Crosshair VI X370 Zen 3/Ryzen 4000 support

[Firedrops]

So we've all seen the news, AMD does not REQUIRE vendors to support 4000 on older boards.

But in practice, the 3000 series and older boards, and older CPUs with newer boards saw pretty good compatibility from the vendors.

CH6 has 16MB rom, current bios uses 10MB.

Will Asus provide Zen 3 support?

[Legate]

I doubt it very much.

[User_od]

Continuing to offer Backwards compatibility does not sell new motherboards unfortunately.
Probably means I will give the 4xxx series an miss.

[RedSector73]

New modding scene incoming .... my2cents

[Targonis]

ROGod wrote:
Continuing to offer Backwards compatibility does not sell new motherboards unfortunately.
Probably means I will give the 4xxx series an miss.

At this point, AMD will be switching sockets to AM5, probably next year. If Asus provides support for first gen motherboard owners to the new generation, then those who are skipping Zen3(desktop Ryzen 4000 CPU series) will be more inclined to go with the next ROG Crosshair motherboard in their next build. I did the jump from the 1800X to the 3900X on my Crosshair VI Hero, and I've been encouraging customers to go with the Crosshair VII and VIII Hero boards for their new builds due to how happy I have been.

So, make ME happy, and that will result in dozens of additional motherboard sales, and in 2021 or 2022, chances are that I'd be going with a new motherboard with the new CPU. I may not be the source of hundreds of sales, but I personally have done at least 20 custom Ryzen builds over the past three years using this series of motherboards.

[arcanexvi]

I doubt that we'll see it. AMD doesn't really want the vendors to support it as it's creating too much confusion as to what's supported and what's not when you start marrying different chipsets to the same processor. It's great for the enthusiast community who upgrades individual components periodically to keep up with the times but your average consumer upgrades everything holistically at the same time and that's what they're catering to. This is why Intel has always been bad about backwards compatibility as they want a clean upgrade path where you use this processor, you get these features. End of story. I think AMD is starting to realize there is a middle ground to be had but supporting things across what will be 4 chipsets when that series launches is going to be very difficult and stressful for retailers and consumers with varying support for features.

[RedSector73]

arcanexvi wrote:
I doubt that we'll see it. AMD doesn't really want the vendors to support it as it's creating too much confusion as to what's supported and what's not when you start marrying different chipsets to the same processor. It's great for the enthusiast community who upgrades individual components periodically to keep up with the times but your average consumer upgrades everything holistically at the same time and that's what they're catering to. This is why Intel has always been bad about backwards compatibility as they want a clean upgrade path where you use this processor, you get these features. End of story. I think AMD is starting to realize there is a middle ground to be had but supporting things across what will be 4 chipsets when that series launches is going to be very difficult and stressful for retailers and consumers with varying support for features.

The below seems more likely the reasons

'According to AMD, this is due to the flash memory chips’ limitations that does not have enough space to support a newer set of codes. The current 400-series chipsets already have support for every Ryzen generation so far, so perhaps AMD has stretched compatibility to its maximum.'

Source: https://klgadgetguy.com/2020/05/08/amd-confirms-am4-x570-and-b550-boards-will-support-ryzen-4000-ser...


"The AM4 socket and B450 chipset are confirmed to be able to support future AMD Ryzen 4000 Desktop CPUs," the rep wrote.

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-4000-desktop-cpus-socket-motherboard

Which means a New modding scene is incoming if the manufactures drop the ball. Just as happened when Intel dropped RAID support on older chipsets saying it would not fit newer raid bios, yet still people found a way.

[Targonis]

arcanexvi wrote:
I doubt that we'll see it. AMD doesn't really want the vendors to support it as it's creating too much confusion as to what's supported and what's not when you start marrying different chipsets to the same processor. It's great for the enthusiast community who upgrades individual components periodically to keep up with the times but your average consumer upgrades everything holistically at the same time and that's what they're catering to. This is why Intel has always been bad about backwards compatibility as they want a clean upgrade path where you use this processor, you get these features. End of story. I think AMD is starting to realize there is a middle ground to be had but supporting things across what will be 4 chipsets when that series launches is going to be very difficult and stressful for retailers and consumers with varying support for features.

The motherboard box for B450/X470 will indicate if the BIOS is already able to support Ryzen 3000 desktop chips. It wouldn't be hard to limit support to the few motherboards with flashback capability. If you've ever tried to flash a BIOS to a previous version and got the message that you can't for compatibility reasons, but flashback works, then you would see how making flashback be required to support the new generation would be a way to protect customers from upgrading to a BIOS that won't work for them. Asus could even have the BIOS flash feature check your current BIOS and processor, then offer the proper BIOS version that will act as a bridge from current to the new one. If you are on first generation and want support for the fourth gen, pick THIS BIOS, if on second gen and you want fourth, pick THIS one(with support for current and fourth). If you are on first and want support for third, pick THIS one. A very simple program or even on the web page to let you pick the proper BIOS to download could be set up for anyone with web development experience.

[blueskies]

Targonis wrote:
A very simple program or even on the web page to let you pick the proper BIOS to download could be set up for anyone with web development experience.

Yeah, this would be nice. Just download the BIOS utility which would autodetect the current CPU, asks you which additional CPU generations you want to support and builds a BIOS with exactly those components. The problem is that the risk is still quite high, and unless the board maker has enough resources to validate every single combination on every single board (and every revision of those boards!) it will create some bricked boards. The BIOS flashback is great because it allows the user to unbrick a board.

I am thankful to AMD for advancing the technology and setting a new standard!

[User_od]

Looks like there will still be no Zen 3 love for X370 though.
That is an real shame as the CH6 and C6E are decent boards.