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
My next system very may be a Threadripper one... wow.wow&wow - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
How to turn off the annoying video at bottom-right?John_M - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
I'm not seeing it so Pihole must be working.neblogai - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
A correction may be needed- 3000G seems to be a Raven2 (released for embedded market this spring, and now also going into laptops as 3200U), not Picasso die. AMD.com lists 3000G as 14nm (RR, Raven2), not 12nm (Picasso). And also, Robert Hallock confirms it is 14nm here: https://youtu.be/NRSUYBjlBXw?t=4072DoomsDayCJ - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
I don't think the 3000G is Zen+. AMD lists it as a 14nm part and thats Zen not Zen+ (12nm) right?https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-athlon-300...
rya - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
do we know of 3000G is actually 12nm Zen+? AMD"s website says its 14nm: < https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-athlon-300... >for reference, here's the 3400G, which you will see says 12nmm FinFet: < https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-34... >
I realize for $49 you can't have it all, but i'm still hoping its 12nm so people can squeeze a little extra out of it and enjoy even lower power consumption.
john.doe.maniac77 - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
I am planning to buy Ryzen 3950X post launch, but i am planning to get X570 motherboard early, i just want to know will the x570 board work readily when i install 3950X ? since AMD has told a BIOS update is required, will i be getting a display atleast to update the BIOS? (OR) will manufacturers update the BIOS and re-launch the same motherboard, for this i may have to wait......not sure how this will go ?Slash3 - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
3950X support has been baked in to all X570 boards since July (earlier, actually, if you include eval systems). The new updates will simply flash the most current microcode and AGESA optimizations. No worries if you plan to buy a board before receiving a 3950X CPU.dwade123 - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
Overpriced.Korguz - Monday, November 11, 2019 - link
go look at intels cpus if you want overpriced :-)