AM4 Retrospective & AM5 Expectations (Die Shrink Telegrams)
Added 2023-11-30 02:11:32 +0000 UTCBack in 2017 what did you think of the AM4 platform? Did you think it was a mess? Did you expect it to improve for...7 years?! Alright, well now what do you expect out of AM5?
As we get closer to the launch of AM5's second (third?) generation of products, Zen 5, we thought it would be fun to center the next episode of Die Shrink on these three main topics:
- A Retrospective on AM4 - Expectations in 2017, how our feeling evolved, and it's legacy.
- Expectations for AM5 - Is it in a better place than AM4 was after 1 year? How long will it last?
- Next Upgrades - Is Tom waiting for Zen 6? Does Dan ever plan to upgrade? What about you all?
Write in below with your thoughts, memories, and hopes! You have ~16 hours (till Thursday Afternoon US Central Time to write in below! Be respectful, concise, and use good grammar to have your submission considered.
https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/amd-ryzen-1800x-and-am4-platform-review/10/
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-5600x3d-cpu-review/5
https://www.pcworld.com/article/1074246/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-review.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d/29.html
https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-am5-support-thru-2025/
https://youtu.be/ueXUoRw5LZk?si=nI2odON59Qo4WzQ_
Comments
I suspect I'll upgrade MB/CPU around AM6 (i.e. DDR6) or so. Will probably upgrade GPU much sooner than that - but I play so few games these days it's hard to justify the expense when I have so many other things I *need* to spend money on.
Justin MacNeil
2023-11-30 17:50:02 +0000 UTCI'm writing this on my AM4 system - an MSI Mortar motherboard with 32GB (2 x 16GB) of Corsair DDR4 3000 RAM - originally using a Ryzen 1700, but upgraded earlier this year to a (used) Ryzen 5700X. Initially I used my old RX480 bought in August 2016, and upgraded to an RX5600XT in early 2022 when my friend wanted to buy my RX480 off me for use in his Linux system. Overall I'd say AM4 has been a great platform!
Justin MacNeil
2023-11-30 17:46:49 +0000 UTCWhat do you think it would require for AMD to introduce a replacement to AM5? At a minimum I’d expect them to wait for both DDR6 and PCIe 6 to be readily available as AM5 is more than enough for 99% of today’s consumers. AMD aren’t really pushing the TDP boundaries and might not until Zen 6. Might we see new sockets on mobile earlier though? The more AMD pushes graphics in APUs the more bandwidth they’ll need. I wouldn’t be surprised if the successor to Strix Halo used some form of DDR6 for example.
Chris Rijk
2023-11-30 17:05:21 +0000 UTCOn AM4 we saw AMD move from monolithic to the IO+CCD chiplet paradigm, do you think we will see another shift on AM5? What do you think it could be?
qhfreddy
2023-11-30 16:51:00 +0000 UTCIf you had to make a guess, do you think AM5 will have a longer or shorter lifetime than AM4 has had? Do you think AMD will meet, beat, or fall short of people's expectations of its longevity?
qhfreddy
2023-11-30 16:33:41 +0000 UTCDo you expect AMD to continue with the 7950X3D mixed vcache configs in the future?
qhfreddy
2023-11-30 16:30:39 +0000 UTCThe 7800X3D seems to be the go to for many AM5 buyers nowadays, how do you see it aging? How do you see the 8800X3D (or whatever AMD calls the 8 core vcache part following up?
qhfreddy
2023-11-30 16:29:59 +0000 UTCRelative to its contemporaries what do you think was the best AM4 CPU? What about the top 3?
qhfreddy
2023-11-30 16:27:14 +0000 UTCHi Tom, I remember you saying a long time ago that Intel deliberately introduced new sockets regularly due to pressure from OEMs, so that they could market it as something “new”. Any idea if those same OEMs might be reconsidering that strategy due to the success of AM4? Might Intel be better off extending their LGA 1700 socket to Arrow Lake?
Chris Rijk
2023-11-30 12:51:58 +0000 UTCA Retrospective on AM4 - I watched all the early news about AM4 and looked forward... to AMD doing something to kick Intel in the seat, because I was tired of the FX platform I was running at the time and didn't really want to buy a new AMD CPU... or an expensive and crap Intel one. But, AMD successfully spurred Intel to raise the floor on their CPU lineup, and thus I got an Intel quad core for $100 (8100, no HT), with a $100 mobo. I am now on a 5800X and I am probably going to stay here for quite a while, so I didn't take any advantage of the upgrade palooza that AM4 allowed for. Expectations for AM5 - *Technically*, yes, AM5 is in a better place after 1 year than AM4 was. But almost entirely because AM5 *launched* in a better place than AM4 did. Board vendor support wasn't an issue, everything has been high quality - even the budget stuff. I have no problem believing that AM5 boards released with the Ryzen 7000 series will run fine with the 9000 series, or whatever comes after that (assuming AMD opts to support the socket for more than 2 generations again), unlike early AM4 boards and Ryzen 5000. Board pricing overall has stabilized relative to features, so at this point I don't think AM5 "health" can get much better than it is, again unlike AM4. Next Upgrades - I might wind up buying into the end of AM5, or sooner if my 5800X stops being effective for gaming. I've never been one to upgrade within a given socket era, though, so "there's no upgrade path" doesn't bother me at all.
