AMD slow to support Ryzen platform with quality x370 motherboards. Wholly Intolerable

[os2wiz]

I have read the list of boards that AMD posted for Ryzen from various motherboard maufacturers. Asus has only 1 pitiful B350 board listed not one x370 high end board. Both MSI, Asrock, and Gigabyte all have at least x370 board mostly 2 such boards. This is disgraceful. Asus must not have a commitment to AMD customers and enthusiasts to be so far behind in the curve. The MSI board looks to be equal to any Intel z270 board on the market I have consistently supported Asus with 2 ROG AMD motherboard purchases and one other Asus purchase. I do not know what kind of game they are playing with us now, but they badly miscalculated. Unless I see product listing for x370 Ryzen boards by the end of January I will dump Asus and never purchase from them again. I repeat this is shameful and totally unacceptable.

[xeromist]

ShrimpBrime wrote:
Team ROG moderator says what?! LOL. I'm sorry gotta laugh.

While the comment about RYZEN may or may not be worth ROG worthy boards.... but ROG found FX piledrivers worth it..... makes absolutely no sense.

Me being a moderator means nothing in this situation as I'm told nothing about products or plans. I've never signed an NDA so ASUS doesn't tell me anything. I'm just trying to have a discussion the same as everyone else.

Regardless of past decisions each new platform is going to be evaluated anew and companies will *attempt* to estimate return on investment. That's just common business sense. Even if you think ASUS made a mistake in the past it's not automatic that every successor is similarly supported.

Also, how we feel about a particular platform and its performance isn't necessarily how a board partner sees it. A ho-hum chip that sells a lot of boards is worth more than a great chip that sells few boards (for whatever reason). The notable exception are halo products that increase brand reputation but we don't know if Ryzen can best Intel's halo yet. Ryzen could very well be a better value than Intel but not quite fast enough to sell halo products.

Anyway, it won't be long before we find out how Ryzen fairs in the wild and we can thoroughly armchair quarterback ASUS's product decisions. Until then there's nothing to warrant assuming that Ryzen is the savior of gamers and that ASUS is a heretic for not selling a launch day premium board.

[ShrimpBrime]

I see you've slipped off the ROG topic and point to Asus and not ROG specific ultra overcocking board features usually geared for top end overclockers, which I do consider myself extreme and would like to see an ROG board released.

Now onto Asus. Being, and has been for quite some time, the top (or in many eyes) considered to be a top choice in motherboard purchase for various reasons.

Obviously the boards are NOT all geared towards gaming, so using gaming as a prime example for Asus's decisions is not really a accurate assumption.

All I see is Asus is simply being quiet about any released board in the near coming future. From the 4 different chipsets available, we will likely see a large variety of motherboards ranging from Extreme overcocking to simple mATX configurations.

While I have had both Intel and AMD setups, both manufacturers produce and release "ho-hum" chips. So this also would not be considered some kind of prime example.

Also RYZEN is the most anticipated and most talked about release in many years for both processor makes, this alone should drive motherboard sales up pretty good.

Here is a small list of boards announced to be released.

ASRock X370 Taichi, ASRock X370 Gaming K4, ASRock AB350 Gaming K4, and ASRock A320M Pro4
Asus B350M-C
Biostar X370GT7, Biostar X350GT5, and Biostar X350GT3
Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming K5, Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming 5, Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 and Gigabyte A320M-HD3
MSI A320M Pro-VD, MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium, MSI B350 Tomahawk, and MSI B350M Mortar

Ah the Asus B350M-C. Nothing on Asus's site, but the board has already been leaked and probably most likely already produced.

From what I gathered, people are disappointed for the Asus hush hush. Nothing more.

[xeromist]

Yeah, I specifically haven't mentioned ROG since (for example) the Sabertooth line isn't ROG but not exactly stripped down either. We might see a few boards targeted at different segments that don't carry ROG branding. But I keep mentioning gaming because we have a lot of gamers on this forum and the people I know who are excited about Ryzen are gamers. And I know gamers who chose a Sabertooth over ROG in the past and they've done just fine. There's nothing magic about the ROG branding and I'd argue that ROG Extreme boards aren't even gaming boards despite the "G" in ROG. You can use them for that but if you just want a solid gaming experience they are overkill.

I realize that might not fit your needs if you are looking for an Extreme board. But as I mentioned in my first post, if there is a profitable market for something I don't think ASUS will just pass it up. If the Ryzen chips are attractive for overclocking then I'm sure we'll see something. My concern is this being the first run of this architecture we may see binning on the edge of viability and virtually no OC headroom.

[ShrimpBrime]

xeromist wrote:
Yeah, I specifically haven't mentioned ROG since (for example) the Sabertooth line isn't ROG but not exactly stripped down either. We might see a few boards targeted at different segments that don't carry ROG branding. But I keep mentioning gaming because we have a lot of gamers on this forum and the people I know who are excited about Ryzen are gamers. And I know gamers who chose a Sabertooth over ROG in the past and they've done just fine. There's nothing magic about the ROG branding and I'd argue that ROG Extreme boards aren't even gaming boards despite the "G" in ROG. You can use them for that but if you just want a solid gaming experience they are overkill.

