AMD's Zen 6 is still far away from its official launch, but MSI is already preparing for the upcoming CPUs by releasing motherboards with larger BIOS capacity.
MSI Prepares MAG/MPG B850/X870E MAX Motherboards With 64 MB BIOS for "Next-Level" CPU Upgrades
We still have a year before we can see AMD's next-gen Zen 6-based CPUs launching for the mainstream market, but as the lineup will be compatible with the AM5 platform, it makes sense that motherboard makers are doing preparation in advance. We have seen a few motherboard models from ASUS and MSI that will ship with a larger 64 MB BIOS chip, and today, we have obtained a few more from MSI.
MSI has already officially announced some of these motherboard models at Computex, but hasn't prepared the webpages for these products yet. We did know specs for these, but now we have detailed specs, including the B850 chipset model, thanks to wxnod. One is a B850 chipset model and the rest three are X870E boards, which are reportedly Zen 6 "ready".
- MAG B850M Mortar Max WiFi
- MAG X870E Tomahawk Max WiFi
- MPG X870E EDGE TI Max WiFi
- MPG X870E Carbon Max WiFi
We have the MSI MAG B850M Mortar Max WiFi as likely the cheapest option here, offering 64 MB BIOS to support "next-level" CPU upgrades with "better" compatibility. This could indicate support for Ryzen 9000G APUs as well as Zen 6-based SKUs coming next year. The motherboard boasts quite identical features to the MAG B850M Mortar WiFi, but has an additional M.2 slot. The layout also seems identical, and the I/O is unchanged as well. Another new feature is the introduction of the OC Engine for improved gaming performance, which will be available on other MAX models as well.
Next, we have the X870E lineup, which now offers three MAX models, bringing 64 MB BIOS chips as well. We cannot spot any differences in the design of these compared to their non-MAX variants, and they will all boast modern connectivity, the same number of PCIe x16 slots, M.2 ports, memory support, and features. They do offer OC Engine as we talked about previously, and EZ DIY design.
It's unusual to see motherboard manufacturers revising their existing lineups with a bigger BIOS chip, considering we only have two generations of CPUs compatible with the AM5 socket. Even the Ryzen 9000G will be based on the Zen 5 architecture, and shouldn't need an additional 32 MB space, as the default 32 MB BIOS chip is sufficient to accommodate a few CPU lineups. Even though MSI is preparing 64 MB BIOS models, the default 32 MB should still be okay for supporting Zen 6 without dropping the support for older generations.
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