That would be a reasonable supposition, although with what people said above about AMD having sold 90% of the chips they've made, maybe not.
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Zen 3 CPUs - 500 Series or Newer Chipsets Only
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That would be a reasonable supposition, although with what people said above about AMD having sold 90% of the chips they've made, maybe not.
kirbyrj
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I'm not, especially with the 3900 and 3950 if they cut out support on older motherboards for Zen3. The Intel analogy is that the 4790k/7700k/9900k are always going to command the highest prices in that they were the fastest chips on their respective platforms. I doubt you're going to see a 50% cut in price like you have with previous generations in the used market on the highest end 3000 series in the short term.
I think it would be wiser to allow motherboard manufacturers the option to support Zen3 based on their own designs and limitations. The socket hasn't changed. I detest Intel's tomfoolery with new platforms for no reason, but at least there is a physical difference in the platform even if it wasn't necessary. In this case, you are literally not changing anything about the socket, so there's no harm in allowing the motherboard manufacturers control over whether or not they will support next gen on older boards, even if they call it "beta" support.
schoolslave
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I can’t help but wonder if the increasingly bloated bullshit vendors shove into motherboards isn’t to blame as well.
A few weeks ago I was modding my b450 ASUS ITX UEFI BIOS. Disassembling that revealed a LOT of hidden options and programs pertaining to intel and ancient platforms - are BIOS engineers incapable of pruning this crap? I guess when the priority is bloated UIs, half-assed RGB, and full network driver stacks it’s no surprise.
I’d much rather have new CPU support than vendor bloated UEFI bullshit. Also ASUS, stop arbitrarily hiding CPU features like PCIe bifurcation - all modern AMD CPUs support it and I paid for the CPU - not for you to decide what I can and can’t do with my HW.
A few weeks ago I was modding my b450 ASUS ITX UEFI BIOS. Disassembling that revealed a LOT of hidden options and programs pertaining to intel and ancient platforms - are BIOS engineers incapable of pruning this crap? I guess when the priority is bloated UIs, half-assed RGB, and full network driver stacks it’s no surprise.
I’d much rather have new CPU support than vendor bloated UEFI bullshit. Also ASUS, stop arbitrarily hiding CPU features like PCIe bifurcation - all modern AMD CPUs support it and I paid for the CPU - not for you to decide what I can and can’t do with my HW.
AMD proved with the PCIE 4.0 B450/X470 removal that they are not above bullshit, and countless times before. They are not your friend, they are the same corporate assholes like everyone else. This is yet another reminder. BS reason for a BS move.
Twisted Kidney
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That feels like an asshole move.
ManofGod
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We will see when the 4000 Series is released. As for the PCIe 4.0 stuff, those boards were not designed for it and hence, the reason for the removal.
Sadly they pulled it more because too many manufacturers cut corners on their boards, things like thinning their tracings or planned them too close to noisy capacitors which interferes with signal quality it sucks that AMD has to do it but it’s what we get for a race to the bottom on board prices. Better to call it off for the whole line than to have to qualify each board individually.
No, but it was proven to work with beta bios and then removed... If you keep it beta or say it's unsupported then it's not like they had to spend $ to support it. I think the problem was it WAS working on to many boards and they were afraid people wouldn't spend the extra money to upgrade to x570. I mean, look how long b550 took to come out? Still waiting. I'm an AMD fan, I run a B450 in my personal desktop. I am not going to pretend they are in this for good will... They are a company in business to make money (mostly to share holders who want short term investments, not long term). I would prefer them.to not put restrictions on their MB partners and allow them to support features if they want, but understand how long the AM4 platform has been out and the amount of work they would need to put in to verify/test in order to give vendors code to allow newer CPUs to run on older boards. As a B450 owner I was hoping to be able to drop in a 4600x or similar, but if not I don't feel like I got taken with my purchase.
Another thought on this issue:
Official reason given is that:
What makes X470 BIOSes with 16MB ROMs different from X570 BIOSes with 16MB ROMs? Something is telling me AMD could go back on this if they wanted, just like how some older boards dropped support for the first gen of AM4 processors (excavator?) when 3000 series launched.
Again I don't really mind -- I can easily pick up an X570 board today (except I hate the idea of the fan). But whether Intel or AMD, NVidia, this kind of stuff makes 0 sense.
Also, the B550 launch timing made this an issue as well. If they flooded the market with B550 boards with "Future AM4 CPU support" at the same price point as B450 boards when Zen 2 launched, there would have been close to no backlash. They also should have made this a selling point for X570 as well instead of staying mum on the issue.
