18 ms·

Finally fixed my PC’s persistent graphics and audio stutters

148 points by pimterry 4y ago

cameronh90 4y ago
I knew this was going to be due to the AMD fTPM stuttering. I've had it on my machine since I switched back to AMD in 2019. The BIOS updates haven't helped, and the discrete TPM I tried just made the system unbootable. I'm just used to it now. Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value for money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD system.
- daneel_w 4y ago
  So why do you have f/TPM enabled in the first place? There was no Windows 11 back in 2019. Do you have an actual need for it?
  - maven29 4y ago
    Full disk encryption as in Bitlocker?
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      Maybe. Only they know. I can't answer your question.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    I have the fTPM enabled on a few AMD Ryzen CPU computers I own. I like using Bitlocker even on my personal machines. I've got a lot of personal information on my computers, FDE helps to keep my data safe in case a drive goes missing.
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      Bitlocker/FDE is a valid use case. I personally prefer to protect sensitive information with software-based solutions that are portable between various operating systems.
    - whyoh 4y ago
      BitLocker can be used without TPM, for example with a password or a key file on a USB drive. And those are probably safer options if your whole computer gets stolen.
      - vel0city 4y ago
        The experience of doing it with a password is pretty poor compared to using a TPM. Every time the computer reboots, I need to type in the password. If it is a remote machine, I have to physically be at the station to type in the password. Keeping the key file on a USB drive isn't exactly safe either, as there's a high likelihood that flash drive is probably going to be near my computer when stolen. Also, that flash drive may be active and plugged when the system is running, exposing it to the machine directly. Having that key material easily accessible on a flash drive makes it less protected than using the TPM. Using the TPM gives me a better experience and depending on how things are handled a far more secure way of handling the key. Its way easier to grab the key file off the flash drive than coaxing it out of the TPM without booting the trusted boot process.
      - gambiting 4y ago
        They are only safer if you always unplug the USB drive and take it with you. Which I know I would never do reliably enough to offer protection(and I would probably lose the drive eventually which is then actually a complete loss of data unless you have a backup, but if you have a backup then that's yet another weakness in the system). A built in TPM module might have some unknown fault that hasn't been disclosed yet, but I think that's about 10000x less likely than the chance of me forgetting/losing the USB drive with encryption key.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    I use Bitlocker FDE. And frankly, having to disable this bit of hardware that you paid for because it doesn't work properly is bullshit.
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      AMD's fTPM is a gratis bonus as far as I'm concerned. Bitlocker's disk encryption can be used without TPM. It's less convenient - Windows needs to read the cryptographic key from a USB flash drive at boot - but I'm willing to bet it's much easier to get used to than 3 years of glitching and stuttering.
      - cameronh90 4y ago
        It's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a device because I require that feature. Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known to be on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a USB drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It means either the key material is stored in plaintext on the USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a PIN. I need my computer to be able to boot without intervention, so that isn't an option.
        daneel_w 4y ago
        > It's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a device because I require that feature. I don't understand, since fTPM specifically isn't a requirement. Any TPM will work. If you had bought Intel you would have paid more for just the CPU alone, regardless of the cost of a discrete TPM. > Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known to be on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a USB drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It means either the key material is stored in plaintext on the USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a PIN. I need my computer to be able to boot without intervention, so that isn't an option. With f/TPM and no PIN you're storing the keys in plain-text right next to the encrypted content. It's like hanging the keys to your door on the knob. This effectively cancels the point of full-disk encryption for your implied personal use. I cannot believe what I'm reading.
- neogodless 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I use my desktop for work and gaming. All AMD system for the past 3 years (CPU/GPU). No glitches or stuttering. Windows 10 with fTPM disabled since I have no interest in Windows 11. Been AMD only for CPU in my desktop the past 15 years or so and haven't had these glitch/stutter issues. All of this anecdotal, but I just find it odd you've never had a "stable glitch-free AMD system." But it might vary depending on motherboard, motherboard OEM and motherboard chipset. (Was on Asus X470, now on MSI X570.)
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    Installing a TPM module and then failing to get the computer to boot suggests that they don't know how to use the TPM in concert with an operating system. It's possible they don't even know what TPM is for or why they enabled/installed it in the first place.
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      Of course I know how to use a TPM and why one might use it. It's rather unfair of you to assume that I don't because the hardware I bought doesn't function properly. The computer failed to POST after I put in the dTPM, nothing to do with the OS. It's either an issue with the dTPM or the motherboard, but I couldn't figure out what the problem was and didn't want to keep spending money. The motherboard manufacturers provide very little information about how their dTPM interfaces work, and nowadays it can be difficult to find genuine OEM dTPMs due to Win11-related stock shortages.
      - daneel_w 4y ago
