*** AMD "Zen 4" thread (inc AM5/APU discussion) ***

[LtMatt]

ComputerBase use JEDEC ram speeds and are using Win 11 for this test.

Thought those results looked a bit off, there's definitely something funky going on with Windows 11 I've rolled back to Windows 10 for now as my ST perf took a hit on 11.

@Poneros - Do you know what settings and race track they used for their F1 2022 testing? I happen to have that game so would like to see how my (7950X) compares to their results. I am running 600030.

EDIT - Ignore I see it posted earlier in the article. I'll download F1 2022 and see how it compares on Win 10 with 6000C30.

Spoiler

 

[g67575]

G.Skill RAM is overpriced for what it is anyway. It's a good option if you don't wanna configure timings I suppose, but in general paying for low latency kits always seems too expensive.

You can achieve the same low latency (or better) with most Hynix M-die modules. AMD themselves used DDR5 6000 MT/s with CL30 in their product demos (sometime 6400 MT/s), so this seems like a good target to aim for.

I think at the moment, it is hard to see any benefit to the official EXPO kits vs XMP, I don't think there is any tangible difference between the actual spec of modules, except that EXPO modules sometimes have tighter timings.

 

[g67575]

One of the things I'm curious about is, if my motherboard advertises support for DDR5 6400+ MT/s speeds, but doesn't actually support any DDR5 kits running at this speed yet, does this mean that they actually intend to add support later, or is this just false advertising?

This is the board I'm talking about:

ASRock B650 PG Lightning

Supports AMD Ryzen™ 7000 Series Processors; 14+2+1 Phase Power Design, SPS; 4 x DDR5 DIMMs, supports up to 6400+(OC); 2 PCIe 4.0 x16, 2 PCIe 4.0 x1, 1 M.2 Key-E for WiFi; Graphics Output Options: 1 HDMI; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC897 Audio Codec), Nahimic Audio; 1 Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5x4),, 1...

www.asrock.com

It's actually a decent board for the money, at least relative to the cost of other motherboards - but it's quite barebones in terms of features (but still supports PCIe5 for storage).

Tbf, many AM5 boards seem to struggle with support for DDR5 modules running about 6000 MT/s.

The other thing I want them to add to the firmware, is support for sleep mode, which in the past was considered to be a fairly standard feature. At the moment, ASRock seems mostly focused on supporting new GFX cards in their firmware, like the RTX 4000 series...

 

[Poneros]

I just put it through google translate.

Nowhere in it do they do any of that.

They surely do. See f.ex. "F1 22" in orange (image below)? That's a link to the game performance review and in it you will find the test sequence. This is in the CPU article itself.

Voila!

Thought those results looked a bit off, there's definitely something funky going on with Windows 11 I've rolled back to Windows 10 for now as my ST perf took a hit on 11.

@Poneros - Do you know what settings and race track they used for their F1 2022 testing? I happen to have that game so would like to see how my (7950X) compares to their results. I am running 600030.

EDIT - Ignore I see it posted earlier in the article. I'll download F1 2022 and see how it compares on Win 10 with 6000C30.

ComputerBase use JEDEC ram speeds and are using Win 11 for this test.

Doesn't matter, Zen 4 are only secondarily gaming cpus. No memory can compensate, they need v-cache.

 

[jonnymc4]

One of the things I'm curious about is, if my motherboard advertises support for DDR5 6400+ MT/s speeds, but doesn't actually support any DDR5 kits running at this speed yet, does this mean that they actually intend to add support later, or is this just false advertising?

This is the board I'm talking about:

ASRock B650 PG Lightning

Supports AMD Ryzen™ 7000 Series Processors; 14+2+1 Phase Power Design, SPS; 4 x DDR5 DIMMs, supports up to 6400+(OC); 2 PCIe 4.0 x16, 2 PCIe 4.0 x1, 1 M.2 Key-E for WiFi; Graphics Output Options: 1 HDMI; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC897 Audio Codec), Nahimic Audio; 1 Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5x4),, 1...

www.asrock.com

It's actually a decent board for the money, at least relative to the cost of other motherboards - but it's quite barebones in terms of features (but still supports PCIe5 for storage).

Tbf, many AM5 boards seem to struggle with support for DDR5 modules running about 6000 MT/s.

The other thing I want them to add to the firmware, is support for sleep mode, which in the past was considered to be a fairly standard feature. At the moment, ASRock seems mostly focused on supporting new GFX cards in their firmware, like the RTX 4000 series...

Interesting to hear. Been looking at this as a possible new build. Don't know much / anything about the company but they do seem to be making the cheaper AM5 boards. Anything to watch out for from your experience so far?

 

[chroniclard]

They surely do. See f.ex. "F1 22" in orange (image below)? That's a link to the game performance review and in it you will find the test sequence. This is in the CPU article itself.

Voila!

Doesn't matter, Zen 4 are only secondarily gaming cpus. No memory can compensate, they need v-cache.

No, no they dont. Hyperbolic nonsense.

 

[LtMatt]

They surely do. See f.ex. "F1 22" in orange (image below)? That's a link to the game performance review and in it you will find the test sequence. This is in the CPU article itself.

Voila!

Doesn't matter, Zen 4 are only secondarily gaming cpus. No memory can compensate, they need v-cache.

Nice one. So, the test sequence is 30 seconds?

I would have assumed they complete a lap and use the results generated by the benchmark sequence.

Either way I'll see how my figures look on the benchmark sequence and I can capture the 1% lows etc via MSI AB.

 

[g67575]

Interesting to hear. Been looking at this as a possible new build. Don't know much / anything about the company but they do seem to be making the cheaper AM5 boards. Anything to watch out for from your experience so far?

Yes, be very careful changing DDR5 timings. If set too low, it can make the PC unbootable, unless the CMOS is manually reset.

The same is true for high DDR5 frequencies.

Using standard XMP or EXPO overclocking profiles should be absolutely fine though, in fact I think this is always a good starting point if OCing RAM.

Another thing to be aware of, is much longer boot times with DDR5 RAM, vs DDR4.

 

[g67575]

Does anyone know if it's just ASRock boards that can't use sleep mode in the OS, if XMP / EXPO is enabled?

Or, is this a wider problem with AMD's firmware?

 

[Noxia]

G.Skill RAM is overpriced for what it is anyway. It's a good option if you don't wanna configure timings I suppose, but in general paying for low latency kits always seems too expensive.

You can achieve the same low latency (or better) with most Hynix M-die modules. AMD themselves used DDR5 6000 MT/s with CL30 in their product demos (sometime 6400 MT/s), so this seems like a good target to aim for.

I think at the moment, it is hard to see any benefit to the official EXPO kits vs XMP, I don't think there is any tangible difference between the actual spec of modules, except that EXPO modules sometimes have tighter timings.

It was one of the top 3 lowest for that spec for me. I paid £208

 

[g67575]

Fair enough. So, G.Skill Hynix M die is affordable?

 

[Noxia]

Fair enough. So, G.Skill Hynix M die is affordable?

I have no idea what it is. To be honest I literally went on the spec in the description and the fact I like the look of it and the price.

 

[Journey]

Completed a very odd/unusual upgrade over the last few days. Guy was umm'ing and arr'ing over Zen4 or Raptor Lake coming from a i7 8700k, with not a massive budget as he wanted a new GPU before the new year.

Broke down the platform pricing for both in best case scenarios, and it just wasn't going to work out until he mentioned the other reason was he needed to update the Ryzen 1200 in his daughters machine when he hands down his GTX 1080 Ti.
Lightbulb moment, give her the old i7 board and CPU, use her board in his system and drop in an X3D, a win-win.
He managed to get an X3D for £321.xx, it's now been successfully installed on an A320 board with 32GB DDR4, running the 1080 Ti for now. Still using his old cooler, 280mm H115i, temps are fine. Given he plays FS2020, Football Manager and some other racing games it has already made a difference at the resolutions he is playing at, a mix of UW 1440 and some downscaled to 1080 equivalent. He's now likely to get a new GPU much sooner thanks to the savings.

TL;DR - think carefully if you have multiple systems to juggle with, you could end up saving money and avoiding unnecessary, and somewhat overpriced purchases.

Oh, he does have some AM4 boards on a watch list for black Friday if he decides he wants more SSD m.2 drives, and PCI-E 4.0 but that seems unlikely given how happy he is.

 

[g67575]

I think I've managed to get a setting of -25 magnitude working for the curve editor (PBO).

I set Load Line Calibration to level 1 for the CPU vcore in my BIOS. I tested it in Prime95 +AVX-512 (small FFTs) for 12 hours and it passed.

Then I ran it without AVX enabled at all, and it failed, so still wasn't quite stable.

Then, I enabled level 1 LLC for the SOC voltage, then ran P95 without AVX-512 for another 12 hours, and it passed.

Unfortunately, it does look like you need to test both without AVX settings enabled, and AVX-512 enabled, to confirm if your PC is P95 stable or not.

Note - on my ASRock motherboard, Load Line calibration level 1 means the most stable /steady voltage when the CPU is under heavy load.

 

[Noxia]

@g67575 what are you actually trying to achieve? Underclock or overclock

 

[g67575]

A minus value for curve magnitude means that the voltage will be lower than at stock.

This should result in higher frequencies (generally a few hundred higher when all cores are active).

 

[Noxia]

A minus value for curve magnitude means that the voltage will be lower than at stock.

See I thought that was too obvious so I had to check.

My board says it has some AI overclocker thing but it's a shame they can't do it the opposite

 

[stephenb]

Good article from Paul Alcorn on why platform costs for AM5 are higher:

Why AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and Motherboards Cost So Damn Much

Zen 4 has a pricing problem

www.tomshardware.com

 

[eddiew]

My board says it has some AI overclocker thing but it's a shame they can't do it the opposite

I believe this is eco mode - enforces a power limit (e.g. 65W or 105W) to help keep thermals under control. There's not much hard data around on it right now, but there's suggestions that people only drop 5% MT performance in exchange for a huge power and temperature drop.

On that note, maybe this is the thread to ask; anyone know whether a 7700X can be cooled adequately in a smaller case like this one?

Fractal Design Pop Mini Air RGB Clear Tempered Glass Mini Tower Case - White

Order Fractal Design Pop Mini Air RGB Clear Tempered Glass Mini Tower Case - White now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I've had a hankering to do a micro atx build for years, and for once there is at least one good mATX motherboard available so maybe this is the time. I would be willing to consider permanent eco mode if the performance loss isn't massive (and I don't think it will be) and tend to undervolt stuff on instinct. I believe that case could handle a Noctua D15S, or a 240mm AiO - is that going to work out?

Good article from Paul Alcorn on why platform costs for AM5 are higher:

Why AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and Motherboards Cost So Damn Much

Zen 4 has a pricing problem

www.tomshardware.com

Of course, it would be nice if AMD would soften their prices before I do that build because it's awkward that I can put together a competitive 13600k system for hundreds of pounds less. Sad news for everyone if that's not going to happen - probably most for AMD. It's tough trying to sell a product for more than its perceived value! The reasons for the cost don't matter, it's how much everyone else can deliver something similar for that has to set your pricing.

 

[alec]

On that note, maybe this is the thread to ask; anyone know whether a 7700X can be cooled adequately in a smaller case like this one?

Fractal Design Pop Mini Air RGB Clear Tempered Glass Mini Tower Case - White

Order Fractal Design Pop Mini Air RGB Clear Tempered Glass Mini Tower Case - White now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I've had a hankering to do a micro atx build for years, and for once there is at least one good mATX motherboard available so maybe this is the time. I would be willing to consider permanent eco mode if the performance loss isn't massive (and I don't think it will be) and tend to undervolt stuff on instinct. I believe that case could handle a Noctua D15S, or a 240mm AiO - is that going to work out?

Absolutely
240mm AIO on the intake will do great, it is still a 125w class CPU.
My 5800X is cooled by 240mm AIO in a more cramped case. Not an issue as long as it is getting cool outside air through radiator. And I am considering upgrade to 7700X in same Rajintek Thetis case.

Noctua will work too if the GPU is not too power hungry.
Eco mode not necessary, but I would set the temperature limit in BIOS to something lower than 95C.

at least one good mATX motherboard - Gigabyte B650M elite ax?