Official reason given is that:
What makes X470 BIOSes with 16MB ROMs different from X570 BIOSes with 16MB ROMs? Something is telling me AMD could go back on this if they wanted, just like how some older boards dropped support for the first gen of AM4 processors (excavator?) when 3000 series launched.
Again I don't really mind -- I can easily pick up an X570 board today (except I hate the idea of the fan). But whether Intel or AMD, NVidia, this kind of stuff makes 0 sense.
Also, the B550 launch timing made this an issue as well. If they flooded the market with B550 boards with "Future AM4 CPU support" at the same price point as B450 boards when Zen 2 launched, there would have been close to no backlash. They also should have made this a selling point for X570 as well instead of staying mum on the issue.
Check the download file sizes for your BIOS @ the motherboard support pages, it will likely be less than 16MB.
The specs pages usually say 128Mb or 256Mb, which is actually 16/32MB since 8Mb = 1MB.
Master_shake_
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This isn't a new thing apparently.
https://www.techpowerup.com/257201/...backwards-compatibility-promise?cp=2#comments
They erased Bristol Ridge support on some MSI boards to fit the UEFI.
Maybe they'll give you an optional UEFI that erases 1xxx and 2xxx support in favor of 3 and 4000.
https://www.techpowerup.com/257201/...backwards-compatibility-promise?cp=2#comments
They erased Bristol Ridge support on some MSI boards to fit the UEFI.
Maybe they'll give you an optional UEFI that erases 1xxx and 2xxx support in favor of 3 and 4000.
Any board with flashback bios, where you can flash the bios even without a CPU would never have a bios size problem if the bios is selected for a given Ryzen version(s). There were bios's that lacked Ryzen 1 support just for this reason. The reasoning for all boards not being able to support is really BS.
I used PCIe 4 for 3-4 months, x370, made zero difference on the 5700XT performance, issues etc. Many motherboards had very good tracing for PCIe that would support it. Should have been left to the manufacturers. I can see motherboard makers maybe pushing the issue so they can sell enough motherboards. Also the motherboard manufacturers would also had to update the bios, support the users in an endless cycle for aged motherboards which may have other issues not related to the bios changes.
Personally I think AMD could sell more CPUs if most of the mid to upper end AM4 boards would support all AM4 CPU's but the issues covering 4 chipsets, X370, X470, X570, X670 would probably make that painful. When you have 10s of thousands complaining how crappy the Ryzen 4 CPUs are bacause it will not post on a B350 board or one of the VRMs caught fire, AMD/Board Manufacturers has to make a call.
I used PCIe 4 for 3-4 months, x370, made zero difference on the 5700XT performance, issues etc. Many motherboards had very good tracing for PCIe that would support it. Should have been left to the manufacturers. I can see motherboard makers maybe pushing the issue so they can sell enough motherboards. Also the motherboard manufacturers would also had to update the bios, support the users in an endless cycle for aged motherboards which may have other issues not related to the bios changes.
Personally I think AMD could sell more CPUs if most of the mid to upper end AM4 boards would support all AM4 CPU's but the issues covering 4 chipsets, X370, X470, X570, X670 would probably make that painful. When you have 10s of thousands complaining how crappy the Ryzen 4 CPUs are bacause it will not post on a B350 board or one of the VRMs caught fire, AMD/Board Manufacturers has to make a call.
Saw a video on HW Unboxed where they said AMD eventually backtracked on initial X370/B350 compatibility due to backlash but won't do it again for this gen. Again, I think if AMD planned to do this, communication is key. Not to mention, not delaying B550 for 10 months then proceeding to drop B450 support.
3600s just don't make much sense on an X570 when the CPU is almost as expensive as the board. Obviously when you are talking about 3950Xs then it makes sense to get a 200-400$ board.
3600 and X570 or a 10400 and an H level board?
That should have been up to the MBO manufacturers to test and decide. It's only a BS reason from AMD. They just didn't want people to keep using boards they wouldn't profit as much from.
The same for the 3XX series chipsets and Zen 2. It was only after public backlash that they caved and allowed support.
