Some Ryzen platform musings

[TheLostSwede]

Looking at the available motherboard options for Ryzen, I have to say that I'm thoroughly disappointed with what's available at launch. It's as if the motherboard makers decided to put out the worst possible boards, as to not compete with their Intel offerings. Admittedly there are a lot of platform limitations as well, but even so...

Some examples.

Every single board, apart from the ROG Crosshair VI Hero has display outputs. Ryzen doesn't have integrated graphics, so unless you're planning on using a $150-300 board with an APU, this is an utter waste of components on the board. It's almost as the board maker ran out of ideas of what kind of ports to put on the rear of the boards after having been used to put display connectors on all boards for a long time now.

A couple of things that no-one seems to have picked up on the super limited connectivity options. This one is kind of on AMD though, as the chipsets from ASMedia are so limited.
Start reading some board specs and you'll see that X370 boards with three x16 slots offer the typical Intel config of 1 x16 or 2 x8 for the first two slots, which I guess is acceptable. However, the third slot is connected to the chipset and only offers a single PCIe lane in many cases, or four lanes in some cases, but then all the other x1 slots on the boards are disabled, due to insufficient lanes. MSI seems to be sharing the M.2 slot with the third x16 slot, which I'm not sure is a better approach. The B350 boards obviously has a different configuration, with x16, x4 and x1, with the last two slots being PCIe 2.0 from the chipset.

The boards with a second M.2 slot are even worse, as you then have to chose between a slow PCIe 2.0 M.2 slot, PCIe x1 slots or that x16 slot that's actually x4.

On a side note, AMD's other CPU options for the AM4 socket only support 8 PCIe lanes from the CPU and only SATA for the M.2 slot.

On the upside it seems like all primary M.2 slots are PCIe 3.0 x4 and connected directly to the CPU, so this was a wise move on AMD's side, as we should hopefully see slightly improved NVMe performance here compared to Intel's way of doing it, with the exception of Intel's HEDP platform.

It does seem like the early rumours about USB 3.1 issues were true as well, as you'll see re-drivers near the rear USB 3.1 ports on all boards. This shouldn't be a problem in the real world, but it shows the chipset was poorly designed. AMD only put USB 3.0 inside the CPUs, but they should clearly have done better validation on the chipsets from ASMedia.

I'm also curious how many people are excited about eight SATA ports today. 5-6 years ago, sure, today, I doubt most people will use that many. It might've been vaguely interesting with RAID 5/6 support, but AMD doesn't offer that on any of the new chipsets, most likely courtesy of ASMedia not support it in any of its SATA controllers. The older chipsets from AMD used to support RAID 5 at least.

RAM support seems rather peculiar as well. Ryzen officially supports DDR4 1866, 2133, 2400 and 2667, with OC modes seemingly so far only being 2933 and 3200. It looks like Asus only offers memory overclocking on its ROG board, whereas Gigabyte for example offers it on its B350 boards as well. Biostar has apparently tested with 3400 and 3600 memory as well. However, if you already have DDR4 2800 and 3000 memory today, you're looking at having to run that at 2667 or 2933 instead, as those speeds aren't supported.

All of this also makes me wonder why there aren't more mATX or even mini-ITX boards, as the chipset is clearly quite crippled as it is and would make more sense on a board with limited ports.

Hopefully we'll see a better chipset in the future, as the current options are disappointing.

One last thing, why are these boards so damn expensive, considering that the chipset can't be very expensive. The half decent boards are all priced at $200+++ which is a bit of a gut punch. In fact, they're poorly priced against comparable Intel boards.

 

[cdawall]

Z270 had video outputs, all of them even the $400 ones.

Chipset isn't doing much on these boards almost all of the complex is on the cpu. Lack of lanes won't affect nearly as many people as you make it sound. Even on this enthusiast forum I believe I can count on one hand the number of people using more than two video cards. There are other 16x slot expansion cards available very few of them would use 4x 3.0 worth of bandwidth however.

The m.2 nvme setup is slightly disappointing but again more than one nvme? You are talking a rare group of people.

