AMD's Latest AGESA Update Removes PCIe 4.0 Support on Pre-X570 Motherboards

Tsing

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AMD has reportedly put the hammer down on manufacturers who insist on adding PCIe 4.0 to older motherboards. The latest AGESA Combo release, AM4 1.0.0.3 ABB, removes that support for non-X570 motherboards.

GIGABYTE's latest BIOS changelogs for the GA-A320M-H and X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI confirm this. While the regression is sure to anger some, the update does fix the boot issues for Destiny 2 and certain Linux distributions in Ryzen 3000 systems. It also improves XMP DDR compatibility.

AMD announced before the launch of Ryzen 3000 and the X570 platform to understand that you will make PCI-E 4.0 only available on X570 motherboards. The motherboard manufacturers, however, wanted to upgrade their product portfolio on their own.
 
I think this move makes sense if the pcie parts were not fully qualified.
 
I wonder how the AMD fans are gonna react to this, probably ignore it. I bet if Intel did something similar we would see a huge ****storm over on reddit :ROFLMAO:
 
WHERES OUR AMD BIOS EDITOR!!! ... oops .. capslock
 
Strelok said:
I wonder how the AMD fans are gonna react to this, probably ignore it. I bet if Intel did something similar we would see a huge ****storm over on reddit :ROFLMAO:
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Yes and no... I mean really how often have we seen 3 generations of CPU's work in a motherboard from Intel. I mean really if you can show me that Intel has been doing this I'll be a happy camper and shut my trap. ;)

AMD fans have absolutely nothing to complain about. They didn't get a hoped for feature really that's about it. It was tested and found wanting.

So much for picking-up a good X470 motherboard for a great price.
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Actually I think you will be MORE than able to now as people are MORE likely to upgrade their motherboard to a 5xx series motherboard. Basically as long as you don't care about PCIE 4.0 you will be golden.

I don't know about you but that sounds like a great deal to me.

And I'm running an intel build.
 
Storm Nobleheart said:
So much for picking-up a good X470 motherboard for a great price.
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The only thing you lose is PCIe 4.0 for SSD's. Even then, that's the kind of thing that mostly shows up in benchmarks. It isn't something you'd really notice using the two. And I would know, I've got the PCIe Gen 4.0 MP600 on X570 here. While X470 won't have that, it will still be a good choice for a great price.

On the graphics card front, I think it will be awhile before PCIe 4.0 will really matter beyond sticking a GPU in a 4x slot or something.
 
I can maybe see AMD reversing this 6 months or a year down the road, if there's a mobo maker that wants it badly enough. Right now it's one more distraction and potential source of instability complaints.

As others have noted, it doesn't really do the X470 any good anyway. I'm waiting for someone to come out with an X570 variant with 5 or 6 PCIe 4.0, 2-lane NVMe M.2 slots (assuming of course, SSD's to match). Run the GPU at 8 lanes and there's 4 2x slots right off. Double the on-board storage at the same speed we have now; I'd take it, fooey on SATA.
 
Riccochet said:
A 2080Ti doesn't even come close to saturating PCIe 3.0. And 99% of people aren't going to notice the performance difference for storage.

PCIe 4.0 was AMD's way of saying "First!"
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IBM has been using PCIE 4 for a few years now IIRC ;)
 
I was just looking for a good performing stop-gap to replace the X99 system that bit the big one recently while I wait for Threadripper with DDR5 support. I was looking at purchasing the latest 1TB to 2TB NVMe drive to pair with an X3700 and a good X470 board. I admit that I am OCD about components performing at their best even if I cannot perceive it. I would rather save money with the 512GB SM951 and 2TB mechanical drive I have instead having something the system cannot run at full speed. I was hoping to reduce the amount of cable clutter in the system with the upgrade. :)
 
I'm pretty sure AMD wouldn't have planned it and let the public know and then had to back out and scrap the whole thing if there wasn't a good reason. It would have been marketing gold had it succeeded and nobody wants to have an embarrassing pull back situation like this.

Doesn't really affect much, though it would have been nice if they launched a b550 and x570 together. Even if b550 just has pci-e 4 to the gpu and 1st m.2 slot that's probably good enough for most people, assuming it's much cheaper and can be passively cooled.
 
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