AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[Blademaster91]

17 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

i doubt any of the b450 motherboards have dual bios probably only the high end x470 motherboards do. and if they do it that way they are basically remove one of the features of the motherboard and it will lead to consumer confusing over which x470 motherboard supports 4000 series and which dont

Gigabyte likes to use 2 bios chips even on some B450 boards, but since AMD doesn't want to support B450 or X470 it would be up to the consumer to use the beta bios anyway.

And if the 16MB bios is a limitation then a lot of X570 boards are going to lose some compatibility with older cpu's.

[spartaman64]

6 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Gigabyte likes to use 2 bios chips even on some B450 boards, but since AMD doesn't want to support B450 or X470 it would be up to the consumer to use the beta bios anyway.

And if the 16MB bios is a limitation then X570 boards are going to lose some compatibility with older cpu's.

yeah theres no good options for amd. maybe after this they will just do what intel does to save some headache lol

[BlackManINC]

Well, people might as well throw their B450 Tomahawk boards out the window. No need to rip yourself off buying a 300 dollar motherboard that can't be upgraded past last years tech. To call it a rip off is a bit of an understatement actually. I'm just being nice for AMD's sake. 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, BlackManINC said:

Well, people might as well throw their B450 Tomahawk boards out the window. No need to rip yourself off buying a 300 dollar motherboard that can't be upgraded past last years tech. To call it a rip off is a bit of an understatement actually. I'm just being nice for AMD's sake. 

That seems extreme.  They still run the newest stuff.  They just won’t run stuff newer than what is now out.  I’m assuming b550 will be our for some time before zen3 appears.  There might be some window throwing, or perhaps deep discount reselling, then.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I haven't read through the entire thread, and I don't currently have an AM4 system, but I'll weigh in with a few thoughts....

 

A few recent comments (on this page) mention some boards having dual BIOS, with the 2nd used as backup.  @NumLock21 also showed a picture of an ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, that has a BIOS selector switch, AND those BIOS chips are socketed.  My current desktop board, the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 (LGA1150), has the same setup.

 

 

 

 

The gist of my thoughts could, I guess, be summed up in this:  I want to be able to upgrade my PC ONE (or maybe two) PART(s) AT A TIME, going forward.  Needing to remove one part to replace another also counts toward that "1-2 parts at a time" rule, even if I put that same removed part back.  Some cables (or parts that are quick to unplug), like SATA, PCIe power, etc, wouldn't count toward that, but CPU coolers (or parts that take a bit more labor to remove - especially custom hard-line watercooling!) most likely would count.

Also, I want a MASSIVE performance uplift over my existing system when I replace my motherboard / do a full-system upgrade.

 

For example, a GPU upgrade from a 300-watt power hog (that was $600+ new) that only gets 10 fps at 640x480, LowSpecGamer-modded settings, in older but still-popular casual games (that could run maxed out on a modern low-end pre-Xe Intel Celeron-Y APU), to a 100-watt power sipper for ~$200 that gets 144+ fps at 3840x2160, ultra/max settings with RT in the latest AAA titles, would be a nice upgrade, but not necessarily earth-shattering.  Going from 1280x720 30fps low in ESports to 4K 144fps high in AAA games would be an incremental upgrade at best, assuming the same TDP and MSRP.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, here goes with my deluge of thoughts...

 

Even if AMD had maintained full chipset compatibility on AM4 through 2020, that likely still wouldn't have been a long enough motherboard life for me.

 

 

One way I like to look at it (how often to replace a motherboard) has to do with how long a PSU lasts, vs the labor to replace a PSU or motherboard.

Let me see if I can explain with a formula.

 

                        Labor Time: Swap Mobo

Motherboard Longevity ≥ ————————————————————— * PSU Lifespan

                        Labor Time: Swap PSU

 

Where:

Motherboard Longevity = how long you can keep a motherboard until it is no longer compatible with new components that plug into it.

Labor Time: Swap Mobo = the labor time it takes to replace a motherboard.  This includes removing components from the old board, and installing them (or replacements) on the new board.  Assume the motherboard is fully populated with components (for example, for an ATX board - all SEVEN PCI Express slot populated, 20+ SATA / SAS ports populated, multiple M.2, USB, etc - all populated.)

Labor Time: Swap PSU = the labor time it takes to replace a PSU.  Assume the PSU is fully modular, the new PSU is drop-in compatible with your existing cables, and your case does not require removing a shroud or screwing on some kind of "backplate" to swap the PSU.

