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Why no one has the right to be angry at AMD with regards to AM4

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For those using the transition of ThreadRipper from TR4 to sTR4 as a justification - at least in that instance there was a fundamental improvement to the platform to justify the incompatibility. And at least it made some sense - those looking in the HEDT market probably are less price sensitive to having to buy a new mobo in the name of retaining more raw performance that otherwise might have been sacrificed to keep compatibility. Basically it's probably worth an extra $300 to not take a hit of say 20% performance.

That's not the case with AM4.

Honestly I'd be more sympathetic if they DID break compatibility for perf but unless there is some sort of "magic sauce" between 5xx chipsets and Ryzen 4xxx there's no reason for this other than worrying about validating on older boards that were honestly crap even back in the day. And that to me sounds like "not wanting to anger mobo makers that made subpar 4xx boards."

Like incompatible 3xx boards I can understand, Ryzen 1xxx wasn't pushing 3800 memory. But Ryzen 2xxx boards (4xx) come on - should at least do 3200.

But like others say AMD is the smaller fish by far, and they need all the help they can get from mobo makers so this seems more like a PR move to them.
 
I know I'm late to the party, and frankly I'm not going to read 4 pages of posts, I don't have the time. So, if what I say has been discussed, I'm sorry.
-SNIP-

Same here, I'm not reading through all that.

I'll remind folks Intel did the exact same thing with Socket 775 at one time.

I own a 775 board (DFI Infinity P965-S Dark) that literally has two different BIOS files you can use, depending on what gen chip you'd want to run in it. One version supports the older gen chips and of course the newer chips have a different BIOS to support them.

It's also a matter of supporting features the newest boards would come with, I mean naturally you'll have advancements of the tech and so on.....
Hey, it happens.

The older Ryzen chips may not be capable of supporting these newer functions fully or at all and the board makers are doing it partially to mitigate any complaints about certain boards features "Not working" when in fact it would be it's the chip, one that cannot support such functions/features.
They would be the ones having to "Make it right" while not being able to do much if anything about it if the customer wanted to reuse the same chip - Same situation - Same result.

It's a simple fact:
If you sell a board with features it woudn't make sense to "Gimp" it by supporting chips that won't fully support the new features, only to turn around and deal with all the griping over it being that way. If the board has them, folks when they buy them expect them to be fully functional, not gimped as described for any reason and no way they could justify it either.

And don't try to convince me some of you woudn't be on the front lines over it if and when it happens - I know better than that already. ;)

I guess that's what Intel did with 775 and I certainly don't recall any villages/castles getting burned down over it.

Nuff said - Done.
 
First,
If you really want the new CPU, then sell the old board and old CPU. Buy a new board and CPU. Not as big a deal as its made out to be. You can often sell the old board on eBay for the basis price, there is that much demand for working mint old motherboards. If you keep the motherboard in mint condition and the box, manual, disks, antistatic bag, IO panel, the motherboards do not lose value. If the new motherboards do not support the old CPUs, then it will ensure the old motherboards retain value.
Second,
CPUs gain like 5 to 10% performance at the most between generations. The idea of upgrading a CPU each and every generation (all while staying on the same motherboard) is an insane waste of money. Go out a few years before upgrading CPUs, and then at that future time, it makes sense to get a new motherboard, newest generation of ram, newest generation of SSD storage, and so forth.
Third,
There is a bit of irony that one of the more annoying to read AMD fanboy talking points was the supposed upgrade-ability of AM4 motherboards for every Ryzen generation going forward, and yet we find it had roughly the same longevity as Intel.
Haha, I read this as I looked down at my 3900X/X370 rig. Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to work. I considered it good luck. I was happy that I was able to do that. I got that board open box for $120, with good features and solid VRM's. Came with everything and I still have it all.

But at the very same time, I was saying that if it didn't work, I'd just swap it for an X570. The old board is still pristine, I could've gotten enough to make the X570 pretty affordable. To me, it's one of those things where if you can keep a mobo through an upgrade, that's great, but if not, what am I really gonna do about that but try to figure out the best way to proceed, if at all? So I agree, not really that bad to swap mobos. On principle I think we swap them more than should be necessary, but if you do it right, the only part that hurts is re-routing power cables.

