The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE B550 Vision D
Aiming more towards content creators and resembling its Designaire models, the GIGABYTE B550 Vision D includes a mid-range set of features. Spearheading what the Vision D has to offer includes an Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 interface which powers the two Type-C ports on the rear panel, with two M.2 slots, four SATA ports, a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and two Intel-based Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Opting for a clean-cut aesthetic, the GIGABYTE B550 Vision D uses a black and white contrasting design with white heatsinks on an all-black PCB. Dominating the lower portion of the board are two full-length PCIe slots which operate at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, while the third full-length slot is locked at PCIe 3.0 x4. For storage is two M.2 slots with individual heatsinks with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the second slot at PCIe 3.0 x4, while for SATA devices, a total of four SATA ports are included. The B550 Vision D has impressive memory support with speeds up to DDR4-5400 supported out of the box, and a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB across four memory slots.
On what is a pretty stacked rear panel are two Thunderbolt/USB 3.2 G2 Type-C ports which include support for DisplayPort output due to the presence of an Intel Ridge Thunderbolt 3controller, with a further two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. For the leveraging of Ryzen APUs with integrated graphics, GIGABYTE has included a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 pair of video outputs, while an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface and a pair of Intel Gigabit Ethernet controllers make up the Vision D's networking capabilities. A Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec drives the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, while a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port allows users to use legacy peripherals.
The GIGABYTE B550 Vision D is an interesting board for a couple of reasons, some very positive and some a little confusing. Starting with what's good, it is advertised as featuring a robust 12+2 power delivery, with the inclusion of an Intel Titan Ridge controller for dual USB 3.2 G2 Type-C ports. It's also one of the best looking B550 models on the market and supports up to DDR4-5300 memory which is impressive. GIGABYTE's decision to opt for Gigabit LAN when cheaper boards include 2.5 GbE Ethernet is a tad confusing. It's also one of the only models, if not the only model to include Intel Gigabit as opposed to Realtek Gigabit Ethernet. The B550 Vision D also has a hefty price tag for a B550 model with an MSRP of $260, putting it as one of the most expensive B550 models on the market, but does benefit from Thunderbolt 3, and two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x8/x8.
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kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I'm kinda disappointed they ended up missing the opportunity to go PCI-E 4 for the CPU to GPU link. With 2 10gbs USB ports, 2 5gbs USB ports, 10 flexible PCI-E lanes that can be NVME/ Sata ports or add on controllers on the chipset there's plenty of bandwidth there to be bottlenecked by a 4x PCI-E 3 link to the CPU. Going PCI-E 4 would make this somewhat less of a bottleneck and could support for example 2 NVME PCI-E 3.0 4X drives at full speed. The B350 more balanced in this way but sadly it was because the PCI-E off the chipset was only PCI-E 2. Hanging 16x lanes worth of things off a 4x link isn't great when they could have doubled that link bandwidth pretty easily.kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Edit 'm kinda disappointed they ended up missing the opportunity to go PCI-E 4 for the CPU to chipset linkIrata - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
That‘s X570. If you need the additional storage bandwidth, this is what you should go for.Alternatively there is the Aorus board that offers the 8x CPU plus 2x 4x PCIe 4 lanes for nVMe drives plus the PCIe 3 lanes from the chipset. That could be an alternative and eight PCIe 4 lanes for the GPU should be fine with the next gen GPU, except perhaps for the top of the line models.
On the plus side, with Ryzen you have four dedicated PCIe lanes from the CPU for nVMe (16+4+4 vs. 16+4 on Intel).
kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
The X570 goes whole hog on PCI-E 4 with PCI-4 hanging off the chipset too and it supports more PCI-E and SATA and USB devices hanging off the chipset so while the CPU to Chipset bandwidth is higher it's actually even more imbalanced between the combine possible bandwidth of devices possible off the chipset and the CPU to Chipset bandwidth.Going PCI-E 4 for just the CPU to Chipset on the B550 would have given the option to decrease that imbalance and one PCI-E 4x link shouldn't have driven the power up too high.
romrunning - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Then most people wouldn't buy X570 and get B550 instead as there wouldn't be much of a difference. That, and having less PCIe 4.0 stuff lowers the power requirements a bit.I personally held off on X570 because I knew I basically only needed the GPU and NVMe drive to be PCIe 4.0 for the most future-proof setup. I figure I'll buy new again when the new AM5 socket is released with Zen 4. Plus, some of the B550 boards have a Type-C front connector, which will go with the new ITX case I'm getting that has one on the front.
PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Yes, but then you need to add a separate PCIe controller on the chipset to handle just those 4 lanes. The market probably isn't big enough to make it worthwhile.Irata - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
The CPU to GPU link is 16x PCIe 4.0 - that has nothing to do with the chipset.Or did you mean something else?
a5cent - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
True, but would that not have brought back the requirement for an actively cooled chipset? That definitely contributes to cost, so it makes sense to cut that from the package.Personally, I'm happy that we've finally left PCIe 2.0 behind. Such chipsets still being sold in 2020 is horrific.
Lucky Stripes 99 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I was hoping to build several B550 APU mITX systems this week, but the lack of a compatible APU has stopped those plans. AMD's decision regarding to use a prior generation micro-architecture for its APUs in addition to their decision regarding AM4 firmware size limits are really colliding to create a missed opportunity here. If the iGPU in the Comet Lake processors was better, I'd be picking up H460 or Q470 boards right now instead.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
My understanding is that the firmware size limit wasn't created by AMD. The motherboard makers could always use firmware chips with a larger capacity. Intel doesn't have this problem since they only support one or two CPU generations per motherboard :-)