A scheme of the alleged Asus Prime X670-P WiFi motherboard for AMD’s next-generation Ryzen 7000-series ‘Raphael’ processors in AM5 packaging reveals primary schematics of the platform and confirms that AMD’s X670 chipset makes use of two similar chips. In the meantime, this explicit motherboard seems to make use of a PCIe swap to attach two chipsets to the CPU effectively. Nonetheless, this is probably not the case for all X670 motherboards.
Rumors concerning the dual-chip nature of AMD’s X670 platform for future Ryzen CPUs have been floating for a few months now. This week, ASRock and Gigabyte teased photos of their X670-based motherboards; these sneak peeks neither confirmed nor denied that AMD’s X670 makes use of two chips. However a schematic illustration of the alleged Asus Prime X670-P WiFi motherboard reveals two similar chips in locations the place the chipsets reside.
An nameless Baidu consumer (by way of HXL) posted the picture on the social community platform, which isn’t essentially the most dependable supply. Nonetheless, assuming that the picture is legit lends credence to the hypothesis about AMD’s X670 chipset leveraging two chips.
AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 7000-series CPUs primarily based on the corporate’s Zen 4 microarchitecture will make use of brand-new platforms with all-new AM5 sockets. As well as, they are going to characteristic DDR5 reminiscence, PCIe 5.0 interface, and plenty of different improvements. These new platforms would require new chipsets, and there might be three chipsets out there initially: AMD’s X670, X670E, and B650. AMD’s X670 reportedly depends on two similar chips, whereas B650 makes use of solely one among these chips. Whereas the performance of the 2 platforms ought to be comparable (or very shut), the previous will assist extra PCIe lanes, extra ports, richer I/O, and many others.
An avid reader would possibly ask the right way to join two chipsets to the CPU that presumably has 24 PCIe lanes in whole (x16 for a graphics card, x4 for an SSD, and x4 to connect with the chipset). Given the character of the PCIe interface, it’s doable to daisy chain two similar chips. An alternative choice is to make use of a PCIe swap, which is able to considerably improve prices and promise larger I/O efficiency.
An attention-grabbing factor concerning the {photograph} is that there’s a chip sitting between two X670 chips. We could speculate that this can be a PCIe swap meant to make sure higher I/O efficiency. Whereas the idea appears to be like logical, we should always contemplate that Asus’ Prime motherboards goal to be comparatively cheap. Including a PCIe swap to such a platform just isn’t rational except AMD desires its premium platforms to make use of such a swap to make sure most efficiency and reliability.
Since neither AMD nor Asus ever feedback on unreleased merchandise, we advocate taking this data with a grain of salt and ready for Computex, the place AMD will announce particulars about its next-generation platforms.
Whereas the knowledge contained within the slides (or excerpts from slides) corroborates with official particulars and unofficial leaks, there are method too many inconsistencies within the photos. Moreover, even the channel itself admits that it obtained the slides in March 2020, so they could have gotten outdated even when they’re genuine.