MSI Betrays AMD's Socket AM4 Longevity Promise: No Zen2 for 300-series?

Yeah the problem is that people run away with the information. But it it is weird where a lot of vendors have released their "updated" bios these past weeks for Ryzen 3000 some still have not?

Means nothing one way or the other. Some manufacturers got things ready earlier than others. Some might not release until much closer to release, some might not do updates until release, some might wait until after release, and some might never do updates. It will, most likely, be a case-by-case basis for each company and product.
 
Some motherboards may never see an update. Again, we've seen inconsistencies concerning this in the past.

Nothing changed AM4 nor 95 Watt or 105 Watt rated cpu still use the same socket and same power...
 
I'm curious to see what other HardOCP forum readers do, but keep in mind we aren't the norm either. So some of you guys might use more CPUs or less of them than the average enthusiast might.

I went with Ryzen for the platform. I knew I took a gamble on it with staying with one motherboard for a few CPU cycles though. I dragged my feet too long. I could have went from my 4670K i5 to a Ryzen 1600 for only $90. In the end I waited, missed two ebay deals, and ended up paying $109 after selling the Intel setup. Slower in a few games, faster in a few others. A few other tasks are a good bit faster due to the extra cores/threads.

I'm now on a Ryzen 2700X. Not really the most economical upgrade this time but I kept my motherboard/RAM so I got a little bump in performance. I plan to keep my motherboard and RAM and get the replacement for it. Hoping the IPC and clock gain is notable. Currently I see no real need for a new motherboard, this one does what I need. I hope my motherboard gets support for the new CPUs. I didn't get the cheapest budget board purposely as I think those ones are more likely to not get a BIOS update. We'll see how it plays out.
 
I wanted the ASRock board with 2x m.2 sockets but it was literally never in stock for more then 5 min. MSI was #3. Guess it was good Asus was in stock.
 
And if you go to page 11 you find out that, shocker, some T1 support dude in Germany doesn't speak for the entire corporation and MSI has already addressed this as false

Too bad it's 10 pages of mental gymnastics and internet hate mechanics before you get there tho so let me save you some trouble

https://www.techpowerup.com/254634/...promise-no-zen2-for-300-series?cp=11#comments

Read carefully. MSI is claiming compatibility with AMD APUs only at this time. Zen 2 CPU compatibility is still a big TBD.
 
My memory was that only x470 boards were guaranteed to be viable until 2020/Zen2.
/has Asrock Tachi X470, so I should be set
 
Micro Star Inc. motherboards seem to be doing alot better as far as durability and reviews ASROCK is up there as well but their boards are made in Vietnam.
ASUS on the other hard seems to be struggling though I used to be a big fan owned like x4 of them the last being the Asus Tuf z170.
 
Yes, because they aren't going to promise that if there is maybe a 12 core or high OC 8 core that it will work on every single board so it's easier to put out a blanket statement now so that way they can avoid shit like this where 10 pages of people lock on to one tiny detail that doesn't matter in the end.

There's a very good chance that the top tier Zen2 might not work on the lowest most budget vrm setup 300 series board so they are covering their asses for now

Hence why it literally says in there "we intend to offer maximum capability for as many products as possible" , I'm sure there will physically be some boards, from more than just MSI, that do not hold up.

I mean shit there are already some boards out there that struggle and sometimes fail on the 2700x due to their VRMs, is it really an honest expectation to assume that every single budget board will work with every flagship top of the line CPU for 3-4 generations? There has to be some realistic concessions on par with common sense folks. Shit there are 450 series boards that don't even stack up well to the 2700x due to VRM issues. I even own some MSI boards that people have had underwhelming successes (not the carbon, the standard Pro Gaming) with 2700x's but I didn't get them for that purpose, they were the cheapest and best option for what I needed. When I did my refresh of my entire house in February I switched all but one system over to MSI 450 series boards for that exact reason, power delivery is known to be all over the place for AM4 boards in the 400 series

This goes for Intel as well, that's why there are cheap boards and there are expensive boards. People making up issues just so they can shit all over AMD, which is hilarious because I never though I'd say that because until about 45 days ago I haven't been an AMD guy since the Athlon mobile days, like over a decade ago
 
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If I upgrade my CPU, I tend to upgrade the motherboard and sell the old CPU/MOBO to recoup costs too - but it's still the fact that MSI is opting to veer away from AMDs vision and giving their customers the option.

