Poll: CPU upgrades on the AMD AM4 platform

[Vattila]

Today I finally put in the order for an interim upgrade of my old desktop PC (based on an Asus PRIME B350-PLUS AM4 motherboard with an 8-core Ryzen 1700 "Zen" 14nm CPU with 8 GB of memory). So I will soon enjoy 16-core Ryzen 5950X "Zen 3" N7 goodness. Thanks to AMD for the amazing AM4 platform support!

The new processor should let me upgrade to Windows 11 and give my programming workloads a pretty boost. To give the massively parallel build jobs I run more breathing room, I also added 16 GB of memory for a total of 24 GB. I had planned to only double my current 8 GB, but the price difference was low (£60 vs £40).



I also ordered a cheap 19 inch monitor to replace my secondary monitor that failed a while ago. This will serve as a stopgap solution until I eventually upgrade to a whole new multi-screen desktop setup based on the upcoming AM5 platform (may even go for Threadripper, if I find a good argument) — next year, perhaps.

The longevity of the AM4 platform has been remarkable. Hopefully, AM5 will follow suit. What do you all think? What are your AM4 experiences? Please vote in the poll, and share your story below.

 

[Vattila]

If all the tech / pricing was equal between the two companies I would opt for AMD again.

I don't think you can go much wrong with either vendor. As soon as AM5 arrives, you will have DDR5 and PCI Express 5.0 support from both. And while the competitive CPU performance ranking remains to be seen, performance is bound to be impressive from both.

However, keeping the discussion on topic, it will be very interesting to see the longevity of AM5, and particularly, whether Intel responds by aiming for better longevity of their platforms — their current platform LGA 1700 ends with Raptor Lake, after just two generations, it seems.

The recent rumour that "Zen 4" will come to AM4 I do not believe for a second, though. "Zen 3" provides plenty of performance on the AM4 platform as a value option after AM5 arrives.

 

[Tech Junky]

aiming for better longevity of their platforms

Well, we already know it's changing with Arrow Lake. Post moving to "chiplet" there might be more stability in the build moving forward. The thought with AM5 going to the same setup might prove fruitful in keeping the same socket for a long duration as well.

I can envision both though playing with the sizing post debut to cram more items into the package after seeing how it plays out in the market. Not being confined to a single die footprint and moving things around within the space offers a lot of options. Maybe going to the footprint being used on the M1/M2 chips is where we end up in a couple of years where there's plenty of real estate to put more tech. If you look at laptops and BGA chips you could easily squeeze a RTX / I7 into the same size as a desktop counterpart. Which leads to Intel + Arc GPU's....

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Well, the software compilation test on "Zen 2" in the TechPowerUp article you linked shows 3200 rated memory scoring 61.70 seconds versus 62.20 seconds for 2666. That's just a 0.8% speed gain (which is probably within the error margins of the test). So, presuming this test is typical for software compilation, and that "Zen 3" behaves similarly, memory overclocking is pretty much pointless for my workloads.

Yeah, the hot loops of most modern compilers fit pretty nicely in the standard Zen3 L3. Also why X3D doesn't really do much for it.

 

[crashtech]

I have had a 1700, a 3700X, and finally a 5950X in my main rig. Going from Zen 2 to Zen 3 involved a MB swap, though. Not sure which checkbox fits me best.

 

[Vattila]

Yeah, the hot loops of most modern compilers fit pretty nicely in the standard Zen3 L3. Also why X3D doesn't really do much for it.

Makes sense. Also, the workload is embarrassingly parallel, as each file (compilation unit) can be compiled independently of other files. I.e. there is little need for synchronisation. This is unlike games, which are probably typically written to manipulate shared state (lock-based multi-threading) and thereby put pressure on cache-coherency protocols for synchronisation (inter-core communication). Games hence benefit greatly from a large shared L3 cache which minimises latency for such synchronisation. Games also have a lot of random memory accesses into the model of the game world — which is the typical explanation you hear for games loving L3 cache. But I guess so does a C++ compiler accessing the often very large compile-time program representation. So I am inclined to think it is the need for synchronisation that makes the big difference in games.

That said, I am no expert on this, so this is mostly my intuition speaking.

 

[Vattila]

I have had a 1700, a 3700X, and finally a 5950X in my main rig. Going from Zen 2 to Zen 3 involved a MB swap, though. Not sure which checkbox fits me best.

Pedantically, you should check only the box for the upgrade you did on the same motherboard, but feel free to check a box for every Ryzen upgrade you have made.

Your dilemma illustrates a good point though: The arrival of PCI Express 4.0 support and other new features on later motherboards made the AM4 longevity proposition less relevant, although there is some value in being able to upgrade a motherboard while migrating the CPU from the old motherboard, of course.

