AMD Reportedly Launching B550 Motherboards Come June 16th

[GreiverBlade]

good news ... well for me i will plan adequately for the end of the year for my upgrade ... (if i can) but given the price of a X570, which is decent... , i will go that chipset, unless the launch of the B550 will make its price go up

little example ....
my GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 did cost me ~209$
a equivalent X570 is ~ 206$ (ASRock Steel Legend ) outrageous pricing indeed?

and it's like that since the launch of the X570 ... i guess most people where fixated on the 350$+ mobo that some manufacturer produce (which have their customer ofc ... ) but Intel equivalent mobo do exist too ... the "going overboard board" is not a new trend.

 

[TheLostSwede]

good news ... well for me i will plan adequately for the end of the year for my upgrade ... (if i can) but given the price of a X570, which is decent... , i will go that chipset, unless the launch of the B550 will make its price go up

little example ....
my GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 did cost me ~209$
a equivalent X570 is ~ 206$ (ASRock Steel Legend ) outrageous pricing indeed?

and it's like that since the launch of the X570 ... i guess most people where fixated on the 350$+ mobo that some manufacturer produce (which have their customer ofc ... ) but Intel equivalent mobo do exist too ... the "going overboard board" is not a new trend.

The ASRock board is apparently even less, Newegg lists it for $180.

ASRock X570 STEEL LEGEND AM4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

Buy ASRock X570 STEEL LEGEND AM4 AMD X570 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[GreiverBlade]

The ASRock board is apparently even less, Newegg lists it for $180.

ASRock X570 STEEL LEGEND AM4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

Buy ASRock X570 STEEL LEGEND AM4 AMD X570 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

i was talking local pricing i would love it to be 180$ ... but in switzerland it's 206chf (well ... still 3chf cheaper than my current mobo )

 

[Metroid]

Do you know what is so good about amd? re-usage, I mean even if my b450 breaks down, I can without any worry buy the same b450 or even a b550 which probably will cost the same and yet wait for the next cpu amd is bringing to the table later this year, now with Intel everything you think or do is a pain.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Do you know what is so good about amd? re-usage, I mean even if my b450 breaks down, I can without any worry buy the same b450 or even a b550 which probably will cost the same and yet wait for the next cpu amd is bringing to the table later this year, now with Intel everything you think or do is a pain.

yep, which is why i would not mind, if my actual situation was better (at home no work ... luckily compensation for that but not quite up to what i would earn otherwise), i would take the mobo i mention above and a Ryzen 3XXX and still be able to toss a 4XXX in the mix later

 

[Space Lynx]

There is no X670...
Why are people making assumptions that there will be a new set of chipsets for the 4000-series? There's zero proof of this.
The B550 is likely going to be the last AM4 chipset.

Ryzen 4000 and X670 scheduled for late 2020

I swear it, each year it's the same of course. Regardlessly, website Mydrivers.com shares some new information about AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs as well as the X670 motherboards. ...

www.guru3d.com

AMD X670 - Upcoming AM4 Chipset to be Produced by Third Party

The successor to AM4's X570 chipset, the alleged 'X670', may be returning to outsourced production by a third party entity.

wccftech.com

 

[GreiverBlade]

Ryzen 4000 and X670 scheduled for late 2020

I swear it, each year it's the same of course. Regardlessly, website Mydrivers.com shares some new information about AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs as well as the X670 motherboards. ...

www.guru3d.com

AMD X670 - Upcoming AM4 Chipset to be Produced by Third Party

The successor to AM4's X570 chipset, the alleged 'X670', may be returning to outsourced production by a third party entity.

wccftech.com

good, that will probably lower the X570 price ... (well ... not that they are expensive ... as i mentioned above)
not a in-house chipset unlike X570 mmhhhh interesting

as long as the 4XXX is compatible with the X570 no biggies

at last no beta bios needed

 

[Caring1]

Ryzen 4000 and X670 scheduled for late 2020

I swear it, each year it's the same of course. Regardlessly, website Mydrivers.com shares some new information about AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs as well as the X670 motherboards. ...

www.guru3d.com

AMD X670 - Upcoming AM4 Chipset to be Produced by Third Party

The successor to AM4's X570 chipset, the alleged 'X670', may be returning to outsourced production by a third party entity.

wccftech.com

Still just speculation, not proof.

