Not all AM4 mobos will support all AM4 CPUs

[mr moose]

5 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

What’s stopping mobo manufacturers from releasing two BIOS versions per release? One for one set of CPUs, and the other for the CPUs that wouldn’t fit on the first BIOS file.

 

 

They'll probably do that anyway.  It has happened in the past, I remember a few Haswell CPU's that required a bios update to run depending on the bios version when released.

[Derangel]

5 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Or more likely cheaping out to save a few pennies, then having it bite them in the rear.

Low end boards are all about compromising in order to "save a few pennies" and get costs down to a certain price point. An extra $4-5 for a single part could mean a $10-$20 increase on the price of the board. That completely removes it from the price point that the manufacturer is aiming for. They would have to find ways to decrease costs elsewhere.

 

8 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

What’s stopping mobo manufacturers from releasing two BIOS versions per release? One for one set of CPUs, and the other for the CPUs that wouldn’t fit on the first BIOS file.

 

They wouldn’t have to increase the size of the BIOS chip then. Just flash the BIOS you need.

 

They could put a very basic BIOS version on it out of the box that is limited in features in order to support all Zen CPUs, then you can flash the one you need after since you should update your BIOS when you build a new rig anyway.

There is nothing stopping them tech wise, but it could create an issue for the less experienced end-user. If the end-user installs the wrong BIOS, or buys a chip not supported by the current BIOS, it leaves them in a tough spot. On top of that it means the company will have to create two versions of every single BIOS they release across their entire range of boards with smaller BIOS chips. It is extra time and money for them. It could also create a situation where they completely abandon the older CPUs so those chips do not receive security or stability improvements from future BIOS updates.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, Derangel said:

Low end boards are all about compromising in order to "save a few pennies" and get costs down to a certain price point.

Oh, I know.  It doesn't invalidate my point.

[Jurrunio]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

Board manufacturers can make that an option without AMD if they want.  Mind you why put in such a feature to fix and issue that could be fixed by simply using a bigger bios chip? 

I sorta claimed that board makers wont do that on cheaper boards because it cost them money right?

 

Also, we're only on the first half of Zen+. There's still some unreleased skus within this generation (Athlon 200 sth?), not to mentiom Zen 2 and maybe Zen 3. I'm not surprised if these larger capacities are not enough. Cost for these chips increase exponentially with capacity, so it could be silly to use a BIOS chip that can carry all data after all.

 

Btw AMD cant let partners drop Bristol Ridge support, because bootkit CPUs are all Bristol Ridge chips. Dont see them handing out 2200g instead in the future.

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

I sorta claimed that board makers wont do that on cheaper boards because it cost them money right?

 

Also, we're only on the first half of Zen+. There's still some unreleased skus within this generation (Athlon 200 sth?), not to mentiom Zen 2 and maybe Zen 3. I'm not surprised if these larger capacities are not enough. Cost for these chips increase exponentially with capacity, so it could be silly to use a BIOS chip that can carry all data after all.

 

Btw AMD cant let partners drop Bristol Ridge support, because bootkit CPUs are all Bristol Ridge chips. Dont see them handing out 2200g instead in the future.

The thing is, I can't really see how AMD designing any sort of bios update feature is going to change anything.  In order to put a USB port and build such an update feature into the bios of a board is easily going to cost just as much if not more than just putting in a bigger bios chip to begin with.   I like the idea of CPU less bios updates, however I think if there was a serious need for it then they would have already implemented it. 

[asus killer]

5 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

 

That's the problem, you have the right BIOS, but you cant flash it in...

 

?

 

as i understood the problem is lack of space in the BIOS, so don't make a BIOS for all, but different BIOS for different CPU's

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, asus killer said:

?

 

as i understood the problem is lack of space in the BIOS, so don't make a BIOS for all, but different BIOS for different CPU's

so what if I want to upgrade from something, say a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 5 2600. If the two CPUs are supported by different BIOSes, then I should use the 1200 to flash the new BIOS, then get the 2600 in for the boot attempt right? Then what if the BIOS update somehow failed? What CPU should I use to reflash it?

 

Not to mention having the screen go blank after the BIOS update will scare of the less tech-minded. They will be like 'OMG BIOS flash killed my computer'

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

so what if I want to upgrade from something, say a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 5 2600. If the two CPUs are supported by different BIOSes, then I should use the 1200 to flash the new BIOS, then get the 2600 in for the boot attempt right? Then what if the BIOS update somehow failed? What CPU should I use to reflash it?

 

Not to mention having the screen go blank after the BIOS update will scare of the less tech-minded. They will be like 'OMG BIOS flash killed my computer'

I just had a quick google and it turns out most modern motherboards don't require the CPU for a bios update and you can recover form a bios flash failure quite easily without the CPU.

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I just had a quick google and it turns out most modern motherboards don't require the CPU for a bios update and you can recover form a bios flash failure quite easily without the CPU.

Still think there may be a lot that can't otherwise the Ryzen 2 bios upgrade kit with a crappy CPU from AMD might not have been a thing? People with no access at all to another computer would still need that but I have to wonder how many people would be in that situation, you need a computer to even put the request in for it anyway, so to create such a program there would really be a need for it and I think that comes from low end boards without a no CPU bios upgrade feature.

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Still think there may be a lot that can't otherwise the Ryzen 2 bios upgrade kit with a crappy CPU from AMD might not have been a thing? People with no access at all to another computer would still need that but I have to wonder how many people would be in that situation, you need a computer to even put the request in for it anyway, so to create such a program there would really be a need for it and I think that comes from low end boards without a no CPU bios upgrade feature.

