Customary "screw your fragile chipsets, Intel". Can't believe some early 2018 AMD X470 motherboards can run 4 (!) generations of AMD CPUs and Intel can *barely* support two generations of CPUs.
The most pathetic Intel chipsets in recent memory:
Z87 / Z97: only supported Haswell and Haswell "Refresh" Z370 / Z390: only supported Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake "Refresh"
If anyone bought these chipsets, their CPU support went from "the launch CPUs" to "the launch CPUs with +100 MHz stock clock and maybe another two cores". It's a real poor way to treat your customers, Intel.
Intel motherboards are akin to flagship Android phones that lose feature support after 1-2 Android OS updates. Chipzilla will smite you for even asking if a 3rd update is even "possible".
LGA1700: this is its final year of existence and it only come out hardly two months ago. LGA1700 will never support a 2023 Intel CPU. We get Alder Lake and Raptor Lake.
"Can't believe some early 2018 AMD X470 motherboards can run 4 (!) generations of AMD CPUs and Intel can *barely* support two generations of CPUs."
Good for that handful of models, but for the majority of AM4 motherboards CPU combability is limited to 2/3 CPU generations, and sometimes you need to switch BIOSes between generations due to BIOS capacity limits so not necessarily able to POST all generations on the same BIOS version. Thus you end up having to consult an arcane combability matrix (e.g. https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/72e00246-c... ), as well as sometimes needing to find an older CPU in order for the board to POST in order to flash the BIOS to allow a newer CPU to POST, rather than the simpler "any motherboard and any CPU within these two generations are compatible".
8x and 9x chipsets also technically supported Broadwell, though that was admittedly a limited release.
"Intel motherboards are akin to flagship Android phones that lose feature support after 1-2 Android OS updates. Chipzilla will smite you for even asking if a 3rd update is even "possible"." except software support continues long after newer CPUs are released, e.g. Z270 is still supported with software updates, and even many 1xx series boards have drivers available for Windows 11 (contemporaneous Bulldozer boards? Definitely not).
AM3+ Bulldozer boards might have been what AMD had available in 2015 when Skylake launched, but that 800/900 series chipset and it's DDR3 RAM was already 5 years old at that point and everyone knew it was EOL since AMD announced in 2013 they weren't releasing more desktop FX processors. If you bought a 900 series board and FX CPU in 2015/2016 you did it because they were basically giving them away, not because you expected a solid upgrade path out of it.
They were selling fx 8320e's with fx970 motherboards for sub 100 around 2014 through 2016. Granted they weren't bleeding edge or awesome, they still were plenty good for general usage computers, intro to mid level gaming rigs, fileservers, and basic vm hosts.
Support isn't a limitation of the chipsets, though. Board manufacturer support is key. The BIOS size limitations are also a manufacturer imposed limitation. In many cases they'd rather sell you a new board!
I'm assuming you're just ranting for the sake of ranting, but just in case you're not the chipset shift is due to the massive number of SKUs Intel ships and the OEMs they're accountable to. For whatever reason (I'm not familiar enough, and nothing I can do will change it) BIOS storage is still relatively tiny which limits the amount of processor support, especially with the UEFI interfaces etc also vying for space.
Perspective: There are currently 29 Alder Lake desktop parts (including the KS) versus 13 Zen 3 desktop parts (including OEM and 3D).
I guess I'm in the vast minority, but if I'm upgrading my CPU there's no way I'm not upgrading everything. A multi-generation socket hardly even warrants a shrug from a customer like me.
i'm the opposite why do a full system rebuild when you don't have to. AM4 has allowed me to go Zen 2 to Zen 3 without changing anything else. And i'm not someone that does new builds every 2 years so works for me.
I go long enough between CPU updates that even AMD's longer lived sockets have been gone before I saw enough increased performance to justify them. S939 (2005) to LGA-1366 (2009), to LGA1150 (2015).
My next system will probably be late 2022/early 2023. If I go AMD near the end of AM5 might have enough gains to justify an upgrade to me again; but if so unless it's a critical need I'll probably wait for AM6 (or go Intel) because I don't want to miss out on whatever other new shinies have been added in the interim for anther half dozen years.
