ASRock X670E Steel Legend review

Mainboards 327 Page 2 of 23 Published by

teaser

X670E/X670, and B650E/B650 Motherboards

X670E/X670, and B650E/B650 Motherboards 

AMD AM5 infrastructure is paired with that LGA 1718 socket and requires new chipsets. Those are the following:

  • X670E,
  • X670,
  • B650E,
  • and B650. 

The 600-series platform comes equipped with DDR5 memory and PCI Express Generation 5 for storage and graphics. The platform supports 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 16 for the video card, four for an M.2 slot, and four more for connecting to the chipset.

The most high-end chipset is the X670E. The E stands for ‘Extreme.’ It can support two video card ports and an M.2 slot for an SSD with PCIe 5.0 bandwidth. AMD has stated that the X670E chipset is designed for “unrivaled capability and extreme overclocking.” It is intended to be able to supply PCI Express Gen 5 “everywhere.” For the B650 - only the SSD operates at PCIe 5.0 speeds.


index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=81784

 

Mainboards with the chipsets B650 and B650E are expected to push the new socket AM5 platform for Ryzen 7000 CPUs into the lower-priced territory. An X670 is designed for Enthusiast Overclocking and features support for Gen5 storage and optional graphics. Only the PCIe Gen5 storage standard will be supported by the mainstream platform based on the B650 chipset. The motherboard part of the 600 series will also include up to 14 SuperSpeed USB 20 Gbps (TypeC) and WiFI-E6 with DBS/Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2. Interestingly. Additionally, AMD has announced that the motherboards in the 600-series will come equipped with up to four HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2 outputs. The X670 and X670E variants are projected to be rather pricey.


Untitled-1 

The distinctions between the B650(E) and the X670 (E)

The differences between the chipsets are illustrated in this AMD picture. The B650(E) only has half as many USB and SATA ports as the X670 versions. PCIe 5.0 is optional on the B650 and is exclusively meant for an M.2 SSD port. The B650E, on the other hand, has PCIe 5.0 for both the graphics card and an SSD, for a total of up to 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes.

Socket AM5

AM4 appeared in 2016; after AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series was announced – the retirement of the socket AM4 platform is inevitable. AMD transitions to PCI Express 5.0 and DDR5 memory. The AM5 LGA socket contains 1718 pins, which significantly increased over the AM4 socket, which had 1331. That increase is partly needed for DDR5 and 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes. Four lanes presumably link to the chipset. After allocating 16 lanes to the graphics card, eight lanes will be left, four for direct-CPU-attached M.2 SSDs and four used as interconnect. Remember, though, PCIe 5.0 video cards are not yet available. BTW your CPU cooler you can carry over to the new platform as they should be compatible between AM4 and AM5 with the same mounting system.

DDR5 

The new platform will officially support DDR5. The controller is officially compatible with speeds up to DDR5-5200 (JEDEC default).  Although AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 CPUs has a sweet spot of DDR5-6000, allowing for a 1:1 IFC ratio (Infinity fabric Interconnect). A 1:1 ratio means that the memory runs at the same frequency as the memory controller on the CPU, which is the best-case scenario. With Alder, Intel has separated the memory ranks into two categories: a 2:1 mode known as Gear 2, which is the DDR5 default, and a 4:1 version known as Gear 4. A 1:1 ratio offers the advantage of allowing for lower latencies and faster speeds. A higher ratio, on the other hand, allows for better overclocking and quicker data transfer rates and results in higher latencies. DDR5-6000 for AMD Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” CPUs already sounds amazing for AM5, with a default to DDR5-5600. Higher frequency DIMMs are supported; however, if you exceed the DDR5-6000 limit, you will be forced to use a 1:2 IFC. DDR5-6400 operating at 1:2 is said to offer poor results and is not advised if you want better gaming performance. AMD has been working on a new overclocking standard for DDR5 memory called EXPO, which the company intends to use as a competitor to Intel’s XMP 3.0 protocol. AMD revealed earlier this year that it is working on Ryzen Accelerated Memory Profiles. EXPO is the memory module equivalent to Intel XMP 3.0, storing compatible ddr5 overclocking profiles with faster speeds and tighter frequencies. It is also advertised as a one-click memory overclocking solution. 

