Has there ever been a bigger in-socket upgrade possibility than the A6-9500 to Ryzen 9 5950X?

[YoungBlade]

I've been thinking back on the AM4 platform since the AMD announcements about AM5 earlier this week, and it's got me realizing just how amazing of a platform it really was. Not only did it span 5 years of new processors, but AMD eventually ended up giving support for the newest chips to the oldest chipsets. This means that many people who invested in the AM4 platform at the start in 2017 could upgrade today to one of the best CPUs on the market.

 

It got me thinking about just how insane it would be to upgrade from an early, Bristol Ridge AM4 CPU - namely, the $99 A6-9500 to a top-of-the-line 5950X in 2022 for about $600 when factoring in a decent dual-tower cooler - which might be around the cost of the original build plus monitor and peripherals back in 2017. Basically, instead of building a new, entry-level PC, such a user could just drop in an upgrade, assuming the original motherboard can handle the chip, and get something insanely faster.

 

For those who don't know, the A6-9500 was a Bristol Ridge APU with "2" cores and 2 threads running at 3.5GHz base, 3.8GHz boost - it is 28nm Excavator architecture, and thus features a single Bulldozer module for the CPU portion. It scores around 135 points in Cinebench R15 multi-core. The 5950X scores about 275 points... for single core, and 4,365 for multi-core. So in that test, the 5950X is over 32 times more powerful. I can't find any head-to-head comparisons of these two CPUs, probably because it'd be pointless, but it is plausible that someone could actually make that kind of an upgrade.

 

Has such a thing ever been possible before now? To get a 32-fold increase from an in-socket upgrade?

 

I know Intel's LGA 775 platform was pretty impressive back in the day, supporting a large range of CPUs, but I don't think going from a single-core Celeron 420 at 1.6GHz to a Core 2 Quad QX 9770 is nearly as big of a jump, even if it is a huge one. Same goes for any of the other AMD and Intel sockets that I can think of. I can't find any other platforms that have that sort of disparity between the fastest and slowest options.

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

but it is plausible that someone could actually make that kind of an upgrade.

Not really. They'd have to have bought the shittiest CPU possible but also a very good (expensive) motherboard that also happens to be one of the X370 boards that actually supports current gen chips properly, and then they'd still miss out on PCIe 4.0. It's theoretically a big jump, but there's little to no chance someone would be in a position to actually do it. 

[SignatureSigner]

As long as you don't mind your vrms having a little bit of a toasty time

[PDifolco]

Haha, I don't think the crappy mobo used for the A6-9500 will survive long to a 5950X, or maybe throttle it back 50%...

[YoungBlade]

2 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Not really. They'd have to have bought the shittiest CPU possible but also a very good (expensive) motherboard that also happens to be one of the X370 boards that actually supports current gen chips properly, and then they'd still miss out on PCIe 4.0. It's theoretically a big jump, but there's little to no chance someone would be in a position to actually do it. 

1 minute ago, PDifolco said:

Haha, I don't think the crappy mobo used for the A6-9500 will survive long to a 5950X, or maybe throttle it back 50%...

2 minutes ago, SignatureSigner said:

As long as you don't mind your vrms having a little bit of a toasty time

What makes you think that plenty of B350 boards from 2017 can't handle a stock Ryzen 9 5950X?

 

The 5950X only draws 142W at stock - the same as the 5800X, 5900X, and 3900X. You can see from this video by Hardware Unboxed that boards like the Asrock AB350M Pro4 can actually handle the 3900X (which again, has the same power draw as the 5950X) and only lose a small amount of performance. And that same AB350M Pro4 even supports the 5950X today, thanks to a BIOS update.

I'm not saying this is ideal. I'm saying that it's possible, and that it's pretty insane that it even is possible.

[RollinLower]

arguably maybe something like x99?

 

low end would be a Xeon E5 1603 V4, with 4 cores and 8 threads at 2,8Ghz

 

high end would be the 22 core 44 thread Xeon E5 2699 V4.

 

i admit that this is all non-consumer hardware though, and shouldn't really be compared to something like a consumer AM4 platform.