This is the same boat I'm in (went from 939 to 1366 to 2011) where I don't upgrade often enough to particularly care about long term support. I care much more about future proofing the platform I get as much as possible than the ability to pop a new CPU in.
keep on mind though, for the most part, intels cpus werent worth the upgrade gen on gen. most would skip 2 or 3 gens before upgrading. where with zen, it was worth the upgrade. i went from a 3900x to a 5900x and the increase i saw was quite noticable, specially with handbrake and video editing.
No, you're in the vast majority (because most people by pre-built systems, usually laptops, and even enthusiasts who build everything themselves rarely upgrade CPUs without getting a whole new motherboard because usually enough has come out since you did that to justify it even if there's not a socket change or other incompatibility even if you're not flipping from AMD to Intel or vis versa).
I could go the other direction entirely. My 6700k was great, but I wanted faster storage, USB, and Ethernet. A new platform was a bigger decider than faster CPU.
I am totally looking forward to upgrading my 2700X to a 5600X, 5800X or 5800X3D, when the prices come down.
Also, there is still a point to having an upgradable CPU, like when you get a free PC, and it only has a pentium in it, but the mobo supports i7. The unfortunate part is, buying an i7 for older sockets is still absurdly expensive on the used market, and I have to buy the correct one, otherwise it doesn't fit.
I'd like to upgrade my 2200G to something like the 5600G, but wonder if I'll ever do it before going to a new computer because, except for encoding, it's quite all right.
I too upgrade rather seldom (I'm currently writing this on Sandy Bridge), but I nevertheless appreciate the modularity of long-lived platforms. One of the nice thing with DIY computers is that you tend to end up with a wee bit of a stockpile of spare parts, and being able to cross-match them in ways that you didn't necessarily have to foresee when your first bought them is very, very nice.
Ask all the B350/X370 motherboard users what "5 years of AM4 support" meant to them - that promise was worthless and they relied on semantics to get themselves out of it. AMD is actively blocking Ryzen 5000 on 300-series chipsets, which have identical silicon to the 400-series, and for which working beta BIOSes were available with Ryzen 5000 support. It also took tons and tons of community pressure for AMD to agree to support Ryzen 5000 on B450/X470 (they were initially only planned to be compatible with B550/X570). Don't trust this at all.
I'm one of those B350 users and it was very disappointing that they locked me out of Ryzen 5000. I ended up going from a 1700 to a 3800XT because I got a good deal on one shortly before Ryzen 5000 released. I would have gladly paid more for the 5800x or 5900x, but AMD didn't give me that option.
I wouldn't trust them to support the early AM5 boards for the lifetime of the socket.
As an X370 Taichi owner, I went from 1700X to 2700X to 3900X and now 5900X (using 6.62 beta bios). ASRock has released an official bios with updated AGESA supporting 5000 series for the X370 Pro this week so I think we're gonna see official Bioses for the X370 boards soon to support 5000 series.
There is some selective memory about the AMD sockets in this article. While a lot of the mainline platforms did have fairly long lives, CPU support was often bifurcated and spotty, and there are a great many platforms that AMD dropped like a rock after a single CPU release cycle. Remember AM1's promised "three generations"? FM1? QuadFX/4x4? And even more recently, TRX40?
So while I do hope the fiasco around AMD trying to keep Zen 3 off of B450 is fresh in their minds, it is always helpful to take what these multi-billion dollar megacorps with terrible track records say with a big helping of "believe it when you see it".
Thanks for mentioning these, I was just about to do the same thing as a former FM1 and current x399 owner. It sure would have been nice to move to an appreciably better chip than my 1920x without a platform update.
Glad someone mentioned this. I got one of those in early 2005 just to save some pennies and I regretted the next year when I realised how limited my upgrade options were. Even getting a PCIE mobo was next to impossible and was stuck on AGP longer than I liked.
I have one in the basement. Should still run. I wonder if I got one of the 64 bit capable ones? I honesty don't remember. I bought it from CompUSA if that gives you any idea of how old it is. :) Has SATA-1 ports, IIRC.
To be fair they started their list on socket 939, they could have gone back to super socket 7 if they wanted (supported everything from pentium mmx through k6 III+, awesome chip options), doesn't mean slot a, and socket 754 users didn't get burned in the interim though.
