AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

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.

That's the information we have only just received, I am asking why they didn;t share that information any length of a time ago?   Instead they kept that little bit of information to themselves while leaving their customers to think they could buy a B450 and get a zen3 for it.  

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, trevb0t said:

I mean... If I recall; AMD's promise of support through 2020 wasn't for a specific chipset, it was for the AM4 socket.

That's exactly right.  And if they only mention the socket and say nothing about chipset then the only logical conclusion a consumer can draw without making assumptions is that it will work on any board with that socket, after all they are committed to supporting that socket.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

That's the information we have only just received, I am asking why they didn;t share that information any length of a time ago?   Instead they kept that little bit of information to themselves while leaving their customers to think they could buy a B450 and get a zen3 for it.  

Because they may not have been able to, like I said like 3 or 4 times now. If you didn't assume anything and took notice of existing compatibility problems then you would have already known to be weary and not just assume it would work.

 

At not point did you have to think it would have been supported. If there were no prior issues and no prior chipsets that didn't support processors I would be right there with you assuming it would be supported, but there were issues and there are chipsets that don't support processors so I have zero reason to assume anything without actually being told so.

 

The only logical conclusion is pay damn attention, because with existing information the logical conclusion is support issues existed so assume nothing. Anything other than that is illogical. 

[mr moose]

Just now, leadeater said:

If you didn't assume anything and took notice of existing compatibility problems then you would have already known to be weary and not just assume it would work.

 

If you don't assume anything then your conclusion should be that they are still supporting all AM4 with zen3.  Problems or not,  they are being sorted because they are being supported.  That's why there are actually a few A320 boards that can run a 3000's series.  here's another:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A320M Pro4 R2.0/index.asp#CPU

This times is Asrock.

 

If I were to not assume anything my conclusion has to be that even though there are problems with some boards, there are solutions being made because they promised to support the AM4 socket till 2020.   You have to make an assumption to conclude that future CPU's won;t be supported on any given chipset when we don't even know which ones or why half the time.

Just now, leadeater said:

At not point did you have to think it would have been supported.

No has to think anything, but that is the position their marketing lead us to believe.

 

Just now, leadeater said:

If there were no prior issues and no prior chipsets that didn't support processors I would be right there with you assuming it would be supported, but there were issues and there are chipsets that don't support processors so I have zero reason to assume anything without actually being told so.

So far they have had problems, not statements saying they are dropping support.  That is the difference.  You can;t expect consumers to work out what future support will look like based on a few boards with issues.

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

No has to think anything, but that is the position their marketing lead us to believe.

Nope because official compatibility matrix directly contradicts that and came after the original statement. You'd have to be stupid to ignore more recent information than cling to an older one since shown to now have stipulations to that.

 

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So far they have had problems, not statements saying they are dropping support.  That is the difference.  You can;t expect consumers to work out what future support will look like based on a few boards with issues.

You or I can't expect anything of them but if you go assuming things that do not match the reality of the situation and events that have happened that is 100% their problem. If you are interested enough in to looking at road maps, architectures, chipset information, reviews then you are interested enough to have been aware of these problem and thus been forewarned about said problems. 

 

Neither has AM4 support not been a thing in to and during 2020. If you want AMD could rewind 3 days and change course and announce AM5 and that would not be breaking the 2020 AMD4 support claim. You really have to start twisting things to try and make a complaint about support length.

 

Don't be the one ignoring known information to make bad arguments. It is what it is, AMD has made their statement, that is the only known situation as it stands. It makes no difference what board vendors might do or could be able to do because we don't know. Edit: Neither do I care about that aspect either. I'm only addressing this notion that we weren't aware and were blind sided and also that AMD could have told us any significant amount of time sooner, you don't know that. You have no idea when negotiations and planning was completed with board vendors and when information was actually allowed to be released.