Never thought this board would see 3 gens of Ryzen in it, but it did! Not a bad deal, for me. I paid $120 for a board that took all of these chips, from Zen to Zen 2. Feel like asking for more is kinda pointless. Like... shit man that's pretty good if you ask me!

That said, I might have a different mindset than some. I'm not really hardcore at all, but I go through parts just for fun - I like to be working inside cases, seeing what things can do for myself, so for me buying and replacing them is just par for the course. I'm not gonna sit here and act like all I want is a good computer. I'd be a fool to spend literal thousands just to do that. I just take em, use em, and flip em.

I think some people just aren't honest with themselves about that, and let certain things trickle in too much. They know they probably don't need all of the upgrades... they want them but can't afford them and feel like they're being blocked out. And on principal it is annoying when you can't combine things for no obvious reasons. Now you gotta buy more parts. But I might ask why you're looking at buying new parts for a year-old machine. Does it really need the upgrade? If not, cool. I make pointless upgrades just because I want it and I can find a way to make it happen. But to me that's always gonna cost some serious money. I've done builds on the side to pay for parts, or sometimes I just save up for a while. When an unused part I have is good for the build I'm doing, I get to cut them a deal and recoup my entry fee. It's a niche hobby. Most people don't want/care about this shit like we might. I'm trying to remember a time when it was ever really cheap or practical to be always working on your PC. The only way it was ever cheap was to shop smart, trade, buy used, and when you're done run it till it's obsolete. That's not new. It's an expensive hobby. There's always a game to play, getting into this stuff. The ones who stick around know what I'm saying.

So I get the frustration, but at the same time feel like if you want to REALLY go after AMD for stuff like this, you have to point the finger at everyone in the game for like the past 2 decades. To criticize it and want it to be better, knowing it probably can be, I can get behind. The straight outrage, not so much. That stuff is for the kids. Like any other company, AMD does some good and some bad. I've supported them for the past couple of years because I really do like their products. If I feel like that's not the case anymore, I'm not sticking around complaining. I'm just going to find another way to get what I want, or hang on to my money until there's more. To me, it's all extravagant. None of it is really needed. I just want it. If you want me to list the things I want but can't have, it'll be the longest post I ever write.

Kinda getting OT, but I think the climate is just different. This hobby, like most other tech hobbies, has been inundated with people ages 19-23ish, who previously would've had a much harder time engaging with it. Not really a dig on them or anything, but their outlook might be missing certain things that those with more experience (in life, even) are past the point of even looking at. Not to mention their finances and how they make things work for them are different. Engaging with PC building is different for them, because of the point they're at in their lives. This is the crowd you see most on places like Reddit and Youtube, even forums (though it seems like forums are more geared to NOT be that - the last bastion of the old ways.) They may say a lot of things that people who've been in it, who've had the experience and dealt with things they wouldn't know about, would look at and say "What is this guy talking about??"

Obviously can't say that about everyone. I think there are people here in that demographic who see this as well as the rest.

Anybody know what I mean here? I'm trying not to be mean about it. I think new people are good. But a lot of the popular opinions out in many tech communities are coming from greener people, and those people are sustaining opportunities for information outlets and people making hardware. What is important to them is going to be talked about more, even if others who have been around more don't care as much. They are a new driving force, talking A LOT about gear, generating interest and creating markets.

They all market a lot more towards that crowd, and the media favors them more, too. Same thing has happened in the audiophile world. Lots of younger dudes out there with less disposable income, soaking up the media that drew them in and basing opinions around that more than anything else. Then they gather and talk and it's all made that much more real. But at the end of the day it's chatter from those who for the most part know only what they have read. They want flashy stuff that has it all, measures perfect, and doesn't cost $10000... in sphere where for a long time that wasn't done much at all. Companies do try to sell them a lot of stuff, but most of that stuff still is not what it's made out to be, and somehow everyone is always surprised. PCs aren't that different IME. Same attitude floating around as the new headphone dorks. I say just move on and don't worry too much about it, because those of them who stick around will eventually branch out beyond shit people say on reddit and buzz fed to them by their favorite reviewers, who are the ones doing the most to inform their decisions. It's kind of an interesting climate. I think quite misguided a lot of times, but I also think the face and general ecosystem of the hobby is changing quite a lot. This is what you get when you take a niche and expensive interest and broaden it out across the net. You're going to have that crowd that comes in swinging like that, knowing how they want their hobby to be, but really having no way of knowing quite how it actually is... yet.
 