[Moonzy]

41 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

They'd have to have bought the shittiest CPU possible but also a very good (expensive) motherboard that also happens to be one of the X370 boards that actually supports current gen chips properly

reminds me of that time AMD allowed FX9590 to fit into any AM3+ socket and lower end boards gets fried if you do so

 

[Fasauceome]

58 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

They'd have to have bought the shittiest CPU possible but also a very good (expensive) motherboard that also happens to be one of the X370 boards that actually supports current gen chips properly

Well, it's not too unrealistic. I knew some folks that did opt for a Ryzen 3 or even these A series CPUs for the sake of a big upgrade in the future. AMD's promise of a full 4 years of socket support was a big boon for this type of "save now and upgrade later" consumer.

 

B350 and X370 motherboards with a proper heat sink were around, even if the early motherboards were rather crappy in general. Still, I'm sure someone out there has opted for a real shitty CPU up front and finally got the means to pull off a huge jump to 5000 series. Also keep in mind the 5700X3D, which appears to be a gem in terms of undervolting and sips power.

 

While not as absolutely impressive of a leap, my girlfriend has a prime X570 P and Ryzen 3 2200G. A horrible mismatch to be sure (mobo cost 4x the CPU) but with the goal of an upgrade in mind, and a 5950X is definitely on the table. From first gen to 5000 series all in one upgrade, that's really satisfying for the part of my brain that likes shiny toys.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

Well, it's not too unrealistic. I knew some folks that did opt for a Ryzen 3 or even these A series CPUs for the sake of a big upgrade in the future. AMD's promise of a full 4 years of socket support was a big boon for this type of "save now and upgrade later" consumer.

 

B350 and X370 motherboards with a proper heat sink were around, even if the early motherboards were rather crappy in general. Still, I'm sure someone out there has opted for a real shitty CPU up front and finally got the means to pull off a huge jump to 5000 series. Also keep in mind the 5700X3D, which appears to be a gem in terms of undervolting and sips power.

I think you're missing most of my point. You'd have to happen to have one of the decent 300 boards that properly supports new chips and you'd still miss out on PCIe 4.0. Also, I think an A6 chip is beyond "really shitty". 

2 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

While not as absolutely impressive of a leap, my girlfriend has a prime X570 P and Ryzen 3 2200G. A horrible mismatch to be sure (mobo cost 4x the CPU) but with the goal of an upgrade in mind, and a 5950X is definitely on the table. From first gen to 5000 series all in one upgrade, that's really satisfying for the part of my brain that likes shiny toys.

That is... a fuckin wack way to do things. If she wants CPU perf she would have gotten far more out of a decent mobo and a much better CPU. If she doesn't then the 5950X wouldn't be on the table to begin with. 

I guess my main point is that an A6 should never have existed for the AM4 platform, and it's unrealistic to praise the ability to jump to a 5950X as that's not a practical use case. The amount of variables in hardware and personal choice and reasoning is too high. And then there's still the caveat of some modern features not being supported. 
 

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, Zando_ said:

That is... a fuckin wack way to do things. If she wants CPU perf she would have gotten far more out of a decent mobo and a much better CPU. If she doesn't then the 5950X wouldn't be on the table to begin with. 

The 2200G was a bargain from a friend so we went with it to start out. Build could have reallocated for some improved core count but this ended up being a good bargain

 

2 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

I guess my main point is that an A6 should never have existed for the AM4 platform

That's probably true. Not a thing wrong with those Zen based athlons for what they are intended for.

[Damascus]

When you can geta bargain bin 2200g, get some $40 b450 to go with it.  It's an incidental cost that would have transferred into a better gpu or RAM that would carry forward waaaaaayyy better.  Spend the nice mobo money when you need it.

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, Damascus said:

When you can geta bargain bin 2200g, get some $40 b450 to go with it.  It's an incidental cost that would have transferred into a better gpu or RAM that would carry forward waaaaaayyy better.  Spend the nice mobo money when you need it.

Well the other hurdle was a white motherboard. My first consideration was B350 Arctic from MSI but they're pretty rare.

 

Prime was on sale at the time so I decided to splurge. Plus the beefed out VRM lets me OC the CPU like a champ.