AM4 Longevity

[Fred Flintstone]

What do you think about AM4? Will it last a few years more? Will there be more CPUs for this socket? Or will it just die* soon?
*Be discontinued.

[sazrocks]

I don't have A link right now but I believe AMD has stated that it will last at least 3 generations.

[Mooshi]

7 minutes ago, Fred Flintstone said:

What do you think about AM4? Will it last a few years more? Will there be more CPUs for this socket? Or will it just die* soon?
*Be discontinued.

Considering Sandy Bridge is still viable and that's from 2011..I don't think it even matters if there are no more compatible AM4 CPUs in 5+ years.

[iRileyx]

4 minutes ago, sazrocks said:

I don't have A link right now but I believe AMD has stated that it will last at least 3 generations.

I remember reading that on a few tech news sites at launch.

[Fred Flintstone]

Just now, Mooshi said:

Considering Sandy Bridge is still viable and that's from 2011..I don't think it even matters if there are no more CPUs in 5+ years.

What do you mean? Like even if AMD doesn't launch more CPUs for this socket, it will still be produced/comercialized?

[Fred Flintstone]

I wanna know if AMD has stated something about launching at least one CPU family more for AM4 and if they didn't, what are the odds of this being the case in your opinion?

[DrMikeNZ]

11 minutes ago, Fred Flintstone said:

What do you think about AM4? Will it last a few years more? Will there be more CPUs for this socket? Or will it just die* soon?
*Be discontinued.

While AMD stated they would support the AM4 platform for 4 years releasing new CPUs with the socket, it doesn't really add much to the longevity of the platform.

In 3 years when they release new CPU's, your motherboard may have degraded to the point that it is near failure anyway, and upgrading the CPU might require a new motherboard anyway.

Meanwhile in 5+ years you will be able to pick up secondhand Ryzen systems for cheap gaming, those will still be good processors for many years to come.

[Mooshi]

1 hour ago, Fred Flintstone said:

What do you mean? Like even if AMD doesn't launch more CPUs for this socket, it will still be produced/comercialized?

More like it doesn't matter since it's doubtful performance will be much of an issue and at 5+ years, you'll be upgrading platforms anyway.

[yathis]

3 hours ago, DrMikeNZ said:

Meanwhile in 5+ years you will be able to pick up secondhand Ryzen systems for cheap gaming, those will still be good processors for many years to come.

Just like now you can score a i5-4570 oem pc from a national retailer for $150, but they do average $200.

[He_162]

Until 2020 AMD will keep releasing new processors based on the AM4 socket, for Zen 2, and Zen 3 CPU's will be backwards compatible with it.

By whatever comes out after Zen 3, they want to make things forward compatible to it, kind of like AM4+.

That being said, Zen will last just as long as Haswell, and Zen 2 will last as long as Skylake, simply based on what the performance is, or has to be.

[Fred Flintstone]

16 hours ago, He_162 said:

Until 2020 AMD will keep releasing new processors based on the AM4 socket, for Zen 2, and Zen 3 CPU's will be backwards compatible with it.
By whatever comes out after Zen 3, they want to make things forward compatible to it, kind of like AM4+.
That being said, Zen will last just as long as Haswell, and Zen 2 will last as long as Skylake, simply based on what the performance is, or has to be.

So, if I buy, let's say, an X370 motherboard, will it handle next generation Zen CPUs/APUs?

[He_162]

5 minutes ago, Fred Flintstone said:

So, if I buy, let's say, an X370 motherboard, will it handle next generation Zen CPUs/APUs?

Yes, the next two generations of AMD CPU's and APU's will run on AM4.

They will have at least a 15% IPC gain on each other, and this is how I speculate they will do this:
Zen 1: Ryzen launch, we understand what these chips are capable of.
Zen 2: A refresh of Ryzen that can clock higher (5ghz?) and has slightly higher IPC, but still 14nm based.
Zen 3: A 7nm version of Ryzen, using the best of Zen 1 and Zen 2 core design to achieve a favorable performance and efficiency gain.

