Zen 4 X3D Limited to 8-Core and 6-Core, No Meteor Lake in 2023: Frosty Year Expected for CPU Market

[Hofnaerrchen]

AMD is expected to debut its entry-level A620 motherboard chipset in Q2-2023. This chipset reportedly lacks CPU overclocking capability, is expected to lack PCIe Gen 5, and caps memory speed to DDR5-4800.

Sounds like a lackluster chipset. Ok for office PCs. I bet the boards will come with minimalistic VRM so the missing OC capability will be no big deal but being limited to DDR5-4800 makes this chipset a bad choice for people who are on a tight budget and want to upgrade later on but still might - when they are not cautious - end up with. AM5 platform (especially B650E) prices need to come down massively or Zen 4 will continue to be rather uninteresting.

 

[MarsM4N]

Great move to go only with 6 & 8 cores X3D variants. For gaming you don't need more than 8 cores, even 6 cores would today be enough for games that aren't poorly programmed. More than 8 cores would only be beneficial if you have some havy background tasks running while gaming, f.e. like video rendering & streaming. But those professional streamers use a separate streaming rig for that anyways, so there's that. And given the current market conditions cheaper variants make just more sense.

There are tons of gamers just sitting out AM5 purchases & waiting for the X3D's. Bet there will be pretty good sales (despite high platform costs) if it delivers dominant gaming performance.

Robert Hallock, a while ago, already confirmed that voltage will not be an issue for the 7000X3D parts. People need to remember that 3D V-cache was proof of concept on 5800X3D, and 7000 series was always designed from the get go to accommodate 3D V-Cache on the package design.

I expect the new 7000X3D CPUs to have at least similar clocks to that of regular 7000 series processors. Now whether this "rumor" about only the two lower skus having 3D V-cache are true, who knows. Over on Reddit it's already been reported that this "leaker" has an extremely poor track record of hits on their rumors, so who knows. Speculation over there thinks that 8 core and 16 core make more sense to have the 3D V-cache as it'll give gamers and enthusiasts their own SKU to buy into the X3D processors. I like that train of thought, but this far out who knows? We still have a couple months to go.

If I remember correctly they "decoupled" the core clocks (or voltage?) for the cores & the 3D V-Cache for the 7000 series, so core clock limitations won't be an issue on the 7000 series CPU's as they where on the 5000 series. Everything more than 8 cores will be a dual CCD CPU, so there might be some technical limitation for a higher core X3D variant. I don't think it's a thermal limitation, I guess it's the side effects of "bridging" two CCD's, like extra latency or something like that. Skatterbencher has a pretty good breakdown of AM5 CPU's, but it's way over my head. Maybe someone can read something out of it.

 

[Valantar]

Sounds like a lackluster chipset. Ok for office PCs. I bet the boards will come with minimalistic VRM so the missing OC capability will be no big deal but being limited to DDR5-4800 makes this chipset a bad choice for people who are on a tight budget and want to upgrade later on but still might - when they are not cautious - end up with. AM5 platform (especially B650E) prices need to come down massively or Zen 4 will continue to be rather uninteresting.

It's an A*20 chipset, so, yeah. That's kind of the point. It's not like A320 or A520 were ever good options for gamers on a budget either, for the exact same reasons. For this generation there might actually be a meaningful price difference (A520 boards didn't tend to cost much less than nearly equivalent B550 boards, for example), which makes this distinction more meaningful, but overall these chipsets aren't meant for that market.

 

[Max(IT)]

Hardly faster. It's about the same; faster, slower or equal depending on the load.

View attachment 269940

Intel Core i9-13900K review - Performance - Corona Ray Tracing (guru3d.com)

so you are taking ONE benchmark, a renderer where P-Core counting is more important, when the majority of the others are favorable to Intel ?

Great move to go only with 6 & 8 cores X3D variants. For gaming you don't need more than 8 cores, even 6 cores would today be enough for games that aren't poorly programmed. More than 8 cores would only be beneficial if you have some havy background tasks running while gaming, f.e. like video rendering & streaming. But those professional streamers use a separate streaming rig for that anyways, so there's that. And given the current market conditions cheaper variants make just more sense.

There are tons of gamers just sitting out AM5 purchases & waiting for the X3D's. Bet there will be pretty good sales (despite high platform costs) if it delivers dominant gaming performance.

PC computing isn't just gaming.
I'm also a gamer, but I won't buy a X3D CPU if productive performance are lower than on "non X3D" SKUs, like it's happening on 5800X3D vs 5900X, for instance.

 

[Valantar]

PC computing isn't just gaming.
I'm also a gamer, but I won't buy a X3D CPU if productive performance are lower than on "non X3D" SKUs, like it's happening on 5800X3D vs 5900X, for instance.

... that's kind of the point. Consumer applications show near zero performance increase from 3D V-cache, while gaming shows major gains. It would thus be very wasteful to pitch this (relatively limited) hardware to people interested in productivity tasks, when they could instead sell it to two gamers (or 1/6 of a server, which also benefit massively from the cache).

Gamer? V-cache is for you. Server/HPC? Same. Video editor, CAD user, music producer, programmer, whatever? No need for V-cache, just get as many cores as you can afford.

