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.

[kzampog]

I bought my X370 Taichi in 2017 trusting future proofness promises that included 2020, and I also went through all the hoops the original author mentions...

[lfx64]

I have a X370 board and I disagree. We've had Zen, Zen+ and Zen 2. A Zen 2 chip will last ages now. I just think some AMD users are becoming spoilt. Don't ruin a good thing by harping on AMD to give you more than they already do. My 3700X will last me years and I've already had my motherboard for two and half years already. By the time I need a new CPU my board will likely be 5+ years old.

Nobody forces people into early adoption of new platforms. X370 is still good. If you want to upgrade that often then you're almost beyond the typical consumer and should be buying new boards anyway if you're wanting to buy new chips every few years. There are limitations to X370 and we've had lots of time with this chipset. It's time to stop being greedy and either A) stick with Zen 2 - which is more than powerful enough not to bottleneck modern high-end GPUs - or B) get a new board and a new Zen 3 chip and keep the old setup as a spare or sell it.

[john1000]

Since Zen 3's announcement, I've been doing Google searches on x370 & Zen3 and I'm surprised on the number of people talking about X370 and hoping for Zen 3 compatibility.  I read WCCFTech's article on the announcement and in the second paragraph, he indicates that motherboard "manufacturers have independently confirmed that even some 300 series boards would be supported through a BETA BIOS."

I think that's encouraging.  If my motherboards get BIOS support, I'd upgrade my 1800x to a 5800x and my 2700x to a 5950x.

[black_zion]

Not going to happen. AMD has already confirmed they will not give AIBs the required code in order to implement Zen 3 support on 300 series chipsets.

[hardcoregames_]

The problem with the older motherboards, the BIOS chip is 16MB and there is not enough room. The X570 come with a 32MB chip which does have more room, and the B550 also has the larger 32MB chip.

MSI has released some MAX line boards with B450 and X470 with more CPU compatibility as they have the larger 32MB chips on them,

[john1000]

They changed their mind on 400 series, maybe they will for 300 series as well.  MSI had launched a bunch of Max motherboards with 32MB BIOS sizes promising future compatibility with all AM4 CPU's back in 2019.  I think that issue had a fair bit to do with the reversal of AMD to change their minds in supporting 400 series boards.  

By the way, one of those Max motherboards was the A320M-A Pro Max.  Maybe that will be the only 300 series chipset to be supported by Zen 3.

[ajlueke]

The major problem is a lot of the X370 motherboards weren't designed for the power draw of the newer processors.  

AMD probably feels some users would burn up their boards.  The X570 boards are better quality pretty much all around.

[tivook]

Stop spreading false information.

Many 370x boards support the 3950x processor, which has the same TDP as the new 5950x top processor.

In other words, it has nothing to do with the power draw, it's just AMD who's not willing to make it happen.

[ajlueke]

Supported and "a good idea" are two different things entirely.  The VRM quality of the different AM4 chipsets is something that has been document pretty extensively.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d9_E3h8bLp-TXr-0zTJFqqVxdCR9daIVNyMatydkpFA/edit#gid=611478281

All the 105W TDP AM4 CPUs will try to use up to just over 140A across the VRMs without precision boost overdrive even enabled.  You can see, that for many of the X370 and even quite a few X470, that isn't a great idea without major airflow.  Sure, there are some good X370 boards, like the top line AsRock, or ASUS, but the X570 perform perfectly up to 200A from pretty much every manufacturer.  If you are AMD, you'd likely want to avoid any customer issues with performance throttling by limiting the new CPUs to the much better quality VRMs of the X570 series.

[tivook]

Dude, if there was ANY risk whatsoever with using the 3950x with a 370x board AMD would never have allowed it.

Ever heard of lawsuits in the US? They would never risk anything unless the board could handle it.

You don't need sky high headroom to feel safe, if it's within spec it's within spec.

Also, people are asking for support for the top boards, Crosshair VI and similar items.

To my knowledge, Crosshair VI has way more VRM capacity than that, the Crosshair VI Extreme has even more.

[ajlueke]

Who said anything about risk?  As I said above, the issue is likely more concerning disappointing performance numbers or stability issues.  Since many of the X370 boards are rank garbage (as in the spreadsheet above) it is easier to just exclude them to ensure everyone has a great experience.

