MSI will support ZEN2 on 300 series motherboards, models to come in the future

[Bouzoo]

Now, take this first with grain of salt, no official statement has been made, but seems that MSI might not support ZEN2 on 300 series motherboards. This is based on a support e-mail from MSI. Why I say with grain of salt, no statement yet, maybe it was just a misinformed staff member.

The customer asks if X370-XPOWER-GAMING-TITANIUM will support AM4 with a BIOS update, the staff member says no, you will need X470 or B450. 

 

Image (in german):

 

 

Quote

Most 300-series motherboards, including from MSI, even ship with USB BIOS Flashback feature to help with forwards compatibility. Unfortunately, motherboard companies such as MSI care more about their bottom-lines than the consumer. In a support e-mail to an X370 XPower Titanium owner, MSI confirmed that MSI will not extend Zen 2 support to AMD 300-series. Motherboard vendors could follow MSI's suit as a representative of another motherboard vendor, on condition of anonymity, told TechPowerUp that "Zen 2" processors have steeper electrical requirements that 300-series motherboards don't meet. This is an excuse similar to the one Intel gave for the planned obsolescence of its 100-series and 200-series chipsets, even as it was repeatedly proven that those motherboards can run and overclock 9th generation processors with custom firmware just fine.

 

Now this is a hostile article if I ever saw one. What do you think? True or fake news? I don't buy it. 

 

Source

Reddit og source

 

EDIT: Since a lot people disagree and not to go off topic, removed the "controversial" part

EDIT2: courtesy of @Ithanul

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/254669/msi-issues-clarification-on-next-gen-amd-cpu-support-on-300-series-motherboards

[ThePD]

Could just be the customer service rep doesn't know or isn't allowed to talk about it. There have been plenty of instances where customer service reps don't really understand the product they are working with.

[Trixanity]

It may be true but generally don't trust the word of social media reps and first level support. They're not privy to this kind of information until it's official and sometimes not even when it's official because the chain of information sucks.

[Quadriplegic]

9 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

but seems that MSI, who is widely regarded as having the best motherboards for Ryzen atm

wut. 

Sure, MSI has pretty much best B450 boards for Ryzen, but their B350 were nothing special, X370 were pretty average (borderline bad), X470 boards don't stand out of the bunch either

[Bouzoo]

Just now, Trixanity said:

It may be true but generally don't trust the word of social media reps and first level support. They're not privy to this kind of information until it's official and sometimes not even when it's official because the chain of information sucks.

That's my take, and as someone who worked in CS, spot on. 

[Sakkura]

Yeah support staff usually don't know this kind of stuff.

[Coaxialgamer]

Even if this turns out to be true, the article is a quite harsh.

This isn't necessarily an easy thing to do given the massive changes in zen 2. Besides, one can ask if it's even worth it, seeing the features you'll probably be losing out on with a 300 series board anyway.

[Bouzoo]

20 minutes ago, Quadriplegic said:

wut. 

Sure, MSI has pretty much best B450 boards for Ryzen, but their B350 were nothing special, X370 were pretty average (borderline bad), X470 boards don't stand out of the bunch either

400 series are a blast, and if you look at every single recommendation from a credible media, most boards are MSI. I did personally few 300 builds with MSI, worked like a charm. Their lineup is either pretty good, like B450, or they still have a pretty good contender with other chipsets, like X370 which you don't like (like pro carbon). Not standing out does not make them bad. B350 Tomahawk was a budget king and B350 Krait an OC champion. I am gonna make a bold statement that they have most actually good boards all around.

[AvogadrosDog]

17 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

400 series are a blast, and if you look at every single recommendation from a credible media, most boards are MSI. I did personally few 300 builds with MSI, worked like a charm. Their lineup is either pretty good, like B450, or they still have a pretty good contender with other chipsets, like X370 which you don't like (like pro carbon). Not standing out does not make them bad. B350 Tomahawk was a budget king and B350 Krait an OC champion. I am gonna make a bold statement that they have most actually good boards all around.

Hmmm - not sure.

 

Best X470 board goes to Asus (Crosshair VII) or ASrock (Taichii) - MSI is not in contention. Crosshair VII is already overkill for the CPUs they're suppose to handle and Taichii boards are amazing and they are pretty much the same as the X370 versions so MSI isn't in contention there either.

 

B450 boards MSI has a good shout with the Tomahawk and Carbon Pro.

 

B350 - I don't remember MSI being that good and actually having issues with some of their boards although I can't recall which right now.

 

Point is MSI aren't bad but they are in no way regarded as the best motherboard manufacturer for AM4 or even LGA 1151 but that's not the point here.

[Bouzoo]

7 minutes ago, xandredu said:

Hmmm - not sure.

 

Best X470 board goes to Asus (Crosshair VII) or ASrock (Taichii) - MSI is not in contention. Crosshair VII is already overkill for the CPUs they're suppose to handle and Taichii boards are amazing and they are pretty much the same as the X370 versions so MSI isn't in contention there either.

 

B450 boards MSI has a good shout with the Tomahawk and Carbon Pro.

 

B350 - I don't remember MSI being that good and actually having issues with some of their boards although I can't recall which right now.

 

Point is MSI aren't bad but they are in no way regarded as the best motherboard manufacturer for AM4 or even LGA 1151 but that's not the point here.

It is not the point yes.

