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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