AMD listened.. again? Zen 3 support on B450/X470

[Void Master]

this has been posted 4 times tdy

 

[RadiatingLight]

It's the best they can do, and it's somewhat sketchy so I can see why they didn't want to do this.

If you're upgrading from 2600 to Zen3, the BIOS update will likely remove compatibility for your 2600, so troubleshooting is harder because you only have one CPU that will work in the board, and users could get confused.

Additionally, if the BIOS update is downloaded by people who don't have a Zen3 CPU on hand, it basically bricks their system.

 

Removing Zen/Zen+ support from B450 is actually quite strange, since B450 launched alongside Zen+ so AMD is removing compatibility with the original CPUs the motherboard was meant to be used with.

[imreloadin]

10 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Unfortunately the consumer that knows how to flash a bios are mainly enthusiasts, not your average gamer hunting for that extra 10 frames in Minecraft or whatever game is popular today. Even with first-party utilities available, flashing BIOSes isn't for the faint hearted and board manufacturers know that. They always recommend people to not update unless it's absolutely necessary. 

 

Even though this is a nice gesture of them, it's still not a great experience. Cause you then have to wait a week or so for a CPU to be shipped to you, then even more if something goes wrong, etc. Consumers want stuff that works, not half baked like how things currently are.

Shit, the way you talk AMD should send a rep to your house and build your PC for you...

Seriously, if you're skilled enough to do a motherboard swap or build a PC then you're skilled enough to flash a BIOS. Literally all you do with modern motherboards is put the BIOS file on a USB, go into the UEFI and click the option that says "Update BIOS" and let it do its thing. The consumers that aren't skilled enough to do that aren't going to be skilled enough to actually build the computer and will pay someone else to do it for them.

[wkdpaul]

@TheDailyProcrastinator

 

Thread merged.

[DailyProcrastinator]

Just now, wkdpaul said:

@TheDailyProcrastinator

 

Thread merged.

My bad missed this! Thanks!

[Demonking]

My Crosshair hero VII wifi has 32mb bios rom, but Asus was 1 of the manufacturers to not care as much like MSI.

[EChondo]

1 hour ago, RadiatingLight said:

Removing Zen/Zen+ support from B450 is actually quite strange, since B450 launched alongside Zen+ so AMD is removing compatibility with the original CPUs the motherboard was meant to be used with.

Isn't strange at all. Small BIOS chips and huge changes of CPU and BIOS code means they need to cut compatibility.

 

A lot of people(not saying you specifically) I've seen on Reddit and this forum don't seem to believe AMD when AMD said it's a technical limitation/issue. AMD just wanted to be able to provide support for original Ryzen CPUs and some newer(Zen3), but allowing Zen4 to be added now means they need to cut the slack because there's just too much new code in the BIOS and it all can't be stored correctly.

 

It sucks that this has to be done, but AMD was playing it safe at first and now that they know the community doesn't care about compatibility, then AMD doesn't care about compatibility either now, but they still want the upgrade process to be safe, which is why they're requiring the verified customer portion(don't know how they'll get around people just sharing the BIOS file via Google drive lol).

 

Honestly can't wait to read the dozen or so threads from people about their bricked motherboards because this process will be confusing and a nightmare for some.

[Shlouski]

8 hours ago, Tedny said:

The select beta BIOSes will enable a one-way upgrade path for AMD Ryzen Processors with “Zen 3,” coming later this year. Flashing back to an older BIOS version will not be supported.

Two steps forward and one step back imo, I would love to know their reasoning behind this.

 

This is not consumer friendly, b450 boards have been very popular and have sold very well, this is going to cause issues in the second hand market.

 

Why don't they just leave it up to their board partners to decide what cpu's their boards support, which they can state on the box. If someone has the brain power to build a computer then they should be capable of taking the few seconds needed to check the manufacturers cpu support list on thier website, and if they don't check it then it's clearly their fault. I wouldn't have minded if AMD stated that officially b450 boards wouldn't  support zen 3 cpu's, so newer customers would buy the newer chipsets and avoid bios issues, as long as they allowed board partners to do bios updates on boards so people could upgrade and downgraded if needed.