Schattenjäger
2023-11-30 11:57:51 +0000 UTCInteresting thing about AM4 is that when ot first launched it was pretty shitty. It had lot of bugs and problems at first but at the end of the AM4 lifecycle it is I think one of the best platforms that ever was. AM5 is even better. It didn't have nearly as many problems as AM4 and if the longetivity will be similar to AM5 it will be another amazing platform.
QuickJumper
2023-11-30 11:17:17 +0000 UTCGotta admit, after your last Broken Silicon 233, I totally agree with you and would definitely wish for a X790 chipset with more PCIe Lanes and maybe even support for Pro Ryzen CPUs (like the 24 Core that I desperately want to become a reality with a few more features) This could bridge the gap between Ryzen and Threadripper for Pro-Sumers who love to games but also may do CPU rendering, physic simulations, video encoding (ProRes, DNxHR etc.) or just need tons of M.2 storage or additional PCIe cards. What's your current opinion if that will ever happen to AM5, especially considering your guests opinion in the last Broken Silicon?
Dave Scholze
2023-11-30 09:59:05 +0000 UTCHey, Tom and Dan! As an early adopter, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of AM5. If anything, I think that their biggest competitor to AM5 will be AM4 for a long while. I know so many people that have existing AM4 platforms that don't feel the need to move to AM5. Because of AMD's long platform support, anyone can just socket in a new Ryzen 7 5800X3D and get near current generation gaming performance without having to swap out their motherboard or RAM. Zen 5 and Zen 6 are going to have to offer very large performance increases to entice more people off of AM4.
kjm015
2023-11-30 08:54:38 +0000 UTCIn 2017 I didn't know about AM4. I had been out of the desktop pc world for about a decade at that point. My first new pc was in 2019 and that was an AM4 prebuilt from cyberpowerpc. It has a 2300x that I swapped out for a 2700 and I changed the ram from 8bg to 32. AM5 is great and will get better as prices come down on everything.
Thalo215
2023-11-30 05:18:37 +0000 UTCI’m sort of hoping am5 Is just a bridge platform to the next big thing. I don’t expect am5 to last as long as am4, honestly it feels like am5 is just am4 in it’s final perfect form. They’ve gotten all the problems that came with early am4 essentially figured out with am5 currently, there’s no longer chiplet latency issues that are detrimental, there’s been a massive increase in clock speed for CPU’s, ram support, ram stability, and ram speed is now much better and higher. Here’s to “am6” and hopefully whatever 3d stacked IO dies on chiplets, and 3d stacked chiplets on chiplets with vcache on top, 3D stacked CPU’s on CPU’s, heck may as well go all the way with 3d stacked CPU’s on rdna 8. All speculation of course but that’s what I’m hoping for. I will be rooting for end of life equivalent releases like the 58/5600x3d and other rumored x3d like parts for am5. But for now my 5800x3d is good for another 3 years or so.
Sad XTX 999
2023-11-30 04:39:09 +0000 UTCHey Tom and Dan, I currently have a Zen 4 system and my initial plan was to wait for Zen 6 to upgrade. However, some new games I bought this year are taxing my CPU more than I expected! Lookin at you Baldur’s Gate 3! Steve at GN even added BG3 to his CPU benchmarks because it likes to pound CPU’s. Anyway, upgrade to Zen 5 and enjoy the bump in speed now or wait for Zen 6 and get even more speed later? What are your thoughts?
PCDog
2023-11-30 04:29:49 +0000 UTCDo we know how "future-proof" AM5 is? Will the pin count allocated for it be capable of continuing to expand PCIe capabilities/lanes and I/O?
Treble Sketch
2023-11-30 04:00:17 +0000 UTCJudging by your comments on how radical of a change Zen 6 is likely to be, I think AMD will probably do a new platform for it. I see expectations for AM5 to be another AM4 type deal as very optimistic. I also think waiting for Zen 6 would be a good move for the reason stated above, and we might get decent scaling on +8 core CPUs for gaming. Coming from a 10th gen I7, I'd rather upgrade to something with more cores than just get 8 again.
Ronigan
2023-11-30 03:11:01 +0000 UTCIt's hard to say how long AM5 is going to last, especially since Zen 6 is purportedly a big change in the architecture and layout of the CPU. If AMD is doing separate lineups for APUs and pure CPUs again, I could see them deciding to go to AM6 with Zen 6 after an APU 10000 series. It has big branding synergy if they go that way, but I can see them sticking with AM5 if market conditions make another socket switch a bad idea.
Cleansweep
2023-11-30 03:10:55 +0000 UTCNot AMD exactly here but do you guys think Intel will be looking long and hard at the precedent that AMD set with AM4 support going forward?