[Rancidpunk]

To be fair AMD must have watched at least some of the many, many reviewers telling people that X570 boards weren't worth the expense unless you need PCIe 4 as a good B450 board had you covered for the upgrade path to Zen 3. 

 

If AMD had felt the need to continue building their corporate reputation as the plucky underdog fighting for the consumer they could have easily cleared up this confusion and even gone as far as releasing the B550 boards much earlier. 

 

They chose to ride the wave of Ryzen upgrade-ability hype instead, no  big surprise from a corporate entity really and perhaps we consumers should remember that whatever we choose to believe of AMD, apple, intel, etc. is only the public face presented to us very carefully by their marketing startegists.

 

Stock value and shareholders are all that really matter to any stock market listed companies.

[Patrik_]

6 minutes ago, Rancidpunk said:

To be fair AMD must have watched at least some of the many, many reviewers telling people that X570 boards weren't worth the expense unless you need PCIe 4 as a good B450 board had you covered for the upgrade path to Zen 3. 

 

If AMD had felt the need to continue building their corporate reputation as the plucky underdog fighting for the consumer they could have easily cleared up this confusion and even gone as far as releasing the B550 boards much earlier. 

 

They chose to ride the wave of Ryzen upgrade-ability hype instead, no  big surprise from a corporate entity really and perhaps we consumers should remember that whatever we choose to believe of AMD, apple, intel, etc. is only the public face presented to us very carefully by their marketing startegists.

 

Stock value and shareholders are all that really matter to any stock market listed companies.

true that 

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Nope because official compatibility matrix directly contradicts that and came after the original statement. You'd have to be stupid to ignore more recent information than cling to an older one since shown to now have stipulations to that.

You have to make assumptions that those issues can't be fixed in order to even come close to drawing that conclusion, so far it looks like they can be fixed, at least mostly.  Again, just because issues existed doesn't meant hey are insurmountable and it certainly doesn't mean the consumer has the responsibility to research what caused them and how they were corrected in order to ascertain future product support, AMD should have just come out then and said they weren't going to support it.  You are literally arguing that it is the consumers job to ascertain product support by trying to find out why some products fail when we don't even have half the information.

 

 

Quote

You or I can't expect anything of them but if you go assuming things that do not match the reality of the situation and events that have happened that is 100% their problem. If you are interested enough in to looking at road maps, architectures, chipset information, reviews then you are interested enough to have been aware of these problem and thus been forewarned about said problems. 

I am not making assumptions.   and again you are trying to insinuate the consumer can work out future support by looking at past issues.  Not possible.  I have already given you two examples of A320 boards that support nearly all 3000's series CPU's.  It is not unreasonable to think such issues are not a problem if you aren't trained or have the relevant inside information to work out they are a problem.

 

Quote

Neither has AM4 support not been a thing in to and during 2020. If you want AMD could rewind 3 days and change course and announce AM5 and that would not be breaking the 2020 AMD4 support claim. You really have to start twisting things to try and make a complaint about support length.

The only thing is they promised AM4 support with zen 3 listed in that promise.  That has now been changed to some AM4 supported but not all.  There is no twisting of anything to know this is the case.

Quote

Don't be the one ignoring known information to make bad arguments. It is what it is, AMD has made their statement, that is the only known situation as it stands. It makes no difference what board vendors might to or could be able to do because we don't know.

I'm not,  you are trying to argue that the consumer should be able to work out future support from the issue that arose,  that is not fair nor possible.  Just because you and I saw this coming doesn't mean everyone did, and by many of the comments around the net it looks like many many didn't see it coming.

