Re-branding chipsets is really a bad move. Sure OEMs will love it (and would have complained if they had nothing "new" to sell), but like
@CAT-THE-FIFTH said AM5 board prices - unlike CPU prices - have been mostly stagnant in price so this "new" shiny just resets or increases prices.
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https://www.techpowerup.com/323052/...ts-800-series-chipset-x870-is-b650e-successor)
Mandatory USB4 in the X870 / X870E is about the only new feature.
These chipsets are all outsourced to ASMedia, aren't they? So it looks ASMedia aren't very good at PCIe 5.0 and AMD weren't willing to spend more.
I also wonder how much extra power the P21+P21 trick uses? No point in Zen4 (and presumably Zen5) being so much more power efficient if the chipset has poor idle? And while the P21+P21 trick is clever in terms of re-use I think P21 was meant to 7W per chip, so monolith should use a fair bit less power.
Still undecided about PCIe 5.0 as not only the chipset uses a lot of power, so far any PCIe devices (i.e. PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives) have been very power hungry too. I suppose
@CAT-THE-FIFTH is correct to be concerned that future low/mid range cards will be x8 (or even x4) PCIe 5.0 but I still think that is a long way away. Does negate AM5's longevity though - even if that keeps OEMs and motherboard makers happy.
I'd say the lack of USB4 on all chipsets is a bigger problem. And segmenting B chips so that the B840 does not get overclocking is a very poor move too.
Still, I keep saying this: if AMD (or whoever) do not produce a product I feel is worth buying - well they will have to do without a sale.
And AM5 proved that with sales being slow and AM5 board prices (and no DDR4 / DDR5 boards) were a huge factor - as it was Zen 4 as EPYP Genoa sold really well. Pleasing motherboard manufacturers with chipset segmentation - and the P21+P21 was probably needless costly too. (AMD's marketshare is no longer that small that they have to re-use everything.)
I for once won't buy Intel either though - not only do their chipsets only support one "real" generation, they also have done a lot more anti-consumer moves throughout the years - and that wasn't just about the marketshare difference. Basically, Intel (and NVidia) invented most of the dirty tricks so while I am not happy with AMD's moves - and am well aware that no corporation is our friend - it will take a lot worse to get me go for the known bad actors while alternatives are available - that would be like being cliche voter being dissatisfied with a current politician and choosing a Trump/Johnson etc. because they find them amusing!
As for Zen5 - pricing will tell but a new IOD might have been nice too; new sockets get a quick-and-dirty IOD like the current one while new CPUs on the same socket should, IMO, get a new IOD where they have used the additional time to squeeze every mW down as far as they could etc. while improving DDR5 support (which may raise those mW again, of course!)
