videocardz Motherboard makers offering new BIOSes for AMD 500 series motherboards

[axipher]

Quote

AMD promised to deliver broad support for its next-generation Zen3 processors to 500-series motherboards. The company has so far not confirmed if there are any plans to launch 600-series motherboards, but there is a strong belief that the 500 series might be, in fact, the last AM4 series.

 

AMD confirmed that Zen3 support will come to select 400 series motherboard. This is of course the fallout from AMD’s initial announcement that 400 series will not receive Zen3 support. The public outrage and confusion as to why a few month old B450 motherboards somehow cannot support next-gen CPUs had caused AMD to change this decision.

 

This week AMD confirmed that Zen3 support on 400 series will arrive with Beta firmware around January 2021. Motherboard makers have already confirmed that they are ready to support Zen3 CPUs and they are only waiting for proper BIOSes. Thus, we believe that AMD is artificially limiting support and the delay is unnecessary.

 

 

Source

 

 

The source article has a great table of all the current BIOS updates for boards.

 

Most manufacturers have BIOD updated that include the required AGESA 1.0.8.0 to provide basic support for Ryzen 5000 series and MSI seems to be ahead of the game with AGESA 1.1.0.0 BIOS updates already.

 

No news yet on available Beta BIOS Updates from any of the motherboard board vendors yet.  It is some poor marketing to still be selling 400-series chipsets that won't support the 5000 series Ryzen CPU's, and lots of already 400-series owners might be a little annoyed about lack of official support, but there is still time for that to change by January 2021 if AMD and its partners can figure out a BIOS solution to give the basic support required for everyday users.

[ENTERPRISE]

"Coming to select 400 series motherboards" Like I said last time, this o going to cause a decent amount of fragmentation.

[axipher]

We might get a Zen3+ that will only work on 500 even furthering that fragmentation, but then Zen4 might come out with DDR5 on a new AM5 socket.  I doubt they will do the whole AM3+ thing again at this point.

 

There were some pretty major changes from Zen1/+ to Zen 2 in the form of the I/O die being separated from the cores themselves which would definitely cause some pretty creative firmware writing.  AMD could have foreseen this with a little bit of thought and made sure all motherboards were using big enough BIOS ROM chips to support all the families, but they were probably thinking their market share was so small since Bulldozer that it would be okay to shift new products to newer chipsets only.

 

The fact that B550 took so long to come out though and B450 is still being sold doesn't help that case out though.

 

Hopefully AMD can figure something out and help all the motherboard vendors get high-quality "beta" BIOS's out for X470 at least, ideally for B550 as well so they can get a solid foothold.

 

 

It's also hard for me to be on the side of people who want 5000 support on 400 series.  They already have a 400 series board with a 2000 or 3000 series CPU, most of them are looking to spend money on just a new CPU which I totally get, but then what about the old CPU?  Is that just e-waste now?  Hard to sell just an old CPU like that.  I feel that long lived sockets like this kind of contribute to e-waste a lot more than they should, but that's personal opinion and haven't really looked up the percentage of e-waste that is just single CPU's.

[Sir Beregond]

Personally feels weird to me that one would upgrade a CPU every year. But hey that's just me.

 

So if I buy a 500-series motherboard in say Feb/March next year for a Zen 3 build, they should have the BIOS to run it?

[KyadCK]

They have the BIOS to run it now. So provided the site you order from had it's stock roll over between now and then, yes.

 

If no one ordered anything and you're getting stock from July, then no.

 

Worst case you can always email your vendor and ask when they got the latest shipment of whatever board you want to buy, or you can email AMD and they'll send you a cheap APU to upgrade BIOS with and return.

[Mistio]

This is interesting. 
I recall I saw some documentation where mobo manufacturers 'colluded' with a chip maker than shall not be named and asked them to change sockets more often in order to launch new products. They claimed it is cheaper to make a new mobo rather than offer support for multiple years. 

 

I am happy to see buying the best and latest is optional and not mandatory. 

[Sir Beregond]

14 hours ago, KyadCK said:

They have the BIOS to run it now. So provided the site you order from had it's stock roll over between now and then, yes.

 

If no one ordered anything and you're getting stock from July, then no.

 

Worst case you can always email your vendor and ask when they got the latest shipment of whatever board you want to buy, or you can email AMD and they'll send you a cheap APU to upgrade BIOS with and return.

 

Good to know thanks!

 

Yeah I am coming from a 4790k and planning for Zen 3 early next year so was worried if I needed to do a BIOS update, not like I have a Zen 2 part lying around.