6 ms·

Just for another datapoint: I'm using one of the new zen4 cpus with Linux Mint. I'm still using the older 5.15.0-50 kernel but almost everything is working fine

Just for another datapoint: I'm using one of the new zen4 cpus with Linux Mint. I'm still using the older 5.15.0-50 kernel but almost everything is working fine anyway. That said: - I'm using an old dedicated graphics card (a RX480) instead of the integrated graphics on the CPU. - The system hard crashes when I suspend then resume. - Wow is it slow to POST. It takes about 20 seconds from when I power it on before grub shows up. Hopefully this gets fixed in a future BIOS version. (MSI hasn't updated the BIOS since release.) - I also get a few warnings in dmesg about ACPI objects being already defined. Other than that, everything feels solid. Sound, wifi and ethernet all work fine. All the cores show up and run great.

brokenmachine 4y ago
>Wow is it slow to POST. It takes about 20 seconds from when I power it on before grub shows up I remember from some reviews that the new Ryzens took a long time on the first boot for analyzing the RAM or something. Could it be forgetting that analysis and having to do it again? Maybe try manually setting some RAM settings?
yxhuvud 4y ago
> Wow is it slow to POST My understanding is that it is intentionally slow the first time you boot but should be normally slow after that. Apparently it is trying how fast it can clock the memory or something like that.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  It is _ridiculously_ slow on first boot after a cleared CMOS due to the extra memory training - as in minutes. 20 seconds to post is the normal time after that initial boot and a decent time at that for these boards.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Any idea why they're so slow to post? Or if this is something that can ever be fixed? The b550 (zen 3) board I replaced was way faster. I wouldn't mind so much if suspend & resume worked.
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      Suspend + resume works for me on Windows, haven’t tried Linux yet so can’t say if it’s in that half or maybe something board/firmware revision specific though. Not sure why they take so much longer. Zen 3 was definitely faster for me as well. I’m not holding my breath that it’ll get significantly faster but I suppose it’s possible an update could do it.
      - josephg 4y ago
        > haven’t tried Linux yet so can’t say if it’s in that half or maybe something board/firmware revision specific though. Its probably just bugs in the 5.15 kernel I'm still running. Full zen 4 support wasn't added until linux 6.0, so I think I'm doing well as it is. Fingers crossed suspend is fixed by a newer kernel. Given everything else in the system seems to work fine, I'm not too fussed.
    - seritools 4y ago
      First-gen products often have issues like this. My old X370 board (zen1 era) turns off and on again twice before actually booting; a similar zen3 system doesn't need that and boots faster in general.
- zaarn 4y ago
  it's doing DDR Training. It's not necessarily how fast it can clock the memory. It's essentially putting an oscilloscope to the memory traces and checking how to generate the necessary signals fast enough while still being recognized on the other end. Simply because at the clock speeds and latency requirements of DDR5 Memory, the signal path is unique enough between CPUs, Motherboards and RAM Sticks that you need to configure the clock generation individually for that setup.
  - josephg 4y ago
    That makes sense for first boot. But does it really have to do some variant of that every time the system boots up?
    - jalbertoni 4y ago
      How would it know if you haven't changed your RAM? Consider that using the same settings with different parts might lead to subtle instability, not a full on-boot crash.
      - mnd999 4y ago
        Surely it can know that. Don’t ram chips identify with vendor / serial number etc?
        sgtnoodle 4y ago
        Serial numbers that are supposed to be unique aren't necessarily unique. I would guess that the BIOS talk to an EEPROM on the RAM modules rather than to the memory chips themselves. It would be very easy for a manufacturer to flash identical contents to every EEPROM in a batch, or with a sequentially increasing serial, rather than bother with a database.
        zaarn 4y ago
        What if you reinsert the same RAM stick into the same slot? Minute differences in insertion force and direction can lead to the frequency response of the RAM stick changing. Data paths might now be a micrometer long and require the BIOS to retrain the communication controller to compensate for that. DDR5 tops out somewhere around 8 Gigahertz clock speed, which means the data signals travel 3 centimeters before the next clock signal arrives. At those time scales it means you're going to have to align those data signals down to the micrometer if you want them to be properly received.
zamadatix 4y ago
Out of curiosity what fabric and memory clock are you able to run at? I’m either extremely unlucky or running into an early firmware bug as I can’t get anything above 2100 MHz fabric to boot reliably.
- josephg 4y ago
  I didn't touch the clock speeds from whatever the defaults are. Given the reported thermals, I'm tempted to go the other way and underclock the system. Losing ~5% performance to get a 50% reduction in power consumption would be a great deal if I can get it. That said, I did activate EXPO on my 6000 MHz RAM sticks - which at first caused the system to hard freeze and nothing short of a CMOS clear could bring it back. But in the end, re-seating the RAM sticks seems to have sorted that one out and its running at the full rated speed now.
  - Trellmor 4y ago
    EXPO breaks S3 sleep at least in some cases. A few motherboard vendors even disable the S3 state when EXPO is enabled. https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xwfadm/when_expo_is_enabled_your_pc_can_not_go_to_sleep/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xwfadm/when_expo_is_en...
  - hesdeadjim 4y ago
    I had the EXACT same problem. I left my machine running for 30 minutes after turning on EXPO after hearing about “training”. Hard reboot, CPU code error… uh oh. Clear CMOS, boots again at 3000mhz. Decide to install Windows first, and then after I turned EXPO back on and have had zero issues at full rated speed. Even ram memtest to be sure. Im running a MSI MPG x670e Carbon Wifi for what it’s worth.
    - josephg 4y ago
      Seems weird that installing windows fixed a ram issue. I wonder if there's a launch day CPU microcode update or something that windows installed that made a difference? I'm also using a MSI board FWIW: MAG B650M Mortar (WIFI)
sgtnoodle 4y ago
My zen3 system with 6800xt GPU doesn't resume from suspend reliably in Arch Linux. It works maybe 1 in 4 attempts. Otherwise, the AMDGPU driver hits a timeout and resets the GPU, and then my compositor has a bunch of open but invalid GL contexts or whatever. Sometimes I can switch to a virtual terminal and recover from it, but the attempt to do so tends to cause the system to lock up.
- tincotema 4y ago
  I have the same problem. Ryzen 5600H laptop. I "fixed" it with a posthook Script thats switches between my first and second tty. That works for me.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    Interesting. Just switching to the tty doesn't fix things for me, though. I need to restart my whole graphical environment i.e. by restarting my display manager. So, it's about as convenient as just shutting down and powering back up. It's unfortunate because my desktop eats up about 110W when idle, and approximately 0W when suspended. I also use some sketchy successor to "barrier" to share my mouse and keyboard with my work laptop, and that somehow keeps my monitors from shutting off if I happen to leave the mouse cursor on the laptop's screen. That's another 100W according to my UPS. There are undoubtedly dozens of power plants that exist purely due to the overall number of software bugs that exist. They're talking about banning natural gas in favor of electrical heating here in California, and I live in a chillier climate, so I must be saving the Earth by leaving my desktop powered on most of the time out of convenience.
    - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
      Same for me. I even had it working for a while but then a kernel upgrade or something else seemed to have broken it again.
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        It's frustrated me to the point that it was a major factor in deciding to splurge on buying a Steam Deck. The suspend / resume works so flawlessly on it that I weep. I keep an arbitrary game running on it in the drawer of my night stand. I don't actually have the energy to play a game that often, but knowing that resume button will work brings me great comfort.
trynumber9 4y ago
Hey josephg, does your motherboard disable sleep states when using XMP or EXPO memory configurations? That could explain the crash when suspending.
- josephg 4y ago
  How can you tell in Linux?

