AMD's Latest AGESA Update Removes PCIe 4.0 Support from Pre-X570 Motherboards

[cucker tarlson]

Absolutely. I kinda chuckle on those looking on first gen pcie4 crap controller nvme ssd's and wet their pants only on useless sequential speeds also...

that's more likely to be the issue with ryzen's latency than pci-e 4.0 standard alone.been known since 1000,anvil scores 18% lower on ryzen.In cdm 1/3rd of 4k write performance is gone.As scores 10% lower overall,but the main performance hit is sadly on 4k random write again,about 1/3rd loss.

AMD Ryzen SSD Storage Performance Preview

We provide an early look at AMD Ryzen SSD storage performance versus Intel in a range of different early tests.

www.tweaktown.com

 

[Punkenjoy]

to be fair all we saw was 5700xt,that's 2070 equivalent.who knows when 2080ti-eqivalent comes around.we might see ~5%,not much but you see the tendency.
the more I think about it,amd would win if nvidia came out with 3080ti soon.they'd get crushed in gpu power,but imagine people selling their coffee lakes for ryzen

There are barely any improvement currently between 2.0 and 3.0 on a 5700XT. A 2080Ti equivalent will probably not see any meaningful benefits on PCI-E 4.0 too.

And if you buy a 2080 Ti and you can't afford a X570 board, there is an issue. Also once 2080 Ti performance level will be available in mid range budget, it's very probable that you will want to upgrade your computer.

Still a cheap shot from AMD, but still, let recall that AMD is still using the same socket and made her new cpu retro-compatible.

 

[cucker tarlson]

There are barely any improvement currently between 2.0 and 3.0 on a 5700XT. A 2080Ti equivalent will probably not see any meaningful benefits on PCI-E 4.0 too.

And if you buy a 2080 Ti and you can't afford a X570 board, there is an issue. Also once 2080 Ti performance level will be available in mid range budget, it's very probable that you will want to upgrade your computer.

Still a cheap shot from AMD, but still, let recall that AMD is still using the same socket and made her new cpu retro-compatible.

good points.although I was talking about a 2080ti equivalent,so basically a new xx70/x700 card and the new 7nm flagship from nvidia.

 

[ZeppMan217]

I wonder if this is AMD fighting with MB vendors. Remember that MB makers wanted a new socket for Zen 2 CPUs, Intel style, while AMD insisted on providing the usual backward compatibility via AM4. Though, I don't see why AMD would insist on prohibiting PCIE4 support then?

 

[Aretak]

Good thing this isn't a really big deal... but damn, this is an Intel-like move from AMD, ehh team red fans?

Suddenly throwing rocks at big bad intel yields a glass house source.

It's simply not true though. AMD don't want the backlash that will come when these old boards, which were never designed with PCIe 4.0 in mind, start malfunctioning when trying to run PCIe 4.0 cards. People have a habit of blaming the CPU manufacturer for problems created by motherboard vendors. Let's also not forget that Intel did this exact same thing with Sandy Bridge-E and X79, disabling PCIe 3.0 support on those chips due to an erratum that could cause it to be unreliable. Motherboard manufacturers found a way around that and managed to enable PCIe 3.0 on their boards, but Intel made their own stance very clear on it. As did Nvidia in fact. To this day if you use an Nvidia card in an X79 motherboard, even if it's one with PCIe 3.0 forced on in the BIOS, the Nvidia driver will automatically downgrade you to 2.0 in order to prevent instability (and so prevent Nvidia from being blamed for boards not being able to handle 3.0 speeds). You have to manually download and install this patch in order to bump yourself up to 3.0, which needs to be re-done every time you upgrade your driver.

And they were right to do all this. A lot of Sandy Bridge-E chips, especially from the first stepping, simply can't handle PCIe 3.0 reliably and become unstable with it enabled. The same will be true of a lot of these motherboards. Motherboard manufacturers don't care about just enabling features anyway, because 99% of the time they won't be the ones who get the blame. People will blame the CPU or graphics card vendor if they encounter problems, and that's unfair when said vendors have configured their devices for stability, which has then been bypassed unofficially.

 

[Tomgang]

Kind of a dick move from amd. In the other hand amd dit never say older boards/chipsæt will get pcie 4 support.

This round its the board manufactures that goes against amd and i am not surprized amd react negative to this.