Higher TDPs

In the performance/energy efficiency race, AMD has reached a level that can compete fully with intel. However, as it turns out, Raphael reveals increased energy levels. Never had Intel had to fight this hard with a competitor, and for a good reason? that goes for both companies; the flagship products from AMD will consume less energy, though. However, the TDP of the most powerful Ryzen 7000 models increases from a 170W TDP and even 230W for the PPT (the highest amount of power that processors are permitted to utilize); for Intel, that looks to be 228W-250W (Core i9 13900K ). Therefore, the new top models’ power consumption will be considerably larger than with Ryzen 5000.


index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=81634

The ZEN4 CPU  

Zen 4 CPU core-based products will power Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs (codenamed “Raphael”), high-end mobile processors (codenamed “Dragon Range”), thin & light mobile processors (codenamed “Phoenix”), and Epyc 7004 server processors (codenamed “Genoa” and “Bergamo”). A lot has been said and spoken about ZEN4; AMD single and multi-threaded performance has been excellent overall, but with competition from Intel heating up, they have a new design with lots more cache and turbo frequencies moving to over 5.5 GHz. Overall, Intel was king in High turbo clock frequencies but a notch weaker in IPC. On the other hand, AMD has been decisive on IPC but less so in absolute peak clock frequencies. That gave intel an advantage in many games with enthusiast performance graphics cards. In the past, a solution to bypass any performance degradation in gaming is to eliminate inter-core and inter-CCX latencies. ZEN2 addressed that to some extent, with a few efficiency solutions found at cache levels. However, getting rid of the inter-core complex partition latencies is another thing. Zen 4 will continue to use an MCM (multi-chip module) or chiplet design; it will use up to two 8-core CCDs and one I/O die. There will only be one CCX per CCD, and this CCX will consist of eight cores. The Zen 4 core’s key architectural advancements include higher data TLBs for the L1 and L2 caches and a doubling of the size of the L2 cache per core from 512KB to 1MB. A translation look-aside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the most recent virtual memory to physical memory translations. It is used to speed up access to a user’s memory location.  


Model

Cores/Threads

Base clock

Boost clock

Cache (L2+L3)

TDP

Ryzen 9 7950X

16C/32T

4.5GHz

5.7GHz

80MB (16+64)

170W

Ryzen 9 7900X

12C/24T

4.7GHz

5.6GHz

76MB (12+64)

170W

Ryzen 7 7700X

8C/16T

4.5GHz

5.4GHz

40MB (8+32)

105W

Ryzen 5 7600X

6C/12T

4.7GHz

5.3GHz

38MB (6+32)

105W

So, factors like IPC, Clock frequency, and increased cache sizes will most likely result in performance improvements. In addition, AMD is bringing AVX512 instructions to Zen 4. As a result, applications that exploit this will obtain significantly more considerable speed benefits.

Fundamental changes from Zen 3

  • AVX-512 instructions support
  • L1 and L2 DTLB size increased from 64 to 72 and 2,048 to 3,072 entries
  • L2 cache doubled from 512 KiB to 1 MiB per core
  • Improved cache load, write and prefetch from/to register (less latency).
  • Higher Transistor Density due to the 5nm process
  • Capable of higher all-core clock speeds (shown by AMD to reach 5GHz+ on all cores)
  • An igpu in every processor
  • PCIe Gen 5.0
  • DDR5

There is a total of 64MB of L3 cache (ZEN3 32 MB and ZEN2 had 16MB per CCX ) shared across the cores in the CCX. There’s also 1MB of L2 cache per core within the CCX, for 8MB of L2 cache per CCD.  On Zen 4, the L2 cache increased from 512KB to 1MB per core. Like its predecessor, Zen 4 includes up to two Core Complex Dies (CCDs) manufactured using TSMC’s 5nm technology and one I/O die fabricated with 6nm. Previously, the I/O die on Zen 3 was manufactured using GlobalFoundries’ 14nm technology. For the first time in any Zen architecture, the I/O die of Zen 4 incorporates RDNA 2 graphics. Zen 4 is the first desktop CPU to utilize the 5nm manufacturing technology. 

index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=81783

Integrated graphics

In the past, AMD offered CPUs and APUs; APUs are a processor with integrated graphics. AMD is seemingly changing this approach as all Raphael Zen4-based processors will be fitted with an RDNA2 graphics unit, which is good news. Those who don’t play games or need a separate video card for some other reason need to purchase a (hopefully) inexpensive card in addition to a standard Ryzen processor or even connect a monitor. This disadvantage grew much more severe due to the scarcity of graphics cards. Every Ryzen 7000 series CPU includes an integrated graphics processing unit, and IGP resides in the I/O chip (6nm). Even though it is based on the contemporary RDNA2 architecture, it will likely have just two compute units. Therefore, it will not be suited for playing modern games. Overall, AMD intended to use the smaller 6nm node size to incorporate a nice quality-of-life boost with additional graphics capabilities.

Architectural Basics

  • 2x RDNA 2 compute units 
  • 4x ACE 
  • 1x HWS 
  • Encode: H.265 10bpc/8bpc, H.264 10bpc/8bpc 
  • Decode: AV1 10bpc/8bpc, VP9 10bpc/8bpc, H.265 10bpc/8bpc, H.264 10bpc/8bpc
  • Display:
    • HDMI 2.1 with: HFR, 48Gbps FRL, DSC, HDR10+, and VRR extensions
    • DisplayPort 2.0 Ready with: Adaptive-Sync, DSC, UHBR10, and HDR extensions

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print