As I also stated, SOME of the X370 weren't junk.  The ASRock Taichi, and Fata1ty Professional Gaming, as well as the Crosshair VI Extreme all got top marks...but that is about it.  Meanwhile, just about every single X570 board hits a 200A load with no cooling required. 

[lolo7777777]

the taichi can be flashed into x470 bios

[lolo7777777]

The ASROCK X370 TAICHI can even be flashed into an x470, meaning this is totally doable

[hardcoregames_]

lolo7777777 wrote:

The ASROCK X370 TAICHI can even be flashed into an x470, meaning this is totally doable

The will not solve the underlying problem of the older chipset.

[john1000]

If one can flash an ASROCK X370 with X470 Firmware and everything works as expected, then there is no underlying problem with the older chipset.

From googling around the internet, it appears that X470 & X370 chipsets are functionally identical.  This lends credence to lolo7777777's comment that an ASROCK X370 could use an ASROCK X470 BIOS/Firmware (I don't have an ASROCK X370 motherboard, so I can't verify the claim that it could be flashed with an X470 BIOS.)

I recall that when X470 first came out, it was advertised with new features like PBO.  Those features were added to X370 later on.

[hardcoregames_]

if you want to run a zen 3 CPU spend some $ on an X570 motherboard

[lolo7777777]

Dude, x470 will be compatible and many boards (like the taichi) are exactly the same as their x370 counterparts, it's plain dumb not to do that

[hardcoregames_]

The small BIOS capacity makes it impossible to have every CPU out there work in a given board. The X570 has a much larger BIOS chip at 32MB so it can handle a wider range of APUs and CPUs.

[pokester]

AS Rock announced they would not have to drop any support on their 16gb boards. MSI is only dropping first gen support. MSI has just made the interface a bit more generic to save space as they already had done last gen on the 16gb boards. That whole bios size thing was just an excuse initially for the reason to not support 4xx boards.  So realistically at this point losing that 1st gen support is likely a non-factor for most anyone. 

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

AS Rock announced they would not have to drop any support on their 16gb boards. MSI is only dropping first gen support. MSI has just made the interface a bit more generic to save space as they already had done last gen on the 16gb boards. That whole bios size thing was just an excuse initially for the reason to not support 4xx boards.  So realistically at this point losing that 1st gen support is likely a non-factor for most anyone. 

MSI has new X470 Max boards with a 32MB BIOS which can more or less handle any CPU for AM4

[lolo7777777]

just dropping support for low-end apus (first gen even had some A10 cpus), all first gen cpus, and OEM only cpus, would make up more than enough for support

[hardcoregames_]

lolo7777777 wrote:

just dropping support for low-end apus (first gen even had some A10 cpus), all first gen cpus, and OEM only cpus, would make up more than enough for support

dropping CPU support only reduces sales as many around the planet are not hyper rich

[pokester]

Many of those cpus at this point can only be purchased second hand. So making room for a new chip sure makes more sense than holding on to support for old process. After all if you have an older CPU you don't have to update the bios. 

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

Many of those cpus at this point can only be purchased second hand. So making room for a new chip sure makes more sense than holding on to support for old process. After all if you have an older CPU you don't have to update the bios. 

While MSI Max motherboards are available, at the end of the day, I am not worried about my B350 too much which is the board my Athlon 3000G is parked,

I am slowly putting a machine together for computer chess and the 35W Athlon 3000G will keep operating costs down. I might put extra disks in the machine for backups or archives.

[pokester]

I have 2 tomahawk 16gb boards and one tomahawk max with 32. It is the only difference between the boards is the bios size. That board is I think losing it's 1st gen support but keeping the nicer looking full featured bios. Time will tell when it actually comes out. 