        Failure to boot after replacing the TPM is a key management problem on behalf of the user. Not a hardware problem.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    My thinking is that it's not the AMD CPUs that are the problem, but rather the Intel chipsets and chipset drivers generally seem to have fewer issues. It could also be that Microsoft and others do more testing on Intel-based systems. For what it's worth, I also indirectly support quite a lot of corporate systems, and we've had a fair amount of flakiness with AMD Thinkpads. Not every laptop has issues, and not in every situation, but we get issues significantly more often for the AMD machines - this is visible clearly in the stats we keep. Anything involving docks seems to be particularly problematic. It could be that Lenovo are just making terrible devices and I'm unfairly blaming AMD - but the Intel ones are rock solid. Also I've used TPM for years, possibly since Windows 7 I think, in order to get full disk encryption with Bitlocker. More recently I've been playing with remote attestation.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  Latest motherboard BIOS might fix it: https://www.techpowerup.com/295821/amd-releases-agesa-v2-1-2-0-7-microcode-to-motherboard-vendors-and-oems https://www.techpowerup.com/295821/amd-releases-agesa-v2-1-2... "This particular version of AGESA gains importance to those on Windows 11, as it corrects a performance-stuttering issue caused due to frequent polling of the fTPM by the OS."
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    Indeed it's supposed to, but it doesn't fix it for me. Even if it did, it's pretty annoying that this problem has been around for at least 3 years without a fix.
  - d2wa 4y ago
    (I’m the author.) That’s the version I’m running.
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      Sorry to hear, I have the same problem and was hoping the update would fix it. Although the latest (beta) update did improve things a lot.
- psyc 4y ago
  I’ve built several AMD systems over the past 20 years, and until now all the ones with nvidia GPUs were absolutely rock solid wrt hardware. The Radeon builds suffered various mostly minor GPU driver problems. But son of a bitcoin, my current PC has this exact stuttering problem! And all this time I just assumed it was Windows being stupid about normal I/O. But come to think of it, I did recently have a conversation with my even-hardware-geekier brother in which I said something like “How in the hell can Windows have become so sloppy that the mouse cursor can be regularly interrupted during normal use? That should be logically impossible by design.” But now I bet it’s this motherboard thing preempting everything and it all makes sense.
- gambiting 4y ago
  I've had a 5900X+X570 machine since late 2020, with fTPM enabled, and never noticed any stuttering. It's a completely flawless system, especially compared to the Intel 4790K machine it replaced, which had loads of random issues like these, unexplainable performance dips and crashes which no tweak could ever fix.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    It really seems to vary based on motherboard make and model. My high-end x570 board from ASUS initially exhibited this behavior, but it was rectified rather quickly with a BIOS update. I still ended up putting in a real TPM module for convenience reasons. It's hard to experiment with bios settings when half of them end up wiping the fTPM, necessitating me to punch in my BitLocker key on next boot. Maybe this fiasco combined with Windows 11 will finally push motherboard manufacturers to just build a real TPM into their products rather than relying on these janky fTPM/PTT solutions.
- fzfaa 4y ago
  >Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value for money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD system. If they are glitchy how can they be great value? I've had the same experience over the past decades - I will never be buying AMD again.
- to11mtm 4y ago
  I've had a couple... Two stand out. One was my glorious AXP1800 + Gigabyte GA-7DXR. Ok so it -started- glitching eventually, but that was because capacitor plague and not the AMD-ness. But that was a workhorse machine of mine through most of college. The few crashes that I -did- have, were related to other components like video/audio(1) that were no better in a 'full intel' setup. The other was an unsupported config; Tyan Tiger MPX with Dual 1.0Ghz Morgan Durons, Running Windows 2000. Fun little box. (1) - At the start of the century, one of the best things I did for system reliability was ditch Creative Labs and their drivers for the Glorious Crystal/HTEnvy cards.
dncornholio 4y ago
I was hoping to read how he debugged his system and found the rout cause. Instead I just get some ramblings from a guy who just tried different things from stuff he read somewhere.
daneel_w 4y ago
My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows 10, TPM completely disabled, no stuttering whatsoever.
- navjack27 4y ago
  My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows 11 pro for workstations latest developer release, TPM and other settings completely enabled, no stuttering whatsoever.
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    That's great. Eventually I'll have to emigrate from Windows 10 as well. Hopefully AGESA 1.2.0.7 solves the problem.
- gambiting 4y ago
  I have a Windows 10, 5900X+X570 machine with fTPM enabled and I get zero stuttering. Still using a pre-release BIOS with early Zen 3 support from August 2020 since I never saw any need to update it.
ItsTotallyOn 4y ago
This is a known issue with a fix that was reported a while back: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaround-for-ftpm-stuttering-issues https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaro...
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Also, he's using an AMD graphics card. AMD GPUs are infamous for stuttering issues and framerate problems on Windows. I tried a RX580 pre-pandemic and it was both a space heater with massive power consumption, framerates were wildly inconsistent in several games, and I had game crashes. Switched to a GTX1060 and boom, problems gone.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  That's mentioned in TFA. It doesn't fix the issue, and might have actually introduced it according to OP.
bigdollopenergy 4y ago
It looks like with a series of changes they were able to mitigate the issue almost completely, but it's still there and the motherboard is obviously deficient in some way. They mentioned they put the ram in 2 years ago and they've had this issue for 2 months. I suspect maybe it started when their OS's started using their TPM's but it's possible their board has just broken randomly. Likely on a hardware level. I do see value in diagnosing the issue and making a post about mitigation's. I love people who do this so others with the issue can find it and get their boards refunded/RMA'd before their warranties expire. But once the tpm/ftpm was identified as being the issue and it was hardware/firmware related, they need to get a new board, not more mitigations (hopefully by getting a refund/RMA so the board manufacturer doesn't get a pass on this). I don't see how someone working in the tech space (we are VERY privileged salary wise) would tolerate having obviously faulty electronics.
