Zen3 Ryzen 4000 won't work on B450 or X470 motherboards

They aged great. B350 perfectly happy running 3700X.

 

My Crosshair Hero VI is running a dream. VRMs on this thing are more than enough for a 3950X.

 

If they're going to release a new chipset (that doesn't work with older CPUs) and new CPUs (that don't work with older chipsets), then the ability to physically plug an old CPU into a new motherboard or plug a new CPU into an old motherboard is pretty useless. If anything it's a disadvantage - it just makes things confusing for buyers when both are listed as using Socket AM4. As a result, it would make more sense to cut a pin off the CPUs and give them a different socket name. This would also nicely fix the situation that some motherboard manufacturers have found themselves in, snce they can continue to say that their B450 boards will support all future AM4 CPUs (the new CPUs would no longer be AM4).

I would have thought that they'd at least mention it to the motherboard manufacturers as soon as they knew, and the mainboard manufacturers would have a chance to pull all the "supports all future AM4 CPUs" advertising. If they stopped B450 production months ago and started taking pre-orders on B550 boards to be shipped when the chipsets became available, they'd have kept motherboard manufacturers happy and users moderately-happy.


If AMD has in the past told motherboard manufacturers that B450 will support all future AM4 CPUs (which would explain MSI's advertising that their boards will support all future AM4 CPUs) and they've now broken that, I expect that AMD will soon be receiving many millions of B450 chipsets returned as "not fit for purpose". Their call on how to play that one...

 

Broken promises are most annoying

 

The problem with that is X570 has been out since mid 2019, and does support the new CPU's. Also B550 is being released right now, not when the next gen CPU's arrive.. They haven't even been announced yet

 

are the promises really broken if they said 3 year old boards would last until 2020?
most of the new cpus probably wont be in stock till late q4 to q1
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmsTYK9Z3-jUX5LGRoFnsZYZiW1pfiDZnKCjaXyzd1o/htmlview#
plenty of mobos still compatible with the zen2s

 

i think the x570 comment covered it. , but yeah, what you just said covers it nicely.
it's so close now mayaswell wait for the b550 boards. if ya want the cpu upgrade options and the other things.

or just take the other options.

 

I think the primary issue is that B550 boards have been significantly delayed, only just being released 12 months after Zen 2 chips came out, and there had been no communication around this intent to drop support previously.

In MSI's case they released updated B450 boards and communicated that these would be compatible with all future AM4 CPU's. So it seems that AMD had previously communicated to board partners that B450 (and possibly other boards) would support Zen 3, but has since backtracked.

For me personally, I purchased a MSI B450 Tomahawk Max late last year based on this information, as I had no real need for X570 features but wanted the option of upgrading to Zen 3. If I knew then that support was not being extended, I would have shelled out extra for X570.

AMD's reasoning that 16MB BIOS's are not sufficient is rendered invalid given even X570 boards have a BIOS of this size.

I think Hardware Unboxed sums it up nicely in this video:

In my case I don't know whether to blame AMD or MSI for incorrect information or shoddy communication practices, but it is disappointing and I hope AMD clarifies the true reasoning behind their decision rather than relying in the farcical BIOS size argument.

 

yep well summarised. No more trawling OCAU for a second hand 4700X in 18 months time LOL unless there is a semi-miraculous u-turn. I would have definitely spent the extra on a X570 had I known B450 couldn't run Zen 3.

*looks at my MAX board in disgust*

 

I think you will find that max board is whole different kettle of fish.

They gave it a 32MB rom for starters. Upgraded vrm etc.

 

Well I hope so but until we hear otherwise it's still B450. The 16MB excuse is rubbish anyway as we all know.

 

is it? seems like a real issue to me

as for hardware unboxed that is way lower down on my playlist it is sort of the days of our lives tube channel...the thing i watch when i run out of good stuff.
they ran it for 3 years....there is a point when you can't keep dragging it...intel have been doing this for decades, amds problem is they worded the whole thing wrong AND they should have know what the issues would be earlier and announced it earlier so people could decide.
Honestly if you had know would you have put up a cpu upgrade because the x570 is to expensive(which it is) and no b550 in sight....or grab a 450 for 100 to tide you over or simply wait(or of course jump ship to intel and grab a definite dead end.... the whole thing is not that cut and dried

 

Thanks for the link. Hadn't seen Gamers Nexus had released content around this.