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Yep, well I've always been an advocate of the idea that you buy a board with a CPU because the two do tend to last equally long, even if its not your main rig anymore, why separate them to find a new buddy... Also the idea that the board will age less quickly than a CPU is... a bit strange. A board is much more prone to failure than a CPU in every single way, it will also go obsolete faster as new standards arrive.

This affects the way people purchase stuff though. If your base notion is that a board will be having multiple CPUs, you start off with the goal not of finding the optimal CPU you can ever find, but one 'that will do for now' and gets resold down the line. Its not my cup of tea, as it seems rather wasteful.
Exactly, the CPU usually outlasts the board, the idea of one board to last a lifetime is a bit backwards.

Haha, I read this as I looked down at my 3900X/X370 rig. Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to work. I considered it good luck. I was happy that I was able to do that. I got that board open box for $120, with good features and solid VRM's. Came with everything and I still have it all. .... Lots of younger dudes out there with less disposable income, soaking up the media that drew them in and basing opinions around that more than anything else.
That is quite good! As far as younger, passionate, but less experienced enthusiasts, that is one market that AMD has chosen to market to. See reddit.com/r/amd.
 
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Exactly, the CPU usually outlasts the board, the idea of one board to last a lifetime is a bit backwards.
How so? If we got to a point where the motherboard is only a collection of passive slots, the motherboard would last a very long time.
Let's say we ended up with all the key parts integrated into the CPU/SoC, then something like this would be more than enough.

The NUC 9 Extreme is sort in a way going down that route as well.
 
How so? If we got to a point where the motherboard is only a collection of passive slots, the motherboard would last a very long time.
Let's say we ended up with all the key parts integrated into the CPU/SoC, then something like this would be more than enough.

The NUC 9 Extreme is sort in a way going down that route as well.
Sure, if it got to that point it would make sense, but the design of consumer motherboards is moving in the opposite direction, more integrated.
The Compute Element is pretty interesting, though in a sense it is an 'all in one' motherboard, ram, storage, i/o, and CPU combo, mounted onto an add on-card form factor. The NUC backplane isn't at all a motherboard. Its more like a PCI-E riser.
 
Sure, if it got to that point it would make sense, but the design of consumer motherboards is moving in the opposite direction, more integrated.
The Compute Element is pretty interesting, though in a sense it is an 'all in one' motherboard, ram, storage, i/o, and CPU combo, mounted onto an add on-card form factor. The NUC backplane isn't at all a motherboard. Its more like a PCI-E riser.
Damn skipy, only the gits used non standard pciex so you can't just put it in a pc.
Damnit people I want cores plugged into the cores of my cores if possible and double, all to make a crunching folding beast in a box.
 
Wouldn't it be nice if all the armchair and Monday morning quarterbacks were really as smart as they pretend to be? If all the whiners could predict not just where the state-of-the-art will be in 3, 5, or 10 years, but consumer demand, the market, the weather, politics and pandemics too?

Wouldn't it be nice if foresight was as good as hindsight?

Obviously, what both Intel and AMD (and Motorola, Via and whoever) should have done 30+ years ago was get together ATX style and create the AM-LGA-10000 socket that would support 100 years worth processors (Is 100 years enough? My crystal ball is a bit cloudy today). Then we could all use our motherboards from 1990 with today's latest CPUs. Oh goody!

