AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

What was AMDs promise anyway? AM4 was introduced in September 2016? It's May 2020 and only now are we seeing processors not being supported. Didn't they say they would support AM4 for 4 years? Technically they are still doing that. Just some boards can't. 

 

You can say they shouldn't have made a promise, but that promise wasn't a contract, and even if it was supporting a single platform for near 4 years is damn impressive. 

 

Hating on AMD for this isn't rational imo.

Hate or lack of hate is irrelevant.  B550 doesn’t exist yet.  There is no middle level board.  There  was a belief that there WAS a middle level board, and one can argue about who’s fault that is, but what it means is that there isn’t one right now. 

[DrMacintosh]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Pretending it is O.K while hanging it on Intel is incredibly less rational.

How though? You're whole position is based on the fact that AMD did not come out at the start pre 2016 stating exactly which chips will and will not be supported well into 2020.....that's simply an insane position to take. 

 

Now that AMD knows what chips they have now, they are telling us what will and will not work. Nobody has been "douped". Nobody bought a new CPU thinking their old motherboard will work, and the reverse of that is true. There is really nothing to be mad about other than AMD not being able to see 4 years into the future of their product line. 

[cj09beira]

58 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

So let me get this straight, people get current Ryzen cpu with their B450 boards, where the CPU is actually a placeholder, until the new Ryzen arrives? Sorry but that is a dumb idea and this proves it when AMD screws you in the rear end. Never on your 1st build or upgrading your current build, by buying a board or CPU first, then when the other parts you need is still months away. Always buy everything at once, when they are all available on store shelves.

 

there are various cases where buying with future upgrades in mind is a good idea, for example buying 1st gen ryzen say a 1600, and then upgrade to a high end 3rd gen or 4th gen is a great way to upgrade without having to buy a new board or new ram if you buy 1 year later (zen 4), i was planing to buy the best am4 cpu in a few years at lower prices instead of going for zen 4 to keep upgrade costs down, guess i will be limited to 3950x.

or if you need a pc that month but just a month after a new one is coming if you can have a use for the "old" one or can sell it for near cost its a good way to get a better pc in the long run

18 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That's kinda the whole crux of Capitalism. 

no its not, if a company starts to do that often soon enough some other company will go for that place in the market, the only place where this stops working is if there is some barrier preventing competition 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

no its not, if a company starts to do that often soon enough some other company will go for that place in the market, the only place where this stops working is if there is some barrier preventing competition 

So how has that.....not proven this:

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

That's kinda the whole crux of Capitalism. 

 

[NumLock21]

3 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

there are various cases where buying with future upgrades in mind is a good idea, for example buying 1st gen ryzen say a 1600, and then upgrade to a high end 3rd gen or 4th gen is a great way to upgrade without having to buy a new board or new ram if you buy 1 year later (zen 4),

And what board did you pair that Ryzen 1600 with?

 

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Hate or lack of hate is irrelevant.  B550 doesn’t exist yet.  There is no middle level board.  There  was a belief that there WAS a middle level board, and one can argue about who’s fault that is, but what it means is that there isn’t one right now. 

 

Even if it did, people were flat out recommending B450 for future upgrade paths which is no longer looks possible.  I was having long and in depth debates with people about the dangers of thinking like that without any certainty.

 

10 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

How though? You're whole position is based on the fact that AMD did not come out at the start pre 2016 stating exactly which chips will and will not be supported well into 2020.....that's simply an insane position to take. 

 

Now that AMD knows what chips they have now, they are telling us what will and will not work. Nobody has been "douped". Nobody bought a new CPU thinking their old motherboard will work, and the reverse of that is true. There is really nothing to be mad about other than AMD not being able to see 4 years into the future of their product line. 

Oh please, why do think all the rhetoric around buy AM4 for longevity is was still going strong uptill yesturday?

 

 

If you think for one minute that AMD didn't know about all the forum recommendations (they have social listeners for this exact reason), and I am sure reviews too, they full well knew that they weren't going to support gen 3 on 4 or earlier boards then you are kidding yourself.

[DailyProcrastinator]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If you think for one minute that AMD didn't know about all the forum recommendations (they have social listeners for this exact reason), and I am sure reviews too, they full well knew that they weren't going to support gen 3 on 4 or earlier boards then you are kidding yourself.

110% they cashed that money in the bank lmao. They knew what they were doing. They could have killed that info many moons ago but decided not to.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

110% they cashed that money in the bank lmao. They knew what they were doing. They could have killed that info many moons ago but decided not to.

