3 ms·

> Huge power draw. Weird motherboards. Has this improved nowadays? AMD never fully fixed the USB dropout issues under load, AMD CPU/mobo are still extremely pr

by paulmd 4y ago

> Huge power draw. Weird motherboards. Has this improved nowadays? AMD never fully fixed the USB dropout issues under load, AMD CPU/mobo are still extremely problematic for VR setups. There are also some weird issues around stuttering with the onboard fTPM enabled (which windows 11 wants you to use). Better than the early days where Ryzen 1000 chips had cache defects that led to segfaults under compiling workloads. The AGESA-BIOS model foists responsibility onto partners for distributing microcode updates and AMD tends to release buggy microcode that partners then have to fix, and they churn the microcode so fast that the fixes often go stale and break other things, but partners have to do them or people accuse them of "buggy BIOS". It's sort of the inverse problem in GPUs where AMD has to fix other people's game bugs in the drivers... partners have to fix AMD's microcode problems in their BIOSs. Commonly manifests as sensor glitches/offset problems/etc, sometimes this has led to real fun problems when those sensors are controlling core/SOC voltage or things like that. AMD GPUs still suck for VR, the 5700XT series had huge crashing problems under the windows drivers that were never really resolved for a lot of people, and the 7000 series seems to be on course to replicate those sorts of issues. They did finally bring the 7900XTX's idle power down to only about 45W though. The fans will vehemently deny it but yeah, you're pretty much right. AMD has gotten better but their software/drivers and user-experience still aren't as polished, either CPU or GPU. It's usually good enough it's not a problem, but you're going off the beaten path and they're not always flawless. On the other hand who knows what's going to happen with Intel with an exodus of staff already happening and likely to continue. 7900X, 7800X3D, 7900X3D, and 7950X3D are great looking parts at the right price but Intel is willing to make dealz right now to keep the cash flowing, they've got DDR4 boards to bring the platform cost down, etc. You have to evaluate the whole build and see what you get... and AMD does worse with large 128GB builds right now too. Although Intel is not flawless either to be fair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P58VqVvDjxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P58VqVvDjxo Around here microcenter is willing to throw in a free 32GB RAM kit of decent quality if you buy a 7000X (not the base tier and unknown whether this will include X3D) and Newegg was offering a similar promotion at one point. Which neutralizes a lot of the platform cost difference - the DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 capable Intel boards aren't cheap either, but, a bit cheaper than AMD right now. Again, gotta look at the whole cost of the build for your own local costs. Personally I think the DDR4 compatibility makes Intel a no-brainer for very cheap builds. You can get a PCIe 4.0 + DDR4 Intel board for the usual, expected price ranges... PCPP says starting from $79. If you're a fit for a Pentium/Celeron or a 12100/12100F that's a system cost AM5 can't compete with at the low end, you have to go back to AM4 which are slower systems. The 12600K, 13500, and 13600K are also very good gaming-focused builds. There's nothing wrong with 7800X for gaming either, especially with the free RAM, but, Intel 13th gen does outperform it. And the e-cores are "free" at the MSRP, so Intel is simply giving you more, but, AMD is also dropping prices below MSRP lately (ymmv depending on your location). For productivity and "server"-ish workloads, the AMD 7900X is great, particularly since AMD supports AVX-512 while Intel has disabled it on 12th/13th gen. And the 7800X3D, 7900X3D, and 7950X3D should all be very attractive high-end gaming+productivity "crossover" components if you are willing to splash out.

