General Discussions

[john1000]

We were the early adopters and pioneers for the AM4 socket. We bought with the promise of support throughout the AM4 socket life (*). As long as future processors were electrically compatible, we were going to be able to upgrade them with our existing AM4 X370 motherboards.

As pioneers, we had to work through a lot of pain to get to stability and I went through an endless stream of bios updates, RMAing my CPU (in the case of compiling code & the “marginality” problem), and system hang’s when idle running Linux (c6 cstate bug.) I worked though all of these problems and now have two stable x370 systems at home.

Some people will say, X370 is so old, why would I even expect AMD to support it? I’ve had these motherboards for less than 3 years, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable for them to support these boards for 3 years from the date they were replaced by X470. Heck, there’s hardly any difference between X370 & X470. What ever system AMD will be using to support X470 for Zen3 will work fine for X370.

To AMD: My complaints and others should be viewed as a compliment. The fact that so many people want to upgrade to your next product release says how much market perception has changed over the last 3 years.

So, show some final love to your X370 pioneers.  Give us Zen3.

(*) This might not be technically true, but my own interpretation of past events relating to the initial release reviews and marketing from AMD.  If you disagree, I will not argue the point.

[black_zion]

Sadly they're not going to do it else they would have announced it back with they said they'd do it for the X470/B450. Heck, it's going to be interesting to see if Renoir, which is Zen 2 based, support even makes it to the 300 series since they depend on the more budget oriented B series due to the lack of display ports on most X series boards. We got shafted and it seems the only reprieve may be if a class action lawsuit is filed...

[pokester]

I get that there really are some models that just are not good candidates for the new processors. Not just because of bios size. The 3xx series boards had a lot of models with underwhelming VRMs that likely don't fit the bill. However instead of just not allowing them to be updated they really should leave it up to the MB maker. Heck even if you can't support the whole series even the 65 watt parts would be a big upgrade for many still on 1st gen Ryzen. 

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

I get that there really are some models that just are not good candidates for the new processors. Not just because of bios size. The 3xx series boards had a lot of models with underwhelming VRMs that likely don't fit the bill. However instead of just not allowing them to be updated they really should leave it up to the MB maker. Heck even if you can't support the whole series even the 65 watt parts would be a big upgrade for many still on 1st gen Ryzen. 

Some of the X470 boards had some cruddy regulators too

[ajlueke]

I think that is the strongest argument against AMD's approach of excluding the X370.  Looking at the data, many of the X470 boards are equally bad implementations to the X370, and AMD is perfectly fine rolling UEFI updates for those.

[ajlueke]

I get that.  But we are sort of on the other end of the "Freesync flicker" problem with motherboards.  With monitors AMD, didn't really regulate what was called "Freesync" vs just adaptive sync and a lot of users had bad experiences with freesync monitors.  When NVidia then came through and tested them thoroughly for those that could be called "Gsync compatible" not many cut the proverbial mustard.  Our conclusion was that AMD should have done a better job weeding out bad implementations from the start.  I think that is what is going on here.  There are some strong X370 boards that are being left out in the cold by doing that, but AMD must feel that is better than just pushing new UEFI to everyone.

The downside for AMD, is they are ensuring that no one with an X370 will upgrade.  Since upgrading to a Ryzen 5000 series requires a new motherboard purchase, most on X370 will wait until Zen4, which will likely be on a new socket and require a new motherboard anyway.

[pokester]

Which is exactly why it will cost AMD some sales, likely not a lot. There are those with X370 and some B350 boards that could upgrade if allowed. It is considered a beta bios use at your own risk kind of thing on 4xx series too and AMD already did that in the past on the 3xx series with Zen2. Again I say let the motherboard makers decide which of their boards are capable or not. It is kind of now win situation as someone will not be happy for sure no matter what. 

I absolutely agree that AMD's lack of validation is an ongoing issue. They very obviously don't have the oversight and validation with their partners that Nvidia for sure and even Intel do. This is Motherboards, GPUs and monitors.

