AM4 chipsets and APU information.

cageymaru

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First of all I saw it on Reddit here and here.

Written information on AM4 and the APU release.
AMD Unveils Its 7th Generation A-Series Desktop Processors; Equipped With New AM4 Socket

Gamer's Nexus article on it.
AMD AM4 Chipset Specs: B350, A320, XBA300 & A12-9800 APU, X4 950

Video from Gamers Nexus.


AMD-APUScreen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.03.30-PM.jpg


AMD-APUScreen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.04.03-PM.jpg


AMD-APUScreen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.04.21-PM.jpg
 
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A bit light in the chipset department. I assume Zen compatibility.

amd-zen-chipset-io.jpg
 
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At first, I was like, why would they use PCIe Gen 2? Then I realized, the excavator core uses Gen 2 PCIe which then makes perfect sense. Also, Shintai, please do not try to do some bullshit crap out of this, it is clearly the APU chipsets as noted by the B350 and A320 designation. For once, either get a clue or stuff it. Yes, I am being a bit hostile if you like because, after a while, your political attempts at AMD bashing are becoming downright irritating.

I personally and not in the market for this but, with DDR4 support, that should help this APU considerably. That is assuming the OEM's do not neuter the crap out of it like they have in the past.

Edit: Looks like I was wrong, the APU does have Gen 3 PCIe after all. However, I would then imagine the Gen 2 lanes of the chipset and extra lanes for General Purpose usage.
 
AMD has always been great with pretty slides and paper numbers but none the less these lower end chipsets look pretty darn good.
 
Edit: Looks like I was wrong, the APU does have Gen 3 PCIe after all. However, I would then imagine the Gen 2 lanes of the chipset and extra lanes for General Purpose usage.

If I'm reading that right it looks like the x8 3.0 lanes are also for GP usage from the chipset and not the PCI-E interconnect for the CPU itself. That makes sense if the lanes can be allocated for two NVMe drives. I'm trying to temper my excitement for this platform but its looking better and better. With a unified socket it would be great for budget builders to be able to start with an APU or the "athlon" chip and then down the road be able to swap in a much better chip.
 
If I'm reading that right it looks like the x8 3.0 lanes are also for GP usage from the chipset and not the PCI-E interconnect for the CPU itself. That makes sense if the lanes can be allocated for two NVMe drives. I'm trying to temper my excitement for this platform but its looking better and better. With a unified socket it would be great for budget builders to be able to start with an APU or the "athlon" chip and then down the road be able to swap in a much better chip.

Its an x2 NVME drive, not 2 NVME drives. Summit Ridge supports a x4 NVME and x16 GPU. Else everything is the same.

It looks like this to be more precise. (FM3 got renamed to AM4)

AMD_Bristol_Ridge_Architecture.jpg
 
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Waiting to find out if AM4 will support ecc myself, I want to use ecc memory on my next desktop.
 
Its an x2 NVME drive, not 2 NVME drives. Summit Ridge supports a x4 NVME and x16 GPU. Else everything is the same.

It looks like this to be more precise. (FM3 got renamed to AM4)

That seems pretty strange, there are no x2 NVMe drives on the market, why would they spec a platform to not even utilize the current standards? As a matter of fact, storage devices seem to be going the other way with x8/x16 drives announced.
 
That seems pretty strange, there are no x2 NVMe drives on the market, why would they spec a platform to not even utilize the current standards? As a matter of fact, storage devices seem to be going the other way with x8/x16 drives announced.

M.2 slots are max x4. Drives can be found in both x2 and x4. And they work in any config. So an x4 drive would just run with 2 lanes on Bristol Ridge.
 
M.2 slots are max x4. NVME/AHCI drives can be found in both x2 and x4. And they work in any config. So an x4 drive would just run with 2 lanes on Bristol Ridge.

Nevermind, I was thinking m.2 only. Although I don't think I've ever seen PCI-E 3.0 x2 SSD that uses a motherboard slot either, but you can get a double SATA 6G to PCI-E 3.0 x2 riser which might be what they were going for.
 
This is looking better and better. I'm actually fixing to be in the market for a new build, but i'm not in any hurry to spend intel bucks for one.
 
OEM only. What, you think they actually want you to buy their stuff?

Read the article because, it says OEM first followed by retail. Makes sense that the OEM would be first since that is where most of the money is made though.
 
Soooo wait.. Is AMD going to do that thing where they have a billion different chipsets so the market gets ridiculously confusing?
 
I would get a 65w APU to build my mini pc based on a mini itx mobo and case and wait till next year's iteration with zen cores, called I think Raven Ridge. I assume retail availability will be around november after the "back to school" sales season will be over.
 
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Still a yawn fest if the APUs can't beat Iris Pro. I want a 12CU radeon chip with 1GB HBM cache on my APU. Imagine a notebook with that chip.
 
Is it me or does this look like a z97 board with ddr4 and USB 3.1? Or am I just too used to Intel. Glad to see more am4 stuff come out, hope it can compete.
 
Still a yawn fest if the APUs can't beat Iris Pro. I want a 12CU radeon chip with 1GB HBM cache on my APU. Imagine a notebook with that chip.
It's pretty easy to beat Iris Pro: you just need to sell the alternative. Like, at all.

Also, i'd argue a laptop with minimal iGPU and mobile 1050 (when it's out) would be both faster and eat less energy.
 