I guess we can kind compared it to intel say i9 9900K would not work on Z370 if i remember correct. And yet some people modified bios and got the cpu to work.

 

[Ferrum Master]

that's more likely to be the issue with ryzen's latency than pci-e 4.0 standard alone.been known since 1000,anvil scores 18% lower on ryzen.In cdm 1/3rd of 4k write performance is gone.As scores 10% lower overall,but the main performance hit is sadly on 4k random write again,about 1/3rd loss.

AMD Ryzen SSD Storage Performance Preview

We provide an early look at AMD Ryzen SSD storage performance versus Intel in a range of different early tests.

www.tweaktown.com

I am seeing unmitigated Spectre/Meltdown intel bench from build 14393 vs 10586 Enterprise that is Ryzen 3 unaware? What are you saying? Mitigations have seriously shot all storage benchmarks on intel lately too.

 

[Xzibit]

I expect longtime BIOS modders to get around AGESA updates so users can retain PCIe 4.0 compatibility and have the bug fixes/stability improvements.

View attachment 128701

Am I reading this chart right ? Higher end boards don't support it while lower ends do. And half speed is Gen 3 x16 (Think everyone is in compliance there). Just find it funny how only the X470 low end TUF board support 4x16 but the higher ends don't. The majority of the lower end B450 support it but the higher STRIX don't.

For all the fuzz its just a M2_1 compliance chart. Still missing PCIe 4x16 and the 4x4 to SB

You could say, If you were buying ASUS you were better off buying their lower end stuff.

 

[Vya Domus]

I wasn't even aware PCIe 4.0 was enabled.

 

[B-Real]

That not cool at all and community needs to raise against this BS ! If motherboard vendors are ok with offering PCIe 4.0 on older platforms then what does AMD care about ? Imagine all the flak Intel would had reveived for pulling such a move !

Thing is AMD haven't changed their mind but told in advance that PCI-E 4.0 will only be available for X570 motherboards. End of story.

This is a very odd move by AMD, I get pci 4.0 is a selling point for x570 buts it's not even that big of a selling point unless you just need the fastest ssd's possible. So why disable it on older models?

I'm curious if there are technical reasons behind it or if it's just "buy more x570"

Selling point in terms of what? Giving 0 performance upgrade in GPU and SSD? Producing more heat and +20-25W power consumption on the motherboard?

 

[Bones]

Many are sticking with their X470's or just buying them instead of the newer versions.
I've noted sales of the X570 boards hasn't been as good as expected, to me this is just trying to push the newer boards out and onto new customers and some older ones too.

The above makes a good point BUT it is what it is.

 

[Aquinus]

it is quite conceivable that the board spec on x470/450 boards is not universally compliant to PCIe compatibility

From a QA standpoint, this is probably the main reason for it. They understand that the boards might be capable of doing it, but if manufacturers are enabling it on boards that could have issues with it, then AMD is making the right call to pull it because AMD trusted vendors to use good judgement for enabling PCIe 4.0 and if enabling it on boards that can't properly handle it without errors or ECC constantly correcting data, then that's the right call in my opinion.

This is literally why we can't have nice things.

 

[zlobby]

Thing is AMD haven't changed their mind but told in advance that PCI-E 4.0 will only be available for X570 motherboards. End of story.

Putting the support in X470 mobos, then pulling it back? In motherboard culture that is considered a dick move.

 

[cucker tarlson]

Putting the support in X470 mobos, then pulling it back? In motherboard culture that is considered a dick move.

No, AMD Still Isn’t Enabling PCIe 4 On 300/400 Series Boards

www.anandtech.com

So, to get right to the heart of matters, I reached out to AMD PR this evening to find out what’s going on with PCIe 4 support. The short version then is that no, AMD’s plans have not changed: PCIe 4 support will be disabled in the shipping AGESA for these boards.

Our plan is unchanged. For the reliability and consistency reasons cited at Computex, we still intend to disable PCIe Gen 4 for pre-X570 motherboards. That AGESA is being released to motherboard manufacturers soon.

manufacturers tested it,amd never said they were gonna allow it so they're not inconsistent.to my mind they could've let them have it but x570 boards wouldn't sell that well.

 

[RealNeil]

OMG!!
So if I want PCI-E 4.0 support I'm going to have to spend money on an X570 Chipset Mainboard?!

