Besides its new Ryzen 7 5800X3D, AMD made another surprise announcement by saying that it will be extending support for its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, all the way to its 1st generation 300 Series motherboard. The movie is clearly a response to the Ryzen community, many of whom have been begging the chipmaker to allow backward compatibility between two generations of components.
As per the explanation of Robert Hallock, Director of Technical Marketing at AMD, the backwards compatibility will be provided through a BIOS update. Specifically, users who are still using a 1st generation Ryzen system, this optional update will be made available for the X370, B350, and A320 motherboards.
More specifically, users will need to be on the lookout for the AGESA 1207 update, which will be located on different pages, based on the manufacturer and brand of your motherboard. Once you’ve updated the motherboard and its chipset to AGESA 1207 – updating the BIOS on your motherboard will still be the same standard affair – your 300 series motherboards should then be able to run any of the current Zen3 CPUs on the market.
As for when exactly this BIOS update: AMD says that AGESA 1207 will be available starting April, although when exactly will depend on the manufacturer and make of your motherboard. That said, it’s nice to see AMD listening to their fans and customers and proceeding to give them what they want.