That is all speculation, but we do know that Zen 3 will have 7nm transistors, and Zen 2 will come out in 2018, Zen 3 in late 2019, or 2020.
 

At the rate of improvement of AMD's chips, and the efficiency of the 7nm transistors they plan to use, they will be able to make faster chips than intel when Zen 3 launches, unless intel can increase their IPC by more than just 15% (actual IPC improvement, not higher clocks, or more cores.)

AMD's multi-threading is also better than intels, so if they can match intel in clock speeds, and IPC, they will pull ahead with the fastest chips on the market, since their version of hyperthreading scales better than current gen intel.

[JoostinOnline]

20 hours ago, DrMikeNZ said:

In 3 years when they release new CPU's, your motherboard may have degraded to the point that it is near failure anyway,

What kind of shitty motherboards are you buying that can't even make it 3 years?

[Fred Flintstone]

2 minutes ago, He_162 said:

Yes, the next two generations of AMD CPU's and APU's will run on AM4.
Zen 1: Ryzen launch, we understand what these chips are capable of.
Zen 2: A refresh of Ryzen that can clock higher (5ghz?) and has slightly higher IPC, but still 14nm based.
Zen 3: A 7nm version of Ryzen, using the best of Zen 1 and Zen 2 core design to achieve a favorable performance and efficiency gain.
That is all speculation, but we do know that Zen 3 will have 7nm transistors, and Zen 2 will come out in 2018, Zen 3 in late 2019, or 2020.

Nice, then investing in AMD is a fairly good decision. Thank y'all for the info ...

[DrMikeNZ]

5 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

What kind of shitty motherboards are you buying that can't even make it 3 years?

Asus Sabertooth X79.

[JoostinOnline]

4 minutes ago, DrMikeNZ said:

Asus Sabertooth X79.

Well aside from some physical damage (including electrical surges), motherboards don't usually go bad unless they're very poorly made.  That's why you can still buy functioning 90's computers from a thrift store.

[DrMikeNZ]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

Well aside from some physical damage (including electrical surges), motherboards don't usually go bad unless they're very poorly made.  That's why you can still buy functioning 90's computers from a thrift store.

Damage was due to the thermal pads on the VRM degrading, causing the VRM to overheat and wear out. It still runs, but needs to be underclocked to prevent power throttling. The rest of the system is still fine.

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, DrMikeNZ said:

Damage was due to the thermal pads on the VRM degrading, causing the VRM to overheat and wear out. It still runs, but needs to be underclocked to prevent power throttling. The rest of the system is still fine.

Then the motherboard didn't degrade.  They used shitty thermal pads.  I'm sorry that happened, but it's not common.

[mariushm]

Modern hardware is more and more efficient.

For example, you had AM3/AM3+ processors with TDP of 95w and 125w (FX-8350 for example)  and now you have processors like Ryzen 7 1700 with TDP of 65w which is more powerful than FX 83xx series already. Just the 1700x or 1800x processors have tdp of 95w

 

VRMs on motherboards are also more efficient, producing less heat. On some motherboards with 6 or more phases, you don't even need heatsinks on the VRM. The cheaper 4+2 phase VRMs may require some additional cooling via a heatsink, IF you use 95w tdp processors.

 

Future processors will be even more energy efficient, the 65w tdp processors of today may be 45w or 55w tdp in a year or two.

 

As for longevity, the platform will last until everyone wants to use the next best thing, like DDR6 and maybe pci-e v4.0 (though i suspect socket am4 could support pci-e 4.0 when it becomes commonplace). And even afterwards, you'd still be able to buy processors for it.  So yeah, at least 10 years you should still be able to buy processors, though you may be inclined to buy some newer stuff.

For example, you can still buy AM3+ processors but AM4 has more performance and is more power efficient.

[He_162]

16 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Modern hardware is more and more efficient.

