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.

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?

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.

insp1re2600:

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?

If you unsolder the chip then I'm sure you could. Personally, I'd rather just lose support for Bristol Ridge.

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.

schmidtbag:

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.

Astyanax:

you're not just losing support for bristol ridge, they scaled back graphical aspects of the bios to bring size down.

As far as I'm concerned, that's an improvement.

schmidtbag:

As far as I'm concerned, that's an improvement.

tbh, i don't disagree.

This is a great move from MSI imo, given that Ryzen 3000 is such a good offering, but to me X570 is way too expensive for being good option to the market, specially i hate the proprietary chipset fan (i still have so many bad experiences). To all my friends that move toward ryzen 3000, im going to recommend this new MSI B450 Max boards, specially since it will come with bios that will boot with ryzen 3000, at least until B550 is released.

abula:

This is a great move from MSI imo, given that Ryzen 3000 is such a good offering, but to me X570 is way too expensive for being good option to the market, specially i hate the proprietary chipset fan (i still have so many bad experiences). To all my friends that move toward ryzen 3000, im going to recommend this new MSI B450 Max boards, specially since it will come with bios that will boot with ryzen 3000, at least until B550 is released.

No, its a cash grab working and exploiting the 'ignorance' of previous buyers. A great move would be MSI offering a board swap program.

Astyanax:

No, its a cash grab working and exploiting the 'ignorance' of previous buyers. A great move would be MSI offering a board swap program.

They released perfectly working boards that are now showing their age with supporting so many CPUs. This also implies that "all" motherboard manufacturers purposefully "took advantage" of "ignorant" previous buyers. These new MAX boards don't even affect previous owners, as most of the stripped content, is content you don't need, and processors you won't use, since you're obviously trying to use a 3000 series CPU. And "exploiting the ignorance of previous buyers" implies that people who bought the older motherboards are likely to buy the new motherboards, that'll effectively work the same for them, just for some GUI and old processor support? If someone actually does that, that's not even remotely taking advantage of someone, as they made their choice to buy a new motherboard that won't do anything more for them specifically. 99.9% of people will not upgrade just to have a more flashy GUI and older CPU support, it makes zero sense. But as stated above, what this has done is effectively given NEW buyers more informed choices when buying ryzen 3000 series CPUs, and not wanting to fork over the cash for x570, but know their CPU will work. There's nothing wrong with this....would it have been better if MSI has released new motherboards with support of ryzen 3000 series out of the box but left it at 16mb firmware? Would your "cash grab" statement stand there? What would be the point of that? Some of the things you say Astyanax....some of the things you say....

Aura89:

They released perfectly working boards that are now showing their age with supporting so many CPUs. This also implies that "all" motherboard manufacturers purposefully "took advantage" of "ignorant" previous buyers. These new MAX boards don't even affect previous owners, as most of the stripped content, is content you don't need, and processors you won't use, since you're obviously trying to use a 3000 series CPU. But as stated above, what this has done is effectively given NEW buyers more informed choices when buying ryzen 3000 series CPUs, and not wanting to fork over the cash for x570, but know their CPU will work. There's nothing wrong with this....would it have been better if MSI has released new motherboards with support of ryzen 3000 series out of the box but left it at 16mb firmware? Would your "cash grab" statement stand there? What would be the point of that?

They sold quit expensive boards with a chip they save Cents for on each one, it was greedy pennypinching that contributed to this kerfaffle and its greedy offering what should have been the expected configuration and not a replacement program. The 16MB spi rom has been a limitation from the release of these parts, MSI just got creative in working around it. they knew full well that AMD's agesa modue and others are quite large and would continue to grow towards 2020 where AMD stated quite clearly that they would be ensuring cpu support till 2020 on the existing components.

And "exploiting the ignorance of previous buyers" implies that people who bought the older motherboards are likely to buy the new motherboards, that'll effectively work the same for them, just for some GUI and old processor support? If someone actually does that, that's not even remotely taking advantage of someone, as they made their choice to buy a new motherboard that won't do anything more for them specifically. 99.9% of people will not upgrade just to have a more flashy GUI and older CPU support, it makes zero sense.

Actually, this is a good point, people who were caught up by the 16MB rom won't even look at MSI again, product consistency is a requirement.

Toadstool:

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.

oh i bet they planned on using that argument to convince AMD of not doing backwards compatibility but AMD pressed on

The thing that worries me is that MSI will probably slow down BIOS development for boards with 16mb chips. I mean this move practically doubles their AM4 offering. So double the testing and validation needed. I doubt MSI is going to put as much effort to the BIOSes on older boards.

