News [REVERSED] AMD says X470, B450 WILL support Zen3

The Exciting Future of AMD Socket AM4

In 2016, we made a pretty bold commitment to you: we would continue to support AMD Socket AM4 until 2020. It was a big promise, especially given what people were accustomed to with other platforms. In the four ensuing years, the humble Socket AM4 has been on an incredible trajectory: 4X more...

community.amd.com

AMD Confirms Ryzen 4000 'Zen 3' Desktop CPU Compatibility With X570 & B550 Motherboards - No Plans To Support X470, B450, X370 Chipsets

AMD has announced that its next-gen Ryzen 4000 CPUs based on the Zen 3 cores will be supported by X570 & B550 chipset based motherboards.

wccftech.com

This is kind of a big deal. It's not the end of the world because it's likely that, just like with B350 and X370, some motherboard manufacturers will make it work, but I think the net/net is people that bought B450 boards expecting to go to Zen 3 may be disappointed


EDIT: AMD has reversed this decision and decided to enable motherboard manufacturers to upgrade 400-series motherboards to support Zen3. Details to be unveiled later.

 

[ermac318]

Also in B550 news, with the launch of today's Ryzen 3 parts (not Zen 3, but Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X) AMD also posted much more info on the B550. Here's an overview of the news:

AMD B550 Chipset Detailed, It's Ready for Zen 3, Older AM4 Motherboards not Compatible

In their briefing leading up to today's Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X review embargo, AMD disclosed that its upcoming "Zen 3" 4th generation Ryzen desktop processors will only support AMD 500-series (or later) chipsets. The next-gen processors will not work with older 400-series or 300-series chipsets...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[AlexTSG]

When it comes to backward compatibility for B550 based boards, it looks like the capacity of the BIOS chip is the main issue.

AMD is only mentioning 3000 and 4000 series support, but if a manufacturer chooses to use a larger capacity BIOS then support for older CPUs should be possible. I think the current APUs, based on the Zen+ architecture would make sense to support, especially on lower cost boards where they would offer an inexpensive starting point with a great upgrade path.

Support for 4000 series (Zen 3) CPUs on older boards is probably more of an issue due to VRM choices. I’m not sure if they could support only up to 65W CPUs for example, or if that would just confuse the average consumer.

 

[murderbymodem]

It looks like B550 will bring most of the features of X570. If there are affordable (under $150) ITX options that don't require a cheap chipset fan like PCs from a few decades ago, I may finally make the switch back to AMD from Intel.

 

[Phuncz]

I honestly don't mind that I can't use my 300-series boards for CPUs that release 4 years later. I'm still amazed how AMD is now commanding lead, coming from almost no competition a little over 4 years ago. I'm more interested in the rumoured A520 boards, hoping ITX and smaller will show up.

 

[FischOderAal]

I honestly don't mind that I can't use my 300-series boards for CPUs that release 4 years later. I'm still amazed how AMD is now commanding lead, coming from almost no competition a little over 4 years ago. I'm more interested in the rumoured A520 boards, hoping ITX and smaller will show up.

I fully agree. For me it has a little negative impact since I just bought a B450 motherboard last month... But well, things like that can always happen and supporting several generations with the same chipsets and boards is amazing (take a note Intel). For me it is not as bad since I specifically bought a 3700X so that I can last several years without upgrading.

 

[Revenant]

Last November I built a B450 / R5-2600 / RX590 family room PC. I was hoping it would be compatible because I like the idea of upgrading to a 4700 whenever it comes out. I'll just wait for the 3700 series to drop in price.

 

[threestripevida]

It sucks that we can’t use 450/470 boards with the new processors as I was looking forward to upgrading my 2700 to the new 4000 series. I think I will just wait for whatever comes after AM4 to upgrade. It was great that AMD even supported this many CPUs with a single socket.

 

[Phuncz]

Last November I built a B450 / R5-2600 / RX590 family room PC. I was hoping it would be compatible because I like the idea of upgrading to a 4700 whenever it comes out. I'll just wait for the 3700 series to drop in price.

I did the same thing. Even though I wanted to upgrade to a 3950X, the cost of a used 2700X and the complete lack of needing more than 8 cores was too good to pass up. In the end I paid the same amount for a single 3950X but I have a 1800X (desktop then server) + 2700X (desktop currently). To me it still adds up, but I can do more with two 8-core CPUs than with one 16-core CPU.

 

[Soul_Est]

I shall wait and see. My 2700X has served me well thus far.

 

[Soul_Est]

I shall wait and see. My 2700X has served me well thus far.

That sounded dismissive when said aloud. I will wait and see because that's tech for ya.

I have been brainstorming this with a few friends and we figured that this may be why AMD might be doing this: Chipset support.

