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Comment by myself248 | Hacker News Reader

I built a gaming PC last fall, also Ryzen, but I picked it specifically because I know AMD likes to keep a CPU socket around a good long time. So really, my main goal was to buy a Socket AM4 motherboard, and then stuff a cheap CPU and some RAM into it.

Right now, it's low-end gaming, I got a 3200G because the integrated graphics are adequate for the games I play. The PCIe slot sits empty, waiting.

In some years when AM5 comes out and AM4 chips get cheap, I'll look at the last/best of the breed and pick a new chip. It probably won't have integrated graphics, so at that time, I'll add a discrete GPU. I plan to have this motherboard and RAM for probably 15-20 years.

(Just like its predecessor, an AthlonX2 4850e, in an AM2+ board from 2008. Which I recently dropped a $30 Phenom into, and it's a relevant machine again, my workbench workhorse.)

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AMD has committed to supporting AM4 until 2020, but you still have a fantastic upgrade path to the 3950X 16C32T CPU and plenty of RAM.

A matching socket is not enought though, the motherboard has to support it too. If it's an older one it might not get a BIOS update for the newest generation, and/or the VRMs on cheaper boards might not be able to handle a 16 core chip.

Just an anecdotal observation. I bought a micro ATX MSI motherboard (a relatively niche product) together with my Ryzen 1700X way back when and they provide support for the latest Ryzen CPUs via bios updates. I'd be surprised if other more popular boards did not get updates.

So I can run the latest 3000 series with my current first gen AM4 board which is great. As you point out though the 16 and 32 core chips might be too power hungry for some boards.

Is there any confirmation if this means Ryzen 2 only or also Ryzen 3? Lots of the enthusiasts expect this to include the upcoming Ryzen 3, but the wording is very vague.

Most of what I've seen seems to indicate that Ryzen 3 will be AM4, with Ryzen 4 moving on, I'd be suprised not to see a shift to DDR5 at that time and usb3+thunderbolt in that generation in a couple years.

I would love to see an AM4 3600G and 3700G though, basically a 3600 or 3700 with the addition of a GPU chiplet. There are plenty of people out there that could use more CPU but don't need a discrete GPU for work.

I bet a lot of ITX builders would be ecstatic if that happens.

Absolutely...

Zen 3 == am4, zen 4 == am5 (next)

Oh man, this exactly. I'd happily add more heatsink and bump my APU TDP by 20-30 watts, rather than get similar performance by stuffing a whole mountain more hardware in a PCIe slot with its own TDP somewhere around 60-100 watts because of all the bus transceivers and other overhead.

As I understand it, they aim the high-TDP parts at the enthusiast/gamer/workstation market where a discrete GPU is just a given, so there'll probably never be a 3700G. Darn!

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