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Discussing Zen 5, X870E, Arrow Lake, and more w/ Steve of Hardware Unboxed! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-27 23:59:20
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Broken Silicon's next episode will see the return of Steve from Hardware Unboxed! And...forgive my laziness, but I (Tom) am late to a family affair - so this write-up will be brief. You can ask us about anything that's happened in the past year, and will happen over the course of the next 12 months - whatever, he can speak to anything!  Just note that I am told he might have an X870E roundup ready Monday, and so you might want to check back in then for last minute questions about those products.

Otherwise, the sooner you submit below, the better for me and KarbinCry! You have ~60 hours (till Monday Morning) to submit below! Be concise, use good grammar, and be respectful to have your submission considered.

HUB YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Hardwareunboxed

Last Episode Steve was on: https://youtu.be/lO22Ny_41nc?si=BujVBFLA-YNrx4os

Comments

Cleansweep

Hi Tom and Steve, How much of the variability of Windows performance do you think can be blamed on how Microsoft sets up Windows installs to have tons of background tasks? I'd be interested to see how big an impact running something like Chris Titus' WinUtil might have on Windows 11 24H2 in a like for like test.

B1ngB0ng3

Hi Tom and Steve, Often when I'm shopping around for motherboards I tend to find a lot more options for Intel chipsets vs AMD. Especially in terms of functionality and aesthetics. I was hoping it would change with AM5 as AMD has garnered more mind share in the CPU space lately, but I often find the offerings from the big three to be a bit lacking, in particular when it comes to OC-focused boards (Only 2 DDR5 slots, more direct power delivery, etc) finding options similar to the Apex Encore or ASRock Aqua have been difficult. I was hoping EVGA would release an AM5 board, but we know where that went...

undertone247

Hi Tom and Steve, HUB had a podcast recently where Steve mentioned not understanding the leaker community and the need to get every detail right. Can Tom discuss, in his view, on the need to be right in the leak community? How much does a leaker need to be actually be right to actually be credible?

Sizzlicks

Hello Tom and all cyber-friends, I recently switched to Ubuntu for my every-day use non-gaming PC, and I'm shocked how much I like it. I'm now only booting to Windows for gaming. Is DirectX the only reason to game on Windows? Is Vulkan our only major alternative to DirectX or are there any other APIs out there that could compete with DX in the future?

undertone247

Hi Tom and Steve, With the predicted price of the 800 series motherboards being super high. Who would this motherboard actually be for? The X670E boards with USB4 really seem to already solve the need of the X870E series. Can you both also talk about the deceptive naming of B840 and how consumer friendly or not friendly they are compared to the old A series name.

CompressedAIBlocks

Is there any way either of you can recommend Intel right now for most consumers with the exception of Lunar Lake?

CompressedAIBlocks

We've had many years of E cores to see how they help, and while they help with certain productivity workloads, they don't really help and sometimes negatively effect gaming. Do either of you wish/think we'll see a product from Intel that cuts back on the E cores to say 4 and we finally get greater than 8 P cores or will we still see the stacking of more E cores and 8 P cores going forward?

CompressedAIBlocks

Do you think Arrow Lake will help Intel in any meaningful way even if it claims some victories over Zen 5? I think it's definitely a wait and see situation with how their last few generations have played out.

Glass

Hi Tom and Steve, With HUB and GN no longer recommending any Intel products, how will this affect your review of arrow lake, whenever it is released? Will the review be performance only, with a “not-recommended” conclusion? Interested in how your team will approach these new products.

CompressedAIBlocks

Steve. What do you expect from RDNA 4? And what position do you think AMD is in now with Radeon? Better than when RDNA started? Better than Polaris? They seem very stagnate/maybe a slight regression in terms of market and mind share.

CompressedAIBlocks

Guys. UDNA seems like the completely logical next step for Radeon and what AMD wants in the GPU market. Do you think it'll be more successful (merging architectures) this time than GCN was due to AMD being in a much more healthy position? Secondly, do you guys think Nvidia is now so entrenched due to their software/feature lead in this space that AMD might make *some* in roads but a majority of the market isn't likely to leave Nvidia ecosystem?

coltmarshmallow

Hi Steve, You're coverage on windows gaming variance was eye opening. Is the only way going forward to consistently benchmarks games now to use Linux (steamOS)? On a more serious note what do you think the OS situation will look like in a few months for gaming?

undertone247

Dude a 12p no E core variant would be awesome. It look like Bartlett Lake was supposed to have it but got tossed.