For example, you had AM3/AM3+ processors with TDP of 95w and 125w (FX-8350 for example)  and now you have processors like Ryzen 7 1700 with TDP of 65w which is more powerful than FX 83xx series already. Just the 1700x or 1800x processors have tdp of 95w

 

VRMs on motherboards are also more efficient, producing less heat. On some motherboards with 6 or more phases, you don't even need heatsinks on the VRM. The cheaper 4+2 phase VRMs may require some additional cooling via a heatsink, IF you use 95w tdp processors.

 

Future processors will be even more energy efficient, the 65w tdp processors of today may be 45w or 55w tdp in a year or two.

 

As for longevity, the platform will last until everyone wants to use the next best thing, like DDR6 and maybe pci-e v4.0 (though i suspect socket am4 could support pci-e 4.0 when it becomes commonplace). And even afterwards, you'd still be able to buy processors for it.  So yeah, at least 10 years you should still be able to buy processors, though you may be inclined to buy some newer stuff.

For example, you can still buy AM3+ processors but AM4 has more performance and is more power efficient.

All Ryzen processors are overclockable, so any of them can overheat a 4+2 phase VRM, but any 8 core can run a 6+2 phase VRM hot, you want a 8+4 phase VRM at least for the 8 cores.

Am4 motherboards will be considered "new" until Zen 3 arrives, in which case they will no longer be "future proof" and the AM4 socket will be replaced, probably by something like AM4+ or Am5.

[mariushm]

22 minutes ago, He_162 said:

All Ryzen processors are overclockable, so any of them can overheat a 4+2 phase VRM, but any 8 core can run a 6+2 phase VRM hot, you want a 8+4 phase VRM at least for the 8 cores.

Am4 motherboards will be considered "new" until Zen 3 arrives, in which case they will no longer be "future proof" and the AM4 socket will be replaced, probably by something like AM4+ or Am5.

The +2 / +4 is for the SOC .. so the +2 phases that can push dozens of amps into the processor are maybe pushing 10w+ (a few amps) for the usb 3 controllers and sata controllers in the processor. 

 

The number of phases is not indicative of quality.  More phases is smoother voltage (better for overclocking) but less efficient at low power consumption. Less phases means higher efficiency at low power but potential for higher heat generation (due to less surface area and higher currents per mosfet) ... but that's not an issue if you use high quality mosfets.

 

However motherboard manufacturers can also use cheaper lower efficiency mosfets but use more phases or phase doublers to make the board look better for amateurs who only count the components on the motherboards. Here's a good example, where you have a 4+3 VRM controller but they use it in 3+3 mode and use voltage doublers to make the VRM look like 6+3 :

 

It still works better than let's say a 4+whatever VRM simply because heat is spread over multiple mosfets but from a performance point of view it's not really equal to a 6+whatever phase VRM.

 

And to show how efficient modern processors are, here's a motherboard with 3+2 phase VRM and CHEAP mosfets and yet you'd still be able to use 8 core Ryzen processors and even some mild overclocking (though this motherboard truly isn't designed for OC)... showing it to point up that future processors will be even lower power:

 

 

 

So anyway the point is that no, you don't need 8 phase vrm for a 95w tdp processor, even with overclocking. A good 4phase vrm is enough, as long as it has some heatsink on it to spread the heat and keep the mosfets below 100c (they're usually rated for 125c or 150c)

 

 

[He_162]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

So anyway the point is that no, you don't need 8 phase vrm for a 95w tdp processor, even with overclocking. A good 4phase vrm is enough, as long as it has some heatsink on it to spread the heat and keep the mosfets below 100c (they're usually rated for 125c or 150c)

My 4+3 phase VRM can only get my CPU to 3.8ghz, any faster and it overheats, I'm not putting an ugly heatsink on my motherboard because the VRM is crap.

I also understand what you are trying to say, but the 8 phase boards are guaranteed to run any of the Ryzen CPU's well.

No need to explain how the VRM works in a thread about longevity anyway, we understand that future Zen based processors will clock higher, and some will run hotter, I'm sure, so we can assume if you want the high end 2 - 3 years from now (Zen 3) you'll also want a decent motherboard.