AMD prevents motherboard manufacturers from releasing beta BIOS for Ryzen 5000 on X370

[MageTank]

1 hour ago, Athan Immortal said:

Sorry bud, dinner was in the oven and I had just seen the notifications. Was only looking to give that link as I'd saved it from before when a similar argument had gone on on Reddit.

 

All best, have a good day.

No worries, appreciate you taking the time to correct my nonsense. Someone has to do it, lol.

[LAwLz]

On 5/10/2021 at 6:23 PM, MageTank said:

If you would have asked me this prior to your super sleuthing detective work, I would have said no, on the grounds that they did not seem to be intentionally deceptive but instead were simply reckless in how they conveyed support from a technical perspective. In light of your recent sources showing a potential cover-up, it's hard not to see it as potentially misleading.

I still would say they were just reckless with how they conveyed support and then didn't bother correcting people when their expectations were set high.

I think AMD took the attitude of "let's be a bit vague, let people assume stuff and then we will figure out how to deal with support later".

 

On 5/10/2021 at 6:23 PM, MageTank said:

The issue again stems from their decision to word it as "AM4" and not mention specific chipsets. If we are arguing specifics, the socket is still supported through 2020 (even now in 2021), while older AM4 chipsets are not.

Exactly.

They said "AM4" and people assumed "chipsets like the X370" and AMD never bothered correcting people. That's why it was such a big shock to people when they said Ryzen 5000 would not be supported on B460 and X470 boards. Because people had been lead to believe that "AM4 support" meant support for newer processors on older chipsets.

 

Regardless of what wording AMD used, I think it was a shitty move from them to not be more upfront and clear in their communication from the start. It's better (for consumers, not for AMD) to set expectations low and then overachieve, rather than set expectations high and then disappoint people. Especially when "disappoint people" means people has ended up buying things they might not have bought otherwise.

 

On 5/10/2021 at 6:23 PM, MageTank said:

If you are trying to make the point that AMD should have been more forthcoming in their advertising of product support, I am in favor of that as well, however I also do not believe they did anything deceitful as that would imply intent. These products were not out when X370 launched and when the majority of these statements were made. That said, if AMD got over their heads and failed to deliver on their promises, they should have owned up to that as well. This should be another lesson to consumers that companies are not your friends, and to never trust the marketing departments, they'll do anything to sell a product.

I think they did some things intentionally.

I think they were intentionally vague because they didn't know how well they could support older motherboards with newer CPUs. So they were intentionally vague and intentionally did not correct any of the misinformation or expectations people had.

That's of course speculation on my part, but I don't see why they would word things they did and not announce things until they absolutely had to if it wasn't an attempt to be misleading to sell more products.

If you say something that is technically the truth but that makes people come to the wrong conclusion, and then don't correct them, you are basically lying in my eyes.

 

On 5/10/2021 at 6:23 PM, MageTank said:

I am not in disagreement with you here. While I do not believe AMD committed false advertisement by saying "AM4 will be supported until 2020" (or through, given your recent findings), it would be far more accurate to list chipset support for their generational CPU releases in terms of product support as that would be far more relevant to what customers need to know for their systems. Nobody cares about what the socket itself will support, go ask Intel fans what they think about LGA1151 and it's compatibility. They'd rather know from the start that X chipset won't be compatible with Y processors. I am all for this line of thinking, just as long as we aren't misrepresenting the words of one party simply because we may have interpreted them differently. Understand, we can't always help how people interpret what we say, though in those situations it's also up to us to clarify what we mean (and double down if need be), and that is where AMD failed here (and doubly so for going back and removing their words).

Well said. Agree 100%.

 

On 5/10/2021 at 6:23 PM, MageTank said:

The fact that they have two different marketing managers providing conflicting information to consumers would be grounds for an investigation in and of itself but I doubt we'd see anything come of it.

I don't want them to get into trouble.

All I want are for people to stop buying things based on future promises (or in this case, misplaced expectations) and buy things for what they are.

While we're at it, I think it would be good if people stopped buying computer hardware with the expectation and intention of replacing it like a year later. My process is over 4 years now and I have no intention of upgrading it anytime soon. I might upgrade to Zen 5 or whatever the second gen DDR5 CPUs end up being called. 

If you plan your builds accordingly, and don't upgrade just for the sake of buying the latest shiniest thing all the time, then you can go many many years without upgrading. Mostly likely far longer than even a long-lived motherboard.