Yep, but socket a atleast was well supported for a few generations, from thunderbird 600's to XP 3200+'s. My favorite board from that generation would have to be Soyo's kt600 dragon ultra platinum, it was stable and while not the fastest looked super neat, there were several great nforce2 boards available.
My heart was set on the MSI nForce2 motherboard and XP 3200+, but I ended up with a Chaintech VNF3-250 and Athlon 64 3000+. Unfortunately, that computer gave me endless trouble, owing to a cheapline PSU.
From there, I went to a second-hand Pentium 4 Willamette, 1.7 GHz, that ran flawlessly for a decade. I've still got it with my old installation of XP and sometimes boot it up to test things.
Well, the point of this article is that they support sockets for a long time and A was that way, so it's odd they leave out a well supported socket--which would support their arguement.
Why do you write that socket AM5 is from 2021? It didn't come out yet. We didn't have release of any motherboards or CPU's. AM5 is planned for 2022. Please correct the article.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
Back to Article
ikjadoon - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Customary "screw your fragile chipsets, Intel". Can't believe some early 2018 AMD X470 motherboards can run 4 (!) generations of AMD CPUs and Intel can *barely* support two generations of CPUs.The most pathetic Intel chipsets in recent memory:
Z87 / Z97: only supported Haswell and Haswell "Refresh"
Z370 / Z390: only supported Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake "Refresh"
If anyone bought these chipsets, their CPU support went from "the launch CPUs" to "the launch CPUs with +100 MHz stock clock and maybe another two cores". It's a real poor way to treat your customers, Intel.
Intel motherboards are akin to flagship Android phones that lose feature support after 1-2 Android OS updates. Chipzilla will smite you for even asking if a 3rd update is even "possible".
LGA1700: this is its final year of existence and it only come out hardly two months ago. LGA1700 will never support a 2023 Intel CPU. We get Alder Lake and Raptor Lake.
ikjadoon - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Well, the final year of LGA1700 V1.Waiting for 2023's LGA1700 V2 that is "electrically incompatible" with LGA1700 V1.
shabby - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Lol yup typical intel, moves pins around so you can't reuse the mobo.Morawka - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
and increase the price 25% over last gen.edzieba - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
"Can't believe some early 2018 AMD X470 motherboards can run 4 (!) generations of AMD CPUs and Intel can *barely* support two generations of CPUs."Good for that handful of models, but for the majority of AM4 motherboards CPU combability is limited to 2/3 CPU generations, and sometimes you need to switch BIOSes between generations due to BIOS capacity limits so not necessarily able to POST all generations on the same BIOS version. Thus you end up having to consult an arcane combability matrix (e.g. https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/72e00246-c... ), as well as sometimes needing to find an older CPU in order for the board to POST in order to flash the BIOS to allow a newer CPU to POST, rather than the simpler "any motherboard and any CPU within these two generations are compatible".
8x and 9x chipsets also technically supported Broadwell, though that was admittedly a limited release.
"Intel motherboards are akin to flagship Android phones that lose feature support after 1-2 Android OS updates. Chipzilla will smite you for even asking if a 3rd update is even "possible"."
except software support continues long after newer CPUs are released, e.g. Z270 is still supported with software updates, and even many 1xx series boards have drivers available for Windows 11 (contemporaneous Bulldozer boards? Definitely not).
MrTeal - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
AM3+ Bulldozer boards might have been what AMD had available in 2015 when Skylake launched, but that 800/900 series chipset and it's DDR3 RAM was already 5 years old at that point and everyone knew it was EOL since AMD announced in 2013 they weren't releasing more desktop FX processors. If you bought a 900 series board and FX CPU in 2015/2016 you did it because they were basically giving them away, not because you expected a solid upgrade path out of it.artk2219 - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
They were selling fx 8320e's with fx970 motherboards for sub 100 around 2014 through 2016. Granted they weren't bleeding edge or awesome, they still were plenty good for general usage computers, intro to mid level gaming rigs, fileservers, and basic vm hosts.Alexvrb - Saturday, January 8, 2022 - link
Support isn't a limitation of the chipsets, though. Board manufacturer support is key. The BIOS size limitations are also a manufacturer imposed limitation. In many cases they'd rather sell you a new board!thestryker - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I'm assuming you're just ranting for the sake of ranting, but just in case you're not the chipset shift is due to the massive number of SKUs Intel ships and the OEMs they're accountable to. For whatever reason (I'm not familiar enough, and nothing I can do will change it) BIOS storage is still relatively tiny which limits the amount of processor support, especially with the UEFI interfaces etc also vying for space.Perspective: There are currently 29 Alder Lake desktop parts (including the KS) versus 13 Zen 3 desktop parts (including OEM and 3D).
