Amd x570 vs x470 vs x370: differences between chipsets for ryzen 3000

The AMD Ryzen 3000 processors are already a reality, and with them and their 7nm technology comes the AMD X570 chipset. And this time we do have interesting news about this new member in the new generation boards for the AMD platform. And also comes our obligation to make the comparison between AMD X570 vs X470 vs X370. Much more power in LANES, support for the PCIe 4.0 bus and of course a greater complexity in the motherboards where the fans are present again.

Index of contents

The X570 chipset and current board architecture

The current processors are characterized by having an architecture based on SoC (System on a Chip) and the AMD Ryzen in its three generations are an example of this. What does this term mean? Well basically it is about installing in the same wafer or silicon of the process not only its cores, those that perform calculations and tasks, but also elements such as cache memory, we already know that, and also the communication interface with RAM memory and with the PCI lines. Even in some of them we also have an IGP or Integrated Graphics Processor.

Basically we are talking about integrating the entire north bridge into the processor, this is obviously a huge relief for board manufacturers and assemblers as the communication system is greatly simplified from a PCB point of view. But a chipset or chipset is still required that is responsible for managing other elements such as peripheral connections, storage and other elements. It is about delegating, so to speak, certain functions to the chipset, called the south bridge.

The keys and importance of the AMD X570 vs X470 vs X370 chipset on a motherboard

Well, like any other processor, this chipset will have a certain calculation capacity, and a certain number of lines or LANES through which the data that it is going to manage will circulate. There are different chipsets on the market for the Intel platform and for the AMD platform, which is our case. AMD chipsets are divided into four families, the A, B and X series which can be desktop or Workstation. Until now, and for desktop we had the A320 (low-end), B450 (mid-range) and X370 and X470 (high-end) chipsets. In addition to all previous versions, although in this case we are only interested in the X370 and X470.

Discarding the AMD A320 for being the most basic and without place in this comparison, the B and X series chipsets are of interest, in fact, it is expected that the successor of the B450, called B550, will be released soon. Recall that both have overclocking capacity, although with far fewer options and power than those of the X series. The interesting thing comes now, and that is that for the new AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors the new AMD X570 chipset has been launched, which is Yes, instead, it brings a lot more news than we saw between the jump from X370 to X470. And its fundamental characteristics is to incorporate support for the PCI-Express 4.0 bus, plus LANES and native support for USB 3.1 Gen2 ports at 10 Gbps.

AMD X570 compatibility with Ryzen CPU

It is essential to know that the new AMD CPUs will be compatible with older chipsets, just like an AMD Ryzen 2700X is compatible with the X370 and X470, now an AMD Ryzen 3950X will be compatible with X570, X470, X370, B450 and B350, as we say it. And this is one of the very good things that AMD has, since a user who wants to buy a new 7nm processor will not need to change the motherboard, they just have to make sure that the manufacturer of the motherboard offers an update to the BIOS to do it compatible, obviously, if they do not have it, it will not achieve that compatibility.

At this point we must have common sense, nobody should think of mounting a processor such as the 16-core 3950X in a mid-range and low-end chipset, and even in a previous generation one. And one of the reasons is that we would lose the PCIe 4.0 support offered by the CPU and the considerable improvement in LANES. In fact, AMD is directly disabling this option in its AGESA library so that this lane cannot be activated on boards other than X570. AGESA is responsible for the initialization of the AMD64 platform for the cores, memory and HyperTransport of the processors.

That said, at least currently it will not be something that will take our sleep away, since we currently do not have GPUs that work on PCIe 4.0, it is more, this speed of 2000 MB / s is not even useful in each data line Both uphill and downhill. And we will also get an advantage from all this, we will save the cost of having to buy CPU + Board.

We could also think the opposite: Can I buy an X570 board and put my Ryzen 2000? Of course you can, to our knowledge, AMD will keep its PGA AM4 socket at least until 2020 on X570 boards, but it is not a logical leap to jump off the shelf and keep the Zen1 or Zen2 SoC. Please note that 1st generation Ryzen CPUs with and without Radeon Vega graphics are in principle not compatible with X570.

