Intel Innovation 2022 - Raptor Lake Announced, on shelves October 20

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

I do have a fairly high-end motherboard aswell as far as B550 goes, but i never bought it for it's amazing overclocking capabilities or myriad of USB ports. Pretty much the only reason was the fact it has a temperature sensor header and i can set the BIOS to use that sensor to run all my fans. (water loop) I fully knew i wouldn't get any performance benefit or more overclocking headroom out of it. Sadly many people think a $700 motherboard is needed when you don't want to kneecap your CPU.

 

I agree that the overall entry point of motherboard seems to rise more and more. But to really have a good understanding of a platforms entry point we need to await the more budget options to appear. And i don't mean cheap X670. I mean B650.

 

Tbh i'm not even looking for feature parity. Both Intel's and AMD's budget-tier (B-series) motherboards have everything a "normal user" would need.

 

Just a few examples: Who still uses more than 1 GPU? Who uses more than 1 PCIe expansion card in general? Who needs more than 1 PCIe 4.0 storage device? The list goes on. Most of the X-series features have next to no benefit for a standard gaming-PC.

I think my thing is with the NVME storage thing that bothers me

Computers used to (still do) come with half a dozen or more full speed sata drives. 
ALL my computers I have expanded the storage through their life spans in one way or the other. It is kind of upsetting with how NVMe is implemented on modern boards how little expansion is actually there. In 4 years, why not get a good new SDD that is twice as fast and just plug it in, get the full performance, and not have to deal with migrating/reformating, just have it as a storage drive for games that in 4 years will be using direct storage API calls.

Also I use more then one PCIe expansion cards
GPU, Soundcard, network card that gives me wifi, and once in the past, a PhysX card/folding at home card.
Heck today I feel like thats a great thing to have, get a new gpu, keep the old one in and fold with it still. 
Capture cards a big market. 
Or now in the times of limited NVME slots on a mobo being one or two, a pcie card just to give more nvme slots. 
Some people need to add serial  ports for ingesting test equipment data.

All of this expandablity is why ATX is a good standard and you could find it all on mid tier boards. 

[tim0901]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

I think my thing is with the NVME storage thing that bothers me

Computers used to (still do) come with half a dozen or more full speed sata drives. 
ALL my computers I have expanded the storage through their life spans in one way or the other. It is kind of upsetting with how NVMe is implemented on modern boards how little expansion is actually there. In 4 years, why not get a good new SDD that is twice as fast and just plug it in, get the full performance, and not have to deal with migrating/reformating, just have it as a storage drive for games that in 4 years will be using direct storage API calls.

Also I use more then one PCIe expansion cards
GPU, Soundcard, network card that gives me wifi, and once in the past, a PhysX card/folding at home card.
Heck today I feel like thats a great thing to have, get a new gpu, keep the old one in and fold with it still. 
Capture cards a big market. 
Or now in the times of limited NVME slots on a mobo being one or two, a pcie card just to give more nvme slots. 
Some people need to add serial  ports for ingesting test equipment data.

All of this expandablity is why ATX is a good standard and you could find it all on mid tier boards. 

This is all true - there are indeed many reasons why you would want more PCIe slots. But I also don't think it's incorrect to suggest that the vast majority of PC owners don't do this - being willing to upgrade a PC at all is already a niche interest in the grand scheme of things.

[starsmine]

18 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

This is all true - there are indeed many reasons why you would want more PCIe slots. But I also don't think it's incorrect to suggest that the vast majority of PC owners don't do this - being willing to upgrade a PC at all is already a niche interest in the grand scheme of things.

yea...
But 3.5mm jacks can and do wear out, do people really want to be spending 60 bucks for a new sound card or 250 bucks for a new mobo. 
Or when you get that new router that is wifi 7. Do you want to get a whole new mobo or just a 70 dollar expansion card(I move a lot so every house had a different situation for internet... 8 total times with this PC... CM storm scout and its handle OP).

just all computer users in the 80s and 90s just expanded their shit.
but those days are over. most users just want it to work and think upgrading means replacing everything, which... Is fair, the amount of investment to learn about it all is a lot if you don't have the fundamentals, which we actively design computers and software around so those fundamentals are not necessary as they are really an unnecessary wall to entry.