Like others have said, that's a reason to blacklist them and avoid their products in the future although I've personally not owned an MSI board myself - and only had an MSI GPU that I traded for from a friend after he helped me with something (gave him a better card).
 
If I upgrade my CPU, I tend to upgrade the motherboard and sell the old CPU/MOBO to recoup costs too - but it's still the fact that MSI is opting to veer away from AMDs vision and giving their customers the option.

Like others have said, that's a reason to blacklist them and avoid their products in the future although I've personally not owned an MSI board myself - and only had an MSI GPU that I traded for from a friend after he helped me with something (gave him a better card).

Read more, this was debunked
 
You know, I like backwards compatibility, but you usually get the most of a new CPU in the latest chipset motherboard anyway, so that's probably the route I would go.
True, when you "saved" money for it that should not be the problem. The problem lies with AM4 life spawn which supposedly ends in 2020. The perks you get from a new chipset/motherboard percentage wise would need to be rewarding and the other thing is that you don't have to worry about a new 32 core AM4 chip being released because AMD will use a upgrade/variant of the current 7nm process.
 
MSI is not a brand I particularly like. Once board, a 790x board, would not run anything beyond a 95 Watt CPU, only nothing was reported about that until way later in the products life cycle. On another board, a 970 board, the heatpad on the VRM's literally leaked on the mainboard. I stick with Asrock because I like their Ultra Fast Boot function.
 
I've been trying to remember, but I don't think I have ever upgraded a CPU only..

I considered it back on x58, going from a quad core i7-920 to a 980 hexacore if I could have gotten it at a good price. Had a friend that worked at Best Buy, and he was able to buy one from Intel for under $300 iirc (The Retail Edge program). But they were a limit 1 per employee and I think he ended up buying it for himself.

And nowdays the performance improvements between cpu generations is single digit percentages, not point in upgrading just a CPU. Instead get 4 to 7 years out of the system, then replace the mobo/cpu/ram as a set. I'm just past 2 years on an i7-6850k, and prior to that the [email protected] lasted 7 years... Moore's Law is dead, so this scenario (of upgrading just the CPU) is even more unlikely.

Don't blame them at all should they choose not to support new cpu's on older boards.
 
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I've been trying to remember, but I don't think I have ever upgraded a CPU only..

I considered it back on x58, going from a quad cord i7-920 to a 980 hexacore if I could have gotten it at a good price. Had a friend that worked at Best Buy, and he was able to buy one from Intel for under $300 iirc (The Retail Edge program). But they were a limit 1 per employee and I think he ended up buying it for himself.

And nowdays the performance improvements between cpu generations is single digit percentages, not point in upgrading just a CPU. Instead get 4 to 7 years out of the system, then replace the mobo/cpu/ram as a set. I'm just past 2 years on an i7-6850k, and prior to that the [email protected] lasted 7 years... Moore's Law is dead, so this scenario (of upgrading just the CPU) is even more unlikely.

Don't blame them at all should they choose not to support new cpu's on older boards.

If I had to upgrade everything, I'd wait until Ryzen gen 4. As is, I'm very likely to replace my 1700X with a newer processor, but leave everything else the same. No reason to get new RAM or a MOBO when it's still DDR4, and I'll upgrade my GPU after I upgrade my monitor.
 
The benefit comes from people spreading their upgrades out over cycles. If you bought a decent 370 board and then a cheaper or used 1st gen ryzen, then you could get the 3rd gen later in a good CPU, you aren't spending as much up front which helps for being on a budget but still seeing gains every other cycle

It's kind of how I do it now. I got a decent VRM that should be able to handle higher end chips, and got a 2600x to hold me over. I got a boost from my old setup and I've got a clear upgrade path for once something surpasses AM4 I can snag up the previous gen flagship and rock that for a while. By the time I do a new mobo I'm expecting DDR4 to not be a thing anymore, unless we just stay there for a decade like we did on 3