I wouldn't have bought my board knowing I'd get a crippled BIOS. I bought an X470 Gaming Pro Carbon with the intention of using it for Zen 2. So far there's basically nothing aside from a questionable beta BIOS that's stripped down. 16MB ROM chips in their "high end" boards, in 2019, are you shitting me?

I know how you feel about stripped down, I am in same boat as X470 Gaming Pro Carbon. I post other forum about Boycott MSI at https://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/1729080-boycott-msi-motherboards-deceptive-practices.html I hope somebody take MSI up to court, Hope we can get MAX version for free with trade-in old 16 rom motherboard. MSI will be my last to buy. Look for new Asus or Gigabyte in the future (X670, B650...)

Neo Cyrus:

I wouldn't have bought my board knowing I'd get a crippled BIOS. I bought an X470 Gaming Pro Carbon with the intention of using it for Zen 2. So far there's basically nothing aside from a questionable beta BIOS that's stripped down. 16MB ROM chips in their "high end" boards, in 2019, are you shitting me?

Nobody knew even the motherboard vendors when the first gen boards were made that 16MB was to small. Its a blessing and a curse when you make things backwards compatible you really have to think ahead. My gigabyte board they simply dropped Bristol Ridge support to make room for Ryzen 3000 which is a nice compromise if you have a Bristol Ridge APU then you simply don't upgrade the BIOS.

JamesSneed:

Nobody knew even the motherboard vendors when the first gen boards were made that 16MB was to small. Its a blessing and a curse when you make things backwards compatible you really have to think ahead. My gigabyte board they simply dropped Bristol Ridge support to make room for Ryzen 3000 which is a nice compromise if you have a Bristol Ridge APU then you simply don't upgrade the BIOS.

X470 is far from first gen, they knew what was coming. And LOL even without that knowledge, which they had, 16MB sounds acceptable to you? It costs almost no difference to have things arranged ahead of time to produce 32MB chips instead. MSI also dropped old CPU support, and their interface, and RAID support. And it's still not working. At one point they broke Windows's SLEEP functionality on my board. On waking from sleep it'd fail to detect the boot drive so it'd crash. It took them over a month of complaints before they fixed it, and that was with me sending them 90 terabytes of information. I might as well have done the entire job myself.

It's a crash grab from crazy, I dont think you really need the extra on a x370/b450/x470, MSI should have cut out ryzen 1st gen and 2nd gen in the new bios on said boards and you have the space to add the fancy Gui/ and make a bios for the other 2 gens just incase you want to flash it back and sell the board, I dont think anyone really cares for 1st and 2nd gen ryzen if they are going for the 3000 anyway.

Neo Cyrus:

X470 is far from first gen, they knew what was coming. And LOL even without that knowledge, which they had, 16MB sounds acceptable to you? It costs almost no difference to have things arranged ahead of time to produce 32MB chips instead. MSI also dropped old CPU support, and their interface, and RAID support. And it's still not working. At one point they broke Windows's SLEEP functionality on my board. On waking from sleep it'd fail to detect the boot drive so it'd crash. It took them over a month of complaints before they fixed it, and that was with me sending them 90 terabytes of information. I might as well have done the entire job myself.

Yes I think 16MB was perfectly fine. Gigabyte did the same and all they had to do is cut out the APU's on newer bios revisions. I'm running a 16MB BIOS from Gigabyte with Ryzen 3000 updated BIOS so yes 16MB is fine. As far as your other point that is just MSI making crap boards like they have recently. I was not and will not try to stand up for MSI as there products have not been great for a few years now. ASUS and Gigabyte are all I consider these days for higher end builds but that is just me.

I got a cheap x470 MSI gaming Plus where I paid $10-$20 USD for on a deal(Forget exact price I paid) and I am fine and very pleased with the motherboard. Yeah the BIOS is cut down now with Ryzen 3xxx but it still works great.I will continue to buy MSI Motherboards and the cheap ones at that.I only play games on PC so these motherboards work as good as any other.

Only thing MSI needed to get enough space in 16MB flash was to remove most of images and replace remaining with style that can be reused on all similar locations. And MSI logo can be changed for cool ASCII art.

gerardfraser:

I got a cheap x470 MSI gaming Plus where I paid $10-$20 USD for on a deal(Forget exact price I paid) and I am fine and very pleased with the motherboard. Yeah the BIOS is cut down now with Ryzen 3xxx but it still works great.I will continue to buy MSI Motherboards and the cheap ones at that.I only play games on PC so these motherboards work as good as any other.

MSI had cut down BIOS even on "msi x470 gaming pro carbon ac". I was pretty disappointed with that experience. They should do better with their prioritization.