Begun the AM5 Wars Have....

Delicieuxz said:
Citing an inside source who's said to have been a reliable leaker, Moore's Law Is Dead reports that Zen 4 X3D will have about 30% more performance than regular Zen 4, when both are locked to the same TDP. He also says that AMD is hurrying its release, potentially up to Q1 2023, so that it can help compete with Raptor Lake.



I'm guessing there won't be much in the way of mobo refinements between Zen 4 and Zen X3D's launches, outside of BIOS updates.

What would early adopter's tax apply to, in this case? AMD worked out some kinks with Zen 1 and 2, Zen 4 is like a refined Zen 3, with marginally higher IPC and higher clocks. And the Zen 4 X3D v-cache is already a (apparently major) refinement of Zen 3 X3D's. So, I'd guess that stuff is out of its early adoption phase.

Will DDR5 and PCIE5 support really get better from the first mobos that support it? What else does the EA tax apply to, with Zen 4?
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That's one of the videos I was alluding to.
 
Per all of the supposedly leaked info on WCCFTech this morning, it seems like all is right with the world in terms of pricing. I'm still going to be watching Intel's launch like a hawk, too, though.
 
Domingo said:
Per all of the supposedly leaked info on WCCFTech this morning, it seems like all is right with the world in terms of pricing. I'm still going to be watching Intel's launch like a hawk, too, though.
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I suppose we will find out when the products are actually available for purchase
 
Randall Stephens said:
I've got a dumb question, is a lane being used a lane being used, no matter what PCIE speed it is?
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A PCIe lane is a physical object. 1 lane consists of a transmit differential pair (tx) and a receive differential pair (rx). This will be 4 wires total for 1 lane. If you use up a PCIe lane that means no other device can use it. The number of PCIe lanes are restricted by the integrated logic on the semiconductor, the number of IO pins the semiconductor/package has, and the layout of the motherboard.

PCIe 1,2,3,4,5 all run over the same lanes, but the motherboard layout and materials are more restrictive for faster speed.
 
Isn't it possible to split a PCIe lane into 2 lanes of the next standard down i.e. 1 x PCIe 5 to 2 x PCIe 4?
 
jfreund said:
Isn't it possible to split a PCIe lane into 2 lanes of the next standard down i.e. 1 x PCIe 5 to 2 x PCIe 4?
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I'm not sure about "the next standard down" or not, but there is PCI-E Bifercation which allows you to split the bandwidth and resources of one lane into 2 or more provided your mobo/chipset supports the feature. I believe this is how during the GPU mining days you would see someone using a lot of PCI-E riser cables to essentially cram in more GPUs per motherboard, since mining operations didnd't require the full bandwidth of each slot individually.
 
RanceJustice said:
I'm not sure about "the next standard down" or not, but there is PCI-E Bifercation which allows you to split the bandwidth and resources of one lane into 2 or more provided your mobo/chipset supports the feature. I believe this is how during the GPU mining days you would see someone using a lot of PCI-E riser cables to essentially cram in more GPUs per motherboard, since mining operations didnd't require the full bandwidth of each slot individually.
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PCIe bifurcation won't split 1 lane into 2. A computer will bundle multiple PCIe lanes together and treat it like a single device, this is a PCIe port. For example the x16 slot on your motherboard is treated like a single device (1 GPU usually), this is 1 PCIe port. Some firmware allows you to split this single x16 port into smaller ports, this is bifurcation. So instead of the x16 single device, you can now connect a riser that splits 1 x16 -> 4 x4, now you can connect 4 nvme drives instead of 1 GPU. But the total number of lanes does not change.
 
German Muscle said:
1x PCIe 5 x16 down to 2x PCIe 4 x16 lanes? No
1x PCIe 5 x16 down to 2x PCIe 4 x8 lanes? Yes
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What you'd need for the first case is a PLX chip. It'd allow you to split a PCIe 5 x16 into two PCIe 5 x16s. Either or both of which AFAIK could be individually downgraded to 4.0 or slower.

Assuming PCIe5 PLX chips are available at present, and assuming the manufacturer hasn't decided to stuff another zero into the price to shake down server builders even more.
 
jfreund said:
Isn't it possible to split a PCIe lane into 2 lanes of the next standard down i.e. 1 x PCIe 5 to 2 x PCIe 4?
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I would assume the device would have to be a 5.0 or have some kind of god in
Teenyman45 said:
What's amazing to me is how far up the product stack you have to go from any manufacturer these days to get a motherboard with power and reset buttons on the board as if those were now high end, specialty features.
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That was always mid-high end feature. The cheap ones you had to jumper it with a screw driver.
 
serpretetsky said:
A PCIe lane is a physical object. 1 lane consists of a transmit differential pair (tx) and a receive differential pair (rx). This will be 4 wires total for 1 lane. If you use up a PCIe lane that means no other device can use it. The number of PCIe lanes are restricted by the integrated logic on the semiconductor, the number of IO pins the semiconductor/package has, and the layout of the motherboard.