 

[Xajel]

It is a bit of inconvenience, though. These new mobos must be shipping with 4000-series-ready BIOS.

Ryzen 4000 desktop APU's are still not announced, they're even not finalised. So they can't have a macrocode update then.

This is just for the the 4000 desktop APU's (Zen2). we're still not taking about the 4000 desktop CPU's (Zen3).

Again, you can't have any macrocode update unless the final spec. for the CPU/APU is finalised.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ryzen 4000 and X670 scheduled for late 2020

I swear it, each year it's the same of course. Regardlessly, website Mydrivers.com shares some new information about AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs as well as the X670 motherboards. ...

www.guru3d.com

AMD X670 - Upcoming AM4 Chipset to be Produced by Third Party

The successor to AM4's X570 chipset, the alleged 'X670', may be returning to outsourced production by a third party entity.

wccftech.com

Rumours.
There is no X670.

 

[Chrispy_]

Any news on whether it's a passively-cooled chipset yet?

X570 needing active cooling is a step back to how motherboards were 15+ years ago and if they can get a B550 chip down to a passively-cooled TDP then I'll be picking it over X570 even for high-end builds.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ryzen 4000 desktop APU's are still not announced, they're even not finalised. So they can't have a macrocode update then.

This is just for the the 4000 desktop APU's (Zen2). we're still not taking about the 4000 desktop CPU's (Zen3).

Again, you can't have any macrocode update unless the final spec. for the CPU/APU is finalised.

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Any news on whether it's a passively-cooled chipset yet?

X570 needing active cooling is a step back to how motherboards were 15+ years ago and if they can get a B550 chip down to a passively-cooled TDP then I'll be picking it over X570 even for high-end builds.

Most likely yes, at least based on the assumption that the B550 chipset itself won't have any PCIe 4.0 lanes beyond possibly the link to the CPU.
It's obviously not for high-end builds, more like mid-range.

 

[Chrispy_]

No, definitely no. These are OEM-related issues and purely because of their engineering "decisions". Ask them to make new revisions.

I'd still put some of the blame on AMD; OEM's building down to a price (to maximise their profits and market appeal) are following a minimum spec, set by AMD. Crap VRMs were enabled because AMD's minimum spec was too low. Auto overvolting issues were down to flaky AGESA releases.

If AMD had robust AGESA releases at launch and their minimum spec was capable of handling a 3950X, then we wouldn't see any of the undercooled, iffy voltage nonsense that plagued the first 3-6 months of Zen2 for some boards. The buggy BIOSes is entirely the fault of the OEMs but AMD is at least partly-responsible for the rest.

Wasn't the B550 series late due to ASMedia not getting their own PCIe 4.0 chips ready in time? I recall an earlier report mentioning such, which is why X570 got a far longer run than the previous X470 and X370.

It feels so weirdly late, what with the impending X670 and Zen 3 (4000-series) that were mentioned for a Q4 2020 release. It's come to the point that I'm wondering if it'd just be better to skip B550 altogether and jump to B650 just months after the X670 releases, given that the AMD ecosystem hasn't collapsed this far along into Zen 2 and X570-only mobos.

Zen 2 is put into B450/X470 a lot. I don't have the figures but given that most people don't need X570's additional features and that there are so many channels/threads/streams dedicated to VRM analysis of 400-series boards for Zen2, I'd wager that more than half of all Zen2 chips go into 400-series boards. It's only a guess but that's a conservative guess, 90% might be a completely believable estimate too...

