Friday, May 31st 2024
AMD Shuffles Feature-sets of its 800-series Chipset, X870 is B650E Successor
AMD is debuting its Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors powered by the "Zen 5" microarchitecture later this year. These chips are compatible with existing AMD 600-series chipset motherboards with a simple UEFI firmware update, but the company is also taking the opportunity to launch the AMD 800-series chipset family alongside these chips. The lineup will be led by the AMD X870E, followed by the X870. These two chipsets should launch immediately alongside the new processors, but will later be joined by the AMD B850 and B840. There's no entry-level chipset planned, the AMD A620 will continue to hold the fort for AMD here. There is an interesting new mix of product differentiation, according to a leaked GIGABYTE slide scored by VideoCardz.
If you recall, the X670E and X670 were differentiated by a lack of Gen 5 PCI-Express x16 PEG slots on the X670, which instead was limited to Gen 4 on the PEG slot. The X670 still had Gen 5 NVMe slots attached to the CPU, and had practically the same I/O features as the X670E, including the same counts of downstream PCIe Gen 4 general purpose lanes. Both the X670E and X670 are 2-chip solutions, in that the second chip is a connected to the general purpose PCIe lanes of the first chip, which in turn is connected to the processor. Things are going to change with the 800-series. The top-spec X870E will be a 2-chip solution, with PCIe Gen 4 general purpose lane counts resembling the X670E; but the X870 is a single-chip solution that more closely resembles the B650E in I/O. The X870 (non-E) now gives you Gen 5 PCI-Express x16 PEG, just like the X870E and the B650E, and at least one Gen 5 x4 NVMe slot attached to the CPU, but has fewer downstream Gen 4 general purpose PCIe lanes than the X670. Both the X870E and X870 assure USB4 connectivity, and support CPU overclocking. Things get very interesting in the mid-range.
The AMD B850 is very similar to the X870 in terms of downstream general purpose PCIe Gen 4 lanes. What's more, it even assures a Gen 5 x16 PEG slot, much like the X870. Where it differs from the X870 is its CPU-attached NVMe slots. Gen 5 is made optional here (motherboard vendors can provide Gen 5 if they want, but are perfectly free to offer Gen 4 instead). Unlike the X870E and X870, the B850 doesn't mandate USB4 connectivity, however, motherboard vendors will be free to offer discrete USB4 controllers on their boards. Much like the B650 and its predecessors dating all the way back to the B350, the B850 supports CPU overclocking.
The B840 is a new introduction with this generation, there's no real predecessor to it, although it closely resembles the A620A, which in turn resembles the B550. It completely removes all forms of Gen 5 PCIe from the platform—the x16 slots are limited to Gen 4, as are the M.2 NVMe slots attached to the CPU. This chipset also lacks CPU overclocking support. It does retain memory overclocking, and B840 motherboards should support AMD EXPO, as well as manual memory overclocking. What sets the B840 apart from the A620 is its Gen 4 PCIe connectivity both along the PEG and general purpose PCIe.
Source:
VideoCardz
If you recall, the X670E and X670 were differentiated by a lack of Gen 5 PCI-Express x16 PEG slots on the X670, which instead was limited to Gen 4 on the PEG slot. The X670 still had Gen 5 NVMe slots attached to the CPU, and had practically the same I/O features as the X670E, including the same counts of downstream PCIe Gen 4 general purpose lanes. Both the X670E and X670 are 2-chip solutions, in that the second chip is a connected to the general purpose PCIe lanes of the first chip, which in turn is connected to the processor. Things are going to change with the 800-series. The top-spec X870E will be a 2-chip solution, with PCIe Gen 4 general purpose lane counts resembling the X670E; but the X870 is a single-chip solution that more closely resembles the B650E in I/O. The X870 (non-E) now gives you Gen 5 PCI-Express x16 PEG, just like the X870E and the B650E, and at least one Gen 5 x4 NVMe slot attached to the CPU, but has fewer downstream Gen 4 general purpose PCIe lanes than the X670. Both the X870E and X870 assure USB4 connectivity, and support CPU overclocking. Things get very interesting in the mid-range.
The B840 is a new introduction with this generation, there's no real predecessor to it, although it closely resembles the A620A, which in turn resembles the B550. It completely removes all forms of Gen 5 PCIe from the platform—the x16 slots are limited to Gen 4, as are the M.2 NVMe slots attached to the CPU. This chipset also lacks CPU overclocking support. It does retain memory overclocking, and B840 motherboards should support AMD EXPO, as well as manual memory overclocking. What sets the B840 apart from the A620 is its Gen 4 PCIe connectivity both along the PEG and general purpose PCIe.
74 Comments on AMD Shuffles Feature-sets of its 800-series Chipset, X870 is B650E Successor
Edit: That B840 is the one that looks the most interesting from value point of view of non-X CPUs.
In regards of GPU's and PCI-Express: www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-pci-express-scaling/
Speaks for itself. PCI-E 4.0 still is not fully used. And will take a few generations before we do.
Be it next Gen or the one after. Usually you keep CPUs for longer.
SO it is only relevant for people that buy AM5 now and upgrade the CPU later, so that they can use the board for the next 5-9 years.
It mostly plays with peoples minds.
If it had to buy a AM5 board right now, I would still buy B650E, the cheapest one. It was tested and is good enough and I don't need the connectivity of the X670 board.
That said, I didn't buy AM5 since I have a good 5800X3D (on a B550 board). I might be able to skip AM5 completely and buy AM6 with DDR6, also skipping DDR5. :D
Its a pain to root for them when they keep doing nonsense actions like this.
Have any of you actually need that many lanes without also needing like a system of rack-based servers and 25GbE switches?
P.S.: Despite the lack of price in these rumours price, it's going to be a mess, obviously. With the RDNA1/Zen3 AMD started to pull the dirty "pricing" trick every single launch. I doubt this is an exception.This is just "inflated" A series. This isn't really a B series chipset. They got away with SKU naming shenanigans with RDNA3, where they renamed RX 7500 to 7600, why wouldn't they do the same here. Intel sheeps buy every cr*p it farts for two decades. Why this should be any different.
And AMD their investors know better. Never again they will let that "charity" with A420/520, let alone to ride the 16 Core CPU, especially with an OC. Such a "luxury" for "free".Hardly, after this, though. As the biggest problem is they inflated the numbers on the bottom of the stack. So now it is "worth" more in their heads. And if you consider, that the absolute garbage A620 motherboards were costing north of $100, or even $120 during it's inception, you can guess what it's going to be now. AMD has completely lost it's shame.
A couple of AM4 boards even have TB3 certification from Intel.
USB4 supports the full 40 Gbps for data, whereas Thunderbolt 3 and 4 are "limited" to 32 Gbps, since 8 Gbps is always reserved for display data.
USB4 supports PCIe, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) and USB4 data, Thunderbolt supports PCIe and USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) data.
Yes, Thunderbolt has a networking layer that Intel didn't give to the USB-IF as well as VT-d based DMA protection, but that's the only real advantages.
Neither standards supports enough power to be useful without supporting USB-PD, 15 W for Thunderbolt and 7.5 W for USB4.
The rest where Intel claims USB4 is inferior, doesn't apply to the host controller, but could apply to devices, but then it also applies to Thunderbolt, since all USB4 certified devices has to support Thunderbolt.
And this wasn't me having a go at you, simply agreeing with you and adding some points to show why it doesn't matter too much which standard your computer supports, because all the important stuff is more or less the same.