Thanks for the news, sounds good.

As a joke, when Zen 4 comes at 5nm Intel will still be at 14nm and still missing PCI-E 4.0 support :P

Once firmware support finally comes out for X470 motherboards, I'm tempted to upgrade my 2700X to a 5900X. I wonder what the performance of Zen 3 processors on these older motherboards will be like though? If it turns out the X470 motherboards don't perform that well with Zen 3 CPUs, I think I'll wait until Zen 4 and upgrade everything at once.

I don't want to play the Apple fan, but after the unveiling of the M1, the news about X86 seems a bite tasteless.

FM57:

I don't want to play the Apple fan, but after the unveiling of the M1, the news about X86 seems a bite tasteless.

Like it or not the world runs on x86.

FM57:

I don't want to play the Apple fan, but after the unveiling of the M1, the news about X86 seems a bite tasteless.

"tAbLeTs wiLL RepLAcE lApToPs" Remember that? Yeah, it didn't happen, as much as this insane transition to ARM that crApple expects also won't happen. People will just realize they can be much more productive and/or cheaper with x86 and simply move on. Having an inconvenience to move from Mac OSes to windows/linux is nothing compared to losing hours of actual productive work.

Herem:

Once firmware support finally comes out for X470 motherboards, I'm tempted to upgrade my 2700X to a 5900X. I wonder what the performance of Zen 3 processors on these older motherboards will be like though? If it turns out the X470 motherboards don't perform that well with Zen 3 CPUs, I think I'll wait until Zen 4 and upgrade everything at once.

It will perform the same. Zero difference. You will see sooon

Herem:

Once firmware support finally comes out for X470 motherboards, I'm tempted to upgrade my 2700X to a 5900X. I wonder what the performance of Zen 3 processors on these older motherboards will be like though? If it turns out the X470 motherboards don't perform that well with Zen 3 CPUs, I think I'll wait until Zen 4 and upgrade everything at once.

supposedly they will be as fast or with negligible difference . when the time comes i am 101% sure @Hilbert Hagedoorn will show us exactly what's the deal with performance of 5xxx cpux on x470 and b450 Edit: i wrote x570 instead of 470 in the end .

So... is Zen 4 presumed to be moving onto DDR5?

Technology is the best thing that ever happened to procrastinators. The more you delay the better the tech

deusex:

Before AMD starts to talk about ZEN4 it would make sense to meet the demand for Ryzen 5000 first. Other wise that is the point?

Why? It's not like the people taking about Zen 4, designing Zen 4, etc are the same people sitting on a production line building Zen 3.

Ricardo:

"tAbLeTs wiLL RepLAcE lApToPs" Remember that? Yeah, it didn't happen, as much as this insane transition to ARM that crApple expects also won't happen. People will just realize they can be much more productive and/or cheaper with x86 and simply move on. Having an inconvenience to move from Mac OSes to windows/linux is nothing compared to losing hours of actual productive work.

I feel like for most people they have? Obviously for work and stuff more people use laptops, and during that whole movement, I don't think anyone expected tablets to overtake laptops in business - but at home, pretty much all my family members have iPads and not laptops/desktops anymore.. that includes me. The ARM transition is happening already, so that's another weird one to say. Windows is increasingly becoming interoperable with ARM processors. Lots of companies are investing in ARM designs. Apple is obviously switching to ARM based processors (that are extremely competitive performance/w). You have Graviton on the server side, Nuvia, Nvidia, etc. I don't think anyone expect x86 to vanish overnight, obviously - but it's stronghold on the market is definitely sliding away - and as these companies start building performance competitive designs on ARM's architecture, it's paving a path for others to join. It's not like anyone can grab an x86 license.

Im more interested in RDNA3 and their chiplet design gpu.

If Zen 4 is only going to be released in 2022 then this means investing in Ryzen 3 now or in the next few months of next year like a safe bet. And the 5600x is a tasty one, specially if i could find a decent MB around 100€, on sale of course. To upgrade or not , difficult question...

