AMD recently introduced its new Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series processors and AM5 socket. On the other hand, since the day it was released in our country, the new one joined us while we could not even adapt to this series due to the problems experienced in AM4 motherboard stocks and compatible processors.
That’s why we decided to take a closer look at the B650 and X670 motherboards, their features and differences in order to close the gap more quickly. Therefore, we are also focusing on processors with the new Zen 4 architecture.
What does AMD offer with Zen 4 and AM5?
Let’s start with the Zen 4 processors first. AMD is now fully adapting to PCIe 5.0 in this new generation. There are 28 PCI lanes in total, of which 16 are used for a single x16 PCIe slot. Of course, it is also possible to see it as 2×8.
Of course, it should be noted that both 4.0 and 5.0 technologies are supported on the PCIe connection side. Because users who want PCIe 5.0 have no choice but to turn to X670E motherboards for now. However, this situation will change in the future and the options will increase.
In addition, the new Zen 4 series has 8 more general-purpose lines. We see that at least 4 of them are reserved for M.2 type SSDs (gen 5.0). The other 4 lines are left to the choice of motherboard manufacturers. But in general, we predict that it will appear as Thunderbolt 4 (Intel Goshen Ridge JHL8440) and USB 4 (ASMedia ASM4242).
On the other hand, we know that integrated GPUs are used in the new Ryzen 7000 series (those who want to prefer these chips instead of APUs can click on the link above). In this way, new AM5 socket motherboards will also support HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.0. In addition, there will be 4 different ports for image transfer.
Additional four USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps and at least 1 Type-C output) and at least one USB 2.0 connection point is placed. The remaining 4 PCIe lines will be used to connect the chip. Of course, as we mentioned, at this point, although the processor supports PCE-Express 5.0, the chips come with PCIe 4.0. Accordingly, the result you will get will be in Gen 4 quality.
AMD is known to be working with ASMedia to create a single chipset called Promontory 21 in AM5. This chip offers 16 PCI-Express lanes. Four of them are used to connect to the CPU via Gen 4 as we said before.
On the X670 and X670Es, the secondary chipset is connected to the primary chipset. So it has no direct connection with the processor. This means that the other four lanes are used in the primary chipset, leaving eight free PCIe lanes. So the secondary chipset has 12 available PCIe lanes.
So here we see some room left for motherboard manufacturers to do whatever they want. For example, ASRock prefers 8 SATA ports at this point. But in general, we see that other manufacturers prefer 6 pieces each.
To summarize, B650 series motherboards will have a total of eight available PCIe 4.0 lanes and four PCIe 3.0 or SATA (6 Gbps) connections. The X670 and X670E series motherboards will have 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes and up to 8 PCIe 3.0 or SATA (6 Gbps) connections.
What do you think about this issue? Don’t forget to share your views with us in the comments!