PSU Lifespan = how long the PSU lasts until it dies, not just when the warranty expires.  Assume you're using a Tier A+ or S PSU, that's as overpowered relative to your hardware as a 1000W SeaSonic Prime Ultra Titanium would be relative to a low-power system (with a 15-watt APU, single stick of RAM running at JEDEC spec (no XMP), and a single M.2 SATA SSD), and it's in an "easy" environment (for example ambient temperature cold enough so someone who's native to north of the Arctic Circle would still have their teeth chattering from the cold even when bundled up with multiple thick coats).  Also, if a PSU dies within the warranty period, even if it's on the last day, it would be considered "infant mortality".  (I've known of products that FAR outlast their warranty - for example some Steinway pianos, in spite of only having I think a 5 year warranty, can still be usable even if they were originally made in the late 1800s.)

 

 

 

Another way to say things, I guess, might be something like...

 

I'd be willing to upgrade my CPU every 3 to 4 years or so, IF there's at least a 2x or more performance/$ per year uplift (or whatever was the fastest pace in the 1980s and/or 1990s), *AND* I can keep the SAME motherboard over that time period.

Otherwise, if the improvement pace is slower, or I'd have to replace my motherboard, I'm more likely to hang onto the same CPU for upwards of 7-8 years, possibly 10.  (And I wouldn't so quickly turn up my nose at keeping the same CPU for possibly 15 years or even longer.)

Also if I was able to upgrade every 3-4 years, I'd prefer that my total $ spent over time be no more than if I hung onto the same CPU for a long time.  Basically I might pay a fairly significant amount more for a CPU, or a motherboard, if I was keeping them for a long time, than if I was frequently replacing them.  Also I'd pay a bit more for a motherboard that has more longevity built in - for example supporting PCI Express 7.0 even though we're only just now getting 4.0, or on which I could replace parts of it without having to rip out all my parts and replace an entire board.  (If someone could improve on the April Fools joke that MSI did a few years or so ago, and make it an actual product....  )  I'd still balk at paying more than about $200 for a consumer board or $350-400 for an HEDT/server board, though, unless its lifespan was measured in multiple decades.

 

 

 

I suppose I could also make comparisons to other tech standards and their longevity.

 

I would like to be able to see CPU sockets, and DIMM slots, able to last (be forward/backward compatible) at least as long as:

SATA cables

PCI Express slots

USB Type A ports/cables

4-pin Molex power connector

QWERTY keyboard standard

 

 

 

 

Also .... earlier I made a reference to an ATX board with seven (emphasis added above) PCIe slots.  That brings up another thought:  I really want to see mobo/cpu/system makers quit with the segmenting connectivity based on platform or chipset (for example 16 PCIe lanes on LGA11xx, 64/128 PCIe lanes on TR/Eypc - yes I know they're 2 different makers), and instead segment the connectivity based on form factor.  All boards should be able to fit the maximum number of components / ports for their respective form factor, without any shared bandwidth.

• A mini ITX board would, for example, have a single CPU socket, 2 DIMM or 4 SO-DIMM slots, a single PCIe x16 slot, a few M.2 slots, and a few SAS ports (I think they take up less space than SATA ports, considering you can plug 4 SATA drives into a single SAS port IIRC), among other things.
• A micro ATX board would have 1 or 2 CPU sockets (Supermicro made a dual-socket LGA771 micro ATX board), 4 or 6 DIMM slots (the same Supermicro X7DCA-L has 6), 4x PCIe x16 slots, a few more M.2 slots and a few more SAS ports, among other things.
• A full ATX board would have 1 or 2 CPU sockets, 8+ DIMM slots, 7x PCIe x16 slots, several M.2 slots, a dozen or more SAS ports, etc.
• An EATX board would have 2+ CPU sockets, 16+ DIMM slots, 7+ PCIe x16 slots, a bunch of M.2 slots, many SAS ports, etc.
• EATX is the same size as SSI EEB, as Steve Burke / GamersNexus eloquently brought out in his video a while back.  I had thought of the idea of relabeling "EATX" (12x10.5" - same as SSI CEB) boards as ATX+ (pronounced ATX Plus), but I like SIlverstone's idea better of labeling them LATX - Large ATX.

 

 

 

I'd like to see better longevity for software / OS updates, or support for in-place upgrades / patches.  I heard of a system that ran for about 24 years (from 1993 to 2017 or so) without ever being shut down, and I would like to at least have a chance to beat that record with a consumer system running a consumer OS (not server-grade).  I would have thought that capability would have trickled down to us mere mortals by now.   

