AMD Loses Either Way: B450 & Zen 3 Compatibility Deep-Dive, 32MB ROM Issues, & More
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Date: 2020-05-18
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Comments and reviews: 10
Mizino:
Ok lets face it, if you bought a b450, or x470 board with a 32mb bios, then its likely you are getting support for the new processors, at that point offering support is purely on the board manufacturer as it falls into line with supporting x570 and b550 boards. Remember x570 and b550 are compatible with zen, zen+, and zen2 almost all of which cannot address the full 32mb range anyway. So on the boards that have a full fat 32mb chip there is nothing more that a board manufacturer will need to do really to bring in support that they aren't already doing on the other two chipsets. The issue lay in the boards with 16mb chips that cannot be given support without dropping support for other processors and or board features. At that point it will be a toss up. It will take lots of time and R&D to figure out a way of providing support to those boards without completely gimping them. Yes they won't have the newer features so some of those will get pushed into oblivion, but that doesn't account for all of the space difference. It will at the end of the day fall on board manufacturers to solve this issue as AMD can only say If you support everything this will be the size of the bios if the manufacturers want to get it working then thats something they are going to have to beat their heads against. My issue is that someone had to have seen this coming at AMD or at the board partners. Someone should have seen that registry sets and feature sets were eating space and someone should have asked why don't all our boards use 32mb bios chips. Yes the response from the top would have been cause the bios doesn't even use 16mb but the point would be that this is essentially a headache that someone should have seen coming either in AMD or in one of the board makers. Cause really when you think about it, they are both at fault.
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Ok lets face it, if you bought a b450, or x470 board with a 32mb bios, then its likely you are getting support for the new processors, at that point offering support is purely on the board manufacturer as it falls into line with supporting x570 and b550 boards. Remember x570 and b550 are compatible with zen, zen+, and zen2 almost all of which cannot address the full 32mb range anyway. So on the boards that have a full fat 32mb chip there is nothing more that a board manufacturer will need to do really to bring in support that they aren't already doing on the other two chipsets. The issue lay in the boards with 16mb chips that cannot be given support without dropping support for other processors and or board features. At that point it will be a toss up. It will take lots of time and R&D to figure out a way of providing support to those boards without completely gimping them. Yes they won't have the newer features so some of those will get pushed into oblivion, but that doesn't account for all of the space difference. It will at the end of the day fall on board manufacturers to solve this issue as AMD can only say If you support everything this will be the size of the bios if the manufacturers want to get it working then thats something they are going to have to beat their heads against. My issue is that someone had to have seen this coming at AMD or at the board partners. Someone should have seen that registry sets and feature sets were eating space and someone should have asked why don't all our boards use 32mb bios chips. Yes the response from the top would have been cause the bios doesn't even use 16mb but the point would be that this is essentially a headache that someone should have seen coming either in AMD or in one of the board makers. Cause really when you think about it, they are both at fault.
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LD
I feel AMD should stick to their guns and move on. Yes many Will/Are complaining but how many of those complaints would translate into loss of sales from the enthusiast segment of AMD's market? My feeling is not That many. We want things Both ways usually, modern improvements but at no extra cost to us, it doesn't work that way in reality. You want faster speeds, higher instruction numbers etc, then go and buy the kit that fully supports that, not expect what you bought 2, 3 years ago to suddenly grow PCI 4 lanes etc. > I feel that we were already damn lucky to get Ryzen 3000 series on current MB's, they could (and quite likely should) have forced them to only be compatible with x570 boards, then they wouldn't be in this situation now. They knew that they had a great product and as soon as the early adopters began putting their benchmarks online, all the moaners would have shut up and bought x570 boards without a grumble. Time to move on and live in the today, not yesterday. And before anyone begins to flame, yes I Do have modern kit, it Did spend an arm and at least half a leg on my rig, it took me over a year to save and build.
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I feel AMD should stick to their guns and move on. Yes many Will/Are complaining but how many of those complaints would translate into loss of sales from the enthusiast segment of AMD's market? My feeling is not That many. We want things Both ways usually, modern improvements but at no extra cost to us, it doesn't work that way in reality. You want faster speeds, higher instruction numbers etc, then go and buy the kit that fully supports that, not expect what you bought 2, 3 years ago to suddenly grow PCI 4 lanes etc. > I feel that we were already damn lucky to get Ryzen 3000 series on current MB's, they could (and quite likely should) have forced them to only be compatible with x570 boards, then they wouldn't be in this situation now. They knew that they had a great product and as soon as the early adopters began putting their benchmarks online, all the moaners would have shut up and bought x570 boards without a grumble. Time to move on and live in the today, not yesterday. And before anyone begins to flame, yes I Do have modern kit, it Did spend an arm and at least half a leg on my rig, it took me over a year to save and build.