One thing I found very odd myself is that my FreeSync monitor never worked right with my RX 580, it didn't work right with Vega 56 which I returned and it didn't work right with Navi which I also returned. However it works just fine with my RTX 260 in every way. This is something I have seen many comment on in the green forum about their monitors finally working right with the green cards. 

Now over the weekend though I was reminded of a game (Battlefront 2) I like that runs like crap in DX 12 vs 11, on my RTX 2070 super. Why that game runs so poorly in DX12 on team green is beyond me. I can tell you it ran fantastic in DX 12 on my RX 580.  So each camp does have its issues regardless of what the extreme fan boys on both sides say. I will say though that by comparison my issues with my green team cards are few and far between. 

I bring this all up as this to me is why supporting what they could support and not just a blanket NO brings a lot of good will back to team red. Especially remembering that those early 3xx MB users dealt with their own nightmares for a while after launch. In 3 years time I have gone from I would not even look at competition cards or cpus vs the competition as AMD has done so well by me, to returning my x370 board and cpu and going with an i7 several years ago because I wasn't dealing with stability issues till they got it fixed. I had not had an Intel CPU since a 386 before that. Then buying the RX 580 which had a ton of stability and features not working right and even now won't load the 2020 drivers, and having to return my attempts at using Vega and Navi. 

While AMD has done beyond great with this last couple rounds of Ryzen they still have a ways to go to earn back the business they have lost with a lot of users. The more they find ways to help users upgrade without spending additional money on motherboards for instance goes a hugely long way in restoring that faith. 

Then the last thing. While I have not had a 5xx board I do read the posts here all time and my gut is that it has issues likely do to it being the first PCIe 4 board. All the complaints of stability can't all be other components. You just don't see the same complaints on 3xx anymore and never really on 4xx chipsets. So I am not so confident that 5xx really is the most stable platform, it just supports every feature.

[ajlueke]

My X370 motherboard supports Zen2 fully, as in the UEFI is official release as opposed to beta.  

I haven't had a lot of the issues you are discussing myself.  My server PC currently has an RX 460 installed, and I can run the 2020 drivers without issue.  Both my X370 board and X470 board have been great, nothing to complain about.  I likely will not be getting any X570 boards as by the time any GPU needs PCIe 4.0 levels of bandwidth, PCIe 5.0 will already be out.  I never had the freesync flicker issue either, but my display was ultimately certified by NVidia as "Gsync compatible" and pretty much every display that made that list was flicker free.  I'm not sure about Ryzen 5000, since my X370 won't support it the point is moot, and I'm not sure I like the idea of a one way flash on my X470.  

One thing I think feels a bit disingenuous about all this are performance metrics.  AMD claimed, when Zen2 launched, that the massively improved power handling of the X570 boards improved overclocking and boost clocks.  I have never seen any data that bore that out.  While X570 does indeed have better VRMs, does that actually lead to more performance?  It may lead to better thermals or even better stability, but there really isn't any data on this at all.  Partners likely put a lot of money into those higher end redesigns, but users likely felt they could skip them since AMD couldn't actually prove that buying the newer motherboards mattered.  So now it does feel like AMD is artificially trying to push those upgrades by dangling an actual performance improvement in the form of a Ryzen 5000 series.   

[pokester]

I am sure if I had held onto my x370 it likely would have been fine in 6 months. After also suffering with my RX580 I wasn't taking that chance. Too much money when another solution had excellent stability reviews and I could use the all the components on that board I already bought as well. Never an issue with my 3 B450 boards stability wise. They have been great.  The RX 580 still will not run without black screens at default settings. You have to raise the power limit slider to max and run a custom fan profile. This is extremely common with RX 580 and 590's. The 4xx variants didn't seem to have this problem, I'm guessing that 5xx just pushed Polaris too far and or the bios just would not give the card enough power. 