 

 

 

As it stands now, I'm tentatively planning to upgrade from my i7-4790K, to an AMD based system, about when DDR5, PCI Express 5.0, and Socket AM5 (or TR5 / SP5) are ready to go.  I don't think AM5 will have enough bandwidth for all the parts I'd eventually like to install, so I may need to consider TR5.  I'd like to be able to get a "starter" CPU under $70-100, then maybe in-place upgrade to a $250-300 CPU a couple years later.  Eventually when the socket's lifespan ends, I'd like to get, off eBay, a ~$200 CPU (that was originally $5K+) or two, hang onto that for a while, then get the 2nd-next socket/board after that (likely skipping a socket or something like that).

 

Even though the pace is picking up for CPU innovation, though, I'm a bit worried that we won't meet my criteria I'm looking for, to upgrade from my 4790K :

• new CPU as fast at encoding H.265 4K video, as my current one is at encoding 320kbps MP3 audio, at the same price.  (In a test I ran, my 4790K took FOUR DAYS to transcode a 4-minute video to 3840x2160, H.265, keyint=1, q=0, using Handbrake.  The same 4790K took 2 minutes to transcode 2 hours of .wav audio files to 320kbps mp3 using a GUI frontend for LAME that supports multi-threading.)
• new CPU has the same leap single-threaded over my current CPU's multi-threaded performance, as my current CPU's single-threaded is over my previous CPU's multi-threaded performance.  (I mentioned I currently have the 4790K.  My previous CPU was the Athlon 64 X2 4000+.  I haven't had it for several years (the board died), but I still have my dad's Dell D830 laptop with a Core 2 Duo T7250, with similar performance.  My 4790K single-threaded is about 2-2.5x faster or so in Cinebench R15 & R20, than the C2D T7250 is multi-threaded.)
• Similar cumulative performance/generation uplift compared to 1980s to 2000s, etc, as follows:
  • Devil's Canyon = 8086
  • Broadwell = 286
  • Skylake = 386
  • Kaby Lake = 486
  • Coffee Lake / Zen = Pentium
  • CL Refresh / Zen+ = Pentium II
  • i9-9900KS / Zen 2 = Pentium III
  • Comet Lake / Zen 3 = Pentium 4
  • Rocket/Alder Lake / Zen 4 = Core2
• (I think recent CPU generations have fallen WAY behind that pace, especially toward the beginning - I've heard there was a 2x+ IPC jump from 8086 to 286, and again from 486 to Pentium.  AMD is doing better than Intel at catching up, I think, but I still feel they both have a LONG way to go.)

 

 

I'm gonna guess by now you can tell that I like fairly large / significant upgrades, and don't like small / incremental upgrades.  This was shaped in part by my family's upgrades growing up.  Our first upgrade was from a 286-10 bought in January 1989 to a 486 DX4-120 bought in October 1995.  My research tells me the 286-10 CPU by itself would have been around $280 or so (based on 287-10 prices in PC Magazine archives - we have the invoice but it groups several parts together in one price - $940 for CPU, board, 1MB RAM, case, 200W PSU, 101-keyboard, 1.2MB FDD), our invoice says the 486DX4-120 was $102, and my research (wikipedia MIPS, etc) calculates the 486 was about 75-80 TIMES faster than the 286.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

Just thought of something, why not have dual bioses where users can toggle between the 2 depending on the CPU they want.

Bios 1 for older Ryzen 2000 and 3000 series where AGESA can still be updated to the latest

Bios 2 for Ryzen 4000 series along with latest AGESA

How do you expect to switch them? Start putting jumpers on the MB again? What if you put the wrong one? Fried CPU?

 

No, really the problem is just people set their expectations too high.

The B550 is the only one in that list that does not support any previous CPU. "Future AMD Ryzen" doesn't show compatibility with B450/X470 and prior.

 

What does that tell everyone. Probably that the Zen 3 is PCIe4.0 only.

[NumLock21]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

How do you expect to switch them? Start putting jumpers on the MB again? What if you put the wrong one? Fried CPU?

With a toggle switch on the board.

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

How do you expect to switch them? Start putting jumpers on the MB again? What if you put the wrong one? Fried CPU?

 

No, really the problem is just people set their expectations too high.

The B550 is the only one in that list that does not support any previous CPU. "Future AMD Ryzen" doesn't show compatibility with B450/X470 and prior.