I am thinking AMD will not want to run programs like that every time they release a product, and historically they haven't, so it may well just be a one off due to the specific nature of this new socket and the Ryzen update.

[asus killer]

7 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

so what if I want to upgrade from something, say a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 5 2600. If the two CPUs are supported by different BIOSes, then I should use the 1200 to flash the new BIOS, then get the 2600 in for the boot attempt right? Then what if the BIOS update somehow failed? What CPU should I use to reflash it?

 

Not to mention having the screen go blank after the BIOS update will scare of the less tech-minded. They will be like 'OMG BIOS flash killed my computer'

well you can get a laundry list of drawbacks, still if you don't want the trouble buy a new mobo, just go "intel" on the m****** f*****

 

It's still miles better to give the option to everyone else. The problem is never to many options, the problem is too few options, that's my only point.

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, asus killer said:

well you can get a laundry list of drawbacks, still if you don't want the trouble buy a new mobo, just go "intel" on the m****** f*****

 

It's still miles better to give the option to everyone else. The problem is never to many options, the problem is too few options, that's my only point.

AMD will lose an advantage over to Intel if this doesnt get solved one way or another though

 

Oh and yes, I'm the m****** f***** on Intel's side  But nah, not their new stuff

[NumLock21]

23 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

My Asus H87M Pro has their USB BIOS flashback, as does my Z97 Sabertooh MKII (which is actually as far from top tier feature wise as the H87 board). Decent midrange Asus boards also have it.

That feature when it first came out was on their mid-range such as the ones you have and on their top of the line models. Now it's only on their top of the line skus such as Pro, Deluxe, WS, and ROG. Because anyone that wants it, will have to pay more to get it.

22 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

That's why I hope AMD will make it a feature of the chipset and not one added in by their board partners.

These wont affect me too much anyway (I cant afford even Ryzen), but being close enough to mainland China means I only need $10 to do anything that needs special tools, say flash a new BIOS without a CPU on boards that need one, even hardmodding Z170/270 boards and slap an 8700k on it later.

Asus method could already be a chip that flashes the bios without the need for cpu, ram, and gpu. My board has usb bios flash back, but I never use it

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

and ROG.

Not even all ROG. B350-F, X470-F, Z370-E. all dont have this function. It's only those without the chipset name in the name that can do this on the consumer platform

 

7 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Asus method could already be a chip that flashes the bios without the need for cpu, ram, and gpu. My board has usb bios flash back, but I never use it

That's what I'm thinking about. Built this chip int the chipset, so board makers have less reasoning to not use the feature

[Dabombinable]

11 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

That feature when it first came out was on their mid-range such as the ones you have and on their top of the line models. Now it's only on their top of the line skus such as Pro, Deluxe, WS, and ROG. Because anyone that wants it, will have to pay more to get it.

Asus method could already be a chip that flashes the bios without the need for cpu, ram, and gpu. My board has usb bios flash back, but I never use it

Oh. So Asus is once again taking steps backwards instead of forwards. To think that they used to be the top motherboard manufacturer.

[NumLock21]

6 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Not even all ROG. B350-F, X470-F, Z370-E. all dont have this function. It's only those without the chipset name in the name that can do this on the consumer platform

 

That's what I'm thinking about. Built this chip int the chipset, so board makers have less reasoning to not use the feature

Asus probably can by licensing this to other board makers.

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Oh. So Asus is once again taking steps backwards instead of forwards. To think that they used to be the top motherboard manufacturer.

The features is just now on some of their expensive boards.

[QuantumBit]

my days of saying "am4 is going to be supported for like the next 4 years" is over </3 

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, QuantumBit said:

my days of saying "am4 is going to be supported for like the next 4 years" is over </3 

AM4 is still supported, just limited support, based on the storage capacity of the bios chips. It's not a physical socket change say to AM5

[thorhammerz]

On 6/16/2018 at 1:19 AM, Jurrunio said:

Btw AMD cant let partners drop Bristol Ridge support, because bootkit CPUs are all Bristol Ridge chips. Dont see them handing out 2200g instead in the future.

https://hexus.net/tech/news/mainboard/119396-amd-am4-boards-expected-drop-bristol-ridge-apu-support/

The removal of Bristol Ridge support may be a reality after all .

[Jito463]

A better solution would be to clean up their bloated BIOS interface.  There's so much extraneous animated garbage going on that they should (in theory at least) be able to shave a pretty good chunk from the size of the update.

[mariushm]

The Bristol Ridge series of CPUs were based on Bulldozer architecture, while all the others are based on Zen ... so it's two different architectures, with probably very different series of microcodes (software patches that have to be "uploaded" in the processor if the processor has older version of this microcode, for example if user buys a cpu that was forgotten on store shelves for some time).

With the Zen and Zen+ processors, the microcode patches I imagine are fairly similar, so potentially they could compress these well inside the bios to save space, but the microcode for bulldozer may be quite different.

 

The B450 boards come with support for the 2xxxG series and the latest Zen cpus, which were the ones not supported by default on some B350 boards and for which those bios upgrade kits with a cheapo bulldozer cpu were created. So you would never need such a bios update kit for a b450 board.

 

I guess maybe, if at some point they'll make some ryzen 3xxxx or something in the future that won't work without a bios update, they could create a new bios update kit with a ryzen 1300 and some 5-10$ pci-e video card, or a < 2200g cpu

 

note that there's no reason why mb makers couldn't make a special bios chip with only bulldozer microcodes and let's say 2xxxx series only microcodes, to squeeze everything in 128 mbps, or maybe add the bulldozer microcodes and simplify the interface (reduce space used by interface skin and images by let's say making interface grayscale instead of full color)