MSI launches new revisions of AMD 300 and 400 motherboards with 32MB Firmware
As discussed in detail, older 300 and 400 series motherboards have been stripped in the BIOS from older CPUs and some features, due to a too-small EEPROM size. No biggy, but MSI is solving this with updated motherboards as well.
If you want to install a Ryzen 3000 CPU on an older motherboard, you will lose support for, among other things, data raid and some older Socket AM4 CPUs. MSI now offers a number of motherboards with a larger storage size for the BIOS. The backward compatibility of Ryzen AM4 is praiseworthy but also presents the board manufacturers with some problems.
The new motherboards get an extra-label called 'Max' and thus have the new 32 MB BIOS. The 300 and 400 series are cheaper than the newly introduced X500 motherboards and thus could be an attractive alternative if you do not fancy PCIe 4.0 These will be the motherboards:
- A-320M-A Pro Max
- B450M-A Pro Max
- B450M Pro-M2 Max
- B450M Pro VDH Max
- B450-A Pro Max
- B450M Mortar Max
- B450 Tomahawk Max
- B450 Gaming Plus Max
- X470 Gaming Plus Max
- X470 Gaming Pro Max
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so what happens to us who bought a x470 with 16mb other than losing raid and older cpu support? can the bios be replaced on these boards?
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What's with the A320 board? I thought AMD had no intention on supporting Zen2 on that chipset, so, why not just leave that behind?
But hey, at least everyone will know that these Max boards should be Zen2 compatible out-of-the-box. They might be the only pre-500 series boards on the market that are guaranteed to work.
If you unsolder the chip then I'm sure you could. Personally, I'd rather just lose support for Bristol Ridge.
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Imagine if the programmable flash chips were still placed in holders.
MSI could have done a couple of dollars replacement program so users could upgrade their stuff.
What's with the A320 board? I thought AMD had no intention on supporting Zen2 on that chipset, so, why not just leave that behind?
But hey, at least everyone will know that these Max boards should be Zen2 compatible out-of-the-box. They might be the only pre-500 series boards on the market that are guaranteed to work.
If you unsolder the chip then I'm sure you could. Personally, I'd rather just lose support for Bristol Ridge.
you're not just losing support for bristol ridge, they scaled back graphical aspects of the bios to bring size down.
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As far as I'm concerned, that's an improvement.
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I'm curious to know how much more a 32mb BIOS chip is than a 16mb. I get that every penny counts but I doubt that saving ultimately outweighs the cost of this refresh. You'd think with AM4 sticking around so long they'd have expected BIOS space might get tight, that would leave plenty of extra room for needless GUI and graphics in the BIOS too.