Question B550 chipset, so AMD joins the dark side after all.

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Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
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I just read the article...

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So let me get this straight, this chipset is coming out like a year later, they did not even bother to add CPU PCI-E 4.0 uplink support or to increase the number of sata ports that is ALREADY a problem on every 6 sata B450 motherboard (NVME x4 disables the 2 SOC Sata, thus 6 sata B450 mbs losses 2 sata if NVME is used), and they even dare to futher reduce backguard compatibility?

I was not expecting for the PCI-E lanes FROM the chipset to be 4.0, but only USB 3.2 G2, no more satas, CPU link still 3.0 and the PCI-E lanes 3.0 is beyond disappointing.
 
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PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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Bios chips aren't really small for their purpose until your start cramming in giant dragon bitmaps and graphical motherboard overlays, which is really beyond what a BIOS is really intended to do (boot the PC and provide control of low level options that are rarely changed). But somewhere along the line bios bling became a thing people wanted I guess. I recall a lot of people complaining that Biostar BIOSes are "bad". I have a z77 biostar board and it the craziest amount of bios options of any board I've ever owned. But its just the plain old blue screen with no mouse support that I was using in the late 90s when it comes to UI design.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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According to one of their videos, 16 MB PROM is used in a lot of places (netowrking, IoT, etc.) and is a high volume product essentially. 32 MB PROM is a more niche product and carries a substantially higher price. I don't know the validity of this but that is what GN found in their research.

Just seems so strange and I’ve thought if increasing the storage amount is so difficult they should go big like 64MB for new chips.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,729
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So its the CPUs that can't address more than 16MB. Well, that is going to be a big mess to support then, but it was already going to be a big mess. I think people will appreciate the option nonetheless.

Socketed bios chips would kind of solve this. The manufacturers could even charge for them to mitigate the cost of the extra work. I'm not sure how common those are these days.
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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Now we have to see how many of those B450 owner really update to 4000 Series CPU.

Well, if my mainboard gets support, I just might. Zen3 should be a big jump in performance, and if it's drop-in compatible it's just the cost of the CPU you'll have to factor...

...and that 3600 can always be re-used in another system...
 

randomhero

Member
Apr 28, 2020
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Now we have to see how many of those B450 owner really update to 4000 Series CPU.
Not to be disrespectful but you are missing the point.
It is not how many upgrade but what someone marketed, promised, call it whatever you want.
We consumers, and that should be WE CONSUMERS, are paying for all this with our hard earned money and things like this should not be taken lightly.
 

Geranium

Member
Apr 22, 2020
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Not to be disrespectful but you are missing the point.
It is not how many upgrade but what someone marketed, promised, call it whatever you want.
We consumers, and that should be WE CONSUMERS, are paying for all this with our hard earned money and things like this should not be taken lightly.
Well new BIOS will take away support for older CPU's like 1000/2000 series. What about that??
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
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So its the CPUs that can't address more than 16MB. Well, that is going to be a big mess to support then, but it was already going to be a big mess. I think people will appreciate the option nonetheless.

Socketed bios chips would kind of solve this. The manufacturers could even charge for them to mitigate the cost of the extra work. I'm not sure how common those are these days.

New to the internet?

Not supporting the 400 series wasn't going to be taken too well. Understandably. But for all the "customers" they would have lost by sticking with their guns, it was going to be a short term outrage.

This is going to be a confusing mess, we will see troll posts about how updating to this bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with people who really bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with all the people who can't figure out how to update their board. People pretending they can't figure out how to update their board. The list goes on. This will be all over the forums for years.
 

Asterox

Golden Member
May 15, 2012
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So its the CPUs that can't address more than 16MB. Well, that is going to be a big mess to support then, but it was already going to be a big mess. I think people will appreciate the option nonetheless.

Socketed bios chips would kind of solve this. The manufacturers could even charge for them to mitigate the cost of the extra work. I'm not sure how common those are these days.

Well no at all, if you dont need Zen3 CPU or APU like me in my HTPC solution.

My plan is upgrade from Athlon 3000G to 4/8 Desktop Renoir APU.For my needs, green monster is more than enough.


"These optional BIOS updates will disable support for many existing AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor models to make the necessary ROM space available.

The select beta BIOSes will enable a one-way upgrade path for AMD Ryzen Processors with “Zen 3,” coming later this year. Flashing back to an older BIOS version will not be supported."
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
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Well new BIOS will take away support for older CPU's like 1000/2000 series. What about that??

Not just take away, but take away permanently. Meaning once you flash for Zen3 compatibility, you can't flash back to use an older CPU again that was dropped. There's going to be other unintended (by people wanting this) consequences pop up as well, I'm sure. It's going to be a mess to deal with on a global scale. I hope customer support teams for all the Mobo makers get a nice Christmas bonus this year, lol.

Just imagine the call to customer support for someone who bought a new b450 board and a Zen3 CPU. The board won't boot with their CPU because they have to update the BIOS first so customer support has to tell them to get an older CPU that the BIOS supports to update to Zen3 at which point the older CPU is likely useless in said board. Or they have to pick the right model that is supported by both BIOS versions and make sure not to pick from the list that is no longer supported in the later BIOS. I don't envy them.
 

