What justifies a new platform?

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wandplus

Gawd
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It just occurred to me that we've seen sometimes different chipsets and sockets when the gains didn't seem that large. What do you think justifies a new platform/socket?
 
New chipsets on the same socket are fine so long as they are bringing new/more features to the table, like faster USB or networking, more downstream PCIe or whatever. New sockets should only come into play when there is a major feature update that requires more pins or surface area. Stuff like PCIe version/lane count increases, I/O die feature additions (more an AMD thing), or RAM version/channel count. It's been well demonstrated that increasing the power draw doesn't need a new socket, so long as the board is properly designed (really only a problem for the lowest end boards you wouldn't put a high end chip in)

Intel's Z270/Z370 same chipset, same socket but not quite, BS incompatibility on the change from 7th to 8th was a great example of money grubbing. No reason a 9900ks wouldn't have been able to run in a Z170 board. Likewise, I think that AMD's decision to use the same chips for the 600 and 800 series chipsets but slightly tweak the board build requirements was unnecessary and maliciously confusing to average consumers. 3/4/500 chipsets had updates and ran 4 iterations of Zen, that was a good deal.
pendragon1 said:
when you old shit cant do the shit you need it to do, or cause you feel like it...
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I think they mean on Intel's side of things.
 
wandplus said:
It just occurred to me that we've seen sometimes different chipsets and sockets when the gains didn't seem that large. What do you think justifies a new platform/socket?
Click to expand...
$$$ - Intel prob

Only time it's justified is if there's a physical limitation of the hardware to handle the increase compute power.
 
Grebuloner said:
New chipsets on the same socket are fine so long as they are bringing new/more features to the table, like faster USB or networking, more downstream PCIe or whatever. New sockets should only come into play when there is a major feature update that requires more pins or surface area. Stuff like PCIe version/lane count increases, I/O die feature additions (more an AMD thing), or RAM version/channel count. It's been well demonstrated that increasing the power draw doesn't need a new socket, so long as the board is properly designed (really only a problem for the lowest end boards you wouldn't put a high end chip in)

Intel's Z270/Z370 same chipset, same socket but not quite, BS incompatibility on the change from 7th to 8th was a great example of money grubbing. No reason a 9900ks wouldn't have been able to run in a Z170 board. Likewise, I think that AMD's decision to use the same chips for the 600 and 800 series chipsets but slightly tweak the board build requirements was unnecessary and maliciously confusing to average consumers. 3/4/500 chipsets had updates and ran 4 iterations of Zen, that was a good deal.

I think they mean on Intel's side of things.
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To be fair, nothing stops you from running Zen 5 on a 600 series chipset and I'm pretty sure the same will apply to Zen 6 as well. Sure, 600 vs 800 features are a little confusing, but as long as you are shopping for the features you want at the price point you're willing to pay, you wouldn't go wrong regardless of whether you chose a 600 or 800 series board. At a higher level, people that would be upset that X870 is a B650E equivalent and that there isn't an X670 equivalent in the 800 lineup is likely a very small number.

To answer OP, as said, for AMD/Intel, justification of new socket other than DDR and PCI-E revision is basically at the whims of the business. For the end user, going to a new platform is always best done when the current platform no longer meets expectations.
 
wandplus said:
It just occurred to me that we've seen sometimes different chipsets and sockets when the gains didn't seem that large. What do you think justifies a new platform/socket?
Click to expand...
[H]ard answer - easy and stated above.
Mature answer - that takes a bit more maturity. Gains seen from the latest I/O, ram, and cpu rarely are as life changing as you think it will be. Holding onto electronics longer can actually be rewarding in some ways too.
 
Retro hardware seems to be the new e-peen. A 5800x3d seems to be as much of a flex as a 9800x3d. Especially true now in the console relm - CRTs, Dreamcasts, and Nintendo 3DS owners get all the chicks.
 
Justification?
1. You won the lottery
2. Expendable income
3. Impress someone
4. You like new stuff
5. YOLO
 
Use to be just the fun of tinkering with new hardware for me. Setup custom WC loops and stuff. The past few years? I give a shit really. I don't see any need to upgrade my 7800x3d with a 4080S any time soon. Not like I have the choice in the matter anyway with the way prices are going for the next few years.
 
I'm not going to assume I fully understand the complexities of a EE's life, or a firmware engineers life. So there are definitely going to be times where a platform simply doesn't have the capabilities that an Intel or AMD want for their next chip. That being said, I feel with 100% certainty that Intel many many times has chosen to simply make a new platform for a new chip because they could. Consumer be damned. That mentality is now biting them in a the arse.
 