 

 

[Gohardgrandpa]

I couldn’t imagine working with amd. They cause a ton of headaches. We just had the 5600xt with the last minute bios update and now they are doing this shit. They need to get it together before companies don’t want to work with them 

[spartaman64]

3 minutes ago, Gohardgrandpa said:

I couldn’t imagine working with amd. They cause a ton of headaches. We just had the 5600xt with the last minute bios update and now they are doing this shit. They need to get it together before companies don’t want to work with them 

i mean its the motherboard companies opting for 16MB bios chips that got us into this mess so they have no one to blame but themselves

[Gohardgrandpa]

Yeah because they didn’t want to go all in on ryzen in case it was a flop like the older cpus they’ve made and I understand where the mobo mfg were coming from on that. If it costs only $1 per board that shit adds up over time 

[Neftex]

well this is good news. i do have one question tho, theyre recommending to buy b550/x570 but afaik didnt tell us if the next generation after zen3 will be supported on those so similar situation can repeat again. (if they release another am4 cpu gen, which i think they will)

[-rascal-]

Part reason due to B450 over extending its stay, and B550A / B550 taking so long to arrive.

 

I think the one-way BIOS update is fine, given that it should have support for both Ryzen 3000-series and 4000-series.

To cover a broader user base (e.g. system integrator, etc).

Drop Ryzen 1000-series and 2000-series support in the *exclusive* BIOS.

Having JUST Ryzen 4000-series support might be tough.

 

Just going by the 'Build Planning' and 'CPU / Motherboard / Memory' sections on the LLT forums, most new B450 builds are going with a Ryzen 3000-series CPU anyways.

e.g. Ryzen 3600 / 3600X / 3700X, with probably 3100 and 3300X in the mix now too, given how well they perform for gaming.

 

Should be also on the board partners' to indicate if their specific model of board(s) has BIOS for Ryzen 4000-series support , since some new B450 boards have 32MB BIOS.

e.g. MSi's B450 'MAX' boards.

 

Zen3+ / Ryzen 5000-series is rumored for 2021 ~ 2022 on socket AM5 with DDR5, and USB 4.0

That is already off the "up to" 2020 road-map anyways.

[Shorty88jr]

Won't this completely destroy the used markets on the boards? What if someone flashes this bios then you can't use certain CPUs and you will now have to verify before buying one. Or worse someone has no idea about this and sees the boards are compatible buys it and then it isn't because it's been upgraded. 

[TempestCatto]

10 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Oh come on AMD! Grow a spine!

 

Those people bitching about it last couple of weeks are enthusiasts and not your real customers. Your real customers needs you to protect them from some mumbo jumbo they can’t handle like this.

I do hope this is sarcasm. Although I could understand for older platforms like x370, I bought a fully loaded x470 board hoping/expecting to upgrade to Zen3. Not to mention it took b550 forever and day to finally be released, forcing some people to buy "last gen" boards.

[Arika S]

3 hours ago, Neftex said:

well this is good news. i do have one question tho, theyre recommending to buy b550/x570 but afaik didnt tell us if the next generation after zen3 will be supported on those so similar situation can repeat again. (if they release another am4 cpu gen, which i think they will)

i think they are changing the socket next gen if their roadmap is to be believed. BUT having said this, this whole situation is because their roadmap wasn't adhered to.

 

there will be a point where there is no upgrade path without buying a new board. it's impossible to provide infinite upgradability.

[AluminiumTech]

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

I do hope this is sarcasm

100% not sarcasm. I agreed with the way they handled the issue originally and I didn’t see a need to correct it.

 

They were put in a terrible position and I believe they chose the lesser of two evils. I sincerely believe that. Now they’re just kicking the proverbial can further down the road instead of making a proper fresh start. 

[imreloadin]

3 hours ago, Shorty88jr said:

Won't this completely destroy the used markets on the boards? What if someone flashes this bios then you can't use certain CPUs and you will now have to verify before buying one. Or worse someone has no idea about this and sees the boards are compatible buys it and then it isn't because it's been upgraded. 

Literally would have been fine if people didn't all start bitching about support for Ryzen 4000...if everyone would have left it well enough alone then it would be straightforward, if you have an x470/B450 board or older then you can support CPUs up until the Ryzen 3000 series, if you have x570/B550 then you can support Ryzen 2000 and up. Since people chose to complain they now get this kind of clusterfuck where you don't know if an old board has a beta BIOS or not. The BIOS chips on like 99% of the motherboards out there just don't have a big enough of a chip to store everything so this is what you get.