But then I guess the whiners would complain they didn't have anything to whine about. :rolleyes:

Here's a thought. If a socket doesn't support the CPU you want to use, don't buy it! AMD makes lots of other great CPUs. If you are done whining about the last despicable and totally unforgivable thing Intel did to you, buy Intel instead. Or maybe forget both and get an iPhone. Apple has never done anything bad for consumers, right? :rolleyes:
 
UEFI itself has nothing to do with bloat. Bloat itself does.
I know I may have started late into this conversation, but I do have some really dumb questions that I want to ask.
  1. Why in God's name do most of these UEFIs have lots of (often gaudy) graphics for something that is essentially a "set it up and leave it alone" kind thing?
  2. Who really goes into the UEFI every day and asks, "How can this be more pretty?" (No one I know.)
  3. If the OEMs decided to drop all of that graphical garbage and go back to what I remember from the dark old days of BIOS, how much space would be freed up?
 
I know I may have started late into this conversation, but I do have some really dumb questions that I want to ask.
  1. Why in God's name do most of these UEFIs have lots of (often gaudy) graphics for something that is essentially a "set it up and leave it alone" kind thing?
  2. Who really goes into the UEFI every day and asks, "How can this be more pretty?" (No one I know.)
  3. If the OEMs decided to drop all of that graphical garbage and go back to what I remember from the dark old days of BIOS, how much space would be freed up?
1. To make it "consumer" friendly. Also, the Taiwanese loves to come up with useless new features, as that way they can justify their jobs in front of their bosses. No offence to the Taiwanese, but I've sat through way too many meetings where people are suggesting utterly senseless things, just to suggest something during so called brainstorming meetings.
2. :roll:
3. Gigabyte has in all fairness removed a lot of the crap, not sure about the others, but it's not just that today, we have things like having to adopt the graphics for 1080p, 1440p and 4k resolutions, so we don't get blocky looking graphics, or a tiny square at the centre of the screen. These things are easy to forget, but the UEFI graphics don't scale all that well. Add to that the AGESA, which is apparently quite sizeable now on AMD boards and we're soon looking at 64MB flash chips on the boards.
 
Damn!
I got ninja'ed! :D

Oh well - My take on it.
I know I may have started late into this conversation, but I do have some really dumb questions that I want to ask.
1: Why in God's name do most of these UEFIs have lots of (often gaudy) graphics for something that is essentially a "set it up and leave it alone" kind thing?
It's all about the "Bling" or marketing - Making it fancy instead of as you call it like the old, dark days.

2: Who really goes into the UEFI every day and asks, "How can this be more pretty?" (No one I know.)
Good question - No answer here except it ain't me doing it.
However if you want to hang some RGB curtains on the monitor to make it look nice, just go for it.

3: If the OEMs decided to drop all of that graphical garbage and go back to what I remember from the dark old days of BIOS, how much space would be freed up?
TBH I prefer a BIOS like that, simpler, stuff isn't tucked away so much and so on.
Plus you can actually see all the BIOS without having to use a card of a certain age or newer too to avoid some of it getting chopped out because it can't display the entire BIOS page.
 
Gigabyte has in all fairness removed a lot of the crap, not sure about the others, but it's not just that today, we have things like having to adopt the graphics for 1080p, 1440p and 4k resolutions, so we don't get blocky looking graphics, or a tiny square at the centre of the screen. These things are easy to forget, but the UEFI graphics don't scale all that well.
OK so, here's the solution. Dump the gaudy graphics and go back to text-only screens with nothing more than the bare necessities. We used to have nothing more than text on the screen with simple menus and by God, we were happy! We didn't have fancy graphics, but it worked. Cue up my "Get off my lawn!" rant. :roll:
No answer here except it ain't me doing it.
Me either. I can't remember the last time I was in the UEFI of my motherboard. I have it set up and I've left it alone ever since. As for UEFI updates, I only do those when it's absolutely necessary and even then, I dread doing it.

It's all about the "Bling" or marketing - Making it fancy instead of as you call it like the old, dark days.
Don't need it, don't care about it. It's not something that I load up and look at every day so it's the last thing I think about.
 