[hardcoregames_]

I have an Athlon 3000G I use for flashing BIOS on boards with M-FLASH when I need to update a board BIOS

So far this CPU has been recognized so no problem

[pokester]

A lot of it comes down to what AMD allows. There were 4xx boards that got support for pcie 4 in a beta bios that got pulled too. There is no reason a that PCIE 4 support that a B550 board has could not exist on on x4xx boards too. All that support is in the Ryzen processor not the B550 chipset, unlike on X570. They just don't want to offer that support. Same thing with the announcement today of the better performance with Radeon 6xxx, with Ryzen 5000 on X570 and B550. If B550 can do it then so can the older boards. The support is in the processor. So if you can't do it, it is because they don't want you to and make you buy a new board. I think it sucks that AMD only agreed to bring support for zen 3 to the 4xx boards. Plenty of 3xx boards should have zero issue supporting it too. AMD made the statement about compatibility moving forward about both motherboard lines and when the decided to give support after all on 4xx they seem to have gotten praise when the tech sites should have said why not 3xx too. Instead everyone was happy we got what we got. I absoulutely know some boards will have issues with some new processors. Some of the 320 boards already did have issues with released processor. They should however let the motherboard manufacturers decide what gets updated and which processor will be supported per board instead of just a blanket no on a lot of boards that could run the processors. Regardless that is not going to happen. And yes it sucks. 

[barons]

Im just here to suggest AMD to push for x370 compatibility, at least on high end mobos like Crosshair VI Hero.

High end mobos has been proven to be fully compatible and stable even with zen2 processors, I got one and it is working perfectly.

I kinda feel insulted by them refusing to do such a clearly possible thing. I'd like to buy zen3, but I simply won't because I'm not idiot enough to spend 350$ for a new motherboard that will last just for this gen. I know an insane amount of users in my same condition. They are not going to buy zen3 if they are forced to spend hundreds of $ in a new useless motherboard. I repeat, THIS IS AN INSULT.

Please AMD, be smart, make zen3 compatible with x370 or go lose easy money. It is simple as that.

[oile]

I absolutely quote you. Bring agesa 1.1.0.0 on x370 High end mobo. ECS did it for a A320 mobo! 

[akex]

https://www.overclock.net/threads/rog-crosshair-vi-overclocking-thread.1624603/page-2282#post-286650... 

No comment .....

[pokester]

Nice share! I have never seen any reason not to leave it up to the motherboard makers to decide what they can support. I don't doubt that some boards may not be able to support some of the higher power high core count processors with possible stability issues due to weak VRMs on many budget boards. That being said 65w processors should not be a problem. 

Nice find I hope they don't make them pull this bios like when PCIe 4 was supported on 4xx boards proving they can do it and AMD made them pull it. 

[oile]

More and more proof is emerging about ryzen 5000 cpu on a320 without problems. Bring the support officially or with a disclaimer! 

[black_zion]

The problem then becomes how do you deal with all the PO'd people who bought into a dead socket with an X570/B550 motherboard just because everything you've said for the last several months is "We will not give the board partners the code to implement Zen 3 support on 300 series motherboards"? Or how do you even justify that you suddenly reversed course?

[hardcoregames_]

X570 is not a dead socket but it is evidently the last of the DDR4 boards as no new chipsets are on the radar

Ryzen 5000 processors offer a last chance for a more powerful CPU if needed

[tivook]

By giving each manufacturer the option of releasing an unofficial beta bios, preferably for the high end boards such as the very top of the X370 lines.

Expensive gear deserves special treatment.

If you buy a top of the line Mercedes AMG car you expect a little extra from Mercedes in terms of support and updates compared to if you bought their cheapest A-klass.

Same here, if you buy a Asus Crosshair VI that costed several hundred euro like I did I expect more support than the ones who bought a 65 euro board.

Especially since it's known that the Crosshair VI VRM can handle wayyyy more than anything you can throw at it in terms of stock CPU performance.

[Jepalo]

I have the Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming K7 mobo. I would also like to receive AGESA for Zen 3. Nothing but fair for 2020. My English is not good, I am Brazilian. Thanks

[jayfang]

In my case AMD may lose a sale.

I'm currently on Ryzen 1800X and X370 motherboard.   
For me the price of Ryzen 3700X is close to Ryzen 5800X, thus makes no sense to invest in 3700X. 
If I can run 5800X on my existing motherboard then it's a great upgrade
If I need to replace the motherboard then the Intel 12th Gen is looking strong
And also I would be afraid that AM5 gen 1 mobo's get abandoned - so would not be keen to wait