Ryzen Zen 2 Procs Incompatible With Some Older 300-Series due to BIOS limitation?




Many of you are waiting on the launch of ZEN2 aka Ryzen 3000 and have an X370 motherboard in the hope to upgrade to the new proc. That might be an issue, indications right now it probably might not work on older 300-series chipset motherboards such as X370.
Website Forbes has posted a response sent by motherboard manufacturer MSI towards a Reddit user, in that reply the company mentions that AMD's Zen 2 processors will not work on older 300-series chipset motherboards. The company claims that the new CPUs will only work with 400-series, such as B450 and X470 chipsets. Shortly thereafter we've seen news-posts that MSI would be doing this purely out of pure greed etc. Such wording seems to be incorrect.
Really, this raises the question if all motherboard manufacturers will face the same issue, or it this might be an individual motherboard manufacturer decision as to whether or now they support AMD's Zen 2 CPUs, which are due for release this summer. If MSI would not support it, chances are really high that there is incompatibility or a choice made at AMD to not support Ryzen 3000 on the 300 series.
Here's the likely and probable reason, earlier on it was indicated that a BIOS chip limitations could be a factor in whether your board can support 3000-series Ryzen processors or not, support for 3000-series chips may now come down to a question of something as simple as its 16MiByte flash storage on the (and all) 300 series. We know that the 400 series already anticipated this being able to store 32MiBytes. If that is the case, all motherboard more manufacturers will drop Ryzen 3000 support on X370, B350 and A320 as it is simply incompatible at least on the models with a 16MiByte flash storage. So that doesn't mean some models WILL actually support the new procs, if they can.
AMD is aware of this and is going to release an "AMD Ryzen Desktop 3000 ready" badge just to address this.
Update: After some rather gnarly accusations on the web MSI responded with the following:
"It has come to our attention that MSI customer support has regrettably misinformed an MSI customer with regards to potential support for next-gen AMD CPUs on the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard. Through this statement we want to clarify the current situation," MSI said.
"At this point, we are still performing extensive testing on our existing lineup of 300- and 400-series AM4 motherboards to verify potential compatibility for the next-gen AMD Ryzen CPUs. To be clear: Our intention is to offer maximum compatibility for as many MSI products as possible. Towards the launch of the next-gen AMD CPUs, we will release a compatibility list of MSI AM4 motherboards," MSI added.
Below a full list of current and previous generation MSI motherboards that have already been qualified to work with Ryzen 3000:
- X470 Gaming M7 AC
- X470 Gaming Pro Carbon
- X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
- X470 Gaming Plus
- X470 Gaming Pro
- B450M Bazooka and B450 Bazooka V2
- B450 M Pro-VDH and B450 M Pro VDH V2
- B450M Pro-VDH Plus
- B450I Gaming Plus AC
- B450M Pro-M2 and B450M Pro-M2 V2
- B450M Thunder
- B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
- B450 Gaming Plus
- B450-A Pro
- B450M Gaming Plus
- B450M Mortar
- B450M Titanium
- B450M Bazooka Plus and B450M Booka Plus V2
- B450M Tomhawk
- X370 XPower Gaming Titanium
- X370 Gaming Pro Carbon
- X370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
- X370 Gaming Plus
- X370 Gaming Pro
- X370 Krait Gaming
- X370 SLI Plus
- X370 Gaming M7 ACK
- B350 Tomahawk
- B350 PC Mate
- B350 Tomahawk Arctic
- B350 Gaming Plus
- B350M Mortar
- M350M Mortar Arctic
- B350M Bazooka
- B350M Pro-VDH
- B350M Gaming Pro
- B350I Pro AC
- B350 Gaming Pro Carbon
- B350M Pro-VH Plus
- B350 Krait Gaming
- B350 Tomahawk Plus
- Be50M Pro-VD Plus
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Well, yeah, I guess I would

Though it's a measure of budget in the end.
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I wrote to asrock about this matter, maybe they will never respond, maybe they will.
Worth a try

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Haha AMD really are catching up with Intel
Had to happen eventually, they weren't going to keep trying to make modern cpus compatible with old chipsets
You didn't read the thread, did you.
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Well... Hopefully this is just another MSI oopsie. I do like a lot my Asus x370-F Strix, but as far as it's specs go, it's a 16MB chip, which in theory shouldn't have enough space either.
I'll definitely wait until Asus and the other major companies say anything about this, but if it's just one or two companies doing this sort of thing (not adding compatibility to 3000 series to x370 motherboards) my next build will most definitely NOT be theirs. If it's spreadout and everything does that, then hell, AMD will hear a LOT. Sure, they will still sell lots of 3000 chips, but that energy/momentum will diminish a little bit as I do feel that's a step in the wrong direction when they compromised on supporting the AM4 socket until 2020. Yeah, socket isn't the same as chipset but you get the drill, what's the point of having AM4 socket still the same but not having chipset compatibility with them?
edit:
I wrote to asrock about this matter, maybe they will never respond, maybe they will.
Worth a try