[Stahlmann]

2 hours ago, porina said:

I'll bite. What caught my eye on this statement wasn't more than one PCIe (presumably NVMe?) storage device, but focusing on 4.0? If a board maker has gone through the effort of putting in multiple M.2 connectors, I think it would be nice to start bringing the standard up to 4.0 support as a baseline in all but the lowest cost systems. Chipset connected is ok, doesn't have to all be CPU connected.

My point was not what's possible or what should be done. My argument was that the budget chipsets offer everything a standard user would need. For most people there is zero reason to even look at X or Z series motherboards. Somehow, a lot of people still buy them.

 

Your average gaming PC doesn't need a 2nd PCIe 16x device or more than 1 NVMe drive (heck, even one NVME is totally overkill for an average gamer as they're not noticeably faster than SATA III SSDs). The B-series chipsets still allow for more devices than what i listed, albeit not at full speed or the latest spec. Even if every 10th person still has a sound card or other expansion card, these devices likely don't even need 16x 4.0 bandwidth. And if you need 8 PCIe 4.0 drives for some reason, then obviously you're not a customer relevant to budget chipsets.

[Stahlmann]

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

I think my thing is with the NVME storage thing that bothers me

Computers used to (still do) come with half a dozen or more full speed sata drives. 
ALL my computers I have expanded the storage through their life spans in one way or the other. It is kind of upsetting with how NVMe is implemented on modern boards how little expansion is actually there. In 4 years, why not get a good new SDD that is twice as fast and just plug it in, get the full performance, and not have to deal with migrating/reformating, just have it as a storage drive for games that in 4 years will be using direct storage API calls.

Direct storage has been a topic for years now and we still have no game that actually uses it. And i personally don't buy stuff based on promised features. Most motherboards still have 6-8 sata plugs, so there's your connectivity. Still, most people won't notice a difference in day-to-day use between a SATA and PCIe 4.0 NVMe so i could argue that NVMe storage as a whole still isn't important to most people.

 

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

Also I use more then one PCIe expansion cards
GPU, Soundcard, network card that gives me wifi, and once in the past, a PhysX card/folding at home card.
Heck today I feel like thats a great thing to have, get a new gpu, keep the old one in and fold with it still. 

I never said no one uses more than 1 expansion card. But it's getting rarer and rarer.

 

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

Capture cards a big market.

For streamers or content creators maybe. Even though they seem like a lot of people, they're a very small part of the overall gaming community. Most people only watch streams, some stream themselves.

 

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

Or now in the times of limited NVME slots on a mobo being one or two, a pcie card just to give more nvme slots. 
Some people need to add serial  ports for ingesting test equipment data.

All of this expandablity is why ATX is a good standard and you could find it all on mid tier boards. 

And again, my argument was about the budget B-tier chipset motherboards and an average gamer's needs from a motherboard. Not a creator that needs heaps of fast NVMe storage or someone even more specialized who'd need a serial port for "testing equipment".

[porina]

35 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

My point was not what's possible or what should be done. My argument was that the budget chipsets offer everything a standard user would need.

I didn't closely follow the earlier discussion so I may have missed the flow there. But who is is mysterious "standard user"? I did specifically focus on storage for a reason, as I do feel it is not unreasonable for many users to consider upgrading storage throughout the life of a system. Doubt most would want to replace the existing storage so anything added would be extra. I haven't done a market analysis but my gut feeling is the price differential between SATA and NVMe isn't that great, at least for comparable performance tiers. SATA should be on the way out (including M.2 SATA), and we can't have all the nice things as long as developers still have to cater for the bottom of the barrel systems.

