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

kanewolf

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They just need to support the 5800x3D. Just add that one chip and people will be happy.
I don't think that is true. Obviously it depends on what is currently in the 300 series board. I still have a 1700 in an X370 board and would probably go with a 5600. Somebody with a 3900 might want the 3D CPU, but I don't think you can paint everyone in that category.
 
Microsoft: "You MUST upgrade to windows 10 to get DX12"
Three years later at EOL Windows 7 "Oh here's the DX 12 we said was only available on Windows 10"

They know it's possible. They just don't want to because there's no incentive for them to. It doesn't increase sales.
 

kanewolf

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Oh I don't disagree with you. But they wanted to eat their cake from both sides at first to maximize margin. And they deserve to be roasted a tiny bit based on their promise to support the socket.
Maybe. But I can also see them wanting to get the new CPUs and chipsets right. There may not have been enough engineers to work compatibility at the same time. I have worked on large projects like a CPU rollout. There are never enough staff, time or resources. It is an easy dig to say the only motivation is greed.
 
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I JUST upgraded from a Ryzen 5 1400 to a Ryzen 5 3600 on my B350M Bazooka board and paid the same amount I could have picked up a Ryzen 5 5600x.

Then this news drops. Kind of a kick in the nuts.
 

watzupken

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While this is good news for people still using 300 series chipset, I generally don't think that motherboard makers will like this sorts of extension at the start, because it will definitely have an impact on the sales of new motherboards. Some motherboard makers will buck this trend and embrace it just so that they can give their customers a positive experience and hope that they will come back and buy a new motherboard from them again.
 

VforV

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ah yes... now that we have better value with 12th gen Intel , suddenly they care about 300 series support

color me suspicious
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...
 

oile

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As a x370 pioneer and as one of the users who fought in every twitter, discord, reddit and enthusiast forum about this topic, I comment here just to say THANK YOU to Tomshardware @Admin to have had this conversation with someone in AMD.
TY again
 

escksu

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Haha, this is why we need competition....

Thanks to Intel and their Alderlake, AMD now no longer has performance crown and would need to do better to get pple to buy AMD CPU.

Sorry AMD, but I have to say you didn't do well at all.

You realase B350/X370 and ditch it just after 1yr..... B450/X470 are essentially the same chipset with just extremely minor differences.... Then you release X570 a year later which is bascially X470 with again a few small changes...

PCIE 4.0 was not allowed on B450/X470 simply because most pple would not even go for X570 if these boards allow PCIE 4.0..... They do support PCIE 4.0 but manufacturers are not allowed to enable it in the BIOS..... Marketing at its best....force pple to buy new boards.

Later you release B550 which is again just a B450 with hardly any changes.
 

salgado18

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Haha, this is why we need competition....

Thanks to Intel and their Alderlake, AMD now no longer has performance crown and would need to do better to get pple to buy AMD CPU.

Sorry AMD, but I have to say you didn't do well at all.

You realase B350/X370 and ditch it just after 1yr..... B450/X470 are essentially the same chipset with just extremely minor differences.... Then you release X570 a year later which is bascially X470 with again a few small changes...

PCIE 4.0 was not allowed on B450/X470 simply because most pple would not even go for X570 if these boards allow PCIE 4.0..... They do support PCIE 4.0 but manufacturers are not allowed to enable it in the BIOS..... Marketing at its best....force pple to buy new boards.

Later you release B550 which is again just a B450 with hardly any changes.
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.
 
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Microsoft: "You MUST upgrade to windows 10 to get DX12"
Three years later at EOL Windows 7 "Oh here's the DX 12 we said was only available on Windows 10"

They know it's possible. They just don't want to because there's no incentive for them to. It doesn't increase sales.

Microsoft has changed their business model. The reason to upgrade people to windows 10 is to collect their metadata and use the app store to sell apps, package in cloud services(monthly fee) and gamepass etc.....

