A scheme of the alleged Asus Prime X670-P WiFi motherboard for AMD's next-generation Ryzen 7000-series 'Raphael' processors in AM5 packaging reveals basic schematics of the platform and confirms that AMD's X670 chipset uses two identical chips. Meanwhile, this particular motherboard appears to use a PCIe switch to connect two chipsets to the CPU efficiently. However, this may not be the case for all X670 motherboards.
Rumors about the dual-chip nature of AMD's X670 platform for future Ryzen CPUs have been floating for a couple of months now. This week, ASRock and Gigabyte teased images of their X670-based motherboards; these sneak peeks neither confirmed nor denied that AMD's X670 uses two chips. But a schematic illustration of the alleged Asus Prime X670-P WiFi motherboard shows two identical chips in places where the chipsets reside.
An anonymous Baidu user (via HXL) posted the image on the social network platform, which is not the most reliable source. However, assuming that the image is legit lends credence to the speculation about AMD's X670 chipset leveraging two chips.
AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000-series CPUs based on the company's Zen 4 microarchitecture will employ brand-new platforms with all-new AM5 sockets. In addition, they will feature DDR5 memory, PCIe 5.0 interface, and many other innovations. These new platforms will require new chipsets, and there will be three chipsets available initially: AMD's X670, X670E, and B650. AMD's X670 reportedly relies on two identical chips, whereas B650 uses only one of these chips. While the functionality of the two platforms should be similar (or very close), the former will support more PCIe lanes, more ports, richer I/O, etc.
An avid reader might ask how to connect two chipsets to the CPU that presumably has 24 PCIe lanes in total (x16 for a graphics card, x4 for an SSD, and x4 to connect to the chipset). Given the nature of the PCIe interface, it is possible to daisy chain two identical chips. Another option is to use a PCIe switch, which will significantly increase costs and promise higher I/O performance.
An interesting thing about the photograph is that there is a chip sitting between two X670 chips. We may speculate that this is a PCIe switch meant to ensure better I/O performance. While the assumption looks logical, we should consider that Asus' Prime motherboards aim to be relatively inexpensive. Adding a PCIe switch to such a platform is not rational unless AMD wants its premium platforms to use such a switch to ensure maximum performance and reliability.
Since neither AMD nor Asus ever comments on unreleased products, we recommend taking this information with a grain of salt and waiting for Computex, where AMD will announce details about its next-generation platforms.
While the information contained in the slides (or excerpts from slides) corroborates with official details and unofficial leaks, there are way too many inconsistencies in the images. Furthermore, even the channel itself admits that it got the slides in March 2020, so they might have gotten outdated even if they are authentic.
