Zekk Pacus' AMD Ryze(n) hardware thread, July 2017

[Malcanis]

It's not like there's been any good video games released recently that justify dropping over a grand on new hardware so why bother.

Also a very good point

Just one new SKU, 5800x3d. Same as the old one more or less with extra 64 Mb of L3. Launchdate still unknown. Zen 4 comes in 2H 2022 when AMD feels DDR5 price and availability has improved enough.

Also the new 6000 series APUs, which look pretty impressive. 6 or 12 RDNA2 cores on DDR5 will be a huge step up from the Vega core APUs. AMD did say that they won't release them as individual items until DDR5 is "properly" available though, so they'll be OEM only for some unspecified amount of time. I still want to get one in a miniPC for #2 nephew. It will easily be good enough to run CEMU and whatnot plus the Steam games he actually plays. Heck if I drop 32GB in there it should last him well into his teens.

[Spartan Dax]

I played around a bit with a 4c/8t 2400G when they were released. Decent for low/med 1080p gameplay in the 30 fps range while playing WOT and similarly demanding games. Not a speed demon to be sure but for HTPC uses it's still a very good cpu despite being a Zen 1 core with Vega graphics.

[Malcanis]

Yeah the higher end 6000s should have about 3x the GPU power. The ones with 12 GPU cores all seem to be 8c/16t though. Valve had to get their 4c/8t + 12 RDNA2 core Deck APU custom made, but I think there'd be a ready market outside of Valve for similar GPU-centric APU SKUs.

[Overspark]

Just one new SKU, 5800x3d. Same as the old one more or less with extra 64 Mb of L3. Launchdate still unknown.

I think I've seen April mentioned? Depends very much on the price how competitive this CPU is gonna be. Clockspeeds are lower than regular 5800X, but they claim a 15% performance improvement on average in games due to the larger L3 cache.

I've been itching to upgrade my 2600X at some point, something like this increases the urge if the price is right. Although there's something to be said for holding out for Zen 4 of course, although I'll also need to get a new mobo + RAM then.

[Spartan Dax]

I'm looking to do a AM4 cpu upgrade as well but which one it will be will depend on the price. Intel's Alder Lake sure makes AMD's lower end parts appear less than stellar but AMD seems to rely on their newfound fame/reputation to keep their prices up and still sell. Thus far it seems to be working but maybe by April prices will have dropped.

An imaginary 350 USD 5900x or 5800x3d would be a nice final upgrade.

[Cosmin]

From experience you do need a good motherboard to have your stuff work nicely and to get that sky high optimisation ceiling. Everything matters, from quality/sturdy VRMs to how the RAM traces are layed out on the PCB.

A 350USD 5900X would be nice indeed, but expect to pay at least just as much for a good motherboard.

[Zekk Pacus]

I'm looking to do a AM4 cpu upgrade as well but which one it will be will depend on the price. Intel's Alder Lake sure makes AMD's lower end parts appear less than stellar but AMD seems to rely on their newfound fame/reputation to keep their prices up and still sell. Thus far it seems to be working but maybe by April prices will have dropped.

An imaginary 350 USD 5900x or 5800x3d would be a nice final upgrade.

Alder Lake is being held back by DDR5 availability now, plus needing to install Windows 11 to make the e-cores behave properly.

[El Capitano]

A 350USD 5900X would be nice indeed, but expect to pay at least just as much for a good motherboard.

Err...lol. A decent B550 motherboard is perfectly fine for a 5900X if you don't need the extra features of a high end motherboard. I've got a Gigabyte B550I (£165 right now) motherboard with a 5900X and a 3090 in it with no problems whatsoever.

[El Capitano]

Alder Lake is being held back by DDR5 availability now, plus needing to install Windows 11 to make the e-cores behave properly.

DDR5 on Alder Lake is only a significant benefit in a few very specific scenarios. As for Windows 11, the default power profile (Balanced) will stick anything not in focus on the E cores exclusively, which is rather silly. Thankfully, you can switch to Performance profile to override it, but It's still a strange decision.