What a company doesn't say in the face of mass social discussion is sometimes worse than what it does say.

 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

33 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

To be fair I never promised this and I never recommended a place-holder CPU, I always suggested and recommended buying for current needs/wants. With the added value of 4 years of (ending in 2020) AM4 support. I think AMD was just misleading and should have made this clear since B550 was not even an option. But I never used the F-word 'future-proofing'. 

 

At least with Intel it seemed crystal clear lol (we knew it would happen), when LGA1151 8th gen was not compatible with my previous Z270 ITX board I was fully expecting it so I was not disappointed, just meh.... I knew what was coming.

 

AMD seemed to be more obscure about how they went about this. In some ways yeah they didn't need to be crystal clear and we should never take their word. Not that I was every holding out for AMD as I remember how excited/surprised I was that Zen2 would actually work on my X470 motherboard, I had grown so used to the old Intel ways. It was what I was hoping for all along but I did not solely invest in AM4 because of it, at the time the R7 1700 when bought with my X370 board originally was purchased because of the multi core workstation performance. Future AM4 support for a few gens was just icing on the cake really. If anything it just felt like a breath of fresh air, but how quickly this can be forgotten.

Blame avoidance seems rampant today.   This is not the first such on this thread.  

[Dylanc1500]

People seem to have not been around for, or forgotten about, Socket T's history.

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

People seem to have not been around for, or forgotten about, Socket T's history.

That would include me.  I can look it up I suppose.  According to google Socket T is apparently much better known as lga775.  I’ve got lga775.  I’m not seeing your point though. Perhaps I’m just dense today.  Would you care to relate your theory?

Edited May 8, 2020 by Bombastinator
Gigantic derp removed

[Dabombinable]

10 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

People seem to have not been around for, or forgotten about, Socket T's history.

Yeah...but it's actually good that it didn't see more than the 2 generations (excluding Netburst...that POS). The boards really have not aged well, and in the case of mine - over the last 5-6 years its really gotten bad when it comes to memory support (all slots work, but it refuses to run even 2x 1GB sticks in dual channel or above 800MHz).

[TheDankKoosh]

I don't understand why AMD wouldn't just give the OEM's the microcode needed and leave it at their discretion on how to implement it, I was wanting my MSI MAX board to support these so that I could grab a Zen 3 8-core. The BIOS chip has plenty of space to support such an update and even those boards that have 16mb BIOS chips could just have a forked BIOS path that relinquishes support for irrelevant chips such as athlons and APU's (not saying that these chips are useless, but it would make sense to drop support in this instance) for owners wanting to upgrade. If AMD doesn't reconsider this then I guess I'm grabbing a used 3700x/3800x in a year or 2 so the money won't reach their pockets.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I love reading about all of this outrage while I'm still chugging along with my 890FX. *Munching on Doritos*

[Bitter]

25 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Yeah...but it's actually good that it didn't see more than the 2 generations (excluding Netburst...that POS). The boards really have not aged well, and in the case of mine - over the last 5-6 years its really gotten bad when it comes to memory support (all slots work, but it refuses to run even 2x 1GB sticks in dual channel or above 800MHz).

That's likely a capacitor aging issue, as they drift from spec things stop working properly. Probably can pop some fresh ones on there and be good as new! /derail

[CarlBar]

Only got to page 2 end before posting this but here's my take so far. First to be perfectly blunt arguing about the when where whats of cpu releases vis a vis the 2020 support statement is arguing semantics. It was widely assumed by the buying public that support till 2020 meant zen 3 would work on at least 400 series boards. Regardless of how they fulfill the technical aspect of the claim the allowed, (possibly created though thats arguable), the perception that zen 3 would be backwards compatible with at least 400 series boards to propagate. As i've point out in another m,matter, at least in the EU this would probably get you afoul of false advertising regulations, (If AMD had corrected this assumption when they launched Zen 2 they would be in the clear from what i understand btw).

 

That said a lot for me depends on why this is so, if it's a genuine case of AMD waned to provide the backwards compatibility but unanticipated factors related to new features made this impossible i'm willing to cut them some significant slack.And i'd hope the legal system would as well.

[mr moose]

5 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

That said a lot for me depends on why this is so, if it's a genuine case of AMD waned to provide the backwards compatibility but unanticipated factors related to new features made this impossible i'm willing to cut them some significant slack.And i'd hope the legal system would as well.

