AMD extends Socket AM5 support through at least 2029; AM4 refuses to die
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It speaks to all the weirdness around CPU, RAM, and SSD availability these days that it feels AMD is giving PC builders an extra lifeline by, yes, re-releasing a 4-year-old chip and keeping a very aging motherboard chipset on life support for more years. And we're rightfully grateful for it. I really don't see Intel or Nvidia doing anything like this type of thing, meeting builders halfway and implying 'we got your back'.
AMD know we don't need PCs to be cutting edge, just capable enough that we don't need to sell kidneys/first borns. For a while, anyway.
AMD know we don't need PCs to be cutting edge, just capable enough that we don't need to sell kidneys/first borns. For a while, anyway.
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This is one of the reasons why I went AMD after being Intel for most of my years.
They support their shit.
And it's been a huge financial boost considering that I built a "new" computer for my roommate recently, and because none of us are made of money, she got an AM4 socket motherboard, with all the modern stuff they have (wifi built into a PC motherboard was not a thing for the longest time, as an example).
But she didn't buy the RAM when I told her to, and couldn't afford the new prices.
I've always doubled the RAM in my builds for each successive one, and her OLD one was the one I replaced with my new one, which has 64 GB of RAM. So she had 32 GB of ram in the old one. I used 16 to set up her new one and then make sure the data was transferred out of the old one and any other things she needed, then moved the remaining 16 to her new one. It being a much faster processor, even if an AM4 socket, and using Linux, her boot time went from 4 minutes with Win10 to about 20 seconds with Linux.
The moral of the story is, if it SEEMS faster, it's an upgrade. And it was a shit-ton faster, so she's pleased. And she's not out the $400+ it would have cost to upgrade to the RAM she would have had.
I'm sure in someone's universe, the tick all count differently. But in realtiy, you only need as new as what it takes to have a good experience with a computer. I remember when they first came out how every new generation of processor was two to five times "better", and RAM speeds were quite noticeable. These days, it's hard to tell the differences without a stopwatch or even something with far greater precision of timing. Once it passes beyond annoying-the-human noticeable stage, then it's only about bragging rights, which is fine if you're into that.
But if not, you can save a lot of cash these days recycling what you had. Combined with something new, it's STILL going to be faster than what you had.
They support their shit.
And it's been a huge financial boost considering that I built a "new" computer for my roommate recently, and because none of us are made of money, she got an AM4 socket motherboard, with all the modern stuff they have (wifi built into a PC motherboard was not a thing for the longest time, as an example).
But she didn't buy the RAM when I told her to, and couldn't afford the new prices.
I've always doubled the RAM in my builds for each successive one, and her OLD one was the one I replaced with my new one, which has 64 GB of RAM. So she had 32 GB of ram in the old one. I used 16 to set up her new one and then make sure the data was transferred out of the old one and any other things she needed, then moved the remaining 16 to her new one. It being a much faster processor, even if an AM4 socket, and using Linux, her boot time went from 4 minutes with Win10 to about 20 seconds with Linux.
The moral of the story is, if it SEEMS faster, it's an upgrade. And it was a shit-ton faster, so she's pleased. And she's not out the $400+ it would have cost to upgrade to the RAM she would have had.
I'm sure in someone's universe, the tick all count differently. But in realtiy, you only need as new as what it takes to have a good experience with a computer. I remember when they first came out how every new generation of processor was two to five times "better", and RAM speeds were quite noticeable. These days, it's hard to tell the differences without a stopwatch or even something with far greater precision of timing. Once it passes beyond annoying-the-human noticeable stage, then it's only about bragging rights, which is fine if you're into that.
But if not, you can save a lot of cash these days recycling what you had. Combined with something new, it's STILL going to be faster than what you had.
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The fact that both chips clock the same (meaning the Zen 4 one is faster) and the older one costs more just shows there is nothing "kind" about the release - just meeting demand at a premium.
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A harmless pie
Ars Centurion
I've yet to see the need for anything more, even for high-end gaming. It was a workhorse in my workstation and continues to kick ass in my partners gaming/DnD-map-making machine. She plays at 4k with that cpu paired to a 4080 and everything seems to go off without a hitch. I think this particular cpu deserves a spot on the list of all-time greats.
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One big benefit of the X3D chips is that RAM speed is less important. There are been several reviews comparing gaming results with various RAM speeds and latencies and the difference between the fastest and the slowest was pretty marginal. So feel free to stick with your current RAM kit, as long as you have enough capacity for the workloads you care about.