PCIe 1,2,3,4,5 all run over the same lanes, but the motherboard layout and materials are more restrictive for faster speed.
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serpretetsky said:
Not without some sort of an active component in between to handle the split.
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serpretetsky said:
PCIe bifurcation won't split 1 lane into 2. A computer will bundle multiple PCIe lanes together and treat it like a single device, this is a PCIe port. For example the x16 slot on your motherboard is treated like a single device (1 GPU usually), this is 1 PCIe port. Some firmware allows you to split this single x16 port into smaller ports, this is bifurcation. So instead of the x16 single device, you can now connect a riser that splits 1 x16 -> 4 x4, now you can connect 4 nvme drives instead of 1 GPU. But the total number of lanes does not change.
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Kind of ironic that I'm typing this on a Raspberry Pi with a PCIe switch, which uses a ASMedia ASM1184e PCIe switch to connect four devices to the single-lane PCIe 2.0 interface. ;)
It does split the bandwidth, but it does allow multiple connections across a single PCIe lane, which unlike bifurcation will split the lane's data transfer rate between multiple devices on the same lane.

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Credit to Jeff Geerling for this (video is timestamped):

 
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Yeah, just to clarify I dont think you, Red Falcon, disagreed with anything i said?
Although yeah I didn't really understand which part was ironic.
 
Here we go with some pricing... Looks pretty darn steep. Not as bad as my gloom and doom predictions but the cheapest one is well over a hundred bucks more than I paid for my ASUS TUF X570 and more than Double than the Aorus Elite X570 I picked up recently.
MSI Reveals X670 Pricing

The X670E has stupid pricing, better make that CPU twice as fast... Somehow I highly doubt it does anything more than add a bunch of features very few people will ever use.

Looks like the low end X670 doesn't even have a PCIE 5.0 Slot on the Board, the main slot looks like it's only PCIE 4.0... So happy I am skipping this gen.
 
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Legendary Gamer said:
The X670E has stupid pricing, better make that CPU twice as fast... Somehow I highly doubt it does anything more than add a bunch of features very few people will ever use.
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It's all about PCI-E 5.0 lanes.
People who need em will pay for em. Most of the HEDT market is about PCI-E lanes.

Hell, I know I need em. I'm using all 24 pci-e 4.0 lanes on my x570, I'd actually have loved another 8 lanes.

Would I love em enough to spend $800 on a motherboard though? We'll see in a few years.
 
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Anyone remember how the greatest motherboard of all time, the Abit BP6 dual Celeron in 1999 cost ~$145?

That used to be the premium motherboard price point.

Sure, we have had some inflation since, but not a factor of 10.

$145 in 1999 is $260 today. Not $1,250

It's bullshit. They gussy the boards up with fancy lights, pretty heatsinks, and other stuff you don't need, then create artificial branding buzz for no reason, and charge an unwarranted bloody fortune for them.

The market is thoroughly broken.

It's bullshit.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's bullshit. They gussy the boards up with fancy lights, pretty heatsinks, and other stuff you don't need, then create artificial branding buzz for no reason, and charge an unwarranted bloody fortune for them.
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There's a lot to that, but I'm sure a modern motherboard is way more complicated. Start with the pinouts, they have over 1,700 compared to 370 (even times two). All of the traces are smaller, faster, and require a lot better power regulation. New boards probably scale up across the board in terms of traces and layers. A 2022 motherboard is going to have easily five times more stuff baked into it, and require much more expensive, higher-quality components. Even boards without RBG bullshit and crazy fan setups.

And they can't use lead anymore, either.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Anyone remember how the greatest motherboard of all time, the Abit BP6 dual Celeron in 1999 cost ~$145?

That used to be the premium motherboard price point.

Sure, we have had some inflation since, but not a factor of 10.

$145 in 1999 is $260 today. Not $1,250

It's bullshit. They gussy the boards up with fancy lights, pretty heatsinks, and other stuff you don't need, then create artificial branding buzz for no reason, and charge an unwarranted bloody fortune for them.

The market is thoroughly broken.

It's bullshit.
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Totally. This marketing bullshit has become Xtreme…
 
I remember the Abit BP6. I also owned an EPOX board which was another of those exceedingly awesome boards from yester-year.

