How AMD sabotages itself & both sides of the story (B450 / B550 Chipsets & Zen 3 Bios)
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Date: 2020-05-12
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Comments and reviews: 10
Derek
So I understand the idea that making a branching bios is difficult, you've actually made me reconsider my position on it. Especially so for companies that you say, may only have one employee working on it. Allow me to attempt a couple counterpoints though. Correct me if I'm wrong but if a board partner chose to have one or just a couple people working on the bios would it not be those particular companies' own fault? Why should the end-user pay for companies' decisions to under-staff? Also, you imply that the end-user would just mess it up anyway and update it to the wrong bios. While I generally share your pessimistic view of general users, again, I feel like that too falls to board manufacturers and AMD to properly educate their consumers on their products. You're always gonna have people that screw everything up because they couldn't be bothered to read even a single paragraph. I would bet most people only do bios updates if they know what they're doing and are comfortable with it, plus they'd at least have to have a little knowledge to even know to look for that in the first place right? Then If they know enough to understand they need a bios update, or that they may need one, if they weren't comfortable or knowledgable, they'd probably ask a friend or family member that did know to help them. I think most of the people that are upset with this are more of the people that bought specific boards (B450 Max) exclusively for future upgrades with Zen 3. I'll admit, I bought an MSI Tomahawk Max because I thought I'd have Zen 3 support. To be clear though, while I'm disappointed, I am in no way pissed of at MSI or AMD. I just think it's unfortunate because other than the driver issues some users were experiencing with the 5000 series GPUs, It feels like AMD has just been generally kicking ass for the last couple years, picking up steam along the way and building up a lot of goodwill. Obviously, there has been a few hick-ups along the way (5600xt launch anyone?). I don't think any rational people would be upset if AMD said it will take up to six months or more to create an acceptable level of Zen 3 support and performance but only on select 4th series Boards so customers who want to keep their qualifying B450 boards will need to be patient or upgrade to a 500 series board. or something similar. Even if they came out and said there would be performance issues or certain features would be locked out at first until they got the kinks worked out. I'm no expert by any means here and I defer to your experience, I just feel like maybe you were placing more blame on the consumer in that section than I would have thought you would. Then again I've been up all night long writing and my brain is seriously feeling burnt right now so maybe I completely missed the point and got lost in the plot myself. Forgive my rambling ass overworked brain's vomit of a comment hahaha.
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So I understand the idea that making a branching bios is difficult, you've actually made me reconsider my position on it. Especially so for companies that you say, may only have one employee working on it. Allow me to attempt a couple counterpoints though. Correct me if I'm wrong but if a board partner chose to have one or just a couple people working on the bios would it not be those particular companies' own fault? Why should the end-user pay for companies' decisions to under-staff? Also, you imply that the end-user would just mess it up anyway and update it to the wrong bios. While I generally share your pessimistic view of general users, again, I feel like that too falls to board manufacturers and AMD to properly educate their consumers on their products. You're always gonna have people that screw everything up because they couldn't be bothered to read even a single paragraph. I would bet most people only do bios updates if they know what they're doing and are comfortable with it, plus they'd at least have to have a little knowledge to even know to look for that in the first place right? Then If they know enough to understand they need a bios update, or that they may need one, if they weren't comfortable or knowledgable, they'd probably ask a friend or family member that did know to help them. I think most of the people that are upset with this are more of the people that bought specific boards (B450 Max) exclusively for future upgrades with Zen 3. I'll admit, I bought an MSI Tomahawk Max because I thought I'd have Zen 3 support. To be clear though, while I'm disappointed, I am in no way pissed of at MSI or AMD. I just think it's unfortunate because other than the driver issues some users were experiencing with the 5000 series GPUs, It feels like AMD has just been generally kicking ass for the last couple years, picking up steam along the way and building up a lot of goodwill. Obviously, there has been a few hick-ups along the way (5600xt launch anyone?). I don't think any rational people would be upset if AMD said it will take up to six months or more to create an acceptable level of Zen 3 support and performance but only on select 4th series Boards so customers who want to keep their qualifying B450 boards will need to be patient or upgrade to a 500 series board. or something similar. Even if they came out and said there would be performance issues or certain features would be locked out at first until they got the kinks worked out. I'm no expert by any means here and I defer to your experience, I just feel like maybe you were placing more blame on the consumer in that section than I would have thought you would. Then again I've been up all night long writing and my brain is seriously feeling burnt right now so maybe I completely missed the point and got lost in the plot myself. Forgive my rambling ass overworked brain's vomit of a comment hahaha.