The driver not loading is complained about a ton here on Polaris and the 2020 drivers. I had the issue and Kingfish is the one that told me he had the problem to a recommended going back to the last 2019 driver which is fine. Then Colesdav told me about the how to use the 2019 adrenaline interface and just using device manager to load the 2020 driver only part. Then I have also found just running just the driver through device manager install and using Afterburner honestly gives the best set it and forget it experience. No idea why so many of us have this issue but it did it on Window 1907 and on a clean install of Win 2004. 

I agree that the better VRMs at best give better stability and thermals. I highly doubt it would give better performance. If it does by comparison then prior designs had the wrong VRMs to begin with. I would guess that also you could test between an X470 an x570 to check this. I have seen NOBODY point this out. So I would say you are absolutely correct. 

For the vast majority of users there is no real life improvement that bares out going to a PCIe board over a board you already have. Very few workloads benefit in a meaningful way. So yes saying it is a forced upgrade IHMO is absolutely correct.  Especially when it is like playing Russian Roulette getting a good stable board. You and I may be lucky in getting good boards. I did my research and the B450 MSI Tomahawk had been out over a year with stellar reviews before I bought so I was pretty sure I was getting a good board and I did. That being said a couple of the early MSI x570 boards had bad stability issues and ultimately were replaced by other models. So saying go MSI because the last gen had good boards doesn't necessarily translate to the next gen.

This kinda goes back to the validation and oversight thing we discussed earlier. 

My monitor finally made the G-Sync compatible list too. However it worked just the same from day one that the green team began supporting FreeSync. I find it ironic that my monitor likely had more validation testing from Nvidia than it did from AMD. 

[jesaul]

I've already changed c6h to x570 taichi. No one is you

[ajlueke]

I have an X470 in my main machine actually.  Why upgrade now out of curiosity?  Not interested in DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 that will likely launch with Zen 4 and the AM5 socket? 

[black_zion]

Remember the 1800X? Rated as a 95w TDP processor by AMD, but could draw up to 141w of power, and I haven't heard of any issues of even A320 motherboards having issues with it. Given the enhanced manufacturing node, I don't see a problem with the X300 series motherboards being able to handle any 8C/16T processor from the Zen 3 range, though I would definitely limit it to X370 boards with USB BIOS Flashback.

[pokester]

I do see your point and in most cases agree. I do however remember reading many complaints of people trying to run A320 with 8 and higher core cpus and having instability. It was a pretty low end chipset and I would say your mileage would definitely vary.  I would however think that B350 and X370 should not be an issue in most cases. Again let the motherboard makers decide as far as that goes it should be their decision on A320 IMHO too.  

[black_zion]

Thing about 320 and 350 boards is that they catered to the budget crowd, and that crowd would be more likely to grab a highly discounted Ryzen 3000 series CPU since they're not going to be rocking high end video cards or do heavy CPU workloads generally, not with the B550 catering to that market so much better, and even then it's situational dependent on if a GPU upgrade would generate more performance over a CPU upgrade.

[pokester]

I would agree that for most A320 users a 3600x is likely about as high as they would need or want to go. 

There is no doubt it depends on use case. I think many gamers especially average to casual gamers think they need more CPU than they do. It really is high refresh 1080p and some 1440p that benefits from the fastest CPUs the most. People like me with a 4K 60hz tv or even my 1440p 75hz monitor are mostly GPU dependent and CPU choice isn't making that much of a difference. As soon as you enter the world of high refresh gaming that extra cpu power can really help but that is still a small part of the gaming crowd albeit getting bigger. 

[ajlueke]

"Partners likely put a lot of money into those higher end redesigns, but users likely felt they could skip them since AMD couldn't actually prove that buying the newer motherboards mattered. "

Looks like the statement I made seems to be true.

https://wccftech.com/asus-not-supporting-amd-ryzen-5000-cpus-on-x470-motherboards-suggests-x570-b550-upgrade/

ASUS isn't going to push Zen3 support for the X470 either.  I think AMD is caught between the users and the board partners.  The board makers spent quite a bit on these high end MB designs only to have users keep dropping CPUs into the X370 and X470.  ASUS is flat out just pushing X570 now. 

