Sunday, February 4th 2024
AMD Readies X870E Chipset to Launch Alongside First Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" CPUs
AMD is readying the new 800-series motherboard chipset to launch alongside its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors that implement the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. The chipset family will be led by the AMD X870E, a successor to the current X670E. Since AMD isn't changing the CPU socket, and this is very much the same Socket AM5, the 800-series chipset will support not just "Granite Ridge" at launch, but also the Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael," and Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point." Moore's Law is Dead goes into the details of what sets the X870E apart from the current X670E, and it all has to do with USB4.
Apparently, motherboard manufacturers will be mandated to include 40 Gbps USB4 connectivity with AMD X870E, which essentially makes the chipset a 3-chip solution—two Promontory 21 bridge chips, and a discrete ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 host controller; although it's possible that AMD's QVL will allow other brands of USB4 controllers as they become available. The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" are chiplet based processors just like the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael," and while the 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs are new, the 6 nm client I/O die (cIOD) is largely carried over from "Raphael," with a few updates to its memory controller. DDR5-6400 will be the new AMD-recommended "sweetspot" speed; although AMD might get its motherboard vendors to support DDR5-8000 EXPO profiles with an FCLK of 2400 MHz, and a divider.The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" will launch alongside a new wave of AMD X870E motherboards, although these processors very much will be supported on AMD 600-series chipset motherboards with BIOS updates. The vast majority of Socket AM5 motherboards feature USB BIOS Flashback, and so you could even pick up a 600-series chipset motherboard with a Ryzen 9000 series processor in combos. The company might expand the 800-series with other chipset models, such as the X870, B850, and the new B840 in the entry level.
Sources:
Moore's Law is Dead (YouTube), Tweaktown
Apparently, motherboard manufacturers will be mandated to include 40 Gbps USB4 connectivity with AMD X870E, which essentially makes the chipset a 3-chip solution—two Promontory 21 bridge chips, and a discrete ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 host controller; although it's possible that AMD's QVL will allow other brands of USB4 controllers as they become available. The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" are chiplet based processors just like the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael," and while the 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs are new, the 6 nm client I/O die (cIOD) is largely carried over from "Raphael," with a few updates to its memory controller. DDR5-6400 will be the new AMD-recommended "sweetspot" speed; although AMD might get its motherboard vendors to support DDR5-8000 EXPO profiles with an FCLK of 2400 MHz, and a divider.The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" will launch alongside a new wave of AMD X870E motherboards, although these processors very much will be supported on AMD 600-series chipset motherboards with BIOS updates. The vast majority of Socket AM5 motherboards feature USB BIOS Flashback, and so you could even pick up a 600-series chipset motherboard with a Ryzen 9000 series processor in combos. The company might expand the 800-series with other chipset models, such as the X870, B850, and the new B840 in the entry level.
220 Comments on AMD Readies X870E Chipset to Launch Alongside First Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" CPUs
semiengineering.com/upgrade-your-soc-design-with-usb4-ip/
Also
t-2-m.com/semiconductor-ip-core/interface-usb-4-device-host-controller-silicon-proven-ip
As for the networking capabilities, maybe that has changed, but a certain company wanted to keep that thunderbolt exclusive.
It looks much better on Intel Z790 but even here, more than 4xSATA has become much rarer than with Z690. Mine too, at first, until I realized it wastes a precious PCIe x4-slot. Modern GPUs don't leave space for more than 2-3 usable slots. See above. There are only two AM5-boards with two x4-Slots from PCH, very few with one x4 and one x1 and none with two x4 and one x1. It is a shame they decided to dirch the x8-slot in this gen. You could have put the GPU in one x8-Slot, two Gen5-SSD in the other x8 and two in the Gen5-M.2-slots. Wrong, there are only seven AM5 boards with a Gen5x8 (and none with a Gen4x8), only one from Asrock (Taichi) and two from Asus (Hero and Creator). I think so, too. I wonder why Intel has not yet released a 5GbE-only NIC and I always wondered why everybody apart from QNAP ignored Quantias 5GbE-NIC, but I bet they sell us 5GbE before 10GbE. Only thing speaking against that is WiFi7-routers often having 1-2 10GbE-ports. But the realtek-NIC and PHY should make 5GbE-switches more affordable than 10GbE, like it did with 2.5GbE. It's the same with TB3/4. It says 20Gbps, but will only deliver 10Gbps at best. Handy if your devices allready have TB or USB4, but if your main goal is a fast connection between devices, 10GbE or 25GbE is better.
