AMD Zen 3 (5000 Series), rumored 17% IPC gain.

[Gerard]

Put yourself in AMD's shoes.

You're selling a product, it requires two components to work, you only have control of one of those components, you allow the other component in older EOL form to support your product but its up to the product manufacture to enable that support and if they do its up to you the consumer to modify that product, possibly bricking it and rendering it out of warranty in order to get it to work with the component you make.

That's unacceptable...

Bios flashing a board even under warranty can void your warranty if it bricks it depending on the manufacturer. It's a risk either way.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think running Windows 10 is probably more of a risk nowadays than flashing a BIOS,especially as MS QC has gone a bit down the drain!

 

[Grim5]

Bios flashing a board even under warranty can void your warranty if it bricks it depending on the manufacturer. It's a risk either way.

The amd slide says "hassle free upgrade" but Bio flashing isn't hassle free lol, not by a long shot. If it was hassle free I'd be able to put the new cpu in without any flashing required.

I think running Windows 10 is probably more of a risk nowadays than flashing a BIOS,especially as MS QC has gone a bit down the drain!

I bricked a $500 router in one day by flashing firmware. I installed the thing and connected it to the net, a pop up said download new firmware? I pressed yes after it finished it asked Install? I press Yes and then the router died. After I read the manual it says the internet must be disconnected when flashing firmware lol...

Luckily after a few hours I found the manufacturer anticipated this scenario and built in a recovery firmware chip and i was able to restore the original firmware even though it seemed to be bricked

 

[Martini1991]

That slide shows support up to 2020, not in it.

For AM4 though is what it says, so by that logic it'd only work if AM4 had died off

 

[Joxeon]

Making demands that Motherboard vendors to put large ROM chip's on their boards is one thing, them actually doing that is another.

Also: like the vast majority of AMD's customers imagine you're not tech savy, you buy an older Zen+ board with a Zen 2 processor because you're reading the hype around mixed platform support and you don't fully understand the nuances, it arrives, you put it together and it doesn't work, to you its broken, you send it back.
Then this happens:

The Retailer: Nothing wrong with this, RMA denied.
You: But it doesn't work????
The Retailer: you have to find an older CPU to put in the board first, then flash the BIOS to one that supports Zen 2 and then it will work.
You: What? WTF is Zen 2? What CPU do i need? I don't know how to flash the BIOS??????
The Retailer: If you write to AMD they will send you an older CPU to loan so you can flash the BIOS, Google "B450 BIOS flashing" to learn how to do it.

What sort of an impression are you going to get about AMD from that ^^^ ?

Its no different than buying an X570 or B550 with a Zen 3 chip and finding the boards bios wasn't pre-updated before you purchased and discovering you need a Zen 2 cpu to update.

 

[Martini1991]

Or picking up any random b450 board and a Ryzen 3XXX CPU.

The logic just doesn't stick.

 

[Gerard]

Its hard to fathom why people are trying to defend this decision by amd, it's an incredibly flimsy excuse first off, and all the supposed risks are part and parcel of any bios flash. Some boards have bios flashback to undo any changes, but they're also excluded currently.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I bricked a $500 router in one day by flashing firmware. I installed the thing and connected it to the net, a pop up said download new firmware? I pressed yes after it finished it asked Install? I press Yes and then the router died. After I read the manual it says the internet must be disconnected when flashing firmware lol...

Luckily after a few hours I found the manufacturer anticipated this scenario and built in a recovery firmware chip and i was able to restore the original firmware even though it seemed to be bricked

Well my previous motherboard,one day the sound stopped working after an Intel Windows 10 update,despite working fine for 4 years previously. I ended up using an external DAC to get sound,as I tried a lot of fixes and it wouldn't work. Once I upgraded the PC,I decided to ran the old system under Linux,and the sound was fine.

 

[Grim5]

Its hard to fathom why people are trying to defend this decision by amd, it's an incredibly flimsy excuse first off, and all the supposed risks are part and parcel of any bios flash. Some boards have bios flashback to undo any changes, but they're also excluded currently.

The only defence I have is to thank AMD. To thank them for not tanking the second hand value on ryzen 3000 chips. I should be able to get $500 for my 3950x now when I upgrade to 4950x

 

[Joxeon]

The only defence I have is to thank AMD. To thank them for not tanking the second hand value on ryzen 3000 chips. I should be able to get $500 for my 3950x now when I upgrade to 4950x

They will probably be going new for that price by then.

 

[humbug]

Its no different than buying an X570 or B550 with a Zen 3 chip and finding the boards bios wasn't pre-updated before you purchased and discovering you need a Zen 2 cpu to update.

