2 slot if used)
Slot 6: 10 Gig NIC
M.2 Slot: Samsung NVME Drive (limited to only 2x lanes)

So, this would be borderline doable, but with too many senseless compromises for me, and absolutely no room to grow.

I got out of building small form factor systems because I was annoyed at the limited expansion. These very few PCIe lanes in consumer parts essentially turns every system into the capability of a small form factor system, regardless of how big you make it.


I know I'm getting old and yelling at clouds and all that, but seriously, this shit was way better thought through years ago. Modern CPU's may have the IPC, clock and core advantage, but other than that, the old systems are way more configurable and usable. So sad to see this stuff get constricted and limited. Kind of ruins it for me.
Click to expand...

Well, older chipsets didn’t have all those USB and SATA either though. They had maybe a 232 port, a parallel port, PS/2, and a few IDE. You /had/ to use the expansion slots for even the most basic functions added.

A modern consumer chipset has like 6 USB 3, a few more 3.1/c, 4-6 usb 2, 5-8 SATA III, at least one x4 3.0 nvme, decent on board audio, gig-e, etc. And that’s all chipset native generally without wasting lanes.

I’m pretty old as well and remember buying ISA expansion cards. The extra PCIE slots just aren’t needed anymore IMO given the vast USB support. If you really cared about sound quality for instance you’d ditch the sound card and stop wasting a pcie slot right there and go with a usb dsp. Shit, most sound cards these days are just that. A USB based dac linked via pcie. It’s a waste of a slot.

So you’ll only need the one 16x for the gpu. The reality is that if you need more you need to pay to play for the prosumer chipsets.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Now I'm paying a grand for extra CPU cores I have no interest in, and whats worse, because of power and thermal envelopes, they are clocked lower than the 7820x
Click to expand...

i have this EXACT SAME problem trying to spec up a quick "side grade upgrade" for my i7-950 system. It is really REALLY pissing me off.

either i have to buy a motherboard worth 600-900$ to get lanes and then a super pricey CPU thats not fit for purpose.... or i buy a gimped motherboard and can't use all the features/functionality i want to do the upgrade for (but hey... the CPU will be spot on!).

ffs its pissing me the f off.
 
You guys want a 1900x, should be fairly cheap right now, get all the PCI lanes you ever wanted, and still know that if you ever desire to upgrade to a future Zen CPU, you will be able to.

The fact that it is not the latest Zen make it 10% slower in ST situations, but should not be the end of the world, especially as you are still doing OK on old platforms.

*did a quick check on ebay, cheapest is $285, and there are plenty around $325 mark.
 
Mchart said:
Well, older chipsets didn’t have all those USB and SATA either though. They had maybe a 232 port, a parallel port, PS/2, and a few IDE. You /had/ to use the expansion slots for even the most basic functions added.
Click to expand...

I'm not talking that old. I remember those days too (and I miss when we could actually configure our own setups rather than just take whatever the motherboard maker integrated. I'd love to bring back the good old days of NOTHING on board and customizing everything through expansion boards.)

My Asus x79 workstation motherboard certainly has lots of SATA and USB3 ports, dual gig-e ports, etc. And it also has a 40 lane CPU, capable of the highest clocks and best overclocking of its day. There is no platform like this today.

Mchart said:
A modern consumer chipset has like 6 USB 3, a few more 3.1/c, 4-6 usb 2, 5-8 SATA III, at least one x4 3.0 nvme, decent on board audio, gig-e, etc. And that’s all chipset native generally without wasting lanes.
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There is no such thing as a free lunch. All of these things use PCIe bandwidth, whether they are on board or not.

Mchart said:
I’m pretty old as well and remember buying ISA expansion cards. The extra PCIE slots just aren’t needed anymore IMO given the vast USB support. If you really cared about sound quality for instance you’d ditch the sound card and stop wasting a pcie slot right there and go with a usb dsp. Shit, most sound cards these days are just that. A USB based dac linked via pcie. It’s a waste of a slot.
Click to expand...

I don't trust USB. Sure it's fine for simple stuff like keyboards and mice and the occasional USB stick, but it's not very reliable and can be flakey. In general it is my opinion that apart from mouse and keyboard, anything that is permanently attached to the computer should not use USB. It is there as a quick way to attach something portable, and both performance and reliability suffer because of it.

