Read more.Zen 3 upgrade path cleared for B450 and X470 users, with ROM space workarounds.
Read more.Zen 3 upgrade path cleared for B450 and X470 users, with ROM space workarounds.
Millennium (19-05-2020)
I had all but decided just to get a 3900x to chuck in my B450 tomahawk as it would the last upgrade possible for the board, guess Ill have to have a rethink now then!
Excellent news!
Now the ball is in the motherboard OEMs court.
I'm not sure i agreed with all the negative press around this but it is a bonus the X470 board will support 4!!!!!!! generations of chips.
I was almost getting to the point that I wished AMD would just add an extra PIN to Zen 3 just to kill off the nonsense.
Well,if you look at Zen sales,they skyrocketed with Zen2,and the mainstream chipset was B450. X570 motherboards were £180+ and barely in stock for months. Most Zen2 owners were new users who upgraded in 2019. So it wasn't really nonsense for them,as they were stuck with the same generation. People who bought X470 in 2018,got two generations of CPUs.
The whole 3~4 generations argument was functionally pointless,as it assumed 100% of Ryzen buyers bought it in 2017,which is untrue.
Also people shutting up,achieves nothing,since things like GPP were dropped because of the backlash. AMD got the negative press,after it made statements mocking Intel in 2019,actively calling out competitors for being "bad" by forcing motherboard upgrades. This is partly a hole they got themselves into.
MSI apparently was not at all happy,as they had made massive investments into B450,more than any OEM,so were blindsided by the annoucement. They were going to lose big time as they sold the most B450 motherboards. Companies like Schenker who make custom AMD laptops with Clevo, were promised support for Zen3 in their Ryzen 9 3950X laptops,but were blindsided by it too. Those last two instances were not really fair for the companies involved.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 19-05-2020 at 03:39 PM.
I'd like to think CAT single-handedly deservers a certain % of the credit for this!
Reading between the lines, I'd imagine that certain OEMs (MSI Max) should be able to get both working.
Since Zen is a SOC anyway, you'd have though there would have been some way for AMD to spec that boards should be able to run at a min setting (just enough to flash the BIOS) with even unannounced future CPUs.
Or just spec a really cheap ARM processor on the chipset which can do USB BIOS Flashback. Maybe the logistics and cost of having had to send out those AM4 loan CPUs during the Zen2 launch might incentivise AMD to come up with something like that for AM5.
I am just a lone Moose with a keyboard,I say it was a group effort!
My view is AMD should have let companies decide what support arrangements they could make,but not stop supplying the microcode. This way companies which decide to put that extra effort,will distance themselves from others who CBA. This would have made sure AMD was not exposed to any bad PR,and people would see clearly which companies actually care about product support.
So going from Gamersnexus,the order will be MSI>ASRock/Gigabyte>Asus.
So, if you have a board that supports older CPU's, there might, BIOS sizes being taken into consideration, a BIOS update that only allows you to use the new Zen3, I don't see that as a problem, as long as you flash your BIOS to the new one before upgrading, unless they wipe the board totally and it will ONLY support Zen3, in which case how will a board react if you flash a BIOS that removes support for the CPU you have in the board when you flash it...
It seemed inevitable that they'd have to make a U-turn on this when it contradicted what they had previously told their OEM partners, let alone the backlash from consumers (particularly those who had not long ago bought into AM4 with a 400-series board), but I'm glad to hear that they came to their senses regardless.
I wish they could do something for us TR4 / X399 owners too, i would love to be able to go from my 1920X to a 3 generation TR processor first, and then in a few months get a new TR40 motherboard for the full blown experience of the new stuff.
Having to buy 2 expensive items in one go, at least for a guy like me on a pension are a tall order, i would have to flip pennies for the best part of a year to be able to do that.
The other way around i would also have to do just that, but i could split it up in 2 batches and still be able to use my hardware in between.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (20-05-2020)
Hello!
As I try to understand it:
- Most of B450 and X470 motherboards shipped with 128Mb (16MB) of flash (bios) chips
- Newer revisions of B450 and X470 do have 256Mb (32MB) of flash chips
- AMD processors older than "Matisse" can only access 16MB of flash
- As AMD releases more processors, the AGESA blob continues to increase in size
- B550 was delayed
All these factors combined have created a sort of an issue where technically it is possible for both older and newer chipsets (different bios versions, basic uefi ui, dropping features) to support all the range of AM4 processors, but, it requires most effort from motherboard sellers at the cost of potential support issues hurting AMD's image ... even for Ryzen 3000 series, some motherboards had to drop older APU support. However, having an option in any case is much better as AMD have now learned.
For the future, maybe the industry should move to SD cards (they support SPI mode) or have some option of a usb flash drive augmenting the onboard SPI flash memory along with building processors capable of addressing such larger flash!
Regards,
Ahmed
CAT-THE-FIFTH (21-05-2020)
At least they did something, and are trying to make amends. I can't quite imagine Intel doing the same thing in the same position.
Cheap Ryzen 3000/Zen 2 chips coming in 2H 2020 then
CAT-THE-FIFTH (19-05-2020),Iota (19-05-2020)
Cat is a lone moose...
Must resist animal puns from now to eternity
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
CAT-THE-FIFTH (20-05-2020)
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