No you don't, if you would have bought something like a B350 board 3 years ago you could have used CPUs all the way up to Ryzen 3000, that's 3 generations.
AMD didn't make Intel look like a joke just because of the chipset situation but also in terms of scalability, having a board from 3 years ago that could use anything from a dual core to a 16 core CPU is crazy.
Now let's see how many truly did that
Thing is... the real life situation doesn't differ all that much for the vast majority of people, which is why ASUS does this the way it does it. They know the market that is really eager for that compatibility is possibly small enough to ignore OR the benefit in sales doesn't weigh up to the cost for them.
Its not the first time. And its going to be a recurring thing.
I'm not saying AMD is in any way at fault here for setting up their sockets as they do. Kudos to them for TRYING. Its just that for numerous reasons most people still see themselves buying new boards every gen or other gen. And this is especially true if you're not upgrading every gen which most people don't do to begin with.
I do like how you all rush to the defense though, lol
I know. But it makes AMD look as though they're not being honest about AM4 support. I appreciate Asus et al have every right not to provide backwards compatibility but it has negative PR consequences which will land at AMD's door.
This. And its falls straight into the trend we know of them, way too loose agreements with industry partners, too much leeway that gets abused time and time again. Whether its timely support, availability, time to market, or general PR and communication. Something is always amiss.
Not good for perception. And definitely, most definitely this is an AMD problem more than anyone else's. Its not just ASUS either, every partner will be making up the balance here, every single time with every new release. Its a cost/benefit scenario for them and AMD should eradicate that thought to begin with: it should be 'you sell our product, damn well make sure you support them for the full lifecycle or you're simply not a partner anymore'.
In fact,
@Vayra86 let's look at this.
As we can see below, your claim that you get, one generation is complete BS, literally not one chipset only lasts for one generation. "Maybe two" is also BS as every board has supported AT LEAST two generations of chips and the majority of boards have supported 3 generations. Most of the 300 gen supported Zen2, most of the 400 gen will probably support Zen3 as well.
your comments are completely untrue.
| Chipset | Zen | Zen+ | Zen2 | Zen3 | Gen Supported | Notes |
| A320 | YES | YES | YES *per manufacturer | NO | 3 Generations | |
| B350 | YES | YES | YES *per manufacturer | NO | 3 Generations | |
| X370 | YES | YES | YES *per manufacturer | NO | 3 Generations | |
| B450 | YES | YES | YES | YES *per manufacturer | 4 Generations | (one backwards compatibility) |
| X470 | YES | YES | YES | YES *per manufacturer | 4 Generations | (one backwards compatibility) |
| A520 | NO | NO | YES | YES | 2 Generations | (only been around for two generations) |
| B550 | NO | NO | YES | YES | 2 Generations | (only been around for two generations) |
| X570 | NO | YES | YES | YES | 3 Generations | (only been around for two generations & one generation backwards compatible) |
Note that the time between the release of Zen and Zen 3 is a mere 2,5 ~3 years now. One could question the practical use of switching hardware yearly or even bi-yearly, especially with the baby steps we're getting gen to gen.
