Friday, February 24th 2017
AMD's X370 Only Chipset to Support NVIDIA's SLI
Only AMD's top-of-the-line X370 chipset will support competing NVIDIA's SLI technology. AMD's next-in-line B350 eschews SLI support but retains CrossFire compatibility, while the low-end A320 chipset will offer no support for any such multi-GPU technologies. While this may seem a move by AMD to purposely gimp NVIDIA products on its platforms, it stands to reason that even enthusiasts tend to stay away from multi-GPU solutions and their associated problems. Besides, AMD will surely avoid any way of giving NVIDIA more funds than the company already has, by way of paying the "SLI Tax" on every chipset it ships. By limiting SLI support to its highest-end chipsets, AMD shaves some expenses from licensing efforts, whilst keeping SLI support to those that are, in truth, more likely to use them: power users, who will certainly spare no expense in springing to a X370-based platform.
As of now, some details remain unclear in the overall feature-set and compatibility differences between AMD's upcoming AM4 chipsets, but it would seem that only AMD's X370 chipset manages to leverage the full 20 PCIe lanes (18x if you run 2x SATA connections) delivered by AMD's Ryzen CPUs. This would look like a way for AMD to impose a "motherboard tax" on users, by limiting the number of PCIe lanes available on lower-end motherboards, and thus urging them to take the next step to their own X370. Apparently, PCIe lanes are not a differentiating factor between AMD chipsets (with X370, B350 and A320 all offering 4 native lanes), only their ability to access (or not) Ryzen's own 20.
Not much time until all of this is adequately cleared up, though.
Source:
Computerbase.de
As of now, some details remain unclear in the overall feature-set and compatibility differences between AMD's upcoming AM4 chipsets, but it would seem that only AMD's X370 chipset manages to leverage the full 20 PCIe lanes (18x if you run 2x SATA connections) delivered by AMD's Ryzen CPUs. This would look like a way for AMD to impose a "motherboard tax" on users, by limiting the number of PCIe lanes available on lower-end motherboards, and thus urging them to take the next step to their own X370. Apparently, PCIe lanes are not a differentiating factor between AMD chipsets (with X370, B350 and A320 all offering 4 native lanes), only their ability to access (or not) Ryzen's own 20.
Not much time until all of this is adequately cleared up, though.
69 Comments on AMD's X370 Only Chipset to Support NVIDIA's SLI
www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=871
Where's the USB Type C connector?
Also, no Intel Ethernet Port = no buy.
www.guru3d.com/news-story/gigabyte-announces-am4-ryzen-support.html
And anyway, Crossfire was everywhere all those last years with SLI being more of a premium feature for more expensive boards.
AM4 changed nothing really.
select .. geizhals.at/?cat=mbam4
One of AMD's biggest plus points was their motherboard design allowing flexible lanes. What is with this cut down stuff?
For anyone wondering what the mainstream Intel Z270 offers for chipset lanes, here you go: www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/images/diagrams/z270-chipset-block-diagram-16x9.png.rendition.intel.web.1072.603.png
I hope that you know haw to clock , OC.!
For Ryzen CPU's you're looking at a total of 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes. 16 of those are for graphics, 4 of those are connecting to the chipset.
The remaining 4 lanes can be either 1x M.2 (four lanes), 2 SATA ports and 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes, or 2 SATA ports and one M.2 (two lanes).
The CPU's also have support for four USB 3.0 (3.1 G1) ports.
The X370 chipset connects as mentioned with 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes to the CPU. It gives you 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0 which sort of makes sense, as that adds up in terms of the PCIe bandwidth available. However, it also adds 4 SATA ports, 2 SATA Express (why AMD, why???), although if SATA express isn't used, apparently you can then somehow recover 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes, but I have not seen this on any motherboards so far. Then you also get 2 USB 3.1 10Gbps (G2), 6 USB 3.0 (3.1 G1) ports and 6 USB 2.0 ports.
Somehow the X370 chipset also allows the CPU to split the bandwidth for the x16 slot into an 8/8 configuration, much in the same way Intel's Z chipsets allow for this.
What a lot of board makers have done, is add an ASMedia SATA controller for additional SATA ports, especially on the B350 chipset which only supports two SATA ports. If the SATA ports from the CPU are implemented, they're usually disabled if an M.2 drive is inserted into the board, check the motherboard manuals for specific before buying.
AMD has never cared what speeds you run your cards at, and in fact I ran a 6950 CF with my second card in a x1 slot. Still worked.
since cpu coming 24 lanes pcie 3.0 (cause nort bridge are inside of cpu), since suthbrigge coming 8 lanes pcie 2.0 for x370.