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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
Clawedge
Senior Member
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Joined: 2006-09-02
Senior Member
Posts: 2599
Joined: 2006-09-02
#5660476 Posted on: 04/16/2019 08:41 AM
Well shit. Not cool. But still better than you know who.
At least AMD supported 1000 and 2000 chips on the 300 series chipset
Well shit. Not cool. But still better than you know who.
At least AMD supported 1000 and 2000 chips on the 300 series chipset
Kaarme
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Posts: 2691
Joined: 2013-03-10
Senior Member
Posts: 2691
Joined: 2013-03-10
#5660479 Posted on: 04/16/2019 08:49 AM
If it truly is universal and not only a strong excuse for the mobo makers to boost their sales, I don't see it being hugely different from the scumbag move Intel did with Coffee Lake. In some sense it would be even worse because Intel never promises future compatibility and everybody more or less expects incompatibility from Intel these days. That's so even when Intel is being especially nasty like how they were by releasing the incompatible Coffee Lake so soon after the "we have perfect trust in" Kaby Lake. Intel doesn't even pretend to be customer friendly, but AMD did.
That's why I think it would be interesting if one manufacturer made some of their models compatible, creating a PR headache for the others.
If it truly is universal and not only a strong excuse for the mobo makers to boost their sales, I don't see it being hugely different from the scumbag move Intel did with Coffee Lake. In some sense it would be even worse because Intel never promises future compatibility and everybody more or less expects incompatibility from Intel these days. That's so even when Intel is being especially nasty like how they were by releasing the incompatible Coffee Lake so soon after the "we have perfect trust in" Kaby Lake. Intel doesn't even pretend to be customer friendly, but AMD did.
That's why I think it would be interesting if one manufacturer made some of their models compatible, creating a PR headache for the others.
asturur
Senior Member
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Joined: 2010-05-12
Senior Member
Posts: 1162
Joined: 2010-05-12
#5660486 Posted on: 04/16/2019 09:09 AM
For bios chip are we talking about the chip that contains the UEFI OS layer?
I believe they can cut on corners and made the code fit? Like a bios for people that wants to install it and will remove some functionality to save space. ( like checking from the internet if a new bios is available or this kind of things )
For bios chip are we talking about the chip that contains the UEFI OS layer?
I believe they can cut on corners and made the code fit? Like a bios for people that wants to install it and will remove some functionality to save space. ( like checking from the internet if a new bios is available or this kind of things )
fantaskarsef
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Joined: 2014-07-21
Senior Member
Posts: 12550
Joined: 2014-07-21
#5660489 Posted on: 04/16/2019 09:20 AM
Honestly, even with AMD this had to happen at some point. I did not expect them to support their new releases on older mainboard forever.
What they should do is to offer a BIOS which you can flash under your own discretion (and under no warranty) that removes Ryzen 1000 compatability in favour of adding Ryzen 3000 BIOS. Would be a simple BIOS flash, if they offered such a version anyway.
Honestly, even with AMD this had to happen at some point. I did not expect them to support their new releases on older mainboard forever.
What they should do is to offer a BIOS which you can flash under your own discretion (and under no warranty) that removes Ryzen 1000 compatability in favour of adding Ryzen 3000 BIOS. Would be a simple BIOS flash, if they offered such a version anyway.
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Well, many older boards predating APU releases were not exactly best choices for them due to VRMs not being sufficient for iGPU.
One should consider it from technological perspective and then assess if it is reasonable or not.
Last thing company wants is to enable upgrade which will prove to cause issues.
Edit: On other hand, MSI lately makes boards which are not up to standard in their price range. And one is more often than not better off buying board from other manufacturer. Therefore there is chance that it may be just some or all MSI's boards.