[black_zion]

Bah, was just about to post that, but I still stand by my statement that the Ryzen 5000 series shouldn't exist, especially not if the other motherboard manufacturers axe X470 support as well. Why drop $300+ into a dead socket?

[ajlueke]

I guess it serves as a preview of what we can expect with AM5.  Even if Zen 4 is more like a Zen+ bump, most of us will be seeing 20% IPC increases.  But the larger issue is again, you don't need a top tier motherboard to get the best out of Zen2 or likely Zen3 either.  rhallock‌ initially stated that the better power handling in X570 would give better overclocking and boosts, but that just never materialized.  The CPUs are already so voltage limited they run nearly at max with the included stock cooler.

[black_zion]

The default voltage curves are set so high it limits automatic performance, we saw that with the CTR results as well as manual overclocking, and there's not really any way AMD can rectify this except by having CTR be an official tool, rebrand it AMD Boost Optimizer, integrate it into and Ryzen Master...Maybe AM5 will include additional sensors which detect instability and are able to adjust voltage curves over time to match the capabilities of the processor instead of the one size fits all they have now.

[pokester]

Agree! Unless Zen3 proves to be that different in the end than Zen2, it is pointless in spending extra thinking you will get more overclocking out of a better board. I think it is good to get a board with good VRMs from a stability standpoint. 

I have to say though if I did buy a current gen board I would be more likely to go B550. I see all these discussions about only x570 being compatible and not mentioning B550. Since day one that X570 launched there have been a lot of complaints on some of the boards. I don't see that on the b550 boards plus I really like that they are passively cooled. 

[pokester]

In an update to that story:

Update: In a reply to Computerbase, ASUS has stated that they do plan on offering support for its X470 & B450 lineup. However, the specific model was not confirmed if it would be supported or not. It's still very shady of ASUS's marketing team to suggest users to upgrade to 500-series boards and telling them that there won't be support for 400-series motherboards.

Luckily MSI said from the start they would support it on my B450. They even advertised it. I think this was a big part of why AMD reversed course on the topic to begin with. 

[hardcoregames_]

MSI at least has some MAX variants of B450 and X470 which will allow for AGESA 1.1.0.0 and Ryzen 5000 series support.

As a developer I could say that a BIOS, DMI, ACPI and UEFI can squeeze into a rather small space. Extra features is what is troubling with the BIOS environment.

[pokester]

Honestly even the regular bios is big enough to support all of 3xxx and 5xxx. They already eliminated the more fancy graphical interface on the non max boards and dropped 1st gen support. This would be no different this time around. 

[ajlueke]

I'm sure there will be a big delay in availability.  Need to allow time after the Zen3 launch for the board partners to sell as many motherboards as they can, then roll out the updates and allow AMD to sell CPUs to the X470/B450 crowd who are unwilling to upgrade.

[pokester]

A delay is likely IMHO too. 

I will be interested to to see if a year from now for instance if MSI is still making the B450 Tomahawk Max board. I know it is still currently in production. If they prove to be perfectly fine with Zen 3, they would still be a great value choice for the like of Zen 3 as well. 

[black_zion]

With Zen 4's announcement coming next year and arrival in early 2022, nothing Socket AM4 related will be made for much longer, probably not past July, since it will be a new socket and all that jazz.

[pokester]

Good point, I was just more or less thinking if some of the B450 boards will be made as long as other the other DDR4 AM4 boards are still made. 

[hardcoregames_]

black_zion wrote:

With Zen 4's announcement coming next year and arrival in early 2022, nothing Socket AM4 related will be made for much longer, probably not past July, since it will be a new socket and all that jazz.

AM4 will not disappear overnight. It will be years before DDR5 comes down in price before it can overtake DDR4 in consumer rigs.

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

Honestly even the regular bios is big enough to support all of 3xxx and 5xxx. They already eliminated the more fancy graphical interface on the non max boards and dropped 1st gen support. This would be no different this time around. 

