AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[Bombastinator]

20 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Because all X570 boards have active cooling on the SB. So it's noisy as heck all. In fact, I contemplated "down-grading" for a quieter PC as I didn't have a need for PCIe 4.0. I still might if the B550 platform has passive cooling for its SB.

The x570 has several issues.  One of which is its frequently about double the price of a b450. Triple for equivelant quality level, though x570 does have higher top end quality levels.  The x570 has some really interesting features but they’re largely only valuable to workstation users.  SLI is one example.   Plus the aforementioned fan thing.  So higher price, more annoying, feature set not usefully different.  Right now I’m thinking of the b450 and b350 as being often interchangeable, and being more similar to the a series than I did previously.  Hopefully the b550 will hit soon and this sad chapter may be closed.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Albal_156 said:

I'll indirectly quote TechDeals on that. AMD was months away from bankruptcy and demanding motherboard companies spend extra money on ensuring all their boards had 32mb BIOS chips when they didn't know if AMD would be around for much longer and when they didn't know if their new architecture was any good seems a bit too much of an ask. Then again having an option to disregard support for older CPUs such as Zen1 on my X470 board doesn't seem too radical if Im honest. Just bury it down a rabbit hole on the internet for us. I understand why AMD did this. Doesn't mean Im not happy about it though. If Zen 3 has the gaming performance and clocks of a 9900K or a 10900K then I won't be very happy. Then again B550 motherboards will be not too expensive. At least its better than what Intel offered us I guess.

AMD were only months from bankruptcy for the entire 6 years leading up to Ryzen. They were in a shit position for quite some time financially.

 

5 hours ago, Albal_156 said:

By the sound of what HardwareUnboxed said from their communications from AMD they said AMD wouodn't be giving the AGESA code to motherboard makers so they could produce BIOS updates for it. That makes it difficult if not impossible to make a BIOS for 400 series and older boards.

This is the impression I have been left with, if true then without some legitimate reason AMD are doing the dirty on everyone who followed their marketing hype surrounding longevity and platform support.

2 hours ago, Patrik_ said:

But what about us who paid 200bucks + I think I deserve that update. 

 

This is why AMD should have specifically told consumers they either weren't supporting zen3 or couldn't guarantee it would work even with support at least a year ago.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

28 minutes ago, mr moose said:

AMD were only months from bankruptcy for the entire 6 years leading up to Ryzen. They were in a shit position for quite some time financially.

 

This is the impression I have been left with, if true then without some legitimate reason AMD are doing the dirty on everyone who followed their marketing hype surrounding longevity and platform support.

 

This is why AMD should have specifically told consumers they either weren't supporting zen3 or couldn't guarantee it would work even with support at least a year ago.

 

 

You’re assuming it would be not only possible but easy to make a series 400 chipset support ryzen3. I would say that if it is, even if the code is too large for many bios chips, write it anyway.  A large file might actually do appropriate things.  It would mean that only people who got max boards could even load it which makes some sense.

 

the think is it might not be possible to make a series 400 chipset support ryzen3 at all.  
 

writing a file like that isn’t easy or free, but it’s not particularly difficult or expensive either on the corporate level. probably less than a couple hundred grand in expenses.  Less than 1 as spot and worth a ton more than an ad spot in public goodwill.  If it can be done.

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

You’re assuming it would be not only possible but easy to make a series 400 chipset support ryzen3. I would say that if it is, even if the code is too large for many bios chips, write it anyway.  A large file might actually do appropriate things.  It would mean that only people who got max boards could even load it which makes some sense.

 

the think is it might not be possible to make a series 400 chipset support ryzen3 at all.  
 

writing a file like that isn’t easy or free, but it’s not particularly difficult or expensive either on the corporate level. probably less than a couple hundred grand in expenses.  Less than 1 as spot and worth a ton more than an ad spot in public goodwill.  If it can be done.

I made no assumptions, I clearly stated my comments that it was an impression and required there be no legitimate reason for this.