For X470 Asus is hero (no pun intended), but Carbon Pro and Gaming Titanium are still pretty good, they are just not better than Asus or Aorus Gaming 7 for that matter. Those are just better. B450 we can all agree, on B350 Tomahawk was pretty darn good for the price, but we're not talking that here, but the Krait had a X370 VRM design and it could OC arguably the best in B350 range. I did 2 Tomahawk B350 build, worked like a charm, even on OC RAM and CPU, though mild OCs due to cooler. We could argue probably for hours but that is for another time. 

[jagdtigger]

51 minutes ago, Quadriplegic said:

wut. 

Sure, MSI has pretty much best B450 boards for Ryzen, but their B350 were nothing special, X370 were pretty average (borderline bad), X470 boards don't stand out of the bunch either

Not to mention linux support, they actively blocking the development of the temperature monitoring for instance...

[Dash Lambda]

55 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

-MSI, who is widely regarded as having the best motherboards for Ryzen atm-

Other people in the existing discussion probably know more than me (I haven't been following the most recent motherboards much), but that seems really far-fetched. When I was buying Ryzen 1, MSI was the bottom of the roost; Worst VRMs, no real stand-out features, and memory support issues that lasted too long after everyone else got their shit together.

 

Nothing against MSI, I assume they've gotten quite a lot better about Ryzen since that rough start, but... I really have no idea what group you're speaking for.

[RejZoR]

MSI has a terrible software support. So I wouldn't be surprised. It took them months to release Spectre/Meltdown BIOS which ended up being bugged and caused severe stability issues. That was back in June 2018. It hasn't been updated since for my MSI X99 Gaming 7. Which is far from cheap entry level board. I don't think I'll buy MSI again. ASUS on the other hand always provided very long term support. Not sure about Gigabyte/AORUS...

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Not sure about Gigabyte/AORUS...

I've been fairly pleased with mine.  They're not as good about BIOS updates as Asus is, but they generally keep on top of things.  And aside from having some very random (but sparse) lockups on my first x370 board - something that cleared itself up eventually - I can't complain.

 

As for the article, while it's certainly possible that MSI could decide to abandon AGESA updates for the first gen Ryzen boards, I'd hardly take the word of a first level customer support tech.  No offense to anyone who works in those positions, but most people who do have never even seen the inside of computer before.  They mainly only know what's on their response chart, and if it's not there then they don't have an answer.

[S w a t s o n]

I saw this in the news separately but I don't think it has any merit. AMD may not yet hold the sway Intel does but they aren't going to let MSI just fuck them over like that. It was always planned that AM4 (and appropriate chipsets) would support later generations of Ryzen. This is something MSI knew and probably agreed to or will have to agree to if they want to be allowed to make AM4 mobos

[Taf the Ghost]

9 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

I saw this in the news separately but I don't think it has any merit. AMD may not yet hold the sway Intel does but they aren't going to let MSI just fuck them over like that. It was always planned that AM4 (and appropriate chipsets) would support later generations of Ryzen. This is something MSI knew and probably agreed to or will have to agree to if they want to be allowed to make AM4 mobos

It's only some of the B350s and A320s that might get into issues. But what they could do is offer split BIOS options. And/or drop Bristol Ridge.

[S w a t s o n]

27 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It's only some of the B350s and A320s that might get into issues. But what they could do is offer split BIOS options. And/or drop Bristol Ridge.

Possibly limit them to single chiplet sku's or something, I dont think AMD will allow them to just not support Ryzen 3000 at all.

[mr moose]

Apart form the fact it's not a very good source, it wouldn't surprise me if older motherboards physically couldn't support all the features of newer CPU's, it's never been a thing in the past and until actually becomes a thing there is no reason to assume it will or can. 

[Bouzoo]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

Apart form the fact it's not a very good source, it wouldn't surprise me if older motherboards physically couldn't support all the features of newer CPU's, it's never been a thing in the past and until actually becomes a thing there is no reason to assume it will or can. 

The thing is, AMD a while ago confirmed that AM4 on 300 series will work with Zen2, hence why everyone expects it. I don't see a reason why even cheaper MBOs might not support it. Unless OEM drops support so no BIOS update or something like that. On architectural level they should have the same basic features to support Zen2 all around. 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

The thing is, AMD a while ago confirmed that AM4 on 300 series will work with Zen2, hence why everyone expects it. I don't see a reason why even cheaper MBOs might not support it. Unless OEM drops support so no BIOS update or something like that. On architectural level they should have the same basic features to support Zen2 all around. 

Being able to work and being fully supported are not the same.

[Bouzoo]

Obviously full support is not expected, since we do get new things with every chipset. We are talking about the possibility of not working at all here, not even supporting the chipset on OEM level. 

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Obviously full support is not expected, since we do get new things with every chipset. We are talking about the possibility of not working at all here, not even supporting the chipset on OEM level. 

Then why did you quote me?

[RejZoR]

16 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Obviously full support is not expected, since we do get new things with every chipset. We are talking about the possibility of not working at all here, not even supporting the chipset on OEM level. 

They said the same for Zen+ support and yet Ryzen 2600X works exactly the same on X370 as it does on X470. Absolutely no measurable difference.

[ImAyaanKhan]

This is kind of infuriating. The launch of a new line of processors from AMD has meant a new line of motherboards. Previous motherboards are given bios updates to allow older motherboards compatibility with next-gen processors (provided they are compatible with the socket type, of course.) The refusal to release a new line of motherboards is one thing, but an outright refusal to allow ryzen users to upgrade is another. MSI has no right to screw their buyers over like that. If this email is true, my opinion of MSI as a company will drop severely.

[Bouzoo]

18 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Then why did you quote me?

Because apparently I misunderstood you as you meaning "there is no reason to believe they will support Zen2". Misunderstanding you is apparently my thing.