 

[Max(IT)]

... that's kind of the point. Consumer applications show near zero performance increase from 3D V-cache, while gaming shows major gains. It would thus be very wasteful to pitch this (relatively limited) hardware to people interested in productivity tasks, when they could instead sell it to two gamers (or 1/6 of a server, which also benefit massively from the cache).

Gamer? V-cache is for you. Server/HPC? Same. Video editor, CAD user, music producer, programmer, whatever? No need for V-cache, just get as many cores as you can afford.

would you use a 5800X3D on a server ? hardly so...
I think AMD is going all-in on gamers, but gaming on a PC is becoming more and more expensive, and lackluster sales by Zen 4 are the demonstration people don't want to put so much money on an hobby...

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's an A*20 chipset, so, yeah. That's kind of the point. It's not like A320 or A520 were ever good options for gamers on a budget either, for the exact same reasons. For this generation there might actually be a meaningful price difference (A520 boards didn't tend to cost much less than nearly equivalent B550 boards, for example), which makes this distinction more meaningful, but overall these chipsets aren't meant for that market.

Neither A320 nor A520 has memory OC limitations, I'm not sure what you're smoking.

A520 was a perfectly reasonable chipset given CPU OCing is going the way of the dinosaur. Had It allowed PCIe 4.0 form the CPU I'd have likely picked it up.

I was looking forward to A620 for budget builds (especially given it would have PCIe 4.0 now) but if they do indeed limit ram OC via chipset then its going to be a no go. Back to Intel for budget needs I guess.....

 

[losingmyreligion]

I guess Intel and AMD will start to put more efforts into new architectures of processors. Working on a totally new architecture that will fix some things in energy consumption and temps. I think it is for better. Maybe in 2024 we will get processors seriously revised and easier to tame with power and temps.

Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that will happen. One manufacturer going for reduced power consumption/temps means that the other will destroy them in performance. And although decreased power consumption and temperature is nice, most users are just going to go for the processor that gets them the most frames for their dollar.

 

[Valantar]

would you use a 5800X3D on a server ? hardly so...

No, you'd use one of the several already announced Zen4 EPYCs with 3D V-cache, which use the exact same CCD+cache stack. That's where the vast majority of X3D CCDs will be going.

I think AMD is going all-in on gamers, but gaming on a PC is becoming more and more expensive, and lackluster sales by Zen 4 are the demonstration people don't want to put so much money on an hobby...

That's in direct contradiction with reality - average sales prices for PC components have never been as high as today, and PC gsming has exploded over the past decade. Up until very recently, more people have been buying than ever before, and for more money. What is holding sales back currently is several factors:
-the ongoing economic downturn
-everyone, their grandmother and their dog all buying gaming PCs durbing lockdown
-poor value propositions of current gen CPUs and systems compared to used parts and parts users already own.

AMD definitely isn't all in on gamers, they're all in on servers, with gamers being an important but small market far behind that. That's part of why we're currently seeing such high prices and poor value - if they really wanted the volume rather than high margins, they could cut prices quite a lot and still make a killing, but increase DIY sales quite a lot. The only problem with that is that DIY sales are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to both OEM, laptop and server sales.

Neither A320 nor A520 has memory OC limitations, I'm not sure what you're smoking.

A520 was a perfectly reasonable chipset given CPU OCing is going the way of the dinosaur. Had It allowed PCIe 4.0 form the CPU I'd have likely picked it up.

Which is precisely my point. These chipset have always been heavily limited. And for what they are, that's fine. They've never been positioned as a value gamer option.

 

[Nuke Dukem]

Frosty year expected? Gamers left out in the lurch? Unable to hit 667 fps, only getting 533?! Oh, say it ain't so!

/s

Most people wouldn't even have a clue that things have slowed down. The only people to be negatively affected would be the very, very small minority called "enthusiasts" -- with enough cash, a constant (read "mostly meaningless") upgrade itch and total lack of self-control. I almost feel bad for them.

 

[Valantar]

Frosty year expected? Gamers left out in the lurch? Unable to hit 667 fps, only getting 533?! Oh, say it ain't so!

/s

Most people wouldn't even have a clue that things have slowed down. The only people to be negatively affected would be the very, very small minority called "enthusiasts" -- with enough cash, a constant (read "mostly meaningless") upgrade itch and total lack of self-control. I almost feel bad for them.

Very, very, very much this.

 

[Nuke Dukem]

Sounds like a lackluster chipset. Ok for office PCs. I bet the boards will come with minimalistic VRM so the missing OC capability will be no big deal but being limited to DDR5-4800 makes this chipset a bad choice for people who are on a tight budget and want to upgrade later on but still might - when they are not cautious - end up with. AM5 platform (especially B650E) prices need to come down massively or Zen 4 will continue to be rather uninteresting.

Agree, limiting a simple RAM OC (a feature present on previous versions!) is a major dick move. It is exactly this type of artificial segmentation that gets on my nerves...