[Nena Trinity]

Zen 3 is the codename for the successor of AMD's Zen 2 CPU microarchitecture slated for release in 2020.^[1] It is expected to be fabricated on an improved^[3] 7nm MOSFET node from TSMC (initially referred to by AMD as 7nm+) and powering Ryzen mainstream desktop processors (codenamed "Vermeer") and Epyc server processors (codenamed "Milan").^[4][2] Zen 3 is expected to be the last microarchitecture before AMD switches to DDR5 memory and new sockets.^[1] Zen 3 will be supported on motherboards with the 500 series chipsets, but not on the older 300 and 400 series.^[5] -Wikpedia

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

Zen 3 is the codename for the successor of AMD's Zen 2 CPU microarchitecture slated for release in 2020.^[1] It is expected to be fabricated on an improved^[3] 7nm MOSFET node from TSMC (initially referred to by AMD as 7nm+) and powering Ryzen mainstream desktop processors (codenamed "Vermeer") and Epyc server processors (codenamed "Milan").^[4][2] Zen 3 is expected to be the last microarchitecture before AMD switches to DDR5 memory and new sockets.^[1] Zen 3 will be supported on motherboards with the 500 series chipsets, but not on the older 300 and 400 series.^[5] -Wikpedia

Well Wikipedia is caught up.  Wikipedia changes drastically and quickly though.  One wonders how long it has said that for.  Possibly a long while, possibly a few hours. There is a layer of information under the standard skin where Wikipedia info is constantly updated and voted on and argued about.   Data on when that statement was placed might be there.  

[Nena Trinity]

10 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Well Wikipedia is caught up.  Wikipedia changes drastically and quickly though.  One wonders how long it has said that for.  Possibly a long while, possibly a few hours. There is a layer of information under the standard skin where Wikipedia info is constantly updated and voted on and argued about.   Data on when that statement was placed might be there.  

I wonder if Zen 3 has 2 types of I/O dies because one model is suppose to on the DDR5 platform? I guess the refresh of Zen 3 might be DDR5!

[Albal_156]

On 5/8/2020 at 8:35 PM, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

I got good use out of my X470 board so I am 'content' with this but I actually feel bad for the amount of times not only I, but many of us here on the forum recommended a B450 board because of future upgrade-ability, I now think the info around AM4 CPU support has intentionally been obscured from the start. Many of us regulars here on LTT are enthusiasts, so we may have gotten 2-3 gens of CPU use out of AM4. But I actually am disappointing by this for those that just invested on Zen 2 and a B450 board.

 

It seems AMD was a bit misleading and while they can get away on a technicality that Zen 3 will likely launch late 2020 or 2021, I think the BS around not having B550 launch until just now (not even commercially available yet) not only seems intentional, but is going to hurt them. This will upset many people. 

 

I personally don't feel as cheated but MANY others will. And AMD's bios excuse is a load of sh!t. This is why favoring AMD over Intel is dumb, both are big international corporations with investors to please. Especially AMD, they had many dark years that they need to make up for. I interpret this as them deciding that they calculated a greater revenue increase by forcing people to upgrade motherboards, my opinion only.

 

Hopefully vendors sill release Zen3 Bios updates, right now this might not be what is said but this was the same thing with A320. AMD does not support it, but vendors still provided Bios updates on many of the A320 boards to support Zen2, so we will see what happens.

 

If that is not the case I can already guarantee this means no Zen 3 CPU for me, I am happy with my R7 3800x (maybe I will pick up a a good R9 used or on clearance) so again, I don't feel cheated. But many sales were made on the promise of extended AM4 support, the fact that most 4xx motherboards could easily receive Bios support but will not, will hurt their new found customer base. 

 

Congrats AMD for being Intel! 

 

Buy products people, not brands. At least the R5 3600 I recommended 100+ times is still great value vs the competition, even if it was with a MSI B450 Tomahawk Max...

The problem for vendors is that the 300 series and 400 series chipsets were virtually the same. The 500 series is understandably different, PCIe 4.0 from the chipset plus the fact that AMD made them in house (they are literally 12nm IO dies) and the 400 and 300 were made by ASMedia.

