It’s been another busy week at GN and we have plenty of news to go through today. There’s been some big developments in the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple, we’ll be going through the latest on that.

In more PC hardware centric news, we have our first glimpse of Ampere Computing’s Altra Max line, as an official engineering sample has surfaced in the wild. There’s also Windows 11 news from Asus, and how Riot is using TPM 2.0 to ban cheaters from Valorant.

As always, there’s plenty more. So check out the article and video embed below.  

At GN, we’re slowly emerging from our RTX 30-series coma, where we’ve pushed our testing and coverage perhaps as far as we ever have. We’re getting ready to slow down for a week or so to revamp and improve processes internally and get ready to do it all again with Zen 3, RDNA2, and the RTX 3070.

As ever, there’s plenty to cover outside of our reviews and testing. This week, we have news regarding NVIDIA delaying the RTX 3070 launch window to the end of October in an effort to avoid the previous RTX 3080 and 3090 catastrophe. There’s also a credible rumor suggesting that Zen 3 will come in under the Ryzen 5000-series banner, which would probably be for the best, given how convoluted CPU naming is getting. 

Elsewhere, we discuss Intel’s Omni-Path being resurrected under the new Cornelis Networks, leaked Windows XP source code, an interesting new HPE-Cray built supercomputer, and more. Check out the article and video embed below.  

AMD today announced its A520 chipset, following-up the previous B550 and X570 launches, and excluding the B550A chipset (which was a rebranded B450 chipset). The A520 chipset is nearly identical to the A320 chipset from 2017, except some items move to PCIe Gen 3 from PCIe Gen 2. We’ll recap the chipset differences again here today, although if you want full comparative details between X570, B550, the 400-series, and the 300-series, we’ll refer you to our recent AMD Chispet Differences content here. For this one, we’re focusing on just the A520 chipset.

Another week, another HW News. While not as busy as last week, we’ve still got some interesting stories. For instance, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, as well as the main Linux kernel developer, has moved to AMD CPUs for his personal machine -- after 15 some years of Intel-based machines. There’s also a new development in the ongoing SMR saga: Class action lawsuits are being brought against WD in both the US and Canada.  

We also have news of changes to the numbering of AMD’s AGESA microcode updates, updated ARM IP, Intel finally overhauling its stock coolers, and a terrible Nintendo Switch clone that’s begging to be sued. 

On the GN side of things, we’ve been busy analysing Intel’s newest 10th-gen (Comet Lake-S) K-SKU CPUs and their respective Z490 platform. Most recently, we looked at the extreme auto voltage settings on Z490, including Vcore, power limit, and MCE. We also looked at the i5-10400 and i7-10700K. Spoiler alert: they’re both hard to justify. 

Article and video embed follow below, as usual.

In this content, we’re going to be breaking-down the AMD B550 vs. X570, B450, X470, X370, and A320 chipset specifications number-by-number. Our goal is to look at this purely from a facts-based angle of what the differences are, and those differences will include both numerical specification differences (number and type of lanes afforded) and forward or backwards compatibility differences. This includes the intent of the 500-series chipsets to support Zen 3 architecture (reminder: that’s not the same as Ryzen 4000 mobile, nor is it the same as Ryzen 3000 desktop), while the existing B450 and X470 boards are left to cap-out at Ryzen 3000 series (Zen 2) parts.

We have some additional discussion of the basics of naming, including CPU naming distinctions, in our video component that accompanies this article. You may get more information on the differences between AMD Zen generations and Ryzen generations in that content.

AMD’s X570 chipset marks the arrival of some technology that was first deployed on Epyc, although that was done through the CPU as there isn’t a traditional chipset. With the shift to PCIe 4, X570 motherboards have grown more complex than X370 and X470, furthered by difficulties cooling the higher power consumption of X570. All of these changes mean that it’s time to compare the differences between X370, X470, and X570 motherboard chipsets, hopefully helping newcomers to Ryzen understand the changes.