 

What does that tell everyone. Probably that the Zen 3 is PCIe4.0 only.

That's a new chart, we never had that information before last week.  And also many A320's run with 3rd gen ryzens so the chart isn't even accurate in what is supported/works.  It's really of no surprise at all that people just believes the marketing hype.

 

 

[BlackManINC]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

That seems extreme.  They still run the newest stuff.  They just won’t run stuff newer than what is now out.  I’m assuming b550 will be our for some time before zen3 appears.  There might be some window throwing, or perhaps deep discount reselling, then.

That's exactly the problem. How long before your CPU becomes too old for the latest games? You might have five or six years tops on average depending on how high end it was to begin with. To find out you can't upgrade it is quite worrisome. 

[Dabombinable]

16 minutes ago, Kisai said:

How do you expect to switch them? Start putting jumpers on the MB again? What if you put the wrong one? Fried CPU?

 

No, really the problem is just people set their expectations too high.

The B550 is the only one in that list that does not support any previous CPU. "Future AMD Ryzen" doesn't show compatibility with B450/X470 and prior.

 

What does that tell everyone. Probably that the Zen 3 is PCIe4.0 only.

Asus, Gigabyte and MSI have A320 boards that support Ryzen 3000, so I'm expecting B550 will be similar. AMD says no, but certain boards will support gen 4:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-A320M-H-rev-11#kf

https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/PRIME-A320M-E/

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/A320M-A-PRO-MAX

All 3 boards will support up to the 3950X.

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, BlackManINC said:

That's exactly the problem. How long before your CPU becomes too old for the latest games? You might have five or six years tops on average depending on how high end it was to begin with. To find out you can't upgrade it is quite worrisome. 

Oh it might be a lot less than that.  More like 1 or 2 if you got a 4/8 cpu.  It’s maybe though.  Betting on the design of games that haven’t been written yet.

 

The thing is that was how computers used to be.  They dust weren’t good for more than a couple years.  The stint between 2010 and 2019 was not normal.  That was intel failing over and over again.  People talk about “future proof” thinking they’ll get that Same kind of 10 year stint again.  Not likely to happen.  There is a possibility ONLY for gaming machines that assumes that ps5/Scarlett will remain in the same configuration for five years.  If you beat that configuration you will have as long as intel and ps5 choose to keep running the same hardware.  I’m the past that has been 5 years, but there are no guarantees.   The standard used to be more like 3 years for high end systems 1 year for lower end systems.  That may be coming back.

[mr moose]

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

How do you expect to switch them? Start putting jumpers on the MB again? What if you put the wrong one? Fried CPU?

 

No, really the problem is just people set their expectations too high.

The B550 is the only one in that list that does not support any previous CPU. "Future AMD Ryzen" doesn't show compatibility with B450/X470 and prior.

 

What does that tell everyone. Probably that the Zen 3 is PCIe4.0 only.

The other problem this chart raises is that all the arguments for long term socket support is so you don't have to buy a new motherboard (assuming that is an expense that makes a difference to long term upgrading), Unfortunately now what we have is that the only real way to benefit from the longevity support (in terms of saving money on upgrades) is if you always upgrade the CPU every time a new gen is released.  otherwise by skipping a generation or more (as most people do already anyway) you are in the same position.   The saving part for AMD's sales right now is the fact their CPU's are cheaper than Intel for the same performance.  

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, WI-FIultrasnoop said:

I heard that Intel just does a better job with their CPUs because they are made for everything instead of just gaming.

Mmm... more like they COULD do a better job if they could figure out their node problem.  AMD CPUs arent made for just gaming.  Kind of the reverse.  They do compute a lot better than intel stuff.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, WI-FIultrasnoop said:

I heard that Intel just does a better job with their CPUs because they are made for everything instead of just gaming.

 

I think the reality is in the last 7-8 years Intel has developed to the market, AMD have had to develop to get some market.   That is why Intel only slowly raised core count (no market demand for more cores outside of content creation and even then they had the xeons for that).  And why AMD did everything they could to sell anything.  The foundation of zen was good, I wish AMD had of held onto Keller (the brains behind zen) for longer as this might have resulted in better performance out of the gate rather than the ramp up from release to now with zen 2 overtaking Intel.   Then Intel had issue with 10nm and that caused most of their grief trying to push 14nm harder than it was ever designed to go.