CompressedAIBlocks
2023-11-30 02:51:32 +0000 UTCT&D. Looking back at AM4 how big do you think the upgrade path was for owners? I know a lot of us here would simply drop in a CPU upgrade and be content with that but how important do you guys think that is for the average PC gamer? I ask this because the people I know who were on AM4 did both CPU and motherboard upgrade even when owning an AM4 motherboard, granted these were X370 and X470 boards.
CompressedAIBlocks
2023-11-30 02:49:05 +0000 UTCHello Tom and Dan, I got my AM5 system on day one and liked it so much I built another one as my AI server. The only unanswered questions I have about AM5 is when will AM5 be able to run 4 sticks of DDR 5 at 6000+mhz and are the current plans to bring Zen 6 to AM5?
Joseph Kelly
2023-11-30 02:45:57 +0000 UTCNot a question but observation. It's great to see motherboard vendors and AMD learn from AM4 mistakes and put them forward with AM5. It seems like a much more solid and cohesive platform than AM4 did at launch (looking at you X370/B350 boards).
CompressedAIBlocks
2023-11-30 02:44:11 +0000 UTCHey guys, do you think AM5 will have as robust support as AM4? We're still potentially getting more X3D chips for AM4 well into AM5s life cycle. Do you think this trend will continue with AM5 or will AMD be more willing to move to AM6 more definitively?
CompressedAIBlocks
2023-11-30 02:41:54 +0000 UTCAM4 in short is probably "somewhat chaotic mess but good overall"? If you bought a b350 board and a R5 1600 at the start of AM4, there's a pretty good chance you could slap a 5600x3d in there. However, you probably will have to deal with a lot of jank. The board quality in the first few gens were mediocre at best, BIOSes for older boards came months after the launch of new CPUs, and you might even need a midpoint Zen 2 CPU to even update between the two. I don't know how many people actually did an upgrade like that, probably not many. I started with a b450 board and a 2600, but ended up buying a new b550 board when I upgraded to a 5600 because I moved to ITX. I didn't even take advantage of long platform lifespan. AM5 seems to at least be more prepared, with mandatory BIOS Flashback and enough storage on the BIOS chip. I would hope Zen 6 is on AM5, but AMD's Promise to support the platform until "at least 2025" doesn't guarantee it. Only time will tell, but I do think some will be disappointed if AMD just does the 2 gens and done approach.
AdanFS
2023-11-30 02:38:36 +0000 UTCPersonally, I whiffed on my selection of X370 board, and that closed off my personal upgrade path on AM4. (It got EOL'd in 2017 for some reason I don't remember.) That said, I'm planning to build a Zen 5 system next year to replace it, and I can't complain about the solid performance my R5 1600X has given me. Had to make custom heat sinks for my mobo though, due to the VRMs and the awful surface area on the stock heat sinks. Just upgraded my brother's 2600X system to a 5700X. Loved the drop in compatibility and he's enjoying the performance, but the mobo I got him predated BIOS Flashback. Manufacturer's BIOS update apps didn't work, and I spent HOURS googling answers to find out that I just needed to put the latest BIOS on a USB stick and flash it via the BIOS. I think AM4's legacy is going to be the flexibility in upgrading and forcing motherboard manufacturers standardize an easy way to update BIOS.
Cleansweep
2023-11-30 02:33:37 +0000 UTCAs for me, I'm riding out a 5600x3d and RX 6950xt combo until mid AM6 (around 2027-2028). I need to appreciate and have fun with what I have, not just look forward for the next thing to buy
FloridaMan
2023-11-30 02:27:25 +0000 UTCHello Tom and and Dan! When you first mentioned the possibility of "Ryzen 8000" being Phoenix brought to desktop, and maybe even Hawk point (could you elaborate on that?) I grew quite excited as I am looking for a platform upgrade. I've been wanting to upgrade to a twelve cores or more CPU, but I'd rather have all of them on a single CCD to not have the latency issues so a twelve cores Phoenix or Hawk point APU would be a very interesting option, especially if those would support overclocking. And if they do, what about the IGPU? Could it be realistically overclocked to 2060 performance for Hawk point? I really want to start experimenting with Radeon graphics, and if I can push it that hard I might even let go of my 2070 Super.
3-Valdion Dreemur
2023-11-30 02:21:18 +0000 UTCI think AM5 will be decent, and will likely go for 3 gens, but not 4. If they only do 2 gens, people will be scathing. I expect great things from Zen 6 on that platform, whatever they decide to do architecture-wise
FloridaMan
2023-11-30 02:20:31 +0000 UTCAM4 is a legend, which will be remembered on par with the 1080ti or the 8800 GT. The 5800x3d / 5950x are capstone achievements in gaming and compute efficiency. AMD had some regrets on holding out AM4 that long, at least in the innovation department. There's only so much you can do before moving around pins
FloridaMan
2023-11-30 02:18:38 +0000 UTCHi Tom and Dan, AM4 surpassed my wildest expectations as I thought it would be mostly done by the time AM5 was out. However, it seems to still get new chips(5600x3d). Honestly, I think it might be the gold standard for platform longevity and support(although I'm inexperienced to older platforms). I can only hope AM5 is as good.
Xavbeat03
2023-11-30 02:15:07 +0000 UTC
