During a broadcast, MSI showed that its 400 Series baseboards are planned to support AMD’s upcoming “Zen 3” microarchitecture. This video from MSI Insider also showed that the 300 series boards are not expected to support the new microarchitecture.
MSI confirms that the AMD 400 motherboard will be compatible with Zen 3
AMD has stated that they will retain the AM4 socket, but change the chipset to ensure maximum performance. As AMD is changing the chipset, some chipsets may not support older CPUs or microarchitectures even if the CPU fits into the motherboard socket.
A background slide was included in the MSI Insider presentation to show which processors and motherboards were supported. Motherboards included the A320, B350, X370, B450, X470, B550 and products based on the X570 chipset.
This slide also showed how the X570 and B550 motherboards were incompatible with the Athlon processors and the first generation Ryzen processors, while the newer B550 motherboards, in addition to the first generation Ryzen processors and the first generation Athlon processors, were also incompatible with the second-generation Ryzen processors.
The good news is that the 400 series motherboards support everything from Athlon processors to the upcoming ‘Zen 3’ based processors. However, to get support for the upcoming Zen 3 microarchitecture, users will need to update the BIOS. As Michiel Berkhout said, this update may result in the motherboard no longer supporting older processors.
This means that any user who still owns a 300 Series motherboard must purchase a new motherboard that is compatible with Ryzen’s third-generation processors and all future processors that use the ‘Zen 3’ microarchitecture.
As a result, the situation becomes much clearer and it is obvious what to expect with Ryzen 4000 and future processors. It’s a real pity that the 300 series motherboards are not included, as they represent a strategy for users to upgrade their motherboards.