t.s - Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - link
Yeah, right. Like LGA1151 vs LGA1151(v2) that use exact same pin and you can, factually, use 1151 board for coffeelake CPU (1511v2), right? Lol.NickConrad - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I guess I'm in the vast minority, but if I'm upgrading my CPU there's no way I'm not upgrading everything. A multi-generation socket hardly even warrants a shrug from a customer like me.Makaveli - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
i'm the opposite why do a full system rebuild when you don't have to. AM4 has allowed me to go Zen 2 to Zen 3 without changing anything else. And i'm not someone that does new builds every 2 years so works for me.DanNeely - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I go long enough between CPU updates that even AMD's longer lived sockets have been gone before I saw enough increased performance to justify them. S939 (2005) to LGA-1366 (2009), to LGA1150 (2015).My next system will probably be late 2022/early 2023. If I go AMD near the end of AM5 might have enough gains to justify an upgrade to me again; but if so unless it's a critical need I'll probably wait for AM6 (or go Intel) because I don't want to miss out on whatever other new shinies have been added in the interim for anther half dozen years.
thestryker - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
This is the same boat I'm in (went from 939 to 1366 to 2011) where I don't upgrade often enough to particularly care about long term support. I care much more about future proofing the platform I get as much as possible than the ability to pop a new CPU in.Qasar - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
keep on mind though, for the most part, intels cpus werent worth the upgrade gen on gen. most would skip 2 or 3 gens before upgrading. where with zen, it was worth the upgrade. i went from a 3900x to a 5900x and the increase i saw was quite noticable, specially with handbrake and video editing.drothgery - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
No, you're in the vast majority (because most people by pre-built systems, usually laptops, and even enthusiasts who build everything themselves rarely upgrade CPUs without getting a whole new motherboard because usually enough has come out since you did that to justify it even if there's not a socket change or other incompatibility even if you're not flipping from AMD to Intel or vis versa).Jp7188 - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I could go the other direction entirely. My 6700k was great, but I wanted faster storage, USB, and Ethernet. A new platform was a bigger decider than faster CPU.meacupla - Saturday, January 8, 2022 - link
I am totally looking forward to upgrading my 2700X to a 5600X, 5800X or 5800X3D, when the prices come down.Also, there is still a point to having an upgradable CPU, like when you get a free PC, and it only has a pentium in it, but the mobo supports i7. The unfortunate part is, buying an i7 for older sockets is still absurdly expensive on the used market, and I have to buy the correct one, otherwise it doesn't fit.
GeoffreyA - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
I'd like to upgrade my 2200G to something like the 5600G, but wonder if I'll ever do it before going to a new computer because, except for encoding, it's quite all right.t.s - Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - link
Yep. ~$168 i6 6700K vs ~$140 15 8500 make me laugh. But understandable, cause for Joe and Jill, i7 is always better than i5.Dolda2000 - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I too upgrade rather seldom (I'm currently writing this on Sandy Bridge), but I nevertheless appreciate the modularity of long-lived platforms. One of the nice thing with DIY computers is that you tend to end up with a wee bit of a stockpile of spare parts, and being able to cross-match them in ways that you didn't necessarily have to foresee when your first bought them is very, very nice.TiO2 - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Ask all the B350/X370 motherboard users what "5 years of AM4 support" meant to them - that promise was worthless and they relied on semantics to get themselves out of it. AMD is actively blocking Ryzen 5000 on 300-series chipsets, which have identical silicon to the 400-series, and for which working beta BIOSes were available with Ryzen 5000 support. It also took tons and tons of community pressure for AMD to agree to support Ryzen 5000 on B450/X470 (they were initially only planned to be compatible with B550/X570). Don't trust this at all.cfenton - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
I'm one of those B350 users and it was very disappointing that they locked me out of Ryzen 5000. I ended up going from a 1700 to a 3800XT because I got a good deal on one shortly before Ryzen 5000 released. I would have gladly paid more for the 5800x or 5900x, but AMD didn't give me that option.I wouldn't trust them to support the early AM5 boards for the lifetime of the socket.