 

I really don't like Steve. Hes a little bastard and often lies or misconstrues the truth. Not sure why. He makes all this noise about been independent. But...

 

You mean Gamers Nexus Steve or Hardware Unboxed Steve? lol

 

Umm when? Please share a link

 

Right, I keep a database on the shit they say...

 

I bought my B450 board because there were no MITX X570 boards in the country..
Also what does MITX get from x570? Nothing. My B450 supports PCIE4 on *ALL* lanes..

In fact the feature set of B550 and my B450 is exactly the same. It is most likely the exactly the same chipset, badge engineered to be a B550.

Why would a person buying a the top end 3700x (3900x wasn't in the country and 3950x wasn't released) but a non-existent x570 mitx board for more than the CPU is worth?

We were advised to buy b450 boards for our 3700x chips. Now we learn, har har no upgrades.

We know that there is no reason why a BIOS can't be written to support 3000 and 4000 cpus.

This gets into the same space as Inject printers being designed to reject anything except special cartridges. Or Tractor manufacturers refusing 3rd party mechanics to fix tractors.

Board manufacturers were promising to support all AM4 releases.

Manufacturers lied. See what happened to VW when it lied. AMD knew they were lying and didn't correct them. They used this to their advantage.

We should contact our retailers about getting a refund.

Steve from GN is talking out his arse. He doesn't program bioses. He doesn't manufacture boards. He a goofy twit that reviews products board manufacturers supply *TO HIM*. Hes job is dependent on access to board products. If he was cut off, or GN was cut off, they would die, no early access means they would be weeks behind in reviews and news.

Far out his argument about not creating a bios is fucking weak. It already happens. Manufacturers already dropped support in some 1000 series CPU's on bios's to support 3000 series CPU's.

 

wut? evidence?

so none.. gotya...

that is not strictly true. it *could* but on most boards you'd have to remove old code, but most of asia is STILL running ancient chips (as covered by Steve) AMD is NOT going to cut that market off.
it *COULD* be written but at a cost, and a cost AMD is no willing to pay.

 

As per my previous posts this exact situation already happened with B350 and 95% of boards got zen2 support, they removed pre zen1 cpu support with new bios release to make room for zen2. If you're running an ancient chip like those asia pcs that the new bios doesn't support don't update the bios, that simple. By the time Zen3 is out b450 should be EOL/sold out so anyone who has one already has a pre zen3 cpu in it that they can flash the bios to the latest just before upgrading, so they won't even need the cost of the generous cpu lending program AMD did with zen2. And that's the point AMD have gone in one gen from being the good guys looking after users reducing ewaste etc to doing an intel, the exact thing they have bashed intel for in their marketing. Actually worse given it looks like intel are going to support next gen rocket lake on the z490 and not just a single gen like anyone who bought a b450 board since zen2 launch gets. Again remember AMD actively encouraged everyone to buy B450 if they didn't need X570 premium features at the zen2 launch without stating future cutoff for zen3 with the deliberately misleading statements of 'socket am4 support through 2020'. It's entirely their doing.

Quote from amd exec Robert Hallock at zen 2 launch that's aged well
"The alternative to this BIOS 'problem,' which we find truly repugnant, is simply breaking socket compatibility with every new generation of CPU. Nobody can keep their old motherboard and upgrade, anymore. Nobody would ever have to worry about a BIOS update again... but they would also never get to keep their investment ever again. To us, that is not the right thing to do. It seems hostile and abusive to arbitrarily prevent users from keeping the same motherboard, which may cost a few hundred dollars, just to make the upgrade process a little 'neater' on paper. So we do what we can to support in-socket upgrades as we have with Socket AM4."

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-3000-destiny-2-beta-chipset-driver,40041.html

Also from the tech side der8auer weighs in and cast lots of doubt of any technical reason that zen3 couldn't work on older chipsets B450 or even B350 etc.