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

[B-Real]

Last round only Coffee Lake was compatible with the latest mobo gen. Now for Comet Lake, you again need new mobos. And to quote from TPU's news:

"and in many cases, pricier than even AMD X570 chipset ones"

Wait? No. So my planned 3 generation CPU path on one, original mobo is shafted? I'm pretty sure it was never promised but I'm certain future upgrade on the old X370 was spoken on for Zen 3?

If true, this sucks big time.

I think only the same socket was promised until 2020 and it's true. And if you check the charts, there is no Zen 2 compabitility with the B350 and X370 yet you can get BIOS updates for certain B350/X370 boards so it can run Zen2 CPUs. I'm quite sure this will be the same for Zen3: some B450/X470 will get updates to run Zen3 CPUs. And you will probably get series6 mobos for the Zen3 CPUs so at least 2 compatible mobo gens are guaranteed.

 

[kapone32]

Individual issues are not the sole remit of AMD but you can if it makes you feel good imply that one equals everyone.

As for your friends they might want to take their pc to the shop for a proper setup .

Or use RAM on the QVL of their motherboard.

 

[Turmania]

PR disaster for AMD just when they are about to do a coupe de grace on Intel, they shoot themselves in the foot.

 

[kapone32]

haha like my x399 and 2990WX-2500 usd become dead platform after just one year,,, when i complain on that, reddit amd ban me for this and all amd fans say me - " but ist different than new tr40 chipset" .... aaand now when they must eat salt from amd,, they sttart whinning ...

Don't worry the 3960x will drop in price then you can upgrade to TRX40 and laugh at everyone else who won't have 88 lanes of PCIe 4.0 glory.

 

[windwhirl]

Or use RAM on the QVL of their motherboard.

Depending on your location, finding RAM that is listed on the QVL sometimes is a pain... I'd know, I went through that.

 

[Durvelle27]

I can't believe so many people are whining about this

I don't see anything wrong with upgrading boards

My B350 has served its time with a 1700X upto the 3900X no complaints

And people commenting about the 5 series using the same size BIOs chip yadada

It clearly states with the B550/X570 it will not support older Athlons or APUs and possibly won't even support Ryzen 1000 or 2000 to open room up for Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 4000

Hell my B350 when i updated the BIOs for Ryzen 3000 literally lost support for Athlons and non ryzen APUs

 

[bug]

I can't believe so many people are whining about this

I don't see anything wrong with upgrading boards

My B350 has served its time with a 1700X upto the 3900X no complaints

And people commenting about the 5 series using the same size BIOs chip yadada

It clearly states with the B550/X570 it will not support older Athlons or APUs and possibly won't even support Ryzen 1000 or 2000 to open room up for Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 4000

Hell my B350 when i updated the BIOs for Ryzen 3000 literally lost support for Athlons and non ryzen APUs

People thought that if AM4 remains unchanged, all boards will run all CPUs. And now they discover they were wrong. Since admitting you were wrong is hard, they vent here instead.
As for the Ryzen 1000 and 2000, it says pretty clear in the slides they're a no go on B550.

 

[R-T-B]

Good luck spending 500€ for 10fps...

In GPU land it's not so much about FPS as Navi just being a stability mess.

 

[INFERNUS]

You'd have a point if ASRock X570 boards had the exact same CPU support like their X470 ones.

More than likely the collective AGESA firmware for Ryzen 3000 and 4000 CPUs with full board features doesn't leave enough room for Ryzen 1000 and 2000 support.

As for power phases, you can have fewer, but more efficient phases.

Hmm, I would not mind if the vendors omit 1000 and 2000 series CPUs for support of Zen3 if that would be the case. That could well indeed work

Worst case scenario I save a bit of my stimulus money for a new board that will support Zen3, will probably put $200 aside.

 

[mikmak]

Hi,
If the issue is only a mere bios capacity to store the asic code for the new 4000 processors I hope that few motherboards manufacturers will opt to throw away the support for some old cpu's in favor of the new ones. But if there is something else that can prevent the new agesa code to run correctly on x470 and b450 boards then I guess there will not be so much to do.

 

[dyonoctis]

I might not be as experienced as you are, but i have my 15 years of experience, and what you're saying doesn't stand, because doesn't matter how it was before, what matters is what companies say, pcie 4 is kinda useless now yes because you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between an nvme ssd running on pcie3 and one running on pcie4 as of now, since speeds are not that different on ssds at the moment, besides past a certain point i challenge you to see the difference anyway. There's no interpretation here, there's being backstabbed and not being backstabbed.