wkat4242 4y ago
Do you have any information on the VR issues? I'm getting really weird issues if I really push MSFS2020 on my Ryzen setup.
- paulmd 4y ago
  official acknowledgement: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lnmet0/an_update_on_usb_connectivity_with_500_series/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lnmet0/an_update_on_us... later update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/m2wqkf/updated_agesa_coming_for_intermittent_usb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/m2wqkf/updated_agesa_c... general discussion, a couple of which are post-update: this one is interesting because the user has traced it to specific USB controllers and notes that one controller is perfect while the other 2 have problems: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lrcp8q/x570_usb_dropouts_and_vr_something_to_try/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lrcp8q/x570_usb_dropou... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/p5ygve/anyone_considered_suing_amd_over_their_usb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/p5ygve/anyone_consider... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/wud1xo/was_the_usb_dropout_bug_ever_fixed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/wud1xo/was_the_usb_dro... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/twph8r/if_youve_build_your_ryzen_system_in_the_last_3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/twph8r/if_youve_build_... this is all my personal summary/analysis and not fact, but: it does not seem to be tied to a particular generation of CPU or model of chipset (and this is significant because X570 is actually completely different from every other chipset which are all OEM'd by Asmedia). The symptom is that the USB controller stops responding under load (and I think probably drops frames at that point). Since VR is a very heavy USB load (especially Oculus) this is a semi-reliable reproducer but there's nothing inherent to VR that causes the problem, I think it just seems to be a "happens under load" issue. AMD put out an AGESA patch which seems to significantly reduce the problem. And again, I think the idea that microcode fixes the problem, and that the problem exists across both AMD OEM and Asmedia OEM chipsets, suggests it's not a hardware problem with the chipset. Actually it may be the opposite, and the problem exists with the SOC implementation of USB and the chipsets themselves are fine. Some boards use the onboard SOC to drive the USB and that sounds like maybe the problem - others drive it off the chipset's USB and maybe that works better. It's possible the CPU themselves have a hardware defect or it may be a problem with the USB software stack inside the SOC. The AMD PSP is like the Intel ME, it gets in underneath the user experience and while you'd hope that USB is not implemented there maybe it is, or maybe it's interfering (mailbox overflow?) or something like that. Again it's hard to know whether the residual crashes are something the mobo companies themselves might be doing to try and fix AMD's problems... maybe a fix that worked before is now crashing something else. It's hard to say. That's the problem with shipping glitchy microcode to partners. A lot of partners literally have one or two core BIOS devs for the whole company. This came up during the crisis around Zen2/Zen3 BIOS support, and after elmor left ASUS, that basically ASUS really only had a couple guys for the whole damn company and they're not the only ones. And AMD in particular pushes a lot of workload onto their partners. Great that they're moving fast but they break stuff which ends up being someone else's problem, and they're churning code so fast they break the fixes other people are doing for them. They don't publish source, only binaries, and they make the partner's lives very difficult. https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=1276 https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=1276 https://youtu.be/36kCBQt7YBk?t=237 https://youtu.be/36kCBQt7YBk?t=237 https://www.overclock.net/search/1039852/?q=agesa&t=post&c[users]=elmor&o=relevance https://www.overclock.net/search/1039852/?q=agesa&t=post&c[u... If I was personally in this situation I would try a standalone USB card, and pick from the list curated for the Oculus rift even if you are not using a rift, I think they are just better USB controllers. Put it in a CPU-direct slot and not one attached to the chipset. See if that helps, go from there. Maybe the card works in a chipset lane, maybe the chipset lanes work natively, etc, once it's working try to pin down the delta that causes crashing. But like... there is this whole gaslighting cycle with the AMD fans. You saw the same thing with the 5700XT. "I have one, there are no crashes, it's 100% stable for me, you're making it up" -> lots of users report it and the gaslighting intensifies (HUB finally ran a poll on 5700XT after months of denial and it turned out over 1/3 of their very technically adept and very pro-AMD userbase reported issues) -> AMD acknowledges there is actually an issue and they're working on it -> patch released and it doesn't fix the issue for everybody -> "OK so there was an issue but it's all better now, if you're still having problems it's your fault!" -> everybody moves on to the next product and if you still have problems welp sucks to be you, my 5800X3D is amazing! Same thing happened with defective Zen2 early silicon... GamersNexus had their 3950X miss its advertised boost clocks by up to 450 MHz (they actually understated it by 100 MHz, the advertised clock was 4.7 not 4.6), basically 10% of its advertised speed. People did the "it says up to", some people went as far as making programs that just run NOPs in a loop to show that a program could actually hit the advertised clocks so it wasn't technically false advertising. AMD acknowledged an issue, released a patch that didn't help (GamersNexus' review was after the patches, they go into F10c later in the video), the fans moved back to gaslighting, and everyone moved on and forgot about it. Later silicon was higher quality I think and just didn't have a problem but AMD wanted to ship some marginal silicon that didn't quite meet spec and didn't think anybody would call them on it. And indeed they were pretty much right, the fans shrugged and moved on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sNUFjV7p4&t=254s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sNUFjV7p4&t=254s https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cfli2n/i_discovered_how_to_get_my_3900x_to_boost_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cfli2n/i_discovered_ho... Issues with Intel or NVIDIA are front-page news, everyone freaked about POSCAP-vs-MLCC back at 30-series launch, the connector at the 40-series launch, some soldering defects with EVGA 1080s, the whole New Worlds thing (even though that killed some AMD cards too, everyone treated it as an NVIDIA issue), etc, and the AMD stuff is completely downplayed and shoved under the rug even though it's pretty often not fixed, or not fixed 100%, and it's pretty aggravating. But AMD really stokes the reddit set, they were pioneers in going direct-to-consumer and stoking the fires. GN talks about it earlier in one of those videos, and LTT and Der8auer have said the same thing. Like, it's calmed down a lot over the last couple years but during 2017-2021 it was bad. https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=259 https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=259 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03FyPQ3a3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03FyPQ3a3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscDxMrZmGU&t=1304s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscDxMrZmGU&t=1304s (this is the LTT video that got him set up with a bribe from AMD to bury his Vega FE review, the threadripper preview and the holocube, if anyone remembers that little bit of pocket-sand!) https://youtu.be/oVxVIkw0xd8?t=261 https://youtu.be/oVxVIkw0xd8?t=261 And honestly the gaslighting aspect of that really has not gone away, which I still find incredibly annoying as far as internet discourse. Say there's a problem and people get defensive and will happily generalize their own experiences to tell you yours aren't real. Just say "AMD has driver problems" and someone will pop out of the woodwork to tell you they've been good for 10 years now, as if 5700XT and Vega and Fury X just all didn't happen. Sometimes the drivers/firmware/BIOS are great, sometimes they're not, and if they're not they don't always get fixed, or don't get fixed fully for everyone.

