AMD Rumored to Announce 800-Series Chipsets by Computex 2024 with Support for DDR5-8000 Memory
Moore’s Law Is Dead shared a snippet of AMD’s upcoming motherboard lineup set to arrive later this year. The 800 series of motherboards based on AM5 are expected to be announced by Computex in June. However, the launch date may be pushed back, with a similar story repeating for Zen5 CPUs as well.
AMD X870, B850 and B840 Motherboard Initial Specifications
These new chipsets from AMD are not an entirely new platform. Rather, they’re based on AM5, similar to the 600-series of motherboards. Consider them a formality with some minor I/O upgrades since Zen5 is just around the corner.
Starting off, the X870E flagship is expected to feature 2x Promontory 21 chipsets with an ASM4242 USB4 controller. Quite similar to the X670E, MLID hasn’t heard much regarding a potential PCIe lane count increase. So the only upgrade we may see is the added USB 4.0 support.
The normal X870 is expected to be a cut-down X870E or could feature a single Promontory 21 chipset. AMD is still in talks with AIBs to finalize specifications, thus these are just speculation. However, it is also probable that the X870 is just a B650E with as much PCIe 5.0 support as possible alongside support for USB 4.0.
Moving on, B850 does not see any ‘Extreme’ treatment and will only come in one flavor. MLID asserts that the B850 chipset is a B650E with mandated PCIe 5.0 support. More technically, it features a single Promontory 21 chipset. Lastly, the B840 is a new addition based on Promontory 19 and is a tweaked version of the A620 chipset.
DDR5-8000 Memory & Zen5’s Potential Delay
AMD currently aims to run DDR5-8000 memory with these boards using EXPO (2400MHz FCLK). This is an insane improvement over existing boards and could be a deciding factor in Zen5’s final performance numbers.
Board partners will try to show off their offerings based on these new chipsets by Computex, however, that isn’t guaranteed. Moreover, Zen5 is rumored to be facing ‘a lot of issues‘. The standard models are rumored to be rushed out by Summer, with the flagship variants planned for Q4 2024, just before Arrow Lake.
MLID is hearing similar things regarding Turin due to bugs with the EPYC SOC, which may require another stepping to iron out stuff. The expected release date of Turin is around September, but that doesn’t reflect Granite Ridge’s (Zen5) launch schedule.
Source: MLID