It should be up to MB manufacturers to do but here’s why they won’t and why AMD won’t push it. If the MB manufacturer spends the money and does all the tests it nets them no additional sales, if they don’t pass it tarnishes their reputation and costs them future sales. AMD is not exactly in any position to go pissing off its partners like that so knowing the issues they won’t press it. It’s far better for them to say “for the sake of stability and ensuring the best performance for you, we are only making this available for these chips” and end it there. AMD’s partners get to save face and for 99.9% of their customers they don’t really care and there is no impact on sales. What AMD should have done was not mention PCIE4 at all until after their cards launched then released a BIOS update for the 500 series that “enables” PCIE4, then give us a story about how their new GPU’s are compatible with the faster speeds. Then it’s no longer a marketing sale but a nice bonus for the consumer side. They could happily leave the PCIE4 material in the thread ripper stuff from the get go as there was no backwards compatibility there to worry about. It’s not like PCIE4 is that big of a deal on the consumer side, it only really effects memory storage and nvme drives operating at those speeds are few and far between.
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This doesn't make sense. The MB manufacturers wanted to and have done it. It was AMD that stepped over them and made them disable it.
At least AMD had the "dignity" to lie about it then blaming it on physical restrictions, now they aren't even trying with the "too large BIOS" nonsense.
AMD don't make much from MBs as far as I can remember. Maybe this has changed with x570 due to pcie 4.0 requirements? I still dislike that even today if someone wanted to build a lower end AMD rig, they still can't get a b550 and be able to upgrade later. This actually puts me in a tough spot, I was debating buying a MB to upgrade my son's PC from his 6600k to a 3300x... Then buy myself a new CPU when zen 3 comes out.(in the 4600/4600x range)... If I cant put that into my current b450, then I might as well keep waiting to upgrade. The b550 won't support my 1600, so I can't even upgrade my MB to pass mine to my son in the meantime.... So basically I have to wait for zen 3 to drop, which means instead of spending $ on AMD now, just waiting until the end of the year. The lack of budget motherboards is/was a crappy decision if they weren't planning to have compatibility going forward.
Honestly, I wouldn't think they made much either, but I can't see another reason for these moves. Them being the ones manufacturing the 5XX chipsets instead of ASMedia which made previous ones makes me think they have a bigger margin now to make it worth it, especially when their CPUs are so popular now.
ManofGod
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They should let the MB manufacturers decide? Then when things fail, AMD takes the hit and is at fault, hurts their image and people say they should have not allowed it, eh?
Edit: Also, show me this backlash, since it was actually supported from day one. As well, I have yet to see any evidence of this non support for the 3xx series chipsets, although I could be wrong. I do not recall any youtubers saying anything nor any articles written about it. (And no, possible bad support at the beginning is not evidence.)
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kirbyrj
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ASMedia is making the B550. They made the X570.
The small amount of people this would effect, and enthusiasts at that, would not be blaming AMD for a beta bios on a non supported motherboard. It's not like big OEMs would be selling non working unsupported combos. If a board didn't work right, but 15 others did, they would blame the vendor not AMD. You can already see this as (going by memory) some Asus x370 support was crap with bios updates for newer CPUs. Nobody put that on AMD, you only ever hear a handful of people complaining that ASUS didn't release many updates and left a lot to be desired.
I can't remember when a CPU manufacturer got blaimed for a MBO advertised feature not working.
And do note that AMD haven't cited any physical reasons, they are deliberately restricting access to needed AGESA code.
There was definitely a lot of noise about MSI motherboards not supporting Zen2, but you may be right on AMD not being the one restricting it on 3XX initially (though I vaguely remeber it being ambiguous) . They have done so with PCIE 4.0, even though some had MBO models capable of supporting it. It was a software switch for hardware feature segmentation pushed from AMD.
Then it baffles me even more.
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sirmonkey1985
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yes and that's likely going to happen.. remember AMD never officially said B350 and x370 would support zen 2 up until they launched, only B450, x470, and x570 would for these exact reasons. they don't want to force the board partners to support it if there's a legitimate limitation cough early msi boards cough.. it's likely at least x370/b450 will support them but lose first gen support in the process except for asrock boards which have a 128mb rom.
it's also considered unfair marketing within the board partners, remember the ASUS marketing fiasco? you know it would of gotten worse if some board partners could legitimately support pcie 4.0 on b450 and others couldn't.
Why? It's just another feature better SKUs would have. Just like ECC, 10G, M.2, BIOS flashback...
we will see what happens at launch. Plenty of boards gave up athlon/APU support/ryzen gen1 support for 3000 series support. No reason that it can't happen again. I think having AGESA for different architectures is what will really take up space, but still should be possible.
schoolslave
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The bigger issue here is motherboard vendors' shitty BIOSes and proprietary crap like AMI.