Both the 300-series and 400-series chipsets were created in collaboration with ASMedia and are similar to each other. B550 (and A520?) is another ASMedia collaboration (according to https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/x670-chipset-motherboard-ryzen) and X570 is AMD's own in house developed chipset which require a different amount of support. There are also the Zen-3 based Ryzen 4000 chips to consider. What is their configuration and how have AMD managed to get them working with the B550 and X570 chipsets? For all we know, the I/O die on Zen-3 changed yet again which may make compatibility a pain point for the older chipsets.

Unfortunately, it seems like AMD may have been too ambitious and optimistic in creating the Zen-3 micro-architecture and the B550 chipset. I hope it doesn't hit them as hard as the 10nm and 14nm issues hit Intel as it will be harder to come back from.

Still makes the decision no less odd though we'll have to wait and see.

EDIT: Last two things I'll add before shutting up for now.

The first video from Hardware Unboxed calls AMD out on their reasoning behind the decision, calls AMD out of their marketing, and relays what they could have stated instead:


The second video from Gamers Nexus expands on AMD's reasoning behind the decision, calls AMD out on their marketing, and relays what many of potential issues with supporting all AM4 chips:

 

[Frenzy]

Bought a B450 last summer with the release of 3700x. Realistically i wouldnt really be upgrading now to zen3. The main thing though is that there was no B550, and the X570 made little sense for most to invest in. Had 'we' known B450 / 470 was end-of-life, i would've likely gotten the X570 at that time. As my main concern of chipset fan noise seems not warranted. Then again if Zen4 is a new socket anyway (believe i heard its likely), it wouldn't have mattered much in my case anyway.

It's just that so many opted for B450 at that time, most are rightly miffed about the lack of communication and foresight from AMD.
BIOS ROM size as limiting factor is quite lame.
Gamer Nexus captures the whole story quite neatly.

 

[Soul_Est]

Bought a B450 last summer with the release of 3700x. Realistically i wouldnt really be upgrading now to zen3. The main thing though is that there was no B550, and the X570 made little sense for most to invest in. Had 'we' known B450 / 470 was end-of-life, i would've likely gotten the X570 at that time. As my main concern of chipset fan noise seems not warranted. Then again if Zen4 is a new socket anyway (believe i heard its likely), it wouldn't have mattered much in my case anyway.

It's just that so many opted for B450 at that time, most are rightly miffed about the lack of communication and foresight from AMD.
BIOS ROM size as limiting factor is quite lame.
Gamer Nexus captures the whole story quite neatly.

I read you on that. I'm more miffed for my friend than for myself because I convinced him to go with a 2700X and X470 when rebuilding his system earlier this year. I built my machine way back in 2018 just a few months after Ryzen 2000 launched.

 

[FischOderAal]

Another look on the topic from GN

 

[Phuncz]

I'll watch it just because of the thumbnail.

 

[rfarmer]

I just watched the second Gamers Nexus and now know a whole lot more on the subject than I did before. This could be really interesting going forward. MSI basically backed themselves into a corner and now is pushing hard for Ryzen 4 support on B450, but now that it is revealed that the older CPUs can't even address 32mb ROMS the only way to support Ryzen 4 would be to drop support for older CPUs. This is going to have a big impact on 3rd world countries where older AMD CPUs are extremely popular. The saying rock and a hard place comes to mind.

 

[ignsvn]

I just watched the second Gamers Nexus and now know a whole lot more on the subject than I did before. This could be really interesting going forward. MSI basically backed themselves into a corner and now is pushing hard for Ryzen 4 support on B450, but now that it is revealed that the older CPUs can't even address 32mb ROMS the only way to support Ryzen 4 would be to drop support for older CPUs. This is going to have a big impact on 3rd world countries where older AMD CPUs are extremely popular. The saying rock and a hard place comes to mind.

Thankfully I am still holding back.. Almost surely will go with at least B550 motherboards.

But the next question is, will the Ryzen 5 still be on AM4 platform? ?

 

[Soul_Est]

And now they are supporting Ryzen 4000 on B450 and X470 as a final upgrade. Once the Ryzen 4000 BIOS is flashed to the board, there will be no way to flash back to an earlier version (just as with the Ryzen 3000 supporting BIOS). This also depends on the motherboard ODMs and OEMs.





Ryzen 4000 is the last on B450 and X470 according to AMD, @ignsvn. Might be the last for AM4.

 

[threestripevida]

Happy they did it. Still not sure if I should upgrade or not. If the performance jump is quite a bit compared to my 2700 then I might pull the trigger.

 

[rfarmer]

I was thinking this was one way to solve it, I don't think anyone upgrading to Ryzen 4 would be looking to go to Ryzen 2 or below. This will make a lot of people with B450 motherboards that wanted to upgrade very happy.