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John
Speaking as someone who built a B450 system a month ago, I m... not that upset by all this. I mean yeah, it sucks. I definitely wanted the option of being able to drop a 4000 series chip in my system in a year or two. But honestly, tallying up my build, my motherboard cost less than 7% of my entire system. If Zen3 really is super amazing and worth upgrading for, I might consider upgrading the chip and board. But the trouble with all this is we re all squabbling about the very last chips to be put out on AM4. If you re like me and have a B450 system, you re likely not even going to upgrade until AM5. So what s the big deal? Besides, if you re really the kind of person who wants to upgrade CPUs ever year, you can clearly afford to fork over a little more for a B550 board, too. This whole thing seems silly and I gotta say Steve, you ve done a great job of telling people to be levelheaded about it. Seriously, with Zen4 and DDR5 right around the corner, all the hullabaloo about this is highly unnecessary.
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Speaking as someone who built a B450 system a month ago, I m... not that upset by all this. I mean yeah, it sucks. I definitely wanted the option of being able to drop a 4000 series chip in my system in a year or two. But honestly, tallying up my build, my motherboard cost less than 7% of my entire system. If Zen3 really is super amazing and worth upgrading for, I might consider upgrading the chip and board. But the trouble with all this is we re all squabbling about the very last chips to be put out on AM4. If you re like me and have a B450 system, you re likely not even going to upgrade until AM5. So what s the big deal? Besides, if you re really the kind of person who wants to upgrade CPUs ever year, you can clearly afford to fork over a little more for a B550 board, too. This whole thing seems silly and I gotta say Steve, you ve done a great job of telling people to be levelheaded about it. Seriously, with Zen4 and DDR5 right around the corner, all the hullabaloo about this is highly unnecessary.
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cjskater2006
I didn't reply to the last video on this topic because I get it and I don't really care that much since my next upgrade is 4000 with x570 anyway. I will say though, it's already relatively common knowledge that you may have to flash your BIOS to support a new CPU generation when you buy a motherboard. So much so that Flashback is a big selling point, see: the b450 tomahawk, which is not only good, it has Flashback. Just compare these mid range motherboard's reviews for evidence. I do get that not everyone knows about this, or is confident in their ability to do it, but this is the age of the internet where you can find anything you want online with a simple search of the key words. Maybe it's the problem of these motherboard manufacturers to make this knowledge more easily accessible as well. Or just have them create a way that simplifies the process of finding and flashing the BIOS, when this issue occurs, for these users.
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I didn't reply to the last video on this topic because I get it and I don't really care that much since my next upgrade is 4000 with x570 anyway. I will say though, it's already relatively common knowledge that you may have to flash your BIOS to support a new CPU generation when you buy a motherboard. So much so that Flashback is a big selling point, see: the b450 tomahawk, which is not only good, it has Flashback. Just compare these mid range motherboard's reviews for evidence. I do get that not everyone knows about this, or is confident in their ability to do it, but this is the age of the internet where you can find anything you want online with a simple search of the key words. Maybe it's the problem of these motherboard manufacturers to make this knowledge more easily accessible as well. Or just have them create a way that simplifies the process of finding and flashing the BIOS, when this issue occurs, for these users.
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CurrField
Shit what a mess, great job reaching out to a lot of people for information. Makes it clear that AMD isn't screwing itself over right now but they did a long time ago with Zen/Zen+ not supporting 16mb+ and chipsets not being 16mb+ as standard. AMD knew they were going to keep their socket for a long time, couldn't they just plan ahead with BOIS support a little better?? I can understand why they couldn't because at Zen launch they were in a very bad market position so the last thing their partners wanted to hear is that they needed to get 32mb ROM, not to get more BIOS features but to support CPU's. They need to fix this now with the start of Zen 3 and especially when they move to a new socket and/or DDR5. If they explicitly state that support will be there and not just suggest it that can be a great selling point.
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Shit what a mess, great job reaching out to a lot of people for information. Makes it clear that AMD isn't screwing itself over right now but they did a long time ago with Zen/Zen+ not supporting 16mb+ and chipsets not being 16mb+ as standard. AMD knew they were going to keep their socket for a long time, couldn't they just plan ahead with BOIS support a little better?? I can understand why they couldn't because at Zen launch they were in a very bad market position so the last thing their partners wanted to hear is that they needed to get 32mb ROM, not to get more BIOS features but to support CPU's. They need to fix this now with the start of Zen 3 and especially when they move to a new socket and/or DDR5. If they explicitly state that support will be there and not just suggest it that can be a great selling point.
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Amit
Keeping aside the debacle that AMD created with their support of 4000 series cpus on the 300 series and 400 series chipset, if AMD decids to launch 600 series motherboard along with 4000 series processors with x670 and later in the 2nd quarter of 2021 b650 supporting 4000 series processors and then releases the 5000 series cpus in late 2021 with ddr5 support than these new boards will only be relevant for a year for the x670 and B650 will become obsolete in less than a few months. Now AMD can make the 5000 series processors support both ddr4 and ddr5 but given that AMD cpus perform better with higher clocked memory, how much performance delta can be seen in a same cpu between the use of ddr4 and ddr5 given that ddr5 is assumed to be clock 2x as high as ddr4.