I own the hardware, there is zero reason to lock down the BIOS software outside of restricting my use.
All of the vendors just purchase/license and customize AMI's templates anyways. Some are nicer than others, ie. Asrock opening up the AMD PBS menu on their motherboards (unlike ASUS and friends).
I own the hardware, there is zero reason to lock down the BIOS software outside of restricting my use.
All of the vendors just purchase/license and customize AMI's templates anyways. Some are nicer than others, ie. Asrock opening up the AMD PBS menu on their motherboards (unlike ASUS and friends).
I'm not overly concerned, I would bet money multiple vendors have b450/x470 BIOS with ryzen 4000 support a month after launch. If one does it, the rest will be forced to follow. There is always BIOS modding as well.
On the fan.
Back in the day, I added fans to cool the southbridge and/or the vrms. Yeah, back in the Riva TNT days... They were audible, but that was the sound the cutting edge would make.
I was a bit leery of the X570 with its active cooling. I bought one (Gigabyte Auros Ultra). It is inaudible. I like the mobo so much (and the silence), that I have a second one sitting on my kitchen table, waiting (with its 3700x) for the open-heart transplant, to replace my 6700k/z170.
Whatever else you may be considering or concerned about, the fan should not be one of them. FWIW.
Hagrid
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It would be nice if they let the MB manufacturers decide, but I just got a 3600 and only use it for games, so no big deal.
For others it might suck. I do not like it in that the MB can support it, but they just do not want it to because.......
For others it might suck. I do not like it in that the MB can support it, but they just do not want it to because.......
Auer
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I have a itx mini Asus B450, what seems prudent now is to buy a 3800x/3900x after Zen3 comes out and then hang for another year until Intel get's it shit together.
Unabomber
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I can certainly sympathize for the folks who are mad about the possible lack of future compatability. I'm pretty sure a lot of folks here were quite pissed at Intel when they found out that the P24T upgrade for those old Socket 3 boards wasn't going to work for many of them, and that they certainly took their sweet ol' time releasing the damn chip in the first place.
On the other hand, though, I also know with a new socket generally comes more features, and it would be nicer to have a newer motherboard with the newer CPU. If you already have a Ryzen system, it should be perfectly good for most use for a while.
I bought a MSI X470 board in combination with a Ryzen 5 2600X two years ago, and I'm simply going to keep this combination going for as long as I can. When I upgrade to Zen 3 or something better, it's going to be with a new board, since my current setup will still be quite usable for a long time.
On the other hand, though, I also know with a new socket generally comes more features, and it would be nicer to have a newer motherboard with the newer CPU. If you already have a Ryzen system, it should be perfectly good for most use for a while.
I bought a MSI X470 board in combination with a Ryzen 5 2600X two years ago, and I'm simply going to keep this combination going for as long as I can. When I upgrade to Zen 3 or something better, it's going to be with a new board, since my current setup will still be quite usable for a long time.
D
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Welp damn I’ll have to upgrade my motherboard too oh well Ryzen 4xxx series looks like it might be performant enough to make that worth it
just wait and see.
When my X370 board died, bought an X470 so I could keep using my 1700x until I was ready to update the CPU, so an X570 was out. Gonna get burned on that one, as I was hoping to wait for the 8 core 4000 series to drop as the point to upgrade. :/
I've bought 3 AMD cpus in the last year and a half. (Two in the last month.) My last intel chip was purchased 4 years ago. No, I'm not a powerful force in the market.
The last two AMD chips, 3700x's, were both purchased with X570 mobos...specifically to increase the odds of my system longevity. Will I swap in a Ryzen 4000 series? I don't know. But I do know that I like the option. Intel...well, they've been pushed deep into second place on my list of "go to" cpu manufacturers.
Like others here, I keep one or two machines at the top of the heap, and try to use their cast-offs to keep the other machines relevant. AMD lets me do that far more easily (and cheaply) than intel.
Exactly we all have wives and kids computers to feed.
With Intel if you want to be crazy and buy new CPUs every year or two its hard to justify as mostly you either have to sell the old parts off, buy more parts so you can use them elsewhere, or just store them in a closet.
AMD on the other hand makes the choice pretty simple... buy yourself the latest greatest and drop you old chip into another machine in the house. It also makes it far easier to justify, and I guess for some keeps the wife happy if your upgrading their machines every time you upgrade your own. lol
Master_shake_
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