smallstepforman 4y ago
When I assembled by PC in 2020, stuttering was caused by the RAM RGB light driver. No more GSkill-Z Trident RGB in this box. Or any RGB driver.
- nix0n 4y ago
  That was just your PC playing "red light/green light"
codedokode 4y ago
> The fTPM clearly affects the system stability, even under an OS where it’s not in use. This is probably a code that works in SMM mode, and it has a priority even over ring 0 code. SMM is one of the worst CPU features, it is basically a backdoor in your system that can do anything and you cannot even see it. Even if you run Linux you have no control over SMM code, it can hang your system and you cannot even debug it. Also this shows a weakness of an "open" PC model where poorly tested hardware and low quality firmware from different vendors are assembled together. I cannot imagine this happening on an iPhone for example.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  And it's frankly absurd that ASUS/AMD etc won't run a test to see if the board runs under Windows/Linux without stuttering ATI drivers back then were already in a different league of quality than nVidia ones, looking like amateur hour sometimes SMM code writers seem to not give a F about any OS except Windows (current version) and even then. If AMD wants to win the datacenter they need to be extra attentive to this
- mkopec 4y ago
  > This is probably a code that works in SMM mode AMD fTPM runs on the PSP coprocessor, not on the x86 cores.
navjack27 4y ago
> so I quickly reinstalled Dude needs to stop quickly reinstalling things. Instead they need to slowly work through what is going on in the operating system that could be causing the observed issue. What does the Windows system information program say when it is run as an administrator? Is secure boot enabled? Is the pcr7 configuration on "binding possible"? What about kernel dma protection or virtualization based security?
jeffbee 4y ago
Wow this guy is really selling the AMD+Linux experience. Improved from 2 crashes per hour to once per 4 hours? Nobody I know would tolerate either of those.
- acdha 4y ago
  Yeah, Apple could run that post as an ad. It’s sad reading that and realizing that my 90s Debian desktop was _more_ stable.
  - churnedgodotdev 4y ago
    Actually, a reason (of many) I switched from Apple to Windows was Apple's well-known audio drop-out fiasco caused by Apple's T2 security chip essentially hijacking data lanes when low-latency audio processing needed them. Here is an image of an audio capture of the T2 causing a hiccup: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg This image was linked from this article: https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-for-mac-usage/ https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-fo...
- loudmax 4y ago
  He had the same problem in AMD+Windows. Things finally got better on a beta version of Windows. If he hadn't been using Linux, the entire experience would have been completely mysterious. Microsoft releases an update and problems magically go away. Not much of a blog post and not much to understand. The blog post ends with a plea to make problems easier to diagnose and understand, not with a plea for corporate monopolies to fix our problems for us.
gambiting 4y ago
I've had this random graphics stutter that would never ever show up in any benchmark at all, but weirder than anything else was that it also wouldn't show up in recordings made on that machine. To save you the story of weeks-long debugging efforts - the problem turned out to the monitor. It was a Dell Ultrasharp 25", and (as I now know) they all had an issue where the monitor would freeze roughly every 20 seconds for a frame, because the monitor was advertising the refresh rate to windows as 59.95Hz but it was actually refreshing at 60Hz internally - the timing would get out of sync pretty much exactly every 20 seconds, causing the monitor to "pause" and freeze - which looked like stutter when playing games. The solution was using some kind of program(forgot the name now) which basically overrode the refresh information being sent from the monitor and forced windows to refresh at exactly 60Hz and no less - then it worked fine. But of course if you used it with a PS4 then you didn't have any way to do that and just had to suffer this stutter every 20 seconds.
- croutonwagon 4y ago
  Similarly I have a monitor at home that, for whatever reason, will stutter on a game in fullscreen UNTIL i go and manually set its refresh rate. I have to flip it between 59.95Hz and 60 Hz in the windows advanced settings, changing that setting basically makes the monitor re-initialize and then everything is fine. It happens every time I wake the monitor from sleep (ie: my computer rarely, if ever goes to sleep, but the monitors will turn off after 10 minutes of inactivity) This only really happens with games. DirectX or Vulcan doesnt matter. Doesnt affect things like youtube, plex etc. But any game in fullscreen or borderless windows on that screen, i have to basically just change that setting back and forth to keep my sanity.
  - danudey 4y ago
    This reminds me of a sound card I bought way back when (22 years ago or so); it was a wavetable-supporting, Soundblaster Pro-compatible card that I got on sale for 50% off without making any effort at all to look it up online or even check the kernel for Linux support. It worked and sounded great in Windows; it also worked and sounded great in Linux, with one exception: the card supported ISA PNP, which was great, but the kernel module for the sound card wouldn't load unless I did `cat /proc/isapnp` first. I had no idea why, and it took a few reboots and trial-and-error to narrow it down to this janky workaround, but it worked so I just configured modprobe to run `cat /proc/isapnp > /dev/null` before trying to load the module and I never had to worry about it again. Technology sure is weird sometimes.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
In the past, I'd buy Intel + Nvidia to hope to avoid these sorts of weird troubleshooting cases. This occurred because I had a first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for Thunderbird CPUs/mobos was not complete, resulting in random crashes that required a mix of BIOS, Windows, and driver updates to completely resolve. Nowadays, I have no idea if that advice (Intel + Nvidia) is still sound. There are way more AMD users than before, and computers are more complicated than they were 20 years ago.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  Hmm. Wouldn't sticking to any Intel CPU with an IGP be enough ? Haven't had frustrating problems since I stick to that for Linux. But I haven't been really playing on Linux for years now, I don't have the time to experiment much. If it doesn't work at first try then it's windows or console.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    I presume anybody who is already using a dedicated GPU would not be happy with the performance of Intel's integrated GPUs.