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Good move from AMD. Pretty sure they need little effort to produce a few thousand extra CPUs and gain brownie points with builders. As others pointed out, you don't need the cutting edge CPU anyways, my 5800x3d runs everything I throw at it without issues.
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Amount of RAM is even less important as is dual channel according to rests done by Dutch website tweakers.net
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Perhaps you wanted to say that extra RAM above what you need isn't critical.
But, yeah having sufficient RAM is more important the CPU speed, your graphics card or anything else - just try running a computer with 2 GB of RAM these days.
Obligatory footnote - I'm not saying that extra RAM won't be used or won't be useful - any OS will gladly use it for caching.
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Or that it's a limited run for which economies of scale don't apply.
I wish somebody would do an investigation of how extra cache affects tasks such as running a ton of VMs on consumer hardware, although ideally you'd want it on both CCDs for that, which doesn't apply to the older X3D chips.
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Other than the inflated prices, these are both decent entry-level chips. The 9850x3d is priced (normally, not on sale) at $439 at MicroCenter, so $100 more and you're running the fastest gaming CPU ever.
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Extra RAM and fast RAM never hurts (unless you're measuring battery life, which it does hurt a little).
Most people not running games can get a few extra generations out of their old, old computers just by increasing the RAM and putting in a flash drive.
For gamers, the GPU is unfortunately both super-important and the most expensive part in the build. Updating to the fastest CPU might improve framerates by 10%, but getting the fastest GPU might double or quadruple framerates.
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Modern CPUs have read-only registers to report some low level stuff such as cache hit rates. There are libraries availble to pull this data.
The results would probably only be useful for your particular workload. So, a company could, in theory, run stats on their server farms and maybe get info on how much bang for the buck they're getting on one CPU vs another. But, by the time you care about that, you're probably (1) in a position to add more compute as needed, and (2) newer CPUS often have more cache or newer architecture or are faster - so the results might not help drive future purchases anyway. TL;DR - most of the time it's not worth analyzing differences that turn out to be small and that are part of an ever shifting landscape.
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We're in agreement on all your points. To the OP's point - having dual channel RAM or multiple memory paths on a slower RAM can end up being faster than less channels on a faster chip-speed RAM. Parallelism for the win.
So - never put one stick of memory in a machine - use two of half the size - it'll be faster. If you want to get the most performance out of your motherboard - fill all the RAM slots. If you want to leave room for expansion (without discarding old RAM) - fill half the RAM slots.
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I assume you are comparing the 7700x3D and the 5800x3D chips. It is a little odd the 7700x3D is cheaper but it's also a lower binned and probably one they've been accumulating chips to use for a while considering how long the 7800x3D has been out. The 5800x3D is the top bin for that and there was a 5700x3D back in the day. In the end the new MSRP is still cheaper than what used ones were going for so I'm sure they could have priced it even higher if they really wanted. Time will tell what the actual street price ends up being. I'm still on AM4 so I am hoping the street price on the 5800x3D will be lower or the 5700x3D will make a return too as I would like to upgrade but don't really need it since I'm only targeting 60fps and my 5600x seems fine for that in all the benchmarks I've seen.
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I had to build a PC for a work project a few weeks ago. I am building an AV1 shadow archive of all our video assets in HEVC because I know as HEVC support withers this will inevitably become my problem regardless.
i didn't even contemplate anything other than an AM4 based system. I scavenged DDR4 and SSDs from the recycling bin and bought a Ryzen 7 5700, Intel Arc A380, Asrock B550 board and 700w Power Supply and stuck them in a cheap case from Amazon and it is just cooking away.
i didn't even contemplate anything other than an AM4 based system. I scavenged DDR4 and SSDs from the recycling bin and bought a Ryzen 7 5700, Intel Arc A380, Asrock B550 board and 700w Power Supply and stuck them in a cheap case from Amazon and it is just cooking away.
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My six-year-old AM4 system (upgraded from a 3900 to a 5900 a few years ago) is still running fine, with Linux. I do some gaming on it, but it is not primarily a 'gaming pc'. It's just my primary desktop. I probably won't upgrade it until it physically fails.
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4 min boot time in Windows 10? Was it a spinning disk, running Norton Antivirus scan at boot, or something else?
Something just seems off here. Windows boot that bad means something is slowing it down...
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The 5800X3D at $349 pushes its price beyond what I’d want to pay. It’s a great budget option if you absolutely cannot spend more and especially if you don’t have access to a MicroCenter or similar retailer who has CPU+Mobo+RAM bundles at fair-to-great prices.
