AMD’s X570 chipset was stacked with potent I/O, however introduced a big annoyance for patrons: it required lively cooling. That meant a return to the days of yore when using quicker and quicker reminiscence meant that motherboard chipsets—the place the reminiscence controller used to reside—began to require heatsinks with followers.
This raises some questions that weren’t answered, akin to precisely how all this will probably be wired. If the paired chipsets are wired up in parallel—that’s, every chip getting two lanes—then latency will probably be equal throughout the chips, however bandwidth will probably be restricted by the two-lane interface. (That mentioned, PCIe 5.0 x2 is functionally equal to PCIe 4.0 x4, which is what X570 hooks as much as.)
Alternatively, in the event that they’re wired as much as the CPU socket in sequence, then that would have important latency implications for the second chipset—though it will enable any single system on both chipset to hook up with the CPU at a peak price of 16 GB/sec.
Regardless of the case, each X670 and X670E are utilizing a pair of those chips, whereas B650 will get only one. Which means B650 will solely have half the obtainable I/O in comparison with X670, however half of what AMD promised might be lots for many customers. AMD’s slide says that Socket AM5 can have as much as 14 SuperSpeed USB ports, and a few of these most likely wire up on to the CPU socket, which implies moderately than dropping 7, you are most likely dropping simply 5 or 6.
Within the stream, MSI’s Berkhout and Van Beurden additionally identified that MSI is not planning any Mini-ITX boards for Socket AM5’s launch. Between the enlarged CPU socket, the twin chipsets, and their want for large passive heatsinks to keep away from a loud fan, Berkhout says it is unlikely we’ll see many X670 or X670E boards on ITX. As an alternative, Mini-ITX Socket AM5 boards will doubtless follow the single-chip B650.
As for why AMD would do one thing like this, nicely, it is actually fairly sensible. Utilizing a single chip throughout their product stack considerably simplifies logistics and planning, and slapping a pair of the chips on higher-end boards is a straightforward resolution to increasing I/O. It is simple to think about an enterprising motherboard vendor like Biostar utilizing a PCIe change to attach much more chipset cube for a specialised board with expansive I/O.