brokenmachine 4y ago

>Wow is it slow to POST. It takes about 20 seconds from when I power it on before grub shows up I remember from some reviews that the new Ryzens took a long time on the first boot for analyzing the RAM or something. Could it be forgetting that analysis and having to do it again? Maybe try manually setting some RAM settings?

yxhuvud 4y ago

> Wow is it slow to POST My understanding is that it is intentionally slow the first time you boot but should be normally slow after that. Apparently it is trying how fast it can clock the memory or something like that.

zamadatix 4y ago
It is _ridiculously_ slow on first boot after a cleared CMOS due to the extra memory training - as in minutes. 20 seconds to post is the normal time after that initial boot and a decent time at that for these boards.
- josephg 4y ago
  Any idea why they're so slow to post? Or if this is something that can ever be fixed? The b550 (zen 3) board I replaced was way faster. I wouldn't mind so much if suspend & resume worked.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    Suspend + resume works for me on Windows, haven’t tried Linux yet so can’t say if it’s in that half or maybe something board/firmware revision specific though. Not sure why they take so much longer. Zen 3 was definitely faster for me as well. I’m not holding my breath that it’ll get significantly faster but I suppose it’s possible an update could do it.
    - josephg 4y ago
      > haven’t tried Linux yet so can’t say if it’s in that half or maybe something board/firmware revision specific though. Its probably just bugs in the 5.15 kernel I'm still running. Full zen 4 support wasn't added until linux 6.0, so I think I'm doing well as it is. Fingers crossed suspend is fixed by a newer kernel. Given everything else in the system seems to work fine, I'm not too fussed.
  - seritools 4y ago
    First-gen products often have issues like this. My old X370 board (zen1 era) turns off and on again twice before actually booting; a similar zen3 system doesn't need that and boots faster in general.
zaarn 4y ago
it's doing DDR Training. It's not necessarily how fast it can clock the memory. It's essentially putting an oscilloscope to the memory traces and checking how to generate the necessary signals fast enough while still being recognized on the other end. Simply because at the clock speeds and latency requirements of DDR5 Memory, the signal path is unique enough between CPUs, Motherboards and RAM Sticks that you need to configure the clock generation individually for that setup.
- josephg 4y ago
  That makes sense for first boot. But does it really have to do some variant of that every time the system boots up?
  - jalbertoni 4y ago
    How would it know if you haven't changed your RAM? Consider that using the same settings with different parts might lead to subtle instability, not a full on-boot crash.
    - mnd999 4y ago
      Surely it can know that. Don’t ram chips identify with vendor / serial number etc?
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        Serial numbers that are supposed to be unique aren't necessarily unique. I would guess that the BIOS talk to an EEPROM on the RAM modules rather than to the memory chips themselves. It would be very easy for a manufacturer to flash identical contents to every EEPROM in a batch, or with a sequentially increasing serial, rather than bother with a database.
      - zaarn 4y ago
        What if you reinsert the same RAM stick into the same slot? Minute differences in insertion force and direction can lead to the frequency response of the RAM stick changing. Data paths might now be a micrometer long and require the BIOS to retrain the communication controller to compensate for that. DDR5 tops out somewhere around 8 Gigahertz clock speed, which means the data signals travel 3 centimeters before the next clock signal arrives. At those time scales it means you're going to have to align those data signals down to the micrometer if you want them to be properly received.