 

For me it doesn't really matter, I suspect (as I have argued all along) that there are limiting physical factors in supporting sockets and chipsets for any length of time due to the nature of technology development.   The issue is they could have been a lot more upfront about what will be supported on their road maps a year ago, if the general tech population are going to hang Intel for telling them outright what will and won't work on the next generation then they should be even more enraged with AMD for not telling them anything and leaving them believing the support is there.

 

 

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Yeah this is one of my big issues with this news. AMD definitely rode the wave of news suggesting B450 was good for future upgrades, they could have killed that info LONG ago, but chose not to. Or they could have actually pushed the release of B550, what like10 months ago. So I also cannot recommend B450 any longer, for now it is just X570.

 

I just gave this some thought as well though, and with all that is going on in the EU and right to repair legislation + trying to reduce e-waste, AMD may get into a situation where they could be forced to support Zen3 on all compatible motherboards, or if this takes a few years to develop it could just turn into a class action lawsuit. And rightfully so, no real logical reason not to provide support, especially for the high end X370/X470/B450 motherboards.

 

Also people who are defending them saying they only promised AM4 support until 2020 need to realize that just because they did not explicitly say this exact scenario would happen still does not make it any less consumer friendly. Of course these companies look out for their own pocket books but I think what AMD did not say over the past 6 months is what shows their intentions. Why not clarify future support with B550/X570, and previous gens of motherboards. Because they wanted to make sales NOW. Thankfully I've made more than enough on their stocks to make up on it lol, but I still think it's a dick move.

 

As I get older I find my discontent for companies who promote the trend of replacement products even more and more distasteful, and we can blame the iPhone for that... Intel did this with LGA1151/8th gen as well, and we are all so okay with it now, because it's 'normal'. Bottom line is don't like brands, like products, I like my Ryzen CPU, I do not like AMD lol. 

 

Also Zen2 is still likely launching this year, last I checked my calendar it is still 2020 for another 7 months...

The claim of "until 2020" to me, means through 2020 because all the reviewers were hyping up B450/X470 as an amazing value and you'd be able to throw a Zen2 cpu on it,  now AMD doesn't really have the advantage of being any cheaper over Intel. Yeah there are cheap X570 boards but the cheap ones aren't any better than B450, and you could actually get a Z390 board with more features for less than a X570 board.

I like AMD's products and what they've done to get Intel to be competitive again, but I can't stand the people that always defend AMD as if they can do no wrong, in this case AMD is really pulling an Intel but it almost seems worse because people are being told they can't upgrade even though the socket is exactly the same. Those that aren't aware are still going to buy B450 boards and be really upset when they realize there isn't any upgrade path to a newer cpu generation.

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

 but I can't stand the people that always defend AMD as if they can do no wrong, in this case AMD is really pulling an Intel but it almost seems worse because people are being told they can't upgrade even though the socket is exactly the same. Those that aren't aware are still going to buy B450 boards and be really upset when they realize there isn't any upgrade path to a newer cpu generation.

 

The sadder part is that when Intel did it (as expected and announced)  people were jumping over themselves calling it anti consumer and how Intel were only doing it to sell more motherboards,  Those accusations are decidedly absent this time around.  A surprise to nobody I am sure.

[Mr.Meerkat]

I personally accept this reasoning of BIOS (EEPROM) chips not being large enough. I mean if you do even the smallest amounts of research, you'll quickly find mobo manufacturers already had issues just adding Zen+/Ryzen 2xxx support to x3xx mobos due to BIOS size limitations. Then, when adding Zen 2 support, the issue became even larger where some resorted to simplifying the UEFI massively which meant mobo features being outright removed whilst from what I've seen, some have removed Zen or Zen+ support, in exchange for Zen 2 support. In the short term, that works however, in the long terms, that is simply not a feasible option. I'd personally blame mobo manufacturers for this. They've known this to be an issue since 2018, if not earlier yet they didn't do anything to increase the size of the BIOS chip. In their defense, a 256mb chip would have costed more than twice as much (due to bulk savings/agreements) whilst some did consider striped dual 128mb chips but that's still twice the cost. 

 

With this in mind, I personally think x3xx and x4xx mobos being axed from supporting Zen 3 to be a fair compromise. x4xx still got 2 generations whilst x3xx got 3 generations. Granted, for mobos with 256mb chips, the option to add support should be there but that would increase confusion, complexity and frankly, with a large number of consumers not being particularly tech savvy (not everyone is like the resident forum users here), I think it's a good enough trade-off. I know I may get a significant amount of backlash but you have to remember pleasing customers isn't the only thing AMD has to worry about. They also have to please the mobo manufacturers, which from what I've heard is already a bit strained so not wanting to annoy their mobo manufacturers any more, they decided to make the compromise.  