    - johnchristopher 4y ago
      My bad, I mixed up thoughts about dev/office usage and gaming. For dev and desktop usage no IGP has let me down. Unless work needs a dedicated GPU to be done I think an IGP is enough for everything else these days. I don't think people using dedicated GPU wouldn't see differences with an IGP in day to day usage.
- bityard 4y ago
  > I had a first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for Thunderbird CPUs/mobos was not complete Nit: Thunderbird was the third iteration of Athlon and I only remember this because I had an Athlon 700, which came on a Slot A cartridge (!) and had the L2 cache as separate chips That same system also had one of the first GeForce cards. The term "GPU" was not unknown before GeForce, but it was the first time the mainstream computing media started using it regularly. That was the first computer I built with my own cash and boy it was not cheap. (21" CRT monitor and dual 10k RPM SCSI drives...)
gchamonlive 4y ago
I had issues once with my gaming setup (Arch Linux, Ryzen 5 3600, rtx 2060 6gb, MSI b350m gaming pro, 16gb ddr4 1600). The only thing I did was to set the governor from powersave, which came by default configured, to ondemand. Graphic stutters immediately went away and performance got close to that on windows. I suggest anyone having performance issues under Linux to check their governor.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  AMDGPU power profiles were giving me problems in VR in Arch Linux as well. I installed corectrl to automatically change modes whenever VR is running.
cgb223 4y ago
I’ve had an audio crackle that happens only sometimes on my PC for years now. Windows 10, Z170-A motherboard with driver for built in audio Tried different cables, inputs (optical vs aux etc) installing different drivers, old drivers, new drivers, nothing fixes it Super annoying when I want to listen to spotify or YouTube or anything
- capableweb 4y ago
  Probably your speakers, have you tried other ones? Cheap speakers sometimes (or OS "power saving" features) turns off various components after being inactive for a while, and when they come alive again, there is a pop happening as electricity enters the circuits. Happens if you turn on whatever the speaker is connected to after turning on the speakers as well, while vice-versa is fine with no pop.
- lapsis_beeftech 4y ago
  I too had issues with loud pops and crackles from my speakers and tried just about everything except picking apart the speakers (hardware is scary). Eventually I did investigate the speaker internals and the culprit turned out to be a bad potentiometer on the back of the subwoofer; I bypassed it with a wire which fixed the problem completely.
Melatonic 4y ago
Reminds me of the days when you had to optimize your IRQ's Big reason why lot of audio engineers use an external audio box - latency is super noticeable with audio and motherboards are rarely going to cut it
- capableweb 4y ago
  Another reason for a proper, external audio interface is noise. My previous ASUS mother board introduced a noticiable buzzing noise when using it for receiving audio, even though it was claimed that the isolation was good. Maybe something else in my desktop was outputting stronger interference than what they had tested with. Newer ASUS motherboard doesn't suffer from the same issue. Although the noise sucked, the real reason I got a external audio interface was the 1/4"/XLR connections anyways, so matters less.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
I am scared of upgrading from my i7-6700 system because it is so rock solid - it never crashes and just runs for days without weirdness or Windows 10 imploding on itself.
postcert 4y ago
The random crashing at low usage sounds very similar to an issue I had with my previous 5950x. There seems to be a real problem with 59{00,50}x’s where you either need to disable PBO (I think that’s the name) or bump voltages. After finding out it was a silicon lottery thing I sent my cpu right back to Amazon and the replacement has been perfectly fine from first boot (outside of figuring out the upper memory clock for 4 dimms)
sebastien_b 4y ago
So ”Fixed” is relative - more like “good enough for my satisfaction”. Kudos for sticking out for so long. I would’ve given up a lot sooner.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mat0 4y ago
He deserves the stuttering based on the amount of ads alone.
dhosek 4y ago
There was a twitter thread recently about how Mac people never built their own computers so don’t know what things can be like. But I have built my own computers and I hated dealing with issues like this. There’s a reason I don’t build my own computers anymore.
happyopossum 4y ago
This is the kind of thing that makes me chuckle every time I see a comment like ‘just build your own PC - they work better and save money’. Yeah, both can be true, but when it goes wrong, it can be very difficult and expensive to troubleshoot.
- asciimov 4y ago
  I've had these kinds of weird issues happen on named brand computers too. One annoying one is a 2014 HP laptop with Beats Audio. The laptop has a non-standard internal speaker setup. With the installed Windows 8 & Beats Audio drivers it sounds nice. Under Linux by default the speakers sound like a muffled tin can. Using a couple of tools and some terminal commands everything is right as rain. I nearly exclusively use Linux, but I had a need to work on some windows stuff so the laptop was pulled out and upgraded to windows 10. As soon as I ran some audio, tin can sounds. I've looked over and over for drivers, HP doesn't support Beats Audio anymore, and their replacement drivers that claim to work don't. Now if I need audio from that laptop I either have to use linux or I have to use the headphone port.
- bloaf 4y ago
  I've had way more issues on commodity systems than any PC I've built. Every sub-$1500 laptop I've ever bought has had some form of hardware issue. Anything from CPU incompatibilities with OS low power states to the machine I'm currently typing on which regularly BSODs due to the absolute dumpster fire of Realtek wireless drivers.
no_time 4y ago
>The mainboard reverts to fTPM if the hardware TPM is removed. It doesn’t have a way to disable the TPM. Can anyone verify this? Sounds fucked up.
ajolly 4y ago
I ended up having extremely weird stuttering issues where the mouse would suddenly take several seconds to move across the screen on a high-end 64 core threadripper machine. Turning off mouse trails in Windows completely solved the problem.