10GHz Netburst

How much of AMD trying to get Zen 5 X3D out as soon as possible do you think can be attributed to AMD wanting to have a quick response to Arrow Lake rather than just trying to move on from Zen 5s horrendous launch?

Aluveitie

Hi Steve, did you find or receive any evidence AMD was actively blocking sponsored games from implementing DLSS?

AI-Soldier789

Hello you two, at 400$ will you declare the 9800X3D as the go to option for high end gaming PCs? Or will the conclusion be wait till it's 350 $ ?

Joseph Kelly

Hello Tom and Steve, When Arrow Lake launches, and the reviews come out how much if any will the current raptor lake woes impact Arrow Lake reviews. I understand that Arrow Lake is a completely different architecture and no current issues should affect Arrow Lake at all. How will you (Steve) approach the review because of Intel's past mistakes?

10GHz Netburst

Both RDNA3 and Zen 5 are cases where expectations were set too high compared to the product that was finally delivered. To what extent do you think AMD's marketing, AMDs engineering, the leaking scene, and the PC community as a whole contributed to the inflated expectations? To what extent do you think the expectations were reasonable?

10GHz Netburst

What do you think the 3 worst examples of product names from the last year or so are?

Chris Rijk

The mantra for real estate is “location, location, location” and considering how the 7800X3D dominates DIY sales and Zen 5 desktop has flopped, should the mantra for DIY be “gaming, gaming, gaming”? Putting it another way, if the 9800X3D is a solid improvement over the 7800X3D in gaming would you expect it to sell well regardless of the poor Zen 5 sales to date? Similarly for Arrow Lake - will it need to beat the 9800X3D in gaming to have good sales?

Chris Rijk

Let’s say for the sake of example that AMD decides to double the cores per CCX, the L3 cache size and V-cache size on Zen 6. Along with other improvements that should help gaming performance by a good amount but at quite high cost. Would you like to see such a thing or do you think AMD should focus more on cost-per-frame even if it means marginal gains in absolute performance? Do you currently see a need for such high performance CPUs with today’s games? If not, could that change by 2026?

Chris Rijk

In gaming, Zen 5 doesn’t benefit much from higher clocks or higher speed memory, so what is limiting it? My best guess is that it’s the Infinity Fabric interconnect between the CCD and I/O chiplet - with a 2GHz FCLK it allows for approximately 60GByte/s of read bandwidth and 30GByte/s of write bandwidth, meaning that DDR5-6000 can saturate it easily. I suspect many of the games that show little benefit from Zen 5 would get a larger boost by increasing the FCLK. I think the reviewers who saw bigger improvements from Zen 5 were using JEDEC memory speeds, which is higher on Zen 5 and also increases the FCLK.

Chris Rijk

One unexpected side effect of the Zen 5 reviews was to highlight the difference the OS makes. As the rate of improvement in hardware slows, do you think we might be entering an era where in some cases software improvements will make a bigger difference than hardware improvements? For example, not much software makes good use of many cores. Few applications on Windows have AVX-512 support. Almost no software exists that runs on the NPUs on new laptop chips. And so on.

Ronigan

In your recent leak about RDNA 4's release date, you seemed unsure that RDNA 3 would be able to run AMD's upcoming AI based FSR 4. With RDNA 3 having AI accelerators included and currently unused, I assume that it should be able to run FSR 4 when it releases. Why wouldn't it be able to? Also thank you and Steve for the work you do in this satisfying and niche hobby of ours.

10GHz Netburst

Thoughts on the apparently increasing likelihood that Arrow Lake is the only generation on LGA1851, and if AM5 were to be replaced for Zen 6?

AnotherChris

Steve in your comparison video of 7800x3d vs 7900x3d vs 7950x3d you still picked the 7800x3d over the other two, if the other two have v cache on both CCDs , how do you see this playing out?

James Prendergast

A very simple question for you both: Are the 800 series boards even worth being released for consumers? For a specific kind of person, who needs USB4, I can argue for... but for the rest; the majority? It seems like a waste of money for everyone involved. Almost better to wait until Zen 6 and release then...

Michael Mullin

Considering that zen 5 is a poor upgrade for owners of zen 4, and considering that zen 3 owners would be concerned about buying an x670 or b650 board without the ability to run a bios upgrade for zen 5 compatibility. Do you foresee zen5 sales picking up once current zen 3 owners have an easier upgrade path via x870 boards? How much of a sales blunder was it to sell zen5 without motherboards to go along with them?