 

 

[BlackManINC]

22 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Oh it might be a lot less than that.  More like 1 or 2 if you got a 4/8 cpu.  It’s maybe though.  Betting on the design of games that haven’t been written yet.

 

The thing is that was how computers used to be.  They dust weren’t good for more than a couple years.  The stint between 2010 and 2019 was not normal.  That was intel failing over and over again.  People talk about “future proof” thinking they’ll get that Same kind of 10 year stint again.  Not likely to happen.  There is a possibility ONLY for gaming machines that assumes that ps5/Scarlett will remain in the same configuration for five years.  If you beat that configuration you will have as long as intel and ps5 choose to keep running the same hardware.  I’m the past that has been 5 years, but there are no guarantees.   The standard used to be more like 3 years for high end systems 1 year for lower end systems.  That may be coming back.

Well, then that makes the B450 motherboards obsolete already if this will be the case. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, BlackManINC said:

Well, then that makes the B450 motherboards obsolete already if this will be the case. 

Depends.  There are CPUs that run on b450 that can smoke ps5/Scarlett.  Anything 3700x or bigger will do it.  They will continue to be faster than Scarlett/ps5 until xboxwhatever/ps6 come out.  There’s also the unlikely edge possibility that b450 gets a bios update.  Ddr5 is coming though, and there isn’t a motherboard in existence that can survive that change.

[BlackManINC]

26 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Depends.  There are CPUs that run on b450 that can smoke ps5/Scarlett.  Anything 3700x or bigger will do it.  They will continue to be faster than Scarlett/ps5 until xboxwhatever/ps6 come out.  There’s also the unlikely edge possibility that b450 gets a bios update.  Ddr5 is coming though, and there isn’t a motherboard in existence that can survive that change.

How much more of an improvement are they expecting DDR5 to be? Will it operate at even higher clock speeds?

[Bombastinator]

Just now, BlackManINC said:

How much more of an improvement are they expecting DDR5 to be? Will it operate at even higher clock speeds?

Much.  Like double.  Also twice the memory per stick.  Every ddr ungrade has been a doubling.

[BlackManINC]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Much.  Like double.  Also twice the memory per stick.  Every ddr ungrade has been a doubling.

So what, from 16 to 32 GB's per stick? I'm assuming it will start at anywhere from 4,000MHZ to 5,000MHZ at a minimum since this is the fastest DDR4 can get.

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

The other problem this chart raises is that all the arguments for long term socket support is so you don't have to buy a new motherboard (assuming that is an expense that makes a difference to long term upgrading), Unfortunately now what we have is that the only real way to benefit from the longevity support (in terms of saving money on upgrades) is if you always upgrade the CPU every time a new gen is released.  otherwise by skipping a generation or more (as most people do already anyway) you are in the same position.   The saving part for AMD's sales right now is the fact their CPU's are cheaper than Intel for the same performance.  

This kafuffle is exactly why I'm glad I went with X570 over B450. It was certain that it'd get Gen 4 Ryzen due to PCIe 4.0, and it was also guaranteed to support the 3000 series while not being bottlenecked at the CPU-chipset interconnect. In addition to the PCIe slots all being Gen 2.0 on them. I wanted a full upgrade from Z97, not something half assed (which by comparison B450 kind of is).

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

(even the cheapest boards exceed the quality of my Z97 Sabertooth MKII).

Given how expensive the cheapest are,  I would almost expect it.

[merco]

38 minutes ago, BlackManINC said:

So what, from 16 to 32 GB's per stick? I'm assuming it will start at anywhere from 4,000MHZ to 5,000MHZ at a minimum since this is the fastest DDR4 can get.

Most likely 2x16 will be the new normal though, like right now most people use 2x8. 

[Joe4evr]

4 hours ago, BlackManINC said:

How much more of an improvement are they expecting DDR5 to be? Will it operate at even higher clock speeds?

 

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, BlackManINC said:

So what, from 16 to 32 GB's per stick? I'm assuming it will start at anywhere from 4,000MHZ to 5,000MHZ at a minimum since this is the fastest DDR4 can get.

Here’s a link to an article that was apparently done when PCs were moving from DDR3 to DDR4.  Apparently the doubling isn’t perfect because what is being doubled is the amount of prefetched data, and while that often works it doesn’t always help.  This is old so I’m not sure how accurate it is.

https://www.gamingscan.com/ddr3-vs-ddr4-vs-ddr5-ram/

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

That's a new chart, we never had that information before last week.

Only the last column is new, that has existed since Ryzen 300 release last year.