Just a reminders that even those 3 gen of cpu support on AM4 weren't easy peazy. X370/B350 were marked up as "selective compatibility" wich was already a bad sign.

next : The introduction Of Ryzen 3000 was a pain even with the 400 motherbaord : AMD went as far as to lend you free of charge a cpu so that you could update your bios if you bought a 400 with an old Bios. They'll probably have to do it again for Zen3 on 500 chipsets.

For 3 gen they went out of their way to make the dream happen. Does is it suck that couldn't make it happen till the end ? Yes. Did they marketed the AM4 support too heavily even though they weren't 100% sure about it ? Yes. But when you are building PC's, anything with a * or ² should give you pause. You weren't backstabbed, You were just too overeager. You told your client/friends that something was 100% guaranteed, when the company actually said "we'll try, but we are not sure about it".

Glossing over details in marketing isn't new, it sucks, but we need to buy things while keeping that in mind.

 

[kapone32]

Hi,
If the issue is only a mere bios capacity to store the asic code for the new 4000 processors I hope that few motherboards manufacturers will opt to throw away the support for some old cpu's in favor of the new ones. But if there is something else that can prevent the new agesa code to run correctly on x470 and b450 boards then I guess there will not be so much to do.

Only the best X370 and X470 boards in terms of VRM supported the 3000 series CPUs. The reason that The 3100 or 3300 will have no support for B450 lies in the fact that not just the CPU but the boards must also be PCIe 4.0 wired. In not just the top M2 but also (selectively) The top 2 x16 slots will run at PCIe 4.0x8. The problem with some boards are the BIOS chips cannot hold a larger BIOS than they were designed for. It is also obvious from the temps that these chips produce a ton of heat. Just imagine running this on the As Rock B350 Pro or the Gigabyte B450M-DS3H. Both of those boards are great for APUs but I could not see a 2700 or above being stable OC on either of those boards. There is also the fact that board manufacturers and indeed AMD are in this to make money. For me X670 must have more I/O whether it is Thunderbolt or even as B550 does allow for PCIe 3.0 (some B550 boards have more storage support than some X570).

I am on X399 and I am not going to lie. I was a little put off that the TRX40 socket is the exact same in terms of pin layout wiht no support for my CPU, but PCIe 4.0 makes that a no go. When I thought further on it though it allowed for several things

A. TRX40 made it possible to purchase a 2920x for $389 Canadian That is about $278 US.
B. The TRX40 boards are not overpriced for what you get. The top TRX40 board is about $1100 (Asus Zenith Extreme) and has 5 NVME PCIe 4.0 all capable of RAID 0 (without using any of the PCIe slots).
C. The 3960X will come down in price. It is the CPU I want to move to from my 2920X. All of my current cooling equipment is also fully compatible.

Having said all of that I am still going to build a B550 based PC (I hope the Strix board is not too expensive) and as I have said before get either one of the 3100 or 3300 (I have an Eisbear unit that just needs a rad to tame the heat) with a 5500XT Multi GPU array (In terms of Gaming, yes there are not a lot of games that support multi gpu) as Total War Warhammer2 supports Multi GPU in DX11 or 12 and is currently my favourite game to play I will see some wonderful FPS. The funny thing is the game I am playing the most right now (Xcom2) fully supports Multi GPU and I see over 180 FPS average at 4K.

 

[hat]

What's so wrong with expecting AMD to do what they said? Almost every time Intel releases a new CPU: LOL new motherboard required again! AMD does it when they explicitly said they wouldn't* and it's okay? I have more of an issue with AMD screwing up compatibility than Intel requiring new boards all the time. At least with Intel, nobody bought a kickass motherboard expecting to use it in the future, only to get shafted by an asterisk. Who cares if the new chip physically fits in the same board if it doesn't boot? I need a functional computer, not a Lego set.

It seems neither one is better than the other in the grand scheme of things. Everybody sucks.

 

[Durvelle27]

Only the best X370 and X470 boards in terms of VRM supported the 3000 series CPUs. The reason that The 3100 or 3300 will have no support for B450 lies in the fact that not just the CPU but the boards must also be PCIe 4.0 wired. In not just the top M2 but also (selectively) The top 2 x16 slots will run at PCIe 4.0x8. The problem with some boards are the BIOS chips cannot hold a larger BIOS than they were designed for. It is also obvious from the temps that these chips produce a ton of heat. Just imagine running this on the As Rock B350 Pro or the Gigabyte B450M-DS3H. Both of those boards are great for APUs but I could not see a 2700 or above being stable OC on either of those boards. There is also the fact that board manufacturers and indeed AMD are in this to make money. For me X670 must have more I/O whether it is Thunderbolt or even as B550 does allow for PCIe 3.0 (some B550 boards have more storage support than some X570).