GeoffreyA - Saturday, January 8, 2022 - link
300-series motherboards might end up getting support.https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-exploring-ry...
Shlong - Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - link
As an X370 Taichi owner, I went from 1700X to 2700X to 3900X and now 5900X (using 6.62 beta bios). ASRock has released an official bios with updated AGESA supporting 5000 series for the X370 Pro this week so I think we're gonna see official Bioses for the X370 boards soon to support 5000 series.Cygni - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
There is some selective memory about the AMD sockets in this article. While a lot of the mainline platforms did have fairly long lives, CPU support was often bifurcated and spotty, and there are a great many platforms that AMD dropped like a rock after a single CPU release cycle. Remember AM1's promised "three generations"? FM1? QuadFX/4x4? And even more recently, TRX40?So while I do hope the fiasco around AMD trying to keep Zen 3 off of B450 is fresh in their minds, it is always helpful to take what these multi-billion dollar megacorps with terrible track records say with a big helping of "believe it when you see it".
Oxford Guy - Saturday, January 8, 2022 - link
First-generation Threadripper boards don’t support generation 2 CPUs.artk2219 - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
Thanks for mentioning these, I was just about to do the same thing as a former FM1 and current x399 owner. It sure would have been nice to move to an appreciably better chip than my 1920x without a platform update.dwillmore - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
What about Socket 754? We ignoring that?GeoffreyA - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Unfortunately, I had one of those.trenzterra - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
Glad someone mentioned this. I got one of those in early 2005 just to save some pennies and I regretted the next year when I realised how limited my upgrade options were. Even getting a PCIE mobo was next to impossible and was stuck on AGP longer than I liked.GeoffreyA - Friday, January 7, 2022 - link
No dual-channel memory, and if I remember rightly, the 3700+ was the highest CPU it could take.dwillmore - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
3400+ IIRC. The 3700 was a mobile part. And this article is about desktop sockets (or else they're missing a while bunch more sockets from AMD).dwillmore - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
I have one in the basement. Should still run. I wonder if I got one of the 64 bit capable ones? I honesty don't remember. I bought it from CompUSA if that gives you any idea of how old it is. :) Has SATA-1 ports, IIRC.GeoffreyA - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
I think all Socket 754 CPUs were x64.dwillmore - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
No, only the E6 stepping on the 90mm parts according to wikipedia at least.artk2219 - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
To be fair they started their list on socket 939, they could have gone back to super socket 7 if they wanted (supported everything from pentium mmx through k6 III+, awesome chip options), doesn't mean slot a, and socket 754 users didn't get burned in the interim though.dwillmore - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
They left out Socket A as well, which was also clearly an AMD socket. :)artk2219 - Sunday, January 9, 2022 - link
Yep, but socket a atleast was well supported for a few generations, from thunderbird 600's to XP 3200+'s. My favorite board from that generation would have to be Soyo's kt600 dragon ultra platinum, it was stable and while not the fastest looked super neat, there were several great nforce2 boards available.GeoffreyA - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
My heart was set on the MSI nForce2 motherboard and XP 3200+, but I ended up with a Chaintech VNF3-250 and Athlon 64 3000+. Unfortunately, that computer gave me endless trouble, owing to a cheapline PSU.From there, I went to a second-hand Pentium 4 Willamette, 1.7 GHz, that ran flawlessly for a decade. I've still got it with my old installation of XP and sometimes boot it up to test things.
dwillmore - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
Well, the point of this article is that they support sockets for a long time and A was that way, so it's odd they leave out a well supported socket--which would support their arguement.sd7832kjd3bcds - Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - link
"AM5 socket from 2021 to ..."Why do you write that socket AM5 is from 2021? It didn't come out yet. We didn't have release of any motherboards or CPU's. AM5 is planned for 2022. Please correct the article.