AMD X870 Flagship Roundup: Zen 5 Motherboards Are Here

[Hom3r]

There's tons of improvements if you actually look and read specs.

Intel Killer LAN 2.5G got replaced by a much better Realtek 5G NIC.
WiFi7 instead of WiFi6.
GPU Ez-Release button which is a trend on all new boards due to massive GPUs (and that is not changing)
Better VRM cooling

Just to name a few

People not intending to upgrade will always talk crap. That is human nature. Living in denial.

That is why you listen to pro reviewers, that got the boards for free or has to return them, instead of user reviews which are biased because they spent their own hard earned money on the product.

 

[zx8086]

I was quite stoked for AM5, hoping it will be both a substantial upgrade and that it will also bring down prices of AM4. And, oh boy, what a massive disappointment it has been so far. The gains are piddling and the prices of the likes of 7800x3d have not only not fallen but actually risen And the whole platform still remains kinda expensive to get into: +300$ just for a decent MOBO and RAM, even before the CPU? Oh, dear.

I used to think as a joke that maybe I will just get 5080 and stick with my current 5600X, because that combo will be most likely enough to deliver min 60fps@4K for most games (even if stronger processor would of course yield more). But this joke is increasingly looking like quite a plausible scenario.

 

[Hom3r]

I was quite stoked for AM5, hoping it will be both a substantial upgrade and that it will also bring down prices of AM4. And, oh boy, what a massive disappointment it has been so far. The gains are piddling and the prices of the likes of 7800x3d have not only not fallen but actually risen And the whole platform still remains kinda expensive to get into: +300$ just for a decent MOBO and RAM, even before the CPU? Oh, dear.

I used to think as a joke that maybe I will just get 5080 and stick with my current 5600X, because that combo will be most likely enough to deliver min 60fps@4K for most games (even if stronger processor would of course yield more). But this joke is increasingly looking like quite a plausible scenario.

7800X3D price went up because production stopped. 9800X3D will take over in a few weeks instead, delivering higher performance across the board. No-one will miss the 7800X3D when 9800X3D hits.

You consider 300 dollars alot for motherboard and RAM but are willing to spend 1200 dollars on a 5080? Good lord.

That 5080 will be bottlenecked hard by a 5600X. You need 5800X3D as bare minimum to keep a 5080 somewhat happy.

 

[zx8086]

7800X3D price went up because production stopped. 9800X3D will take over in a few weeks instead, delivering higher performance across the board. No-one will miss the 7800X3D when 9800X3D hits.

You consider 300 dollars alot for motherboard and RAM but are willing to spend 1200 dollars on a 5080? Good lord.

That 5080 will be bottlenecked hard by a 5600X. You need 5800X3D as bare minimum to keep a 5080 somewhat happy.

What a load of rubbish
-9800X3D will cost 500 USD or thereabouts. For some people that's a lot of money for a processor, which by the way might not deliver that huge gains anyway if you're on a mid-end GPU
-300 USD for MB+RAM PLUS 450 for 7800 X3D at the moment. Why should I bother since it will make minuscule difference to my setup with 4070?
-conversely, buying 5080 will make a huge difference
-5600X will bottleneck 5080 to some extent, but as long as it can deliver steady 60fps@4K it's not that big deal, at least for some time to tide me over till prices get more sensible.
-saying I need 5800X3D as "bare minimum" for 5080 is just a proof that you don't have much clue about real world scenarios and are just repeating tech website gospel

 

[Hom3r]

What a load of rubbish
-9800X3D will cost 500 USD or thereabouts. For some people that's a lot of money for a processor, which by the way might not deliver that huge gains anyway if you're on a mid-end GPU
-300 USD for MB+RAM PLUS 450 for 7800 X3D at the moment. Why should I bother since it will make minuscule difference to my setup with 4070?
-conversely, buying 5080 will make a huge difference
-5600X will bottleneck 5080 to some extent, but as long as it can deliver steady 60fps@4K it's not that big deal, at least for some time to tide me over till prices get more sensible.
-saying I need 5800X3D as "bare minimum" for 5080 is just a proof that you don't have much clue about real world scenarios and are just repeating tech website gospel

If you are CPU bound, yeah the CPU will matter.

Most high refresh rate gamers don't buy the highest-end GPUs because they are CPU and RAM bound anyway. High fps = CPU bound and GPU usually don't matter much.

If just 60 fps is your goal, then you don't need high-end hardware really. That is like console level of performance these days!

How can just 60 fps be a goal? That is like terrible in terms of smoothness. 100 fps is bare minimum for me.