And since I did all my systems on this theory with progessively lower chips, when I buy 1 CPU to upgrade my gamer everything else will get the previous chip from the next system and I'll get a boost across 3 PC's with the purchase of a single CPU lol, I know that's a fringe case but it applies and having AM4 last longer just makes that strat work better in the long run too
 
More like the x370 was the beta test and had a whole bunch of problems on release. The x570 should be a lot more solid. Like Dan said how many people actually upgrade a CPU with out a MB also? In 20 years of building computers I have never reused a MB.
Point is AMD clearly said at AM4 launch that platform would be compatible with new processors through 2020. It was a big draw at the time to those of us who hold equipment a long time. I build PCs for friends and customers on occasion, and I touted that line that AMD marketed. I didn’t know, and no one knew that it would be AMD partner dependent. That’s bad form.
 
I got an MSI Tomahawk B350 when Ryzen was pretty new, so I expected some "growing pains". What I stepped into, however, was the biggest pile of shit bios I've encountered in a very long time. I've got it working pretty smoothly now, but the journey was a nightmare. So many boots to a black screen of nothingness, rebooting and trying to navigate a bios menu that's not visible. Swapping video cards, monitors and cables just trying to get a display... to get anything to show. Finally getting a display as if by magic one boot, only for it to be gone the next.

And I won't even get into the issues with memory. Or with M.2 NVMe

So, this does not surprise me at all. Not that I would attempt to install a 3rd gen Ryzen in my Tomahawk. Hell, I won't even try swapping to a second gen. The next upgrade my MSI is getting will be some lead shot piercing the PCB. In the meantime I pray that nothing fails so I don't have to worry about swapping anything and fighting to get it to boot, and I leave it running 24/7 because I just never know when it will decide to turn on and not give me a display. Last. MSI. Ever.
Upgrade the bios recently?
 
More like the x370 was the beta test and had a whole bunch of problems on release. The x570 should be a lot more solid. Like Dan said how many people actually upgrade a CPU with out a MB also? In 20 years of building computers I have never reused a MB.

Used to do this all the time in the Socket 7 and Socket A era. in the Socket 7 era I had less money so I would use whatever CPU I could get my hands on cheap or free. If a faster one were available, I'd swap it out in a heartbeat.

In the Socket A era things were progressing much faster on the CPU side than on the motherboard side. I must have gone though 4 or more CPU upgrades in the same motherboard once boards with the faster 133Mhz bus came out.

Since then it's been less frequent. For a long time I was running an FX-8120 as a server. I did upgrade that one with an FX-8350 at some point.

Other than that, these days I feel like for my main desktop I'd probably opt for the latest motherboard with my latest CPU upgrade, especially since CPU upgrade cycles are so long these days, but for secondary systems (routers, HTPC's, etc) anything goes. Once parts leave my main system and enter the parts bin I pick and pull from that and combine anything with anything that will work.
 
Upgrade the bios recently?

No. I attempted to, but I cannot. When I boot into bios settings I am greeted by a black screen. Same goes for trying to boot off usb.

I'm not going to mess with this any further. Archaic MSI doesn't have a way to flash the bios from Windows, and I had all the fun dealing with the black screen of death I ever wanted getting my PC to the point it is at. The next bios update I attempt is going to come with a new motherboard.
 
No. I attempted to, but I cannot. When I boot into bios settings I am greeted by a black screen. Same goes for trying to boot off usb.

I'm not going to mess with this any further. Archaic MSI doesn't have a way to flash the bios from Windows, and I had all the fun dealing with the black screen of death I ever wanted getting my PC to the point it is at. The next bios update I attempt is going to come with a new motherboard.

Do you have multiple screens / TV's connected to your computer?
 
Do you have multiple screens / TV's connected to your computer?

It behaves that way in many configurations. One display or multiples. DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort or VGA. RX 580, RX 460, 550 Ti or GT 230. I've memorized the bios key combos to revert to factory defaults and save & exit, because I almost never get the bios to display. The motherboard has loaded the bios options, but it won't display.

My guess is it is some sort of low level communication issue between the bios and the GPU, where MSI is doing something nonstandard.
 
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