Introduction

The wait is finally over. After CES, Computex, and finally E3, it seemed as though the hype for the new AMD Ryzen lineup had overwhelmed the whole industry. Now, it is finally time to see what lies beneath that hype. Was Ryzen 3000 worth the wait and is the new X570 chipset worth the cost?

Unlike Intel, AMD has made a commitment to supporting the AM4 socket over multiple CPU generations. So far, the team in red has held to that promise, and the new Zen 2 processors are widely supported on older-generation motherboards. While this is great for consumers, it also creates more complexity as more choice inevitably must. Do you need a new X570 motherboard? Due to the cost of the new chipset, the new generation of boards are more expensive feature for feature than the last two generations. This is largely due to PCIe 4.0, a costly and complex feature to implement.

In the graphics department, no card on the market has saturated even PCIe 3.0 yet, at least in the x16 configuration. The largest immediate benefit is with high-speed storage. NVMe drives in RAID configurations can and will take advantage of the extra bandwidth to push never before seen sequential read and write speeds. With your average game, even the switch from SATA to NVMe can be hard to notice, let alone to an even faster and more expensive RAID array. This is more relevant for content creation and media production, where high-speed storage can save significant time and therefore money, which is further bolstered by the near-HEDT core counts on the high-end Ryzen 3000 CPUs. Of course, graphics cards will eventually catch up as well, so for the discerning gamer who only upgrades every three to five years, the new standard could prove a good investment.

With the ASUS Prime X570-Pro, ASUS is looking to strike a middle ground of performance and price. While it is no budget board, the ASUS Prime X570-Pro lacks luxuries like WiFi, multiple LAN options, or over the top aesthetics. Instead, the ASUS Prime X570-Pro focuses on what matters most by featuring a 14-phase digital VRM, integrated rear I/O shield, and HDMI 2.0b support. So, has ASUS found a balance between price, performance, and features?

Specifications

Our exhaustive coverage of AMD's 7/7 Launch Day includes the following content:
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core processor | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core processor | AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card | AMD Radeon RX 5700 graphics card | AMD Zen 2 Memory Performance Scaling | Ryzen 3900X and 3700 on X470 vs X570 platforms | Radeon RX 5700 XT Navi PCI-Express 4.0 Performance Scaling | ASRock X570 Taichi motherboard | ASUS Prime X570-Pro motherboard