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All Zen4 to have iGPU by design

Soldato
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Don
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USB BIOS updates mandated by AMD also a significant change, and hopefully again a sign of another socket that will be supported for a number of years

AM5 will make that a thing of the past. AMD’s motherboard design guide states that the “USB BIOS Update feature is integrated into all AM5 processors” and is activated when a GPIO pin (AGPIO23) is asserted at power on. AMD recommends that boards implement a button connected to AGPIO23. I personally hope that board makers will take this advice instead of doing something stupid like asking users to short two inconveniently placed pins with a screwdriver.

https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/08/23/details-on-the-gigabyte-leak/
 
Caporegime
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and is activated when a GPIO pin (AGPIO23) is asserted at power on. AMD recommends that boards implement a button connected to AGPIO23

Are they talking about an on motherboard power on button? Otherwise i don't really get it, i plug the USB in to the dedicated BIOS slot, power on, press and hold the button under the USB until it starts blinking.
 
Associate
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Yippee to all those who requested that loaner CPU from AMD to upgrade the BIOS to cope with the too new CPU they had bought.

Must have been enough of a logistical nightmare that someone said "never again, our next socket gets a USB BIOS upgrade feature"!

All Zen4 having some iGPU has been the rumour for a while now. Wonder what it will? 3 CU or so? As long as it can drive a few monitors and decode video it should be quite useful. Before I swapped to 1440P I had one of my 1080P screen power of the Intel Ivy Bridge onboard (BTW, IB doesn't seem to support 1440P at least on my board), and this stops most GPUs from running their memory or core at higher clocks to support multiple monitors. Using onboard should allow GPUs with Zero RPM fan mode to stay quiet in most setups.
 
Don
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Are they talking about an on motherboard power on button? Otherwise i don't really get it, i plug the USB in to the dedicated BIOS slot, power on, press and hold the button under the USB until it starts blinking.

Essentially it means the chipset will have a specific GPIO pin to initiate a USB flash - it's still up to motherboard manufacturers to physically connect this pin to a button (i.e. next to an appropriate USB port)

(As opposed to motherboard manufacturers having to implement the whole of the flashing process)
 
Associate
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Essentially it means the chipset will have a specific GPIO pin to initiate a USB flash - it's still up to motherboard manufacturers to physically connect this pin to a button (i.e. next to an appropriate USB port)

(As opposed to motherboard manufacturers having to implement the whole of the flashing process)

It also implies that a new CPU not supported by the mobo's current BIOS can drive the whole process. Currently motherboard manufacturers have to add their own controller for this.

However, presumably the on-chip USB controller which does this has firmware itself so what if you need to update that too?
 
Man of Honour
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Bad news for gamers I guess as it will drive up the cost of CPUs, although this might be offset slightly by not having to run as many manufacturing processes.
 
Soldato
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Makes sense as it’s a simple way to increase penetration into the wider graphics market while lowering power consumption for OEM’s

RDNA 2-3 APU’s will probably be meaty little things with 16-32gb of DDR5 at 5000 plus MT/s

Just seen some 512gb sticks of DDR5 at 7200MT/s

That would offer 2tb of RAM on a desktop system.
 
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Caporegime
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Essentially it means the chipset will have a specific GPIO pin to initiate a USB flash - it's still up to motherboard manufacturers to physically connect this pin to a button (i.e. next to an appropriate USB port)

(As opposed to motherboard manufacturers having to implement the whole of the flashing process)

Right got it, thank you.
 
Associate
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I`ll find the video, but theres a lot more to it than that, especially with the 7200GB/S 512 sticks from samsung
Thanks, I hate watching "tech" videos but can make an except for Ian.

Wondering, since that 512GB has 8 3D stacked dies per 'chip' maybe multi-banking will work. While the addressing (AFAIK it's some kind of page & row thing) might work per chip, a controller which knows the layout might be able to time it's requests in an interleaved way.

(Probably vastly oversimplifying this) request page X from chip Y then request page Z from chip Y and receive the first request.
 
Associate
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Bad news for gamers I guess as it will drive up the cost of CPUs, although this might be offset slightly by not having to run as many manufacturing processes.

Will have negligible effect on manufacturing costs, and utilising otherwise 'wasted' space (on the I/O die) is a always a plus, surely (as well as all the other benefits already mentioned)?
 
Man of Honour
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I don't know enough about the manufacturing process to know if utilising wasted space is always a plus or not, e.g. could this have any impact on overclocking yields, power consumption or heat dissipation? I've always worked on the assumption that you don't want to include unnecessary components on a chip
 
Soldato
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It could do depending how AMD configure the chip. X amounts of watts could be reserved for the GPU, but it could also add performance.
 
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Associate
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I’m not sure how this would work as I have never had an onboard gpu but if it could handle browsing and YouTube and then the dedicated graphics card kicks in for games that seems pretty decent as it would be less of a power draw. My wife uses my computer working from home and the 3090 gpu pretty much doubles as a mini heater lol.
 
Soldato
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Sounds good to me. I've built both intel & AMD IGPU based PC's in the past & both have served my needs but have been a bit lacking when indulging in light gaming as far as i'm concerned. I hardly play any PC based gaming these days but any IGPU would have to have efficent & reliable HDR media playback with 4K blu-ray if I decided to go down that route in the future.
 
Soldato
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I don't know enough about the manufacturing process to know if utilising wasted space is always a plus or not, e.g. could this have any impact on overclocking yields, power consumption or heat dissipation? I've always worked on the assumption that you don't want to include unnecessary components on a chip
Will probably have an impact on prices also as can be seen by Intels F and non F Sku's.
 
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