OK so, here's the solution. Dump the gaudy graphics and go back to text-only screens with nothing more than the bare necessities. We used to have nothing more than text on the screen with simple menus and by God, we were happy! We didn't have fancy graphics, but it worked. Cue up my "Get off my lawn!" rant. :roll:
Unfortunately, as I mentioned, that's not going to work due to people using much higher resolution screens now and unless you want to have a 640x480 tiny square in the middle of your screen (which is a monitor setting) or very, very blurry text as the 640x480 UI is scaled up to 4k, we're sadly going to have to live with the fact that there has to be multiple graphics simply for display scaling. Does it have to include a bunch of stupid animations and other gaudy crap? Obviously not, nor does it need to include a clickable image of a motherboard.
There were actually fancy (for the time) graphical UI's in the BIOS with mouse support way back in the day, example below. Was it easier to use or better? No, not really.

ami_titan_05_s.jpg

Source: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthre...dae750d68b7fcd53cfe52cb01&p=504351#post504351

There are some advantages with what we have now though, like the ability to use the mouse to set the steps for the fan profiles, as that's a nightmare to do with arrow keys. I prefer to set it up there, rather than to install some bloatware app in Windows that never seems to work properly.
 
I don't think he is defending AMD nor any other company. I see a lot of people in the forums (not just TPU) are fixed on either Intel or AMD. If you say AMD did good with that, you must be a fanboy. If you agree with something one of the given companies did or is about to do, doesn't make you fanboy but you still need to be objective.
I don't think that either company is king. (If they want loyalty, they should get a dog)


I think that AMD thought that they would be able to support existing motherboards with their new CPUs and then they ran into problems getting it done.
So now we have AMD with egg on their face and people tying them to the whipping post for evil deeds.
I still just love my 3800X system by AMD. I love that they are competing again, and I love that they didn't perish and leave us to deal with JUST Intel.
I also love my i9-9900K box. Intel DOES build some nice product.

So AMD can't live up to what they originally stated,....I'll get over it.
 
Does it have to include a bunch of stupid animations and other gaudy crap? Obviously not
Exactly! Get rid of the damn graphics and I'm sure that they could free up a good amount of storage space in the ROM for necessary things like, you know... AGESA code.
If they want loyalty, they should get a dog
:laugh:
 
You may want to read this, so hold on users.

Not that it is acceptable, but you can still buy another motherboard and likely still be under the cost of equivalent Intel package.
 
Those are still fairly minor things. Sure, simplifying trace routing makers for easier board designs, so it's a good thing, but did it require a socket change? Most likely not.
Unused pins being repurposed happens all the time, so no big deal.
The last one is questionable, as some people have modded older boards to work with newer CPUs, but sure. I'm not convinced it required Intel locking out older parts, as AMD didn't have to do it for AM4 where we've gone from eight to 16 cores.

Minor or not, they are improvements. Of course, completely changing the pin-out to improve wiring and signal quality isn't exactly a simple thing.

And while there was some success in hacking Coffee-Lake processors to work on Z170/Z270 boards, we have no idea on the longevity. The fact is that Intel added more pins to provide power to the processor because they believed they were necessary. The CPUs might have run for a while with fewer power pins, but pulling too much current through the pins because there isn't enough pins can definitely lead to some very bad things. Intel knows this, and Intel believed the pins on the old 1151 socket were not enough.
 
First,
If you really want the new CPU, then sell the old board and old CPU. Buy a new board and CPU. Not as big a deal as its made out to be.

Oh ok so your going to hand out the $1100+ it would cost me to get a new equivalent X570 Mobo and CPU then if you think its not that big of a deal? :kookoo:
which FYI is double what it cost me for my current Mobo/CPU and they wasnt cheap to begin with!
 
So what do you gain from going around being angry at something you can do absolutely nothing about?
I mean, do you think it's acceptable to send threatening emails to AMD staff because of this? As some people clearly do.
Yes, it's fine to be pissed off about it in a forum thread or two, but how long is ok to go around being furious over something like this?
I fully understand why some people are miffed about this, but there's a limit to how far you're allowed to take it.
I dunno why yar putting things in my comment. Threatening email and death threats aren't acceptable in any way, shape or form and nobody will contest that. Justification for those is understandable but doesn't mean it's acceptable at all. We can criticise both the fuckfaces that do that and the entity that instigated that behaviour at the same time.

