AMD held a behind-closed-doors meeting at CES 2017 yesterday to reveal more details on its Ryzen CPU, which will be released this quarter. The meeting focused on the company's lineup of motherboards, coolers, and PCs. According to AMD, these accessories will all have same launching date.
The meeting revealed the X300, X370, and B350 as the only chipsets to support Ryzen's overclocking. This implies that every Ryzen PC cannot be overclocked. Together with the Ryzen, the chips will use the AM4 socket.
PC vendors have greater flexibility when using the AM4, which is compatible with several different chipsets. They can customize motherboard designs for specific markets. However, AM4 boards with X300, X370, and B350 chipsets can take advantage of the new overclocking technologies inherent to Ryzen, says PC World.
The X370 chipset-based motherboards offer better input-output connectivity and support for overclocking while the X300 is ideal for more compact and cheaper form factors, according to The Inquirer. Both chipsets can be paired with dual-channel DDR4 memory, NVMe, M.2 Sata, Gen 1 and Gen 2 USB 3.1 and PCIe 3.0
Furthermore, only AM4 motherboards with X370 chipset can be paired with Radeon CrossFire and Nvidia SLI setups for two or more GPUs. According to AMD, these features are rarely used by mainstream PC owners. This lessens the load for PC vendors when offering setups for mainstream or enthusiast grades
Meanwhile, mainstream AM4 chipset B350 may also entice Ryzen users. The chipset can also support overclocking but it has no CrossFire or SLI capabilities.
An AMD Ryzen PC setup with a Vega GPU promises good quality 4K graphics, which is a very attractive selling factor to attract gamers. This setup may also find its way in graphics, animation, video and other compute-intensive applications.
The video below shows the images of AMD's upcoming Ryzen AM4 motherboards shown at CES 2017. The X370 is the enthusiast grade motherboard meant for overclockers while the B350 is a more casual motherboard meant for basic stuff like gaming. Share your thoughts on the article in the comment section.
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