This setup is aimed to be the "gamers choice" that means one video card, one nvme ssd and a storage drive. This is the most common configuration and these boards cater to it beautifully.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Well, almost all Intel CPU's have graphics, so it makes a bit more sense on the Intel side. Exactly zero Ryzen CPU's have built in graphics from what I can tell.

Considering how many people are complaining about the lack of dual x16 lanes on Intel's consumer platform, I'm sure people will complain that AMD has gone backwards as well, as AMD used to offer dual x16, but alas, no more. I'm with you that this is a minor issue.

Dual NVMe I think is going to start to become more common, as why would you get a SATA drive over an NVMe drive if the price difference isn't too big? I want to get a second NVMe drive, but alas, it looks that is not an option. The cost difference where I live isn't big between a high-end SATA drive and a decent NVMe drive (not talking Intel 600p here), so why wouldn't I go down that route?

This was just meant as some general observations about the platform, as I think a lot of people haven't realised the amount of limitations it has.

 

[cdawall]

A lot of the current platform limitations are a CPU swap away from changing. As long as the board is wired for 16/16 or 16/8/8 if the cpu has enough lanes in a later revision the issue will be gone. People got along just fine with z97 and haswell with a similar lane and NVMe situation.

I also wouldn't complain about having the flexibility to relinquish and old motherboard into being an APU based unit at a later date. The video outputs will be used eventually I don't see why people would call it a negative.

 

[BeepBeep2]

Well, almost all Intel CPU's have graphics, so it makes a bit more sense on the Intel side. Exactly zero Ryzen CPU's have built in graphics from what I can tell.

I think you are forgetting Bristol Ridge, which launched on AM4 for OEMs before Ryzen - I expect to see those show up in retailers soon.
Raven Ridge will follow up on AM4 in 2H17 I believe, after they launch FP4 (FP5?) mobile.

 

[TheLostSwede]

A lot of the current platform limitations are a CPU swap away from changing. As long as the board is wired for 16/16 or 16/8/8 if the cpu has enough lanes in a later revision the issue will be gone. People got along just fine with z97 and haswell with a similar lane and NVMe situation.

I also wouldn't complain about having the flexibility to relinquish and old motherboard into being an APU based unit at a later date. The video outputs will be used eventually I don't see why people would call it a negative.

Uhm, that wouldn't be possible. No board would be designed like that and the CPU socket is highly unlikely to be designed to allow for more PCIe lanes in the future, as it would add cost for no reason.

NVMe is what, 2-3 years old now, so yes, people got along fine with a lot of things before NVMe, but this is a brand new platform and should have better support for it.

When did you last use DVI, or even worse, D-sub?

I think you are forgetting Bristol Ridge, which launched on AM4 for OEMs before Ryzen - I expect to see those show up in retailers soon.
Raven Ridge will follow up on AM4 in 2H17 I believe, after they launch FP4 (FP5?) mobile.

Not at all, I don't mind that some boards have video outputs, but would you get a $300 motherboard to go with one of those CPUs? I think not. The lower tier boards can have as many display outputs as they want, but why waste board space on $200++ boards for a D-sub connector and DVI?

 

[cdawall]

Uhm, that wouldn't be possible. No board would be designed like that and the CPU socket is highly unlikely to be designed to allow for more PCIe lanes in the future, as it would add cost for no reason.

NVMe is what, 2-3 years old now, so yes, people got along fine with a lot of things before NVMe, but this is a brand new platform and should have better support for it.

When did you last use DVI, or even worse, D-sub?

1331 pins in the socket couldn't possibly support more than 24 pcie lanes and no motherboard could possibly allow more lanes? I find that hard to believe here in the real world.

 

[TheLostSwede]

1331 pins in the socket couldn't possibly support more than 24 pcie lanes and no motherboard could possibly allow more lanes? I find that hard to believe here in the real world.

You done a lot of board design then?

You're also missing the fact that some of those pins are for the video interfaces, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, SATA and so on, as AMD stuck all of that in the CPU as well. PCIe lanes use up a lot of pins and if it was as easy as you say, why didn't Intel add more PCIe lanes to it's LGA-115x platforms, but instead chose to put the extra lanes in the chipset?

