MSI clarifies Ryzen 5000 Support for Series 400 chipset motherboards

I thought 300 series boards were manufacturer opt-in but otherwise unsupported? Based on this chart, looks like they're just outright not supported, period.

 

300 were already not officially supported for Zen 2 ( Ryzen 3000 ), but for most boards, it worked.

The recent discussion about support is about 400 series... 300 is already dead and buried.

Tbh, technically it -could- work if AMD really wanted to, as there are no structural changes that prevent it (same DDR4 memory type, same PCI-e 3.0, same mechanism for power delivery, and obviously, same physical socket... but there is no will to do so. Welcome to capitalism ! There is no money to be made on something that was already sold a long time ago.

 

Beta drivers I'm ok with. Beta bios', no thanks. @wavetrex Capitalism is a good thing, but has nothing to do with this. The 300 series boards are just, old.

 

If the hardware is compatible but the manufacturer won't provide the necessary software, I think it's a form of planned obsolescence.

 

nothing wrong with beta bios, it either works or it doesn't get released.

 

As someone in the business like yourself, you should know that a beta bios that does or doesn't work could result in hardware failure.

 

You're more likely to have brick issues with fully released bios's, seen quite a few Acers laptops that used the official utility that just wouldn't start back up, one of them being my SIL's (out of warranty), That one sat bricked for almost a year till I found a niche topic buried amidst the acer forums on the fact the model has a secret bios flash back routine - you just needed the right sd size and file name (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

where beta mainboard roms are concerned, if somethings broken its usually specific to a particular feature or function and remains totally bootable, the boot block is rarely if ever written to during the update process unless you explicitly use a command line flash tool and tell it to do so - or, like with some of asus's legacy > uefi conversions does the change in one particular bios and all subsequent images must be flashed from that version first.

the only board i've seen update bricked would be an asrock 990fx where one of the eprom pins had been bent by the user pulling things out, luckily you can just swap eprom chips out while the flasher is open and asking for confirmation to begin the flash, and we had a duplicate board on hand that was otherwise defective.

 

If there is nothing wrong with a beta bios, then why call it beta? Beta to me means it is not fully tested; for the most part it works. This already happened before and it was proven that there was a marked performance difference between the boards that "officially" supported the cpu and those that only received the beta bios. It worked but negated the reason for the upgrade...so no.

MSI stated that not all 400 series boards will receive an updated bios. Having the phrase "...will provide BIOS updates later on that can support Ryzen TM 5000 processors." does not clarify a thing. If all boards can support it, then just come out and say all boards will receive it. That is clear.

 

That is just plain false.

 

No its really not, and is no different to the OS/Application side of programming where final releases often get found to have workflow breaking issues at times.

That nothing is discovered during testing is not proof of absence of a problem. There is no way you can prove the absence of something, only the presence of something.

Not fully tested =/= Something wrong.

Don't mistake releasing something before tests were finished for it having an issue.

Many of the final bios releases for x58 and x79/99 are tagged as beta, specifically those correcting the XMP/Overclock issues that Windows microcode updates broke post spectre mitigations.

 

Not going to buy a cpu and told that yeah it will work but we do not know how well...you tell us. Been down that road...not traveling it again. I agree with the concept that not fully tested does not equate to there is something wrong. What the issue is, is that it is not known. Not fully tested means we have no clue...it could be great, it could be a potato.

100% confidence is not realistically achievable. What is the difference in confidence that distinguishes a beta bios from a fully backed one? Is a fully backed version rated at say 95% confident that no flaws exist? And at what level of confidence are major flaws solved? I am truly curious. Am curious along the lines of say lifetime warranties. Lifetime warranty on a new residential roof is like 25-40 years. It is specifically defined. Just trying to understand the industry.

 

I see only 2 reasons why would these be labeled as beta.
Either some BIOS features will be ripped off to make space, or AMD will release only 1 version of microcode and they won't bother updating it no matter what the issue may surface later, when mass of people get hands on it.
With AMDs track record of not really supporting even their new hardware, I think latter is probably the case.

 

crazy to think a 400 board could've had a zen1, zen+, zen2 and zen3 cpu in its lifetime

 

@KazeGG
you do know "new" code doesnt appear out of thin air?
whos is paying those ppl that have to do ANY work related to get 5000 series to work on x3xx boards?
not talking amd, but manufacturers.

@jbscotchman
Gb has shown me that betas can be better/stable vs non beta.
i always tried and used them in the past 10y when there was one,
never had issues with anything beta except my Gb x570.

 

Gonna try to stick with my 2600 and MSI B450M Pro-VDH until late 2022 then pick up a discounted 5900X then.

 

Imo,AMD made a mistake when they offer support for Zen 3(Ryzen 5000 series) to 400 series mb.
At the begining they should say: only B550 & x570 will offer support for Zen3.
Now its too late for AMD to step back.

But they win anyway,because will sell more new Cpus than new chipsets.

 

Not even official BIOS are safe. I’ve found a bug on X570 that enabling RAID on SATA you lose all extended data like temps and SMART data. I just can’t figure out which AGESA did it. I’ve confirmed it’s not vendor specific it’s the chipset so it’s “official” bug.

 

That's not a bug, You have to enable raid smart detection in the tool you're using.

 

I make and handle all my arrays in the BIOS? I just install the software because I have to? But I guess I’ll have to actually open and see what you mean I was trying different RAID drivers trying to figure out when the info disappeared until one driver targeted my NVME and totally nuked my boot drive....