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MrPhuct
Afterthought: Was browsing through digikey looking at the most common brands of rom ic's (eeprom? flash?) used by mobo manufacturers. I have no idea what actual part numbers they use (yeah sure I could watch AHOC and find out but...) Even the cheapest ones- that would actually work, would still cost millions... assuming you're buying parts in packages of 1,000 peices. The trouble I see with that though: it's roughly the same price for 16mb and 32mb roms in bulk pricing. Quality/Performance scales with price and availability. And it appears (not saying that it actually is) that you can even get 64mb roms in almost as cheap price range. Overall I have to respectfully disagree with size limitations on Mobo vendors. It's likely an excuse because these vendors can easily buy up a series of chip from a manufacturer directly for even cheaper. So making a switch to the 32mb category would be a lateral movement not costing the vendor any money, at least not too far out of the margin to justify spending the money. At worst there would be a .5% to 1% price increase (not in any way sure about component quality though). Which after adjusting for final cost to end user would bring a 100 mobo to 105 (on average) shipped to the end user. And on that, there are even 64mb ic's that fall into the pricing category as the 16mb ic's. From the same manufacturer. And I totally get that a company like MSi or ASUS would directly source parts from a manufacturer instead of someplace like digikey or mouser, but these companies do actually reflect accurate pricing in other market sectors. I'm probably confused on this whole thing though. I'm probably not seeing what mobo vendors see. Or maybe they have to fulfill some kind of contract to get parts? And I'm also not looking at specific parts, it is possible the ic's the vendors receive might be a custom/semi custom solution.
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Afterthought: Was browsing through digikey looking at the most common brands of rom ic's (eeprom? flash?) used by mobo manufacturers. I have no idea what actual part numbers they use (yeah sure I could watch AHOC and find out but...) Even the cheapest ones- that would actually work, would still cost millions... assuming you're buying parts in packages of 1,000 peices. The trouble I see with that though: it's roughly the same price for 16mb and 32mb roms in bulk pricing. Quality/Performance scales with price and availability. And it appears (not saying that it actually is) that you can even get 64mb roms in almost as cheap price range. Overall I have to respectfully disagree with size limitations on Mobo vendors. It's likely an excuse because these vendors can easily buy up a series of chip from a manufacturer directly for even cheaper. So making a switch to the 32mb category would be a lateral movement not costing the vendor any money, at least not too far out of the margin to justify spending the money. At worst there would be a .5% to 1% price increase (not in any way sure about component quality though). Which after adjusting for final cost to end user would bring a 100 mobo to 105 (on average) shipped to the end user. And on that, there are even 64mb ic's that fall into the pricing category as the 16mb ic's. From the same manufacturer. And I totally get that a company like MSi or ASUS would directly source parts from a manufacturer instead of someplace like digikey or mouser, but these companies do actually reflect accurate pricing in other market sectors. I'm probably confused on this whole thing though. I'm probably not seeing what mobo vendors see. Or maybe they have to fulfill some kind of contract to get parts? And I'm also not looking at specific parts, it is possible the ic's the vendors receive might be a custom/semi custom solution.
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derfreak
Gamers Nexus You are way too friendly with the mainboard makers here, Steve. Being ignorant to AMD's push for Zen and supporting AM4 for a long time is partially on them to blame. Their ignorance of supporting AMD's pitch through properly does cost them both now, there were enough higher priced models which would have deserved better support and a bigger BIOS ROM from the start (AMD could and should have enforced the use of the bigger BIOS ROM, they could have sourced this quite easily back then, too, just as they have to source better smart power stages now for Intel platforms - shying away of such an investment is their lack of foresight). Especially with B450/X470 they should have seen that AMD gets traction with their product stack and considering Intel's still ongoing supply problems they should have realized by then that their AM4 board designs deserved better investments. But they didn't! From a consumer standpoint there are any reasons to be up in arms here as tech journalists like you praised B450 for Zen 2 owners who are screwed now and don't care at all about Bristol Ridge support etc. The tech press could have pressed AMD sooner on this issue, just as MSI's MAX series highlighted that there might be a problem last summer. But the tech media exonerated AMD's failure to bring B550 on time and gave bad advice. Well done helping them clearing their now less valuable inventory!