Anecdotal, I know, but here goes: I recently picked up a used A320 board with an Athlon 3000G and 8GB of 2400 RAM for cheap -- just to tinker with it. I pushed the memory from 2400 to 3200 (3400 was a bit unstable). If I replace the CPU* and install a proper GPU** - boom, cheap gamer rig!

* Given how far pushed out of the box CPUs have become, manual tuning is now unnecessary, bar some limited scenarios.

** PCI-E 3.0 doesn't bother me at all -- I can live with the low single-digit FPS loss it would cause, plus I'm not likely to use top tier cards anyway.

 

[mb194dc]

There is an undeclared planned obsolescence via software updates. For example, my 4-core / 8-thread Ryzen gets severe stutter in games in which it previously had run smoothly.

Really. I'm running a ryzen 1 and a 4790k in another rig and no problems.

What OS ?

 

[Minus Infinity]

Wow no 7900 or 7950 with v-cache. Very disappointed and this has now made my mind up for 13700K.

As for Meteor Lake delays, I said this 6 months ago, 2023 was a joke and yet the media kept spouting this nonsense. The good news for AMD is Zen 5 will be a chance to be out not long after ML. I also said Arrow Lake won't be out before 2025 and will probably be facing off against Zen 6.

The one bright thing for Intel IPC uplifts on Redwood cove are said to be 22-34% over Raptor cove, and Crestmont is something like 15% over Gracemont. Arrow Lake apparently gets bigger uplifts than this! So 6P Redwood cores with up to 34% IPC uplifts could still beat 8P Raptor cores. The 16 E cores though will be much stronger and overall in MT we might see good gains. But Zen 5 is a much bigger change in architecture than Zen 4, so all bets are off as to how they compare. AMD will be breathing easier seeing Intel has cancelled plans for much higher E core counts in ML and Arrow Lake.

 

[Max(IT)]

AMD definitely isn't all in on gamers, they're all in on servers, with gamers being an important but small market far behind that. That's part of why we're currently seeing such high prices and poor value - if they really wanted the volume rather than high margins, they could cut prices quite a lot and still make a killing, but increase DIY sales quite a lot. The only problem with that is that DIY sales are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to both OEM, laptop and server sales.

AMD has not such a good grip on OEM and laptop, so gamers and DIY market definitely are their focus.
I think you are overestimated the servers market and underestimated the gaming market if you are saying AMD is keeping platform prices high on purpose.
Yes, servers market is very important, but gaming is very relevant.
They just overestimated themselves , thinking people would have bought Zen 4 platform at any asked price, and I'm quite sure they will correct that pretty soon.

 

[Valantar]

AMD has not such a good grip on OEM and laptop, so gamers and DIY market definitely are their focus.

They don't have as good a grip on OEM and laptops, no, but those markets are easily 10x the sales of DIY gaming, so even a loose grip on those makes them an obvious priority

I think you are overestimated the servers market and underestimated the gaming market

You're wrong. AMD's Data Center accounting segment is currently seeing the same revenue as their entire Gaming segment, which includes console APUs that sell in the tens of millions a year. And they are seeing massive ongoing growth in data centers, while consumer sales overall are dropping off. Of course the Client segment comes on top of this with its own $1B revenue, which is where CPUs for DIY gaming go, but that segment is massively dominated by laptops and OEM sales. DIY CPUs is a small market segment overall.

if you are saying AMD is keeping platform prices high on purpose.

I'm saying they're not doing their utmost to drop prices in order to improve revenue - which is simple truth. If they wanted to increase revenue they'd do so by pushing out more lower-end SKUs earlier, as those inevitably outsell higher end SKUs by significant amounts. Profit margins would be lower, yes, but revenue and thus profits would increase - but they're not aiming for that. Instead, they're prioritizing putting their silicon towards the data center segment, where they're still selling every die they can make, but at much higher margins.

Yes, servers market is very important, but gaming is very relevant.

Gaming is mainly important for PR. Yes, it's also a sizeable market, but it's still quite small compared to literally every other market segment AMD operates in.

They just overestimated themselves , thinking people would have bought Zen 4 platform at any asked price

That is exactly what I'm saying

and I'm quite sure they will correct that pretty soon.

But the fact that they haven't yet demonstrates clearly and unequivocally that for them, average sales prices are more important than sales volumes. I hope they will drop 7000-series prices soon, but I'm definitely not "quite sure" that they will do so. I'll remain skeptical and be happy if proven wrong.

 

[Vayra86]

Really. I'm running a ryzen 1 and a 4790k in another rig and no problems.

What OS ?

More importantly, what GPU.

 

[Valantar]

More importantly, what GPU.

I'm not the one the question was directed at, but my secondary rig is doing just fine with its i5 4670S + RX 6600 (and also did fine with the previous RX 570). It's even running W11 pretty well!

 

[big_glasses]

More importantly, what GPU.

even more importantly, what games?
big difference between CS:GO and Cyberpunk

 

[THU31]

3D cache > E-cores.

If there actually is a 7600X3D, it will be a real winner. I want a CPU focused entirely on gaming performance.

 

[stimpy88]

3D cache > E-cores.

If there actually is a 7600X3D, it will be a real winner. I want a CPU focused entirely on gaming performance.

I love your Quark/Jensen pic! You win the Internet today!