The AMD Ryzen 3000 are built in the form of a chiplet (different elements in different architectures). In fact, we have a RAM I / O memory interface made at 12nm the same as previous Ryzen, while only the processing cores are manufactured at 7nm. The chipset for its part is a 14nm DIE, so in this way AMD saves enough production costs to incorporate previous technology where 7nm is not necessary.

AMD X570 vs X470 vs X370: specifications and comparison

To continue with the comparison, we will list all the specifications of each of the chipsets:

Of the compatibility we have already talked about in the previous section, let's take into account that, officially, there is no compatibility with the 1st generation Ryzen nor for the Athlon APU, although we consider something that falls within the normal range due to the great performance leap between the three generations. If anything, there is full backwards compatibility of CPUs with older chipsets, so we're in luck.

Up to 20 LANES to manage

And without a doubt the most important thing about this new chipset will be the LANES or lanes, and not only the chipset but also the CPU, and know how they will be distributed. These Ryzen 3000 have a total of 24 PCI LANES, of which 16 are used for the communication interface with the graphics card and 4 are used for general use or NVMe SSD 1x PCIe x4 or 1x PCIe x2 NVMe and 2x SATA lanes, that is why one of the NVMe slots will always be directly associated with the hard drive. The other 4 remaining lanes will be used to communicate with the chipset directly, and thus increase this better bandwidth. These CPUs also support 4x USB 3.1 Gen2 which are often directly connected to them on the boards.

If we now turn to see the power of the chipsets in terms of lanes, there is no doubt that the X470 chipset is a slight update of the X370, this we already discussed in its day in the respective comparison. The simple objective of X470 was to implement support with StoreMI similar to Intel Optane, and to allow processors with higher frequencies in overclocking thanks to Boost Overdrive.

That said, we moved to the AMD X570, which does have significant improvements. We now have a total of 20 PCIe LANES at our disposal with increased processing capacity and support for the PCIe 4.0 bus. We know that manufacturers have limited access to these lanes to assign them for different purposes. In this case, 8 lanes will be mandatory for PCIe and another 8 lanes may be used for other devices such as SATA or peripherals such as USB, for example, with manufacturers having some freedom of movement in this case. Initially, support for 4 SATA connectors is foreseen, but manufacturers will be able to increase this number by up to 8 if they wish, as we will see in some high-end motherboards. The remaining 4 lanes will be used by the chipset to communicate with the CPU.

Increased USB 3.1 capacity and higher consumption

The chipset offers great support of up to 8 USB 3.1 Gen2 at 10Gbps, while the previous chipset was limited to supporting 2 of these ports and 6 USB 3.1 Gen1 at 5Gbps. It also supports 4 USB 2.0 ports and, in principle, none 3.1 Gen1, reserved these to the control by the CPU or free choice of manufacturer's LANES. In an era in which connectivity is so important, the power of this chipset does make many differences compared to the previous ones, and if not, wait to see the specifications of the new boards. Obviously manufacturers have some freedom to choose how many of these lanes are destined for USB, hence we have boards of different categories and costs, as always.

Likewise, the capacity to work with CPU and memory has been improved, with greater overclocking capacity, since in this case , RAM memory of higher frequency is supported, depending on the case, reaching up to 4400 MHz in the top models. spectrum. This also translates to higher power consumption, in fact the X470 and X370 chipsets consumed exactly the same, 5.8W under load. Now the X570 has officially increased to 11W, although manufacturers and partners place this consumption at around 14 or 15W. This explains the incorporation of these large heatsinks with fans and heat pipes distributed by the chipset and VRM.

One problem that AMD of this chipset has yet to solve is precisely energy management, since it never drops below its maximum frequency despite not being in use, which causes these considerable energy consumptions, and consequently, more heat. And as we say, the VRMs of the motherboards have also undergone great changes, reaching up to 16 power supply phases in the ones with the highest performance, basically to improve the power delivery and signal quality by dividing the phases in greater quantities. This suggests that the overclocking of these new Ryzen will be more aggressive, obviously the considerable increase in cores and threads until 16/32.

conclusion

So far our comparison of AMD X570 vs X470 vs X370 chipsets comes. We see a lot of news between this new X570 and the previous two, which were basically simple updates of each other. All the information will be developed when it is the turn to analyze in depth the new motherboards.

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Do you think that these new Ryzen and X570 will be a before and after in new generation gaming equipment? Will we see more AMD CPUs than Intel from now on?