Thinking about yanking the Type E/A WiFi+BT and adapt-riser the x1 lane to my Xonar Essence STX I was sad to pull (for P41+s).
- there are dirt cheap SATA adaptors for anyone who needs more. It has never been as easy to add a few SATA ports
- relatively less SATA ports stems from the shift towards NVMe and external storage, such as NAS, cloud and other devices
- there is less need for more SATA drives as drive capacities have increased a lot
- it's enough to connect 1-2 traditional HDDs with 10-20 TB for all files, whereas in the past we used to load PCs with more drives that have less capacity Then you don't buy Gigabyte. If they do not sell enough, they might rethink their approach. My last Gigabyte board was Z68 You can do this on those seven boards that you mentioned. Plenty of choices. Intel will not have this option even on Arrow Lake. Yes. I have both TB ports on multiple devices and 10 GbE switch. Enough for a few years.
More mainstream boards will move to 5 GbE in the next gen chipsets and a few more boards will have 10 GbE. It comes drop by drop as majority of people simply do not use as much bandwidth. Heck, most TVs and AV receivers still have 100 Mbps ports and you can bring more in unlikely case of need for more bandwidth for streaming via USB port adapter. Almost no one in the world needs PCIe 5.0 on client devices, apart from a handful of Gen5 SSD enthusiasts. And those terrible passive heatsinks... Gosh... those look like monstrocities in the motherboard. Gen5 GPUs will not be widely available until nect year, so Gen5 GPUs slots have been 'gathering dust' since 2021... It benefits both sides. Connectivity on motherboards has never been as fast and advanced. The deeper you go into past chipsets, the less lanes for connectivity. Well... it's certainly going to be more interesting than Raptor Lake refresh "generation"
I have Fractal Define 7 with 5 front ports, like Dark Base Pro 901 below, and all 5 ports are served well, 2x USB 2.0, 2x USB5 and USB-C.
What they can do on more advanced boards in future is to finally bring 40 Gbps USB4 port to the front I/O, so that we don't need to use the rear one with awkward cable hanging around to connect external SSDs or other devices.
Courtesy of Intel, we know that the I226-V costs US$2.87 in bulk, most likely even less for the motherboard makers and Realtek will be cheaper than that.
ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/210599/intel-ethernet-controller-i226-v.html
So the Realtek 2.5 Gbps parts are most likely sub $2 and I was told at Computex that Realtek is expecting their 5 Gbps chips to be around $5 a pop. The old Aquantia parts were $25+.
Hardly anyone in the world ever maxes out on all available ports. Again, it had been said many times that it has never been as easy to add any adapter or AIC for more connectivity for those who need it. No reason to be hot-headed about this. There is no case here to win or lose one's head over 1-2 SATA ports. A non-topic. Nowadays, such large arrays are often offloaded to NAS. I have one with 24 TB on two disks. Smaller storage is often portable too. Plus cloud. There are so many storage options that 1-2 SATA ports less on some motherboards is completely insignificant. Those who want more will make it happen in one way or another. It is for those who need such features. You have 7 choices for fast connectivity features that have never existed before in the history of mainstream PC. A little bit of humility, please. Most PC users do not need such premium features, therefore motherboard manufacturers will not waste their time with it on many designs. Less is more.
If anyone needs significantly more connectivity, we also have next tier, HEDT and workstation boards. Also, there's an option for crowd-funding for enough big group of users who need specific solutions. If there were only 2 options, I'd grant that it's limited, but it's still not one or none. When I was looking for a new board, I wanted Thunderbolt 4 dual port on AMD AM4 ATX board. There was none... until Pro Art B550 came out. And I bought it. One single board with what I want! Amazing! Sure, you can say that glass is half empty, but it's also half full at the same time. Something to be appreciated. Yes, USB2.0 adapter, like this one. You get ~300 Mbps. But again, very niche, almost no one in the world needs it apart from a few geeks tinkering with a handful of files with bit rate above 100 Mbps. For 4K streaming of audio-video content, 100 Mbps LAN ports are enough. Pragmatic engineers don't like to be wasteful. Besides, WiFi on TV is faster, need there be. Even some AVRs that costs $6,000-7,000 have old 100 Mbps ports. Nothing unusual if you are aware of the fact how content distribution and bit rate work on those devices.
