B450 / X470 motherboard and Zen 3 compatibility

Update 19th May:

AMD have listened and now will be providing Zen 3 support on B450 and X470. See details:


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Old Info:


Apparently now confirmed.

Very poor show, AMD.

AMD axes Zen 3 support on 400-series motherboards: Is AMD pulling an Intel?

In a surprising announcement, AMD last week said they would discontinue support for older chipsets with their upcoming Ryzen 4000 series, codenamed Zen 3. In the press deck we received for our most recent Ryzen 3 3100 / 3300X review,…

www.techspot.com

Board makers will not be able to provide BIOS updates supporting Zen 3 on B450, as they did with Zen 2 on B350, because AMD won't develop the AGESA code for it. No "beta BIOS" option will exist.


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Original Post:

https://www.techspot.com/news/85144-amd-next-gen-zen-3-compatible-amd-b550.html

It's possible individual boards will still end up supporting if the manufacturers decide to allow it, as has been the case with B350 and A320 supporting Zen 2 (3000 series). It may also depend on BIOS chip size; MSI at least had been caught out by that in the past.
 
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Inspireless Llama

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As how I read it now: Unless all manufacturers decide to make their motherboards backwards compatible, it can get confusing finding out which x3xx and x4xx motherboards are going to support zen 3 right? But I believe all 300 motherboards were compatible with Ryzen 3000, so can we expect the same for the 400 chipset with ryzen 4000? And possibly even the 300 chipset?
 
It's not confusing. x500 motherboards and x600 motherboards will support Ryzen 4000. x500 will require a bios update to do.

Most older x400 motherboards are not compatible because the amount of bios memory is not large enough.
 
It likely many mobo manufactuters will find a way - either they were using larger BIOS chips or they will drop support for certain features/processors to fit the new ones.

But AMD's claim of supporting AM4 to 2020 has been confusing at best.
 
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Inspireless Llama

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That's my point. x500 & x600 will oficially support ryzen 4000. Manufacturers may or may not find a way, therefore it can be confusing which mobo they did find a way for and which one they didn't.

Basically the support from AMD and from manufacturers can differ. Even between manufacturers there can be differences as far as I read it now.
 
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It's confirmed - no Zen 3 on B450 (or any 300 or 400 series) motherboards:

Board makers will not be able to provide BIOS updates supporting Zen 3 on B450, as they did with Zen 2 on B350, because AMD won't develop the AGESA code for it. No "beta BIOS" option will exist.

Updated the original post.
 
That backtrack didn't take long.


And it's to AMD's credit - although they shouldn't have put themselves in a position to need to backtrack from in the first place. That said, hopefully it will be water under the bridge and the system they've worked out will be suitable.

(first post edited by moderator since there's a time limit on post editing)
 
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Inspireless Llama

Community Contributor
I'm not sure if it would have been necessarily bad if AMD wouldn't support X400 though. I mean,the fact that they even create backwards compability for 1 generation seems better than Intel already.

I'm not that much an motherboard specialist, but as said before, could it be possible that for example a B300 mobo eventually won't be good enough anymore for a Ryzen 4000 chip?

I'm glad they're going for compability though, but I wouldn't have been disappointed if they didn't (also, I don't plan on upgrading my CPU anytime soon anyway).
 
Taken out of context it wouldn't be so bad and there are valid reasons why they were wanting to not do it.

However, what was very bad was that they said they would support AM4 through 2020. i.e. they all but promised it.

People based purchases on that, and MSI went as far as to promise their B450 boards would support all current and future AM4 CPUs.

I don't know how many people I've advised - and seen advised - that a B450 mobo would give them the option of Zen 3. It was a fact people were taking to the bank.

That's what was so bad about the initial u-turn. Thanksfully they u-turned that u-turn :)

In case of interest, the mini sections on the issue here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X-8vZtml8


And the deeper dive here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N2NCpZ6Otk

are very good.

It's not clear whether the support "through 2020" will get delivered for 300 series mobos or not. No word, so very possibly not.
 

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