Computex

Mainboards for Ryzen 9000 with USB4 and new chipsets

High-end mainboards for AM5 CPUs will receive the fast USB version with 40 Gbit/s. AMD divides the individual Series 800 chipsets differently than before.

(Image: c't)

Jun 6, 2024 at 11:24 am CEST

2 min. read

c't Magazin

By

Christian Hirsch

This article was originally published in German and has been automatically translated.

Shortly after the announcement of the X870 and X870E chipsets, the first mainboards for Ryzen 9000 processors can already be seen at the Taiwanese IT trade fair Computex. The lavish features include WLAN with Wi-Fi 7, several slots for graphics cards and M.2 SSDs.

AMD CEO Lisa Su had already mentioned in her keynote that USB4 is also mandatory for motherboards with the two chipsets mentioned. However, the associated controllers are not located in the processor or chipset. Firstly, the Ryzen 9000 contains the same I/O die as the Ryzen 7000 and secondly, the X870/X870E is based on the Promontory 21 chip developed by Asmedia, which is already used in the predecessors.

Mainboards with the X870(E) chipset such as the Asrock X870 Pro RS WIFI offer two USB4 sockets with 40 Gbit/s speed.

Instead, AMD obliges the motherboard manufacturers to solder on an additional controller for USB4 connected via PCI Express. However, it is up to the board manufacturers to decide which supplier this comes from. In most cases, the choice will probably fall on the Asmedia ASM4242, which is connected via four PCIe 4.0 lanes and provides two USB4 ports with 40 Gbit/s speed (USB4 Gen3x2).

Changed chipset segmentation

The high-end X870E chipset consists of two Promontory 21 chips connected in series for more PCIe lanes and more SATA and USB ports. This makes it identical to its predecessor, the X670E, apart from the additional USB4 controller chip mentioned above. The X870, on the other hand, differs greatly from the X670, as only one Promontory 21 chip is used instead of the double pack. This reduces the number of interfaces considerably, for example there are only four instead of eight SATA ports.

The Ryzen 9000 mainboards shown, such as the MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk, usually already work with Wi-Fi 7.

(Image: c't)

Rumor has it that the cheaper 800 series chipsets B850 and B840 will follow later, replacing the B650E and B650. The B850 also uses Promontory 21 and provides PCIe 5.0 on the PEG slot, but not mandatory on the CPU's M.2 slot. The B840 probably uses the older Promontory 19, which AMD also uses in the A620A chipset. This is much slimmed down and can only support PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0.

AMD-Chipsätze für Ryzen 7000/8000/9000
Chipsatz	Konfiguration	PEG-Slots	M.2-Slots von CPU	PCIe-Lanes (inkl. CPU) / davon PCIe 5.0	USB 5 Gbit/s	USB 10 Gbit/s	USB 20 Gbit/s	SATA 6G	USB 4.0
X870E	2x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 5.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 5.0 x8	2x PCIe 5.0 x4	44/24	2	12	2	8	:v
X870	1x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 5.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 5.0 x8	2x PCIe 5.0 x4	36/24	1	6	1	4	:v
X670E	2x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 5.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 5.0 x8	2x PCIe 5.0 x4	44/24	2	12	2	8	optional
X670	2x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 4.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 4.0 x8	2x PCIe 5.0 x4	44/8	2	12	2	8	optional
B650E	1x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 5.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 5.0 x8	2x PCIe 5.0 x4	36/24	1	6	1	4	optional
B650	1x Promontory 21	1x PCIe 4.0 x16 / 2x PCIe 4.0 x8	1x PCIe 4.0 x4 (PCIe 5.0 optional)	36/0	1	6	1	4	optional
A620	1x Promontory 21/22	1x PCIe x16 4.0	1x PCIe 4.0 x4	32/0	2	2	0	4	optional
A620A	1x Promontory 19	1x PCIe x16 4.0	1x PCIe 4.0 x4	32¹/0	2	2	0	4	optional
¹ vom Chipsatz nur 16 PCIe-3.0-Lanes