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Gamers Nexus You are way too friendly with the mainboard makers here, Steve. Being ignorant to AMD's push for Zen and supporting AM4 for a long time is partially on them to blame. Their ignorance of supporting AMD's pitch through properly does cost them both now, there were enough higher priced models which would have deserved better support and a bigger BIOS ROM from the start (AMD could and should have enforced the use of the bigger BIOS ROM, they could have sourced this quite easily back then, too, just as they have to source better smart power stages now for Intel platforms - shying away of such an investment is their lack of foresight). Especially with B450/X470 they should have seen that AMD gets traction with their product stack and considering Intel's still ongoing supply problems they should have realized by then that their AM4 board designs deserved better investments. But they didn't! From a consumer standpoint there are any reasons to be up in arms here as tech journalists like you praised B450 for Zen 2 owners who are screwed now and don't care at all about Bristol Ridge support etc. The tech press could have pressed AMD sooner on this issue, just as MSI's MAX series highlighted that there might be a problem last summer. But the tech media exonerated AMD's failure to bring B550 on time and gave bad advice. Well done helping them clearing their now less valuable inventory!
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sj33
Here's the issue for me. I upgraded my PC at the end of last year. I was always going AMD because after being stuck with no upgrade path for my Haswell CPU for over 5 years, I wanted to avoid that situation again. I saw both X570 and B450 boards and explicitely checked that B450 would have the same CPU compatibility as X570 going forward. With AMD promising to support the platform for 5 years, I had no reason to think there would be discrepancy between the X570 and B450. So I bought a B450 board as well as a cheap 2700 with the plan up upgrading to 4000 some time in the future. Obviously we now know that B450 won't be supported by 4000, which is frustrating because this was not made clear when I bought my board. Indeed, I may have looked into the X570 a little closer had I known this. AMD's biggest problem however is that B450 is still their primary mainstream chipset (however much AMD deny it) - B550 isn't available yet. AMD will be dropping support for a chipset this year that is still current. It's not the end of the world in my case - I can still upgrade to something like a 3800 or 3900 down the line and get a decent performance bump. But I can see people who bought into 3000 assuming they invested in an upgrade path feeling burned.
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Here's the issue for me. I upgraded my PC at the end of last year. I was always going AMD because after being stuck with no upgrade path for my Haswell CPU for over 5 years, I wanted to avoid that situation again. I saw both X570 and B450 boards and explicitely checked that B450 would have the same CPU compatibility as X570 going forward. With AMD promising to support the platform for 5 years, I had no reason to think there would be discrepancy between the X570 and B450. So I bought a B450 board as well as a cheap 2700 with the plan up upgrading to 4000 some time in the future. Obviously we now know that B450 won't be supported by 4000, which is frustrating because this was not made clear when I bought my board. Indeed, I may have looked into the X570 a little closer had I known this. AMD's biggest problem however is that B450 is still their primary mainstream chipset (however much AMD deny it) - B550 isn't available yet. AMD will be dropping support for a chipset this year that is still current. It's not the end of the world in my case - I can still upgrade to something like a 3800 or 3900 down the line and get a decent performance bump. But I can see people who bought into 3000 assuming they invested in an upgrade path feeling burned.
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Robin
Why's no-one stepping up for 300 Chipset owners? Are we less worthy than 400 boys? Arbitrary limitations. I thought we werent fans of those...? Also, claiming AMD insinuated Chipset & Socket were the same thing... they didn't; they weren't even going to bring Zen2 to 300's. On the '2020 promise' - It doesn't matter if it was until , through or at least , Zen 3 _is_ coming to AM4. AM4 just got 2 new CPUs. There will be more CPUs throughout this year, maybe even next year on AM4. Am I a fanbois? No. If 300/400 _can_ technically run Zen 3, then AMD shouldn't be preventing it, nor should they be doing 3rd Party's dirty work and excusing the lack of support from them, if that's what's happening. If however there _are_ technical reasons why it wont be supported, such as BIOS teams being just one guy, and BIOS chips being too small, or even the boards themselves carrying low-rent components... then that needs to be recognised as a legitimate limiting factor. If the actual problem here is with MSI's marketing claims, and it looks like it is, then the backlash should be directed at MSI. That backlash should probably be held off until someone has spoken to MSI and found out whether they will be supporting Zen3 on their 450 boards.
