AMD Reverses Course on B450 and X470 Support for Zen 3

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by jwb1, May 19, 2020.

  1. bobblunderton

    bobblunderton Master Guru

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    Great to hear they were nice and fast with the RMA. Never had a dead CPU yet within warranty period here.
    I too came from a 4790k (with 2400mhz cl-11 ram) to 3700x (with 3000mhz cl-15 ram), BIG BIG difference in over-all snappiness, and this sucker just DOES NOT want to ever 'bog down'. Not even with 16 threads going on 7-zip. With 8 threads going on my 4790k my mouse cursor was 1fps and I couldn't do anything but wait. Now my file-zip ops are done 4~5x quicker PLUS when it's doing it, the system doesn't lag, I can even watch Youtube. Folks don't realize what they're missing. If they can't see the clear performance difference, they likely never should have upgraded in the first place.
    So when the substation blew up last May (a year ago) and fatally wounded the 4790k's motherboard (it booted, but had no front USB or secondary sata controller which I used for backup drives), it may have been a blessing in disguise after-all. I was annoyed I couldn't upgrade the processor in that intel PC, I would have liked to do so before the substation blew up any-who.
    Plus, best part, I don't have to overclock this - it does it itself better than I could - I did not have to buy a 35$ delidder tool and liquid metal and delid it - I did not have to buy a 100$ fancy air cooler to cool it (okay, I spent some extra so it had looked nice). Stock cooler does the job satisfactory. I have PCI-E 4.0 later on when I need it *cough* when something actually uses it (I keep mine for years!), lots of USB, 8 sata ports (with no ASMEDIA junk!), 2 NVME ports, and ability for this x570 board to take another generation of CPU should I feel the need to upgrade.
    Just is nice though that AMD is allowing the user a choice to take the possibly risky route for folks who possess the knowledge about hardware - or the safer-but-more-expensive route for the folks who aren't PC guys.

    If there is no fail-safe method of reverting the board to it's factory BIOS (the one it shipped with), then you break out your BIOS chip programmer tool and clip it onto the chip and update it yourself. There's also reasons these are typically hidden from consumers.
    There's always a way. Always. That's typically how they fix boards with a bad flash/bricked.
    Never accept that there isn't a way. Not once. Unless there's a flaming lake of hot lava between you and your destination and there's no way around, there's always a way.
    EDIT:
    Also, AMD right now is trying not to say anything due to not being able to un-say it right now. They have enough issues with that at the moment as everyone knows. They don't want to say something and have all these users say 'but i thought you said I could undo flashing the bios', etc.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2020
    Izi Cheeseborn likes this.
  2. Abc666

    Abc666 Member Guru

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    Good job AMD.

    AM4 goes down in history as one of the best, if not the best platform ever made.
     
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  3. Fediuld

    Fediuld Master Guru

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    What PBO settings you are using?
     
  4. Fediuld

    Fediuld Master Guru

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    2nd hand market is already showing this issues. People buy X370 boards second hand and aren't working, as they are flashed for Zen 2
     

  5. Shakey_Jake33

    Shakey_Jake33 Guest

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    Yep. And that matters even if it's second hand as those people might never buy AMD again after such an experience.

    I support AMD's decision here - I get to upgrade my 2700 to a 4000 series at some point in the future. But this was by no means simple, and might end up gettng messy. They won't want to ever do this again.
     
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  6. Mesab67

    Mesab67 Guest

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    Absolutely, and the longest lived.
     
  7. Silva

    Silva Ancient Guru

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    I bought B450 back in august because there was no other affordable option. B550 is one year late and they wanted to screw all of us who bought B450/X470 over the past 2 years? Obviously people would be mad.
    I'm glad that my original plan, replacing my 2600 for a 4000 part, is still possible.
    Thanks community!
     
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  8. Shakey_Jake33

    Shakey_Jake33 Guest

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    I think 'wanted to' is a bit of a mischaracterisation. Delaying B550 was a huge miscalculation which backfired. This all blew up because people had been buying B450 board for past year in lieu of B550. It wasn't some evil scheme to make people buy B450 then B550 again, they just grossly misread how it would be received by the enthusiast community.
     
  9. Morax

    Morax Master Guru

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    Great news! I was thinking about upgrading my "golden sample??" 2700X to a 3700X, having a 470X mainboard, but if Zen 3 is going to be supported after all, I'm going to wait for that!
     
  10. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    its really not.
     

  11. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    I completely understand why you can't flash your BIOS back once you updated it. According to the information that Gamer's Nexus got from motherboard manufacturers because of the restructuring of BIOS to support Zen3 is a major change to how BIOS functions which causes higher RMAs which motherboard manufacturers call corruption of BIOS because when you flash between two different versions forwards and a rollback you are risking of corrupting your BIOS which becomes an RMA issue which is bad news for both the motherboard manufactures and AMD because they want to limit the amount of RMAs they get if they can. Boards that support USB flash back they can implement a workaround but I wouldn't count on it due to how the low level code executes vs how low level the block is on BIOS. TL DR at the end of the day once you update your BIOS on your b450 or X470 motherboard you are stuck with it and also make sure that you want to do it.
     
  12. pharma

    pharma Ancient Guru

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    Don't some of these boards have 2 bios?
     
  13. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    The included cooler with the X models is indeed descent, personally I prefer less noise thou.
    I did have some concerns switching to AMD though, the 4970K I have does quite well in Audio Applications, DAW's and such, AMD has been plagued by latency issues with their first 2 generation of Ryzen CPU's, that seems no longer to be an issue with the 3000 series and probably neither with the upcoming Zen3 processors.

    Every mobo manufacturer should be forced to include a backup BIOS, it's not like that costs a lot of extra.
    That aside, even back in the days when a flash failed we could rescue the chip by hot swapping the chips on similar boards, need to have a steady hand since it can be a bit risky.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2020
  14. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    These actually no real reason you can't go back, you just need the flashwrite utility to erase all blocks before writing in the prior bios, and clear the nvram of all settings.
     
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  15. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    I don't think it is that simple.

    Gigabyte boards are the only ones that I know of that have dual BIOSes.
     

  16. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    I know it is.
     
  17. fekter

    fekter Guest

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    +1 Uniflash would flash anything to anything as long as the bios chip is supported, atleast, back in the days i done that, hot flash included.
     
  18. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    I totally agree with this. Users got to the point where they couldn't wait any longer and there was no sign at the time on how much more they had to wait so they purchased a B450 Board instead.

    Another thing that AMD and the motherboard partners are trying to do is limit how many RMA's they get because back when B450 got Zen2 support alot of users had a PC that would no longer boot and they want to avoid that. AMD lost so much money because of RMAs due to the fact they had a BIOS flashing kit where they would send you a compatible CPU for you to flash your BIOS with but some users never returned the CPUs.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2020
  19. bobblunderton

    bobblunderton Master Guru

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    I have zero latency issues here, since release day on Zen 2 3700x / Asrock Phantom Gaming 4 x570 board / Windows 10 Pro x64 for what it's worth, for folks considering getting a 3xxx series and a cheapo Asrock motherboard, using stock settings + XMP RAM settings (3000mhz). Nvidia studio / game ready drivers installed (tried both).
    Yes, this was a concern (is on any of my systems), have been working with audio since the mid to late 90's on PC's over here (nothing too fancy, but latency kills).
     
  20. Mpampis

    Mpampis Master Guru

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    Care to elaborate?
     

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