 

[cdawall]

You done a lot of board design then?

You're also missing the fact that some of those pins are for the video interfaces, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, SATA and so on, as AMD stuck all of that in the CPU as well. PCIe lanes use up a lot of pins and if it was as easy as you say, why didn't Intel add more PCIe lanes to it's LGA-115x platforms, but instead chose to put the extra lanes in the chipset?

Why would Intel want 115x to compete with 2011? Somehow Intel has managed to allow 28 lanes on certain Cpus and 40 on others through HEDT.

Do you happen to have a schematic available for amd 1331? Do you know how many lanes it's end goal was?

 

[fourletterfame]

You done a lot of board design then?

Needlessly snarky. You don't need to be an expert to think critically and have doubts about stuff. Asking questions instead of blindly accepting things is not to be derided these days my friend.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Why would Intel want 115x to compete with 2011? Somehow Intel has managed to allow 28 lanes on certain Cpus and 40 on others through HEDT.

Do you happen to have a schematic available for amd 1331? Do you know how many lanes it's end goal was?

2011 is artificially gimped by Intel. It was designed to support the higher lane count, whereas the "cheaper" CPU's are gimped.
Why would Intel do 2011 for 40 lanes if you somehow think AMD can squeeze in the same lane count into 1331 pins? More pins = higher cost.

No, I have not, but see my logic above.

Needlessly snarky. You don't need to be an expert to think critically and have doubts about stuff. Asking questions instead of blindly accepting things is not to be derided these days my friend.

How so? He's making statements that suggests he should have the experience with regards to what he's talking about. I make assumptions based on my knowledge of board design. Some of us that hang out here actually work with these kind of things...

 

[cdawall]

2011 is artificially gimped by Intel. It was designed to support the higher lane count, whereas the "cheaper" CPU's are gimped.
Why would Intel do 2011 for 40 lanes if you somehow think AMD can squeeze in the same lane count into 1331 pins? More pins = higher cost.

No, I have not, but see my logic above.

So what does amd have in 1331 that Intel doesn't have in 115x? Do you honestly think USB 3.1 takes nearly 200 pins?

None of us know how many pcie lanes 1331 was designed to have and anything past what the spec sheet has right now is pure speculation plain and simple. These chips could be a mere stop gap while they prep gen 2 parts with 32 lanes...

You can claim knowledge of board design, but seeing how your post is pure conjecture it's obvious you know more or less the same as anyone else in here. You have no idea what the pinout is nor do you know the maximum number of lanes this socket was capable of handling.

 

[eidairaman1]

Z270 had video outputs, all of them even the $400 ones.

Chipset isn't doing much on these boards almost all of the complex is on the cpu. Lack of lanes won't affect nearly as many people as you make it sound. Even on this enthusiast forum I believe I can count on one hand the number of people using more than two video cards. There are other 16x slot expansion cards available very few of them would use 4x 3.0 worth of bandwidth however.

The m.2 nvme setup is slightly disappointing but again more than one nvme? You are talking a rare group of people.

This setup is aimed to be the "gamers choice" that means one video card, one nvme ssd and a storage drive. This is the most common configuration and these boards cater to it beautifully.

Considering SLI and Crossfire still have teething issues and not all games support it anyway, they went with what worked but I guess some here can never be happy.

 

[RejZoR]

A lot of the current platform limitations are a CPU swap away from changing. As long as the board is wired for 16/16 or 16/8/8 if the cpu has enough lanes in a later revision the issue will be gone. People got along just fine with z97 and haswell with a similar lane and NVMe situation.

I also wouldn't complain about having the flexibility to relinquish and old motherboard into being an APU based unit at a later date. The video outputs will be used eventually I don't see why people would call it a negative.

I'd say it's cheaper and more logical to stick a "non-used output" port on motherboard than "forge" a CPU with GPU on it that won't be used in 90% of cases...