Swiggles

Hey Tom and Steve! AMD's next generation value proposition seems more focused in its upcoming rdna 4 gpus. Nvidia will need to put in a little more effort to win the benchmarks. Do you think they will favor their usual "we win Ray tracing and features" strategy, or will it be necessary to actually need to offer a better value proposition? How much would that improved value proposition dilute AMD's attempt at pretending high end doesn't matter?

Swiggles

Hey Tom and Steve! The trend for a good generation and a mid/sucky generation is a decision not an accident. They make the decision since graphics cards progress quickly per release but release slow they know when to release good cards. They have the pascal,ampere, cycle where everyone upgrades and they have the turing, lovelace cycle where all the early adopters suckers upgrade. They do that because they have other opportunities and advantages to boost margin like ai chip allocation. I think next generation the 5000 series will be the ampere cycle, at least in the parts that count. What's your guys thoughts?

10GHz Netburst

Why do you think AMD insists on having high MSRPs which they rarely, if ever stick to for more than a few months immediately after launch? Do you think they see it as a way to leave the option open to increase pricing later? Do you think this really works when, for example with the 7900XT(X) people always complained when the prices went up anyway, and the same is now happening with the 7800X3D?

10GHz Netburst

Is unifying RDNA and CDNA really going to fix the core problem that AMDs cards haven't been competitive enough in terms of value compared to Nvidia?

10GHz Netburst

Do you see any future for Arc dedicated Graphics? Has intel said anything about it to the tech press since the A580 launch? What features or functionality, if any, beyond just basic game support has Intel been improving on Arc?

AngelOfCake

Hi Better Steve, Are we beginning to hit a wall with single core performance and the age of double digit improvements is coming to an end? Is more on-memory cache like AMD's 3D chips the way forward? More importantly... will we see a pivot to cricket with basket balls for Hardware Unboxed? Also, thank you for your cost per frame charts. They're my bible when I have to put a PC together for someone. Have a great week!

KarbinCry

Why does almost everyone think a problematic launch should have been delayed? How many of Ryzen 9000's issues would be fixed if AMD delayed launch until now? I doubt many. They wouldn't discover methodological problems with their testing, they likely wouldn't see platform and BIOS issues (due to much less diversity in platforms they use for testing). Launch provides much more information to use to fix issues. It is the same for products like Meteor Lake (Intel likely tested on their platform, thus didn't see issues on OEM boards), even the 7900XTX vapor chamber issue would probably not have been seen before launching the card. Yet almost everyone says a problematic launch should have been delayed to fix issues... when those issues are much faster to solve with information you can only get after a launch, and often the issues that slip through do so precisely because they are extremely unlikely to be discovered in a limited, internal testing pre-launch.

Kiln God

Steve - I notice reviewers tend to get a bit of a split personality about the products they review. Intel had years of dismal performance improvements, yet its the end of the world when AMD only has a minor improvement. What Gives?

KarbinCry

With Lunar Lake presenting a unique design with strong ST, but very weak multithreading, is it time to create a more realistic testing methodology reflecting real usage? Noone I know games with only the game open. They have Discord, usually a browser, and often some other apps open and active together with the game. When testing even a 6-core, that's OK, it doesn't change the results much. But with a 4+4 thread machine like Lunar Lake, testing "clean" can significantly overstate the CPU's real life performance.

Dark Side of the Force

How much longer it would be before you take a hair loss treatment sponsor from testing Zen 5? Thank you for the extensive Zen 5 testing Steve!

MelodicArmor

Good day Steve! I have two questions: Recently I have noticed an alarming trend of communication issues between marketing and product management when dealing with these companies (Intel, AMD and Nvidia.) Have you seen it as well and has it made it difficult to be able to review products? Have you tried using AFMF 2 since it launched? I have been using it now for almost 2 months and generally I have been happy with it. Alot of the latency issues are gone. The only real distraction for me is some minor ghosting that happens at resolutions under 1440p. Just wanted your thoughts.

Glass

Hi again Tom and Hello Steve, who are the 8-Core non-X3D (9700X) and 12-Core (9900X) parts for? What product market do these serve that the 6-core, X3D for gaming, or 9950X(16-Core) and Threadripper/HEDT doesn't? I really see little value in someone buying these parts other than AMD being able to sell "ok yields".