It turns out that AMD will soon start supporting the Renoir desktop processors on the older 400-series motherboards: B450 and X470. As soon as the Zen 3 based Ryzen 5000 processors are out in full force that is. Technically, the Ryzen 4000 APUs shouldn’t even be available on the AM4 platform, but high demand has led to retailers selling the processors either individually or paired with motherboards.
As you can imagine, this decision was taken to dissuade users from opting for the Renoir APUs over the Ryzen 3000 CPUs which have higher profit margins. The 7nm Zen 2 APUs were launched earlier this year on the notebook platform and ever since have garnered critical acclaim.
The landing of the APU lineup on the desktop platform was less smooth, with many budget users upset with the “OEM first” policy that has limited these chips to pre-builds and OEM systems for the most part. They’re more freely available in the Eastern and European markets, but availability in the US is limited.
As the newer Zen 3 lineup is launched, Zen 2 will officially fade from the limelight. This is when AMD plans to release support for the Renoir parts on AM4 as cannibalization of the Zen 2 chips will no longer be a concern.
As per motherboard vendors, they require a particular AGESA update from AMD to enable support for Renoir APUs on the B450 and X470 boards. This update will hopefully come towards the end of the year.
Source: ComputerBase