 

[cdawall]

I'd say it's cheaper and more logical to stick a "non-used output" port on motherboard than "forge" a CPU with GPU on it that won't be used in 90% of cases...

Same thing Intel does with 115x so I would agree except it's used way more than 10%...

 

[TheLostSwede]

So what does amd have in 1331 that Intel doesn't have in 115x? Do you honestly think USB 3.1 takes nearly 200 pins?

None of us know how many pcie lanes 1331 was designed to have and anything past what the spec sheet has right now is pure speculation plain and simple. These chips could be a mere stop gap while they prep gen 2 parts with 32 lanes...

You can claim knowledge of board design, but seeing how your post is pure conjecture it's obvious you know more or less the same as anyone else in here. You have no idea what the pinout is nor do you know the maximum number of lanes this socket was capable of handling.

As I mentioned above, if you actually bothered reading, SATA, USB 3.0, NVMe... This all adds up and takes up pins. The socket only has an extra 180 pins (compared to Intel 115x) which would be used up quite quickly. NVMe would use up something like 40-60 of those pins, as the interface connects to the in-CPU SATA and USB interfaces as well as to the PCIe bus. The SATA interface also has to have separate connection to the two possible SATA ports, so that's another 14 pins. USB 3.0 will use another 20 or so, as it's up to four ports. That leaves us with no more than another 100 pins. That's not enough pins to allow for a whole bunch more, maybe an additional four PCIe lanes, but definitively not another 16 lanes that you're hoping for.

Also, if the motherboard manufacturers are only fitting slots that are electrically x8 and only has pins for 8 lanes of PCIe, how are you going to make the boards dual x16? But I guess you didn't even bother looking at that?

 

[RejZoR]

Same thing Intel does with 115x so I would agree except it's used way more than 10%...

Not in the gaming segment. It is used a lot for offices and multimedia though.

 

[cdawall]

As I mentioned above, if you actually bothered reading, SATA, USB 3.0, NVMe... This all adds up and takes up pins. The socket only has an extra 180 pins which would be used up quite quickly. NVMe would use up something like 40-60 of those pins, as the interface connects to the in-CPU SATA and USB interfaces as well as to the PCIe bus. The SATA interface also has to have separate connection to the two possible SATA ports, so that's another 14 pins. USB 3.0 will use another 20 or so, as it's up to four ports. That leaves us with no more than another 100 pins. That's not enough pins to allow for a whole bunch more, maybe an additional four PCIe lanes, but definitively not another 16 lanes that you're hoping for.

Also, if the motherboard manufacturers are only fitting slots that are electrically x8 and only has pins for 8 lanes of PCIe, how are you going to make the boards dual x16? But I guess you didn't even bother looking at that?

8 more lanes in 100 pins. It has 24 already. I have seen the current boards and the crosshair for one is wired 16/8/8.

You again have no idea the current pin out or current usage. I used 115x as an example these chips don't even have onboard video as it sits. While those pins are spoken for that still begs the fact that NO ONE ON HERE HAS THE USED PIN LIST.

Not in the gaming segment. It is used a lot for offices and multimedia though.

There are quite a few more office computers than gaming ones.

 

[TheLostSwede]

8 more lanes in 100 pins. It has 24 already. I have seen the current boards and the crosshair for one is wired 16/8/8.

You again have no idea the current pin out or current usage. I used 115x as an example these chips don't even have onboard video as it sits. While those pins are spoken for that still begs the fact that NO ONE ON HERE HAS THE USED PIN LIST.

Right, so what you have seen is fact, but what I know is BS? Nice one...

So let's see what Asus actually says:

Expansion Slots
AMD Ryzen™ Processors
2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
AMD 7th Generation A-series/Athlon™ Processors
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x8 mode)
AMD X370 chipset
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode) *1
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1

So that means the first slot can be x16 or x8, fairly normal.
The second slot can be either nothing or x8, again, fairly normal.

What I would like for you to explain to me, is how you're going to get another 8 lanes to that slot simply by swapping out the CPU for one with 8 more lanes.

Some visual evidence, although it's hard to see on the ROG board.

