AMD Q4: 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, Threadripper Up To 32-Core 3970X, Coming November 25th
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTRX40: More High-End Motherboards for TR3
The new sTRX4 socket will be paired with a TRX40 chipset – a design that AMD says comes from an in-house team and built on GlobalFoundries 14nm. The new chipset, updated from the previous X399 in this space and even updated from the X570 in the consumer space, is the other half in the CPU-to-chipset bandwidth story. By using a PCIe 4.0 x8 link, AMD is removing almost any practical bandwidth limitation downstream from the CPU.
The new TRX40 chipset will come with a degree of modularity.
From the chipset, we can see motherboard manufacturers afforded a full PCIe 4.0 x8 slot, up to another x8 lanes as two x4 connections or further bifurcated, or instead of those bifurcated lanes, either four or eight more SATA ports. That’s 8 SATA ports on top of the four already present on the chipset.
So I like these modular systems. It allows motherboard manufacturers to go crazy with offering potential systems. For example:
| Potential TRX40 Variants | |||||||
| AnandTech | CPU | Chipset | |||||
| TRX40 SATA Powerhouse 20 drives |
x48 for PCIe slots | x8 for downlink | 8x SATA from options | x8 for dual NVMe | 8x SATA from options | 4x SATA from chipset | |
| TRX40 NVMe Powerhouse 18+ drives |
x48 for PCIe slots | x8 for downlink | dual NVMe from options | x8 for dual NVMe | dual NVMe for options | - | |
So that would be a motherboard with x16/x16/x16 (or x16/x8/x16/x8) in terms of PCIe 4.0 slots, a single x8 slot for a pair of NVMe drives, and then TWENTY SATA ports, all directly supported on the system without any additional controllers.
If SATA isn’t your thing, then the same arguments could be made for 48 PCIe lanes and six PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe slots, making a total of 18 high capacity PCIe 4.0 drives. The fact that AMD has put more PCIe lanes into their high end desktop platforms, plus this amount of modularity, wants me to play Dr. Frankenstein.
To be fair, those ideas are a bit extreme. Motherboard manufacturers will likely have to partition off a few lanes for 10 GbE networking, perhaps Thunderbolt, or maybe something more exotic like a RAID controller, or an RGB controller.
As noted in some of our previous news posts, motherboard manufacturers have been slowly leaking names of their TRX40 products. At this point in time we have seen mentions of the following:
- ASRock TRX40 Creator
- ASRock TRX40 Taichi
- GIGABYTE TRX40 AORUS XTREME
- ASUS Prime TRX40 Pro
- ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme
- MSI TRX40 Creator
- MSI TRX40 Pro 10G
- MSI TRX40 Pro Wi-Fi
We expect details of some of these to perhaps be announced today, or on the 25th when the CPUs come to market. GIGABYTE has even been showing previews of their motherboards on social media, with one showing an obscene number of power phases, and we’ve seen images of boards with 8 SATA ports. We’ll have our usual motherboard overview article up on that date, and we’ll be looking at reviews of these motherboards through the new year.
I will address comments about potential TRX80/WRX80 motherboards which have been put into the ether as potential other chipsets being launched. When asked, AMD said that the only chipset they are launching today is TRX40.
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Total Meltdowner - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
I've done it like twice. That's pretty good, though. May do it again here with the 3700x if the price drops a bit. Will replace my 1800x.proflogic - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
That moving line for HEDT is kind of lame. Now it costs even more to get more memory channels and/or PCIe lanes.Are core counts increasing to nonsense levels on AM4? Can they even be served well with the amount of I/O and memory throughput available to them?
Spunjji - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Not really. A little more, but not a lot more.The answer to your question can be found on this site. The short answer is: yes.
The long answer is: some tasks benefit from more memory bandwidth, but only if they're bound by that limitation in the first place. They're the sort of tasks you'd only do on a HEDT platform in the first place.
WaltC - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Nice write up! It's interesting to watch Intel drop further and further behind. 2020 should be a blowout year for AMD. Surprising that anyone is still buying Intel's old, massively security-hole-punched architectures, made on the old 14nm process, to boot. Processing performance, not MHz, has been the name-of-the-game since 1999. Hard to believe that in 2019 there are people who still don't understand what that means...;) I always thought it was rather elementary.imaheadcase - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Umm, considering holes was fixed, and 14nm process means nothing to end users they are doing good. Intel is still a great CPU, it makes sense for lots of people. Upgrade path to AMD is not exactly cheap if you already have intel cpu..you got to get new mobo/ram as added cost to going amd.Mhz is still king for flat game performance as well.
Sounds like you are just a uninformed on how things actually work in the real world.
Korguz - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
" Mhz is still king for flat game performance as well. " not really.. ipc is also just as important.and right now, clock for clock, amd wins there. for the most part, ryzen is pretty close to intel even with the clock speed disadvantage... imagine if ryzen were at the same clocks as intel...milkywayer - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Yup because we should all cpu buying decisions based on what cpu offers an extra frame or two when most games on almost all mod tier cpus can do 75 to 100fps.14nm is ancient and Intel is milking it thanks to fangirls who were happily buying dual core i7s on mobile until AMD came in and kicked them in the rear and finally made 6 core cpus the new low tier norm.
Count Rushmore - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Don't be harsh... according to them, human eyes can only see 4 cores & PC is for gaming only. All Those multi-billions $ games apparently developed exclusively on i7 procskgardas - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
"Umm, considering holes was fixed," -- are you sure? To me it looks like Intel still sell more CPUs with holes not fixed (in silicon) than those fixed. Honestly Intel message about this is all big mess...haukionkannel - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
It is all about pricing! Intel has huge r&d and their cpus Are really good, if the price is ok!