[JoostinOnline]

What I don't understand is why AMD didn't make the BIOS chips bigger.  I can appreciate the arguments for them that Linus made on the WAN show, but this isn't there first time using the same socket across multiple generations.  I feel like this is something that should have been prepared for.  I'm also nervous because I don't know if this is going to be a regular thing.  When AMD announced that B450 boards couldn't use PCIe 4.0, but then MSI added it anyway, I didn't really care much because we're a ways off from almost anyone needing 4.0 bandwidth.  Now I'm wondering how much of this is actually necessary.  For all I know they're actually bullshitting us for more money.

 

Either way, this isn't good for their image.  They're next product is going to have zero upgradability.  Even if they say that the "AM5" chip won't do the same, I won't believe them.

[Bombastinator]

Been thinking about this one:  Did a lot of people think b450 was stronger than it turned out to be?  Yes.  That may not make it cripplingly weak though. For gaming it may not matter.   One of the things that has been reliable about video games for the past 20 years is that they are built around consoles.  There are Vanishingly few games that have hardware requirements too strong for the currently released console.  They may not RUN on it for other reasons, but pure hardware wise they generally don’t exceed it.  So far as we can tell, B450 can beat Scarlett/ps5 as well as x570 can.  A 3700x beats the ps5/Scarlett apu in compute.  An upcoming zen3 might beat it by MORE, but it is still beat. There are other questions about gpu and storage, but those are the same, more or less, amongst the motherboards.  B450 can’t run zen3.  That sucks.  To beat an upcoming console it doesn’t need to though.  A b450 has the capacity to play games, at least cpu wise, as long as ps5/Scarlett exist.  Historically that has meant about 5 years.  

[Albal_156]

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.

[RoseLuck462]

This is fine with me, its only logical for a mobo upgrade after 3 gens of Ryzen.

[thatpc.]

Is there going to be a bios update that will make them compatible for people who are upgrading??

[Albal_156]

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.

[Rancidpunk]

On the plus side for B450 owners at least the aftermarket cpu coolers will still fit on B550 boards

 

[steelo]

56 minutes 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 impossibler to make a BIOS for 400 series and older boards.

For me, it's not a huge deal as I'm usually 1-2 gens behind. I have a cheapie b450 mb with a 1600af and a rx 5700. This is plenty for me as I stick to vr and 1080 gaming. In a few years, a r5 3600 and 16gb-32gb ram would be my upgrade path...Assuming my motherboard doesnt fry in the meantime, I estimate another 5+years out of my pc before I will need to entirely rebuild from scratch.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour 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.

I think if an AGESA for the 400 series boards to run ryze3 can be written it should be done and distributed.  It’s real possible board manufacturers wouldn’t bother to implement it if it did for several reasons, one being that they’d been making 500 series boards for a while and why? but it would indemnify AMD to a degree.  That’s totally an IF though.  It’s real possible it can’t.  Not without badly hurting zen3.  And while AMD is beating intel, they may not be doing it by enough to afford hurting zen3.  Rocket lake is coming.

[Patrik_]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

I think if an AGESA for the 400 series boards to run ryze3 can be written it should be done and distributed.  It’s real possible board manufacturers wouldn’t bother to implement it if it did for several reasons, one being that they’d been making 500 series boards for a while and why? but it would indemnify AMD to a degree.  That’s totally an IF though.  It’s real possible it can’t.  Not without badly hurting zen3.  And while AMD is beating intel, they may not be doing it by enough to afford hurting zen3.  Rocket lake is coming.

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

[Joe4evr]

5 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

What I don't understand is why AMD didn't make the BIOS chips bigger.

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

[Bombastinator]

52 minutes ago, Patrik_ said:

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

This word “hornswaggled”. You may want to look it up.  You may have been “hornswaggled fair and square” though.

[StDragon]

On 5/8/2020 at 7:55 AM, leadeater said:

Doesn't have to be better but if it's not bad for applicable reasons why buy a B450 over an X570? Doesn't make sense.

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.