MSI corrects prior customer service claim about AM4 and Zen 2 support

[Fasauceome]

Previously there was a rumor that AM4 support for Ryzen 3000 processors would be slim, potentially that B350 boards with be kept out and that MSI specifically wasn't going to be updating support on even their X370 line, but according to MSI themselves, and subsequently Tom'sHardware, this is actually not the case.

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The misunderstanding stemmed from a comment made by an MSI service representative to a customer in regards to support for the chips with the X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium motherboard, which was then shared to reddit. Several media outlets picked the news up in short order, but MSI says the representative misinformed the customer.

It would have been a pretty bad move to keep old boards out of the loop, kind of defeats the purpose of AM4.

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Much of the speculation about MSI's support stemmed from a report that the next-gen Ryzen processors would have higher system power requirements that current-gen 300- and 400-series motherboards couldn't satisfy.

7nm is more efficient, any semi decent motherboard should be fine.

 

MSI themselves:

https://www.msi.com/news/detail/4c78f7b58f4de12ed2cab9bcb9ec0ba0

[Marcel Kipka]

As an owner of that particular board I'm happy to see that I will be able to get on to Zen 2, depending on the pricetag...

[tarfeef101]

8 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

7nm is more efficient, any semi decent motherboard should be fine.

More efficient is good and all that, but doesn't help much if your core count is doubling. 

But I imagine most people wont need 12 or 16 core parts, and even less running all-core loads on them, so you're probably right for most circumstances. 

[Fasauceome]

Just now, tarfeef101 said:

More efficient is good and all that, but doesn't help much if your core count is doubling. 

But I imagine most people wont need 12 or 16 core parts, and even less running all-core loads on them, so you're probably right for most circumstances. 

Actually AMD made the bold claim of "double the performance per watt" so it might not actually be a huge increase to power draw at all despite the doubled cores 

[tarfeef101]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

Actually AMD made the bold claim of "double the performance per watt" so it might not actually be a huge increase to power draw at all despite the doubled cores 

I would be very surprised if that's the case. Maybe at the same clock speeds. 

But I hope they managed to get the clock speeds we're seeing in rumours, and if they are, I suspect that will be at significant power cost. But hey, i'd love to be wrong. I've been waiting to get the platform for my next LAN PC until we see the Zen 2 announcement/release. If I can get ~5 GHz, 8+ cores cooled by a 120mm AIO, i'll be thrilled

[CarlBar]

4 hours ago, tarfeef101 said:

I would be very surprised if that's the case. Maybe at the same clock speeds. 

But I hope they managed to get the clock speeds we're seeing in rumours, and if they are, I suspect that will be at significant power cost. But hey, i'd love to be wrong. I've been waiting to get the platform for my next LAN PC until we see the Zen 2 announcement/release. If I can get ~5 GHz, 8+ cores cooled by a 120mm AIO, i'll be thrilled

 

What they said is that can get an over 20% increase in clock speed at the same power draw or get halved power at the same frequencies. So doubled core counts with no frequency jump on the same power with no binning advantage accounted for, (and Zen 2 does have binning advantages compared to Zen 1 and Zen+), factor in we know an AM4 sized socket can cope with upto 200w of thermals from intel's 9900K and we know from comments AMD have made to the press vis a vis old MB support that some of the new Zen 2 chips may be a bit more power hungry than most boards can hack and there's no reason they couldn't do it from a thermal's PoV...

[Doobeedoo]

Properly so. Good for support. Some jumped way to early to assumption because of misinformed customer service. 

[Fasauceome]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Properly so. Good for support. Some jumped way to early to assumption because of misinformed customer service. 

Most people should already be aware of how crap MSI customer support is anyways, I don't feel like this should have happened in the first place.

[GoldenLag]

People keep bringing up powerdraw as a reason why they wouldnt support it on B350, but that is not really the case

 

You can have a doubling of cores and higher clockspeeds on the same node and still have a 105 watt power mode.

 

All it takes is clever core boosting. 

 

 

 

The real concern is the memmory chips in the motherboard. B350 and A320 used lower capacity chips (16mb i think) to store the BIOS on. Something that would be a limitibg factor when you need to support more and more chips

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

The real concern is the memmory chips in the motherboard. B350 and A320 used lower capacity chips (16mb i think) to store the BIOS on. Something that would be a limitibg factor when you need to support more and more chips

This actually came up a while ago, AIBs mentioned they would be making specific BIOS versions for when this becomes a problem.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, fasauceome said:

This actually came up a while ago, AIBs mentioned they would be making specific BIOS versions for when this becomes a problem.

Compatibility BIOS i guess. Only checks for CPU and updates accordingly. Could become custumary to do so at some point. As in boards come with a compatibility BIOS and the updates itself on powerup. And if it doesnt reqognise it requests a BIOS update to a newer revision compatibility-BIOS.

[Fasauceome]

16 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Compatibility BIOS i guess. Only checks for CPU and updates accordingly. Could become custumary to do so at some point. As in boards come with a compatibility BIOS and the updates itself on powerup. And if it doesnt reqognise it requests a BIOS update to a newer revision compatibility-BIOS.

Some of the other proposed solutions were a dual BIOS chip setup, kind of like how Asus has a dual BIOS for backup but instead it would select an appropriate BIOS for the CPU installed.

[DesolationGod]

my motherboard is on the list so im happy... while upgrading to the 500 series would be nice, saving a little money from a board and getting a better cpu is preferable lol

[RealGamer]

7 hours ago, DesolationGod said:

my motherboard is on the list so im happy... while upgrading to the 500 series would be nice, saving a little money from a board and getting a better cpu is preferable lol

Same, got a X370 board from MSI back in 2017, waiting to upgrade to a better CPU next year when Zen 3 comes out. I was pretty pissed when I heard that MSI is not going to support Zen 2, but luckily it was a misunderstanding.

[ravenshrike]

On 4/17/2019 at 7:25 PM, CarlBar said:

 

What they said is that can get an over 20% increase in clock speed at the same power draw or get halved power at the same frequencies. So doubled core counts with no frequency jump on the same power with no binning advantage accounted for, (and Zen 2 does have binning advantages compared to Zen 1 and Zen+), factor in we know an AM4 sized socket can cope with upto 200w of thermals from intel's 9900K and we know from comments AMD have made to the press vis a vis old MB support that some of the new Zen 2 chips may be a bit more power hungry than most boards can hack and there's no reason they couldn't do it from a thermal's PoV...

My bet is that XFR will be limited on the older boards to a lower all-core boost for the 12 and eventually 16 core chips.