[Overspark]

From experience you do need a good motherboard to have your stuff work nicely and to get that sky high optimisation ceiling. Everything matters, from quality/sturdy VRMs to how the RAM traces are layed out on the PCB.

A 350USD 5900X would be nice indeed, but expect to pay at least just as much for a good motherboard.

As it's a CPU-only upgrade if I end up buying another AM4 CPU it'll work just fine on my X470 Crosshair VII. I imagine Spartan Dax is in a similar boat.

[Malcanis]

That board should run a 5800X3D perfectly fine. It's the same TDP as a standard 5800X, and doesn't even require a BIOS update compared to normal Zen3s. As Dax said, it's just a 5800X with 96MB L3 cache (which is kind of awesome tbh. 100MB total on die cache!)

[Spartan Dax]

From experience you do need a good motherboard to have your stuff work nicely and to get that sky high optimisation ceiling. Everything matters, from quality/sturdy VRMs to how the RAM traces are layed out on the PCB.

A 350USD 5900X would be nice indeed, but expect to pay at least just as much for a good motherboard.

As it's a CPU-only upgrade if I end up buying another AM4 CPU it'll work just fine on my X470 Crosshair VII. I imagine Spartan Dax is in a similar boat.

Yup, I have an X470 Gaming-F and that will do nicely as well. I've seen plenty of A320 boards running 5800x's happily all day long, no need to go overboard on "good" mobo allthough I wouldn't put a 5950x in one of those.

[Cosmin]

It isn't about just running it stock, any motherboard will do that. But if/when you try to push the CPU and RAM a bit more you can run into limitations.

I have a close friend who had issues with RAM quantity/running them at stock speeds. YMMV of course, you can of course be fine with your own MB and just drop in the CPU, it's a great advantage that the AM4 boards have over Intel's offers

[Zekk Pacus]

You're right of course, but the ROG boards are for extreme overclocking. Nobody needs a £450 motherboard for your average gaming machine.

Honestly between PBO and Turbo Boost, the amount of headroom left in manual overclocking is shrinking all the time. A better board with better VRM will probably let you stay at max clocks a bit longer, but the days of a good board netting you a whopping great manual overclock are long gone.

[Malcanis]

Instead we have actual generational improvement

[Cosmin]

You're right of course, but the ROG boards are for extreme overclocking. Nobody needs a £450 motherboard for your average gaming machine.

Honestly between PBO and Turbo Boost, the amount of headroom left in manual overclocking is shrinking all the time. A better board with better VRM will probably let you stay at max clocks a bit longer, but the days of a good board netting you a whopping great manual overclock are long gone.

Of course you don't need this board for an average gaming machine, you are absolutely right.

Also no. This particular ROG board has something that other X570 boards don't have (afaik) and that's DOS:

https://youtu.be/4cQK_kcmRSw

Tl;dw: you set a stable o/c on all cores, preferably with a low voltage and according to how much power the CPU draws it switches between this and 1-2 core boosting. So you can run 4.5-4.6GHz all cores at let's say 1.2-1.25V for renders/heavy CPU work and when you're gaming a couple cores will boost to 5GHz to offer you single thread high clocks performance.

[El Capitano]

It isn't about just running it stock, any motherboard will do that. But if/when you try to push the CPU and RAM a bit more you can run into limitations.

Decent (the one I listed is counted amongst that) B550 motherboards can achieve that just fine too. Keep in mind that, for the price difference between the motherboard you listed and the motherboard I countered with, you could go from a 5900X to a 5950X, which would net you quite a lot more performance improvement than trying to overclock the 5900X.

I have a close friend who had issues with RAM quantity/running them at stock speeds. YMMV of course, you can of course be fine with your own MB and just drop in the CPU, it's a great advantage that the AM4 boards have over Intel's offers

Sample sizes of one are...problematic.

[El Capitano]

Of course you don't need this board for an average gaming machine, you are absolutely right.

Then why did you say you should expect to spend as much on the motherboard as you spend on the CPU? Is there anybody in this forum heading into LN2 territory?

[Overspark]

You're right of course, but the ROG boards are for extreme overclocking. Nobody needs a £450 motherboard for your average gaming machine.

