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

[btarunr]

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

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[fynxer]

Really weird that it will take that long for low and mid range motherboards to enter market.

This will seriously hamper Ryzen 3 and 5 cpu sales rest of the year for people looking for Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 system on a budget.

They should have had these chipsets available this summer already to maximize the sales of Ryzen 3000 while they have a clear advantage in the market.

While doing every thing else just right this is a BIG MISS BY AMD.

Sure you can choose to go for a cheap 400 series PCIe 3.0 motherboard with Ryzen 3000 BUT most people will feel that they want PCIe 4.0 when they anyways buy a cpu that supports it.

The salvation here is if motherboard manufacturers redesign and market new motherboards that have proper support for PCIe 4.0 with 400 series chipset.

EDIT:
Can see down below people are trashing PCIe 4.0 and says it make no difference now and we could as well stick to PCIe 3.0.

With PCIe 4.0 it is enuf to allocate 8x PCIe 4.0 to the graphics card and then you can play around with the rest 12x PCIe 4.0 that is direct linked to the cpu doing SSD Raid 0 or what ever. With Intel and PCIe 3.0 this is impossible, you are basically bandwidth starved using Intel cpu and PCIe 3.0.

Well if i buy a computer now i won't upgrade again for like 5 years or more, so maybe PCIe 4.0 don't matter on day one but it could definitely matter in a couple of years or so and then i don't want to be sitting there with PCIe 3.0 when i could have had PCIe 4.0.

Really hope at lest a few price worthy X570 motherboards will turn up that doesn't kill your budget totally.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Really weird that it will take that long for low and mid range motherbords to enter market.

This will seriously hamper Ryzen 3 and 5 sales for people on a budget rest of the year.

How so? X470 and B450 works just fine.

 

[madness777]

People acting like 2nd gen and B450 chipset don't exist anymore

 

[Zubasa]

People acting like 2nd gen and B450 chipset don't exist anymore

Also people act like budget users need PCI-E 4.0, which is useful only on new NVME SSDs.
Nvme SSD is not the most budget friendly option in the first place.

 

[cucker tarlson]

Definitely going 450/470 if 3600/3700 can rival 8700k

 

[Chrispy_]

The only real thing that next-gen chipsets add is PCIe 4.0, which isn't really necessary for most people, so a B450 will serve 98% of the market or something like that.

Are board vendors updating existing inventory BIOSes to be 3000-series ready? If not, what's the skinny on this USB flashback thing mentioned - does it allow one to buy a B450 board and 3000-series chip that don't work without an update, and then perform the update anyway without needing a temporary 1000 or 2000 CPU to do so?

Definitely going 450/470 if 3600/3700 can rival 8700k

The 8700k has already lost much of its advantage over the 2000-series Ryzens. It's slower than a 2700X now:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/291649-intel-performance-amd-spectre-meltdown-mds-patches

Spectre/Meltdown/MDS/Zombieload/RIDL/Fallout - that's six significant flaws in Intel's architecture which have caused a 25% performance drop in Skylake/Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake products, even if you leave hyperthreading on - which is not recommended. If you turn off hyperthreading, that's an even bigger performance drop and disables a feature that people paid a $100+ premium for. Meanwhile, in the last 18 months of Spectre/Meltdown/MDS/Zombieload/RIDL/Fallout patches, AMD have lost just 3% of their original performance and SMT is safe to leave enabled.

 

[Jism]

Really weird that it will take that long for low and mid range motherboards to enter market.

This will seriously hamper Ryzen 3 and 5 cpu sales rest of the year for people looking for Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 system on a budget.

They should have had these chipsets available this summer already to maximize the sales of Ryzen 3000 while they have a clear advantage in the market.

While doing every thing else just right this is a BIG MISS BY AMD.

Sure you can choose to go for a cheap 400 series PCIe 3.0 motherboard with Ryzen 3000 BUT most people will feel that they want PCIe 4.0 when they anyways buy a cpu that supports it.

The salvation here is if motherboard manufacturers redesign and market new motherboards that have proper support for PCIe 4.0 with 400 series chipset.

Dude, there is currently not one graphics card that is able to utilitize the full bandwidth offered by PCI-E 4.0. Let alone PCI-E 3.0 being utilitized to it's best. Sure, NVME SSD's could use that extra bandwidth but many 470 boards offer a Raid-0 technology to basicly archieve the same. And if that is'nt enough i'm sure that the fastest available NVME SSD is still enough for most day usage. There's no difference in a Nvme vs S-ata SSD in that matter if you talk about normal use. The AM4 socket is just a great upgrade path from first generation all the way up to the latest generation. Exactly as AMD promissed that you wont have to upgrade the board to make use of it's features.

 

[EntropyZ]

Looks like my X470 ITX board is staying. Unless ASUS screws X470 users over in some way in the BIOS, which I believe they might to sell those expensive X570 boards.

I think delaying new budget motherboards for that long is a mistake. However, if B450 and X470 aren't going to have many differences, they might as well sell all of those out first.

I'm mostly interested in overclocking and stability features over I/O.

 

[Rahnak]

It would be super nice if AMD released a comparison table between all the 3000 series chipsets. Especially for people torn between previous gen boards or waiting for B550.

 

[B-Real]

Really weird that it will take that long for low and mid range motherboards to enter market.

This will seriously hamper Ryzen 3 and 5 cpu sales rest of the year for people looking for Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 system on a budget.

They should have had these chipsets available this summer already to maximize the sales of Ryzen 3000 while they have a clear advantage in the market.

While doing every thing else just right this is a BIG MISS BY AMD.

Sure you can choose to go for a cheap 400 series PCIe 3.0 motherboard with Ryzen 3000 BUT most people will feel that they want PCIe 4.0 when they anyways buy a cpu that supports it.