I realize that might not fit your needs if you are looking for an Extreme board. But as I mentioned in my first post, if there is a profitable market for something I don't think ASUS will just pass it up. If the Ryzen chips are attractive for overclocking then I'm sure we'll see something. My concern is this being the first run of this architecture we may see binning on the edge of viability and virtually no OC headroom.

GREAT motherboards are always profitable on the market. If you over produce these boards, well that's a different story. You don't bring 6 deep dish pizzas to a party of 4 people. So if you make say 50K instead of 100K motherboards, then you're likely to sell more of the 50K if the demand where to be lower than say a mid ranged board.

Sabortooth is a decent board. Rev 1.0 had bugs. Rev 2.0 had different bugs, and I've never bothered with the 3.0 because of the ultra late arrival, that obviously is not going to generate that much coin with end of life FX processors.

On that note, since I've owned both Sabortooth and ROG 990FX boards, I can personally tell you there is MAJOR differences between the two. Gladly slap a long list upon your request, but in example the bios is much more defined for actually overclocking and tweaking with any and every available setting that you would see in the AMD OverDrive while the Sabortooth board does not and I can even brake that down off my head section by section, but we can just start with the memory tweaking features between these two boards.

Any how, the Ryzen OC headroom means nothing unless it gains decent epeen along the way. So I have to agree there. Hopefully they have that cold bug still tackled to where cooling makes the OC headroom responsive. I do remember seeing an easter egg in binary code leaking a 5ghz overclock on air cooling. But because I understand shorter pipelines means less end Mhz this is a wait and see deal.

In the past AMD's 95w chips where pretty easy to cool and gave decent OC headroom. As these chips go through the years shrink and less voltage, helps a lot. Even the Themtrip has gone even higher with most FX chips in the 85-90c range at the cpu core. While AMD loosely states with AOD for example, 70c is you temp limit. Well it's not. Most of the fight with the FX processors with users on air and liquid where fighting the motherboard socket reading while these chips generally lost stability at around 60c give or take a couple percent.

But don't worry. I've used that LN2 switch on that ROG Crosshair Formula V-Z. Let me tell you something we needn't keep secret. There is a night and day difference between Asus ROG and any wanna-b top tier motherboard out there 😉

I'm Enthusiastic about Ryzen. It may be a touch over hyped. But with 16 threads, even at 500$ or less, it's going to be pretty darn good bang for your buck. Jim Keller Design? Ya, he knows how to build a processor. I think AMD will be alright.

[xeromist]

ShrimpBrime wrote:
Jim Keller Design? Ya, he knows how to build a processor. I think AMD will be alright.

I hope so too. I shall cross my appendages. 🙂

[os2wiz]

xeromist wrote:
Yeah, I specifically haven't mentioned ROG since (for example) the Sabertooth line isn't ROG but not exactly stripped down either. We might see a few boards targeted at different segments that don't carry ROG branding. But I keep mentioning gaming because we have a lot of gamers on this forum and the people I know who are excited about Ryzen are gamers. And I know gamers who chose a Sabertooth over ROG in the past and they've done just fine. There's nothing magic about the ROG branding and I'd argue that ROG Extreme boards aren't even gaming boards despite the "G" in ROG. You can use them for that but if you just want a solid gaming experience they are overkill.

I realize that might not fit your needs if you are looking for an Extreme board. But as I mentioned in my first post, if there is a profitable market for something I don't think ASUS will just pass it up. If the Ryzen chips are attractive for overclocking then I'm sure we'll see something. My concern is this being the first run of this architecture we may see binning on the edge of viability and virtually no OC
headroom.

The last engineering sample that was made for Ryzen is 3.6 GHZ with 4.0 GHZ turboboost. It will give I& performance at the Broadwell level. IPC has only gone up 7% from there all the way to kaby Lake. So with this sample going into production Ryzen will be excellent for all games , even single threaded ones. Asus is plain stupid for delaying announcement for the high end x370 boards for Ryzen. Every competitor has jumped on the band wagon with x370 support. Yesterday Biostar announced a high end x370 board. Asrock has 2 x 370 boards that will be available at launch, Gigabyte 2 as well. Asus is going to be behind the curve on this and it will hurt their profits. Missed sales means lost profits. But what do I know, I am a communist.

[panzlock]

os2wiz wrote:
Asus is going to be behind the curve on this and it will hurt their profits. Missed sales means lost profits. But what do I know, I am a communist.

Given the hype and recent acclaim of Ryzen CPU performance I hope that statement is true, but I'm not entirely sure it is. In order for this to hurt their profits AMD has to regain market share. Otherwise they need to shift support production from esteemed Intel crop, meaning less potential sales from that end of the spectrum.

