ASUS & ASRock Confirm AMD Zen 6 CPU Support On Socket AM5 B850 Motherboards

One of the big features that AMD fans boast about when extolling the virtues of the Ryzen platform is forward compatibility. This very writer bought an ASRock X570 Taichi motherboard way back in 2019 for the launch of AMD's Ryzen 3000 series, and was still using that motherboard (with a 5800X3D installed) until this year. Socket AM5 may or may not last as long as Socket AM4, but it's at least going to support Zen 6, and that applies to current motherboards as well as future ones.

We know that because now, three of the big four motherboard vendors have explicitly or implicitly confirmed support for AMD's Zen 6 processors. We told you about MSI doing so last week through pseudo-official channels; now, both ASUS and ASRock have explicitly confirmed that their new motherboards will have support for Zen 6.


Indeed, that's the source of the charming young lady at the top: a video on ASRock's official Bilibili channel where Miss Shiyu explains that users should consider newer motherboards with 800-series chipsets over older boards with 600-series chipsets because of the various upgrades they offer. Shiyu stops short of saying that every ASRock motherboard will get Zen 6 support, but she does say that the new CPUs will be compatible immediately after release on 800 series ASRock products. Quite clear, that one.

Meanwhile, ASUS also confirmed the same through images originating from a listing on its JD shop. For those unfamiliar, JD is sort of like what would happen if Amazon and FedEx had an unmistakably Chinese baby. In a listing on JD, ASUS promotes its B850M AYW Gaming OC Wi-Fi 7 motherboard with the image below:


Even if you don't read Chinese, a shocking amount of this is perfectly comprehensible. There's toolless graphics card and M.2 installation, there's BIOS Flashback for CMOS updates, on-board reset and power buttons, a Q-Code diagnostic readout, Wi-Fi 7, and piles of USB ports. The most interesting part to us, though, is the part over on the left where it says "战未来, 支持Zen6, 64MB BIOS", which translates to, essentially, "future-proof Zen 6 support by 64MB BIOS."

The 64MB BIOS part is critical. Typical extant motherboards usually use 32MB BIOS ROMs, and what that means in practice is that future firmware updates for extant AM5 motherboards may require users to decide between an older BIOS for Zen 4 support, or a newer BIOS for Zen 6 support. We already saw this with Socket AM4, where many early motherboards only used a 16MB BIOS ROM, resulting in later BIOS revisions dropping support for early Bristol Ridge, Summit Ridge, and Raven Ridge processors.

Does all this preparation mean that Zen 6 is imminent? Well, no. Zen 6 desktop CPUs actually aren't expected until at least the second half of next year. Most likely, AMD's next CPU launches will be the Gorgon Point refresh of today's Strix Point. Zen 6 may still be a ways off, but it's encouraging to see motherboard vendors aligning early; it's a rare case of the hardware ecosystem getting ahead of the curve instead of scrambling after it.

_{Shout out to Uniko's Hardware for pointing out the ASRock video.}