148 points by pimterry 4y ago

I knew this was going to be due to the AMD fTPM stuttering. I've had it on my machine since I switched back to AMD in 2019. The BIOS updates haven't helped, and the discrete TPM I tried just made the system unbootable. I'm just used to it now. Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value for money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD system.

daneel_w 4y ago
So why do you have f/TPM enabled in the first place? There was no Windows 11 back in 2019. Do you have an actual need for it?
- maven29 4y ago
  Full disk encryption as in Bitlocker?
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    Maybe. Only they know. I can't answer your question.
- vel0city 4y ago
  I have the fTPM enabled on a few AMD Ryzen CPU computers I own. I like using Bitlocker even on my personal machines. I've got a lot of personal information on my computers, FDE helps to keep my data safe in case a drive goes missing.
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    Bitlocker/FDE is a valid use case. I personally prefer to protect sensitive information with software-based solutions that are portable between various operating systems.
  - whyoh 4y ago
    BitLocker can be used without TPM, for example with a password or a key file on a USB drive. And those are probably safer options if your whole computer gets stolen.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      The experience of doing it with a password is pretty poor compared to using a TPM. Every time the computer reboots, I need to type in the password. If it is a remote machine, I have to physically be at the station to type in the password. Keeping the key file on a USB drive isn't exactly safe either, as there's a high likelihood that flash drive is probably going to be near my computer when stolen. Also, that flash drive may be active and plugged when the system is running, exposing it to the machine directly. Having that key material easily accessible on a flash drive makes it less protected than using the TPM. Using the TPM gives me a better experience and depending on how things are handled a far more secure way of handling the key. Its way easier to grab the key file off the flash drive than coaxing it out of the TPM without booting the trusted boot process.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      They are only safer if you always unplug the USB drive and take it with you. Which I know I would never do reliably enough to offer protection(and I would probably lose the drive eventually which is then actually a complete loss of data unless you have a backup, but if you have a backup then that's yet another weakness in the system). A built in TPM module might have some unknown fault that hasn't been disclosed yet, but I think that's about 10000x less likely than the chance of me forgetting/losing the USB drive with encryption key.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  I use Bitlocker FDE. And frankly, having to disable this bit of hardware that you paid for because it doesn't work properly is bullshit.
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    AMD's fTPM is a gratis bonus as far as I'm concerned. Bitlocker's disk encryption can be used without TPM. It's less convenient - Windows needs to read the cryptographic key from a USB flash drive at boot - but I'm willing to bet it's much easier to get used to than 3 years of glitching and stuttering.
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      It's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a device because I require that feature. Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known to be on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a USB drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It means either the key material is stored in plaintext on the USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a PIN. I need my computer to be able to boot without intervention, so that isn't an option.
      - daneel_w 4y ago
        > It's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a device because I require that feature. I don't understand, since fTPM specifically isn't a requirement. Any TPM will work. If you had bought Intel you would have paid more for just the CPU alone, regardless of the cost of a discrete TPM. > Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known to be on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a USB drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It means either the key material is stored in plaintext on the USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a PIN. I need my computer to be able to boot without intervention, so that isn't an option. With f/TPM and no PIN you're storing the keys in plain-text right next to the encrypted content. It's like hanging the keys to your door on the knob. This effectively cancels the point of full-disk encryption for your implied personal use. I cannot believe what I'm reading.
neogodless 4y ago
For what it's worth, I use my desktop for work and gaming. All AMD system for the past 3 years (CPU/GPU). No glitches or stuttering. Windows 10 with fTPM disabled since I have no interest in Windows 11. Been AMD only for CPU in my desktop the past 15 years or so and haven't had these glitch/stutter issues. All of this anecdotal, but I just find it odd you've never had a "stable glitch-free AMD system." But it might vary depending on motherboard, motherboard OEM and motherboard chipset. (Was on Asus X470, now on MSI X570.)
- daneel_w 4y ago
  Installing a TPM module and then failing to get the computer to boot suggests that they don't know how to use the TPM in concert with an operating system. It's possible they don't even know what TPM is for or why they enabled/installed it in the first place.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    Of course I know how to use a TPM and why one might use it. It's rather unfair of you to assume that I don't because the hardware I bought doesn't function properly. The computer failed to POST after I put in the dTPM, nothing to do with the OS. It's either an issue with the dTPM or the motherboard, but I couldn't figure out what the problem was and didn't want to keep spending money. The motherboard manufacturers provide very little information about how their dTPM interfaces work, and nowadays it can be difficult to find genuine OEM dTPMs due to Win11-related stock shortages.
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      Failure to boot after replacing the TPM is a key management problem on behalf of the user. Not a hardware problem.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  My thinking is that it's not the AMD CPUs that are the problem, but rather the Intel chipsets and chipset drivers generally seem to have fewer issues. It could also be that Microsoft and others do more testing on Intel-based systems. For what it's worth, I also indirectly support quite a lot of corporate systems, and we've had a fair amount of flakiness with AMD Thinkpads. Not every laptop has issues, and not in every situation, but we get issues significantly more often for the AMD machines - this is visible clearly in the stats we keep. Anything involving docks seems to be particularly problematic. It could be that Lenovo are just making terrible devices and I'm unfairly blaming AMD - but the Intel ones are rock solid. Also I've used TPM for years, possibly since Windows 7 I think, in order to get full disk encryption with Bitlocker. More recently I've been playing with remote attestation.
WithinReason 4y ago
Latest motherboard BIOS might fix it: https://www.techpowerup.com/295821/amd-releases-agesa-v2-1-2-0-7-microcode-to-motherboard-vendors-and-oems https://www.techpowerup.com/295821/amd-releases-agesa-v2-1-2... "This particular version of AGESA gains importance to those on Windows 11, as it corrects a performance-stuttering issue caused due to frequent polling of the fTPM by the OS."
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Indeed it's supposed to, but it doesn't fix it for me. Even if it did, it's pretty annoying that this problem has been around for at least 3 years without a fix.
- d2wa 4y ago
  (I’m the author.) That’s the version I’m running.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    Sorry to hear, I have the same problem and was hoping the update would fix it. Although the latest (beta) update did improve things a lot.
psyc 4y ago
I’ve built several AMD systems over the past 20 years, and until now all the ones with nvidia GPUs were absolutely rock solid wrt hardware. The Radeon builds suffered various mostly minor GPU driver problems. But son of a bitcoin, my current PC has this exact stuttering problem! And all this time I just assumed it was Windows being stupid about normal I/O. But come to think of it, I did recently have a conversation with my even-hardware-geekier brother in which I said something like “How in the hell can Windows have become so sloppy that the mouse cursor can be regularly interrupted during normal use? That should be logically impossible by design.” But now I bet it’s this motherboard thing preempting everything and it all makes sense.
gambiting 4y ago
I've had a 5900X+X570 machine since late 2020, with fTPM enabled, and never noticed any stuttering. It's a completely flawless system, especially compared to the Intel 4790K machine it replaced, which had loads of random issues like these, unexplainable performance dips and crashes which no tweak could ever fix.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  It really seems to vary based on motherboard make and model. My high-end x570 board from ASUS initially exhibited this behavior, but it was rectified rather quickly with a BIOS update. I still ended up putting in a real TPM module for convenience reasons. It's hard to experiment with bios settings when half of them end up wiping the fTPM, necessitating me to punch in my BitLocker key on next boot. Maybe this fiasco combined with Windows 11 will finally push motherboard manufacturers to just build a real TPM into their products rather than relying on these janky fTPM/PTT solutions.
fzfaa 4y ago
>Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value for money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD system. If they are glitchy how can they be great value? I've had the same experience over the past decades - I will never be buying AMD again.
to11mtm 4y ago
I've had a couple... Two stand out. One was my glorious AXP1800 + Gigabyte GA-7DXR. Ok so it -started- glitching eventually, but that was because capacitor plague and not the AMD-ness. But that was a workhorse machine of mine through most of college. The few crashes that I -did- have, were related to other components like video/audio(1) that were no better in a 'full intel' setup. The other was an unsupported config; Tyan Tiger MPX with Dual 1.0Ghz Morgan Durons, Running Windows 2000. Fun little box. (1) - At the start of the century, one of the best things I did for system reliability was ditch Creative Labs and their drivers for the Glorious Crystal/HTEnvy cards.

dncornholio 4y ago

I was hoping to read how he debugged his system and found the rout cause. Instead I just get some ramblings from a guy who just tried different things from stuff he read somewhere.

daneel_w 4y ago

My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows 10, TPM completely disabled, no stuttering whatsoever.

navjack27 4y ago
My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows 11 pro for workstations latest developer release, TPM and other settings completely enabled, no stuttering whatsoever.
- daneel_w 4y ago
  That's great. Eventually I'll have to emigrate from Windows 10 as well. Hopefully AGESA 1.2.0.7 solves the problem.
gambiting 4y ago
I have a Windows 10, 5900X+X570 machine with fTPM enabled and I get zero stuttering. Still using a pre-release BIOS with early Zen 3 support from August 2020 since I never saw any need to update it.

ItsTotallyOn 4y ago

This is a known issue with a fix that was reported a while back: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaround-for-ftpm-stuttering-issues https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaro...

KennyBlanken 4y ago
Also, he's using an AMD graphics card. AMD GPUs are infamous for stuttering issues and framerate problems on Windows. I tried a RX580 pre-pandemic and it was both a space heater with massive power consumption, framerates were wildly inconsistent in several games, and I had game crashes. Switched to a GTX1060 and boom, problems gone.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
That's mentioned in TFA. It doesn't fix the issue, and might have actually introduced it according to OP.

bigdollopenergy 4y ago

It looks like with a series of changes they were able to mitigate the issue almost completely, but it's still there and the motherboard is obviously deficient in some way. They mentioned they put the ram in 2 years ago and they've had this issue for 2 months. I suspect maybe it started when their OS's started using their TPM's but it's possible their board has just broken randomly. Likely on a hardware level. I do see value in diagnosing the issue and making a post about mitigation's. I love people who do this so others with the issue can find it and get their boards refunded/RMA'd before their warranties expire. But once the tpm/ftpm was identified as being the issue and it was hardware/firmware related, they need to get a new board, not more mitigations (hopefully by getting a refund/RMA so the board manufacturer doesn't get a pass on this). I don't see how someone working in the tech space (we are VERY privileged salary wise) would tolerate having obviously faulty electronics.

smallstepforman 4y ago

When I assembled by PC in 2020, stuttering was caused by the RAM RGB light driver. No more GSkill-Z Trident RGB in this box. Or any RGB driver.

nix0n 4y ago
That was just your PC playing "red light/green light"

codedokode 4y ago

> The fTPM clearly affects the system stability, even under an OS where it’s not in use. This is probably a code that works in SMM mode, and it has a priority even over ring 0 code. SMM is one of the worst CPU features, it is basically a backdoor in your system that can do anything and you cannot even see it. Even if you run Linux you have no control over SMM code, it can hang your system and you cannot even debug it. Also this shows a weakness of an "open" PC model where poorly tested hardware and low quality firmware from different vendors are assembled together. I cannot imagine this happening on an iPhone for example.

raverbashing 4y ago
And it's frankly absurd that ASUS/AMD etc won't run a test to see if the board runs under Windows/Linux without stuttering ATI drivers back then were already in a different league of quality than nVidia ones, looking like amateur hour sometimes SMM code writers seem to not give a F about any OS except Windows (current version) and even then. If AMD wants to win the datacenter they need to be extra attentive to this
mkopec 4y ago
> This is probably a code that works in SMM mode AMD fTPM runs on the PSP coprocessor, not on the x86 cores.

navjack27 4y ago

> so I quickly reinstalled Dude needs to stop quickly reinstalling things. Instead they need to slowly work through what is going on in the operating system that could be causing the observed issue. What does the Windows system information program say when it is run as an administrator? Is secure boot enabled? Is the pcr7 configuration on "binding possible"? What about kernel dma protection or virtualization based security?

jeffbee 4y ago

Wow this guy is really selling the AMD+Linux experience. Improved from 2 crashes per hour to once per 4 hours? Nobody I know would tolerate either of those.

acdha 4y ago
Yeah, Apple could run that post as an ad. It’s sad reading that and realizing that my 90s Debian desktop was _more_ stable.
- churnedgodotdev 4y ago
  Actually, a reason (of many) I switched from Apple to Windows was Apple's well-known audio drop-out fiasco caused by Apple's T2 security chip essentially hijacking data lanes when low-latency audio processing needed them. Here is an image of an audio capture of the T2 causing a hiccup: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg This image was linked from this article: https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-for-mac-usage/ https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-fo...
loudmax 4y ago
He had the same problem in AMD+Windows. Things finally got better on a beta version of Windows. If he hadn't been using Linux, the entire experience would have been completely mysterious. Microsoft releases an update and problems magically go away. Not much of a blog post and not much to understand. The blog post ends with a plea to make problems easier to diagnose and understand, not with a plea for corporate monopolies to fix our problems for us.

gambiting 4y ago

I've had this random graphics stutter that would never ever show up in any benchmark at all, but weirder than anything else was that it also wouldn't show up in recordings made on that machine. To save you the story of weeks-long debugging efforts - the problem turned out to the monitor. It was a Dell Ultrasharp 25", and (as I now know) they all had an issue where the monitor would freeze roughly every 20 seconds for a frame, because the monitor was advertising the refresh rate to windows as 59.95Hz but it was actually refreshing at 60Hz internally - the timing would get out of sync pretty much exactly every 20 seconds, causing the monitor to "pause" and freeze - which looked like stutter when playing games. The solution was using some kind of program(forgot the name now) which basically overrode the refresh information being sent from the monitor and forced windows to refresh at exactly 60Hz and no less - then it worked fine. But of course if you used it with a PS4 then you didn't have any way to do that and just had to suffer this stutter every 20 seconds.

croutonwagon 4y ago
Similarly I have a monitor at home that, for whatever reason, will stutter on a game in fullscreen UNTIL i go and manually set its refresh rate. I have to flip it between 59.95Hz and 60 Hz in the windows advanced settings, changing that setting basically makes the monitor re-initialize and then everything is fine. It happens every time I wake the monitor from sleep (ie: my computer rarely, if ever goes to sleep, but the monitors will turn off after 10 minutes of inactivity) This only really happens with games. DirectX or Vulcan doesnt matter. Doesnt affect things like youtube, plex etc. But any game in fullscreen or borderless windows on that screen, i have to basically just change that setting back and forth to keep my sanity.
- danudey 4y ago
  This reminds me of a sound card I bought way back when (22 years ago or so); it was a wavetable-supporting, Soundblaster Pro-compatible card that I got on sale for 50% off without making any effort at all to look it up online or even check the kernel for Linux support. It worked and sounded great in Windows; it also worked and sounded great in Linux, with one exception: the card supported ISA PNP, which was great, but the kernel module for the sound card wouldn't load unless I did `cat /proc/isapnp` first. I had no idea why, and it took a few reboots and trial-and-error to narrow it down to this janky workaround, but it worked so I just configured modprobe to run `cat /proc/isapnp > /dev/null` before trying to load the module and I never had to worry about it again. Technology sure is weird sometimes.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

In the past, I'd buy Intel + Nvidia to hope to avoid these sorts of weird troubleshooting cases. This occurred because I had a first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for Thunderbird CPUs/mobos was not complete, resulting in random crashes that required a mix of BIOS, Windows, and driver updates to completely resolve. Nowadays, I have no idea if that advice (Intel + Nvidia) is still sound. There are way more AMD users than before, and computers are more complicated than they were 20 years ago.