Fabricating products for one market will inevitably siphon resources from another. Making 50,000 units for AMD means they will be unable to make 50,000 units for Intel. Possibly more, depending on what such a production shift entails. Also keep in mind that Ryzen needs to excel. Currently Intel offers Haswell-E, Broadwell-E, Skylake, Kaby Lake and a forthcoming Cannonlake. All these products, save for Cannonlake, can be used by Intel to undercut AMD in pricing, creating yet another hurdle for AMD's market share salvage.

ASUS has established, at this juncture, that it's safer to wait and see whether offering a substantial supply of X370 boards is feasible. They could be wrong and Ryzen could become a commercial success, a prospect for which I am nothing but optimistic. But without comprehensive test verification by unbiased parties we have no credible performance analysis.

Should Ryzen meet, or even exceed expectations ASUS will be on the back foot, that's a given. But I believe they have time before Ryzen actually garners enough steam to be considered a viable, risk-free business opportunity despite what Gigabyte, ASRock and MSI foresee. By then ASUS will have established data on Ryzen's capabilities and could offer an optimized X370 platform.

[os2wiz]

panzlock wrote:
Given the hype and recent acclaim of Ryzen CPU performance I hope that statement is true, but I'm not entirely sure it is. In order for this to hurt their profits AMD has to regain market share. Otherwise they need to shift support production from esteemed Intel crop, meaning less potential sales from that end of the spectrum.

Fabricating products for one market will inevitably siphon resources from another. Making 50,000 units for AMD means they will be unable to make 50,000 units for Intel. Possibly more, depending on what such a production shift entails. Also keep in mind that Ryzen needs to excel. Currently Intel offers Haswell-E, Broadwell-E, Skylake, Kaby Lake and a forthcoming Cannonlake. All these products, save for Cannonlake, can be used by Intel to undercut AMD in pricing, creating yet another hurdle for AMD's market share salvage.

ASUS has established, at this juncture, that it's safer to wait and see whether offering a substantial supply of X370 boards is feasible. They could be wrong and Ryzen could become a commercial success, a prospect for which I am nothing but optimistic. But without comprehensive test verification by unbiased parties we have no credible performance analysis.

Should Ryzen meet, or even exceed expectations ASUS will be on the back foot, that's a given. But I believe they have time before Ryzen actually garners enough steam to be considered a viable, risk-free business opportunity despite what Gigabyte, ASRock and MSI foresee. By then ASUS will have established data on Ryzen's capabilities and could offer an optimized X370 platform.

No business opportunity is risk-free. Ryzen is no longer a high risk investment. There have been a fair number tests both synthetic, real-word, and gaming apps run showing it is fully competitive with Intel. Yes there are many more that will be run, but both 3.4 GHZ and 3.6 GHZ base clock speed octacore Ryzen is up to the task. With optimized motherboards and optimized drivers the Ryzen advantage is likely to increase upon release by the first of March. The best x370 motherboards now announced are the Asrock Taichi x370, the MSI Titanium X370, and the Gigabyte X370 Gaming 5. My primary criteria for naming these boards is their overclocking ability. They each have at least 8x2 powerphase control for their vrms. Let's see Asus get off their collective asses and anounce a board with vrm power phase better than 8x2 and I will wait for their Sabertooth or Crosshair VI release.

[Silent_Scone]

os2wiz wrote:
The last engineering sample that was made for Ryzen is 3.6 GHZ with 4.0 GHZ turboboost. It will give I& performance at the Broadwell level. IPC has only gone up 7% from there all the way to kaby Lake. So with this sample going into production Ryzen will be excellent for all games , even single threaded ones. Asus is plain stupid for delaying announcement for the high end x370 boards for Ryzen. Every competitor has jumped on the band wagon with x370 support. Yesterday Biostar announced a high end x370 board. Asrock has 2 x 370 boards that will be available at launch, Gigabyte 2 as well. Asus is going to be behind the curve on this and it will hurt their profits. Missed sales means lost profits. But what do I know, I am a communist.

Do you know for sure how Ryzen will perform?

Do you know for sure what vendors board will perform the best at launch or which you intend to purchase?

Do you know for sure when Ryzen will launch?

Do you know what boards will be available at launch?

Are you even sure you want Ryzen yet, or how much it will cost?

The answer to all of these is no.

[os2wiz]

Silent Scone wrote:
Do you know for sure how Ryzen will perform?

Do you know for sure what vendors board will perform the best at launch or which you intend to purchase?

Do you know for sure when Ryzen will launch?

Do you know what boards will be available at launch?

Are you even sure you want Ryzen yet, or how much it will cost?

The answer to all of these is no.

Incorrect. The answer is yes how much it will cost, and I made up my mind 3 months ago based on a lot of research with knowledgable people that I wanted Ryzen, so do NOT tell me what I do not know. I know a lot more abouit Ryzen than 95 out od 100 users on this board. I knwo which boards will be available at launch. As far as performance the top Gigabyte, top asrock, top Asus, and top MSI will perform at similar levels. You have a lot of nerve presuming I am ignorant.