 

[crashtech]

It wasn't 100% clear to me, since only AM4 was mentioned and no rule about motherboards was specified as far as I saw. But I did check the box that you would expect, and consider my 5950X as a completely new, dead end system.

 

[Geegeeoh]

Ryzen 5 1600 → R5 3600X → R7 5800X
(last jump I also upgraded MoBo and RAM to sell the 3600X)

 

[DrMrLordX]

I never upgraded my AM4 system, but I did buy an entirely new AM4 setup. Went from 1800X to 3900X.

 

[NTMBK]

No love for Bristol Ridge in the poll?!

 

[DrMrLordX]

No love for Bristol Ridge in the poll?!

Let's hope not.

 

[Vattila]

The Ryzen 5950X CPU and Noctua NH-D15 cooler arrived yesterday already. So while I wait for the memory (to arrive tomorrow), I decided to install the processor under the stock cooler for the old Ryzen 1700 — just to check that the new CPU works, run some tests and upgrade to Windows 11. As the installation of the NH-D15 is a more complex affair, and with the big size of it covering up the memory, I decided to wait to install it until the memory arrives, so that I don't have to redo anything.

However, this simple CPU swap almost ended in disaster for the old CPU, as it was firmly cemented to the heat sink. Even though I was aware of the potential issue, and tried to apply some gentle rotational force, the whole thing was firmly stuck until it suddenly came loose, ripping the CPU out of the socket. Luckily, the CPU stayed fixed to the cooler without falling off, and without any pins visibly bent. I was ably to pry the cooler and CPU apart with a flat headed screwdriver. I will have to look for a better technique next time. By the way, it is good that AM5 has a new socket design that will not have this issue.

Installation of the 5950X was easy though, and I am happy to say it works and runs fine. However, as expected under this small cooler, it gets into the thermal limits very quickly when I give it something to do. At idle in Windows it runs at ~54° C with the CPU fan at ~1700 rpm, which is OK but noticeably more audible than with the Ryzen 1700, and if I start a sizable software build, it ramps steeply up to 90° C with the fan at an awfully noisy ~2800 rpm. Hopefully, the Noctua NH-D15 will do much better. It has to be said that I have no case fans running in my Antec Sonata III case. I have had the single rear fan disconnected, and I even put in some improvised cardboard for further sound dampening. I will have to revisit that solution and finally connect the case fan, I think, as to give the case some airflow.



As regards early performance results, I tested building all 112 library configurations of OWLNext 7.0 with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 toolset. Using the parallel build option, this job took 167 seconds, versus 390 seconds with the Ryzen 1700 — that's a 134% speed-up (or 57% less waiting, if you prefer). Not bad! With proper cooling, I guess the new processor will do even better. Also note that, although configurations were built in parallel (at a maximum of 16 configurations at a time), this test was performed with each configuration being built without using multi-threading. This limitation is due to memory constraints. When I get more memory, I should be able to allow the toolset to use multi-threading, which should give me another speed boost. The Ryzen 1700 saw a ~15% speed increase when going from single-threaded to multi-threaded compilation in this test (with a maximum of 8 configurations at a time), although it was working at the limits of available memory and sometimes running out of heap space.



My plan to upgrade to Windows 11 ran into an apparently unsurmountable problem, though: My olden Radeon R7 250 GPU does not support UEFI, which prevents the motherboard from turning on support for Secure Boot, a feature required by Windows 11. I may have to upgrade to a modern GPU. Let me know if you have any advice. Perhaps I will just stick with Windows 10 on this PC. Perhaps I will just do a reinstall to freshen things up a little (login has started to take a very long time for some strange reason — the problem shows up in the Windows logs, but I have found no obvious cause and solution).

No love for Bristol Ridge in the poll?!

Sorry, that poor chip is easy to overlook in the shadow of the "Zen" launch. That said, it was a useful pioneer on the AM4 platform, I guess. So for those early adopters who started out on AM4 with this chip and since upgraded, you can vote as if you had "Zen", if you want. Again, the point of the poll is to get a feel for how many used the opportunity to do a CPU upgrade across generations on the AM4 platform.

 

[NTMBK]

Sorry, that poor chip is easy to overlook in the shadow of the "Zen" launch. That said, it was a useful pioneer on the AM4 platform, I guess. So for those early adopters who started out on AM4 with this chip and since upgraded, you can vote as if you had "Zen", if you want. Again, the point of the poll is to get a feel for how many used the opportunity to do a CPU upgrade across generations on the AM4 platform.