 

41 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

 

This is the impression I have been left with, if true then without some legitimate reason AMD are doing the dirty on everyone who followed their marketing hype surrounding longevity and platform support.

 

 

 

 

 

If it isn't possible then there is a legitimate reason.

[JoostinOnline]

3 hours ago, Joe4evr said:

Because the BIOS chips aren't made by AMD, nor does AMD have any sort of mandate on the size.

I realized that later, but that just makes it worse.  It went from "We can't do it" to "We won't do it".  At least that's how it seems with the information given.  AMD's biggest selling point was the upgrade paths, at least to me.  With so much changing right now, building didn't feel like a roll of the dice.  It's also worse because they've only just now released the B550 boards.  The three systems I've built in the past 6 months can't be upgrade anymore.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

I realized that later, but that just makes it worse.  It went from "We can't do it" to "We won't do it".  At least that's how it seems with the information given.  AMD's biggest selling point was the upgrade paths, at least to me.  With so much changing right now, building didn't feel like a roll of the dice.  It's also worse because they've only just now released the B550 boards.  The three systems I've built in the past 6 months can't be upgrade anymore.

We can’t and we won’t are very different things and I’m not sure which if either is totally true.  Easy move right now, is do NOT expect a b450 to do ANYTHING for zen3 even if it’s a max atm, wait for b550 if you can, and if you can’t the math as to whether there are intel rigs that might make more sense has changed and needs to be redone.  AMD might still be a better deal even with a low end x570.  Or if you don’t care about zen3 think of b450 as like a series.  Dead end.  

[tehxf]

Cant have your cake and eat it too.

 

Intel being doing this for years...

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, tehxf said:

Cant have your cake and eat it too.

 

Intel being doing this for years...

At least Intel told us before we purchased which cake we could eat and which cake we could have.  There was no illusion that a CPU only upgrade was ever worth it let alone possible with Intel at any point in their history.

[JoostinOnline]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

At least Intel told us before we purchased which cake we could eat and which cake we could have.  There was no illusion that a CPU only upgrade was ever worth it let alone possible with Intel at any point in their history.

Hell, if AMD had said when they released Zen 2 that you'd need an X570 board if you wanted future upgrades, that would have been way better.

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Hell, if AMD had said when they released Zen 2 that you'd need an X570 board if you wanted future upgrades, that would have been way better.

Probably.  Foolish of them.  They’ve got a month or two till b550 comes out and several more moths after that till it’s even possible for zen3 to so much as show it’s face in public.  It’s unlikely that even if 400 series zen3 code can even be written we will see it before zen3 launches.  I suppose it’s not impossible they will get it out the door as quickly as possible if it’s doable and embargo it so board manufacturers can figure out how to integrate it.  This whole thing is interesting.  Intel’s move with hotter, pricier chips seems to assume that the b550 problem is a bigger one for AMD than it appears to be, and that it will force AMD to make an inferior chip or something so intel can catch up without having to actually compete i the marketplace.  I’d really rather see them do that.  The whole “take what you’re given and like it” phenomena is something I’m getting a bit sick of.  It would amuse me if it turns out intel attempted a broadside on an unweakened bulwark.

[tehxf]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

At least Intel told us before we purchased which cake we could eat and which cake we could have.  There was no illusion that a CPU only upgrade was ever worth it let alone possible with Intel at any point in their history.

Just foolish you would think AMD and intel arent the same. 

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, tehxf said:

Just foolish you would think AMD and intel arent the same. 

Unfortunately all big companies are the same, the only difference is when they are on the verge of bankrupt/new to the market  they can't afford to piss of customers.

 

 

[Andk1987]

The plot thickens

[5x5]

Business reasons is very very vague. Could end up being "supporting only certain boards harms the business and half the boards are too junky to support so we won't support any of them)

 

 

Btw I researched the graphs, support was promised until 2020, not through 2020 so legally they aren't liable for anything and technically you get support still as Zen is due in end of 2020

[mr moose]

Until something more substantial comes to light I am not going to assume it was purely a business decision.  At the moment the only thing I hold against them is not telling consumer earlier while enjoying the business their earlier  marketing was generating.

