Written by Metal Messiah

As you may have noticed AMD’s current ZEN processors have been in the market for quite some time, and AMD has also offered backwards-compatibility on it’s AM4 platform, unlike INTEL who has been forcing end users to upgrade to a new CPU socket/platform.

Now, one official representative of the XMG group, Schenker, posted on a Reddit thread that AMD’s upcoming next-gen Ryzen 4000 series of processors (codenamed VERMEER)  are going to be compatible with the existing B450 Chipset.

This means current Ryzen CPU owners can upgrade to the next-gen 4000 series of processors, without having to change their current motherboard. Though, for proper and full backwards compatibility, I presume motherboard vendors may need to release proper Firmware patches, along with BIOS updates.

According to “Schenker”, the XMG APEX 15 is a notebook having support for the desktop Ryzen 3000 processors, and is currently equipped with a B450 chipset mobo, which supports AM4 CPUs with 65 Watts TDP (e.g. the Ryzen 3950X, running in ECO Mode though).  So when referencing to the XMG APEX 15 model, “schenker” told the laptop is going to be future-proof.

This means AMD’s ZEN 3-powered Ryzen 4000/Ryzen 4’th generation of processors should hopefully be compatible with current AM4 socket motherboards. This speaks of the longevity of the current AM4 platform.

Now, if suppose current B450 chipset-based AM4 motherboards do get a microcode update to support the Ryzen 4000, then hopefully the high-end X470 chipset,  the current X570 chip, and the upcoming B550 motherboards may also feature support for ZEN3. Though this is a mere guess as of now. We can expect same level of compatibility with the X470 chipset.

In the REDDIT Q&A, Schenker had this to say, “it’s already been confirmed that AM4 socket and B450 chipset will be compatible with some (if not all) future Ryzen 4000 SKUs.”

So there you have it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise though, since the same thing happened with B450 and Ryzen 3000 CPU support, as BIOS updates were necessary to enable compatibility.  Also, this may be the LAST generation to be AM4 socket compatible.

AMD is expected to launch ZEN 3 Ryzen 4000 series of processors later this year. The series is slated to utilize an enhanced 7nm manufacturing process node, and a revamped ZEN 3 architecture. This should make the architecture even more power-efficient, and also powerful than current Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 series.  We can expect significant IPC gains, faster clocks and higher efficiency, and other new features.

One important thing to note here is that new upcoming platform features will likely not be available on these older chipsets.  Not all features. The same thing happened when Zen 2 came out with PCI-4.0 standard, which isn’t supported on the current 400-series chipset.

To conclude this, maintaining full AM4 support by AMD will also help encourage current Ryzen owners to upgrade their systems.  Good for the Red team in the long run I suppose.  AMD still has the competitive advantage with its current Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 series over INTEL, and the upcoming Zen 3 processors are going to push this move even more further.