Still a yawn fest if the APUs can't beat Iris Pro. I want a 12CU radeon chip with 1GB HBM cache on my APU. Imagine a notebook with that chip.
I like the look of the 35 watt one even if it can't beat iris pro outright. If these follow the current line up the high end with be ~$150 which isn't bad at all for a thin and quite media box. As for the HBM chip; I too look forward to those datacenter chips and hope a workstation version is made as well ;)
 
Soooo wait.. Is AMD going to do that thing where they have a billion different chipsets so the market gets ridiculously confusing?

From the looks of it they will have 3 chipsets. All made from the same baseline chip. So its just a matter of features disabled/enabled.

A320=entry.
B350=mainstream
?=enthusiast
 
From the looks of it they will have 3 chipsets. All made from the same baseline chip. So its just a matter of features disabled/enabled.

A320=entry.
B350=mainstream
?=enthusiast
You missed the X/B/A300 at the bottom of the last slide. ;)
 
My take on the chipsets was that there was going to be 4 total, but only 2 would be in the retail sector (ie: boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc), aka the "enthusiast" models: the X400 and X300.
The B350 will be for OEMs and I assume the top model, which the higher end workstations will get (and systems that have the FirePro APUs).
The A320 and A300 then will be for your everyday OEM systems


Ok I'm revising this notion, now that I think about things a bit more as I typed all that... Reason being, is that these are SoC, they won't have a 'chipset' so to speak, as it's all built into the CPU/APU. That being said, I doubt AMD is going to package various models of chips that'll have features to match these chipsets.

I suspect that there may POSSIBLY be different levels of the Promotory features as you cross into different performance nodes (A12, A10, A8, etc), but otherwise it'll be the fully fledged feature set.

As such, it feels like what this will all be are just a signifier of "board features" that the system will come with, but otherwise all of (or at least most of) the chips will be capable of utilizing all of what they have.

So that these X, B, A classes are the more important indicator, signaling if the board will have "everything and the kitchen sink" for the Enthusiast (X), while Business (B) will focus on high performance storage connections and at least 1 full x16 PCIe slot, then the Entry (A) will be just the standard things that.

As for the numerical indicators... for some reason I have a feeling that's going to reference the slots. Not certain if it'll be purely the PCI/e slots, or PCIe+high speed storage slots, but either way, something to the effect of:
350: comes with either 5 PCI/e slots, and 1 or 2 storage slots. OR 3 PCI/e and then 2 storage slots.
320: comes with an x16 PCIe and 1 storage slot. MAYBE a PCIe x16 and a PCI given this is OEM we're talking about, and keeping with my theory, so would still get probably 1 storage slot.
300: (and this is why I wonder if storage are factored in) comes with zero full size PCI/e slots but will have mPCIe for WiFi+BT, at least 1 storage slot but 2 would be ideal.

If this is true then I figure the enthusiast range will be 370, for 7 slots of various flavors, and then hopefully 2 to 4 storage slots, but could feature 6, 8, 10, whatever (technically no maximum, beyond what 'chipset' lanes can accommodate). It'll simply be left up to the board maker's discretion as for how crazy they want to go. We've seen boards that have them on the backside, so anything's possible. Though, if the storage slots do play some role in the numbering convention, then it could be 380, 390, 400+

However, I'd prefer to see it be the 400, just because numerically it looks better (X400) and would more appropriately signify the next generation, aka Zen.


That's just my 3½ cents worth.... :cool:
(Please Note: This is all speculation that I've came up with right now. I have not read anything about this, and have only read one article from yesterday regarding the AM4 OEM Launch, so all of this is simply me theorizing about what AMD has planned and why their labeling things how they are.)
 
I'm hoping we get some decent micro ATX boards.

Agreed. I'm on a 760G at the moment, paired with a GTX 770 and it still works very well. I'm upgrading most components by January, so I'm hoping for some decent MicroATX boards too - all I need is to cram 1 GPU, RAM and CPU, so I've never needed many expansion options.

Whether I'll get Intel or AMD, it all depends on what they release this fall.
 
Dual channel DDR4 ... are you kidding me? With as important that APU's are to AMD I'm surprised they didn't include quad channel support. I would imagine the IGP would benefit greatly from the increased memory bandwidth.
 
Dual channel DDR4 ... are you kidding me? With as important that APU's are to AMD I'm surprised they didn't include quad channel support. I would imagine the IGP would benefit greatly from the increased memory bandwidth.

Swatting a fly with a rocket propelled grenade makes little sense ....

If anything if they wanted to give the APU more power HBM would be more obvious.
 
Dual channel DDR4 ... are you kidding me? With as important that APU's are to AMD I'm surprised they didn't include quad channel support. I would imagine the IGP would benefit greatly from the increased memory bandwidth.
The DDR4 in of itself is going to increase the bandwidth quite a bit. That being said, even Intel doesn't use quad channel on consumer level CPU's that have IGP's. It's simpler and cheaper to just keep requiring a faster standard of RAM as it's released.

The great thing about this is it will increase demand for the highest speeds of RAM out there forcing increased production which will help push the prices down for enthusiasts.
 
As much as I have no interest in AMD chips, I do miss the pins being on the CPU.
 
From /r/amd and /r/hardware:



Strangely, I cannot find the HP Support page for the desktop at Costco.

Edit: Of course they might just be late with rollout of the support page. I found references to the desktop in question but not the support page itself.
 
a savvy tech website/yt channel should drop that piddly $600 for a web exclusive! hint hint, hint hint...
 
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