There is no real reason why all AM4 processors cannot run on my MSI X570-A PRO

I do agree the Athlon 3000G would be hard pressed

[hardcoregames_]

I tend to buy new motherboards more often than processors.

The X570 is a good platform for gaming and so far no game is unplayable.

[john1000]

At work, my company purchased an X570/Ryzen 3900x/Nvidia GTX 2060 Super workstation for me.  I've never been able to get the GTX 2060 working reliably with it on Linux and had to purchase a GT1030 card in the meantime.  It looks like some incompatibility with X570.  You can read the saga here:  Random Xid 61 and Xorg lock-up - Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums .  A lot of people have been reporting this.  Most fixed it by going back to a Pascal based Nvidia card or replacing their motherboard with a B450 or X470.  Ultimately, it's probably a software issue since I don't think Windows people have been reporting these kinds of issues.

Besides that, it's been a very stable and fast system.

[hardcoregames_]

I have seen widespread problems with some distributions of Linux on Ryzen.  I only have a GTX 1060 available but I only used Linux server which is a console UI only and that does not use a GUI so integrated is fine.

[john1000]

On an episode of Broken Silicon (from Moore's Law is Dead) published on May 26th says he's hearing Zen 3 will come to select X370 boards. You can find the podcast here:  Intel 10900K v R9 3900XT, Unreal Engine 5 v Fanboys | A Tale of Two Flame Wars | Broken Silicon 50 -...  and that bit starts at 14:13.

I've been listening to his stuff for over a year now and he's pretty good at finding these things out.

[black_zion]

I wouldn't doubt some of the OEMs would try to take the BIOS provided to them for the X470 boards and attempt to engineer it for their X370 models, at least the high end ones. It would improve their standing in the motherboard market hierarchy, though at only four manufacturers it's not like there's much choice to begin with. Even then it's going to be questionable as to if you should actually use it given AMD's lack of support...

[tivook]

I definitely think X370 or at least the very top models from each manufacturer should get Support for Zen 3.

Why not AMD? I mean really, give us enthusiasts the option at least with no flashback.

The whole reason I stuck with AMD all these years is because of socket lifespan and the fact that you could upgrade cpus without replacing the motherboard and in these dire times where the enviroment is the number one issue how on earth could you stop people from continuing using their old motherboards when it's technically possible to support Zen 3?

I'd understand if it wasn't possible but technically it IS possible so please don't become Intel or you'll suffer the same fate.

[oile]

I have bought a Crosshair VI and a x370 taichi. I've suffered all kind of problems at launch with my 1600. Still today with a 3600 I have a crippled bios with no per ccx overclock and same settings in multiple places wich may or may not override.

On crosshair VI I do have spi bios flashback on board without cpu installed.

AMD would simply have to enable a pciid check bypass to have ryzen 4000 only bios on 16mb x370 bios.

 not only it is possible but I demand it. 

I have bought as an early pioneer being promised in 2017 support through 2020. As I'm a lawyer, I would sue AMD if they don't respect their own original marketing.

Give the option of a beta bios with desclaimer or even a beta agesa usable by modders at user's own risks. 

[jesaul]

Well, I own top ASUS board C6H. If it will not support next Zen generation, I will go to second hand market for 3700x or 3900x and will not bring any more money to AMD and partners in 4 years.

[roco_smith]

At least they should give support for the top of the line X370 boards , for the AM4 socket . When AM5 socket it the market the upgrade to a new motherboard and CPU will be more pleasant 

[niki4xxxxx]

Indeed, there is no reason x370 should be left without Zen 3. There is no sense in buying new mobo just for pci4, but buying new Zen3 instead of used Zen2 is profitable for both clients and AMD.

Asus Roh Crosshair VI Extreme / Hero are worth to be able to run Zen3. Maybe other mobos as well, but it's just I use C6E )

[mito1172]

I bought c6h trusting AMD but amd cheated on us