Grebuloner said:
New chipsets on the same socket are fine so long as they are bringing new/more features to the table, like faster USB or networking, more downstream PCIe or whatever. New sockets should only come into play when there is a major feature update that requires more pins or surface area. Stuff like PCIe version/lane count increases, I/O die feature additions (more an AMD thing), or RAM version/channel count. It's been well demonstrated that increasing the power draw doesn't need a new socket, so long as the board is properly designed (really only a problem for the lowest end boards you wouldn't put a high end chip in)

Intel's Z270/Z370 same chipset, same socket but not quite, BS incompatibility on the change from 7th to 8th was a great example of money grubbing. No reason a 9900ks wouldn't have been able to run in a Z170 board. Likewise, I think that AMD's decision to use the same chips for the 600 and 800 series chipsets but slightly tweak the board build requirements was unnecessary and maliciously confusing to average consumers. 3/4/500 chipsets had updates and ran 4 iterations of Zen, that was a good deal.

I think they mean on Intel's side of things.
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Most of the time they could have kept their sockets compatible for 3-4 years, without gimping features on the latest CPUs. Mostly PCI-E and and RAM revisions that actually need a full socket change. For a lot of other stuff they could just have upgraded the chipsets with new features and kept the CPUs the same.

Intel probably makes quite a bit of the motherboards so it made sense to do so when there was little competition. Basically double dipping by forcing people to pay them for both the motherboard and the CPU. They dominated the market until Zen 1 offered a little bit competition. Zen 2 was when AMD finally could compete on equal footing and Intel has mostly been playing catch up since AMD launched Zen 3. People will still buy the brand name, which is how Intel has survived in the consumer desktop space.

The drawback to their strategy is that some people get annoyed with their BS. The Z270 chipset was the last I bought from Intel as I got tired of the buying a new MB every CPU. Bought 4 MB and 6 CPUs since then with 2 being upgrades. Being able to do 2400G -> 5600G is probably the best upgrade I ever did for my passively cooled HTPC and 5900x -> 5800x3D extended my main system by a few years. Next will most likely be 9800x3D to Zen6 single CCD X3D CPU, with the 9800x3D being repurposed for my secondary.

Probably not going back to Intel, unless they hold a 20-30% performance advantage in games for a few years. The CPUs are so fast in productivity now days that it is rare that I feel like I need more than a modern 8 core 16 thread CPU provides.
 
wandplus said:
It just occurred to me that we've seen sometimes different chipsets and sockets when the gains didn't seem that large. What do you think justifies a new platform/socket?
Click to expand...
It's pretty much 3 things:
Speed (do things quicker and faster), efficiency (less power draw), and/or new industry benefits and technologies.

I was on a 3930K with 64GB less than two years ago. I do a lot of different productivity work, and some gaming on the side. The biggest issue I had was very slow browser speeds, especially with a large number of tabs. It never made sense, since it was fine a long time ago, but I think all the browsers stopped supporting Flash, and websites just just got bogged down with newer technologies that were unoptimized. The biggest factor in my upgrade was speed... and of course, price. The 13600K was my choice, since I found one selling for less than $150, along with a Z690 D4 motherboard and 64GB 3200MHz DDR4, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for $110 (yeah, crazy... but I drove like 5 total hours for both the CPU and the MB/DDR/NVMe SSD combo).

About half a year ago, we started traveling to visit relatives more, so I wanted a portable mini-PC for my kids so that they could play local co-op games with their cousins. A capable gaming iGPU was needed, and a Ryzen CPU with a 780M was able to fit that bill. Having a USB4 and/or Oculink port was a bonus in case I needed to use an eGPU.

Since two years ago, I transitioned from encoding H.264 to HEVC (H.265), and now am transitioning to encoding AV1 with an Intel Arc B580.

Also, I've been a budget builder, so price-per-performance is the biggest factor (or else I'd just buy the best stuff, duh). Next is large amounts of memory due to multiple browser tabs soak up a lot of memory, as well as for encoding needs (as well as a temp cache using RAMDisk so I don't wear out SSD writes). DDR4 > DDR5 mainly because of price, but also smaller gains. Larger gains just cost a lot more (higher speeds and timings), so that's out of the question, especially these days. Also, Intel CPU's seem to just handle larger amounts of memory (4x32GB to 4x16GB) much better than AM4/AM5 setups from my own experience.
 
wandplus said:
lol I just read the Nova Lake platform will use a new socket.
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Just? That's been known for a while.

I wish it was 2 new sockets. I want a Core Ultra 9 with quad channel ram and large last level cache and a 10950X3D in a quad channel Threadripper socket that works with CUDIMMs to choose from. And lots of PCI-e lanes on either. In other words proper HEDT comes back. Desktop "9" gaming performance plus more ram & lanes. OTOH ram is so fucking expensive right now I'd just sit on what I have, so add cheaper ram to the wish list.
 
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