>AMD recently dicked b350/x370 chipset owners by sending motherboard manufacturers a memo telling them not to support Zen 3 (5000 series) Ryzen CPUs on their older chipsets.[1] This was after AsRock sent out a beta BIOS which proved that 5000 series CPUs worked fine on b350 chipsets. Today, AsRock's beta BIOS still isn't on their website and it's nearly a year after they put it out.

And they stated their reasoning: The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard, including: VRM configuration, memory trace topology, and PCB layers

Which is entirely reasonable, and accurate if you look at the quality of the average X370 motherboard compared to 400+.

And no, AMD does not do everything I described. Which Ryzen model doesn't have SMT? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9. Which model doesn't have turbo boost? I see it on the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9.

As for ECC: I don't believe I said they're perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what Intel has to offer...

> The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard, including: VRM configuration, memory trace topology, and PCB layers

So AMD told you that? And yet you don't call that market segmentation? Come on now. Lose the double standard already. AsRock (and I think Asus or Gigabyte?) has proven the b350/x370 chipset works fine with 5000 series CPUs. People have tested it and are using it just fine. VRMs are up to the motherboard. Why are you letting AMD dictate what motherboard manufacturers want to support here?

> look at the quality of the average X370 motherboard compared to 400+

Uh, what? The x370 is at a higher tier than b450. There are many b450 boards that are straight garbage (and let's be honest, garbage MBs stretch across all chipsets). The difference between a b350 and b450 is vanishingly tiny.

I'm baffled that people really think 300/400/500 series matter. You can run Zen 1 on b550/x570 despite AMD not wanting you to. You can't claim VRM/memory trace/PCB there. The only real limitation that I can tell is physical BIOS RAM capacity.

> Which Ryzen model doesn't have SMT?

The Ryzen 3, of course. Not that I meant literally all the steps Intel took AMD also took. But what the hell do you think the "X" series of Ryzen chips are? Or Threadripper and EPYC? It's all market segmentation. The Ryzen 5 is just the 7 with cores disabled. Why are you picking certain features as "segmentation" over others? It makes no sense.

> As for ECC: I don't believe I said they're perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what Intel has to offer...

How? Just so you know I spent literally months researching everything I've stated in this thread just so I could put together a Ryzen system with ECC. With Xeon I could have been done in a day.

Gigabyte allows ECC RAM to operate, but forces it into non-ECC mode thereby working as normal RAM. Good luck figuring out what MSI is doing. Asus, who the hell really knows. Their website spec sheet lists "ECC supported" and the manual for each specific motherboard says something entirely different.

They took right to choose for myself from me for my own good! Like Abortion, Apple genius telling me I should buy new device because replacing battery will cost the same, or Tesla charging $15K for broken battery cooling pipe, is that what you are saying?

>VRM configuration

New CPUs have same TDP.

>memory trace topology

worked fine with previous CPUs at speed X

>and PCB layers

see above

>> The average AMD 400 Series motherboard has key technical advantages over the average AMD 300 Series motherboard

funny you say that, AMD didnt think so before the backlash https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/amd-zen-3-processors-w...

AMD Zen CPUs are full S0Cs nowadays. What they call "chipset" is just a PCIE connected Northbridge. Everything important is integrated inside CPU. pcie, ram, usb 3.0, sata, HD Audio, even RTC/SPI/I2C/SMBus and LPC are on die. You can make perfectly functional system with just an AMD CPU alone.

How about AMD Smart Access Memory totally requiring 500-series chipset despite being just a fancy marketing name for standard PCI Express Resizable BAR support? Already shipping disabled for 2 prior generations before being announced as 5000 exclusive. Oh, enough uproar and even that crumbles a little bit https://www.extremetech.com/computing/320548-amd-will-suppor... but still linked to "chipsed" while implemented entirely inside CPU.

Or that time x470 was going to support PCIE 4, but then it was made x570 exclusive. Despite the fact "chipset" doesnt even touch the lines between CPU and slots.

oh, but but the bios size limit, we cant support all the CPUs on same motherboard (like they did in Socket A days) ... in a 16MB bios chip? please.

The worst part is that adding ECC support should only increase the price of RAM by about 13%, which given that the RAM modules are about $50-$100 on most builds works out to $7-$13 to the total cost of the machine. Every machine should come with ECC. It's such cheap insurance. But because the chip manufacturers have to make more money by artificially segmenting the market almost nobody runs ECC on home machines.

13% is huge in a low margin, highly competitive field. the price difference comes down more to economies of scale and less to artificial segmentation.

It is 13% of one of the cheaper components. Back in the 80s when all memory was expensive there was something of an excuse, but today we are needlessly trading the possibility for silent corruption over the multi-year lifetime of the machine for a couple of coffees. And worse, we make it really expensive and difficult for people who do want to reduce their risk by artificially segmenting the market.

Back in the 80s the need for ECC was much less because the gates were physically bigger and there was much less overall memory. Back then the chance of your computer having a bit flip was like one in a million per year, now with gigabytes of memory it's near 100% chance per year.

But it's 13% of a tiny component of an overall system. Not the same as 13% of the total cost.

Sure, if you're only buying memory modules, maybe you would go for the $7 savings. But as part of an overall system, nobody is even going to notice.

I notice so there goes your argument down the drain.

For RDIMM, it's fair that they don't "implement" it on memory controller because they don't sell chips made from same silicon that need support RDIMM .

Intel's "disabling" ECC is different situation. They implements ECC for the silicon, enable for Xeon, disable for Core i.

>OEM desktop chips which can only be found outside North America (think AliExpress, or random sellers on eBay).

Lenovo offered Pro Series Ryzen APU small form factor PCs. Like the Lenovo ThinkCentre M715q with a 2400GE. I believe HP offered them as well with the 2400GE at some point.

by desktop I meant non-integrated/embedded. A standalone CPU you could buy and plop into any standard ATX/mATX/ITX motherboard.

But even if you have a Pro embedded, it doesn't mean you get ECC. My Lenovo ThinkPad has a PRO 4750U. But they solder on one non-ECC DIMM. So it's rather pointless. Plus, it's SODIMM. So that's yet another factor at play when choosing RAM.

The only real exception that I know of is the recent 5000G APUs may support ECC. But this seems to be borderline rumor/speculation at this point. Level1Techs made the claim on YouTube and were supposed to have a follow up. Not sure if that ever happened.