AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[IrshaadH]

So, I was upset about this at first. I bought a crosshair vii fully expecting to drop in a 4000 series upgrade.

 

However, I think Zen2 ultimately will be the biggest performance upgrade on AM4. So, when Ryzen 4000 releases, I'll try and nab a 3950x for half off.

[XenosTech]

I'm confused at peoples confusion over this. AMD said AM4 would be supported for zen3 but they never said anything about chipset support for existing boards to my knowledge. I originally thought x570 was the end of support for the first 3 generations and zen3 being a new architecture it would be a new chipset again but as linus explained on the WAN show it's a lot more complicated to support all those chips from a bios standpoint even with a bigger bios chip.

[Bombastinator]

24 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

I'm confused at peoples confusion over this. AMD said AM4 would be supported for zen3 but they never said anything about chipset support for existing boards to my knowledge. I originally thought x570 was the end of support for the first 3 generations and zen3 being a new architecture it would be a new chipset again but as linus explained on the WAN show it's a lot more complicated to support all those chips from a bios standpoint even with a bigger bios chip.

So the socket will be there but you can’t use it nyaa nyaa nyaa.  like that’s reasonable. 
 

This isn’t the problem really.  People believed, a few of them got damaged.  Not real badly. Myself I wasn’t t damaged because I didn’t buy.  I almost did. I intended to, but circumstances prevented it from happening.  I believed though. Myself I’m just embarrassed and I feel bad for people I told wrong.   There were a lot of people doing it as well, of course.  I wasn’t the only one who believed. I fell for it.  Such things happen.  What’s irritating is the people that did know carefully did not say so.   

[NumLock21]

To avoid this problem in the future, I hope board manufactures adds a 1TB bios rom chip.

 

/s

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

To avoid this problem in the future, I hope board manufactures adds a 1TB bios rom chip.

 

/s

The bios is just another instance of Windows

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

So the socket will be there but you can’t use it nyaa nyaa nyaa.  like that’s reasonable.

Well part of it is the problem that we all still think in the 'Intel ways'. This is also why Intel does prefer to change the socket so it can't be confused.

 

I do think back in 2016 AMD had every intention for every chipset to support all architectures on AM4, even if not all processors but at least most of them. But back in 2016 AMD still had a bad rep and board vendors were still very weary of putting money in to a platform with no proof it was actually going to sell well and zero brand reputation to back it. So you make it cheap to lower your risk and with how busy AMD would have been I would find it very hard to believe they would micro manage board partners down to the BIOS chip size, that's not their wheelhouse.

 

Now that we know it's a problem and everyone's gone 'oh shit' there is little that can be done. Lets also not forget about the problems AMD had giving support during Ryzen 3000 launch for chipsets that were intended to be not supported but board vendors insisted on providing support so AMD backed that. This forced AMD in to a position of supporting their CPU customers that had product combinations that didn't actually work, Ryzen 3000 CPU upgrade kits for free. This was likely a logistical nightmare and very costly too.

 

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295027-amd-will-provide-a-free-temporary-uefi-upgrade-kit-for-ryzen-3000-motherboard-updates

 

This is why it baffles me how easy everyone forgot about these problems during the Ryzen 3000 launch, it was a huge damn problem.

 

Somtimes your partners let you down and there is nothing you can do about it, sometimes you don't know they have until years later. You just have to do the best you can with the situation, if that means the same as Ryzen 3000 situation or no support at all then that is what it is. Go bitch to board vendors for having no faith during a time when there was no warrant for them to, because FX did them no favors.

[NumLock21]

Just now, Arika S said:

The bios is just another instance of Windows

Not Windows, but Asus board did have something back then called Express Gate, which is a Linux OS that runs off the build in flash drive or from the users HDD.

[mr moose]

54 minutes ago, leadeater said:

AMD had giving support during Ryzen 3000 launch for chipsets that were intended to be not supported but board vendors insisted on providing support so AMD backed that.

Got a citation for that, Because if they never intended to support 3000 series on some AM4 boards then they are worse than I was calling them out for.   Because it is pretty hard to argue that given all the marketing they had no intention of supporting even that.

 

 

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

What’s irritating is the people that did know carefully did not say so.   

