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*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***

Soldato
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The ASUS Prime X370 Pro would get my vote from previous experience with ASUS non ROG but higher end boards (until I see some reviews at least). The spec looks good and it is £160.

Also allegedly Silverstone may in fact support AM4 so that is saving to me of £50+ Ryzen is getting more affordable.

Thats one I've got my eye on too. I think I'll hold off until the rush is over.
 
Caporegime
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The best chip is the R7 1800X which is 4GHZ already on boost clockspeeds. If you are changing over from a Haswell Core i5 it will be for the fact you want or need 16T,ie,4 times what you have now. If you don't need or want 16T its best to wait for the 6C R5 1600X which is probably going to be £260 and already has a 4GHZ boost clock. If it is anything like the FX6300 and the FX8300 series ranges were,I suspect 6C Ryzen will be easier to overclock and cool.

Like I said a while back an option for you is to consider a secondhand Core i7 4790K as I suspect with what is going to be happening in the next few months,prices should start to drop on older Core i7 chips.

Its this "VRMs throttling" which worries me, my 300 Watt FX-9590 didn't do that and the 8+2 VRMs from 2011 were not that good by todays standard.
 
Soldato
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If you start increasing clock speeds you increase power requirement. Increasing the voltage to 8 CPU cores then adds heat and you get a run away effect. My hunch is the VRM side of things could be handled by the motherboard not the CPU. It's silly to say the VRM's are't important because the chips *TDP* is 95 watts. TDP isn't measured at the VRM's neither is TDP a measure of power use...

People need to remember these are 8 core 16 thread chips and voltage regulation is critical to stable overclocking.
 
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Soldato
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I hope so because a 4Ghz limit of the best chip is not quite good enough to warrant the outlay of changing platforms, if the IPC is the same i was hoping for 4.2 to 4.4 in the same way my 4690K does 4.6Ghz to 4.8Ghz on a £90 board, its pointless spending £250 on board to get 4Ghz or maybe slightly more.

This isn't anything like bulldozer. I think the VRM side of AM4 is handled much more subtly than AM3.
 
Soldato
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Its this "VRMs throttling" which worries me, my 300 Watt FX-9590 didn't do that and the 8+2 VRMs from 2011 were not that good by todays standard.

The standard VRM setup is a 6 phase jobbie for Ryzen and some of those 8+2 phase designs on AM3+ motherboards could deliver upto 220W. Some of my mates have Asus 970 motherboards with that 8+2 VRM design and they are incredibly solid.

The problem is we don't know whether the throttling is actually down to power only or down to way the new CPUs regulate clockspeed,etc.

Remember,a fair number of Gigabyte motherboards had throttling issues with BD/PD CPUs too when they first launched and it is why I steered my mates away from them at the time.

It might be people need to work a bit more with Ryzen to try and overclock it,just like with the FX8300 and Phenom II X6 series,since it is a newish design and needs more investigation and even the 8C Intel CPUs are harder to overclock than the quad cores.

You also need to consider Ryzen is an SOC design,so as I mentioned before we don't really know how that might effect things too. Not all logic acts the same once you start pushing more voltage through it.

Edit!!

Or it could simply be the process node itself.

Intel first runs on 22NM and 14NM tended to be lower clockspeed mobile chips,and IB and SKL didn't generally overclock better than SB or Haswell at the beginning.
 
Caporegime
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Zen has no iGPU ^^^^^
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Its 8Pack saying you need these £250 boards to get more than a couple 100 Mhz OC out of them, not me, he's the expert.

@Cat i don't see what Bulldozer has to do with Zen, Bulldozer sucked up a huge amount of power and they worked on most boards, even cheap'n cheerful boards, Zen is supposed to be half the power.

Turn two of the cores off and try again............
 
Man of Honour
Man of Honour
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Re:iGPU

OK thanks, product page seemed as if it did even though seeing as what its comparable to in Intel I wasn't expecting it to have.

AM4 motherboards can also take AM4 versions of the older bristol-ridge APU's which do have IGP - hence the mobos having the outputs. Not many around yet though.

Future RyZen APU's - in 6-9 months probably (hopefully less) will also have vega 11 class gpu's built in too so they will also work for future upgrades.
 
Soldato
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Zen has no iGPU ^^^^^
----------

Its 8Pack saying you need these £250 boards to get more than a couple 100 Mhz OC out of them, not me, he's the expert.

@CAT i don't see what Bulldozer has to do with Zen, Bulldozer sucked up a huge amount of power and they worked on most boards, even cheap'n cheerful boards, Zen is supposed to be half the power.

Turn two of the cores off and try again............

What has IGP could do with it?? The reference VRM design for AM4 is 6 phase - surely you knew that??

BTW,I remembered the Asus ones were a 220W capable 6+2 phase VRMA(oops).

Cheap and cheerful motherboards couldn't overclock an FX8350 - dude seriously look at all the threads people complaining of throttling on motherboards even on here just running them at stock.

Look at the throttling issues Gigabyte AM3+ motherboards had which Asus ones didn't have??

You needed a fairly decent 970 motherboards at the beginning to run them - some of the cheaper ones like from MSI had VRM burn outs as they underspecced the VRMs and many of the lower specced boards lacked VRM cooling. It took a while for one 760G based board to come out which could run an FX8300 series CPU fine,but it went through like a 1000 versions before we had a good one. The same with the lower end 970 ones,they could have issues and it took a while and many versions for them to be release good ones.

This is because they plonked in the same VRM designs as some 770 motherboards which had no cooling.

This is why for any of my mates who wanted to overclock safely,I specced £70+ 970 motherboards even with an FX6300 and they have lasted years. One of my mates got one of those earlier Gigabyte ones with the throttling issue(despite it being 8+2 phase) and it did eventually die last year,but it was horrible when overclocking.

The Asus ones are still going strong and overclocked better.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Sep 2011
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Surrey
If you start increasing clock speeds you increase power requirement. Increasing the voltage to 8 CPU cores then adds heat and you get a run away effect. My hunch is the VRM side of things could be handled by the motherboard not the CPU. It's silly to say the VRM's are't important because the chips *TDP* is 95 watts. TDP isn't measured at the VRM's neither is TDP a measure of power use...

People need to remember these are 8 core 16 thread chips and voltage regulation is critical to stable overclocking.

lol, lord.

Nobody said VRM isn't important, but everything you just said is the poster child of why these types of discussions are lost on most. You don't know how power efficient this platform, or what the current ramp is from idle or otherwise when overclocking. What people want to know is why exactly these lower SKU board VRMs are apparently struggling. Your affliction to power phases or otherwise has nothing to do with this without that information, or even if it's the fet temperature that's inducing the throttling at this point.

Phase count/vrm really is a dark topic that thanks to marketing, people really don't have any more of a grasp on then they did 8 years ago.
 
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