The salvation here is if motherboard manufacturers redesign and market new motherboards that have proper support for PCIe 4.0 with 400 series chipset.

Please do not say fake news. X470, B450 and even X370 and B350 mobos will work fine. You will see ZERO performance loss with SSDs in everyday use, meaning Win and game load times (as there is 0 performance difference between a 450-500 MB/s SATA3 SSD and a 2500-3000 MB/s NvME SSD: video).

Dude, there is currently not one graphics card that is able to utilitize the full bandwidth offered by PCI-E 4.0. Let alone PCI-E 3.0 being utilitized to it's best. Sure, NVME SSD's could use that extra bandwidth but many 470 boards offer a Raid-0 technology to basicly archieve the same. And if that is'nt enough i'm sure that the fastest available NVME SSD is still enough for most day usage. There's no difference in a Nvme vs S-ata SSD in that matter if you talk about normal use. The AM4 socket is just a great upgrade path from first generation all the way up to the latest generation. Exactly as AMD promissed that you wont have to upgrade the board to make use of it's features.

That is only true for workloads.

 

[Chrispy_]

It would be super nice if AMD released a comparison table between all the 3000 series chipsets. Especially for people torn between previous gen boards or waiting for B550.

There's this one for now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_chipsets#AM4_Chipsets

 

[zlobby]

Uhm, didn't AMD ditch Asmedia's chipsets for backdoors in the previous chipsets?

Now all of a sudden Asmedia is all good?

 

[olymind1]

I'm wondering if lets say i buy now an MSI B450 Tomahawk and a Patriot Viper 4 2x8GB 3733 CL17 kit, then can i fully drive / utilize them with a Ryzen 5 3600, that the Tomahawk has the necessary wiring more that kind of mem oc?

I'm not gonna ask about OCing the 3600 because if that board can handle an OCed 8 core 2700 then it can too easly a 6 core cpu made at 7nm.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Hopefully, AMD will sort out the active-cooling for motherboards nonsense in some way. I thought we'd moved past that. Fans fail.

 

[Mysteoa]

Uhm, didn't AMD ditch Asmedia's chipsets for backdoors in the previous chipsets?

Now all of a sudden Asmedia is all good?

I don't think they ditch them. It's more likely to do with implementing PCIEX4 and why x570 uses AMD IO chip.

 

[lsevald]

What we need is a good quality board with 14+2 phase VRM's, PCB tuned for high RAM speeds and a BIOS to support all the new Ryzen 3000 stuff (higher ram speeds and such), but with b450 chipset and non of the costly PCIe 4.0 stuff. Sort of a hybrid, strictly to the point, no fluff, decently priced board ($150-200), if any motherboard makers are reading this

 

[shmuck]

What we need is a good quality board with 14+2 phase VRM's, PCB tuned for high RAM speeds and a BIOS to support all the new Ryzen 3000 stuff (higher ram speeds and such), but with b450 chipset and non of the costly PCIe 4.0 stuff. Sort of a hybrid, strictly to the point, no fluff, decently priced board ($150-200), if any motherboard makers are reading this

discusses those points.

 

[prtskg]

Really weird that it will take that long for low and mid range motherboards to enter market.

This will seriously hamper Ryzen 3 and 5 cpu sales rest of the year for people looking for Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 system on a budget.

They should have had these chipsets available this summer already to maximize the sales of Ryzen 3000 while they have a clear advantage in the market.

While doing every thing else just right this is a BIG MISS BY AMD.

Sure you can choose to go for a cheap 400 series PCIe 3.0 motherboard with Ryzen 3000 BUT most people will feel that they want PCIe 4.0 when they anyways buy a cpu that supports it.

The salvation here is if motherboard manufacturers redesign and market new motherboards that have proper support for PCIe 4.0 with 400 series chipset.

It was because Asmedia couldn't/didn't implement PCIe 4.0 on time that AMD designed x570. AMD doesn't have enough people to design all the chipsets anymore. So we will have B550 and A520 according to Asmedia's convinience.

 

[Metroid]

People acting like 2nd gen and B450 chipset don't exist anymore

I guess they are used to intel cpus hehe. Every new chipset in every new cpu launch hehe

 

[_UV_]

People acting like 2nd gen and B450 chipset don't exist anymore

If you need proper AVX, yes, Ryzen 1st and 2nd gen doesn't exist.
And B450 if you consider 16c CPU (maybe as a later upgrade) didn't look like as viable solution due to possible weak VRM.

 

[RichF]

How so? X470 and B450 works just fine.

People acting like 2nd gen and B450 chipset don't exist anymore

Does anyone have solid evidence that B550 won't have better memory performance with 3000 series Zen? Remember that B die is not only overpriced it is EOL.

Also, for those who mentioned the first generation boards... a news report I read said only some of the B350 boards will get BIOS updates, most likely the "most popular" of them. So, if your board didn't sell well enough, you may be out of luck.

 

[TheDeeGee]

No upgrade for me this year then.

 

[Metroid]

Does anyone have solid evidence that B550 won't have better memory performance with 3000 series Zen? Remember that B die is not only overpriced it is EOL.

Also, for those who mentioned the first generation boards... a news report I read said only some of the B350 boards will get BIOS updates, most likely the "most popular" of them. So, if your board didn't sell well enough, you may be out of luck.

That "x470 and b450 is here" mentality could backfire if reviews show x570 give you an extra 5% in performance due to the memory improvements in the x570 chipset. I'm not buying any b450 until I see many reviews and draw my own conclusions.

 

[mstenholm]

What we need is a good quality board with 14+2 phase VRM's,

As far as I know that leaves out all of the x470 boards and 99% of the x570 boards