 

 

[Andk1987]

44 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Until something more substantial comes to light I am not going to assume it was purely a business decision.  At the moment the only thing I hold against them is not telling consumer earlier while enjoying the business their earlier  marketing was generating.

the buisness side of things is where its at AMD knows they have an ace up thier sleeve with zen3 and its going to be the generation that AMD clearly and fully dominated intel from the top to the bottom of the product stack in every single workload. so they know theyre going to be able to get away with it

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, tehxf said:

Just foolish you would think AMD and intel arent the same. 

There are no levels. “Better” “worse” and “the same” are not the only options.  That’s a simplification prone to error.
It’s known as binary thinking.  
Seeing this mistake use to manipulate people in American politics a lot lately.

 

I believe that AMD as a rule has been slightly less bad about some things, much less bad about some things, just as bad about other things, and somewhat worse about a couple others.

 

so perhaps less bad though less than perfect, but it depends on how you weight what.  It’s complicated enough that binary “just as bad” isn’t accurate.

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, Andk1987 said:

the buisness side of things is where its at AMD knows they have an ace up thier sleeve with zen3 and its going to be the generation that AMD clearly and fully dominated intel from the top to the bottom of the product stack in every single workload. so they know theyre going to be able to get away with it

Perhaps.  Time will tell.  There may be some premature counting of chickens going on here.  Part of the problem is the whole thing is still a dualopoly more or less.  Not as bad as a monopoly, but not great.  Dualopolies never work terribly well, though they work least badly when the two competitors are nearly equal.   It is possible AMD is passing intel here. Should AMD simply swap places with intel it will be just as bad as it was.  Things have been less bad lately but I doubt it will last.  I suspect the white knight for this whole situation is going to be a third player like Cyrus or something.  

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, Andk1987 said:

the buisness side of things is where its at AMD knows they have an ace up thier sleeve with zen3 and its going to be the generation that AMD clearly and fully dominated intel from the top to the bottom of the product stack in every single workload. so they know theyre going to be able to get away with it

I fully agree with the sentiment and the reality that they are going to rule the performance roost, however I refuse to treat them differently to Intel.  Every time Intel bring out a new chipset for a new processors this forum explodes with people making all sorts of claims about motive without evidence. I refuse to accept Intel did it purely for the money (one could argue it actually cost them sales)  without proof so I apply the same critical reasoning to AMD.   I am not naive to companies doing the dirty on their customers, I just won't make/accept accusations based of hearsay or emotion.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Andk1987 said:

The plot thickens

 

Cry me a river.

 

It would be nice if Intel and AMD would allow 8 generations of CPU on the same MB, but there's very logical engineering reasons why that isn't ever a thing. Given how expensive a CPU and a MB is, it's actually quite surprising that the entire south bridge/pch has not been integrated into the CPU already, and the MB manufacturers could then go back to producing boards that work with Intel and AMD chips connected to one big ass socket that just supplies DDR4/5 and PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0 lanes. For one, how does a UEFI bios deal with features that are on different CPU's. Can't keep flashing the BIOS every time a new CPU is released. That just invites bricking the MB more often.

 

Like if it wasn't for the amount of parts needed, it would be much more sensible to break the CPU up into it's individual parts (eg 64 cores and a iGPU) so you could put exactly as many cores on that you need, and leave the rest of the socket space for other chip-based PCIe devices such as ram and flash memory. It just doesn't happen that way because it would require a MB with a ZIF-style slot the size the MB itself. Then there are electrical-mechanical issues with cooling.

 

Hence it makes more sense to just dump as many cores on as possible onto a socket and make the IPC faster. At some point they're going to have to start integrating 4GB of ram on these CPU's just so it runs at the speed of the CPU and not hamstrung by the bus itself.

 

[leadeater]

46 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I am not naive to companies doing the dirty on their customers, I just won't make/accept accusations based of hearsay or emotion.