[That Franc]

19 hours ago, Andk1987 said:

i myself purchased a 3600 and B450 higher end board

You really don't need an upgrade in that case, just wait out and get Ryzen 5000 with a new board, it will be a much more meaningful upgrade than a jump from Zen 2 to Zen 3.

Zen 2 is already a beast and a half.

[TheDankKoosh]

16 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The claim of "until 2020" to me, means through 2020 because all the reviewers were hyping up B450/X470 as an amazing value and you'd be able to throw a Zen2 cpu on it,  now AMD doesn't really have the advantage of being any cheaper over Intel. Yeah there are cheap X570 boards but the cheap ones aren't any better than B450, and you could actually get a Z390 board with more features for less than a X570 board.

I like AMD's products and what they've done to get Intel to be competitive again, but I can't stand the people that always defend AMD as if they can do no wrong, in this case AMD is really pulling an Intel but it almost seems worse because people are being told they can't upgrade even though the socket is exactly the same. Those that aren't aware are still going to buy B450 boards and be really upset when they realize there isn't any upgrade path to a newer cpu generation.

Z390 is a dead in the water chipset with no upgrade path though, and equivalent chips still cost more. There are definitely cheap boards on x570 that are outright better than b450 (Prime x570-P comes to mind), but they do cost more as a result of PCIE 4.0 support. Intel has done the same thing for the past 4 generations with 1151/1151v2, but at least AMD has supported the Zen 2 arch despite it functioning very differently compared to the previous 2 generations, Intel has not.

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, TheDankKoosh said:

Z390 is a dead in the water chipset with no upgrade path though, and equivalent chips still cost more.

 

Any thing that is not X5XX is a dead upgrade path now. That's half the point.

12 minutes ago, TheDankKoosh said:

 Intel has done the same thing for the past 4 generations with 1151/1151v2, but at least AMD has supported the Zen 2 arch despite it functioning very differently compared to the previous 2 generations, Intel has not.

 

The difference between the two is that Intel told you upfront what would and wouldn't work going forward, they haven't supported more than 2 gen on any platform and everyone knew it before they bought. There was zero reason for anyone to assume Intel would support 1151v2 on 1151 even when 1151 first came out.  In this case AMD easily knew a year ago and made zero effort to warn people this was going to happen, there are lots of reasons for people to assume it would be supported.  How anyone can fool themselves into thinking Intel did the consumers wrong while AMD did exceedingly worse is beyond me.  

 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

I’m trying to think of ways around this one for AMD.  Offering upgrades from b450 boards to b550 boards at some kind of discount is one possible option.  An expensive one though since they don’t make the boards.  If an AGESA was written that even only fit in the expanded bios chips of MAX boards that would do it too.  It at least leaves an option.  That one costs AMD only development time, and possibly a bit of goodwill from whomever is tasked to write it. Probably kind of a PITA.  Hopefully someone more creative than myself can get a solution for this one. 
 

In any event something needs to be done or at least arranged for quickly, because as it stands the 3600x barely fits on an a series board if it even does, and there’s no real price advantage to 3700-3900 right now if you’ve got to pay $300 to get a decent motherboard. Might as well go intel.  If there’s even a commitment that b450 has some sort of pathway it should be enough to make it usable.  There’s nothing actual wrong with it.  It works.  

[TheDankKoosh]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Any thing that is not X5XX is a dead upgrade path now. That's half the point.

 

The difference between the two is that Intel told you upfront what would and wouldn't work going forward, they haven't supported more than 2 gen on any platform and everyone knew it before they bought. There was zero reason for anyone to assume Intel would support 1151v2 on 1151 even when 1151 first came out.  In this case AMD easily knew a year ago and made zero effort to warn people this was going to happen, there are lots of reasons for people to assume it would be supported.  How anyone can fool themselves into thinking Intel did the consumers wrong while AMD did exceedingly worse is beyond me.  

 

 

 

 

Is this announcement not directly telling people to not buy 300 and 400 series boards if they intend to upgrade to zen 3? Isn't this approximately 6 months before release of zen 3? They never promised "till end of 2020" they only promised 2020 support for legacy boards which has been delivered, not to say that I'm not a bit angry from this announcement. This isn't really a bad move on their part from a financial perspective, but a somewhat frustrating one from a consumer perspective, I still find Intel's way of handling things to be much worse for consumers since they haven't had a reason to switch chipsets so often, considering they haven't had a new uarch in 5 years.