The Future of Zen in the CPU World: What You Need to Know

Obviously, if you're planning to buy a low-power CPU and couple it with a motherboard that supports higher TDP from these Zen chips as they roll out, you'll want to check the official support list for CPUs on the motherboard. There's a good chance that if you do, you'll find that the motherboard can handle the higher TDP of these new Zen chips.

In fact, even though we don't have the Zen chipset yet, all of the chipsets will natively support PCIe Gen 3. This is a big move for AMD because it's unifying those platforms and making it easier to upgrade the CPU only and keep the same platform motherboard with your system. For comparison, the AMD B350 chipset parallels the Intel 970 platform, which had a much lower TDP of 5.8 watts compared to the A78 chipset on the FM2 platform, which had a higher TDP of around 7.8 watts.

As for the low-end chipsets, such as the A320, they're not really worth considering. They parallel the A68G and A760G chipsets, which are very low-power solutions that may not be suitable for most users. The XB and A300 chipsets on the AM4 platform don't have a lot of information available yet in terms of specs.

The Gen 7 APs support dual-channel DDR4 memory, a maximum of four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, two SATA 3 ports, and two NVMe lanes or, alternatively, two extra SATA ports with two PCIe lanes for M.2 usage. The B350 chipset will support two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, one USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, and six USB 2.0 ports, as well as two SATA 3 lanes.

The SFF (Small Form Factor) chipsets on the AM4 platform, such as the XB and A300, will lose support for certain features like PCIe Gen 2 and RAID 10, but these are details that may not be relevant to most users. As for performance, AMD is claiming equal performance with an I5-6 565W CPU running at 65 watts compared to an I5-6500T running at 35 watts, as well as a nearly 2x performance gain in 3D Mark 11.

It's worth noting that these claims are based on testing using AMD's own test systems, which run DDR4 memory at 2400 MHz, while Intel is still limited to DDR4-2133. While the memory speed limitation may account for some of the differences in performance, it's clear that the new Zen APs and APUs will be capable of delivering significant performance gains over their predecessors.

In comparison to the Zen chipset that's coming out later, these newer APs and APUs are more geared towards enthusiasts and users who want high-performance capabilities. While they're not meant to be used with the upcoming Zen chipsets, they still offer impressive performance and features that will appeal to those looking for a powerful but affordable solution.