In all seriousness, it's crazy that a single socket supports all the way from single-module Bristol Ridge chips up to 16 core Ryzen 5000 monsters. That's got to be the biggest jump in CPU power on a single socket I can think of! (Even if I don't think any single motherboard has ever been able to support both chips?)

 

[Tech Junky]

have to look for a better technique next time.

I use graphite pads instead of paste at this point due to this sort of stuck on cooler event. I went through a dozen different paste options with my 8700K setup and found them all to be about the same except one that failed miserably after 4 days. I got sick of having to periodically check the paste when temps would creep up after a period of time and switched to the pads since they're solid in the form of a film almost compared to the toothpaste. While the graphite isn't better or worse in terms of thermal displacement it's a lot easier to deal with when needing access to things surrounding the heat sink. I switched to the graphite as well on my laptop due to similar issues with pastes because cracking the case for routine cleanings and needing to remove the heat sink in the laptop to get into the fan bays got tiresome cleaning the paste off each time.

On the 12700K system the temps idle most of the time around 27C and never breach 50C under load. Laptop of course runs hotter due to confined space but, still acceptable temps.

 

[moinmoin]

However, this simple CPU swap almost ended in disaster for the old CPU, as it was firmly cemented to the heat sink. Even though I was aware of the potential issue, and tried to apply some gentle rotational force, the whole thing was firmly stuck until it suddenly came loose, ripping the CPU out of the socket. Luckily, the CPU stayed fixed to the cooler without falling off, and without any pins visibly bent. I was ably to pry the cooler and CPU apart with a flat headed screwdriver. I will have to look for a better technique next time.

The best suggestion I recall from past threads on that topic is running the old CPU for a little so that it heats up, then using dental floss to cut off the heat sink.

 

[Vattila]

using dental floss to cut off the heat sink.

That's cool and clever advice! For this particular cooler, I found that there is a nice gap between the edge of the CPU lid, not covered by the heat sink, and the heat sink assembly, in which a flat headed screwdriver can be rotated to pry them apart. That technique may be awkward though with the CPU still in the socket and the motherboard installed in the case, so I may try your suggested dental floss technique next time.

 

[Vattila]

In all seriousness, it's crazy that a single socket supports all the way from single-module Bristol Ridge chips up to 16 core Ryzen 5000 monsters. That's got to be the biggest jump in CPU power on a single socket I can think of!

Yeah, AM4 has been amazing. Here is a nice video by PC World, paying homage to the platform. They do a yearly "PC Hardware Hall of Fame" thing on their "Full Nerd" show. I bet AM4 will be in there at some point. It got mentioned a few times in their latest award ceremony.

Hardware Unboxed also did a video praising the AM4 platform recently:

 

[biostud]

I got three kids during the AM4 prime time, so I skipped it.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I checked every yes box. I have had every gen of Zen CPU and APU in a X370, with the exception of the 2000 series APUs. Even an Athlon 3000g.

 

[Markfw]

@Vattila , you need to change it to allow multiple selections. I have done most of the choices, but I had to pick one.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@Vattila , you need to change it to allow multiple selections. I have done most of the choices, but I had to pick one.

Weird, it let me pick 6 answers.

 

[Markfw]

Weird, it let me pick 6 answers.

I said change my vote, and it let me ! Thanks !

 

[Vattila]

@Vattila , you need to change it to allow multiple selections.

Initially I had it set to "unlimited", then I limited it to 7. However, when I went back to edit it now, it had reset to "unlimited" — or perhaps I didn't commit the limitation to 7 in the first place. Anyway, I have saved the "unlimited" setting again to confirm. Hopefully multiple selections work fine now.

Thanks for participating, and for putting so much great hardware to good use!

 

[fleshconsumed]

Went from 1800x to 3950x (will be going to 5950x as soon as I can find one for a good price), from 2400g to 5600g. Went through a number of motherboards from x370 to b550. AM4 platform has been great, I was able to upgrade piecewise, I'd get a new motherboard when it went on sale, and next gen cpu whenever it was on sale. I only hope that AM5 will have the same longevity and backward compatibility as AM4.

 

[bigboxes]

A year ago in March, my main rig suffered catastrophic death. So, in April of 2021, I built the rig in my sig. This was during the parts shortage. It was very hard to even find the CPU in retail. I went from an i7 4790K to the R9 5950X. Paired it with 32GB of the tightest timing ram that was on the QVL list. Went from DDR3 1600 CL7 to DDR4 3200 CL14. Also, from San Disk Extreme 480GB SATA to Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 2TB and PCIe4. The only part I didn't upgrade was a GTX 1080 Ti. I'm not a gamer, so I wasn't about to pay 2-3X retail. Outside of that, this is hands down the best computer I have built to date. And the quietest. It's like a Ferrari.