Friday, June 14th 2019

ASMedia-sourced AMD B550, A520 Chipset Motherboards Arrive in 2020

If a recent MSRP price-list leak is anything to go by, motherboards based on the AMD X570 chipset will cost a pretty penny, beating even Intel's premium Z390 Express chipset on average motherboard pricing. Those looking for an affordable motherboard for the Ryzen 3000 series processors have the option of choosing existing AMD 400-series chipset based motherboards, and taking advantage of the USB BIOS Flashback feature that's almost universally available on the AMD platform. You lose out on PCI-Express gen 4.0 with the older platforms, which may not be a big compromise when it comes to graphics cards, but would limit your M.2 NVMe SSD performance upgrade path. One possible option would be to wait for affordable variants of AMD's 500-series chipsets, which are sourced from ASMedia.

According to DigiTimes, ASMedia will tape out its next-generation AMD-platform chipset silicon, and is on track to shipping its new chipsets to motherboard manufacturers by Q4-2019. This would pin availability of the first motherboards based on these chipsets to at least Q1 2020. These chipsets not only feature PCI-Express gen 4.0 downstream lanes, but also boards based on these will be built to AMD's PCB requirements for the new platform, enabling a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot for discrete graphics, and revised CPU VRM and memory wiring specifications that improve overclocking over the previous generation platform. For now there are two SKUs in the works, the B550, which succeeds the B450, and the A520, succeeding the A320.
Image Credit: Hardware.info
Source: DigiTimes
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83 Comments on ASMedia-sourced AMD B550, A520 Chipset Motherboards Arrive in 2020

#76
Zubasa
smaddeusI am not sure where you are living, but NVMe SSD's are killing SATA SSD's, they are cheap, and the speed is 2x faster as minimum that NVMe has, 1GB at least of reading and writing for around 50-80 Euro's. 1-3GB(reading/writing) NVMe I can get for around 60-80 Euro's with 240GB - 512GB of memory. For example ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB, it has damn 3GB+ writing and reading...that's like 6-7x more of top performing SATA SSD's for the same price if not lower, costs just 80 Euro's (depending if those SSD's are or aren't MLC, since those are expensier, but if we look at TLC, then it's just about 70-100 Euro's for an SSD of 240-512GB capacity and 500-550MB reading/writing speeds, obviously NVMe is the way to go).

Personally I am looking for NVMe SSD MLC for OS, TLC can be for game storing with 512GB and 3GB reading/writing. I am planning in near future to get AORUS NVMe Gen 4 SSD, 1TB memory, and up to 5GB reading and 4GB writing speed, of course it costs quite a sum 250-300 Euro's , but much more worth than SATA SSD's, and performance is just unbelievable for such price.


The only sad thing I dislike, is that they all are, or majority are, TCL, and MCL are rare to find in this haystack of TCL's.
The fallacy is all of that is just sequential transfers.
The real bottleneck that nvme is hitting is IOPs, and PCI-E 4.0 SSD is not inherently faster than PCI-E 3.0 SSDs in IOPs, especially important is the low queue depth IOPs.
PC work loads rarely invlove huge sequential transfers but lots of rather small files.

You act like PCI-E 4 will benefit all of those PCI-E 3 SSD that you mentioned, it doesn't.
My point is PCI-E 4 is not something that budget user should be looking at, and even today it is still true.
The lower end NVME SSDs still do not offer significant low queue depth IOPs performance over the better SATA SSDs.
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#77
smaddeus
ZubasaThe fallacy is all of that is just sequential transfers.
The real bottleneck that nvme is hitting is IOPs, and PCI-E 4.0 SSD is not inherently faster than PCI-E 3.0 SSDs in IOPs, especially important is the low queue depth IOPs.
PC work loads rarely invlove huge sequential transfers but lots of rather small files.

You act like PCI-E 4 will benefit all of those PCI-E 3 SSD that you mentioned, it doesn't.
My point is PCI-E 4 is not something that budget user should be looking at, and even today it is still true.
The lower end NVME SSDs still do not offer significant low queue depth IOPs performance over the better SATA SSDs.
Sorry, forgot to mention I was talking about M.2 not PCIe's. I see no point at why I should place in a PCIe slot that will be taken by graphics card that usually takes 2 slots, and who knows, maybe a third slot, getting in the way of 2nd PCI 8x slot, maybe in future I would like to get a sound card as well. There wont be space for PCI slotted NVMe, but that's not my argument, I just better buy an NVMe M.2 not PCIe slotted SSD, it doesn't get in the way (unless you buy an AORUS model, that has a beefy passive radiator on, might get in the way in slotted below X16 PCIe slot where graphics card will be.).
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#78
Zubasa
smaddeusSorry, forgot to mention I was talking about M.2 not PCIe's
Well m.2 nvme is just using up to 4 lanes of PCI-E, performance wise it is no different from PCI-E 4x add-in-cards.
As for M.2 AHCI that is just SATA signal and offers no performance benefit what so ever over 2.5 inch SSDs.
The only benefit for M.2 AHCI drives is no extra cables to deal with and saves space.

