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  • Colin1497 - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    "Meanwhile, the validation of a Promontory-class chipset for AMD's Ryzen 3000 CPUs enables OEMs to offer reasonably-priced PCs powered by the latest processors."

    This seems to be saying that the B450 isn't validated with the 3000 series CPUs?
  • brakdoo - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    AT needed to fill this page instead of just saying "B550a=B450/350 and B550(no a) is something else that we have to wait for".
  • Marlin1975 - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    I don't care if the chipset only supports PCIe 3.0. As long as the PCIe 4.0 from the CPU to the GPU, M.2 slot, and interconnect does that would be fine.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    The interconnect can't bet 4.0 (if you mean the CPU to chipset interconnect) since the chipset only supports 3.0 as stated. The other two things are up to mainboard developers and AMD allowing it (they blocked it for B450 and X470 etc.). I'd be fine with a B450 which has 3.0 lanes downstream, those 2.0 lanes really hurt it in my opinion. But I'm on X570 now anyway, so I don't really care anymore. :D
  • Hul8 - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    That's delusional.

    1) The B550A chipset would be used in OEM systems to cut costs (compared to a B550).

    Why would the OEM then go and spend those savings by routing the considerably more expensive PCIe 4 to the GPU and M.2?

    Also, take away market from a higher end model (with better margins) that could have a "real" B550 (if it ends up supporting PCIe 4 even partially) or an X570?

    2) The Promontory chipsets support PCIe 3 only upstream (from the CPU). All downstream PCIe is Gen 2. This means the jump in bandwidth would be up to 4x, for any 500 series PCIe 4 chipset.

    It's possible that B550 is what you want: It could have PCIe 4 support from the CPU, and between the CPU and chipset, but lower speeds from the chipset.
  • Marlin1975 - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    Thats what I meant, the consumer B550 not the OEM A one. If the B550 does not support at least some PCIe 4.0 then what does it really offer to most users over the sub $100 B450 boards now.

    Seems like the gap between the B450/X470 and X570 is large enough that the B550 will support some PCIe 4.0 but not full chipset support to fill that gap.
  • a5cent - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link

    "If the B550 does not support at least some PCIe 4.0 then what does it really offer to most users over the sub $100 B450 boards now."

    B450 is a PCIe 2.0 chipset. Not 3.0! Hopefully that's not all, but PCIe 3.0 instead of 2.0 is at least one of the things B550 would offer users over the sub $100 B450.

    The B450 is lacking in three areas:
    a) only PCIe 2.0
    b) the low number of PCIe lanes.
    c) an inability to directly drive a good number of modern USB ports.

    The lack of PCIe lanes is why B450 boards can't run two M.2 drives without downgrading the PCI x16 slot.

    If B550 maintains all the IO capabilities of X570 and merely lacks PCIe 4.0, then I'd say that's a very fair way of lowering cost without sacrificing features. That would be a great upgrade over B450, which looks very outdated to me. We'd be lucky if B550 is that good.
  • Valantar - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    What you're outlining there is pretty much the perfect scenario for retail B450 - a PCIe 4.0 x4 uplink to the CPU, and a decent amount of PCIe 3.0 lanes off the chipset - ideally enough for two x4 m.2 drives and a couple of controllers or slots. Though that would probably come too close to X570 for AMD's comfort, as you'd get >90% of its features for a significantly lower price.
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    One of the M.2's can be directly connected to the CPU, so even if the uplink isn't 4.0 (and I think it should be) we get a 4.0 x4 M.2 plus 16 more 4.0 lanes which can be divided as board manufacturers please.
  • Hul8 - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link

    Since

    - in client space, PCIe4 doesn't have uses other than PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe drives; and
    - the segment the B550 chipset targets would have little use for more than one such fast drive (if that)

    AMD and the motherboard manufacturers could optimize for cost/benefit by only using PCIe 4 for the primary M.2 slot, and having the GPU slot as well as chipset upstream and downstream connections be PCIe 3. Chipset could even have a mix of PCIe 3 and 2 downstream, for use in low bandwidth devices.
  • xrror - Tuesday, October 15, 2019 - link

    Considering that you can cross flash some B350 boards with their B450 counterpart and have it still work, I'd take a guess that B550a is just the newest revision in that chipset line.

    And to answer the question: B350 with B450 bios didn't really confer any performance advantage so not worth the time + most peripheral I/O chips change from a 350 to 450 board revision so you can lose functionality from mis-matched 3rd party chips/firmware, so things like fan control, off-chip USB ports, lighting control etc.
  • R3MF - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link

    What is the significance of mentioning PCIe3 in the title, and then going on to say in the article that it is the same as the B450 promontory chipset?

    My understanding of B450 is that it:
    a) connected to the Ryzen 1000/2000 CPU's via a PCIe 2.0 4x connection
    b) that it only offered PCIe 2.0 connections from chipset to peripheral devices

    B550 boards will obviously offer PCIe 4.0 16x and 4x [from the CPU!]
    But what would make it an interesting upgrade from B450 is if it:
    a) offers a PCIe 3.0 4x connection to the CPU
    b) and offers PCIe 4.0 connections from chipset to peripheral devices

    Why this matters:
    Because we're looking at the next two years of high bandwidth peripherals such as:
    1. USB 3.2 20Gbps
    2. USB 4.0 40Gbps
    3. 2.5 Gb and 5Gb ethernet
    4. mainstream nvme secondary storage (over sata/spinning rust)

    And these high bandwidth peripherals will be exclusively offered with a PCIE 3.0/4.0 connection, not PCIe 2.0!

    So B550 either has the possibility of being really interesting or a generational dead-end.
    I'd love to know which...?
  • R3MF - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link

    Re: B550 - this should obviously say:
    b) and offers PCIe [3].0 connections from chipset to peripheral devices
  • a5cent - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link

    To clarify:

    The B550 boards don't *offer* PCIe 4.0 from the CPU. If you inserted a Ryzen 1000/2000 series CPU into a B550 board, you'd still only get a PCIe 2.0 connection between the x16 slot and the CPU. The board doesn't *support* this in any way. It's just some traces which lead from the CPU directly to the PCIe x16 socket.

    Based on the time it's taking AMD and ASMedia to release B550 (and that they are already late considering the matching processors were released months ago), it seems obvious there is more to B550 than just another firmware update (like B450 was over B350). For the reasons you mentioned, I think PCIe 3.0 is guaranteed. Every report I've seen also mentions it will support PCIe 3.0 (like over on Techpowerup).

    I think the only questions we need answered are these:
    - how many PCIe lanes will it support
    - how many USB ports will it support and of what type

    If B550 doesn't support more lanes than B450, then we'll still not see any B550 motherboards supporting two M.2 sockets without some tomfoolery (like downgrading the x16 slot).
  • R3MF - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link

    It didn't need clarifying, but thank you;

    yes i agree with the logic of what you say and hope it proves true.

    :)
  • annahumphries110 - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    Will these new chipsets support ryzen 3rd gen CPUs?
    https://www.proassignment.co.uk/do-my-assignment

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