Just curious if you are talking about people in the industry or us forum plebs.  Every time I recommended an AM4 I made sure to caveat that future upgrades are not guaranteed and you should buy for it's current performance and value.   I bought a B350 for myself confident that the 3600 would work.  Turns out I came mighty close to being burnt even though I was aware this would happen eventually.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Got a citation for that, Because if they never intended to support 3000 series on some AM4 boards then they are worse than I was calling them out for.   Because it is pretty hard to argue that given all the marketing they had no intention of supporting even that.

The links I already provided saying Beta BIOS support, because not all board actually got BIOS updates for it.

 

And again directly caused by board vendors, go bitch at them, they are the cause. AMD cannot go around saying platforms support a product when they in fact do not, no amount of wishful thinking will change that. AMD could say A320 supports Ryzen 3000 all day long but if board vendors don't or can't do it that is worse than saying A320 can when reality hits real products can't. That is by far worse.

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The links I already provided saying Beta BIOS support, because not all board actually got BIOS updates for it.

 

And again directly caused by board vendors, go bitch at them, they are the cause. AMD cannot go around saying platforms support a product when they in fact do not, no amount of wishful thinking will change that. AMD could say A320 supports Ryzen 3000 all day long but if board vendors don't or can't do it that is worse than saying A320 can when reality hits real products can't. That is by far worse.

So it was intended to be supported by AMD?  the way you said it I read as meaning AMD did not intend on supporting it. 

 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So it was intended to be supported by AMD?  the way you said it I read as meaning AMD did not intend on supporting it. 

What I said in the entire post was that in 2016 I bet that was the intention, then board vendors made products, AMD started releasing new products (APUs etc) and new architectures and the AGESA binaries started getting really big, it would have been at that point that AMD realized that their partners have products that cannot fit the new AGESA binaries so support was originally not going to be offered. Board vendors still wanted to find a way as they had tons of existing stock in supply channels and if they didn't support Ryzen 3000 then that entire stock would have been essentially worthless.

 

So would you burn all your board partners or would you find a way to support them when you need every sale and gain as much market share as you can?

 

As it is right now A320 is dead because it does not support Ryzen 3000, it was the cheapest chipset on the cheapest products and nobody want to spend the time trying to do anything with it. X370 and B350 on the other hand were still selling and people brought more premium options of these on the idea of long term support, compromised by insufficient BIOS sizes that went unnoticed at the time.

 

In 2016 AMD did intend to support everything.

In 2019 AMD did not intend to offer support for Ryzen 3000 on X370 and B350

In 2019 AMD allowed board vendors to selectively offer support for Ryzen 3000, labeling this Beta.

[mr moose]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

In 2016 AMD did intend to support everything.

In 2019 AMD did not intend to offer support for Ryzen 3000 on X370 and B350

In 2019 AMD allowed board vendors to selectively offer support for Ryzen 3000, labeling this Beta.

Non of your earlier links actually show AMD telling people that they intended to drop support for anything at any time other than what we already knew for beyond 2020.

 

All of those articles claim AMD had every intention of supporting the 3000 series down to B350 (as per their original plan).  In fact they don't even say that AMD was reluctant not to support down to the 320, but lacking any information on that I won't go there.

 

So what we have is, AMD promising a all ryzens up to and including zen3 to work on all AM4 motherboards throughout 2020 (they did not mention chipsets or make any caveats/footnotes stating exceptions).   Board manufacturers then had issues with bios size,  AMD came in and offered the support they promised yet didn't making any mention of dropping support for future products moving forward.  Now they are dropping support for a product they previously said they would support and they clearly knew this was going to be a problem over a year ago (as I said right back at the start), but did nothing to set the record straight or update their roadmaps to reflect this. 

 

 

What us consumers saw:

 

All ryzens (including zen3) will work on all AM4 motherboards till the end of 2020.

Some motherboards had issues, not intentional and there were updates meaning with  he exception of the 320 AMD kept their promise and everything was good.  Nothing more was said about CPU support on AM4 or their roadmap until now after many have bought B450 boards to find out that zen 3 is not supported on the boards they were told they would be supported on.

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

What's that? I don't have to spend money on my B450 rig? Keep my 2700X it does plenty for me??

 

Yea, they can't get my money if I can't use my current motherboard. Oh well, sucks to be them. 