 

35 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

The B-series chipsets still allow for more devices than what i listed, albeit not at full speed or the latest spec. 

I do feel the mobo market has changed over the years now you mention it. I think the price escalation started just after Skylake or so. A reasonable Z chipset mobo then was not a challenge, and most enthusiasts wouldn't really consider lower boards. Now I do feel B chipsets have raised in features and are good enough for most, and Z chipset price premium isn't worth it for many. Without going over it again, was this part of your earlier discussion? Still, one selling point of PCs are upgrade potential, even if many users wont need to make use of it, it is nice to have some options there. Talk of reduced internal expandability might suit laptops and SFF builds, but for anyone still using a large tower case that's not a selling point.

 

I used Z above but equally applies to AMD X chipsets, but didn't use it since a possible confusion point would be Intel X chipsets also. I've long felt higher end systems deserve HEDT platform features and don't really belong in the mainstream.

[tim0901]

5 hours ago, starsmine said:

But 3.5mm jacks can and do wear out, do people really want to be spending 60 bucks for a new sound card or 250 bucks for a new mobo.

 

Or when you get that new router that is wifi 7. Do you want to get a whole new mobo or just a 70 dollar expansion card(I move a lot so every house had a different situation for internet... 8 total times with this PC... CM storm scout and its handle OP).

There's this little-known standard that's been floating around the PC industry for a few years now that can solve all of this, it's called Universal Serial Bus. You may have heard of it?

 

No, I wouldn't want to spend $250 when my motherboard's headphone jack dies. That would be stupid - I never use the headphone jack on my PC. I use Bluetooth headphones like the rest of the population. But even if I didn't, it would still be ridiculous to spend even $60 on an expansion card given I could just spend $10 on a USB adapter.

The same goes for WIFI - just get a dongle. USB 3.0's 5Gbit/s of throughput is more than fast enough for any WIFI connection you're going to achieve in the real world, let alone a modern 3.2 Gen2 2x2 or whatever the fuck they call it these days port. Sure, WIFI dongles are generally not quite as fast as expansion cards thanks to their smaller antennas, but realistically if you need super fast speeds then you should really be using ethernet (even if over powerline) anyway. For general usage it'll be just fine.

 

The vast majority of expansion options are available these days via a USB port - a convenience that everyone's very much used to at this point when it comes to laptops (#donglemasterrace) but then conveniently ignores/forgets when it comes to desktops. You don't need PCIe to add most of this functionality, it's just one of the options. The only true exceptions I can think of are dedicated accelerator cards - Apple's Afterburner card for example - as the drivers for those sorts of cards probably just won't be able to handle the card being installed in an eGPU enclosure. But how many people have the need for one of those?

[Shzzit]

If your gonna get an 13900k, which motherboard would you guys suggest for good overclocking thats 2-4 hundred bucks?  I wanted a Hero, but thats 6-700. 

[hishnash]

On 9/30/2022 at 3:33 PM, tim0901 said:

The only true exceptions I can think of are dedicated accelerator cards - Apple's Afterburner card for example - as the drivers for those sorts of cards probably just won't be able to handle the card being installed in an eGPU enclosure. But how many people have the need for one of those?

There is nothing theoricaly wrong with running these in an eGPU but the bandwidth limitation of going from 24lanes to 4 lanes would make it realy pointless the same is true however for any workstation task on a GPU... There are some technical (legacy package) features of PCIe that you cant use over TB (for good reason).

PCIe devices have the option of deploying a code bundle onto the cpu (before your OS boots!) as part of the PCIe init they can provide code to the cpu to run... most UEFI bioses run this code directly not even in a little mini VM this is why some secure boot systems lock down the machine even if all you do is change a single PCIe device.  For good reason TB devices are not (supposed) to be able to deliver such binary init code bundles to the cpu.