News AMD Exploring How to Support Ryzen 5000 on 300-Series Motherboards

[ddcservices]

I think it would be a great idea assuming the 300 series boards could support the 5x series chips & Smart Access Memory. I have an Asus Prime B350 plus & have gone from a 1600x to a 3700x. Would be great to do one more bump to a 5800x or 3D version down the road since we're hitting the end of AM4 & DDR4. Drop the support for the 1X & 2X series or go back to a standard non visual bios.

If SAM isn't supported I think I'd still be on the fence. A new motherboard isn't terribly expensive especially if you sell the old one.

I look at the effort involved as well. A good X570 motherboard isn't cheap, then you still need to do the build. Not difficult, but it can take time. Then, if I am doing THAT, maybe replace my case with one that isn't as large(NZXT Phantom 630 is a big and heavy case, and I do NOT need 7 hard drive bays plus 4 5.25 inch bays). So, now it goes from CPU to motherboard+CPU+case for the purchase. My Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero made the jump from Ryzen 7 1800X to the 3900X, and while I've thought about going to the 5900X, Zen4 is so close at this point, that would probably be my next upgrade. Now, if I will be selling my motherboard+CPU, it would be good for the "marketing" if the motherboard will also take a newer CPU as an option for whoever buys my current motherboard+CPU+RAM.

 

[larkspur]

In the mean time we on AM4 enjoyed the best longevity in a platform since I can remember. I love how they try to spin this amazing plus as being a minus. Hilarious.

There are a lot of caveats to include in that statement. Socket compatibility is nice, but motherboard compatibility is the most important. Remember that Intel used the LGA 1151 socket from 2015 till 2020 but the chipsets determined the CPU compatibility, not the socket.

AMD only supports the 300-series chipsets up to and including Zen 2. So if I bought a x370 or b350 chipset at launch in Feb 2017 I enjoyed upgradability through Zen 2's release in July 2019. That's roughly 2 and a half years.

If I bought a B450 or X470 when they launched in March 2018 I could use up to a Zen 3 CPU that was released in November 2020 which is also 2 and a half years of support. The sad part is that AMD only allowed Zen 3 support on 400-series because of public backlash. But at least they gave in.

So that's 2 and half years of new CPU support for the 300-series motherboards and 2 and a half years of new CPU support on the 400-series.

I realize you're going to point out the 5800X3D but based on the announcement and the interview with AMD's Frank Azor, this is a niche, halo product that has the exact same uarch and won't see a lot of volume. As others have said, it's for bragging-rights and super high-end gamers who don't have budgets. Like the 12900KS, the 5800X3D will be for the 1%, certainly not the mainstream masses. But unlike the 12900KS, as Frank stated, the 5800X3D is specifically designed for gaming. It will lose badly to the 12900K and KS in other workloads.

 

[gggplaya]

I look at the effort involved as well. A good X570 motherboard isn't cheap, then you still need to do the build. Not difficult, but it can take time. Then, if I am doing THAT, maybe replace my case with one that isn't as large(NZXT Phantom 630 is a big and heavy case, and I do NOT need 7 hard drive bays plus 4 5.25 inch bays). So, now it goes from CPU to motherboard+CPU+case for the purchase. My Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero made the jump from Ryzen 7 1800X to the 3900X, and while I've thought about going to the 5900X, Zen4 is so close at this point, that would probably be my next upgrade. Now, if I will be selling my motherboard+CPU, it would be good for the "marketing" if the motherboard will also take a newer CPU as an option for whoever buys my current motherboard+CPU+RAM.

Adding the price of the case is a stretch. There's no reason to upgrade your case unless you're simply bored with it. If you bought a decent case the first time with good airflow, there's no functional reason to upgrade. I've used the same case for my last 3 builds. The reason to upgrade from my previous case was to get a tempered glass side panel. The current reason to upgrade is if I want to do a full water cooling loop with an integrated water/pump block.

 

[punkncat]

Something poignant to keep in mind about this is that in spite of the rhetoric about the CPU and motherboard being capable of it (and the reference to Intel 1200)....we KNOW there is capability. Not only was it envisioned and have BIOS revisions made by some motherboard partners that do work, "hackers" (read white hat) have already gone forward on that with UNSUPPORTED BIOS revisions that work as well.