60 Hz gamer I presume?

 

[bclaymiles]

The two paragraphs directly beneath the DDR5-8000 EXPO G.Skill F5-8000J3848H16GX2-TZ5RK post/fail chart appear to be the same content, just worded slightly differently. Just fyi (to the staff).

 

[bclaymiles]

does anyone use external drives anymore?

If you like to have local backups of your data, an external drive is desireable, because in a disaster you can just grab that and go. This is of course in addition to cloud-based backups; the benefit is the much faster restore with a local backup.

 

[bclaymiles]

Backup internet connection from phone in cases wired connection fails? Not necessary to use wires if modem/router is in other room?

I've had to do this a handful of times. Main internet connection goes down, fire up a hotspot on the cellphone and wifi-connect to it. Extremely handy.

 

[bclaymiles]

PCI Express connectivity is what costs. PCIe 5.0 is expensive but also future proof.

In what way is PCIe 5.0 "future proof"? PCIe 7.0 is currently in development.

 

[Hom3r]

In what way is PCIe 5.0 "future proof"? PCIe 7.0 is currently in development.

Because eventually, GPUs and M.2 SSDs will utilize it.

PCIe 4.0 is still good for now, however, might change with RTX 5090.

4090 is bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0!

 

[Eldrach]

If you like to have local backups of your data, an external drive is desireable, because in a disaster you can just grab that and go. This is of course in addition to cloud-based backups; the benefit is the much faster restore with a local backup.

Well - True enough. I guess I'm just "OK" with using a cloud backup. Currently have a 1gb fiber connection, so restoring from the net is fairly fast (dont have movies or music files anymore..just office documents really...Keep the pictures in the cloud)

 

[Eldrach]

In what way is PCIe 5.0 "future proof"? PCIe 7.0 is currently in development.

Well - you have to look at the capacity the current hardware is using. Even a 5090 will most likely not be bottlenecked by PCI-E 4.0. With PCI-E 5.0 we are at a massive overcapacity even with the fastest drives and the current most demanding GPU. So we should be good the next 5 years with PCI-E 5.0

 

[HardReset]

In what way is PCIe 5.0 "future proof"? PCIe 7.0 is currently in development.

Even most video cards don't yet support even PCIe 5.0. Guess how fast they will support 7.0?

Connectors are now developing much faster than home user needs. However that also means 5.0 won't be outdates for loooong time.

To put it another way. Previously it was pretty much impossible to build consumer class computer that is future proof for at least 5 years. That was because connectivity was pretty much obsolete when bought. I except my rig is still not obsolete in 3.5 years, 5 years after I bought it.

 

[Rapob]

People not intending to upgrade will always talk crap. That is human nature. Living in denial.

That is why you listen to pro reviewers, that got the boards for free or has to return them, instead of user reviews which are biased because they spent their own hard earned money on the product.

100% True
Once people spend their own money, they will be biased. Especially people with low income, because they are locked in and can't afford to buy another piece of hardware in ages.

 

[crabbos]

Those audio numbers are dreadful. Even a $20 dongle DAC can do better.

 

[Rapob]

Those audio numbers are dreadful. Even a $20 dongle DAC can do better.

No-one with a good audio setup or headphones uses onboard audio anyway. That is why no motherboard makers spend too much money on it, besides entusiast tier maybe.

800 series generally have newer audio codecs vs 600 series boards tho. Newer chips.

A good DAC or dedicated sound card will always win.

 

[DAOWAce]

Ah yes, flagship boards with 1 functional PCI-E slot and capacity for only 2-4, maybe 6, SATA drives.

Truly a marvel of technology.

Meanwhile people who've been using PC's for the last 30 years are literally unable to upgrade without being forced to retire their old hardware, find alternative solutions, or go actual workstation grade at 5x the cost.

X99 looks like a marvel of technology at this point. The boards were $300 with 7 PCI-E slots, 10 SATA ports and quad channel memory (8 DIMMs). Even mainstream boards at x570, which I'm using now, had much better support.

What is wrong with this industry?

 

[Rapob]

Ah yes, flagship boards with 1 functional PCI-E slot and capacity for only 2-4, maybe 6, SATA drives.

Truly a marvel of technology.

Meanwhile people who've been using PC's for the last 30 years are literally unable to upgrade without being forced to retire their old hardware, find alternative solutions, or go actual workstation grade at 5x the cost.

