What are you actually complaining about here; the length of time it takes to release new BIOS versions, a higher than warranted number of bugs/issues with the BIOSes they release, a combination of the two, or something else entirely?

If it's the speed that ASRock release new BIOS versions then I'm all for ASRock taking their time to get it right. In the early days there were a number of issues reported where ASUS BIOSes bricked the motherboard, I didn't see the same reports with any ASRock BIOS.

As for bugs/issues with BIOSes, sure there are a few, but I'm personally yet to strike anything ground breaking in the versions I've tried. Have things always worked as expected? Nope, but that's part of the teething issue with all new technology.

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Sorry, but you cannot blame ASRock for your woes.  They can only work with what AMD gives them in the AGESA versions.  It's not like all of the people having RAM speed issues are using ASRock boards -- far from it.

Some CPUs simply cannot do higher RAM speeds, even in the best, most up to date boards with the most up to date BIOSes.

AM4 platform is still barely over a year old -- still a newbie.  Intel boards and CPUs still have issues, even though they've been using basically the same platform and chipset and CPU architecture for many years now.

Ryzen is completely new.  You've got to give them time.  And no, a year is not enough time.  Those who would abandon a great new product now should never have gotten on the new-platform train in the first place.  You're using a good CPU and getting competitive performance for less money (on the CPU side anyway).

I never blame the IMC unless there is clear evidence to prove it (tested on different boards). We mods are on your side guys, we are not sellouts or employees of ASRock. We pass along all the info we get here to our contacts at ASRock to try and get issues resolved. 

We do try to rule out board issues wherever possible, the fact is, most people blame the motherboard right out the gate and quite often, it isn't the problem. Ryzen on the other hand has been a whole different beast and caused no end of issues for all of us. 

I blame the BIOS support too, be it ASRock's slow releases or AMD's AGESA codes causing problems the fact remains, we are the ones that are stuck waiting constantly on updates.

For every person on here with issues there are thousands with no problems. These are serious issues but they are by no means product stack wide. Some memory gives issues while others work fine. My system is rock stable (details in sig) at 3333 with my 3600 RAM kit (B-Die). 

I will query ASRock on these ongoing issues yet again. Hopefully they have a solution soon. 

And guys, when you are having issues like this please also make a support ticket to ASRock. Every so often we contact them about issues and are told they have not received tickets (many or any at all) about X or Y issue and that means they have no one working on it. State your RAM model # and brand so they can look at your exact specs and see what issues need fixing. 

The forums are here to help the community find quick fixes and troubleshoot issues, when the issue is clearly BIOS related and requires an update ASRock need to know about it. While they do check in on the forums they do not read every post. Support tickets do all get checked so this is your best option to get their attention. 

Another part of the issue is that a lot of users don't experience issues. Many users don't overclock or mess with RAM speeds and settings, they put it together, turn it on and install windows. Users that do this tend not to have problems because they run things bog stock with no tweaks. We tweakers are still the minority by a large margin. 

P state oc - I'm running 3.9ghz on my 1950x.. but I'm not doing it via pstates.. I just run it flat out all the time.. No issues at all here.

XMP - only effects folks running more than 2 sticks of ram.. my lowly 32gb just isnt enough to encounter the issue (and lets be honest with ourselves.. how many people actually run more than 32gb of ram.. I intend to but I also realize that I'm very much in the minority).

Some of the stuff might not be fixable.. it could be weaknesses in teh design of the chip itself, and not the chipset or the bios (though some of it could be bios or chipsets for sure.. Pstates yes, ram speed.. I dunno.. is the controller integrated into the proc on x399?)

The moral of the story is always run benchmarks at various frequencies and timings and find what nets you the best performance. 

There is a modicum of truth to what ASRock told you, the IMCs on first gen Ryzen are inferior to the second iteration IMCs but there is always a degree of variance even within the same generation. As you noted, your CPU/RAM combo performed better on another board. It may simply be down to a physical difference in the board design that your particular RAM does not agree with. 

