To be or not to be? Alder Lake or AM5 ?

[krusha]

Budget (including currency): $5000 USD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Content creation for DAW (digital audio workstation) some gaming and light video editing

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

Hey gang first time poster, I'm tender go easy. Long story short though if anyone has guidance on the longevity of motherboards that is what I'm after here as Intel historically changes  support, chipsets, and socket sizes every couple of iterations. I'm wondering if I wait for an AM5 socket if my motherboard will last me longer? I'm still rocking a top of the line 2016 intel PC with 8 cores 16 threads and placed a 3080ti in it so she'll do for a little bit longer if I need to wait another year or so but I am simply looking for knowledge/guidance regarding how future proof a Z690 chipset could be and/or if it makes more sense to wait for an AM5 mobo chipset combo instead. My goal is to be an early adopter of either board then nearing the end of its lifecycle to upgrade the CPU to whatever improvements they've made over the years. As an example the 5950x AM4 is quite a leap from early AM4 CPUs, granted I would imagine that just cause it's the same socket size that a mobo won't accept all chips because some of them are meant for the higher end CPUs that come out. So again I'm in the planning stages now and my end goal is to buy a whole new setup except my GPU but then hopefully like 4-5 years later be able to just upgrade the CPU. Is this a pipedream? I hate the idea of having to build a whole new PC when everything else is on point. Muchas gracias amigos. 

 

[Shimejii]

Your asking for something we dont exactly have the numbers on. Its a pretty pointless post if you are looking for advice about hardware thats not out for a while vs hardware out next week.

 

You have to go based on your programs, see how much your programs utilize cores and speed, see if theres any writeups on whats preferred. If its Moreso core based, honestly the 8 core should be fine until am5 comes out and you can see if theres enough of a performance jump to warrant the swap.

 

I dont think z690 is gonna be worth it for it but we still have to see how windows handles the Cores with the big little design.

[Levent]

Both chip makers are making big changes with their upcoming platforms and there are way too many unknowns about both platforms at this point. I would highly recommend waiting until at least Intel platform launches and reviews are in. AMD's upgradeability has been far far superior than Intel's any release since first am4 CPU was released and they hopefully know that it is a major selling point. It really is not a great time to be a early adapter.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

Intel is notorious for only doing two (technically 3 for 1150, but Haswell and Devil's Canyon were practically the same generation) generations of CPUs for a socket. The might change their ways, but I wouldn't hold your breath. 

 

AMD, on the other hand, is known for keeping a socket around for way longer than they probably should (AM3+ was around for like 5 years, and AM4 was around for about the same amount of time). That said, nothing is guaranteed, and each of these are subject to change. First gen AM4 boards, for example, didn't get official support outside of Ryzen 2000, and Ryzen 3000 support was hit or miss depending on the board (I was one of the people screwed out of Ryzen 3000 support on my X370 motherboard). 

 

We won't know any of this until AMD and Intel announce full breakdowns for how long everything will last, and all of this is subject to change. AMD is probably a better bet for support, but it's not guaranteed. They might do an AM5+, for instance, a year later and break support for older boards. 

[krusha]

Just now, Shimejii said:

Your asking for something we dont exactly have the numbers on. Its a pretty pointless post if you are looking for advice about hardware thats not out for a while vs hardware out next week.

 

You have to go based on your programs, see how much your programs utilize cores and speed, see if theres any writeups on whats preferred. If its Moreso core based, honestly the 8 core should be fine until am5 comes out and you can see if theres enough of a performance jump to warrant the swap.

 

I dont think z690 is gonna be worth it for it but we still have to see how windows handles the Cores with the big little design.

Hey thanks for making me feel welcome by saying my first post is pointless, real nice. Obviously we don't have the data to go on unreleased hardware I'm asking for educated speculation based on both companies history of backwards compatibility in chipsets/motherboards. Sorry I had to spell out the obvious. I said to go easy on me lol. 

[Jurrunio]

No one can say for certain of AM5's longetivity. On AM4 they had quite a compatiblity issue with Zen 2 because of BIOS chip capacity and each AM4 chipset supports up to 3 generations of CPUs. It's still longer than the 2 generation rule Intel follows, but I wouldnt put too much of a bet on AM5 being as long lasting as AM4. AMD didnt give a number for how many years AM5 will stay around either unlike AM4 (which is "at least 2020")

[LAwLz]

Nobody knows. Neither of these products have even been released, let alone any comments about long term support has been announced. 

 

Something worth mentioning is that while AM4 had a pretty long life, AMD cut support on the chipset level. As a result, newer AM4 processors do not work on older AM4 boards. As a result you only got, in a best case scenario, 3 generations of support on an AM4 motherboard. With Intel you typically get 2. But since AMD got a ton of backlash for overpromising on AM4 support my guess is that they will cut back support as well, to either 2 or 3 generations. 

 

In practice it won't really matter which platform you choose. If you ask me, buying products because of future potential/promise is a bad idea. Buy what you need, when you need it, and be prepared that you might need to replace everything in a couple of years. 

 

Also, if your budget really is 5 grand then I strongly suggest you don't blow it all on a pc, and if you are going to do that because you need a truckload of processing power (doesn't sound like you do) then you should look at the workstation product lines, not AM5 or Alder Lake. 

[krusha]

So basically to summarize the replies and thank you everyone for trying to be insightful, I should probably expect a 2-3 gen compatibility for either CPU and even that's going to be hard to forecast as the semiconductor space is going through such rapid changes rn. I will likely just wait another year and a half to see how these new mobos land and how well they talk to windows 11 plus how well the audio engines respond to each build. (I use bitwig for music). FYI for non-audiophiles as a rule of thumb for writing music higher clockspeeds can be more important to your whole session as the session can choke if one of your cores peaks. When dealing with audio, latency is super important for the quality of renders to avoid jitter which can produce audible artifacts.  

[8tg]

28 minutes ago, krusha said:

As an example the 5950x AM4 is quite a leap from early AM4 CPUs, granted I would imagine that just cause it's the same socket size that a mobo won't accept all chips because some of them are meant for the higher end CPUs that come out.

Some X370 motherboards, most notably the Asrock X370 Taichi can take the 5950x

Not all though, and it’s a little janky

 

This really depends on what you want your upgrade path to look like, because realistically with that budget you’re buying the first high end option and you don’t need to worry about upgrades.

In which case I would go intel this time around, since it’s like going to be an overtake generation for them trying to out-do AMD in performance at a similar price.

I don’t think it would upgrade too far, considering lga 1200 lasted like 2 generations, but it’s likely to see at least 1 more generation on lga 1700

AM5 however it depends on how AMD wants to market, originally they kept with AM4 for so long because it was just really cheap to do that and it kept motherboards in stock despite significantly lower production numbers. It was a very economical choice to run AM4 for multiple generations. Same reason Intel did it with LGA 775 years ago

But AMD is rolling in the money now and motherboard AIBs are a bit happier with them and they all have better production contracts now, they might not need to stay on AM5 like they did AM4