(oh wait, I was already going to do just that)

Back to our regularly scheduled drama,.....

 

[Fluffmeister]

PCI-E 4.0 doesn't mean shit anyway, but they will use it as a marketing bullet point until they are blue in the face.

Their "partners" no doubt want to sell you a new motherboard anyway, if they don't like it, stick with mean old Intel.

The joys of a duopoly.

 

[Totally]

That not cool at all and community needs to raise against this BS ! If motherboard vendors are ok with offering PCIe 4.0 on older platforms then what does AMD care about ? Imagine all the flak Intel would had reveived for pulling such a move !

Lowest common denominator. I believe they are pulling it because of certain motherboard vendors. They can't make an AGESA update just for them and a separate for the others.

 

[EarthDog]

Lowest common denominator. I believe they are pulling it because of certain motherboard vendors. They can't make an AGESA update just for them and a separate for the others.

Why not? Wouldnt the AIB need to add the agesa version/microcode to its bios?

 

[Apocalypsee]

You guys forgot AMD released AGESA that unlocked their Athlon 2x0GE line when it supposed to be locked? AMD did one thing and people accusing they start pulling 'Intel' on us. This could be temporary, who knows?

 

[RH92]

Thing is AMD haven't changed their mind but told in advance that PCI-E 4.0 will only be available for X570 motherboards. End of story.

Who cares if AMD have or haven't changed their mind man ? That's not the topic here so please post something relevant to the point im raising next time !

Thing is PCIe 4.0 is technically possible on 300 and 400 series mobos so AMD has no reason whatsoever to lock it on X570 especialy when board vendors are ok with enabling it on those older platfrorms . End of story !

 

[eidairaman1]

I wonder if this is AMD fighting with MB vendors. Remember that MB makers wanted a new socket for Zen 2 CPUs, Intel style, while AMD insisted on providing the usual backward compatibility via AM4. Though, I don't see why AMD would insist on prohibiting PCIE4 support then?

Too many variables untested for stability.

 

[RH92]

Lowest common denominator. I believe they are pulling it because of certain motherboard vendors. They can't make an AGESA update just for them and a separate for the others.

Don't understand where you are going with this , this is not how things work ! Nobody asks AMD to make individual AGESA updates , AMD makes 1 AGESA update then distributes it to board vendors this is where AMDs work end , it's up to them to figure out how they gonna implement it . So the '' common denominator '' theory is nonsense !

Besides , again we are not talking about something new here we are talking about a functionality that was already available and well implemented and that AMD is killing off ...........

Too many variables untested for stability.

Such as ?

OMG!!
So if I want PCI-E 4.0 support I'm going to have to spend money on an X570 Chipset Mainboard?!

(oh wait, I was already going to do just that)

Back to our regularly scheduled drama,.....

OMG maybe it's not about the money but about the business practice ?

( oh wait i forgot we care about this only when it's Intel or Nvidia )

Back to our regularly scheduled double standards ......

 

[Totally]

Why not? Wouldnt the AIB need to add the agesa version/microcode to its bios?

Don't understand where you are going with this , this is not how things work ! Nobody asks AMD to make individual AGESA updates , AMD makes 1 AGESA update then distributes it to the board makers this is where AMD works end , it's up to them to figure out how they gonna implement it . So the '' common denominator '' theory is nonsense !

Besides , again we are not talking about something new here we are talking about a functionality that was already available and well implemented and that AMD is killing off ...........

uh, MSI snafu? that one under the radar? They couldn't just simply add because they cheaped out on the ROM for the bios when other vendors couldn't, and eventually their fix was to pare down and remove features like RAID support.

 

[RH92]

uh, MSI snafu? that one under the radar? They couldn't just simply add because they cheaped out on the ROM for the bios when other vendors couldn't, and eventually their fix was to pare down and remove features like RAID support.

So you are trying to tell me AMD kills the support for all manufacturers because MSI didn't do their job properly ( plus i have to remind you that MSI already addressed this issue with their newly released MAX boards cause surprise surprise peoples where blaming them not AMD .... ) how does this make any sense ? Since when does AMD work for MSI ? Im sure that would had made some headlines don't you think ...........

 

[EarthDog]

Not to mention, other AIBs had/have smaller BIOS chips as well...

but what does this have to do with MSI........moving the goal posts??? lol