If one is building a system from scratch, I’d be curious if the 5800X3D a mobo and DDR4 is worth the cost savings from the MicroCenter bundles. You’re still spending maybe $300 for 32GB of DDR4. Then you need to add a mobo. Even if you’re buying used, you start to close in on the prices of the AM5 bundles. Use case matters, but it does make one wonder what is the better path and I’d lean on AM5. It seems this CPU is a much better option if you’ve already got the DDR4 and Mobo (maybe stating the obvious here).
For my situation, I can buy a bundle from MicroCenter with a 7000 or 9000 series AMD CPU and 32GB of RAM and sell the current AM4 components to recoup a decent amount of money spent. To me, it’s worth moving to AM5 and DDR5 - pending prices don’t go crazy again.
If one is building a system from scratch, I’d be curious if the 5800X3D a mobo and DDR4 is worth the cost savings from the MicroCenter bundles. You’re still spending maybe $300 for 32GB of DDR4. Then you need to add a mobo. Even if you’re buying used, you start to close in on the prices of the AM5 bundles. Use case matters, but it does make one wonder what is the better path and I’d lean on AM5. It seems this CPU is a much better option if you’ve already got the DDR4 and Mobo (maybe stating the obvious here).
For my situation, I can buy a bundle from MicroCenter with a 7000 or 9000 series AMD CPU and 32GB of RAM and sell the current AM4 components to recoup a decent amount of money spent. To me, it’s worth moving to AM5 and DDR5 - pending prices don’t go crazy again.
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So, dumb QUESTION. Does the socket introduce any performance or new features or is it just a hardware plug that prevents sufficiently new CPUs from working in older boards?
Asked another way: is AM5 inherently faster or better than AM4, or is it just "better" cause the hardware that requires it is better?
Asked another way: is AM5 inherently faster or better than AM4, or is it just "better" cause the hardware that requires it is better?
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My computer at work is a threadripper system with some crazy pro grade nvidia graphics card with stupid amounts of VRam. My computer at home is a 5600X, 64 GB, Nvidia 4070, and I'm happy with it for the things I do. It does not hold me back, does not limit me from mundane tasks. Sure, if I want to work on a 50 million vertex model, I'd struggle, but I don't do that at home. I don't miss my work computer at home.
AM4 is still fine, for me. I've been thinking about going AM5, because I've had this 3-4 year refit cadence. But with the prices as they are, I can't motivate doing it with a system that's just chugging along fine.
AM4 is still fine, for me. I've been thinking about going AM5, because I've had this 3-4 year refit cadence. But with the prices as they are, I can't motivate doing it with a system that's just chugging along fine.
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While in theory, a socket is just a physical device, in practice, when we're talking about sockets in this context, we're talking about platforms, including the chipsets, motherboards and other peripherals. (AMD intentionally made the physical footprints of the AM4 and AM5 the same so that they could use the same cooling solutions.)
AM4 supports DDR4 along with PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 (some early CPUs/motherboards only supported 3.0); AM5 supports DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.
That inherently means that even if AMD decided to create new CPU cores for existing AM4 motherboards, there would be performance limitations compared to AM5.
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This is very true. Ryzen was truly a game changer for AMD. I was fed up with a lot of Intel shenanigans by that point(their chipser support has always been awful. Last one I personally used was an i7 950. But I bought and installed several others for other people. 3570k 6600k )and haven't looked back. I've bought 4 Ryzen CPUs so far. And see no reason to still go back to Intel. Especially after their shady ass deal with the pedo president.
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It's too bad the 5800X3D 10th anniversary edition couldn't have been on 5nm or less. A 65w TDP 5800X3D would be awesome.
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I'm curious if there's any subtle different between the new 5800x3d and the original one.
And as for anyone on the fence with an am4 computer and an older CPU, I upgraded from a 3700x to a 5800x3d and it was a very noticeable leap. I'm not surprised they did this at all. I thought that when they originally stopped making them that they'd do another run. And with the price of RAM, it's a no brainer.
And as for anyone on the fence with an am4 computer and an older CPU, I upgraded from a 3700x to a 5800x3d and it was a very noticeable leap. I'm not surprised they did this at all. I thought that when they originally stopped making them that they'd do another run. And with the price of RAM, it's a no brainer.
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Same general boat. I've got a 5800X at home; I thought about (then decided not to) get a X3D when it came out b/c of the productivity drawbacks.
When AM5 came out with the 7000 series CPUs, I thought about upgrading then decided not to. When the 9000 series came out, I again thought about it but decided not to.