If you look closely, you'll notice that the components stop about half way down that slot, which means electrically, it's only x8 and it only has pins half way down the slot.

It's easier to see on this picture from Gigabyte

If you look carefully, you'll notice that there are no pins in half of the slot.

So if the platform was designed to support future CPU's with a total of 32 lanes for graphics, the second slot would be electrically x16.

Also, your math is flawed. Yes, the CPU's already have 24 lanes, but they're split as 16 for graphics, 4 for NVMe and 4 for the chipset interconnect. So are you saying you want a board without the chipset and NVMe slot so you could run two graphics card at dual x16?

 

[cdawall]

Both boards your posted are wired 16/8/8. If you look closely at the pictures you posted you will clearly see that.

That being said you are correct my math is flawed and extra 8 lanes would allow 8/8/8 and 4 for the m.2 pcie (since we are correcting each other we are both phrasing that wrong nvme is a protocol that is using the pcie bus) and 4 slots for the chipset or a total of 32 lanes. Luckily I was able to use your math to find out there is enough pins for 8 additional lanes that little skit about nvme (pcie 4x) using 40 lanes on its own and roughly 100 remaining.

That does still leave the second slot as only an 8x due to pin outs on the board no matter what. Almost as if no current generation card to include the Radeon pro duo and Titan xp uses that much bandwidth. This does not mean the socket cannot support than configuration as it stands however it means gen 1 boards would not allow it. We don't know future or current amd got that matter. They could also waste those lanes on silly things like optane in the future.

Now when you get the pinout of 1331 please post back with real information. I would also stop assuming people aren't as in the know as you. Makes you look a bit cocky, especially if you turn out wrong.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I'm sorry, but do you have a reading comprehension problem?

AMD X370 chipset
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode) *1

The * means that if you use it in x4 mode, it disables the x1 slots.
It also means that the third slot is not connected to the CPU and never will be.

Yes, the 100 pins or so that I can't account for what they're being used for, could potentially have enough space to add another further 8 lanes, but that would result in a 16/8 configuration and not a dual x16 which you proposed should be possible.

However, those extra 8 lanes could not be used for an 8/8/8 configuration as you propose, as no board is designed to work that way.

MSI has designed some of its boards to be able to do 16/0/4 or 8/8/4, as pointed out in my original post, but then you lose the NVMe slot. However, these boards are not designed for more than 4 lanes for the last slot.

 

[eidairaman1]

I suspect a X390 chip in the works in the next 2-3 years akin to the 990fx part

 

[Ebo]

@TheLostSwede
Why do you want more pci-e lanes in the first place, that complete beyond me ?.

Nividia has allready taken the first step, only the two toptier GFX support SLI, and they have also stated that support for more than 2 cards will have less driver attention which makes it obsolete in my book. AMD still have support for 3-4 GFX, but I think they will choose exactly the same path as Nvidia, due to less problems with driver support regarding who many pci-e lanes any MB have.

 

[TheLostSwede]

@TheLostSwede
Why do you want more pci-e lanes in the first place, that complete beyond me ?.

Nividia has allready taken the first step, only the two toptier GFX support SLI, and they have also stated that support for more than 2 cards will have less driver attention which makes it obsolete in my book. AMD still have support for 3-4 GFX, but I think they will choose exactly the same path as Nvidia, due to less problems with driver support regarding who many pci-e lanes any MB have.

Because I believe NVMe is the future of storage. I don't care about more lanes for graphics cards, but AMD has gimped this platform by only allowing for a single, full-speed NVMe drive. It's a brand new platform and it's not up to snuff for the next 2-3+ years people will be using it, assuming there are no major jumps in CPU performance from now until then.

I'm fine with dual x8 for the graphics, but AMD should've added at least another 4 lanes for a second NVMe drive or a third PCIe 3.0 slot, even if it's only x4. There are plenty people that want to add things like 10Gbps (and soon 2.5 and 5Gbps) network cards to their builds. 2.5 and 5Gbps should work on a x4 PCIe 2.0 slot, but 10Gbps won't.

 

[X828]