by paulmd 4y ago

wkat4242 4y ago

Do you have any information on the VR issues? I'm getting really weird issues if I really push MSFS2020 on my Ryzen setup.

paulmd 4y ago
official acknowledgement: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lnmet0/an_update_on_usb_connectivity_with_500_series/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lnmet0/an_update_on_us... later update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/m2wqkf/updated_agesa_coming_for_intermittent_usb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/m2wqkf/updated_agesa_c... general discussion, a couple of which are post-update: this one is interesting because the user has traced it to specific USB controllers and notes that one controller is perfect while the other 2 have problems: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lrcp8q/x570_usb_dropouts_and_vr_something_to_try/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lrcp8q/x570_usb_dropou... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/p5ygve/anyone_considered_suing_amd_over_their_usb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/p5ygve/anyone_consider... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/wud1xo/was_the_usb_dropout_bug_ever_fixed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/wud1xo/was_the_usb_dro... https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/twph8r/if_youve_build_your_ryzen_system_in_the_last_3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/twph8r/if_youve_build_... this is all my personal summary/analysis and not fact, but: it does not seem to be tied to a particular generation of CPU or model of chipset (and this is significant because X570 is actually completely different from every other chipset which are all OEM'd by Asmedia). The symptom is that the USB controller stops responding under load (and I think probably drops frames at that point). Since VR is a very heavy USB load (especially Oculus) this is a semi-reliable reproducer but there's nothing inherent to VR that causes the problem, I think it just seems to be a "happens under load" issue. AMD put out an AGESA patch which seems to significantly reduce the problem. And again, I think the idea that microcode fixes the problem, and that the problem exists across both AMD OEM and Asmedia OEM chipsets, suggests it's not a hardware problem with the chipset. Actually it may be the opposite, and the problem exists with the SOC implementation of USB and the chipsets themselves are fine. Some boards use the onboard SOC to drive the USB and that sounds like maybe the problem - others drive it off the chipset's USB and maybe that works better. It's possible the CPU themselves have a hardware defect or it may be a problem with the USB software stack inside the SOC. The AMD PSP is like the Intel ME, it gets in underneath the user experience and while you'd hope that USB is not implemented there maybe it is, or maybe it's interfering (mailbox overflow?) or something like that. Again it's hard to know whether the residual crashes are something the mobo companies themselves might be doing to try and fix AMD's problems... maybe a fix that worked before is now crashing something else. It's hard to say. That's the problem with shipping glitchy microcode to partners. A lot of partners literally have one or two core BIOS devs for the whole company. This came up during the crisis around Zen2/Zen3 BIOS support, and after elmor left ASUS, that basically ASUS really only had a couple guys for the whole damn company and they're not the only ones. And AMD in particular pushes a lot of workload onto their partners. Great that they're moving fast but they break stuff which ends up being someone else's problem, and they're churning code so fast they break the fixes other people are doing for them. They don't publish source, only binaries, and they make the partner's lives very difficult. https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=1276 https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=1276 https://youtu.be/36kCBQt7YBk?t=237 https://youtu.be/36kCBQt7YBk?t=237 https://www.overclock.net/search/1039852/?q=agesa&t=post&c[users]=elmor&o=relevance https://www.overclock.net/search/1039852/?q=agesa&t=post&c[u... If I was personally in this situation I would try a standalone USB card, and pick from the list curated for the Oculus rift