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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

> New AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Desktop Processors Bring More Performance to Legacy Socket AM4 Platforms

Wait, what? New chips for the old platform? I wonder what the driving factor even is to compel them to produce these?

Motherboard prices have increased pretty significantly. First comment on this hardforum post a entitled: AMD and Intel motherboard prices skyrocket past surging inflation rates thanks to 35-40% ASP increases[1]:

"Motherboard prices is why I haven't upgraded my CPU. More important things going on right now."

[1]https://hardforum.com/threads/amd-and-intel-motherboard-pric...

AM5 mobos are more expensive than Threadripper x399 mobos when they were new...

Hope AM5 is the last such an obsolete 2-channel memory platform. Was it 2004-2005 as we got 2-channel memory with single or first dual-core CPUs? Now we have 16 cores with... still 2-channel memory. Looking forward to 4-channel AM6 socket.

Memory bound software like OpenFOAM saturates memory bandwidth already on 6-8 cores with 2-channel memory [1]. So actually we should have got 4-channel with first 16-cores CPUs long ago.

[1] https://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/hardware/198378-openfoam-b...

Eh. I don't think it's that bad.

Something is always the bottleneck. On these 2-channel modern CPU, it's usually the concurrency of software; sometimes the throughput of the CPU cores; and very occasionally memory bandwidth, that sounds like a reasonably balanced system which the right amount of resources committed to each area.

> Something is always the bottleneck.

Insightful thought.

> Looking forward to 4-channel AM6 socket.

More like AM5r2, AM5 has a few ID pins reserved.

> Wait, what? New chips for the old platform? I wonder what the driving factor even is to compel them to produce these?

A lot of people are already using AM4 socket and might not want to do a socket upgrade, but want a new CPU.

Also, I seem to remember AMD made a commitment before/at AM4 launch that they would support it for at least N years, but don't remember the details about that. Maybe that could be related?

Nope, AMD promised to support AM4 socket until 2020.

AM4 came out in 2016, supporting it with new CPUs for over 7 years is unheard of in the PC industry.

And it earns them a lot of good will, and sales.

I might buy one for one of my old desktops that's still kicking around as a server. 16 cores isn't something to shake a stick at!

These new models don't include a 16 core part though?

>7 years is unheard of in the PC industry

LOL. Intel's LGA-775 which span support for CPUs from single core Pentium 4, to dual core Core-2-Duo, to quad core Core-2-Quad would like to have a word with you.

And 7 years back in those days was equivalent to an etternity in today's tech progress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_775

Kind of - early socket 775 motherboards don't support later Core CPUs.

Not sure if the Mainboard Chipsets initially released with the Pentium iv supported the later released core2 quads... Which is actually the case for the am4, where even the cheapest, oldest Chipset (a320) can support the newest am4 CPU, as long as the MB maker provides a bios update.

Sure, but the technological leaps from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Duo and then to Quad that Intel made in those days over 15 years ago, were massive enough to justify the limitation of the same chipset from the Pentium 4 era not supporting the later multi-core Core CPUs, compared to the Ryzen 2-3-4 jumps that AMD made in a similar timeframe which aren't as radically different to each other.

And since then has an Intel socket supported more than one revolution of a tick-tock CPU generation?

Genuine question because I've now built several desktops in the Intel 'Core iX' era and have never truly had on opportunity to reuse a mobo.

Of course not, but I was only pointing out that 7 years of socket support is not unheard of as grandparent claimed.

> LGA-775 which span support for CPUs from single core Pentium 4, to dual core Core-2-Duo, to quad core Core-2-Quad

Mechanically inserting and actually running is a different things.

Same chips, different binning. Zero design effort and almost zero QA effort went into those new products, and it lets them fine tune their margins.

AM5 is a more expensive upgrade, not only are the motherboards more expensive, they also take DDR5 and the overall performance improvement is not so meaningful. So, for many people who already have an AM4 PC, AM5 is not yet a justifiable upgrade.

There may also be some hesitance since while AMD technically did support AM4 for longer than the promised duration, they tried to pull out of it halfway through and overall it was kind of a mess for a while in terms of compatibility with chipset revision.

They are produced on an older processing node than the AM5 lineup. So if AMD switched to only produce AM5 CPUs and Radeon 7000 graphics chips, the old factories would lack something worthwhile to produce. Therefore AMD can negotiate much lower rates for using those older facilities, making it viable to continue production as long as the products sell. There aren't any truly new chips, it is just new binning and marketing of the old models.

I suspect these old fabs will keep going, and make chipsets instead of the main chip, at some point.

AMD historically supported their sockets a lot longer than Intel's two years. Recently they moved to AM5 and only had a single generation on a threadripper socket. This greatly angered tech media and consumers, despite it still being better than Intel support.

Perhaps releasing new SKUs on the "old" platform is a way to bump up the numbers even more: "see we supported AM4 for 5+ generations!"

>> New chips for the old platform? I wonder what the driving factor even is to compel them to produce these?

I might upgrade my 2400G, but I'd want 8 cores in 65W which is sadly not an option.

> I might upgrade my 2400G, but I'd want 8 cores in 65W which is sadly not an option.

5700G is 8 cores, with graphics, 65w tdp, released in 2021. This release also includes the 5700 (no letters) with no graphics at 65w tdp. Looks like 5700X is also 65w tdp? Also, you can usually set a 65w power limit on a cpu with a higher tdp and get most of the performance.

It is actually an option: just activate the eco mode on your favorite 8 core SKU.

Milking their existing old node fab contracts until they are no longer useful.

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