People expecting AMD to be sandbagging and get >>35% avg ST and >>40% avg MT uplift at stock to beat raptor lake are setting themselves up for disappointment. 7950X and 13900K look like they will be nigh indistinguishable both in terms of power and performance, 5-10% either way on all metrics (my guess is 13900K faster but with slightly worse efficiency). Fanboys will buy what their favorite company and claim the other solution is doggerel, everyone else should flip a coin or look at platform features (like longevity and AVX512 which is why I will look at 7950X most closely).
It’s wonderful that after Krzanich years of stagnation we have 2 fierce competitors and 2 good solutions.
Chipset bandwidth and features are actually what I am probably going to look at closely this time.
A lot of people don't look at those factors, but if you have more than just a simple setup like one m.2 and kb/mouse, it can make a difference.
The Z490 I have is miserable in this regard due to the DMI 3.0 x4 lanes to the chipset. A DMI 3.0 lane is basically like a PCIe 3.0 lane, bandwidth is ever so slightly faster on DMI but call it the same. Everything off the chipset, comes down to that interface.
Z590 was far better, with DMI 4.0 x4 (twice the bandwidth) and Z690 expanded to DMI 4.0 x8. From that perspective Z590 had basically the same bandwidth capability to the chipset as AMDs X570, which uses PCIe 4 x4 to its chipset, while the Z690 has significantly greater bandwidth (twice as much) by using twice as many lanes.
From what I can tell, Zen 4 will have PCIe 5 x4 to the X670 which matches the Z690's DMI 4.0 x8. On X670E, they may have PCIe 5.0 x4 to each of its two chipsets, but that isn't certain. Zen 4 has 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, so 16 are used for GPU, and if you have two chipsets than presumably the other 8 are used on the two chipsets - so no PCIe 5.0 x4 off the CPU to an m.2 slot, it's going to be shared.
Alder Lake has 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes off the CPU, plus 8 DMI 4.0 lanes - this is equivalent to having 16 PCIe 5.0 and 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes.
I am hoping that the Z790 bumps DMI up to 5.0 and keeps 8 lanes to the chipset. If it does that, then a Z790 will be superior to an X670E.
At the risk of ticking off a certain group of people, I should probably point out that the AMD B550 is one of the worst at this now. That chipset is still on a PCIe 3.0 x4 link to the CPU. Regardless of what you can connect to the board, it's all going to get packed into that interface, and that sucks. It's exactly like having a Z170 from many years ago.
The Intel B660M is actually a DMI 4.0 x4 interface to the chipset - same as an X570, and way way better for supporting PCIe 4 x4 m.2 and multiple USB 3.2 v2 and v2x2 off that shipset.
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