Yeah, hope to hear from other manufacturers aswell, I do hope it's just MSI doing that, or hopefully some sort of workaround can be supplied, like cutting support for older/not so commom CPU's/APU's, or support 1st gen and 3rd, or 2nd and 3rd, something like that.
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Stop spreading these XXit please until it is true for all manufacturers. Anyway, the AM4 socket is present in Zen2, so what lie you are talking about?
Same.
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Something else worth pointing out:
I'm sure the 500 series chipset will be backward-compatible with all previous AM4 models. So, even if some 300 series boards aren't Zen2 compatible, AMD still didn't totally lie about breaking compatibility.
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Haha AMD really are catching up with Intel
Had to happen eventually, they weren't going to keep trying to make modern cpus compatible with old chipsets
So that is how you have 3k posts? Not reading the threads, but inciting rumours that have no factual bounds. If you read, ASUS has even cheap B350 boards which will continue to support. It is just that MSI is having trouble on their boards. If it was both ASUS and MSI problem, it would be AMD problem, but since it is just MSI facing this challenge, it is....... an MSI problem.... ding ding ding, you have hit a jackpot.
Comprende?
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Very old news now, Mobo OEM's have came up with work around but it's a pain the arse for them and maybe confusing for some customers to use, which they have two BIOS revisions one to support Ryzen 1000 and 3000 CPU's and another that supports Ryzen 2000 and 3000 CPU's. Not ideal but it's a work around although most people like me will use use their X370 mobo as a stop gap before getting the X570, as you know the X500 will have new features and of course PCIE4.0. It does mean i can use my X370 with the New CPU and then can take my time and research/check reviews on getting the best X570 motherboard. Or some might use tie it over get this CPU live with what you got then wait for the next mobo and Ryzen which will have DDR5. I personally won't because like DDR, 1, 2, 3 and 4 when they bring new memory out they are expensive as hell, hard to get hold of, have no real benefits over the last gen and have horrific latencies.
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Doesn't bother me as I will upgrade to x570 when the 3000 series are released--had already planned that. But as of this moment, this seems to be an MSI-only issue, if indeed this isn't just more Internet rumor. But I do note that although the MSI 470 equivalent of my x370 MSI mboard has received a bios update for the 3000 series already, my x370 mboard has not. Something seems a bit fishy, though as the size of the 3000 x470 bios file is 11.17mbs and the size of the last x370 bios file is 10.72mbs--that's compressed, of course, but it will be interesting to see if AMD has changed the physical size required to store the bios on the mboard, beginning with the x470 chipset. Sure doesn't seem likely, and I've not heard this from any other motherboard OEM.
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Good point about DDR5--hard to believe x570 would require it--hope not!--we'll see.
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Stop spreading these XXit please until it is true for all manufacturers. Anyway, the AM4 socket is present in Zen2, so what lie you are talking about?
Same.
It doesn't sound like a vendor greed issue and more of a MB limitation.
it's just like the bullsht intel with the 1151 and 1151v2.......
AMD said they would support backwards compatibility for AM4 up to 2020, it seems like they won't. that's all.
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It doesn't sound like a vendor greed issue and more of a MB limitation.
it's just like the bullsht intel with the 1151 and 1151v2.......
AMD said they would support backwards compatibility for AM4 up to 2020, it seems like they won't. that's all.
Yes... they are. Read the other comments in this thread. There are 300 series motherboards that will support Zen2.
This isn't the same bullshit as 1151 vs 1151v2. Worst-case scenario, there will be backward compatibility, which you can't say of 1151v2.
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It doesn't sound like a vendor greed issue and more of a MB limitation.
it's just like the bullsht intel with the 1151 and 1151v2.......
AMD said they would support backwards compatibility for AM4 up to 2020, it seems like they won't. that's all.
AMD != MSI
Do your Fact checks.
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It doesn't sound like a vendor greed issue and more of a MB limitation.
it's just like the bullsht intel with the 1151 and 1151v2.......
AMD said they would support backwards compatibility for AM4 up to 2020, it seems like they won't. that's all.
AMD is still supporting AM4, it's just some mobos that do not have a big enough bios chip.
As far as 1151 and v2 goes, v2 literally was rewired different. Same pin amount and array, but not the same leads.
Please do not post troll bait posts like these....
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I had a very significant list of issues with my 1600X and an MSI X370 Gaming Plus. Ram NEVER worked quite right and their BIOS releases always broke more than they fixed. Then a few months ago the board just up and died while plugging in a USB stick. Replaced it with an ASRock B450m Pro4 and I actually can't be happier for the price I paid.