[JoostinOnline]

I've decided to wait for Zen 4 to upgrade for this reason. I do need a CPU upgrade, but I really want upgrade paths. Zen 3 is going to suck there, because Zen 4 will both use a new socket and new RAM.

[Dabombinable]

4 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

Not Windows, but Asus board did have something back then called Express Gate, which is a Linux OS that runs off the build in flash drive or from the users HDD.

Unfortunately, that couldn't be updated...so the internet is barely useable in it anymore (it was integrated directly on the motherboard). The internet now works better on my windows 98 machine than Express Gate.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Non of your earlier links actually show AMD telling people that they intended to drop support for anything at any time other than what we already knew for beyond 2020.

What company ever has given details about products not announce or released yet? We got this because someone took the time to ask and they actually got an answer.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

All of those articles claim AMD had every intention of supporting the 3000 series down to B350 (as per their original plan).  In fact they don't even say that AMD was reluctant not to support down to the 320, but lacking any information on that I won't go there.

As I said the original intention was to but it just wasn't possible. If you actually think limited Beta support is actual full support from AMD then you don't understand the term Beta support. I can tell you right now near or actually zero OEM systems with B350 chipsets will have a BIOS update to allow Ryzen 3000.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

(they did not mention chipsets or make any caveats/footnotes stating exceptions).  

Yes they did, since 2019 when problems started showing.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

yet didn't making any mention of dropping support for future products moving forward

Again no company ever goes. If you can take a hint from existing observable things happening I can't help you. A320 has no Ryzen 3000 support, many B350 have no Ryzen 3000, a number of X370 have no Ryzen 3000 support.

 

It should come as no surprise using known offical already released information that the same problem for the same reason would on future products. No crystal ball is required here, we know why it's a problem so we know it is going to be a problem.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

All ryzens (including zen3) will work on all AM4 motherboards till the end of 2020.

No you are now changing the statement to fit your point, this was not what was said. What was said was AM4 support until 2020, not the end of. The wording AM4 is also important here because while I know what their intentions likely were they 100% worded it in a way to make sure if there were any problems this would still be true.

 

All was never used neither was end of 2020.

[leadeater]

And just for sake of completeness here is an Intel architecture road map

 

Completely devoid of anything about chipsets because these slides, like AMD's, have nothing to do with that when talking about architecture road maps.

[Void Master]

I may be lucky by pairing a 2700X ( i bought for 150$ ) with an X570 mobo.

Just because i wanted to have future support for pcie 4.0.

I and i wanted to do it the weird way ... i ended up flexing on my friends  

tho i don't need pcie 4.0 but i just bought it ..... ( and i can't use it with the 2700X)

But tbh AMD did a hell of a job maintaining compatibility, remember that they were the underdog all the way back in 2016 .....

Also the first gen ryzen mobos were trash compared to intel motherboards, they weren't DESIGNED by the motherboard manufacturers to be future compatible, they thought the it was another bulldozer.

 

I was angry when i heard this ( tho i don't have a reason myself), but now i realized that it's harder than i thought ...

maybe AMD wants to push clock speeds next gen, or do some overwhelming design changes to achieve that ... 

As zen 2 hits a hard limit at 4.2-4.3 GHz.

And zen 2 chips ain't aging anytime soon, they can last 8yrs + ( u can grab a 3950X or 3900x for cheap, just like 2 gen ryzen , or even older intel cpus on ebay, remember 8 cores for 150$ video ?) 

looking back at my C2D machine that still runs windows 10 fairly well (with an SSD) and which is 12 yrs old..... with a crappy intel mobo, i guess CPUs are lasting much longer than they used to be. 

remember the jumps from PII to PIII to PIV?  especially security instruction sets ...

u couldn't run windows 7 on PIII , it was HORRIBLE compared to now ...

but after C2D cpus started to last much longer ...

and following that pattern, i guess zen 2 cpus will last for another 12 yrs ...

maybe not AAA titles all the way .. maybe 6 yrs of AAA gaming then esports and normal use ...

Sandy bridge CPU started to have problems running AAA titles only recently  

No need to whine about this ! 

 

 

[mr moose]

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What company ever has given details about products not announce or released yet? We got this because someone took the time to ask and they actually got an answer.

Which was contrary to their marketing claims.

