Motherboard am3 + vs. am4, what has changed? ? ?

Although the AM4 platform has been on the market for a long time, there are still many users who use its long-lived AM3 + motherboard and many will wonder: is it worth changing? For this reason we bring you the comparison of AM3 + motherboard vs. AM4. Here we go!

The socket is a crucial part of the motherboards in desktop computers, being the main line of connection between the processor and one of these boards. Thanks to its existence, we can freely change processors compatible with the same motherboard, one of the keys when it comes to updating a computer.

However, this support is usually limited, and historically these sockets have had a relatively short life, as the needs of processors have changed (and increased), both for feeding, as well as for transmitting and receiving information.

The longevity of AMD sockets

Socket AM3 +, Image: D-Kuru

Despite these statements, there is one company that has boasted of extending the life of these connections as much as possible. We are talking about AMD and its policy to maintain these baseboards throughout the entire life cycle of their architectures.

As a result of this custom, the company's sockets usually see the passage of different chipsets on them until the next generational jump, which usually involves a good number of updates and compatibilities that did not exist before. Today we want to see what the jump of the AM3 + socket and its 990FX chipset meant, to AM4 along with its top of the range: the X370 chipset (first generation) and the current X570.

AM3 + numbers

The AM3 + socket was the result of a revision of its original iteration, the AM3, launched in 2011 on the occasion of the departure of the FX processors from the Bulldozer architecture, which would last until it was replaced by the current Ryzen. As an update to the original AM3, it did not present many new features in terms of specifications, the most notable being the appearance of Hyper Transport 3.1 in the highest-end chipset.

Other of its characteristics were:

Although its numbers are not very impressive today, the ability to support up to four graphics cards in CrossFireX, or the use of SATA 3.1 were striking features at the time.

The current supremacy of the AM4

At the other point of the spectrum, with much less years behind it, we find the socket AM4, the usual one for Ryzen processors and which, according to AMD itself, should accompany these processors until next year at the very least.

In this case, the highest-end chipset in the early moments of the socket was the X370. This featured such grateful innovations as the use of USB 3.1 or NVMe support. Currently it has been displaced by the X470 (2018) and X570 (2019) chipsets, the latter being the first of its kind to support PCIe 4.0 in the domestic range.

Head to head: AM3 + vs AM4

The comparison leaves the chipsets belonging to the AM4 socket, more modern and prepared for today's standards, in a clear position of advantage, but this obvious comparison is interesting to see how the needs for connectivity and technology in the range have changed. domestic.

We recommend reading the best processors on the market

In any case, the decision on which socket to use for your processor does not correspond, most of the time, both to the user and to the processor itself. If you have doubts about which is yours, or what is a socket in itself in the world of computing, you can take a look at our article on processor basics.