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Although AMD has already confirmed Ryzen 5000 support for 400 series motherboards, it is up to each motherboard manufacturer to decide whether they will extend backward compatibility to their hardware; AMD has made it optional. It is encouraging, then, to hear MSI announce its commitment to support the entire brand line with no exceptions.
The list of MSI motherboards includes offerings based on the X470 and B450 chipsets, as well as the company’s Max and non-Max models. MSI will supply new firmware for the aforementioned motherboards to accommodate the Zen 3 chips seamlessly. MSI estimates that the firmware should be ready in January 2021. Once AMD has provided the AGESA code to MSI, the motherboard manufacturer will publish a more precise release schedule.
The Ryzen 5000 chips will officially go on sale on November 5, and AMD will not release a new chipset for the Zen 3-based parts. Therefore, AMD 500 series motherboard owners will be the only ones using the processors. at launch. Barring last minute changes, 400 series motherboard owners have to wait until January next year.
Unfortunately, the future for 300 series motherboards is clear: AMD has not said that it will not extend support to older chipsets.
After some fuss from chipmaker supporters, AMD backtracked to allow support for Zen 3 processors on 400 series motherboards. Due to the limited capacity of the BIOS chips, there will be certain compromises for 400-series motherboard owners like the removal of support for older Ryzen chips and a one-way ticket with no option to downgrade to earlier firmware. Updaters will also lose PCIe 4.0 support; older chipsets are not designed to support the interface. However, that is not a problem for the players; PCIe 4.0 has no impact on game loading performance.
