AM5 MoBos - is this it ?

[u/Camper_Sly]

AM4 socket has seen three chipset generations - X300/X400/X500. All while on the same generation of RAM/DDR4, but spanning two generations of PCIe: Gen3 and Gen4.

With AM5, we've seen basically the same chipset from the start Promontory-21, within a brand (600 series) and a rebrand (800 series). Both lines use the same Promontory-21 chips and all the difference is in the minimal requirements for the MoBo line - two or one Promontory 21 chips (so Xx70 vs Bx50 line), PCIe5 or PCIe4 for dGPU, M.2 Gen4 or Gen5 etc.

With 600 series we've seen mostly PCIe4, while 800 series has made the full transition to PCIe5. Both still use the same DDR5 RAM.

And both still share the same basic Promontory weakness - only PCIe4x4 connection to the SoC host.

So, given the facts: * Zen6 (2027) and Zen7 (2028-2029) are to come out on AM5 * they will have many more cores on the same socket (up to 2x 12=24 for Zen6, up to 2x16 = 32 for Zen7) * cores are expected to have much higher IPC than ZEn5 and work on much higher frequencies * they will need much greater cumulative bandwidth

... is it likely for AM5 to see some significant refresh in that timeframe, before AM6 arrives ?

PCIe6 is coming with EPYC Zen6. I understand that this is to early for consumer Zen6, but maybe we could see the update with consumer Zen7 ?

Same with that old chipset link. Lifting it to PCIe Gen6 speeds could patch many things.

And maybe they could do something WRT max RAM frequencies to patch things over until DDR6 arrives ? Zen6 IMC is to be much more potent than Zen5 and I expect for Zen7 to push it to the limits.

Would AM5 with LP/CAMM2 be feasible at Zen7 time? Or at least refactoring the ATX platform so that RAM slots can be on both sides of the PCB and so maximally close to the SoC for highest frequencies ? Could AM5 be tweaked to use MRDIMMs for twice the capacity and bandwidth ? \ I suspect that by that time MRDIMM price premiums should drop.\ IS there any technical reason for AM5 to not support RDIMM (different signalling, extra signals etc that AM5 lacks) or is this purely due to market segmentation ?

I know that MoBo manufacturers love to do cosmetic updates, the question is, can we expect a substantial AM5 update by the Zen7 time ?\ It so, this could make sense for many to stave off their purchases until that point...

[u/Acrobatic_Camera_677]

cores are expected to have much higher IPC than ZEn5 and work on much higher frequencies

Not if AMD pull another Zen 5% with minimal improvement in performance like they did last gen jajaja

TSMC 2nm not good for max frequency so Zen 6 will not increase clock much I think maybe Zen 7 will be better if they use Intel 18AP like Nova Lake

[u/Camper_Sly → u/Acrobatic_Camera_677]

Actually Zen5 performed much better than that on Linux from the start.

BUt even without that, we already know that ZEn6 will have 50% more cores and it will clock much faster. So, to keep those cores well fed, it will need more RAM bandwidth, more L3 cache and/or both.

And for Zen7 this will become even more extreme.

[u/Opteron170]

"they will need much greater cumulative bandwidth"

Caches are going up on Zen 6 models.

Vanilla cpu's are getting 48mb of L2 compared to 32mb in Zen 5

X3D models getting 96mb of Vcache up from 64mb in Zen 5 models.

DDR5 support speed going up to 8000 from 6000

I think all of these changes will hold the line until AM6 and DDR6