 

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

As I said the original intention was to but it just wasn't possible. If you actually think limited Beta support is actual full support from AMD then you don't understand the term Beta support. I can tell you right now near or actually zero OEM systems with B350 chipsets will have a BIOS update to allow Ryzen 3000.

And I can understand when things go wrong and it's not intentional, but dropping support for zen3 on B450 is intentional as far as we know.

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yes they did, since 2019 when problems started showing.

Link to them saying that or you are just assuming that because there were problems people would automatically assume that meant all support was off?

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Again no company ever goes. If you can take a hint from existing observable things happening I can't help you. A320 has no Ryzen 3000 support, many B350 have no Ryzen 3000, a number of X370 have no Ryzen 3000 support.

 

There is a difference between not being able to do something and deciding not doing something,  The problem there is that some boards can't do it as opposed to AMD just choosing not to do it and more to the point they didn't bother announcing that earlier (when they could have).  It's not up to the consumer to workout from a few board failures that future support promises will no longer be kept.  That just defies logic.   If they promise it will work then it is only logical to believe it will work , that is until they say otherwise,  they didn't say otherwise.

 

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It should come as no surprise using known offical already released information that the same problem for the same reason would on future products. No crystal ball is required here, we know why it's a problem so we know it is going to be a problem.

Got some evidence it won't work on B450?  So far we haven't got jack shit official information from AMD on this.

 

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No you are now changing the statement to fit your point, this was not what was said. What was said was AM4 support until 2020, not the end of. The wording AM4 is also important here because while I know what their intentions likely were they 100% worded it in a way to make sure if there were any problems this would still be true.

 

Again look at the road map.  the 2020 is clearly after zen3.  AM4 is the ryzen socket that AMD have been marketing as supported.   It is not a natural conclusion to assume anything beyond zen, zen2 and zen 3 will work on all AM4 motherboards until the end of 2020.

 

Hell that's what every damned post in every thread on the subject has been saying since 2016.  We only found out this week that wasn't true.  Are you really going to argue that when majority (honestly the largest majority) of tech enthusiast all believe that that is was an assumption on all our parts and that we all bent the meaning of their marketing for 4 years just so we could complain now?  

 

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

All was never used neither was end of 2020.

 

If you read that as zen 3 not released until the end of 2020 then do you also read that as zen not being released in 2018?

 

Zen was released at the start of 2017 which means if you follow this roadmap zen 3 should be during or before 2020,  we don't have it yet, The slide is clearly marketing and they made it look  like it was coming earlier than it will, but even if you take that slide to it's absolute it still says zen3 before 2020 and thus on the AM4 supported til 2020 promise.   None of us like marketing and we all know it's 90% BS, but I am not going to pretend it doesn't exist or doesn't or that it should be ignored.  AMD said support til 2020, they said zen3 before 2020, It 's right there, the only logical conclusion is that we get zen3 on AM4 during 2020.  Unless they can;t but the problem is they should have come out and rectified this information last year, not when pushed by media.

[mr moose]

36 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And just for sake of completeness here is an Intel architecture road map

 

Completely devoid of anything about chipsets because these slides, like AMD's, have nothing to do with that when talking about architecture road maps.

Intel also never claimed socket support for any length of time. 

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

There is a difference between not being able to do something and deciding not doing something

No there isn't when the decision is made on the basis that it is not possible.

[leadeater]

20 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If you read that as zen 3 not released until the end of 2020 then do you also read that as zen not being released in 2018?

I'm not the one reading architecture road maps and trying to apply this to chipset and socket support. You do know until 3 days ago that Zen 3 wasn't even confirmed to be on AM4 and if we go back to 2018 and early 2019 the rumors were that Zen 3 was going to be a new socket with DDR5 support.

 

Point to that architecture road map all you like, it's irrelevant and I will not accept it as evidence AMD ever claimed Zen 3 on all chipsets because that does not do that and no such thing has actually been said ever. Find me an explicit direct statement from AMD otherwise no, didn't happen.

 

Zen 3 could have been released on AM5 in Sept/Nov 2020 and AMD would still never have broken the AM4 supported until 2020 statement made in 2016. Your argument is flawed because it's not backed by what has actually been said or what has happened in the proceeding years.

 

20 minutes ago, mr moose said:

they said zen3 before 2020

Nope that shows during 2020, not before.