I've certainly used at least four separate resources (GN/Buildzoid, r/AMD, HardwareLuXX, der8auer) to identify the best B450 boards simply because I'm trying to avoid X570's stupid active cooling and premium price-tag when all I care about is the power delivery and quality of the board. These resources are still active even today and growing in size/populariy faster than they were just after Zen2's launch. I know correlation does not infer causation, but resources to streamline the use of last-gen boards exploded on Zen2's launch.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I'd still put some of the blame on AMD; OEM's building down to a price (to maximise their profits and market appeal) are following a minimum spec, set by AMD. Crap VRMs were enabled because AMD's minimum spec was too low. Auto overvolting issues were down to flaky AGESA releases.

If AMD had robust AGESA releases at launch and their minimum spec was capable of handling a 3950X, then we wouldn't see any of the undercooled, iffy voltage nonsense that plagued the first 3-6 months of Zen2 for some boards. The buggy BIOSes is entirely the fault of the OEMs but AMD is at least partly-responsible for the rest.

Well, something most people don't know, but something I've pointed out here before, is that Intel turn up with reference platforms for the boards makers, has a local FAE team and delivers what is a production ready UEFI. AMD on the other hand turns up with a tray of chipsets and some design documentation, while they promise to have a workable UEFI ready when the boards are ready. Guess who it's easier to design a board for? In all fairness to AMD, they are a lot smaller company and don't have the same resources Intel has, but they've also rushed things at every launch. This means the board makers end up delivering boards to the end customers that mostly work, but needs several patches over time to make them good. With Intel it generally just works. This is most likely also a reason why AMD has a hard time getting into the corporate market.
In fact, it feels like they've used the Ryzen platform to beta test things so they can deliver a better experience with their Epyc parts.

I will be the first to admit that I was frustrated to no end with my Ryzen 7 3800X, as it took until some late AGESA 1.0.0.3 release and matching UEFI for it to work as it should according to the specs on the box.

 

[Chrispy_]

Well, something most people don't know, but something I've pointed out here before, is that Intel turn up with reference platforms for the boards makers, has a local FAE team and delivers what is a production ready UEFI. AMD on the other hand turns up with a tray of chipsets and some design documentation, while they promise to have a workable UEFI ready when the boards are ready. Guess who it's easier to design a board for? In all fairness to AMD, they are a lot smaller company and don't have the same resources Intel has, but they've also rushed things at every launch. This means the board makers end up delivering boards to the end customers that mostly work, but needs several patches over time to make them good. With Intel it generally just works. This is most likely also a reason why AMD has a hard time getting into the corporate market.
In fact, it feels like they've used the Ryzen platform to beta test things so they can deliver a better experience with their Epyc parts.

I will be the first to admit that I was frustrated to no end with my Ryzen 7 3800X, as it took until some late AGESA 1.0.0.3 release and matching UEFI for it to work as it should according to the specs on the box.

Heh, I'll admit I was not an early-adopter of Zen2. I had the 3800X experience you had with some 1800X builds on Zen's launch, and that was compounded by XMP presets being simply unusable by default (even 2666!). That same rig and board now happily runs 3200 with the XMP presets thanks to AGESA updates.

My first Zen2 build waited until the 1.0.0.3 ABBA release, and I picked a board that I knew would be one of the first to get 1.0.0.4. I suspect 1.0.0.4 is roughly comparable to the maturity of your typical Intel launch, though that's not entirely Intel's good work - more that the industry as a whole has more experience with Intel and will likely design & test with Intel as the priority and AMD optimisations as a secondary objective.

 

[TheLostSwede]

My first Zen2 build waited until the 1.0.0.3 ABBA release, and I picked a board that I knew would be one of the first to get 1.0.0.4. I suspect 1.0.0.4 is roughly comparable to the maturity of your typical Intel launch, though that's not entirely Intel's good work - more that the industry as a whole has more experience with Intel and will likely design & test with Intel as the priority and AMD optimisations as a secondary objective.