And NOT "going around being angry at something we can do nothing about" is what these entities want you to believe. And looking at your reply it's working for the majority of people. Net neutrality, ownership of digital media, right to repair (not to mention other things) these are all going to disappear because people like to believe they as an individual won't matter in the grand scheme of things. I may be not from a western civilized first world country like yours and many others in this forum but third world autocracies like ours like to follow your example (unless something that threatens their cling to power). I'm not thrilled of the day I have to deal with data caps in broadband connection if I'm being honest.
 
I dunno why yar putting things in my comment. Threatening email and death threats aren't acceptable in any way, shape or form and nobody will contest that. Justification for those is understandable but doesn't mean it's acceptable at all. We can criticise both the fuckfaces that do that and the entity that instigated that behaviour at the same time.

And NOT "going around being angry at something we can do nothing about" is what these entities want you to believe. And looking at your reply it's working for the majority of people. Net neutrality, ownership of digital media, right to repair (not to mention other things) these are all going to disappear because people like to believe they as an individual won't matter in the grand scheme of things. I may be not from a western civilized first world country like yours and many others in this forum but third world autocracies like ours like to follow your example (unless something that threatens their cling to power). I'm not thrilled of the day I have to deal with data caps in broadband connection if I'm being honest.
I'm not trying to put anything anywhere, I was asking a question or two based on your comment here, that's all. This wasn't something personal, so apologies if it hit a nerve.

It's a big difference between being angry and being upset or frustrated by a situation. Anger usually implies aggression, which isn't going to help the situation.

I guess you didn't read some of my other comments here, where I suggested if people wants AMD to change their mind maybe a petition is a better way forward.

I live in a place that's barely recognised as existing by most countries, in fact, they've been helping a lot countries recently by gifting facial masks in the millions, yet most countries aren't even willing to thank them by name, because of China. That's something to be pissed off about, not a for profit enterprise that changed their mind and created a PR screwup.

Yes, this reflects badly in AMD, but I think there are more important things going on in the world right now that requires our attention.

Minor or not, they are improvements. Of course, completely changing the pin-out to improve wiring and signal quality isn't exactly a simple thing.

And while there was some success in hacking Coffee-Lake processors to work on Z170/Z270 boards, we have no idea on the longevity. The fact is that Intel added more pins to provide power to the processor because they believed they were necessary. The CPUs might have run for a while with fewer power pins, but pulling too much current through the pins because there isn't enough pins can definitely lead to some very bad things. Intel knows this, and Intel believed the pins on the old 1151 socket were not enough.
The question is if it couldn't have been done differently though.

Regardless, people have accepted Intel's way of doing things, but AMD is get a boat load of crap, even though they've offered better support than Intel has done since socket 775. I don't think that's fair and I don't think your excuse in behalf of Intel is quite good enough.
 
Regardless, people have accepted Intel's way of doing things, but AMD is get a boat load of crap, even though they've offered better support than Intel has done since socket 775. I don't think that's fair and I don't think your excuse in behalf of Intel is quite good enough.
Socket 775 was a dumpster fire. That might have something to do with how Intel deals with platforms.
 
I mostly feel bad for the people who picked up max motherboards. To me they have the most legitimate reason to be upset.

At the same time I'm hoping ryzen 4000 is such a huge leap over 3000 as far a clocks/ipc that AMD was actually worried about all the garbo 1st and 2nd gen boards catching on fire. Probably not the case because if it was then the entire msi x570 lineup under $250 would also be in trouble because their vrms perform worse than the B450 Tomahawk thermally. :laugh:
 
I mostly feel bad for the people who picked up max motherboards. To me they have the most legitimate reason to be upset.

At the same time I'm hoping ryzen 4000 is such a huge leap over 3000 as far a clocks/ipc that AMD was actually worried about all the garbo 1st and 2nd gen boards catching on fire. Probably not the case because if it was then the entire msi x570 lineup under $250 would also be in trouble because their vrms perform worse than the B450 Tomahawk thermally. :laugh:
Care to provide something of substance to this statement please? :confused:
 
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