As always, we'd like to thank our patrons for their support. If you want to learn more about the architecture of the Zen chipset, check out our previous videos on the topic. And if you'd like to see more content from us in the future, consider supporting us through Patreon. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you all next time!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enamd's gen 7 aps are now shipping with am4 motherboards that's the big news here we have some information on the main mainstream and entry level m4 chipsets we don't have the zen chipset info just yet but that is of course still coming out so we'll have that once it's ready but for now we're talking about the mainstream and entry-level chipsets of am4 this is a unified chipset and we'll also run through some of the new 710 apu specs before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by ibuypower and their new elements gaming pc with a full tempered glass side window tempered glass in the front leds in the front and bottom and it's basically a modified s340 the new apu's announced are on the screen now the gen 7 high-end apu is the a12 9800 which runs four of the new excavator x86 cores at a 3.8 gigahertz base clock or 4.2 gigahertz a boost all the new noteworthy apus use an r7 graphics chip for the igp with the a12 9800 clocked at 1108 megahertz for the gpu with eight gpu cues tdp is 65 watts for all chips except for the e suffix the chips which are 35 watts and significantly lower clock rates the a10 9700 also on the screen loses 0.3 gigahertz off the base clock and 0.5 off the boost clock from the a12 9800 also reducing the gpu to 60 use from the 8 on the a12 and 9800 the a6 9600 is comparable just with still lower clock rates we think the x4950 will be among the most interesting options since users will be able to use a low end cpu with the igp disabled for a cheap and more affordable cpu solution when coupled with a dedicated gpu for max performance the a6 9500 apu is only a two core processor and isn't really worth considering for most games at this point this is a low end consumer part note also that the new excavator cpus and am4 low-end platforms will support a maximum of 2 400 megahertz for ddr4 speeds as for the chipset news the more interesting stuff for am4 since this will be applicable to zen as well the am4 shipment initially will be with the b350 a320 and xb and a 300 chipsets those are entry level and mainstream some of them actually aren't even something you'll ever consider for gaming use cases but at the low end that's what we're starting with this is a move to unify the fm and am platforms so fm two plus will go away as a separate apu platform and am3 has effectively become am4 now obviously uh so fm2 plus am3 have been unified into am4 that means your apus and in the future zen cpus will both use the same platform and that means that if you buy an apu early you could theoretically upgrade it to zen in the future now obviously in that case you'd want to check the official support list for cpus on the motherboard because there is a good chance if you buy a low power c apu or cpu and you plan to couple it with a motherboard obviously it'll need to support that higher tdp from these zen chips as they roll out we don't have the zen chipset yet but all of the chipsets will natively support pcie gen 3 that's of course the biggest news here even though we're not really fully saturating the bandwidth in most use cases just yet also natively supports usb 3.1 gen2 and everything below that usb 3.1 gen 1 3.0 things that am3 plus did not support fm2 plus did in some cases this is a big move for amd because again it's unifying those platforms so that sticks to their sort of approach of trying to make it easier to upgrade the cpu only and keep the same platform motherboard with your system in terms of parallels the amd b350 somewhat parallels the 970 of the previous platform and the a78 on the fm2 platform b350 has a 5.8 watt tdp as opposed to a 7.8 watt tdp of the a78 chipset and even higher on the 970 19.6 20 watts somewhere in that range for the low end chipsets the a320 coming out on am4 that parallels the 760g and the a68g which you may have never even heard of because they are very low and not something we'd really normally recommend but those are the comparisons to the a320 that one should probably be off your radar for the most part sff small form factor we'll use the xb and a300 chipsets we don't have a lot of information on those just yet in terms of specs the gen 7 aps support dual channel ddr4 a maximum of 4 usb 3.1 gen 2 and 2 sata 3 ports and 2 nvme lanes or alternatively 2 extra sata sata3 ports and two pcie lanes for m.2 usage the b350 chipset will support two usb 3.1 gen2 two usb 3.1 gen one and six usb 2.0 with two sata three lanes present as well and the sata e support is apparent in one single sata e slot and that can be peeled off for two additional sata three ports instead if you prefer that's done by the motherboard manufacturer of course still on b356 pcie gen two lanes are available for m2 and general purpose devices and sata raid is supported at zero one and ten am4 h20 the chipset will lose one usb 3.1 gen2 channel and two pcie gen 2 lanes and the xb and a300 chipsets will lose the raid 10 support among other features that we might talk about in the future but not today as for performance we've got some charts from amd these are claiming equal performance and pc mark 8 home accelerated watt for watt with an i5 6 565 watt cpu on an a12 9800 at 65 watts amd is claiming 17 higher performance against an i5 6500 t watt for watt versus an intel i5 6500 t 35 watt cpu again versus the a12 9800e 3500 watt apu and 3d mark 11 which is ancient at this point amd is claiming nearly a 2x performance gain against the igp of their selected intel cpus and note that this isn't a 100 cpu to cpu comparison because amd use faster memory for their own test systems and the endnotes show that amd is running ddr4 2400 while intel is running ddr4 2133 but obviously uh intel can't support 2400 so that is one fair point though the memory can't account for some of these changes so performance will be dragged down on these chipsets a little bit partially because of the memory speed limitation other limitations as well in comparison to the zen chipset coming out later we from what we understand anyway the memory speed will definitely account for some sort of a semi-apparent speed loss but they are apus and apu chipsets even though they're on an am4 platform so you're really not meant to necessarily use these with amd zen the zen chipset still forthcoming don't know a lot about it yet officially though we have detailed the amd xena architecture in at least some aspects on the channel so you can hit the channel in the description below check out those information