So, we know it can work. I am not 100% sure what feature sets might be lost or inoperable, but the official excuse was something to do with the size of the BIOS chip in regard to the flash. That certainly could be a reality on some boards, but certainly not all.
The real difference in my eyes is an unsupported BIOS with no manufacturer support for issues that could occur as a result VS. AMD allowing motherboard manufacturers to release said BIOS with a nod that it will work, that you will have support, and not void warranties or cause unexpected behaviors.

I mean, they don't really have to act like they are moving the earth or doing us some special favor. All the pieces are already there.

 

[missingxtension]

It depends on the person, but let's say you get a good 3 series motherboard, the. As time goes one you get 3200 ram, that ryzen 1700 was never able to really support. The you get faster m2 storage, nice water block, etc.....
It doesn't make sense to upgrade to a 2700 that didn't offer anything compelling for another $300 investment. Even the 3700 was not that compelling, now the 5800. Then AMD was clearly implying that there would be an upgrade path, taking into into account the socket, it makes an upgrade seem like it's nothing. I miss the old days of the memory controller being independent from the processor and the motherboard playing a more important role in the overall platform. There were competing chipsets, chip were socket compatible.

 

[punkncat]

It depends on the person, but let's say you get a good 3 series motherboard, the. As time goes one you get 3200 ram, that ryzen 1700 was never able to really support. The you get faster m2 storage, nice water block, etc.....
It doesn't make sense to upgrade to a 2700 that didn't offer anything compelling for another $300 investment. Even the 3700 was not that compelling, now the 5800. Then AMD was clearly implying that there would be an upgrade path, taking into into account the socket, it makes an upgrade seem like it's nothing. I miss the old days of the memory controller being independent from the processor and the motherboard playing a more important role in the overall platform. There were competing chipsets, chip were socket compatible.

You summed my situation up almost to exacts. I did pull the trigger on 2700X, but that was because of the sale pricing they put on them to get them out the door. I paid $99 for a 1700 and ~$125 for the 2700X. At this point the only upgrade that makes sense is 5xxx, but not at the cost of a whole new mobo, possibly new OS (license), etc.

 

[VforV]

I realize you're going to point out the 5800X3D but based on the announcement and the interview with AMD's Frank Azor, this is a niche, halo product that has the exact same uarch and won't see a lot of volume. As others have said, it's for bragging-rights and super high-end gamers who don't have budgets. Like the 12900KS, the 5800X3D will be for the 1%, certainly not the mainstream masses. But unlike the 12900KS, as Frank stated, the 5800X3D is specifically designed for gaming. It will lose badly to the 12900K and KS in other workloads.

I don't know about volume, although I think theoretically is should be easier to have higher volume on an 8 core Ryzen chip than on an top of the line cherry picked silicon like the i9 12900KS is.

What I disagree on is the colored part. I think 12900KS is for the 1%, yes, because it will probably cost alone north of $600 ($650? or maybe more), not to mention the entire platform which will be more expensive, not only because of all the new gen and new stuff it offers, but because you will buy only the best MBs possible for that CPU, unlike 5800X3D which will work on my B450M Mortar Max after a BIOS flash without issues, at zero extra cost.

And the most important thing, besides the cheaper platform, the price of the 5800X3D should not be more than $500 and if AMD actually want's a winner, then $450 and at that pouint it wil not even be a debate about which is going to be more popular and bough more between these 2 CPUs....

So no I don't think 5800X3D will be for the 1% people, more like for the 10% people and that's a big difference. Time will tell, if I'm wrong.

 

[ddcservices]

Adding the price of the case is a stretch. There's no reason to upgrade your case unless you're simply bored with it. If you bought a decent case the first time with good airflow, there's no functional reason to upgrade. I've used the same case for my last 3 builds. The reason to upgrade from my previous case was to get a tempered glass side panel. The current reason to upgrade is if I want to do a full water cooling loop with an integrated water/pump block.

If you had the NZXT Phantom 630 case, you would understand why I plan to go for something a bit smaller. At this point, I don't need any 5.25 inch drive bays or 3.5 inch drive bays. NVMe SSD plus a 2.5 inch SSD is enough for storage. So, if swapping the motherboard plus CPU, going to a new case would actually be less work than pulling apart the old machine to swap the motherboard. Better to just leave the old motherboard+CPU in the current case and find a new home for it in my opinion.