even if you are not using a rift, I think they are just better USB controllers. Put it in a CPU-direct slot and not one attached to the chipset. See if that helps, go from there. Maybe the card works in a chipset lane, maybe the chipset lanes work natively, etc, once it's working try to pin down the delta that causes crashing. But like... there is this whole gaslighting cycle with the AMD fans. You saw the same thing with the 5700XT. "I have one, there are no crashes, it's 100% stable for me, you're making it up" -> lots of users report it and the gaslighting intensifies (HUB finally ran a poll on 5700XT after months of denial and it turned out over 1/3 of their very technically adept and very pro-AMD userbase reported issues) -> AMD acknowledges there is actually an issue and they're working on it -> patch released and it doesn't fix the issue for everybody -> "OK so there was an issue but it's all better now, if you're still having problems it's your fault!" -> everybody moves on to the next product and if you still have problems welp sucks to be you, my 5800X3D is amazing! Same thing happened with defective Zen2 early silicon... GamersNexus had their 3950X miss its advertised boost clocks by up to 450 MHz (they actually understated it by 100 MHz, the advertised clock was 4.7 not 4.6), basically 10% of its advertised speed. People did the "it says up to", some people went as far as making programs that just run NOPs in a loop to show that a program could actually hit the advertised clocks so it wasn't technically false advertising. AMD acknowledged an issue, released a patch that didn't help (GamersNexus' review was after the patches, they go into F10c later in the video), the fans moved back to gaslighting, and everyone moved on and forgot about it. Later silicon was higher quality I think and just didn't have a problem but AMD wanted to ship some marginal silicon that didn't quite meet spec and didn't think anybody would call them on it. And indeed they were pretty much right, the fans shrugged and moved on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sNUFjV7p4&t=254s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sNUFjV7p4&t=254s https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cfli2n/i_discovered_how_to_get_my_3900x_to_boost_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cfli2n/i_discovered_ho... Issues with Intel or NVIDIA are front-page news, everyone freaked about POSCAP-vs-MLCC back at 30-series launch, the connector at the 40-series launch, some soldering defects with EVGA 1080s, the whole New Worlds thing (even though that killed some AMD cards too, everyone treated it as an NVIDIA issue), etc, and the AMD stuff is completely downplayed and shoved under the rug even though it's pretty often not fixed, or not fixed 100%, and it's pretty aggravating. But AMD really stokes the reddit set, they were pioneers in going direct-to-consumer and stoking the fires. GN talks about it earlier in one of those videos, and LTT and Der8auer have said the same thing. Like, it's calmed down a lot over the last couple years but during 2017-2021 it was bad. https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=259 https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=259 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03FyPQ3a3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03FyPQ3a3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscDxMrZmGU&t=1304s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscDxMrZmGU&t=1304s (this is the LTT video that got him set up with a bribe from AMD to bury his Vega FE review, the threadripper preview and the holocube, if anyone remembers that little bit of pocket-sand!) https://youtu.be/oVxVIkw0xd8?t=261 https://youtu.be/oVxVIkw0xd8?t=261 And honestly the gaslighting aspect of that really has not gone away, which I still find incredibly annoying as far as internet discourse. Say there's a problem and people get defensive and will happily generalize their own experiences to tell you yours aren't real. Just say "AMD has driver problems" and someone will pop out of the woodwork to tell you they've been good for 10 years now, as if 5700XT and Vega and Fury X just all didn't happen. Sometimes the drivers/firmware/BIOS are great, sometimes they're not, and if they're not they don't always get fixed, or don't get fixed fully for everyone.