Is it worth to wait for X870E?

[danc]

And as I've stated before, that column is wrong (or at best, deliberately misleading). It is 12 usable lanes of PCIe 4.0 and 8 usable lanes of PCIe 3.0 for X870E and X670E; Puget summed these to get to 20. But given there are no manufacturers who are going to ship their boards without SATA ports, and PCIe 3.0 lanes themselves are too slow for pretty much anything except SATA, those 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes can pretty much be considered spoken for.

Correct me if i am wrong, even for the "12" usable PCIe 4.0 lanes, in reality all of them will be bottleneck by the 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going back to the CPU.

So if you somehow start hammering your I/O devices off those 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, you get major congestion and thus performance losses, in other words, you will never get the full fat 12 PCIe 4.0 performance

 

[TheLostSwede]

Unless you really want to use an external USB4 JBOD, or any other USB4-only device, you might want to check out X670E or even B650E motherboards that provide four or more M.2 slots.

B650E/B650 would share lanes with the GPU to offer more than three M.2 slots though.

Correct me if i am wrong, even for the "12" usable PCIe 4.0 lanes, in reality all of them will be bottleneck by the 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going back to the CPU.

So far, I have yet to see a scenario where this is a true bottleneck. I haven't seen any testing prove it, even though in theory, it should be a bottleneck.

So if you somehow start hammering your I/O devices off those 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, you get major congestion and thus performance losses, in other words, you will never get the full fat 12 PCIe 4.0 performance

Well, two are connected to one chipset and one to the other chipset, so it would really depend on the workload. Again, not seen any proof of this being an issue, on AMD or Intel platforms, but I'm sure there are some scenarios where it could be.

 

[Sarajiel]

Correct me if i am wrong, even for the "12" usable PCIe 4.0 lanes, in reality all of them will be bottleneck by the 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going back to the CPU.

So if you somehow start hammering your I/O devices off those 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, you get major congestion and thus performance losses, in other words, you will never get the full fat 12 PCIe 4.0 performance

You are correct.
The chipset I/O is basically only for "slow", or burst devices that aren't running at sustained full load. That's pretty much the reason why the B650(E) boards are more than enough for most folks.

TPU did some tests with Gen4 M.2s, and they lose about 15% performance even if they are the only active device.

B650E/B650 would share lanes with the GPU to offer more than three M.2 slots though.

That applies to all AM5 chipsets.
As I mentioned in the paragraphs below, you have to bifurcate. In the end, it comes down to the lesser evil, or buying a Threadripper.

 

[TheLostSwede]

That applies to all AM5 chipsets.
As I mentioned in the paragraphs below, you have to bifurcate. In the end, it comes down to the lesser evil, or buying a Threadripper.

No, it does not.
X670, X670E and X870E has two chipsets and can have four or even five M.2 drives without need to share any bandwidth with the x16 slot, depending on the board layout.

 

[Sarajiel]

No, it does not.

My mistake, for my poor wording. I was referring to CPU-connected lanes.

X670, X670E and X870E has two chipsets and can have four or even five M.2 drives without need to share any bandwidth with the x16 slot, depending on the board layout.

You should take a look at ASRock boards... There are quite a few that connect 2x M.2s to B650(E). As you can see in their block diagrams.

 

[chrcoluk]

And as I've stated before, that column is wrong (or at best, deliberately misleading). It is 12 usable lanes of PCIe 4.0 and 8 usable lanes of PCIe 3.0 for X870E and X670E; Puget summed these to get to 20. But given there are no manufacturers who are going to ship their boards without SATA ports, and PCIe 3.0 lanes themselves are too slow for pretty much anything except SATA, those 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes can pretty much be considered spoken for.

3.0 lanes are not useless.

Sound cards, display, NIC's, storage (yes including NVME, not just SATA), capture cards, addon cards anything fed of the chipset that doesnt use 4.0 levels of bandwidth, end of the day lanes are lanes. I agree it should show what the 3.0/4.0 break down is but the total lane count on the chipset as well as the onboard USB/SATA is what I was discussing. As far as I am concerned its all cleared up now on the discussion.