I'd probably be looking at 20%-50% better performance, depending on workload, which is definitely noticeable but not enough to truly change my experience. My computer is generally very responsive, "real work" that engages the CPU for a while would happen faster on the new CPU, but would still take a while, and it's just hard to justify doubling the money I'd spend.
I feel for people who are now looking at buying the re-released 5800X3D to upgrade their say, 3000 series CPU. They've had their machine for years; they probably thought about the upgrade when it came out but decided not to. If they'd bought it closer to launch, they'd have had all those years of better performance for the same $ they're being asked to spend today.
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I think the real question behind all of this is if there will be an AM6 at all, or if AMD's new CPUs going forward will be sold soldered to the board like Apple's are.
AMD already seems to be pushing their "AI MAX" SoCs (which are a lot more efficient but have notably lower performance under load) in SFF PCs for audiences that would have been marketed big desktops (with desktop CPUs to match) previously.
AMD already seems to be pushing their "AI MAX" SoCs (which are a lot more efficient but have notably lower performance under load) in SFF PCs for audiences that would have been marketed big desktops (with desktop CPUs to match) previously.
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What the heck was that computer doing?!? My old 8gb Win10 I5 computer I built in 2014 booted into Windows in about 30 seconds. I am still running on the same copy of Win10, now on a Ryzen 5 5500 with 16gb and its boot time is still about 30 seconds. Quite honestly, those times are being conservative, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual boot times are 15-20 seconds. Both systems are running on SSDs.
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I've built with AMD cpu's for a while and am really happy with them. Then I bought a (second hand) AMD Radeon VII pro, because it's fp64 specs are great. But software support is not, and I tried really hard (first windows, then Linux). I can only guess at why software support of, (esstially ATI hardware) is so awful compared with NVidia (competition is too hard, most likely). Buy their cpu's, not their gpus's, if you want useable calculation performance. Gaming is not my thing here, that may be a different story. Probably you can conclude I haven't upgraded for a while - correct. My rig will have to do more cycles, and so far, that's ok.
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What! I've had a 7700X for a couple years now and now they're making a 7700X3D!? how dare they!!!
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In the modern world of system-on-chips, the socket mostly determines the type of memory. So AM4 == dual channel DDR4, AM5 == dual channel DDR5. It also determines the number of PCIe lanes available, including thunderbolt / USB4 if directly connected to the CPU. It includes other things too, but those are the most obvious ones when comparing desktop CPU sockets between generations.
It also can dictate the fastest PCIe speed, but there is more room for change here. When AM4 launched with Zen+ it supported PCIe3, but Zen2 upgraded to PCIe4. AM5 supports at least PCIe4, but with the right motherboard and chipset supports PCIe5.
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I doubt it. The AI MAX chips are mainly in laptops and a few SFF PCs aimed purely at AI enthusiasts, if they were truly their path forward they'd be trying to put them in larger desktops where improved cooling would allow for crazy power using. AM6 will happen, but the current market fuckery means we probably won't see anything serious until 2028 or later.
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We currently have 3 Ryzen systems: 5700x3d (my gaming rig, upgraded from originally a 3600x), 3600x (daughter's gaming rig) and 1700 (my daily desktop - not work related). The newest Intel CPU I have is a couple of 3570Ks running general web browsing / HTPC systems. Our 3570K w/ 16 GB DDR3 / GTX 960 is starting to show a little strain (doesn't do HDR very well), but overall, still works ok - our TV is a 65" Tcl 4k that's like 7 years old, and I'm not sure how well it actually supports HDR.
Have been looking at maybe a 3050 for the HTPC to try HDR.
Have been looking at maybe a 3050 for the HTPC to try HDR.
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They're on two different process nodes, and the 7700X3D is a binned part while the 5800X3D is the top spec for that CCD. Apples and bananas.
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Yeah, and the 5800X3D is on a much cheaper node with an even cheaper I/O die and with higher node yields. So, costs a lot less to make a run, and whatever dies can't reach spec they will certainly rehash as a new 5700X3D re-release. The non-X3D 5800XT is still available as new in lots of places (including Amazon), so, presuming it is still in production, it costs nothing more for them to re-release the 5800X3D as it is the same X3D v1 module that is still in production that they stack.
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The socket is mostly the interface that connects the CPU to memory, power, and I/O. So there is nothing technically stopping AMD from releasing versions of Zen 4 or Zen 5 on AM4, it is mostly a business decision. While others focused on the memory and I/O aspects that AM5 introduces, a big one is a much higher power limit that the top end AM5 CPUs actively exploit to run a lot faster.
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