Zucker2k

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2006
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New to the internet?

Not supporting the 400 series wasn't going to be taken too well. Understandably. But for all the "customers" they would have lost by sticking with their guns, it was going to be a short term outrage.

This is going to be a confusing mess, we will see troll posts about how updating to this bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with people who really bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with all the people who can't figure out how to update their board. People pretending they can't figure out how to update their board. The list goes on. This will be all over the forums for years.
Updating boards has always been mandatory, moving from one gen to the next gen, or? I mean, it's not like firmware is future-proof or something.
 

Zucker2k

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2006
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"These optional BIOS updates will disable support for many existing AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor models to make the necessary ROM space available.

The select beta BIOSes will enable a one-way upgrade path for AMD Ryzen Processors with “Zen 3,” coming later this year. Flashing back to an older BIOS version will not be supported."
That doesn't sound like much of a solution, then. Not being able to flash back is not a good look. What techinical reasons would make such a thing impossible?
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Updating boards has always been mandatory, moving from one gen to the next gen, or? I mean, it's not like firmware is future-proof or something.
In the Intel camp, yes. In the AMD camp they are promised that all AM4 boards support all generations. Until now....
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,729
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Just imagine the call to customer support for someone who bought a new b450 board and a Zen3 CPU. The board won't boot with their CPU because they have to update the BIOS first so customer support has to tell them to get an older CPU that the BIOS supports to update to Zen3 at which point the older CPU is likely useless in said board. Or they have to pick the right model that is supported by both BIOS versions and make sure not to pick from the list that is no longer supported in the later BIOS. I don't envy them.

Becase I'm sure nobody was going to try and put a Zen3 into a B450 board before this morning's announcement? These people are literally no worse off than they were before.

Well new BIOS will take away support for older CPU's like 1000/2000 series. What about that??

Just don't install the new bios update if you have a 1000/2000 series. Its easy, I'm doing it right now in fact.
 

Geranium

Member
Apr 22, 2020
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Just imagine the call to customer support for someone who bought a new b450 board and a Zen3 CPU. The board won't boot with their CPU because they have to update the BIOS first so customer support has to tell them to get an older CPU that the BIOS supports to update to Zen3 at which point the older CPU is likely useless in said board. Or they have to pick the right model that is supported by both BIOS versions and make sure not to pick from the list that is no longer supported in the later BIOS. I don't envy them.
Or scenario like this: Someone bought B450 and 4000 Series CPU and used it 4000 Series BIOS then sell the board in ebay. Someone with 1000/2000/3000 series CPU/APU buys that board thinking it will support his/her CPU/APU. And he/she cant even flash back their BIOS in previous version.
 

Geranium

Member
Apr 22, 2020
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You are still missing the point.
Again, not to be disrespectful.

Also, go to hardware unboxed youtube channel. They explained the whole thing in detail.
No you not getting it. New BIOS will lock those board with only 4000 Series CPU's. People who buys 1000/2000/3000 CPU/APU now have to look hard to buy new B450 that supports their CPU/APU limiting their motherboard choice. Remember B550 dont support 1000/2000 series CPU/APU and 3000 Series APU.
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
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Becase I'm sure nobody was going to try and put a Zen3 into a B450 board before this morning's announcement? These people are literally no worse off than they were before.

Yeah, but that was a CPU that wasn't supported so it's a really easy customer support issue. Buy a different CPU that is in our support list in the manual. Now they actually have to spend time getting it to work or eat the RMA cost.

Well new BIOS will take away support for older CPU's like 1000/2000 series. What about that??

First, it's going to happen. People will do it no matter what warnings you put on the download page and they are going to make their boards unusable with their CPU. You may say that this is the user's own fault, but I guarantee you they won't see it that way and everyone that does will cause headaches for the mobo companies. When you are planning this stuff, you have to plan for what the user could do wrong, because inevitably a significant amount of them will do something wrong.

Additionally, what about the used market where someone buys a B450 board to use with an older CPU that was flashed to the new BIOS but either it wasn't made clear by the seller or the buyer didn't know the difference. That's another issue now to deal with.
 
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PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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This is going to be a confusing mess, we will see troll posts about how updating to this bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with people who really bricked their boards. Then we will have to deal with all the people who can't figure out how to update their board. People pretending they can't figure out how to update their board. The list goes on. This will be all over the forums for years.

What a bizarre argument. People are to dumb to update their bios therefore it should be impossible? The B450 board has the same socket, people were already going to screw this up because it was already confusing. I still regularly read forum posts where people are looking to upgrade their 6600K to an 8700K and there weren't months of people on forums telling everyone their z270 was good to go for coffeelake before it was introduced.

Having to update your bios to support a new CPU is not a new concept.
 
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Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
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Updating boards has always been mandatory, moving from one gen to the next gen, or? I mean, it's not like firmware is future-proof or something.
Yeah but this is one way. With forked bios's. With questions about what hoops are you going to go through to even get an ok bios. So now someone could update their bios, in theory it would work but lets say MSI releases it thinking it will work. But they update, removing support for the new CPU. But in the mean time lose support for their current CPU. Usually updating the firmware for new CPU doesn't kill support for the current one.