Budget AM5 now or wait for 870?

[dark_hag666]

I'm looking to upgrade from my aging Zen 2 system. Firm 870 details seem sparce, will it have performance benefits beyond 670? Who knows? I honestly don't know what AMD is doing releasing a new chipset shortly after new cpu generation, are they trying to sell through old 670 stock first...

Anyway, is it likely to be worth waiting for? Maybe get a basic AM5 board and upgrade later, or get something more capable now and dont worry about missing out?

Is there even a consensus, or has AMDs messaging created more confusion?

 

[rare]

I don’t think it’s going to be waiting for, it’s more a nod towards board partners so they can give them a bit of an aesthetic spruce and sell more motherboards.

The main difference will be wider USB4 adoption (already available on some boards anyway) and probably support for higher speed memory - but I would honestly expect the later to be spread across existing mid to high end boards anyway as lots of them have seen improvements in memory support since launch.

The actual chipset looks to be the same anyway between 670/870.

 

[Tetras]

As rare said, the only thing I've seen confirmed about the new chipsets is that USB4 support is going to be more widespread and they'll probably advertise higher memory support, even though that's available on current boards after all the BIOS updates.

If you already have a good AM4 board I wouldn't bother doing a budget AM5 upgrade, just get a 5700X3D, which is plenty competitive enough with the Ryzen 5 AM5 CPUs for gaming.

 

[dark_hag666]

More about cores for me, not useful all the time, but when I need them they are invalauble. USB4 is not really a seller for me either. Its a good point you make about being more for board partners though; AMD have been courting them a lot over the last few years to steal the mindshare from intel. Hopefully, when the Zen 5 reviews start coming out, they will clarify the situation on ram speeds. I think that is my biggest worry - upgrade with some tasty new ram and find it struggles to run.

Fingers crossed.

 

[Tetras]

I think that is my biggest worry - upgrade with some tasty new ram and find it struggles to run.

Have you watched Wendell's videos on the subject *? They're pretty old now, but worth watching for an overview.

For what it is worth, AMD have not changed their official spec for 9000 series when running 4 sticks, it is still a crappy DDR5-3600 (which you can't even buy ), regardless of the CPU (the same on the 9950X as the 9600X). There are reports the IMC has indeed improved, but I haven't seen anyone do much testing with 4 sticks yet.

*

AMD Ryzen 7000: 48GB DIMMs, Agesa 1.0.0.7 And A Future With 192GB RAM

48gb DIMMs are here, but things aren't quite so simple for Team Red. Wendell lays it out here!Forum thread: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ddr5-4-dimms-on-a...

www.youtube.com

More about cores for me, not useful all the time, but when I need them they are invalauble.

For reference, in fully multithreaded tasks 12x Zen 3 cores (5900) is roughly equivalent to 8x Zen 4 cores (7700). The same applies with the 5950 and 7900.

 

[Aurhinius]

I'm looking to upgrade from my aging Zen 2 system. Firm 870 details seem sparce, will it have performance benefits beyond 670? Who knows? I honestly don't know what AMD is doing releasing a new chipset shortly after new cpu generation, are they trying to sell through old 670 stock first...

Anyway, is it likely to be worth waiting for? Maybe get a basic AM5 board and upgrade later, or get something more capable now and dont worry about missing out?

Is there even a consensus, or has AMDs messaging created more confusion?

I get the impression that the major difference in the new 870 is USB 4.0 and possibly wifi 7. If you are not interested in USB 4.0 and perhaps a few more PCIe 5 lanes then go with an older board. Motherboards are odd things as most review pretty well so just get something that has all the I/O requirements you have and a decent VRM cooling and you probably won't feel the need to touch it again until the socket goes end of life.