Denial:

Why? It's not like the people taking about Zen 4, designing Zen 4, etc are the same people sitting on a production line building Zen 3. I feel like for most people they have? Obviously for work and stuff more people use laptops, and during that whole movement, I don't think anyone expected tablets to overtake laptops in business - but at home, pretty much all my family members have iPads and not laptops/desktops anymore.. that includes me. The ARM transition is happening already, so that's another weird one to say. Windows is increasingly becoming interoperable with ARM processors. Lots of companies are investing in ARM designs. Apple is obviously switching to ARM based processors (that are extremely competitive performance/w). You have Graviton on the server side, Nuvia, Nvidia, etc. I don't think anyone expect x86 to vanish overnight, obviously - but it's stronghold on the market is definitely sliding away - and as these companies start building performance competitive designs on ARM's architecture, it's paving a path for others to join. It's not like anyone can grab an x86 license.

I think you're understating the "work and stuff" part. Check these statistics, tablets definitely had a small boon, but are nowhere near other devices, while smartphones exploded to compete directly with PCs in about the same time-frame. Also, the shipment and ownership of tablets has been declining YoY, so they're likely to remain a niche device or even disappear. And that's even with the recent movements of making tablets more like laptops, by giving them foldable keyboards and mouse support and whatnot. Tablets are simply redundant when compared to modern smartphones, while being less portable since they don't fit on your pocket. As for ARM transition, I would argue that it's getting stronger due to IoT devices needing low-power silicon that can handle multiple tasks, aside from the obvious monopoly on smartphones. But they're still on a different league compared to proper x86 devices, which tend to be the ones that actually do heavy-lifting tasks. Also, specifically on Apple's case, they're going ARM because Intel has been sucking hard on the price/performance ratio for quiet a while now, allowing for such proximity with ARM to be reached. But AMD has been steadily growing their x86 CPU performance, and Zen 3 is already a big improvement IPC-wise while using very modest power, so I think Apple bet on Intel being stagnant and AMD not being able to pull such a rabbit out of their hats, and are now losing that bet. I mean, just look at Apple's comparisons on their presentation of the M1: they're picking the "best sellers" in laptop market, which accounts to (probably) sucky intel processors from mid/low end. A zen 3 would absolutely crush that and probably would also have more cores and pretty comparable battery life, while remaining natively compatible with x86. So what does Apple have in their favor in this scenario? Aside from "Apple magic", they have nothing.

EngEd:

As a joke, when Zen 4 comes at 5nm Intel will still be at 14nm and still missing PCI-E 4.0 support 😛

Half of the joke is true actually. they will still be at 14nm. but pcie 4.0 will come with rocket lake in march 2021.

Ricardo:

I think you're understating the "work and stuff" part. Check these statistics, tablets definitely had a small boon, but are nowhere near other devices, while smartphones exploded to compete directly with PCs in about the same time-frame. Also, the shipment and ownership of tablets has been declining YoY, so they're likely to remain a niche device or even disappear. And that's even with the recent movements of making tablets more like laptops, by giving them foldable keyboards and mouse support and whatnot. Tablets are simply redundant when compared to modern smartphones, while being less portable since they don't fit on your pocket.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up tablets here. Apple recently announced 3 new ARM devices, none of which are tablets.

As for ARM transition, I would argue that it's getting stronger due to IoT devices needing low-power silicon that can handle multiple tasks, aside from the obvious monopoly on smartphones. But they're still on a different league compared to proper x86 devices, which tend to be the ones that actually do heavy-lifting tasks.

Which is exactly why nothing is going to happen to x86 in the foreseeable future. ARM has its own place in the market. Those care about performance-per-watt will go to ARM. Those who care about maximizing performance go to x86. The thing with Apple is they've never had impressively powerful hardware, but they do have impressively good optimizations, so their transition to ARM will yield all the PPW benefits without really making much of a sacrifice.