Um what? That's literally what you were doing during our conversation and never addressed the issue at all of when AMD were actually able to give out the no support information. Every time you complain they should have said sooner is yet another instance of assuming they could have said sooner. What if the soonest point in time was 3 days ago, or 10 days ago, or 3 weeks ago. Without knowing when they could have said complaining they didn't is irrelevant.

 

You want them to have said sooner, an emotion. You don't know when they could have actually said anything, missing factual information.

 

We also know nothing of the size and complexity of the Zen 3 AGESA code nor the impact of trying to package it with Zen 2 without Zen/Zen+ and all the other extra pitfalls that may come along with it, like the mish mash of APUs and how those are supported or customers updating BIOS version with CPUs install that would then not be supported and haven't purchased a Zen 3 or some other supported replacement.

 

All we have is a statement from AMD saying the decision was made based on existing BIOS size limitations, everything else is pure guessing and speculation, time frames included.

 

And you already know my opinion on the matter, we had fair warning support might be a problem during the Ryzen 3000 launch.

[Patrik_]

For all here 

Hardware Unboxed - "I’ve also had industry contacts confirm that the AMD BIOS excuse is rubbish and that simple workarounds are possible, just like the one I discussed. In one example there would be a single large BIOS file that you download, then upon flashing you select the CPU series you want to support and it flashes the appropriate code."

[leadeater]

48 minutes ago, Patrik_ said:

For all here 

Hardware Unboxed - "I’ve also had industry contacts confirm that the AMD BIOS excuse is rubbish and that simple workarounds are possible, just like the one I discussed. In one example there would be a single large BIOS file that you download, then upon flashing you select the CPU series you want to support and it flashes the appropriate code."

The only problem I see with that, and this is mainly for B450, is that you either need a working and supported CPU to do the flash or have a board that has a BIOS flashback feature that you can do this without/non supported CPU. Being that B450 is supposed to be cheaper not everything is going to fall in to this, which is why the Ryzen 3000 CPU upgrade kit was offered by AMD back then.

 

Treating it just like before, Beta support and leaving it to board vendors, seems like the best option.

 

I don't think the B550 delay issue was quite strongly emphasized as it should have been. That's where I see this issue really coming from, that and not having a long term plan for next generation CPUs at the time of X570/500 series luanch/announcements. As they said in the video, would have been a perfect time to sing the praises of the 500 series as being the chipsets to buy as it supports future CPUs rather than trying to trumpet PCIe 4.0 which is sooo much less important than the CPU support.

[Patrik_]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The only problem I see with that, and this is mainly for B450, is that you either need a working and supported CPU to do the flash or have a board that has a BIOS flashback feature that you can do this without/non supported CPU. Being that B450 is supposed to be cheaper not everything is going to fall in to this, which is why the Ryzen 3000 CPU upgrade kit was offered by AMD back then.

 

Treating it just like before, Beta support and leaving it to board vendors, seems like the best option.

 

I don't think the B550 delay issue was quite strongly emphasized as it should have been. That's where I see this issue really coming from, that and not having a long term plan for next generation CPUs at the time of X570/500 series luanch/announcements. As they said in the video, would have been a perfect time to sing the praises of the 500 series as being the chipsets to buy as it supports future CPUs rather than trying to trumpet PCIe 4.0 which is sooo much less important than the CPU support.

Yeah but there are people like me who paid 200bucks and I also have dual bios so Im not worried... I mean I get that its about about but from me they have plenty... why should I be punished for that. 

 

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Patrik_ said:

Yeah but there are people like me who paid 200bucks and I also have dual bios so Im not worried... I mean I get that its about about but from me they have plenty... why should I be punished for that. 

As I said you should fall under the Beta support like last round, at least then it's not 'officially supported' by AMD but they are still giving what is necessary to board vendors so they can support you if they wish. Edit: Even if that comes a couple of months after if resourcing is a problem, I'm sure having the support will more than make up for waiting.

 

B550 should never have been later than 2-3 months after X570, it's going to be a full year or more between the two.