Heck, I connect my old UPS via a serial RS232 connection just to avoid the flakiness of USB.

I do have an external DAC. I connect it via optical SPDIF. It doesn't have any line in connections for recording though, which is one of the reasons I like the discrete sound card. I also like it for running older games with EAX support using Alchemy.

Also I'll use anything Realtek for either audio or networking over my dead body.

Mchart said:
So you’ll only need the one 16x for the gpu. The reality is that if you need more you need to pay to play for the prosumer chipsets.
Click to expand...

I have no problem paying for a prosumer motherboard/chipset. I had expected needing to drop between $400 and $600 on a motherboard.

The problem are CPU's available to put in them. All of them are worse for my application than the consumer CPU's. They have too many cores, and because of this they compromise by having lower clocks to fit inside the power/heat envelopes, and lower clocks are not a compromise I am willing to make.

And even on the prosumer chipset Side of things, if you go with Intel their save core count CPU's for LGA2066 all have gimped PCIe lane counts, so if you want more lanes, then you are forced into buying 10+ core count models with gimped clock speeds.

I'll happily pay the prosumer chipset tax, just give me somethibg decent to put into it. Something with a 6-8C 12-16T configuration, latest gen IPC and 5ghz turbo clocks.

Essentially an LGA2066 version of the i9-9900k with 44 PCIe lanes would be perfect. I'd happily pay for that.

I'm not going to pay through the nose in order to have a large quantity of gimped öow clocked cores thrown a me. That's what AMD tried to do during the Bulldozer era. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

In my not so humble opinion, a Skylake-X 10C-20T CPU with a base clock of 3.3Ghz and a max turbo of 4.5 GHz (i9-7900x) is a massive downgrade compared to a Coffee Lake-X 8C-16T CPU with a base clock of 3.6Ghz and a max turbo of 5Ghz.

I'll take extra cores as long as they don't harm my real performance. I'll even pay a little for them, but the best possible per-core performance is still king, and I won't touch anything that compromises it.

The example is easiest to make on the Intel side, but the same applies to AMD.
 
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Sure, it uses a couple lanes for all those things on X470 for example. The point was that with all those things you don't need as many add-in cards though.

What you are asking for is such a small segment of the population that it just isn't worth making. Typically if you need a lot of PCIE expansion you'll also be wanting the quad channel memory along with the high core counts for that type of professional/prosumer type of work. A gaming box/consumer box for 99% of the population just needs a GPU, and a sound card maybe.

As for your complaint about not having a decent CPU for single threaded purposes i'm not sure you are absolutely correct here.

On the Intel side you'll still be sitting 4ghz+ w/ a x299 build so you aren't sacrificing hardly anything compared to a 9900k. On the AMD side as long as you pick the appropriate lower core count threadripper you'll be hitting the same all core clocks as you would with a 2700k.

So I really don't see why you're complaining. You're willing to spend the money, so spend the money and do it. At real world 2k/4k resolutions you aren't going to see any real world gaming difference between the platforms from either Intel/AMD.
 
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Mchart said:
Sure, it uses a couple lanes for all those things on X470 for example. The point was that with all those things you don't need as many add-in cards though.

What you are asking for is such a small segment of the population that it just isn't worth making. Typically if you need a lot of PCIE expansion you'll also be wanting the quad channel memory along with the high core counts for that type of professional/prosumer type of work. A gaming box/consumer box for 99% of the population just needs a GPU, and a sound card maybe.

As for your complaint about not having a decent CPU for single threaded purposes i'm not sure you are absolutely correct here.

On the Intel side you'll still be sitting 4ghz+ w/ a x299 build so you aren't sacrificing hardly anything compared to a 9900k. On the AMD side as long as you pick the appropriate lower core count threadripper you'll be hitting the same all core clocks as you would with a 2700k.

So I really don't see why you're complaining. You're willing to spend the money, so spend the money and do it. At real world 2k/4k resolutions you aren't going to see any real world gaming difference between the platforms from either Intel/AMD.
Click to expand...

Expansion and the ability to configure a system to my needs is what makes a desktop PC a desktop PC. It's why I'm into this hobby, why I read the H and why I build my own PC's.