This thread is about supposely B550 and A520 chipsets, most of these mother boards will be sub-100 Euro, so for budget users every little bit of saving counts.
The A320 chipset is only used in super low-end boards or OEM boards that cost like $40 USD. A520 is the supposed replacement.
Posted on Reply
#79
smaddeus
ZubasaWell m.2 nvme is just using up to 4 lanes of PCI-E, performance wise it is no different from PCI-E 4x add-in-cards.
As for M.2 AHCI that is just SATA signal and offers no performance benefit what so ever over 2.5 inch SSDs.
The only benefit for M.2 AHCI drives is no extra cables to deal with and saves space.
But why buy SATA SSD that has max ~550mb reads and/or writes, if you can get for the same price 3GB+ reads and writes despite whether it boosts or not performance? There is no real argument to bother using SATA if at the same price, and you can get more reads and writes despite using it or not... it's simply a self limitation, since there is no difference as you are stating.
Posted on Reply
#80
Zubasa
smaddeusBut why buy SATA SSD that has max ~550mb reads and/or writes, if you can get for the same price 3GB+ reads and writes? There is no real argument to bother using SATA if at the same price and all you can get the same that has more despite using it or not... it's simply a self limitation, since there is no difference as you are stating.
Discounts happens, so of course if an NVME cost less than SATA SSD they are worth considering.
But do also note that there are often also 2.5 inch SSDs that goes on discount for basically nothing.
Posted on Reply
#81
smaddeus
ZubasaDiscounts happens, so of course if an NVME cost less than SATA SSD they are worth considering.
But do also note that there are often also 2.5 inch SSDs that goes on discount for basically nothing.
No discounts... like the M.2. SSD I threw in as an example, base price is ~80 Euro's... 512GB, 3GB+ read and write... before that I was looking at SATA SSD around same price (before I learned about TLC and MLC differences), TLC as well .
I guess I will have to throw that model again.
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB SSD PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVMe 3350/2350 MB/s costs 84 Euro's without any discount and such.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 PCIE MZ-V7S250BW costs 82 Euro's.

Sure I see some that cost 160, 200-500 Euro's, but those are depending on capacity, such as 1TB for 160-200, and 2TB for 500, same Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB M.2 PCIE MZ-V7S2T0BW, it's a 2TB drive, that's the only difference why it is expensive ~500 Euro's.
But this is affordable as hell (the 80's Euro ones). 250 for OS and 512 for gaming, and 3GB read write, doesn't matter if sequential. Not sure what else you need than speed and capacity.

Of course the other difference being the fact that you need new mobo for M.2. slots, otherwise you gotta survive with SATA, but if you plan a new PC build, then surely the M.2. is something to consider having on a mobo, since it makes no difference in costs and is future proof as well, especially in age of quick technology development.
Posted on Reply
#82
Zubasa
smaddeusNo discounts... like the M.2. SSD I threw in as an example, base price is ~80 Euro's... 512GB, 3GB+ read and write... before that I was looking at SATA SSD around same price (before I learned about TLC and MLC differences), TLC as well .
I guess I will have to throw that model again.
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB SSD PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVMe 3350/2350 MB/s costs 84 Euro's without any discount and such.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 PCIE MZ-V7S250BW costs 82 Euro's.

Sure I see some that cost 160, 200-500 Euro's, but this is affordable as hell (the 80's Euro ones). 250 for OS and 512 for gaming, not sure what else you need than speed and capacity.
For that kind of price you can get 1TB SATA drives, with many of the modern AAA games going to 50~100GB per game 512GB drives will run out very fast.
Also by the nature of cheaper TLC SSDs is they tend to lose speed as they fill up, so in the end you really are not getting much of a difference in performance.
On a budget more capacity is better than theoretical performance. In the best case senario for nvme SSD you save a few seconds on load times.
Posted on Reply
#83
smaddeus
ZubasaFor that kind of price you can get 1TB SATA drives, with many of the modern AAA games going to 50~100GB per game 512GB drives will run out very fast.
Also by the nature of TLC SSDs is they tend to lose speed as they fill up, so in the end you really are not getting much of a difference performance.
On a budget more capacity is better than theoretical performance.
Haven't found for 80 Euro's a 1TB SATA, maybe if you are talking about HDD's and not SSD's, then yea, you can, but I wouldn't use a HDD for gaming anymore, already have one 1.5TB for maybe more than 8 years, but not SSD under or around 100 Euro mark. I still see no real argument to keep using SATA SSD's as there is no loss in going NVMe at no cost difference that delivers more despite whether you use it or not.

On budget you can get yourself HDD, but it performs worse than SSD, lets get real if we're talking about practicality vs theoretical on a budget. Despite being on budget you still want to get the best.

But I will stop arguing about this, because clearly you are just as stubborn as myself. I believe there is no real argument to why keep using SATA for core parts, or not enough arguments to prove it.
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