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Why's no-one stepping up for 300 Chipset owners? Are we less worthy than 400 boys? Arbitrary limitations. I thought we werent fans of those...? Also, claiming AMD insinuated Chipset & Socket were the same thing... they didn't; they weren't even going to bring Zen2 to 300's. On the '2020 promise' - It doesn't matter if it was until , through or at least , Zen 3 _is_ coming to AM4. AM4 just got 2 new CPUs. There will be more CPUs throughout this year, maybe even next year on AM4. Am I a fanbois? No. If 300/400 _can_ technically run Zen 3, then AMD shouldn't be preventing it, nor should they be doing 3rd Party's dirty work and excusing the lack of support from them, if that's what's happening. If however there _are_ technical reasons why it wont be supported, such as BIOS teams being just one guy, and BIOS chips being too small, or even the boards themselves carrying low-rent components... then that needs to be recognised as a legitimate limiting factor. If the actual problem here is with MSI's marketing claims, and it looks like it is, then the backlash should be directed at MSI. That backlash should probably be held off until someone has spoken to MSI and found out whether they will be supporting Zen3 on their 450 boards.
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Matthew
So I watched the whole thing, and something that has kind of gone by the wayside is, even if you AREN'T someone who bought B450 last week and are pissed, B550 is also a dead-end, full stop. This is the end of AM4, Zen3+ or Zen4 or whatever comes out in 2021 will need an AM5 board, especially because of DDR5. And if they aren't ready to do DDR5 in 2021, they're REALLY boned, because now 2021 boards are a dead-end too. Histrionics and previous bold claims aside, we're already talking about two generations of dead-end boards up and down the product stack (because B450 had to play double duty as the mainstream board for two processor series), with the possibility of three pending DDR5. That really would be excessive. That confusing motherboard matrix in the Best Buy that Steve alluded to is going to be the state of play in 18 months if they don't reverse course, and maybe Steve is right, that there's no real way out of it. That would just mean that AMD has really scotched it and now has to take a flogging for two years because of poor planning and the B550 delay.
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So I watched the whole thing, and something that has kind of gone by the wayside is, even if you AREN'T someone who bought B450 last week and are pissed, B550 is also a dead-end, full stop. This is the end of AM4, Zen3+ or Zen4 or whatever comes out in 2021 will need an AM5 board, especially because of DDR5. And if they aren't ready to do DDR5 in 2021, they're REALLY boned, because now 2021 boards are a dead-end too. Histrionics and previous bold claims aside, we're already talking about two generations of dead-end boards up and down the product stack (because B450 had to play double duty as the mainstream board for two processor series), with the possibility of three pending DDR5. That really would be excessive. That confusing motherboard matrix in the Best Buy that Steve alluded to is going to be the state of play in 18 months if they don't reverse course, and maybe Steve is right, that there's no real way out of it. That would just mean that AMD has really scotched it and now has to take a flogging for two years because of poor planning and the B550 delay.
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Geronimo553
I have been against AMD since 2005. Because they always released stuff that is yes cheap. But yet is never in touch with reality or demand. Like back then, it was their stuff would literally melt out of the box or they release eight core cpus when programs mostly used one core maybe two making the remaining cores pointless. It has not been until now in 2020 that AMD has brought something practical to market in both CPU and GPU topics that interests me as a gamer. Intel, in that same duration of time has done well because AMD has been so far fetched. Which left most buyers and gamers going to intel for both ease of use and reliability. Thus intel kept raising their pricing. I still enjoy intel products, however their pricing is plain ridiculous now as their competition has basically been none. However people will keep buying intel, because for the past decade they have not failed near to the levels AMD has fallen. I will now give AMD a try in 2020 and I hope they continue down this better path that most people seek in their products.
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I have been against AMD since 2005. Because they always released stuff that is yes cheap. But yet is never in touch with reality or demand. Like back then, it was their stuff would literally melt out of the box or they release eight core cpus when programs mostly used one core maybe two making the remaining cores pointless. It has not been until now in 2020 that AMD has brought something practical to market in both CPU and GPU topics that interests me as a gamer. Intel, in that same duration of time has done well because AMD has been so far fetched. Which left most buyers and gamers going to intel for both ease of use and reliability. Thus intel kept raising their pricing. I still enjoy intel products, however their pricing is plain ridiculous now as their competition has basically been none. However people will keep buying intel, because for the past decade they have not failed near to the levels AMD has fallen. I will now give AMD a try in 2020 and I hope they continue down this better path that most people seek in their products.
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Rauelius
This move really only hurts motherboard makers. What's the point in buying a top of the line 400 x570 board when a 99 B550 board will receive the same support. Instead of buying a high-margin motherboard, I'll just pick up cheap motherboards every year. I predict that the B650 boards will no longer support memory speeds as high as the x670 board, then with B750 will no longer support overclocking. Also, you seem to have missed, that AMD themselves said that this was a business decsion. I'm disappointed. I'm not upgrading to Intel, but now I'm not upgrading my machines at all for a bit longer. I was actually planning on getting two x570 boards to replace my x370 boards when the Ryzen 4000 series comes out, and give my old 1600x and 1700 to a couple friends. Now, I question AMDs support. Why buy 2 MSI x570 GODLIKE boards, when I can just get 2 99 Asrock B550 boards? AMD can fix this if they pull a Devils Canyon Release a Zen 2+, with higher clocks and support for B450 and x470. then release Zen3 in 2021. Promise Kept, everyone happy.