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Keeping aside the debacle that AMD created with their support of 4000 series cpus on the 300 series and 400 series chipset, if AMD decids to launch 600 series motherboard along with 4000 series processors with x670 and later in the 2nd quarter of 2021 b650 supporting 4000 series processors and then releases the 5000 series cpus in late 2021 with ddr5 support than these new boards will only be relevant for a year for the x670 and B650 will become obsolete in less than a few months. Now AMD can make the 5000 series processors support both ddr4 and ddr5 but given that AMD cpus perform better with higher clocked memory, how much performance delta can be seen in a same cpu between the use of ddr4 and ddr5 given that ddr5 is assumed to be clock 2x as high as ddr4.
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Kalle
To me there is two classy ways to handle this type of situation: 1) own up to the actual reason and state that supporting old boards is financially unfeasible due to workload vs. amount of customers who would use it. Don't hide behind technical reasons that are only the source of the business decision, not a hard limitation. 2) Clearly define supported combinations of chipset and CPU and reflect this in the default BIOS. Have enthusiast program/site through which you can willingly give up your claim for support for a BIOS that have eg. the newer CPU:s supported but no old crappy ones. Requires resources and money, but since AMD is always looking after the customer's benefit unlike evil Intel, this shouldn't be a problem right?
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To me there is two classy ways to handle this type of situation: 1) own up to the actual reason and state that supporting old boards is financially unfeasible due to workload vs. amount of customers who would use it. Don't hide behind technical reasons that are only the source of the business decision, not a hard limitation. 2) Clearly define supported combinations of chipset and CPU and reflect this in the default BIOS. Have enthusiast program/site through which you can willingly give up your claim for support for a BIOS that have eg. the newer CPU:s supported but no old crappy ones. Requires resources and money, but since AMD is always looking after the customer's benefit unlike evil Intel, this shouldn't be a problem right?
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André
It would make perfect scence if B550 was launched with ZEN2, and with that killed compatibility from the get go ... Everyone would buy B550 to keep support for newer CPU's and maintain the board ... Now THIS way around sucks... I shilled for the best B450 I could afford with my R5 3600 and been recomending this to my clients bcause this was a no brainer... Now I'm royally pissedoff because I have to say otherwise to my costumers when it's time to upgrade and NOTHING was saying otherwise! In the lower section of the market going B450 or X570 without OC will do NOTHING for performance, so I recommended go with a good B450 and faster CPU, RAM and SSD... Was I wrong? X570 just added PCIe4.0 wich do nothing for the most part...
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It would make perfect scence if B550 was launched with ZEN2, and with that killed compatibility from the get go ... Everyone would buy B550 to keep support for newer CPU's and maintain the board ... Now THIS way around sucks... I shilled for the best B450 I could afford with my R5 3600 and been recomending this to my clients bcause this was a no brainer... Now I'm royally pissedoff because I have to say otherwise to my costumers when it's time to upgrade and NOTHING was saying otherwise! In the lower section of the market going B450 or X570 without OC will do NOTHING for performance, so I recommended go with a good B450 and faster CPU, RAM and SSD... Was I wrong? X570 just added PCIe4.0 wich do nothing for the most part...
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Ammaar
I think it should be okay and wouldn't break the non-enthusiast markets if AMD tries and opens things up. All this conversation is fueling and arming people with better knowledge of the reason why AMD wanted to move forward with a new chipset. If someone is buying a used CPU for their older boards, then it's highly likely that they are fairly competent at basic computing hardware and at least can read warnings like keep in mind this CPU on B450 means you will no longer have support . Overall I think AMD's best move here is to spread as much information via press releases or interviews as they can so that whichever decision they make, they'll likely reduce the backlash. Communication is always a good thing.
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I think it should be okay and wouldn't break the non-enthusiast markets if AMD tries and opens things up. All this conversation is fueling and arming people with better knowledge of the reason why AMD wanted to move forward with a new chipset. If someone is buying a used CPU for their older boards, then it's highly likely that they are fairly competent at basic computing hardware and at least can read warnings like keep in mind this CPU on B450 means you will no longer have support . Overall I think AMD's best move here is to spread as much information via press releases or interviews as they can so that whichever decision they make, they'll likely reduce the backlash. Communication is always a good thing.
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Daniel
Perhaps I'm looking at this wrong, but surely if anyone has an old CPU with a new motherboard, they made that decision so their mobo is ready for upgrading to a new CPU when it's released. It's common enough to need a Bios update to support a new CPU, so they should be expecting that. There must be some solution that would allow a user looking to upgrade to drop old CPU support to get the newer CPU. After all, some board partners and AMD have suggested support historically. Hopefully AMD learns a lesson, and that lesson being to make sure they can technically deliver on their promises. I would have to see them go the way of Intel and force a board update every tick.
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Perhaps I'm looking at this wrong, but surely if anyone has an old CPU with a new motherboard, they made that decision so their mobo is ready for upgrading to a new CPU when it's released. It's common enough to need a Bios update to support a new CPU, so they should be expecting that. There must be some solution that would allow a user looking to upgrade to drop old CPU support to get the newer CPU. After all, some board partners and AMD have suggested support historically. Hopefully AMD learns a lesson, and that lesson being to make sure they can technically deliver on their promises. I would have to see them go the way of Intel and force a board update every tick.
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