>AMD recently dicked b350/x370 chipset owners by sending motherboard manufacturers a memo telling them not to support Zen 3 (5000 series) Ryzen CPUs on their older chipsets.[1] This was after AsRock sent out a beta BIOS which proved that 5000 series CPUs worked fine on b350 chipsets. Today, AsRock's beta BIOS still isn't on their website and it's nearly a year after they put it out.
And they stated their reasoning:
The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard, including: VRM configuration, memory trace topology, and PCB layers
Which is entirely reasonable, and accurate if you look at the quality of the average X370 motherboard compared to 400+.
And no, AMD does not do everything I described. Which Ryzen model doesn't have SMT? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9. Which model doesn't have turbo boost? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9.
As for ECC: I don't believe I said they're perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what Intel has to offer...
> The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard, including: VRM configuration, memory trace topology, and PCB layers
So AMD told you that? And yet you don't call that market segmentation? Come on now. Lose the double standard already. AsRock (and I think Asus or Gigabyte?) has proven the b350/x370 chipset works fine with 5000 series CPUs. People have tested it and are using it just fine. VRMs are up to the motherboard. Why are you letting AMD dictate what motherboard manufacturers want to support here?
> look at the quality of the average X370 motherboard compared to 400+
Uh, what? The x370 is at a higher tier than b450. There are many b450 boards that are straight garbage (and let's be honest, garbage MBs stretch across all chipsets). The difference between a b350 and b450 is vanishingly tiny.
I'm baffled that people really think 300/400/500 series matter. You can run Zen 1 on b550/x570 despite AMD not wanting you to. You can't claim VRM/memory trace/PCB there. The only real limitation that I can tell is physical BIOS RAM capacity.
> Which Ryzen model doesn't have SMT?
The Ryzen 3, of course. Not that I meant literally all the steps Intel took AMD also took. But what the hell do you think the "X" series of Ryzen chips are? Or Threadripper and EPYC? It's all market segmentation. The Ryzen 5 is just the 7 with cores disabled. Why are you picking certain features as "segmentation" over others? It makes no sense.
> As for ECC: I don't believe I said they're perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what Intel has to offer...
How? Just so you know I spent literally months researching everything I've stated in this thread just so I could put together a Ryzen system with ECC. With Xeon I could have been done in a day.
Gigabyte allows ECC RAM to operate, but forces it into non-ECC mode thereby working as normal RAM. Good luck figuring out what MSI is doing. Asus, who the hell really knows. Their website spec sheet lists "ECC supported" and the manual for each specific motherboard says something entirely different.
They took right to choose for myself from me for my own good! Like Abortion, Apple genius telling me I should buy new device because replacing battery will cost the same, or Tesla charging $15K for broken battery cooling pipe, is that what you are saying?
>VRM configuration
New CPUs have same TDP.
>memory trace topology
worked fine with previous CPUs at speed X
>and PCB layers
see above
>> The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard
AMD Zen CPUs are full S0Cs nowadays. What they call "chipset" is just a PCIE connected Northbridge. Everything important is integrated inside CPU. pcie, ram, usb 3.0, sata, HD Audio, even RTC/SPI/I2C/SMBus and LPC are on die. You can make perfectly functional system with just an AMD CPU alone.
How about AMD Smart Access Memory totally requiring 500-series chipset despite being just a fancy marketing name for standard PCI Express Resizable BAR support? Already shipping disabled for 2 prior generations before being announced as 5000 exclusive. Oh, enough uproar and even that crumbles a little bit https://www.extremetech.com/computing/320548-amd-will-suppor... but still linked to "chipsed" while implemented entirely inside CPU.
Or that time x470 was going to support PCIE 4, but then it was made x570 exclusive. Despite the fact "chipset" doesnt even touch the lines between CPU and slots.
oh, but but the bios size limit, we cant support all the CPUs on same motherboard (like they did in Socket A days) ... in a 16MB bios chip? please.
And they stated their reasoning: The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard, including: VRM configuration, memory trace topology, and PCB layers
Which is entirely reasonable, and accurate if you look at the quality of the average X370 motherboard compared to 400+.
And no, AMD does not do everything I described. Which Ryzen model doesn't have SMT? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9. Which model doesn't have turbo boost? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9.
As for ECC: I don't believe I said they're perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what Intel has to offer...