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This move really only hurts motherboard makers. What's the point in buying a top of the line 400 x570 board when a 99 B550 board will receive the same support. Instead of buying a high-margin motherboard, I'll just pick up cheap motherboards every year. I predict that the B650 boards will no longer support memory speeds as high as the x670 board, then with B750 will no longer support overclocking. Also, you seem to have missed, that AMD themselves said that this was a business decsion. I'm disappointed. I'm not upgrading to Intel, but now I'm not upgrading my machines at all for a bit longer. I was actually planning on getting two x570 boards to replace my x370 boards when the Ryzen 4000 series comes out, and give my old 1600x and 1700 to a couple friends. Now, I question AMDs support. Why buy 2 MSI x570 GODLIKE boards, when I can just get 2 99 Asrock B550 boards? AMD can fix this if they pull a Devils Canyon Release a Zen 2+, with higher clocks and support for B450 and x470. then release Zen3 in 2021. Promise Kept, everyone happy.
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USAF
I really appreciate what y all are doing over here. Calling out companies, but also reminding the community to try and keep their heads level. I don t know that I agree with how everything is being handled from AMD, but I can say it s better than what Intel does by far. I have a brand new Z390 motherboard. If I was interested in 10th gen Intel I d still need a motherboard upgrade. At least AMD is keeping previous generation support on their newest platform. I think the response would ve been cut down by 90% if they had managed to release B550 even 6 months sooner than they are going to. But I get it, shit happens. Wish I had gotten on the AMD platform a couple years ago when I built my system, but at this point I m too far in on Intel. Glad to see competition in the market again, and people having different sides to fight for, even if it gets toxic as hell, is ultimately a good thing. You guys are the most reliable and in depth source on any tech info I ve ever seen. Keep up the good work and professionalism. Love you all.
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I really appreciate what y all are doing over here. Calling out companies, but also reminding the community to try and keep their heads level. I don t know that I agree with how everything is being handled from AMD, but I can say it s better than what Intel does by far. I have a brand new Z390 motherboard. If I was interested in 10th gen Intel I d still need a motherboard upgrade. At least AMD is keeping previous generation support on their newest platform. I think the response would ve been cut down by 90% if they had managed to release B550 even 6 months sooner than they are going to. But I get it, shit happens. Wish I had gotten on the AMD platform a couple years ago when I built my system, but at this point I m too far in on Intel. Glad to see competition in the market again, and people having different sides to fight for, even if it gets toxic as hell, is ultimately a good thing. You guys are the most reliable and in depth source on any tech info I ve ever seen. Keep up the good work and professionalism. Love you all.
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Jason
Gets to this video after unreasonably buying an x570 board, and spending less on my video card because not everyone is a gamer. Is it the most premium of the x570? No. But I have no idea where this weird train is going these days. Every single build on the planet has people recommending a not loaded 450 chipset to free up 20- 50 for a better video card... How about you put down the RGB stick and get a better motherboard instead? I spent less than 500, have a board chipset that is the best for the processor line, without buying random things that I won't use like on board WiFi and video. I'm really really confused by this cut corners on Mobo thing that everyone has been pushing since I left the computer building scene. Because of my viewpoint, I have handed down my last two motherboards to GAMERS that currently use them, which was only possible because I've always stepped back on processing power in order to step up in reliable chipset, future expandability, and then whatever video card I can finally get for what's left.
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Gets to this video after unreasonably buying an x570 board, and spending less on my video card because not everyone is a gamer. Is it the most premium of the x570? No. But I have no idea where this weird train is going these days. Every single build on the planet has people recommending a not loaded 450 chipset to free up 20- 50 for a better video card... How about you put down the RGB stick and get a better motherboard instead? I spent less than 500, have a board chipset that is the best for the processor line, without buying random things that I won't use like on board WiFi and video. I'm really really confused by this cut corners on Mobo thing that everyone has been pushing since I left the computer building scene. Because of my viewpoint, I have handed down my last two motherboards to GAMERS that currently use them, which was only possible because I've always stepped back on processing power in order to step up in reliable chipset, future expandability, and then whatever video card I can finally get for what's left.
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