X99 looks like a marvel of technology at this point. The boards were $300 with 7 PCI-E slots, 10 SATA ports and quad channel memory (8 DIMMs). Even mainstream boards at x570, which I'm using now, had much better support.

What is wrong with this industry?

This is 2024, soon 2025.

99% of people use one PCIe slot, for GPU. Multi GPU died many years ago. People use USB DACs instead of soundcards, or onboard if they don't have high-end speakers or headphones.

SATA drives are useless for people building a high-end rig. No-one cares. Disabled my SATA ports for like 5+ years now.

There's room for 2x PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs running at x4, and 2 more with PCIe 4.0 x4. Do you plan on using 4x M.2 SSDs running at PCIe 5.0 x5? Yeah no.

X870 is B650E with better IO and codecs on board, it's fine for most people. Improved NICs and Wi-Fi as well.

The fact you care alot about SATA ports tells me you have no experience building new high-end stuff. No-one uses SATA anymore in a high-end gaming PC really. Obsolete stuff.

You also use HDDs I presume? Do you use IDE?

This is motherboard evolution. People don't need dated crap. We need good VRMs and functionality for new high-end stuff. Meaning PCIe 5.0 for GPU and PCIe 5.0/4.0 for M.2.

 

[HardReset]

Ah yes, flagship boards with 1 functional PCI-E slot and capacity for only 2-4, maybe 6, SATA drives.

Truly a marvel of technology.

Meanwhile people who've been using PC's for the last 30 years are literally unable to upgrade without being forced to retire their old hardware, find alternative solutions, or go actual workstation grade at 5x the cost.

X99 looks like a marvel of technology at this point. The boards were $300 with 7 PCI-E slots, 10 SATA ports and quad channel memory (8 DIMMs). Even mainstream boards at x570, which I'm using now, had much better support.

What is wrong with this industry?

x99 was HEDT chipset, not consumer class one. You can also have today HEDT class Threadripper with whopping 128 PCIe lanes and octa channel memory support. That's called evolution.

Your x570 boards didn't support PCIe 5.0 and also there were 4 less CPU supported PCIe lanes.

 

[Tantor]

I wish this article had discussed USB4 Thunderbolt adapter cards. My Gigabyte X670 mobo can supposedly be upgraded with a Gigabyte USB4 card:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Thunderbolt-Card

Note that each card type has a motherboard compatibility list. The Maple Ridge series is Intel only. Whereas Titan Ridge lists b550, x570 and x670 compatibility.

If the cards actually work as advertised, then it's one more reason to just buy an x650/670 board, rather than paying $500 for an x870.

 

[ThomasTECH]

Once again, Flexing independent options are futile! I purchased a proprietary Alienware Threadripper unit, and power surge blew my motherboard/cpu and there are no replacement motherboards in existence that work with the case. Dell said no more and they are out. AMD will never secure their dominance without a full product that show cases their advancements as they believe them to be. Once assembled other components could make an awesome motherboard seem average or less.

 

[passingposeidon]

LMAO @ $400+ motherboards

The only people who buy any of these are the kind of people who eat crayons.

Or people who have a lot of money?

 

[Raytrace3D]

After looking into X870E (really nice upgrades), I didn't like the PCIe configurations from current offerings if you want to use more than one x16 5.0 slot due to limited PCIe lanes. Some of he boards were real head scratchers (x16/x4/4 ???) I broke down and ended up going with Threadripper PRO 7965WX with the WRX90 chipset (ASRock WRX90 WS EVO board). Ah, the freedom of 128 lanes of 5.0... 7 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slots. Quite a nice upgrade over my old Threadripper 2950X, which surprisingly lasted this long :-D

 

[Rapob]

After looking into X870E (really nice upgrades), I didn't like the PCIe configurations from current offerings if you want to use more than one x16 5.0 slot due to limited PCIe lanes. Some of he boards were real head scratchers (x16/x4/4 ???) I broke down and ended up going with Threadripper PRO 7965WX with the WRX90 chipset (ASRock WRX90 WS EVO board). Ah, the freedom of 128 lanes of 5.0... 7 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slots. Quite a nice upgrade over my old Threadripper 2950X, which surprisingly lasted this long :-D

Why do you need more than 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes? 28 if you disable USB 4.

Multi GPU died years ago. PCIe SSD? Useless for most.

 

[HardReset]

Why do you need more than 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes? 28 if you disable USB 4.

Multi GPU died years ago. PCIe SSD? Useless for most.

PCIe SSD useless? Transferring few hundred gigabytes with SATA SSD is painfully slow compared against same thing with PCIe SSD.