Selling the OS for profit is no longer the focus of their business model.
 

salgado18

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Microsoft: "You MUST upgrade to windows 10 to get DX12"
Three years later at EOL Windows 7 "Oh here's the DX 12 we said was only available on Windows 10"

They know it's possible. They just don't want to because there's no incentive for them to. It doesn't increase sales.
Software can be rewritten, hardware can't. Incompatibility of already launched chips sometimes cannot be solved by software.
 

VforV

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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.
Don't expect ignorant intel fanbois to admit to the truth, even when it hits them in the head. They would rather pay every 2-3 years for an entire new system instead of demanding their beloved intel be more consumer friendly and not rip them off like they do.

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.
 

ddcservices

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The article incorrectly talks about supporting AM4 for five years. The original talk from AMD was that at Ryzen launch in 2017, AMD would support socket AM4 through 2020. This was before Covid-19 caused the chaos and delays in getting new generations out the door. So, in 2020, there was actually a good question, would first generation motherboards support chips released in 2020, or through 2019? Good UNTIL 2020, or through the end of 2020 is really where the question of intent, wording, and mistakes by various press sources have made that a bit vague.

Without a doubt, AMD has supported the socket. The problem is again with the interpretation, can you use your first generation motherboard from 2017 with chips released at the end of 2020? AMD has artificially prevented Zen3 from working on those 300 series chipset boards. Initially, AMD even prevented the 400 series chipset boards from supporting Zen3 but did indicate that 400 series chipset motherboards would get support in February of 2021 or so, which did happen.

Now, if you did follow the supply issues, and how Zen3 was sold out continually for at least six months after the launch of the Ryzen 5000 series processors, AMD preventing upgrades wasn't a horrible idea, just to reduce the demand for those processors. We are also at an interesting point, will Zen4 be fast enough to justify going with an all new motherboard+CPU+RAM, vs. upgrading your CPU on a first generation motherboard that doesn't support PCIe 4.0? I am expecting that Zen4 will be at least 20 percent faster than Zen3+, but $550 for a 5900X, vs. $1500 for a new motherboard+CPU+RAM that will be maybe 40 percent faster than the 5900X plus PCIe 4.0 speeds, SAM support(which many 300 series chipset boards don't support), plus other benefits such as Rage Mode, that's the decision people will need to make.
 

ddcservices

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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.

How much of the "improved boost clocks" was due to the CPU and AGESA improvements? Since almost all functionality is actually controlled by the CPU, the chipset does very little overall. The idea of Ryzen being a system on a chip brought the industry closer to that being real and not just marketing fluff than ever before. The big reason to go with a newer generation motherboard really is the better connectivity, more M.2 slots(most 300 series only had a single M.2 slot). It even looked like some 300 series chipset boards like the Crosshair VI Hero could handle PCIe 4.0 for a while before AMD forced Asus to take away that support.

AMD is far better at keeping socket compatibility for future processors, but hasn't been terribly consistent when it comes to allowing motherboard makers to decide if they want to support it or not. If an individual motherboard vendor wants to say they support new processors on older motherboards, then support at that point goes to the motherboard maker. The motherboard maker would then be on the hook for either making sure it works properly, or to replace the old motherboard without working support for new CPUs with one that will.
 

ddcservices

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I just hope motherboard manufacturers advertise the Bios size this time around. They can actually use that as a line item to sell motherboards.
How about just make BIOS flashback a standard feature, and you just use BIOS flashback to install the BIOS for the CPU you plan to use? If a BIOS update will stop your existing CPU from working(because you plan to upgrade and the new BIOS won't support the old chip), then no big deal as long as you have another computer to make a new USB flash drive to flash the BIOS back if needed.
 
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How about just make BIOS flashback a standard feature, and you just use BIOS flashback to install the BIOS for the CPU you plan to use? If a BIOS update will stop your existing CPU from working(because you plan to upgrade and the new BIOS won't support the old chip), then no big deal as long as you have another computer to make a new USB flash drive to flash the BIOS back if needed.

Yes, they should advertise this as a feature as well. CPU-less bios flashing. A big problem I remember is people were buying motherboards, with the latest CPU, but the bios version might not have supported the CPU yet. So you had to borrow a CPU to do the bios update. Then install your new CPU.
 

Kona45primo

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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.