 

Seriously, I'm so fucking tired of hearing about this. People literally go batshit crazy about "MuH cOmPaTiBiLiTy" for the newest processors and then use the exact same "MuH cOmPaTiBiLiTy" argument when they realize the only fix is a beta BIOS that can't be flashed down to a previous version due to technical reasons. The entire point was that you can't have everything because of technical limitations so AMD basically said "You didn't listen to us so have fun figuring things out on your own". Can't say I blame them at this point for giving people the choice and peacing the fuck out.

[AndreiArgeanu]

AMD gave the people what they ask for, now they suddenly get mad that they can't downgrade the bios or have support for both Zen2 and Zen3. You have to realise there are hardware and maybe software limitations which GN has covered very well in one of their videos. AMD kept their promises after all and supported the AM4 platform for 3 whole generations up to 2020. You can't expect to have support for 4 different cpu generations without any limitations.

In the end you can always sell off your b450 motherboard and get a b550 motherboard whenever they come out if you're really keen on Zen 3 support.

 

[huilun02]

To put things into perspective, blue team has mobos that support only 1 gen of processors on a narrower product stack and they are happy with that superiority.

[imreloadin]

4 hours ago, huilun02 said:

To put things into perspective, blue team has mobos that support only 1 gen of processors on a narrower product stack and they are happy with that superiority.

This is what blows my mind about this entire thing. AMD allowed you to use the same motherboard for three generations of CPUs...THREE! If this were Intel you would have had to buy a new damn motherboard EACH time you upgraded to the next generation. All I could think about when I first heard about this was that it deserved to be on Reddit's r/ChoosingBeggars page. When has a CPU manufacturer made it so you could use three different generations of CPU on the same motherboard besides this one time, ever?

[StarsMars]

I'm confused.

When AMD said they would support socket AM4 through 2020, what exactly did they mean?

Cooler bracket support?

 

I'm plenty happy with the support it's had. You can take a 300gen board and stick a ryzen3000 in it. That's great.

But they knew what their architecture roadmap was. They must have known when they laid out the roadmap that there would be problems with zen4000 and older boards.

Seems like they just promised a bit too much.

 

Either way, going to take the potential cpu upgrade funds and save for a 3080ti.

I'm enjoying the 3700x in my x470. It's plenty.

[thechinchinsong]

11 hours ago, Arika S said:

i think they are changing the socket next gen if their roadmap is to be believed. BUT having said this, this whole situation is because their roadmap wasn't adhered to.

How did AMD's roadmap change? Are you referring to their socket support roadmap or a different one?

[imreloadin]

1 hour ago, StarsMars said:

I'm confused.

When AMD said they would support socket AM4 through 2020, what exactly did they mean?

Cooler bracket support?

You know...the actual socket that you insert the CPU into? Chipset != Socket

[Blademaster91]

10 hours ago, imreloadin said:

Literally would have been fine if people didn't all start bitching about support for Ryzen 4000...if everyone would have left it well enough alone then it would be straightforward, if you have an x470/B450 board or older then you can support CPUs up until the Ryzen 3000 series, if you have x570/B550 then you can support Ryzen 2000 and up. Since people chose to complain they now get this kind of clusterfuck where you don't know if an old board has a beta BIOS or not. The BIOS chips on like 99% of the motherboards out there just don't have a big enough of a chip to store everything so this is what you get.

 

Seriously, I'm so fucking tired of hearing about this. People literally go batshit crazy about "MuH cOmPaTiBiLiTy" for the newest processors and then use the exact same "MuH cOmPaTiBiLiTy" argument when they realize the only fix is a beta BIOS that can't be flashed down to a previous version due to technical reasons. The entire point was that you can't have everything because of technical limitations so AMD basically said "You didn't listen to us so have fun figuring things out on your own". Can't say I blame them at this point for giving people the choice and peacing the fuck out.

More like it would've been fine if AMD had released B550 around when Ryzen 3000 came out, but AMD kinda put that on themselves with the promise of keeping AM4 compatibility with really no clarification that chipsets wouldn't be compatible.  The backtracking doesn't look good for AMD either, and I think they need to get their PR and marketing right, saying the CPU's won't work then going back and admitting users can get an upgrade just causes a ton of confusion.