The persistence of AMD’s AM4 socket, still slated for life through 2020, means that new CPUs are compatible with older chipsets (provided the motherboard makers update BIOS for detection). It also means that older CPUs (like the reduced price R5 2600X) are compatible with new motherboards, if you for some reason ended up with that combination. The only real downside, aside from potential cost of the latter option, is that new CPUs on old motherboards will mean no PCIe Gen4 support. AMD is disabling it in AGESA at launch, and unless a motherboard manufacturers finds the binary switch to flip in AGESA, it’ll be off for good. Realistically, this isn’t all that relevant: Most users will never touch the bandwidth of Gen4 for this round of products (in the future, maybe), and so the loss of running a new CPU on an old motherboard may be outweighed by the cost savings of keeping an already known-good board, provided the VRM is sufficient.

CES posed the unique opportunity to speak with engineers at various board manufacturers and system integrators, allowing us to get first-hand information as to AMD’s plans for the X570 chipset launch. We already spoke of the basics of X570 in our initial AMD CES news coverage, primarily talking about the launch timing challenges and PCIe 4.0 considerations, but can now expand on our coverage with new information about the upcoming Ryzen 3000-series chipset for Zen2 architecture desktop CPUs.

Thus far, the information we have obtained regarding Ryzen 3000 points toward a likely June launch month, probably right around Computex, with multiple manufacturers confirming the target. AMD is officially stating “mid-year” launch, allowing some leniency for changes in scheduling, but either way, Ryzen 3000 will launch in about 5 months.

The biggest point of consideration for launch has been whether AMD wants to align its new CPUs with an X570 release, which is presently the bigger hold-up of the two. It seems likely that AMD would want to launch both X570 motherboards and Ryzen 3000 CPUs simultaneously, despite the fact that the new CPUs will work with existing motherboards provided they’ve received a BIOS update.

With B350, B360, Z370, Z390, X370, and Z490, we think it’s time to revisit an old topic answering what a chipset is. This is primarily to establish a point of why we need clarity on what each of these provides – there are a lot of chipsets with similar names, different socket types, and similar features. We’re here to define a chipset today in TLDR fashion, with a later piece to explain the actual chipset differences.

As for what a chipset actually is, this calls back to a GN article from 2012 – though we can do a better job now. The modern chipset is a glorified I/O controller, and can be thought of as the spinal cord of the computer, while the CPU is the disembodied brain. Intel calls its chipset a PCH, or Platform Controller Hub, while AMD just goes with the generic and appropriate term “chipset.” The chipset is the center of I/O for the rest of the motherboard, assigning I/O lanes to devices like SATA, gigabit ethernet, and USB ports.

DDR5 may achieve mass switch-over adoption by 2022, based on new estimates out of memory makers. A new Micron demonstration had DDR5 memory functional, operating on a Cadence IMC and custom chip, with 4400MHz and CL42 timings. It's a start. Micron hopes to tighten timings over time, and aims to increase frequency toward 6400MHz as DDR5 matures. It's more of a capacity solution, too, with targeted densities at 16Gb and 32Gb for the future.

In addition to the week's DDR5 news, detailed in more depth below, we also have roadmap leaks from AMD and Intel that indicate Z490 and Z390 chipsets shipping this year. We're not yet sure what Z490's purpose is, but we know that it's an AMD product -- and the first of the new chipsets to take a Z prefix, just like Intel's performance series.

Our show notes below cover all the stories, or just check the video:

As we remarked back when we reviewed the i5-8400, launched on its lonesome and without low-end motherboard support, the Intel i5-8400 makes most sense when paired with B360 or H370 motherboards. Intel launched the i5-8400 and other non-K CPUs without that low-end chipset support, though, leaving only the Z370 enthusiast board on the frontlines with the locked CPUs.

When it comes to Intel chipset differences, the main point of comparison between B, H, and Z chipsets would be HSIO lanes – or high-speed I/O lanes. HSIO lanes are Intel-assigned per chipset, with each chipset receiving a different count of HSIO lanes. High-speed IO lanes can be assigned somewhat freely by the motherboard manufacturer, and are isolated from the graphics PCIe lanes that each CPU independently possesses. The HSIO lanes are as detailed below for the new 8th Generation Coffee Lake chipsets: