Of the two claims, the older PR guidance for Intel's partners would seem more likely as many companies take a similar stance with what is assumed to be competitive product from another company in their field.
Despite the editorialising, the second claim could prove interesting if it's at all accurate, and we see any results from it. AFAIK, the graphics agreement hasn't been fully clarified by Intel or AMD, though it seems unlikely to unfold the way the writer speculates. For one, apart from S3 and some others, you primarily need to license certain graphics IP from either Nvidia or AMD.
Intel had been licensing from Nvidia and now have looked to AMD. It could be fans, stock-influencers, or other sources, but there has been endless speculation of Intel using Radeon tech instead of simply licensing AMD patents as it relates to their own GPU tech. We'll see.
It's best to wait for reviews, really. B350 will be lower priced, but you'll need to read site reviews and owner experiences to know which specific boards are worthwhile.
You have a new CPU arch, new socket, and new platform(s) in X370, B350 and the others. There is a lot of room for bugs and BIOS problems to emerge. Some of those could take weeks/months to be resolved.