 

20 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Got some evidence it won't work on B450?  So far we haven't got jack shit official information from AMD on this.

Yes we have, both for Ryzen 3000 and now for Zen 3 and B450. There are offical AMD slides and I already linked you to the official support matrix on AMD's website. I've given you everything you keep asking for, go back and read or stop asking for it again.

 

But here is yet another source saying the same thing.

 

 

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No there isn't when the decision is made on the basis that it is not possible.

We don't know if zen 3 on B450 is not possible. they thought 3600 wasn't possible on 350 and we've had people ruining 3000 on 320 so clearly there is no way to claim it isn't possible right at this moment.   Here is a B320 that says it's compatibale with 3000 series:

 

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-A320M-DS2-rev-10/support#support-cpu

 

 

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I'm not the one reading architecture road maps and trying to apply this to chipset and socket support. You do know until 3 days ago that Zen 3 wasn't even confirmed to be on AM4 and if we go back to 2018 and early 2019 the rumors were that Zen 3 was going to be a new socket with DDR5 support.

It's all marketing.  There is a reason so many of us accepted it to be real.

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Point to that architecture road map all you like, it's irrelevant and I will not accept it as evidence AMD ever claimed Zen 3 on all chipsets because that does not do that and no such thing has actually been said ever.

They never said a lot of things, it's what they did say that's important,  How you can argue that the consumer should be able to make many assumptions and draw some product knowledge from what hasn't been said when what has been said only leaves you with one conclusion is beyond me.

 

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Zen 3 could have been released on AM5 in Sept/Nov 2020 and AMD would still never have broken the AM4 supported until 2020 statement made in 2016. You argument is flawed because it's not backed by what was actually been said or what has happened in the proceeding years.

BS   You still haven't linked to AMD saying anything about this  while a heal of a lot the marketing from both AMD and motherboard vendors points to zen 3 being supported on AM4 in 2020.

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Nope that shows during 2020, not before.

2020 clearly started at the end of the zen 3 time frame bar, unless you want to argue that zen wasn't released at the start of 2017 as per the same time frame bar? 

 

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yes we have, both for Ryzen 3000 and now for Zen 3 and B450. There are offical AMD slides and I already linked you to the official support matrix on AMD's website. I've given you everything you keep asking for, go back and read or stop asking for it again.

The slides you linked show nothing of zen 3  and what they show of 3000 is largely that they are supported. What we don;t have is AMD saying anywhere that they aren't going to support zen 3 on current AM4 motherboards.  No where, you haven;t lionkeed to a single article or ad that shows AMD claiming zen 3 will need more than just an AM4 motherboard.

 

 

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

But here is yet another source saying the same thing.

 

 

All he says is they have had trouble with backward support, we already know this.  I don't know why you think that addresses what I have been saying.

 

Link me to any piece of evidence that shows AMD told us they weren't supporting zen 3 on pre x5xx boards.  Anything. Until then you can stop saying that they did, because having issues with some boards bios's is not the same as saying they aren't going to support certain specific AM4 boards in the future.  

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

All he says is they have had trouble with backward support, we already know this.  I don't know why you think that addresses what I have been saying.

Did you not read the image in the background which is the transcript from the AMD press release and media questions. It's says right there, from AMD, no plans to back port support to 400 series and below, only 500 series.

 

[trevb0t]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

The links I already provided saying Beta BIOS support, because not all board actually got BIOS updates for it.

 

And again directly caused by board vendors, go bitch at them, they are the cause. AMD cannot go around saying platforms support a product when they in fact do not, no amount of wishful thinking will change that. AMD could say A320 supports Ryzen 3000 all day long but if board vendors don't or can't do it that is worse than saying A320 can when reality hits real products can't. That is by far worse.

I mean... If I recall; AMD's promise of support through 2020 wasn't for a specific chipset, it was for the AM4 socket. As far as I can see, B550 is still going to be AM4, it's just going to have the necessary bells and whistles to support the new gear. 

I'm willing to bet that board vendors will at some point play with their BIOS enough to get support out on certain B450 boards, just like they did with select B350 boards, which are managing to work with Zen 2 chips. But as you stated, that's more in the court of the board vendors than AMD, and will depend on the need to deplete B450 stock.