But then AMD is throwing the motherboard manufacturers under the bus (again). There were a lot of reports that they were very unhappy with AMD around the time of Zen 2's launch, and ultimately AMD has to keep them satisfied too. You really don't want, say, Asus deciding that they're not going to bother making AMD motherboards any more because it's too much hassle having to design ever-more labyrinthine BIOSes and support a huge stack of motherboards dating back years. There are only so many resources to go around in terms of BIOS development, and at this point there are companies trying to handle BIOS support for an army of AM4 boards across all chipsets and generations. Granted, there's an argument to made that end users shouldn't give a toss about the trials and tribulations of large companies, but ultimately AMD are one of those large companies too, and they're always going to do what they feel is best for business.
The dream of ongoing support for new CPUs across years and years is nice, but there are practical issues that have become obvious and only continue to get bigger as you add more and more complexity to the situation. Zen 2's launch was enough of a ****show in terms of BIOS support, and it would have been even worse this time around.
Or a decision simply hadn't been made. They're now putting this information out there likely five or six months before Zen 3 actually arrives, so it's not like they waited until a couple of weeks before launch and then pulled the rug out. I wonder if real world events have had any influence as well. No company is looking to take on more expense and liability than necessary at this point, with brutal times ahead for the global economy. I doubt AMD fancy the expense of mailing out BIOS upgrade kits again, or motherboard manfacturers fancy spending time and money updating ancient boards to support extreme edge cases. It may be part of the reason for the decision to cut bait now.
Not getting B550 out for or around Zen 2's launch was definetly a huge mistake on AMD's part. It's absurd that it's still not even out now, closing in on a year since launch. That's definetly on them. I don't know about people flocking back to Intel though. It's not like you're any better off there in terms of motherboard longevity, and generally much worse off in terms of CPU price/performance. It's kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Equally, DDR5 is going to be extremely expensive when it first arrives, so I don't really buy the notion that somebody who bought a B450 board to save some money and was hoping to hang on to it for years to save even more money would suddenly be rushing out to buy a brand new bleeding edge DDR5 platform as soon as it comes out and paying the large premium that it'll demand for a while.
The lack of B550 is the real problem. AMD made the B450 the mainstream chipset for Zen2,and there were new AM4 B450 motherboards people waited for after launch with improvements. AMD knew this too.X570 motherboards were expensive and some of the cheaper ones at launch were poor in terms of VRMs,etc. There were rebadged B450 motherboards made for Cyberpower PC by ASRock which GN tested and worked fine with PCI-E 4.0,etc. The BIOS size issue again is AMD's fault entirely as they made the reference specifications for the platform,so they should have said 32mb BIOSes as standard. This really is on AMD,as much as we can all blame the OEMs,AMD still went with the lie - they could have easily seem all those posts and said,sorry only X570 works. But they were so worried,the extra cost of X570 motherboards might get a few extra Intel sales,they just waited and said nothing.
In the end AMD could have controlled any misconceptions,and they have even responded to Twitter posts with replies to take down any misconceptions. They knew exactly what they were doing here. This is 100% on them,and in the end this is entirely of their making. Very few people will buy a new potential dead-end chipset for an older CPU,but people do have a chance of changing an old CPU for a new one.
The problem is now AMD has forced a CPU and motherboard upgrade which costs more and B450 secondhand prices will now tumble,so for many people they will just hold off now. With the global economy taking a hit this is terrible timing.
Literally everyone I know is on a B450 has said,they intended to probably buy another CPU on the platform,but now won't bother,due to the added cost of a new motherboard and will just wait an extra year or two to see what happens in 2022. So I hope for AMD's sake,Intel does not get its act together by then. That is the problem enthusiasts don't see here,as they change platforms all the time. A motherboard lock-in equals a CPU lock-in,but a new motherboard means its a free for all.
Plus,Intel can't believe this gift horse,all they need to hint is their next generation also works on the Z490,and that socket longevity selling point for AMD isn't there anymore.
Anyway,I hope this kind of proves to people like Intel and Nvidia,AMD is there to look after its own bottomline. They will do what is best for them,which does not mean its best for their customers. They are all the same in the end - charitable when it suits them!