Honestly between PBO and Turbo Boost, the amount of headroom left in manual overclocking is shrinking all the time. A better board with better VRM will probably let you stay at max clocks a bit longer, but the days of a good board netting you a whopping great manual overclock are long gone.

Of course you don't need this board for an average gaming machine, you are absolutely right.

Also no. This particular ROG board has something that other X570 boards don't have (afaik) and that's DOS:

https://youtu.be/4cQK_kcmRSw

Tl;dw: you set a stable o/c on all cores, preferably with a low voltage and according to how much power the CPU draws it switches between this and 1-2 core boosting. So you can run 4.5-4.6GHz all cores at let's say 1.2-1.25V for renders/heavy CPU work and when you're gaming a couple cores will boost to 5GHz to offer you single thread high clocks performance.

I have the Asus ROG Crosshair VII, so the one just before this board. I've come to regret the purchase a bit, I shouldn't have wasted my money on it. The gold-plated audio nonsense is so shitty that I ended up buying an external USB soundcard and the cheaper board (Asus Prime X470) gets higher RAM overclocks in practice. The Crosshair mobo's do have a lot of knobs to twiddle for all-core overclocking, but I've come to realize that all I want is a decent and especially reliable PBO boost and RAM overclock that never gives me any issues.

[Cosmin]

It isn't about just running it stock, any motherboard will do that. But if/when you try to push the CPU and RAM a bit more you can run into limitations.

Decent (the one I listed is counted amongst that) B550 motherboards can achieve that just fine too. Keep in mind that, for the price difference between the motherboard you listed and the motherboard I countered with, you could go from a 5900X to a 5950X, which would net you quite a lot more performance improvement than trying to overclock the 5900X.

I have a close friend who had issues with RAM quantity/running them at stock speeds. YMMV of course, you can of course be fine with your own MB and just drop in the CPU, it's a great advantage that the AM4 boards have over Intel's offers

Sample sizes of one are...problematic.

5900x generally runs higher in frequency than 5950x because it has less cores and dissipates much less heat, it's easier to work with, etc. If I didn't have my own stuff needing as many cores as possible then I would have went for the 5900x. There's always a balance to strike somewhere.

Also motherboard model/layout most definitely matters when trying to run for a specific case (e.g. four high density modules in four slots).

And yes, of course sample sizes of one are problematic. Today found out another friend has issues with the same RAM/MB configuration that my friend has Of course samples of two are also problematic. But if you want a high end CPU you should not skimp on the motherboard if you want to milk it for all the performance it can offer - if you plan running stock, you do you, though.

Of course you don't need this board for an average gaming machine, you are absolutely right.

Then why did you say you should expect to spend as much on the motherboard as you spend on the CPU? Is there anybody in this forum heading into LN2 territory?

This is just silly. High end motherboards aren't only for LN2 territory. My ASUS Rampage IV Extreme served me well since 2013 and will continue to do so in that system. All the high end motherboards I have ever owned have had amazing lifespans, measured in decades. By comparison I've also owned cheap motherboards that needed recapping every 4 years or so and similar stuff. Yes, nowadays the situation is much better and you can get a cracking motherboard for a really really good price. But again, if you want to milk your system for all it can offer 24/7 - you need something bit more expensive than what you can get at the corner store. If that's not your use case, fair enough and no issues, again, you do you

I have the Asus ROG Crosshair VII, so the one just before this board. I've come to regret the purchase a bit, I shouldn't have wasted my money on it. The gold-plated audio nonsense is so shitty that I ended up buying an external USB soundcard and the cheaper board (Asus Prime X470) gets higher RAM overclocks in practice. The Crosshair mobo's do have a lot of knobs to twiddle for all-core overclocking, but I've come to realize that all I want is a decent and especially reliable PBO boost and RAM overclock that never gives me any issues.

Again it depends on your use case in particular. I never really regretted getting a high end motherboard. I definitely regretted when I bought a fucking middle-of-the-pack MSI which found new and interesting ways of fucking up my system after I had a DFI suddenly die when I filled all the slots with 4GB RAM modules. But there were no other 1156 motherboards available vOv