Oh, by all means, now the platform is delivering beyond my expectations if I'm going to be honest. It's just a shame it had to take five months or so to get there from launch.

Obviously the board makers have much more experience with Intel, but even so, AMD has had issues with every Ryzen platform to date and they haven't been small issues in many cases. RAM compatibility isn't on AMD 100%, but it goes to show how much hardware has been tuned to work well on Intel and Intel only. You'd think RAM is RAM, but clearly not. I still can't run XMP on my board, but it's not a big deal for me.

It's also worth remembering that Intel gives the board makers a lot of MDF, which helps them with their priorities. That said, I feel the board makers were a lot more proactive with the X570 boards and updates, compared to the X370 boards.

 

[Turmania]

One thing intel and nvidia has it going is the stability of their drivers and that is a major selling point. I wish AMD adopted stability before launch approach instead of launch it and fix it later.

 

[TheLostSwede]

One thing intel and nvidia has it going is the stability of their drivers and that is a major selling point. I wish AMD adopted stability before launch approach instead of launch it and fix it later.

Can't say I've had any issues with AMD's chipset drivers. Can't speak for their graphics drivers, haven't owned a card from them in years.

 

[Chrispy_]

Can't say I've had any issues with AMD's chipset drivers. Can't speak for their graphics drivers, haven't owned a card from them in years.

5700 series drivers have been good for us across about 100 machines. My personal 5700XT is also faring better with general application stability than the RTX 2060, though the differences are minimal - It's mostly likely to be that when the RTX 2060 does something odd (like resolution change after fullscreen > windowed > back to fullscreen) that it's the app/game developer screwing up just as much as Nvidia.

I heard from launch reviews that the 5700-series drivers were terrible. That's because they were writing/testing/filming their reviews on pre-launch beta drivers. I picked one up a week after launch for testing at work and as far as I can tell, all pre-release issues had been resolved. I can't comment on RTX, we didn't adopt at work that early; In fact, I think I pre-ordered a 2060FE which means RTX cards had been around for at least a couple of months by the time I got my hands on one. It's mostly been fine - the only real driver-specific bugs I've had are that Nvidia won't expose fan control, yet once the driver is loaded it puts the FE fans at an unreasonable speed even when the card is idle. Also, it seems super-keen to put displays to sleep if they don't respond fast enough during POST. A quick on/off of the displays will bring up the logon screens, proving that Windows booted normally and Nvidia's display detection missed a few steps.

We don't have many RTX cards at work; High double digits in workstations but they've been a bit more stable than the 5700 series in flaky software that's still getting daily or at least bi-weekly updates because it's so new.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Supposedly MSI's top of the range Z490 board will be €960...

MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE flagship motherboard pictured - VideoCardz.com

It appears that MSI’s flagship Z490 motherboard has been leaked by KOMACHI. MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE The motherboard features three reinforced PCIe x16slots, a triple M.2 slot with an additional M.2 “Xpander-Z Gen 4” card (appears to be the same as on MEG X570 GODLIKE). The “Gen 4” basically means...

videocardz.com

 

[Nihilus]

It is a bit of inconvenience, though. These new mobos must be shipping with 4000-series-ready BIOS.

I would hope so, otherwise there is no point in holding this off so late for the budget-mid grade shoppers when a B-450 would do just fine.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I don't know what the OP knows, but so far, there have not been any confirmation that I have seen anywhere, nor have any of the people I know in the industry mentioned that B550 will have PCIe 4.0 support.
As mentioned above, it's highly likely we'll see the CPU lanes to the GPU and one M.2 slot being PCIe 4.0. However, all of this is up to AMD, but they'd be silly not to go with at least some PCIe 4.0 lanes, if for no other reason than to one up Intel.
It's important to keep the chipset lanes and CPU lanes separate due to how AMD's platform works. Considering that it was technically feasible to do PCIe 4.0 on X470 via the CPU lanes, the same applies to B550.

