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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tamalero - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
Its Pentium 4 vs Athlon X2 all over again.urmom - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
IDK, I runn all core on my 3900x @4.4Ghz.Irata - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Their performance / W comparison is based on results vs. power use, so perfectly valid. Does not really matter at what clock speed each CPU ran if it was at their best (stock).As for there only being CB shown - yes, that is indeed only one case. Wish they had included more.
HollyDOL - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
I remember seeing some reviews mentioning power hog chipset on AMD side pretty much nullifying any advantage they gain on pure CPU. Ie. while cpu was more efficient platform itself in the end was less... Is that still an issue?Targon - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Because you can run the third generation Ryzen processors on first or second generation motherboards, the issue of high motherboard power draw can be avoided, and you only lose PCIe 4.0 speeds. I am running my Ryzen 3900X on an Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, no problems at all, and no need for an active cooler for the chipset.evernessince - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
@HollyDOLThe difference between these CPUs is over a 100w, not 15. Simple math tells me the chipset is not going to make up the difference even if it was running at it's max of 15w.
In addition, no one said you had to use the X570 chipset with this processor. If you don't need PCIe 4.0, go with a cheaper motherboard. If you do AMD is the only choice right now .
yannigr2 - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
People started understanding that frequency is not everything when Pentium 4 was still selling. More than 15 years have passed since then.Oliseo - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
AMD has better IPC than Intel. Intel needs those high clock speeds to keep up.Performanc per watt, Intel are getting obliterated.
(i9 9900k owner, I have no dog in any fight, but i like to stick to facts)
alufan - Monday, November 11, 2019 - link
omg still folks dont get it the AMD chip does as well as or in many cases better at a lower clock and lower voltage that means it uses its power more efficiently to do virtually or in some cases more of the same work whats so difficult about that to understand?unixguru88 - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Given that a core count race seems to be the new Mhz race, what type of casual everyday programs can we expect to take advantage of 16/32 or more cores? Are there any game engines that can meaningfully use 32 cores? I can seet browsers taking advantage of high core counts trivially by being able to remain performant with many tabs of JavaScript heavy pages open. What else could potentially use 32 or more cores?