Currently, the latest motherboards designed for AMD processors use the AM4 socket. The first difference, which is also probably the most noticeable, is the transition from PGA (pin grid array) to LGA (land grid array) processor attachment, which Intel has been using for quite a few years. In short, PGA means that the processor has a large number of tiny pins (outputs) on the bottom that fit into a socket. So the processor fits into the socket and is then pressed by the retention mechanism. However, the problem lies in the delicacy of these pins.
You don’t have to have alder hands to accidentally damage some pins. The functionality of the processor is a bit of a roulette. It may happen that the processor will work without apparent problems, it may occasionally have problems, or it may not work at all. LGA, which Intel has been using since 2004, is much more resistant to human error. Of course, the pins are still there, they just moved directly to the socket on the motherboard and are therefore harder to damage. However, AM5 is finally supposed to adapt the LGA processor mount on mainstream desktop processors.
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Furthermore, the socket should contain an increased number of pins, by a full 29%. In absolute terms, this is an increase of 387 pins to a total of 1718. Given the maintenance of the socket dimensions, it can be said that the transition to LGA meant not only an increase in resistance to mishandling, but also, of course, a significant increase in pin density. The same dimensions are important for backwards compatibility with coolers, which will ultimately reduce the cost of switching to an AM5 socket by being able to recycle the old cooler. This way, AMD will avoid the complaints that Intel faced when switching to Alder Lake processors. The last differences are the support of DDR5 type RAM and PCIe slots in specification 5.0.
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PCIe is a significant step forward. Version 4.0 provided a 100% increase in bus width per line. Version 5.0 continues this trend and doubles it again. In absolute terms, the data throughput is 4 GB/s. That’s nice, but at the moment there is no graphics card that can handle the entire available band of the 3.0 standard, let alone the 4x wider one provided by the 5.0 standard. Fortunately, this improvement does not only affect the graphics card, but also manages better utilization of DDR5 memory, newer processors and also allows the use of even faster SSDs for M.2 NVMe.
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On August 5, AMD together with its partners plans to present motherboards with X670E and X670 chipsets with the help of its webinar. This event is to be held as part of AMD’s event “Meet the experts“, which is aimed at business partners and at the same time at customers who want to know more about the products. Very often such events are followed by the introduction of separate products. The sentence in the summary of the topics of the aforementioned webinar is also very interesting: “Supporting the recent introduction of the Ryzen series processors 7000”, which suggests that this webinar may follow shortly after the introduction of new processors. However, AMD has not yet commented on the introduction of new processors. At the same time, there is also a high chance that this is just a bad choice of words.
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