zamadatix 4y ago

Out of curiosity what fabric and memory clock are you able to run at? I’m either extremely unlucky or running into an early firmware bug as I can’t get anything above 2100 MHz fabric to boot reliably.

josephg 4y ago
I didn't touch the clock speeds from whatever the defaults are. Given the reported thermals, I'm tempted to go the other way and underclock the system. Losing ~5% performance to get a 50% reduction in power consumption would be a great deal if I can get it. That said, I did activate EXPO on my 6000 MHz RAM sticks - which at first caused the system to hard freeze and nothing short of a CMOS clear could bring it back. But in the end, re-seating the RAM sticks seems to have sorted that one out and its running at the full rated speed now.
- Trellmor 4y ago
  EXPO breaks S3 sleep at least in some cases. A few motherboard vendors even disable the S3 state when EXPO is enabled. https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xwfadm/when_expo_is_enabled_your_pc_can_not_go_to_sleep/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xwfadm/when_expo_is_en...
- hesdeadjim 4y ago
  I had the EXACT same problem. I left my machine running for 30 minutes after turning on EXPO after hearing about “training”. Hard reboot, CPU code error… uh oh. Clear CMOS, boots again at 3000mhz. Decide to install Windows first, and then after I turned EXPO back on and have had zero issues at full rated speed. Even ram memtest to be sure. Im running a MSI MPG x670e Carbon Wifi for what it’s worth.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Seems weird that installing windows fixed a ram issue. I wonder if there's a launch day CPU microcode update or something that windows installed that made a difference? I'm also using a MSI board FWIW: MAG B650M Mortar (WIFI)

sgtnoodle 4y ago

My zen3 system with 6800xt GPU doesn't resume from suspend reliably in Arch Linux. It works maybe 1 in 4 attempts. Otherwise, the AMDGPU driver hits a timeout and resets the GPU, and then my compositor has a bunch of open but invalid GL contexts or whatever. Sometimes I can switch to a virtual terminal and recover from it, but the attempt to do so tends to cause the system to lock up.

tincotema 4y ago
I have the same problem. Ryzen 5600H laptop. I "fixed" it with a posthook Script thats switches between my first and second tty. That works for me.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  Interesting. Just switching to the tty doesn't fix things for me, though. I need to restart my whole graphical environment i.e. by restarting my display manager. So, it's about as convenient as just shutting down and powering back up. It's unfortunate because my desktop eats up about 110W when idle, and approximately 0W when suspended. I also use some sketchy successor to "barrier" to share my mouse and keyboard with my work laptop, and that somehow keeps my monitors from shutting off if I happen to leave the mouse cursor on the laptop's screen. That's another 100W according to my UPS. There are undoubtedly dozens of power plants that exist purely due to the overall number of software bugs that exist. They're talking about banning natural gas in favor of electrical heating here in California, and I live in a chillier climate, so I must be saving the Earth by leaving my desktop powered on most of the time out of convenience.
  - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
    Same for me. I even had it working for a while but then a kernel upgrade or something else seemed to have broken it again.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      It's frustrated me to the point that it was a major factor in deciding to splurge on buying a Steam Deck. The suspend / resume works so flawlessly on it that I weep. I keep an arbitrary game running on it in the drawer of my night stand. I don't actually have the energy to play a game that often, but knowing that resume button will work brings me great comfort.

trynumber9 4y ago

Hey josephg, does your motherboard disable sleep states when using XMP or EXPO memory configurations? That could explain the crash when suspending.

josephg 4y ago
How can you tell in Linux?