 

[ddcservices]

You summed my situation up almost to exacts. I did pull the trigger on 2700X, but that was because of the sale pricing they put on them to get them out the door. I paid $99 for a 1700 and ~$125 for the 2700X. At this point the only upgrade that makes sense is 5xxx, but not at the cost of a whole new mobo, possibly new OS (license), etc.

I did the jump from a Ryzen 7 1800X to the Ryzen 9 3900X, which gave me upwards of a 40 percent performance boost between clock speeds and IPC. The move from a 3900X to a 5900X would be what, 25% or so? You are right that a 2700X to a 5800X would be a big enough boost to make it worth the money, even at the $450 MSRP in my opinion(remember the 5800X will be running at 4.5GHz or so vs the 4.1-4.2GHz you are probably running at, plus the IPC jump from Zen+ to Zen2, then from Zen2 to Zen3). The big problem is if you have a B350 or X370 motherboard and then makes it $200+ more for the upgrade.

So, hold strong, but by the time AMD allows B350/X370 to get Zen3 support, Zen4 might be out. I am thinking that Zen2 to Zen4 will probably be my next upgrade, even if the price will be a LOT higher, so will the performance jump.

 

[drea.drechsler]

It could increase CPU sales.

I don't know that it would...not that much. At least not for AMD since they're already selling pretty much all that they make. I see there being a benefit for retailers and maybe distributors who'll be able to clear Zen 3 stock sooner after Zen 4 releases and Zen 3 production stops. Oh, and shady OEM's and ODM's who have no qualms putting even 5950X's on old unsold B350 motherboard stock they pick up cheap and selling it in a prebuilt.

But I tried to carefully parse what Mcafee was saying, a lot of concern for whether it's technically right and not just the 16MB BIOS problem. That and questions I have about what is meant by "support" the socket make me wonder just what's going to be released for it...or if mfr's will roll a BIOS with it for all their boards.

 

[mitch074]

This is probably due to missing features on top of chipset complexity - A320 was "easy" to add support to, because the chipset in itself does nothing : it's so cheap because it merely serves as a relay for the processor. As such, add the supported CPU's microcodes and you're good to go (what Asus did).
On a vastly different line, X370 is easy to support because it only marginally differs from X470 which is already supported : that's where many BIOS mods managed to have Zen3 run on X370, by porting back X470 BIOS from a very similar motherboard to the oldie.
From what I reckon, B350 is the big bad one : the chipset itself is BUGGY as heck (see ASmedia controversy a few years ago), doesn't have all the advanced features needed to support Zen2 and more recent properly (power delivery, boost etc.) and since it's also the most used chipset from that generation, also has the widest array of configurations to take into account. The worst being that it often came with 8Mb BIOS chips... So adding more firmware to the blob gets tricky as hell, even now that AMD managed to merge many of them.
AMD could simply not add support : they're already selling everything they make as fast as they make it. Kudos to them for at least considering it - Intel sure couldn't be bothered.

 

[Neilbob]

I think that people are wrong to snipe at exclusively AMD for the chipset support issue; I've got a sneaking suspicion those decisions were made due to pressure by the motherboard manufacturers themselves who, after all, have a vested interest in selling more motherboards. Why would AMD care when they're selling the CPU regardless? It's probably why so many of them opt to limit the BIOS storage capacity (speaking of which, why do BIOSes need to have such flashy graphics that take up a large chunk of that storage capacity? What's wrong with good old ASCII? It's not like anyone spends all day in the BIOS just to enjoy the presentation).

Whether this is the case or not, I do agree that the whole support situation could have been handled somewhat better by AMD.

 

[OwlEatsBerries]

I think it would be a great idea assuming the 300 series boards could support the 5x series chips & Smart Access Memory. I have an Asus Prime B350 plus & have gone from a 1600x to a 3700x. Would be great to do one more bump to a 5800x or 3D version down the road since we're hitting the end of AM4 & DDR4. Drop the support for the 1X & 2X series or go back to a standard non visual bios.

If SAM isn't supported I think I'd still be on the fence. A new motherboard isn't terribly expensive especially if you sell the old one.

