X399 replacement motherboard

[GazzaMataz]

I have a MSI x399 which I think is faulty plus it is six years old now so I was looking at replacement. I like the B650 range and the x650 range namely any board with two PCIE slots so I can plug my two RTX2800ti in since I do a lot of GPU rendering.

Thing is most of the boards only support x8 when you have two GPUs installed and my old X399 gave me x16.

Any suggestion would be great!

 

[mickyflinn]

To be fair your x399 is a professional motherboard for threadripper, most am5 boards the second GPU slot runs at pcie4 x 4 effectly pcie3 x 8 which seems to be the norm across intel and AMD unless you go high end , £450 +

 

[Tetras]

I'm afraid 8 is the best you're going to get unless you go for something like a Xeon or threadripper, because the CPU lanes can be split into 8/8 and that's what is used for graphics.

I'd be surprised if it was a meaningful bottleneck to run 8 lanes though.

 

[sx_turbo]

This link might help, I found it on Reddit.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1NQHkDEcgDPm34Mns3C93K6SJoBnua-x9O-y_6hv8sPs/htmlview#gid=2064683589

Looking at 2080ti they are pcie 3 x16 cards, so I guess you need x16 slots to use them at optimum?

Does look like that to get 2x pcie 16 slots have to stick with server grade motherboard and CPU similar to what I got.

 

[GazzaMataz]

Thanks for the replies peeps, much appreciated!

I suppose that since my GPUs are also six years old, but still quite capable, a single RTX 4070ti is as fast if not slightly faster on it’s own… And it would use the full x16 lane. Perhaps new GPU too? Windows 11 won’t support my old Threadripper and Windows 10 is on it’s way out so looking like upgrade time for sure.

 

[sx_turbo]

Thanks for the replies peeps, much appreciated!

I suppose that since my GPUs are also six years old, but still quite capable, a single RTX 4070ti is as fast if not slightly faster on it’s own… And it would use the full x16 lane. Perhaps new GPU too? Windows 11 won’t support my old Threadripper and Windows 10 is on it’s way out so looking like upgrade time for sure.

Does sound like your forced to upgrade.

Though is the new am5/intel 14th gen chips slower than the outgoing thread ripper?

Is win 11 not supporting it because of the new tpm feature? Can you not get an add on? Though your pcie port is only version 3 and the new gpus are now 4

 

[Tetras]

Is win 11 not supporting it because of the new tpm feature? Can you not get an add on?

I haven't looked at that many of these boards, but at least some do have a TPM header (including the MSI model in the OP's signature).

If the OP can get a TPM 2.0 module and enable secure boot then that's usually enough to install 11 without any hacks being needed.

I suppose that since my GPUs are also six years old, but still quite capable, a single RTX 4070ti is as fast if not slightly faster on it’s own… And it would use the full x16 lane.

I don't mean to labour the point, but have you checked that it actually matters for your workloads? I'm just asking because I see it a lot on the forums where someone is worried about losing lanes and for the vast majority of cards and workloads the bottleneck of having 8 lanes per GPU is tiny. Of course, even with games there are a few edge cases/exceptions, so I know you might be caring about this for a good reason.

a single RTX 4070ti is as fast if not slightly faster on it’s own…

It would depend on what you're doing, since the newer architecture does have some large gains, but generally: no, it would not be 2x 2080 Ti.

That said, the effective utilisation of 2x GPUs is very rarely 100% (sometimes not even 50-70% overall), so you would see a consistent overall performance gain when measured across many apps.

Though is the new am5/intel 14th gen chips slower than the outgoing thread ripper?

Here's some numbers from PassMark (single thread, multithread)

Threadripper 1920X: 2316, 23096
Ryzen 7 7700: 4063, 34613
Ryzen 5 9600X: 4579, 30054
Ryzen 9 7950X: 4277, 62732
Core i7-14700K: 4476, 53278

I probably should have included the 2920X (or higher) too.

 

[sx_turbo]

I haven't looked at that many of these boards, but at least some do have a TPM header (including the MSI model in the OP's signature).

If the OP can get a TPM 2.0 module and enable secure boot then that's usually enough to install 11 without any hacks being needed.


I don't mean to labour the point, but have you checked that it actually matters for your workloads? I'm just asking because I see it a lot on the forums where someone is worried about losing lanes and for the vast majority of cards and workloads the bottleneck of having 8 lanes per GPU is tiny. Of course, even with games there are a few edge cases/exceptions, so I know you might be caring about this for a good reason.


It would depend on what you're doing, since the newer architecture does have some large gains, but generally: no, it would not be 2x 2080 Ti.

That said, the effective utilisation of 2x GPUs is very rarely 100% (sometimes not even 50-70% overall), so you would see a consistent overall performance gain when measured across many apps.


Here's some numbers from PassMark (single thread, multithread)

Threadripper 1920X: 2316, 23096
Ryzen 7 7700: 4063, 34613
Ryzen 5 9600X: 4579, 30054
Ryzen 9 7950X: 4277, 62732
Core i7-14700K: 4476, 53278

I probably should have included the 2920X (or higher) too.

Ah, so probably worth looking for an upgrade then. The obstacles and circumstances does look to be worthwhile