I am on X399 and I am not going to lie. I was a little put off that the TRX40 socket is the exact same in terms of pin layout wiht no support for my CPU, but PCIe 4.0 makes that a no go. When I thought further on it though it allowed for several things

A. TRX40 made it possible to purchase a 2920x for $389 Canadian That is about $278 US.
B. The TRX40 boards are not overpriced for what you get. The top TRX40 board is about $1100 (Asus Zenith Extreme) and has 5 NVME PCIe 4.0 all capable of RAID 0 (without using any of the PCIe slots).
C. The 3960X will come down in price. It is the CPU I want to move to from my 2920X. All of my current cooling equipment is also fully compatible.

Having said all of that I am still going to build a B550 based PC (I hope the Strix board is not too expensive) and as I have said before get either one of the 3100 or 3300 (I have an Eisbear unit that just needs a rad to tame the heat) with a 5500XT Multi GPU array (In terms of Gaming, yes there are not a lot of games that support multi gpu) as Total War Warhammer2 supports Multi GPU in DX11 or 12 and is currently my favourite game to play I will see some wonderful FPS. The funny thing is the game I am playing the most right now (Xcom2) fully supports Multi GPU and I see over 180 FPS average at 4K.

The first part of the paragraph i don't believe. As i have a B350 board and it supports the 3100 and 3300X. They are Zen 2 based not Zen 3 so B450 should support them.

What's so wrong with expecting AMD to do what they said? Almost every time Intel releases a new CPU: LOL new motherboard required again! AMD does it when they explicitly said they wouldn't* and it's okay? I have more of an issue with AMD screwing up compatibility than Intel requiring new boards all the time. At least with Intel, nobody bought a kickass motherboard expecting to use it in the future, only to get shafted by an asterisk. Who cares if the new chip physically fits in the same board if it doesn't boot? I need a functional computer, not a Lego set.

It seems neither one is better than the other in the grand scheme of things. Everybody sucks.

Except AMD is doing what they stated. I don't see why people don't understand that. AMD stated AM4 support until 2020. They never stated chipset compatibility not once. And last i checked X570 and B550 are AM4

 

[hat]

Except AMD is doing what they stated. I don't see why people don't understand that. AMD stated AM4 support until 2020. They never stated chipset compatibility not once. And last i checked X570 and B550 are AM4

What else would you expect somebody to think upon reading "AM4 support through 2020"? You're basically getting a weaselly marketing guy going: Weeeeeeeeell... technically this new chip still physically fits in socket AM4... so it's supported! Too bad it doesn't boot... Like I said, I need a functional computer, not a Lego set.

I'm only asking people on the other side of the argument to pause for a moment and understand why people like me and oxidized might be upset by this. AMD stated AM4 support until 2020. Well, it's 2020, and here we are getting new AM4 chips that aren't compatible with the AM4 motherboards we may have bought, recommended or even built for others, with "support until 2020" likely playing a factor in the purchasing decision. Sneaking around the "AM4 support until 2020" statement with multiple chipsets that still use AM4, but require a new motherboard anyway, is a shady move, and quite frankly it's a fucked up maneuver.

On the other hand, using the same socket for a long time, if you can, makes a lot of sense. If you can use the same physical socket, you don't need to re-design the socket, CPU package, and go through all that re-tooling all the time. It's a lot more economical than Intel spitting out a new socket every year or two with minor changes. As a manufacturer, you can still add new features with new chipsets and new motherboards, but you'll save a few by not having to design and manufacture new CPU sockets as well. Just don't try to advertise it as "compatible" to the masses when compatibility goes farther than things physically fitting together to have a working computer that actually boots.

 

[Melvis]

I can't believe so many people are whining about this

I don't see anything wrong with upgrading boards

Do you see why now?

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It clearly states with the B550/X570 it will not support older Athlons or APUs and possibly won't even support Ryzen 1000 or 2000 to open room up for Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 4000

Hell my B350 when i updated the BIOs for Ryzen 3000 literally lost support for Athlons and non ryzen APUs

and? So what? thats a good thing! your not going to update your BIOS To run an older CPU now are you? so just do the same for the 4000series, simple.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

People thought that if AM4 remains unchanged, all boards will run all CPUs. And now they discover they were wrong. Since admitting you were wrong is hard, they vent here instead.
As for the Ryzen 1000 and 2000, it says pretty clear in the slides they're a no go on B550.

When you market something as being supported through 2020 VS your competitor that mandates new mobos every other release, and then renig on that promise, your customer base gets pissed.

Whowuddathunkit? Almost like deceptive marketing NEVER goes over well, no matter how many times it's tried.

 

[ahenriquedsj]

Lucky I didn't buy b450.

I will wait for socket AM5 or something relevant from intel.

Even because these B550s should stay for a year until the new AM5 socket from AMD, correct?