Recently Gigabyte just release official bios to support ReBar for my x370. I don't see why they can't for SAM assuming you have all the required components zen2/3 cpu + the correct gpu.

 

[jacob249358]

AM4 is already miles better than any intel platform in terms of longevity... it's not even a debate.

Some 300 series MB are already unofficially supported.

I went from a Ryzen 2600 to 3600 to 5600X and soon I will also be able to upgrade to 5800X3D all on one motherboard, MSI B450M Mortar Max. Intel users would only dream about that, but it's funny how they bash AMD for exactly that, turning something good into a bad thing... how **** up people have become.

AM5 will also have a long longevity, while also being backwards compatible with AM4 coolers > AMD AM5 to be a long-lived platform, backward compatibility with AM4 coolers confirmed

Let's see intel doing the same with LGA 1700... oh wait, we already know the old coolers are not compatible. Ouch! So that means we have to wait to see the longevity and compatibility of motherboards. Intel fanbois can only dream...

not everyone upgrades every year. A lot of people build a PC and get a new one every 5 years. That is where intel is better for value, you sacrifice upgradeability for price to performance. <<Content removed by moderator>>

 

[jacob249358]

There are a lot of caveats to include in that statement. Socket compatibility is nice, but motherboard compatibility is the most important. Remember that Intel used the LGA 1151 socket from 2015 till 2020 but the chipsets determined the CPU compatibility, not the socket.

AMD only supports the 300-series chipsets up to and including Zen 2. So if I bought a x370 or b350 chipset at launch in Feb 2017 I enjoyed upgradability through Zen 2's release in July 2019. That's roughly 2 and a half years.

If I bought a B450 or X470 when they launched in March 2018 I could use up to a Zen 3 CPU that was released in November 2020 which is also 2 and a half years of support. The sad part is that AMD only allowed Zen 3 support on 400-series because of public backlash. But at least they gave in.

So that's 2 and half years of new CPU support for the 300-series motherboards and 2 and a half years of new CPU support on the 400-series.

I realize you're going to point out the 5800X3D but based on the announcement and the interview with AMD's Frank Azor, this is a niche, halo product that has the exact same uarch and won't see a lot of volume. As others have said, it's for bragging-rights and super high-end gamers who don't have budgets. Like the 12900KS, the 5800X3D will be for the 1%, certainly not the mainstream masses. But unlike the 12900KS, as Frank stated, the 5800X3D is specifically designed for gaming. It will lose badly to the 12900K and KS in other workloads.

and the 5800x3d will probably msrp at $549 maybe even $599

 

[COLGeek]

Folks, civility is a must for all. Feel free to debate ideas with facts and sources. DO NOT attack each other.

Thank you.

 

[escksu]

4xx chipsets added a few things, but one of them is the improved boost clocks. 3xx chipsets wouldn't boost and idle as good as 4xx, so there was a good reason to go for the newer one.

5xx chipsets added PCIex 4.0, which is a big jump over 4xx. Also, PCIex 4.0 needs a motherboard that can handle it, to allow that speed on older 3.0 boards would cause trouble for the user, who in turn would see their computer crashing randomly or other problems.

B550 has improved connectivity over B450, and also PCIex 4.0. But B450 is still on the market, and is compatible with every Ryzen released, so you can just save some money and go for the older one.

Intel has very fast CPUs, but in terms of motherboard support, AMD is way, way better than them. You can't put an i9-9900k on an H110 motherboard, even though both use LGA 1151, can you? Because that's what AMD is doing.

I have to tell you that the boost clocks has absolutely nothing to do with chipset. Its basically just 2 things, CPU that supports it and BIOS to enable it. Chipset only provides connectivity (SATA, USB, LAN etc etc).....

As with PCIE 4.0, again I have to say it has nothing to do with chipset (unless you are talking about PCIE 4.0 via chipset which only x570 has). The Ryzen CPU already has 20 lanes of usable PCIE 4.0 (ignoring lanes for chipset). 16 for PCIE slots and 4 for Nvme.

x470 and many B450 boards are already designed for PCIE 4.0 which only requires a BIOS update to enable it. However, AMD knows this will kill off their x570/B550 so manufacturers are not allowed to enable it. There were a few beta BIOS which allowed this but quickly taken off.

No doubt not all x470/B450 are designed for PCIE 4.0 but many are.