 

[Dyno]

Don't need USB4, WIFI 7, I'm looking forward to Gen 5 for GPU and M.2. The only difference between what they have in the market compared to 870 is if you want more m.2. drives and an extra Gen5 slot. I doubt i'll be purchasing before they come out with 870, but if there is a bargain or sale on an 870 Motherboard that has Gen 5 for GPU and 2x Gen5 m.2. i would most likely buy it if it comes in a bundle. Still waiting to see how 9800X3D preforms and how the 15th generation intel is for sure.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Don't need... and ...

That's great there may be some who do need them. Or perhaps, they just want them and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, if just feels good to treat ourselves with something new want - even if we don't really "need" it.

 

[mkppo]

Any word on any 1DPC X870, like the X870 Tachyon? I really hope it isn't vaporware like the B650E Tachyon was. I don't want to go to Japan to get it..

 

[jxdking]

Any word on any 1DPC X870, like the X870 Tachyon? I really hope it isn't vaporware like the B650E Tachyon was. I don't want to go to Japan to get it..

I don't see any 1DPC with x870(e), while B850 line is not annouced yet by any company.
If asrock release B850-HDV/m.2 and 1DPC, I will jump on that one.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Honestly, I eagerly wait for X870E motherboards, but after reading many comments about X870E vs X670E, I am just thinking of getting X670E instead.
The biggest considerations are the second-hand (like new) high-end X670E is now more affordable (for instance, Asus C Extreme X670E, like new, selling for EUR 450), and I need many SSD storages to store the large datasets locally.
Do you have any better suggestions?

Asrock looks to launch some new boards soon but it looks as though the detail pages are not linked up properly yet. I got tired of waiting so I got a B650 one of few boards that does both x16(cpu)/x4(cpu)/x4(chipset) for PCIe slot expansion and allows room for double slot GPU in the 2nd x16(electrically x4) slot position. I won't be playing games so I don't need the full GPU bandwidth. It leaves me with the top x16 for bifurcated storage and the bottom x4 for something useful like raid card or 10Gbps LAN or more USB3.

 

[NxZsolt]

No, not really. Those boards use old Intel Thunderbolt chips on PCIe 3.0 and call it USB4, but those controllers are limited to 32 Gbps vs. 40 Gbps for the ASM4242 USB4 PCIe 4.0 host controller.
Don't get suckered in by those boards.

What about the new X870 and X870E boards? They use the same Thunderbolt chips?

 

[TheLostSwede]

What about the new X870 and X870E boards? They use the same Thunderbolt chips?

No, they use the ASM4242 USB4 host controller. None of them should have an Intel Thunderbolt chip. USB4 and Thunderbolt are not the same. Despite what Intel says, USB4 is superior in most instances. Thunderbolt 5 is likely to favour Intel and Thunderbolt again, depending on how the chips interface with the system.

 

[NxZsolt]

No, they use the ASM4242 USB4 host controller. None of them should have an Intel Thunderbolt chip. USB4 and Thunderbolt are not the same. Despite what Intel says, USB4 is superior in most instances. Thunderbolt 5 is likely to favour Intel and Thunderbolt again, depending on how the chips interface with the system.

Then it means I cant use Thunderbolt devices with them?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Then it means I cant use Thunderbolt devices with them?

No. USB4 should be seen as a superset of Thunderbolt 3/4, as it offers 40 vs 32 Gbps speeds and it's backwards compatible with all USB 3.x standards, whereas Thunderbolt is limited to 10 Gbps USB 3.x. The ASM4242 even received Thunderbolt 4 certification recently. However, this doesn't automagically mean all products with the ASM4242 will be Thunderbolt certified, but they should all work with Thunderbolt devices.

ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 Host Controller Chip Achieves Thunderbolt 4 Certification

ASMedia announced that its USB4 host controller chip, ASM4242, has received Thunderbolt 4 certification, following its USB-IF certification earlier this year. This marks a significant milestone for the ASM4242, toward providing a comprehensive high-speed transmission solution and an outstanding...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Orodruin]

I switched from Asus ROG B650E-E motherboard to X670E Hero.

The main reason for switching was to have more data paths. On my previous motherboard I was using 4 nvme slots and the GPU slot was X8.

I am currently using 5 NVMEs. 4 of them are connected on the motherboard and one is connected via PCIE card. And the GPU is running as X16. The dual chipset of X670E/X870E provides exactly that.
And also has forward USB 4.0 (Thunderbolt) support.

Other than that the difference between X670E and X870E is Wifi 7 and higher RAM speed.
There is no other difference.