videos if you want to learn more about the the architecture itself for zen and then as always patreon like the post troll video that helps out directly thank you for watching i'll see you all next timeamd's gen 7 aps are now shipping with am4 motherboards that's the big news here we have some information on the main mainstream and entry level m4 chipsets we don't have the zen chipset info just yet but that is of course still coming out so we'll have that once it's ready but for now we're talking about the mainstream and entry-level chipsets of am4 this is a unified chipset and we'll also run through some of the new 710 apu specs before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by ibuypower and their new elements gaming pc with a full tempered glass side window tempered glass in the front leds in the front and bottom and it's basically a modified s340 the new apu's announced are on the screen now the gen 7 high-end apu is the a12 9800 which runs four of the new excavator x86 cores at a 3.8 gigahertz base clock or 4.2 gigahertz a boost all the new noteworthy apus use an r7 graphics chip for the igp with the a12 9800 clocked at 1108 megahertz for the gpu with eight gpu cues tdp is 65 watts for all chips except for the e suffix the chips which are 35 watts and significantly lower clock rates the a10 9700 also on the screen loses 0.3 gigahertz off the base clock and 0.5 off the boost clock from the a12 9800 also reducing the gpu to 60 use from the 8 on the a12 and 9800 the a6 9600 is comparable just with still lower clock rates we think the x4950 will be among the most interesting options since users will be able to use a low end cpu with the igp disabled for a cheap and more affordable cpu solution when coupled with a dedicated gpu for max performance the a6 9500 apu is only a two core processor and isn't really worth considering for most games at this point this is a low end consumer part note also that the new excavator cpus and am4 low-end platforms will support a maximum of 2 400 megahertz for ddr4 speeds as for the chipset news the more interesting stuff for am4 since this will be applicable to zen as well the am4 shipment initially will be with the b350 a320 and xb and a 300 chipsets those are entry level and mainstream some of them actually aren't even something you'll ever consider for gaming use cases but at the low end that's what we're starting with this is a move to unify the fm and am platforms so fm two plus will go away as a separate apu platform and am3 has effectively become am4 now obviously uh so fm2 plus am3 have been unified into am4 that means your apus and in the future zen cpus will both use the same platform and that means that if you buy an apu early you could theoretically upgrade it to zen in the future now obviously in that case you'd want to check the official support list for cpus on the motherboard because there is a good chance if you buy a low power c apu or cpu and you plan to couple it with a motherboard obviously it'll need to support that higher tdp from these zen chips as they roll out we don't have the zen chipset yet but all of the chipsets will natively support pcie gen 3 that's of course the biggest news here even though we're not really fully saturating the bandwidth in most use cases just yet also natively supports usb 3.1 gen2 and everything below that usb 3.1 gen 1 3.0 things that am3 plus did not support fm2 plus did in some cases this is a big move for amd because again it's unifying those platforms so that sticks to their sort of approach of trying to make it easier to upgrade the cpu only and keep the same platform motherboard with your system in terms of parallels the amd b350 somewhat parallels the 970 of the previous platform and the a78 on the fm2 platform b350 has a 5.8 watt tdp as opposed to a 7.8 watt tdp of the a78 chipset and even higher on the 970 19.6 20 watts somewhere in that range for the low end chipsets the a320 coming out on am4 that parallels the 760g and the a68g which you may have never even heard of because they are very low and not something we'd really normally recommend but those are the comparisons to the a320 that one should probably be off your radar for the most part sff small form factor we'll use the xb and a300 chipsets we don't have a lot of information on those just yet in terms of specs the gen 7 aps support dual channel ddr4 a maximum of 4 usb 3.1 gen 2 and 2 sata 3 ports and 2 nvme lanes or alternatively 2 extra sata sata3 ports and two pcie lanes for m.2 usage the b350 chipset will support two usb 3.1 gen2 two usb 3.1 gen one and six usb 2.0 with two sata three lanes present as well and the sata e support is apparent in one single sata e slot and that can be peeled off for two additional sata three ports instead if you prefer that's done by the motherboard manufacturer of course still on b356 pcie gen two lanes are available for m2 and general purpose devices and sata raid is supported at zero one and ten am4 h20 the chipset will lose one usb 3.1 gen2 channel and two pcie gen 2 lanes and the xb and a300 chipsets will lose the raid 10 support among other features that we might talk about in the future but not today as for performance we've got some charts from amd these are claiming equal performance and pc mark 8 home accelerated watt for watt with an i5 6 565 watt cpu on an a12 9800 at 65 watts amd is claiming 17 higher performance against an i5 6500 t watt for watt versus an intel i5 6500 t 35 watt cpu again versus the a12 9800e 3500 watt apu and 3d mark 11 which is ancient at this point amd is claiming nearly a 2x performance gain against the igp of their selected intel cpus and note that this isn't a 100 cpu to cpu comparison because amd use faster memory for their own test systems and the endnotes show that amd is running ddr4 2400 while intel is running ddr4 2133 but obviously uh intel can't support 2400 so that is one fair point though the memory can't account for some of these changes so performance will be dragged down on these chipsets a little bit partially because of the memory speed limitation other limitations as well in comparison to the zen chipset coming out later we from what we understand anyway the memory speed will definitely account for some sort of a semi-apparent speed loss but they are apus and apu chipsets even though they're on an am4 platform so you're really not meant to necessarily use these with amd zen the zen chipset still forthcoming don't know a lot about it yet officially though we have detailed the amd xena architecture in at least some aspects on the channel so you can hit the channel in the description below check out those information videos if you want to learn more about the the architecture itself for zen and then as always patreon like the post troll video that helps out directly thank you for watching i'll see you all next time\n"