But in regards to the 2.5Gbe post near the beginning of the thread, my brand new Asus TUF Gaming X570 Pro Wifi has an Intel i255v that I haven't found a single driver that identifies it correctly yet. It is effectively 100% non-functional. I looked it up online, evidently 85% of the i255v onboard adapters have something wrong with them where they either drop packets, randomly stop working or like mine are DOA. I just purchased a newer Intel CT card in the interim. Realtec's 2.5Gbps chip mostly works... There are a couple 10Gbe adapters that can negotiate down to 5, 2.5 in addition to 1Gbps and work correctly. The marvell Aquaius adapter being one of them. I also heard that Marvell will be exiting the desktop adapter market. So Ill stick with the CT card until something stable and worthwhile comes along.
 
Mackintire said:
I remember the Abit BP6. I also owned an EPOX board which was another of those exceedingly awesome boards from yester-year.

But in regards to the 2.5Gbe post near the beginning of the thread, my brand new Asus TUF Gaming X570 Pro Wifi has an Intel i255v that I haven't found a single driver that identifies it correctly yet. It is effectively 100% non-functional. I looked it up online, evidently 85% of the i255v onboard adapters have something wrong with them where they either drop packets, randomly stop working or like mine are DOA. I just purchased a newer Intel CT card in the interim. Realtec's 2.5Gbps chip mostly works... There are a couple 10Gbe adapters that can negotiate down to 5, 2.5 in addition to 1Gbps and work correctly. The marvell Aquaius adapter being one of them. I also heard that Marvell will be exiting the desktop adapter market. So Ill stick with the CT card until something stable and worthwhile comes along.
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This is why I am a huge proponent of giving us more PCIe slots and fewer on board devices. That way I can decide for myself what I want and buy something that works, and not just be stuck with whatever came with the motherboard.

My ideal board would have nothing that's not included with the chipset on board, and as many PCIe slots as possible.
 
Mackintire said:
I remember the Abit BP6. I also owned an EPOX board which was another of those exceedingly awesome boards from yester-year.

But in regards to the 2.5Gbe post near the beginning of the thread, my brand new Asus TUF Gaming X570 Pro Wifi has an Intel i255v that I haven't found a single driver that identifies it correctly yet. It is effectively 100% non-functional. I looked it up online, evidently 85% of the i255v onboard adapters have something wrong with them where they either drop packets, randomly stop working or like mine are DOA. I just purchased a newer Intel CT card in the interim. Realtec's 2.5Gbps chip mostly works... There are a couple 10Gbe adapters that can negotiate down to 5, 2.5 in addition to 1Gbps and work correctly. The marvell Aquaius adapter being one of them. I also heard that Marvell will be exiting the desktop adapter market. So Ill stick with the CT card until something stable and worthwhile comes along.
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Yep, the Intel 2.5, where Realtek is the better choice. Sad ain’t it? Turns everything you thought you knew about networking on its head.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
This is why I am a huge proponent of giving us more PCIe slots and fewer on board devices. That way I can decide for myself what I want and buy something that works, and not just be stuck with whatever came with the motherboard.

My ideal board would have nothing that's not included with the chipset on board, and as many PCIe slots as possible.
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Slots and more slots on atx, and cut that closed end 1x connector shit out. On itx, 10gbe please :D
 
Yeah, the Asus motherboard without the Wifi and built-in Ethernet was $40 more. The number of slots was also the same across all 4 variations of this motherboard. I chose the motherboard based on cost, stability and what items I required..certain number and type of PCIe slots. In this case it was a Microcenter Special
 
Legendary Gamer said:
The X670E has stupid pricing, better make that CPU twice as fast... Somehow I highly doubt it does anything more than add a bunch of features very few people will ever use.

Looks like the low end X670 doesn't even have a PCIE 5.0 Slot on the Board, the main slot looks like it's only PCIE 4.0... So happy I am skipping this gen.
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No it won't make the CPU twice as fast, and you are absolutely correct a bunch of features very few would, some do use them. This is really one of those situations where you need to not let the shiny things blind you into deciding what to purchase. The big difference between all three boards, x670e will have 2 - pcie5.0 gpu sockets, 1 pcie5.0 nvme slot, x670 will have only 1 pcie5.0 gpu socket + 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot, b650 will only have 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot. There will be other differences of course like VRM differences come to mind too but again most people aren't going to use them, pcie5.0 isn't expected to even be supported for the 40 series Nvidia cards either (unless information changed). So do yourself a favor don't be angry at the price of the x670e boards, those who need all the features can pay for it, look at the b650 boards as they'll be more than fine. Don't get hung up over the whole "ooh no it's only PCIe4.0!"
 