So yes, B550 supports PCI 4.0. B450 wont let you use 4.0 from the CPU, and all anyone wants is for B550 to remove that restriction.

 

[TheLostSwede]

So yes, B550 supports PCI 4.0. B450 wont let you use 4.0 from the CPU, and all anyone wants is for B550 to remove that restriction.

And you know this for sure? Who at AMD gave you this information? What I know, is that as recently as two months ago, AMD hadn't told the board makers yes or no. It's highly likely, but we won't know for sure until the 21st.

 

[YAYgee]

... In all fairness to AMD, they are a lot smaller company and don't have the same resources Intel has, but they've also rushed things at every launch. This means the board makers end up delivering boards to the end customers that mostly work, but needs several patches over time to make them good. With Intel it generally just works. This is most likely also a reason why AMD has a hard time getting into the corporate market....

but they've also rushed things at every launch => could very well be due to their limited resources, i.e. pushing product out as quickly as possible to generate cashflow. Currently AMD seems to be in much better health. In the near future will they still be in such a rush? They'd be competing against themselves and may or may not hold back launches.

Do you expect Renoir desktop APUs to accompany B550's launch? I heard a rumour, from gamersnexus IIRC, that will be the case. If they're working hand in glove, then desktop Renoir with PCIe 4.0? Even though they didn't manage it for laptops. Showing off PCIe 4.0 on B550 alongside R3 3100 and 3300X launches instead?

Not that bothered wrt PCIe 4.0; unless the upcoming consoles shake things up; can't see how; well maybe they'll have an impact on prices for PCIe Gen 4 SSDs; and when those are cheap I'll bother. Personally, I would have liked HDMI 2.1 and AV1 (decode) because I'm planning to build a media machine this summer. Won't happen (= a shame with e.g. Netflix switching to AV1). Probably a long wait before media&display engines are updated again and I guess board makers are in no rush to add HDMI 2.1. I'll settle for a B550 board with HDMI 2.0/DP 1.4. It better support a 4000 series APU out-of-the-box as well. They had plenty of time to get it right for launch.

 

[TheLostSwede]

but they've also rushed things at every launch => could very well be due to their limited resources, i.e. pushing product out as quickly as possible to generate cashflow. Currently AMD seems to be in much better health. In the near future will they still be in such a rush? They'd be competing against themselves and may or may not hold back launches.

Do you expect Renoir desktop APUs to accompany B550's launch? I heard a rumour, from gamersnexus IIRC, that will be the case. If they're working hand in glove, then desktop Renoir with PCIe 4.0? Even though they didn't manage it for laptops. Showing off PCIe 4.0 on B550 alongside R3 3100 and 3300X launches instead?

Not that bothered wrt PCIe 4.0; unless the upcoming consoles shake things up; can't see how; well maybe they'll have an impact on prices for PCIe Gen 4 SSDs; and when those are cheap I'll bother. Personally, I would have liked HDMI 2.1 and AV1 (decode) because I'm planning to build a media machine this summer. Won't happen (= a shame with e.g. Netflix switching to AV1). Probably a long wait before media&display engines are updated again and I guess board makers are in no rush to add HDMI 2.1. I'll settle for a B550 board with HDMI 2.0/DP 1.4. It better support a 4000 series APU out-of-the-box as well. They had plenty of time to get it right for launch.

Let's hope they've decided to that and it's edu the B550 platform is late. However, from what I've been told, AMD has screwed up a bit and there's a hardware bug affecting all currently made B550 boards. It's not something that prevents regular operation, but it's a silly screwup that would be annoying, if those boards ship as they are. I can't share what it's is here though, as it might reveal where I got the info from.

No idea about Renoir, but the Ryzen 3 parts that leaked recently should at the very least arrive alongside B550.