The difference is it will work, their argument is a lot of 300/400 series boards will not work with Zen 3.

 

[Gerard]

The difference is it will work, their argument is a lot of 300/400 series boards will not work with Zen 3.

To be accurate, their argument is the following:

Q: What about (X pre-500 Series chipset)?
A: AMD has no plans to introduce “Zen 3” architecture support for older chipsets. While we wish could enable full support for every processor on every chipset, the flash memory chips that store BIOS settings and support have capacity limitations. Given these limitations, and the unprecedented longevity of the AM4 socket, there will inevitably be a time and place where a transition to free up space is necessary—the AMD 500 Series chipsets are that time.

The only supposed limitation is the size of the rom image, nothing else, nothing to do with vrm's or voltage being upped or anything else from a hardware perspective (if it was a hardware limitation then that reason would have been trotted out instead of this flimsy rom size reason). They could trim the fat out of bios files and make it work if they wanted to, remove support for zen 1 to make it fit, or zen 1 and zen plus, the end user is upgrading to a 4k series chip so that support is no longer needed anyway. If this was an actual hardware change like a new socket there would be less annoyance.

 

[humbug]

The only supposed limitation is the size of the rom image, nothing else. They could trim the fat out of bios files and make it work if they wanted to, remove support for zen 1 to make it fit, or zen 1 and zen plus, the end user is upgrading to a 4k series chip so that support is no longer needed anyway. If this was an actual hardware change like a new socket there would be less annoyance.

That's an assertion based on your assumptions, not fact. i don't think they can, the Zen 2 BIOS is already striped down and with that at the limit of my board.

 

[humbug]

Look at this.... its been said before but to recap the 3300X is unique among Zen 2 processors in that its a singular CCX, that difference results in it not having the intercore latency that all other Zen 2 CPU's have.

With that all things being otherwise equal, thread count, core speed, Cache size.... the 3300X has significantly higher Gaming IPC vs all other Zen 2 Processors.

GN experimented with this by overclocking the IF to see if he could get the otherwise identical 3100 to the same game IPC level as the 3300X, he couldn't get anywhere near it, in this chart the 3300X at the same clock speed is 14% faster, its near as fast as a 5.1Ghz 9600K / 7700K. overclocking its IF makes almost no difference....

If there is to be a Matisse 2 shortly to combat Intel's refresh in the intervening time before Zen 3 later this year or early next i hope its an 8 Core single CCX.

 

[Gerard]

That's an assertion based on your assumptions, not fact. i don't think they can, the Zen 2 BIOS is already striped down and with that at the limit of my board.

Thats an assertion based on the fact they're saying its too big, whats wrong with removing previous cpu support to get the space they need? It's for an upgrade to a 4000 series after all so legacy support isn't needed.

Your motherboard has the same size of bios as mine btw, and i didn't notice anything stripped down about the asus bios that enabled 3000 series support.

 

[LePhuronn]

Have you actually seen the size of the chipset ? No way is it just an IO die.

The PCH is Zen 2's I/O die design backported to 14nm, so it's a bit bigger than what's in the CPU. There's other stuff in there that makes up the full chipset though.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

AMD didn't specify an exact date for support to end, they just said 2020. They've done nothing wrong in my opinion, I'm just disapointed. It would have been nice to upgrade to a Ryzen 4000 CPU but that's okay.

It does make you wonder why MSI released their MAX motherboards with the bigger BIOS memory, supposedly to allow better support for future processors?

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

Look at this.... its been said before but to recap the 3300X is unique among Zen 2 processors in that its a singular CCX, that difference results in it not having the intercore latency that all other Zen 2 CPU's have

If it makes that much difference it's a shame that it wasn't done on earlier chips

 

[CuriousTomCat]

If it makes that much difference it's a shame that it wasn't done on earlier chips

Perhaps chiplets with 8 working cores were reserved for 12, 16, 24, 32 and 64 core CPU's.

That way, chiplets with some working cores can be used in 6, 8 and 12 core processors. That's the advantage of the chiplet design - recyling.

 

[humbug]

Perhaps chiplets with 8 working cores were reserved for 12, 16, 24, 32 and 64 core CPU's.

That way, chiplets with some working cores can be used in 6, 8 and 12 core processors. That's the advantage of the chiplet design - recyling.

No they are all 4+4 CCX's.

Edit: the 6/12 core CPU's take 3 cores from each CCX. its how they are all 32MB L3, each CCX has its own 16MB L3