Also, specifically on Apple's case, they're going ARM because Intel has been sucking hard on the price/performance ratio for quiet a while now, allowing for such proximity with ARM to be reached. But AMD has been steadily growing their x86 CPU performance, and Zen 3 is already a big improvement IPC-wise while using very modest power, so I think Apple bet on Intel being stagnant and AMD not being able to pull such a rabbit out of their hats, and are now losing that bet.

Price is hardly a factor for Macs. Most of the extra cost goes to their customers (instead of Apple themselves), who are willing to pay a higher premium anyway. Apple is going to ARM because Intel screwed up Skylake and Apple doesn't like not being able to control its suppliers. You're probably right that Apple was also betting on Intel being stagnant, and for the most part, they won that bet.

I mean, just look at Apple's comparisons on their presentation of the M1: they're picking the "best sellers" in laptop market, which accounts to (probably) sucky intel processors from mid/low end. A zen 3 would absolutely crush that and probably would also have more cores and pretty comparable battery life, while remaining natively compatible with x86. So what does Apple have in their favor in this scenario? Aside from "Apple magic", they have nothing.

The "Apple magic" is the reason they're able to make such comparisons at all. Apple's phones and tablets have, for a long while, had such mediocre, if not underwhelming specs. Yet, they could run tasks just as smoothly as Android phones with double the specs. When you have full control over the platform, you can make a lot of micro-optimizations. Over time, Apple will likely create additional instruction sets to further boost their performance. This is just the first generation, so for them to have ARM CPUs with performance comparable to popular x86 laptops is a good leap.

Performance Leadership? Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest Zen3 chips – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim. This moment has been brewing for years now, and the new Apple Silicon is both shocking, but also very much expected. In the coming weeks we’ll be trying to get our hands on the new hardware and verify Apple’s claims. Intel has stagnated itself out of the market, and has lost a major customer today. AMD has shown lots of progress lately, however it’ll be incredibly hard to catch up to Apple’s power efficiency. If Apple’s performance trajectory continues at this pace, the x86 performance crown might never be regained.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/5

@schmidtbag Actually Apple's flagship iPhone's have better CPUs/SoCs than their Android competition of the same year and this has been true going back for years now. There have a been a few articles written about this at this point that test the various aspects of CPU perf, but especially in raw single threaded perf Apple's iOS silicon is top notch. Android/Qualcomm/Exynos have been competitive in multithreading scores to be fair. Even Digital Foundry did testing to confirm that pretty much all games run substantially better on the latest and greatest iPhones VS Android flagships of the same year -- now, this may partially be because there's more money made off of the iOS store so games are built from the ground up for iPhone then ported to android without enough effort, but it's also because Apple's mobile CPUs/SoCs have been about a year ahead of Qualcomm for example for quite sometime now. Samsung's exynos chips have gotten closer to Apple's custom silicon perf some years, but they've usually used Qualcomm to help alleviate production woes (years back only the international version of their headliner galaxy got exynos). For Macs though you're 110% right -- historically the price to perf of the specs you're getting in one of their desktop towers/laptops are just abysmal crap -- I like Apple's user interface as much as the next guy, but it seems borderline moronic to pay the prices Apple demands for the specs that you're getting. Now, Android devices do typically ship with more RAM vs iPhones, but there are also some architectural differences in terms of their Operating systems so I'm not sure to what extent that ties into their RAM requirements -- we know iOS is C based while Android is Java based and though I don't know the details of their inner workings, perhaps there's more to it. At a glance though, it would certainly seem like the extra RAM available to Android flagships would be an advantage.

BlindBison:

@schmidtbag Actually Apple's latest and greatest iPhone's have much better CPUs than their Android competition and this has been true going back for years now. There have a been a few articles written about this at this point that test the various aspects of CPU perf, but especially in raw single threaded perf Apple's iOS silicon is top notch. Android is more competitive in multithreading scores to be fair.

I mean on paper they're worse. To my knowledge, there are still Android phones that have better specs than iPhones. The reason iPhones perform better (in single-threaded tasks) is because of all the optimizations. Granted, Apple does have a few of their own custom instructions already, to improve performance. But that's harder to quantify their effect since nothing else can use them.

So...... Tick...Tock?