Realistically speaking you are not missing out on any significant performance running at 2933 rather than 3200, particularly if you can tighten your timings up a little. It helps to bare that in mind sometimes but if you are like me and can't shake the urge to get the rated frequencies to work then you will need to either wait on yet another BIOS or switch out components, be it board or RAM. 

I say this a lot: If you are running at 2666 or higher you are doing fine and won't notice any appreciable boost from higher clocks anyway. When you get to the point where something like RAM frequency is ruining your enjoyment of your system you need to take a step back and look at the rest of the system and how well it performs. It's so easy to get caught up in one thing and miss out on all the good stuff around it. 

I'm not saying it isn't frustrating to have a high performance RAM kit under performing but it shouldn't be all you care about either. I ran my very expensive (at the time of purchase) 3600 kit at 2666 for a long time before I finally got an update that allowed 3200. I am still not able to get my full 3600 at rated timings and voltage. I have accepted the fact that my kit was specced for intel long before Ryzen launched and likely will never run at 3600 on first gen Ryzen. I have tested both the RAM and CPU in multiple boards and none do as well as my Taichi. 

a few minor observations if i may

rated xmp speed and timings if often if not always set at 2t for intel (ryzen tends to set it at 1t)

as xaltar stated differences in boards may well be just down to the different brands preselected sub timings (if it helps honestly i find msi bios tends to allow easier overclocking of ram for am4) this dosnt mean its faster/better it means they auto select safer subtimings, do i own an msi board ? no ! i prefered what i bought and that was asrock taichi overkill power supplies, but ive now built 4 msi ryzens for other people ,all of which have overclocked ram and cpu , but let me tell you msi tomahawks require a lot of volts to get the 1600's upto 3.8 stable,whereas a titainium was a breeze to get low volts 3.9 and 3333 cl14

whats the point ?

everything is different, brands of bios ,design of boards, its a case of see how you go

me ? well from day one (and we mean as soon as the taichi was in stock in the UK) i got 3200 ram working, bios version 2 ,what it took was a week or two and a lot of reading to get cl14 to cold boot, did it take a bios update ? NO it took time and education to get there

and now im still quite happy on bios v3.10

its still to some degree a case as it was at first

if you want top results with ram and ryzen buy the damn B dies , and that goes for any brand of motherboard b dies will do better than hynix etc

i did like Asrock for many years but after getting this bad egg of a product i feel burned. they only offer to replace it with another gaming k4 that will have the very same problems as its a hardware limitation in this Orphaned mother board. 

Makes sense why asrock removed 3200mhz ram support  from the product page in the first days after AM4 launched, Then less then 3 months later the Motherboard is End of Life and replaced with Gaming-x. 

tech support email has been very basic.  "try XMP, try 1 sitck, RMA,give up" same as the last few times i tried to get support.

they defend the K4 but wont support it :( , asrock keeps repeating that the K4 and Gaming x are the same and the only difference is VRM and USB.. well the Memory support is way different too but they refuse to admit that part/ QVL tells the whole story if you ask me.

Look at x370 gaming k4 QVL, the only kit rated 3200mhz is not real. its not a product. cant be found. Smoke and Mirrors.

look at the x370 Gaming-x it has 3333mhz supported. real ram kits. M-die at 3200mhz.

i will try to get asrock to replace this mobo again, Email support refused. so i call them up and got the same, might get a call back from a higher up. 

i called Newegg and they are working to replace this mother board for me,  Newegg has all the info of my contacts with asrock support over the year. i must say Newegg support is going above and beyond, its outside their 30day policy by over a year and still offered to help.

i am still willing to let asrock replace the motherboard with one that will support Hynix M-die at rated speeds. was assured about 1 year ago it would be fix in bios 

Then they showed me pic's of 3200mhz running on a b350 mobo "not the motherboard in question" and said it was my CPU,  Should have been a red flag :(

i was going to return the mobo then but felt i could trust asrock support. and everyone was having ram issues at launch.