If I don't get this, why not just use a laptop or NUC? I could just buy an overpriced Apple MacBook Air and throw it out if I ever need more RAM. That's the direction this shit is all headed.

Everything I like about this hobby is just falling apart. I don't know why I even bother anymore.

Give me EATX boards with as many 8 expabsion slots with as PCIe lanes as possible and integrate nothing except maybe two USB ports for mouse and keyboard onto motherboard. Then I'll be truly happy.

In lieu of this I'll accept just being able to have a decent amount of expansion in a system with a reasonable number of cores (6-8) and the highest clocks/IPC.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Expansion and the ability to configure a system to my needs is what makes a desktop PC a desktop PC. It's why I'm into this hobby, why I read the H and why I build my own PC's.

If I don't get this, why not just use a laptop or NUC? I could just buy an overpriced Apple MacBook Air and throw it out if I ever need more RAM. That's the direction this shit is all headed.

Everything I like about this hobby is just falling apart. I don't know why I even bother anymore.

Give me EATX boards with as many 8 expabsion slots with as PCIe lanes as possible and integrate nothing except maybe two USB ports for mouse and keyboard onto motherboard. Then I'll be truly happy.

In lieu of this I'll accept just being able to have a decent amount of expansion in a system with a reasonable number of cores (6-8) and the highest clocks/IPC.
Click to expand...

Huh? Because an Intel NUC can't run a 2080ti, and it can't overclock well for whatever you're putting into it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, I went poking around again to see if there are any good options for PCIe lanes.

The likes of the Asus x470 Prime Pro look nice on the surface:

View attachment 120256

Look at all of those healthy PCIe slots.

Slot 1: 16x
Slot 2: 1x
Slot 3: 1x
Slot 4: 16x
Slot 5: 1x
Slot 6: 16x


But then we get back to the reality of the limitations and how these things work.

Slot 2 will be covered by your GPU, so it will never get used.

If you stick anything in slot 4, your GPU slot drops down to 8x, so that slot will never get used either.

Slot 6 maxes out at 4x (gen 2), however, if you use Slot 2 (covered anyway) or Slot 3, it gets demoted to x2. (I've never seen an x2 card...)

If you use slot 1 or slot 3, the m.2 slot can only be used for sata.

That, and the M.2 Slot apparently only supports x2 gen 3 mode... Aren't most PCIe SSD's x4?

And all this was somewhat confusing to gleam from the manual.

So, it' looks like it actually has the goods in pictures, but if you try to actually use any of those slots, you are in for a surprise.

Still, I could mostly make this work.

Slot 1: GPU
Slot 2: Nothing (it's covered by the GPU, and would sabotage M.2 if used anyway),
Slot 3: Sound Card
Slot 4: Nothing (it would drop GPU down to 8x)
Slot 5: Nothing (It would sabotage M.2 slot if used)
Slot 6: 10 Gig NIC
M.2 Slot: Samsung NVME Drive (limited to only 2x lanes)

So, this would be borderline doable, but with too many senseless compromises for me, and absolutely no room to grow.

I got out of building small form factor systems because I was annoyed at the limited expansion. These very few PCIe lanes in consumer parts essentially turns every system into the capability of a small form factor system, regardless of how big you make it.


I know I'm getting old and yelling at clouds and all that, but seriously, this shit was way better thought through years ago. Modern CPU's may have the IPC, clock and core advantage, but other than that, the old systems are way more configurable and usable. So sad to see this stuff get constricted and limited. Kind of ruins it for me.
Click to expand...


I have this exact board, with 3 RX VEGA 56s with EK blocks...

The top 2 slot is located under that alum that connects the VRM heatsinks to the South bridge hs assembly...It doe do x4, I have a 960 Evo boot drive installed in it.

The second m2 slot (the one you see) can do NMVE @x2 or sata mode (replacing one of the many sata connectors)...

You are correct about the m2 slots sharing bandwidth with the pci-e 1X slots, but that is the price you pay for versatility...it sucks, but if you want more then you are in the crowd that needs TR/x299 levels of lanes.

And just an FYI, the bottom x16 slot is pcie 2.0 x4 electrically, which is fine for me since I am just mining with that 3rd VEGA but I wanted to point that out. The lanes come off the South bridge.
 
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