 

[ValenOne]

Just a reminders that even those 3 gen of cpu support on AM4 weren't easy peazy. X370/B350 were marked up as "selective compatibility" wich was already a bad sign.
View attachment 154394

next : The introduction Of Ryzen 3000 was a pain even with the 400 motherbaord : AMD went as far as to lend you free of charge a cpu so that you could update your bios if you bought a 400 with an old Bios. They'll probably have to do it again for Zen3 on 500 chipsets.
View attachment 154395

For 3 gen they went out of their way to make the dream happen. Does is it suck that couldn't make it happen till the end ? Yes. Did they marketed the AM4 support too heavily even though they weren't 100% sure about it ? Yes. But when you are building PC's, anything with a * or ² should give you pause. You weren't backstabbed, You were just too overeager. You told your client/friends that something was 100% guaranteed, when the company actually said "we'll try, but we are not sure about it".

Glossing over details in marketing isn't new, it sucks, but we need to buy things while keeping that in mind.

My ASUS ROG X570 Strix can update the BIOS without the CPU.

 

[R0H1T]

When you market something as being supported through 2020 VS your competitor that mandates new mobos every other release, and then renig on that promise, your customer base gets pissed.

Whowuddathunkit? Almost like deceptive marketing NEVER goes over well, no matter how many times it's tried.

Nope they said socket compatibility, not chipset. I know if I'd owned a (relatively) brand new x4xx board I'd be pissed too. But again there are too many variables here that you're ignoring, namely 16 cores, PCIe 4.0 & even IF or memory support.

You do realize that with the same chipset AMD & board partners will need to ensure an updated design (zen3) works just as well on an older board physically incapable of matching the newer chipsets. Now I agree with the somewhat deceptive marketing part but any comparisons with Intel are just

 

[dyonoctis]

My ASUS ROG X570 Strix can update the BIOS without the CPU.

You can, but what about the other ? My rog Strix B350 cannot. If motherboard makers decided to make it a standard, that wouldn't be an issue, but thats' not the case

 

[sepheronx]

Lucky I didn't buy b450.

I will wait for socket AM5 or something relevant from intel.

Even because these B550s should stay for a year until the new AM4 socket from AMD, correct?

I'm thinking same thing. From what we gathered the 4000 was initially thought to be last of the AM4 socket and something newer will shine when DDR5 takes off. I think I'll hold onto my Dell T3500 and just pay to expand its performance a bit (better ram, new GPU, etc) till new processors with DDR5 compatibility is released

 

[kapone32]

The first part of the paragraph i don't believe. As i have a B350 board and it supports the 3100 and 3300X. They are Zen 2 based not Zen 3 so B450 should support them.

Thanks for the clarification I thought otherwise. So it will be the upcoming chips that will not work with B350 and 450 then? If that is the case then it doesn't matter when I get the 3100 or 3300 then as I have no intention of getting a X570 board.

 

[Makaveli]

Luckily I am in the refund window still thanks to extensions. I will be refunding my tomahawk max now and waiting for B550, wow this is a shitty move, everyone told me it was a safe move to go from 3600 to 4800x on tomahawk max b450.

Everyone told you this that was not AMD.

There was no official statement from AMD next time wait for an official source.

Haha. I don't know why AMD couldn't annouce that sooner. Now we are having lots of knee jerk reaction from people feeling betrayed, and AMD went back to being a trash company with uncompetitive product. The little bit of faith that they painfully managed to get from some people is now gone forever. Ah well, they still managed to shook intel enough to make them react.

As usual, YMMV, but I never had any stability issues with my b350/1700x with 3000mhz memory. Some people are acting as if they really were interested in AM4, when they seemed to had a preference for Intel all along, and they are now rubbing it in the face of those who prefered AMD. "Now we are the one with an uppgrade path"

The reason for that is there are alot of pretenders on this thread that are actually intel fanboys.

No but I (more than likely) have support for it if I decide to upgrade to a later cpu (a move that amd is now missing out on).

AMD isn't going to notice anything from you going with an Intel build? Why you are just one person.

Don't forget to close the door on your way out.

 

[INFERNUS]

I was thinking, now I have 3 options for me. One: buy the 3900x or 3950x for the final upgrade for my x470 once the prices really come down. Two: buy a x570 or b550 board and a new 4000 series cpu. And finally three: go back to Intel LOL. I mean I like both cpu companies I had my 3770k from 2012-2018 then went to AMD and got a 2700x now using a 3700x. I will wait and see once AMD launches their zen3 cpus and see what Intel has. All I need really is a mobo, and CPU. DDR4 works on both platforms so I'm good there , using Flare X 3200mhz CL14. Either way I'm definitely upgrading something