sfsuphysics said:
No it won't make the CPU twice as fast, and you are absolutely correct a bunch of features very few would, some do use them. This is really one of those situations where you need to not let the shiny things blind you into deciding what to purchase. The big difference between all three boards, x670e will have 2 - pcie5.0 gpu sockets, 1 pcie5.0 nvme slot, x670 will have only 1 pcie5.0 gpu socket + 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot, b650 will only have 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot. There will be other differences of course like VRM differences come to mind too but again most people aren't going to use them, pcie5.0 isn't expected to even be supported for the 40 series Nvidia cards either (unless information changed). So do yourself a favor don't be angry at the price of the x670e boards, those who need all the features can pay for it, look at the b650 boards as they'll be more than fine. Don't get hung up over the whole "ooh no it's only PCIe4.0!"
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Pcie5 for a GPU not in some form of SLI is way overkill unless they are running 8x5 instead of 16x4.
Now there may be some new direct storage functions or features that may make this completely untrue, but the time it takes them to become mainstream enough to matter we’ll probably be on the 5000 or 6000 series.
 
TheSlySyl said:
It's all about PCI-E 5.0 lanes.
People who need em will pay for em. Most of the HODT market is about PCI-E lanes.

Hell, I know I need em. I'm using all 24 pci-e 4.0 lanes on my x570, I'd actually have loved another 8 lanes.

Would I love em enough to spend $800 on a motherboard though? We'll see in a few years.
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Yeah, all that high end PCI-E 5.0 Goodness... But the adoption price for the one with all the lanes is brutal at 800 bucks. You can get the 500 buck one and get the bare bones version of it tho! Lol! I believe I am only using 20 of my lanes now. The 6900XT and my PCI-E 4.0 M.2, I suspect I will be fine waiting until this stuff starts becoming mainstream and the prices normalize.
 
Mackintire said:
I remember the Abit BP6. I also owned an EPOX board which was another of those exceedingly awesome boards from yester-year.

But in regards to the 2.5Gbe post near the beginning of the thread, my brand new Asus TUF Gaming X570 Pro Wifi has an Intel i255v that I haven't found a single driver that identifies it correctly yet. It is effectively 100% non-functional. I looked it up online, evidently 85% of the i255v onboard adapters have something wrong with them where they either drop packets, randomly stop working or like mine are DOA. I just purchased a newer Intel CT card in the interim. Realtec's 2.5Gbps chip mostly works... There are a couple 10Gbe adapters that can negotiate down to 5, 2.5 in addition to 1Gbps and work correctly. The marvell Aquaius adapter being one of them. I also heard that Marvell will be exiting the desktop adapter market. So Ill stick with the CT card until something stable and worthwhile comes along.
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The Abit was the shit! EPOX was pretty good for some crazy builds back in the day.

Intel Wireless is having all kinds of issues these days. I have the TUF X570 without the WiFi. All of our Intel Latitude 5420's in the field have WiFi issues with intel. You have to use a driver from before March in order to get it to function without BSOD. Not sure what that NIC is atm, have to look.

I'm using the Marvell cards now, in 2 systems, and they're beautiful and stable. However, they don't have drivers for Server 2019... So, I had to install a Rosewill 10G and drop it to 5G for stability's sake. Working fine.
 
sfsuphysics said:
No it won't make the CPU twice as fast, and you are absolutely correct a bunch of features very few would, some do use them. This is really one of those situations where you need to not let the shiny things blind you into deciding what to purchase. The big difference between all three boards, x670e will have 2 - pcie5.0 gpu sockets, 1 pcie5.0 nvme slot, x670 will have only 1 pcie5.0 gpu socket + 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot, b650 will only have 1 pcie 5.0 nvme slot. There will be other differences of course like VRM differences come to mind too but again most people aren't going to use them, pcie5.0 isn't expected to even be supported for the 40 series Nvidia cards either (unless information changed). So do yourself a favor don't be angry at the price of the x670e boards, those who need all the features can pay for it, look at the b650 boards as they'll be more than fine. Don't get hung up over the whole "ooh no it's only PCIe4.0!"
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I'm not getting hung up on anything. I am skipping this generation. Maybe two or three. The pricing is kinda brutal and they should have their full product stack at launch. However, since they likely know most people will buy the B650 instead... It's likely a tactic at launch this time instead of a legit issue with getting the chips manufactured like the B550 delay. I suspect they are gonna gouge as many people as possible this time around, before introducing the affordable models.

AMD is a greedy corporation, after all. We like to think of them as the underdog of the hardware world but that has been fast changing. They're starting to resemble Intel now, and Intel... well, the jury is still out on which direction they are headed.
 
Didn't B550 not come out until after X570? Same "tactic"... from a business perspective.. why release the "budget" option along with the premium product... early adopter price premium/gouging is not new..
 
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