johnchristopher 4y ago
Hmm. Wouldn't sticking to any Intel CPU with an IGP be enough ? Haven't had frustrating problems since I stick to that for Linux. But I haven't been really playing on Linux for years now, I don't have the time to experiment much. If it doesn't work at first try then it's windows or console.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  I presume anybody who is already using a dedicated GPU would not be happy with the performance of Intel's integrated GPUs.
  - johnchristopher 4y ago
    My bad, I mixed up thoughts about dev/office usage and gaming. For dev and desktop usage no IGP has let me down. Unless work needs a dedicated GPU to be done I think an IGP is enough for everything else these days. I don't think people using dedicated GPU wouldn't see differences with an IGP in day to day usage.
bityard 4y ago
> I had a first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for Thunderbird CPUs/mobos was not complete Nit: Thunderbird was the third iteration of Athlon and I only remember this because I had an Athlon 700, which came on a Slot A cartridge (!) and had the L2 cache as separate chips That same system also had one of the first GeForce cards. The term "GPU" was not unknown before GeForce, but it was the first time the mainstream computing media started using it regularly. That was the first computer I built with my own cash and boy it was not cheap. (21" CRT monitor and dual 10k RPM SCSI drives...)

gchamonlive 4y ago

I had issues once with my gaming setup (Arch Linux, Ryzen 5 3600, rtx 2060 6gb, MSI b350m gaming pro, 16gb ddr4 1600). The only thing I did was to set the governor from powersave, which came by default configured, to ondemand. Graphic stutters immediately went away and performance got close to that on windows. I suggest anyone having performance issues under Linux to check their governor.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
AMDGPU power profiles were giving me problems in VR in Arch Linux as well. I installed corectrl to automatically change modes whenever VR is running.

cgb223 4y ago

I’ve had an audio crackle that happens only sometimes on my PC for years now. Windows 10, Z170-A motherboard with driver for built in audio Tried different cables, inputs (optical vs aux etc) installing different drivers, old drivers, new drivers, nothing fixes it Super annoying when I want to listen to spotify or YouTube or anything

capableweb 4y ago
Probably your speakers, have you tried other ones? Cheap speakers sometimes (or OS "power saving" features) turns off various components after being inactive for a while, and when they come alive again, there is a pop happening as electricity enters the circuits. Happens if you turn on whatever the speaker is connected to after turning on the speakers as well, while vice-versa is fine with no pop.
lapsis_beeftech 4y ago
I too had issues with loud pops and crackles from my speakers and tried just about everything except picking apart the speakers (hardware is scary). Eventually I did investigate the speaker internals and the culprit turned out to be a bad potentiometer on the back of the subwoofer; I bypassed it with a wire which fixed the problem completely.

Melatonic 4y ago

Reminds me of the days when you had to optimize your IRQ's Big reason why lot of audio engineers use an external audio box - latency is super noticeable with audio and motherboards are rarely going to cut it

capableweb 4y ago
Another reason for a proper, external audio interface is noise. My previous ASUS mother board introduced a noticiable buzzing noise when using it for receiving audio, even though it was claimed that the isolation was good. Maybe something else in my desktop was outputting stronger interference than what they had tested with. Newer ASUS motherboard doesn't suffer from the same issue. Although the noise sucked, the real reason I got a external audio interface was the 1/4"/XLR connections anyways, so matters less.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

I am scared of upgrading from my i7-6700 system because it is so rock solid - it never crashes and just runs for days without weirdness or Windows 10 imploding on itself.

postcert 4y ago

The random crashing at low usage sounds very similar to an issue I had with my previous 5950x. There seems to be a real problem with 59{00,50}x’s where you either need to disable PBO (I think that’s the name) or bump voltages. After finding out it was a silicon lottery thing I sent my cpu right back to Amazon and the replacement has been perfectly fine from first boot (outside of figuring out the upper memory clock for 4 dimms)

sebastien_b 4y ago

So ”Fixed” is relative - more like “good enough for my satisfaction”. Kudos for sticking out for so long. I would’ve given up a lot sooner.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mat0 4y ago

He deserves the stuttering based on the amount of ads alone.

dhosek 4y ago

There was a twitter thread recently about how Mac people never built their own computers so don’t know what things can be like. But I have built my own computers and I hated dealing with issues like this. There’s a reason I don’t build my own computers anymore.

happyopossum 4y ago

This is the kind of thing that makes me chuckle every time I see a comment like ‘just build your own PC - they work better and save money’. Yeah, both can be true, but when it goes wrong, it can be very difficult and expensive to troubleshoot.

asciimov 4y ago
I've had these kinds of weird issues happen on named brand computers too. One annoying one is a 2014 HP laptop with Beats Audio. The laptop has a non-standard internal speaker setup. With the installed Windows 8 & Beats Audio drivers it sounds nice. Under Linux by default the speakers sound like a muffled tin can. Using a couple of tools and some terminal commands everything is right as rain. I nearly exclusively use Linux, but I had a need to work on some windows stuff so the laptop was pulled out and upgraded to windows 10. As soon as I ran some audio, tin can sounds. I've looked over and over for drivers, HP doesn't support Beats Audio anymore, and their replacement drivers that claim to work don't. Now if I need audio from that laptop I either have to use linux or I have to use the headphone port.
bloaf 4y ago
I've had way more issues on commodity systems than any PC I've built. Every sub-$1500 laptop I've ever bought has had some form of hardware issue. Anything from CPU incompatibilities with OS low power states to the machine I'm currently typing on which regularly BSODs due to the absolute dumpster fire of Realtek wireless drivers.

no_time 4y ago

>The mainboard reverts to fTPM if the hardware TPM is removed. It doesn’t have a way to disable the TPM. Can anyone verify this? Sounds fucked up.

ajolly 4y ago

I ended up having extremely weird stuttering issues where the mouse would suddenly take several seconds to move across the screen on a high-end 64 core threadripper machine. Turning off mouse trails in Windows completely solved the problem.