I remember this one. Interestingly, none of board vendors have introduced one single board with DP 2.1 port at 40 Gbps from Zen4 iGPU. There is always more capability within CPUs than board vendors are willing to expose. If I am not mistaken, only Asrock exposed HDMI 2.1 FRL ports from iGPU at 32 Gbps and perhaps one Gigabyte board. Everybody else use old HDMI 2.0 at 18 Gbpps, which does not work with 4K/60Hz 10-bit RGB image and above on monitors, which needs ~20 Gbps over minimum FRL3 signalling. It's complicated. Several new technologies were introduced, such as PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. Initially, materials and parts for new technologies are more expensive. Plus, let's not pretend that the global pandemic did not occur. It pludged many parts of the world into inflationary spiral whereby prices of most goods went up, especially energy, plus stagnating wages in many sectors, with lower increase than inflation rate. To be honest, my bread, milk and butter went up more in price than most new gen motherboards. My electricity and gas bills went much higher than motherboard prices. So, it's all relative.
It's only that way with pc's now that I think about it
This is what I was confused about, but now I hope I get it. USB4 v1.0 does not support USB4 tunneling. Native USB4 tunneling is dubbed "USB3 Gen T 10-80 Gbps" for USB4 v2.0 spec.
Current host controller ASM4242 cannot be fed by native USB4 data lanes from CPU or chipset, as there is no such provision on ASM4242. The host controller data feeders on the motherboard are three types of native lanes: USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 at 20Gbps, PCIe 4x4 at 64 Gbps and DP 1.4 up to 32 Gbps. There is no "USB4 IN" sort to speak, like DP IN. I am skipping here Alt Mode support for the simpicity and focus on tunneling only.
So, in USB4 mode, USB data traffic cannot be tunneled at 40 Gbps as the v1.0 spec does not support more than 20 Gbps of USB tunelling.
Imagine future ASM8484. Such controller will have "USB3 Gen T 10-80 Gbps" feeder lanes or "USB4 IN" once CPUs and/or chipsets natively support USB4 Gen 3 x2 at 40 Gbps and Gen4 at 80 Gbps. This is the moment when 'USB4 tunnelling' will be possible. If so, Phoenix and future APUs, with integrated USB4, could directly provide "USB4 IN" lanes for such tunneling to occur, alongside DP and PCIe data within 80 Gbps data highway.
Have I got this right?
Here is info about USB4-NET for P2P networking at 10 Gbps. It looks like Intel is not exclusive with this feature on TB.
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/component-guidelines/usb4-interdomain-connections
Now, going to N4, they should be able to achieve ~6 GHz, which would be 5%. It's fine.
www.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21901412430748
FWIW, I always assumed that such boards would easily support Thunderbolt 4 add-in cards or USB4 add-in cards. Therefore if a user really needed TB4 or USB4 it would be an option (not to suggest that TB4 and USB4 are the same or equivalent).
So yeah, ideally there would be more to X800 series chip sets like the X870E than just mandatory USB4.
USB4 website reads that this is supported: "Tunneled USB3 Gen T (10–80 Gbit/s)"
"The USB4 2.0 specification named this USB3 Gen X tunneling and introduced optional support for a new USB3 Gen T tunneling that extends the USB3 protocol to be able to use the maximum available bandwidth."
So, in theory, USB4 data at 40 Gbps from CPU/PCH could be tunneled within USB4 mode of 80 Gbps together with DP and PCIe data, right? Could you develop this, please?
If you compare those the two chipsets, let's take two Taichi boards, you will see more connectivity options on PCIe, NVMe, SATA, USB4, etc on X670. If I do not need more connectivity, I'd buy B650. If I need more, I'd buy X670. Price, of course, also plays role.