AMD: Zen 3 Announced [2020-10-08]

I got all my PC parts. Busy building.

 

The Factal Define 7 case is very interchangeable so it took some time to get everything where I wanted it to be. An amazing case. Slightly wider than my old Cooler Master case.

So I had a bit of issues. The motherboard when I booted gave me errors right away. Q-Code A6 then immediately into 0d. I couldn't even get to the BIOS.

I had a feeling that it was the motherboard not supporting the AMD 5800X. Downloaded the latest BIOS upgrade 3003 and then did a BIOS upgrade using a USB stick and the flash button on the board. That did the trick although it took sometime to finish flashing. Then when I booted up it then upgraded the LED and then after another self boot it upgraded something else. After that I was able to get to the BIOS. Connected my DVD drive and installed Windows 10 Pro. However now when ever I restart I get a CPU Fan Failed error. Not sure what is causing it as I have all the fans working and the CPU pump is also work according to the BIOS. Anyway, bypass that for the moment and have been installing all the drivers and updates as well as copying Steam and GOG over from my old PC on the network.

02h30 in the morning. Going to Sleep. Will look at why the CPU Fan failure is occurring then.

 

Ok, so turned off the CPU fan speed monitor in the BIOS and now it boots straight into windows. All good.

 

Nice, I'm still using an old Coolermaster tower, its significantly less than ideal ergonomically, I guess one of my future upgrades is going to be a case replacement, my colleagues talk highly about Fractal ones.

My Asus TUF Gaming B550-plus booted straight away on the default BIOS.
Fiddled with RAM last night, found my CPU/Mobo/RAM is happy booting 1900Mhz RAM & running with the same 18 22 22 22 timing.

 

I haven't played around with anything yet. Just made sure the memory is 3600Mhz.

 

wrong pins maybe?

 

Not sure. I think because it's PWM or whatever, it doesn't use the CPU pins. I just disabled the CPU Fan and it's fine. AIDA Extreme shows all is good with my CPU and fans.

 

So the single-core problem was definitely the beta BIOSes I was using.
I've updated & now getting much more like expected performance

Running single core Cinebench on PBO profile in Ryzen Master I'm seeing extended periods of 4649Mhz on the 2 preferred cores, 1 sitting on about 400 presumably ticking over the OS & Ryzen Master, 3 cores nearly constantly sleeping & periods where one of the preferred cores will sleep.
Scores still slightly under what I was getting out of the box with stock cooler which is still a bit perplexing but its more in the ballpark.

Meanwhile multi-core hitting much better scores, boosts up to 4535+ initially then throttles back to about 4523, I guess I need to adjust my fan curves.
Scores much better than stock or previous PBO.

I'm hoping/assuming Ryzen Master will get an update with curve optimiser related options at some point,

 

Well not just the BIOS, apparently you're supposed to reinstall Ryzen Master & do first run with BIOS defaults.
Also set high performance power profile on both Windows & the AMD slider plus got rid of the Mobo manufacturer gumf that I'd installed to see what works.
Now getting solid amounts of 4649Mhz in single core Cinebench with often 5 cores sleeping & better scores
Multi-core got even better.

Messing with PBO mode best performance seems to come when you set PPT, TDC & EDC so that they just hit 100% in an all-core -> about 4525Mhz & plenty of 4649 in single core.
Putting in the stock PPT, TDC & EDC on Auto Overclock mode it hits 4.8Ghz single core (but mostly in the high 4.7x) with appropriate score boost, same 4.25Ghz multi-core/scores.
Or putting in the PBO values I get the 4525Mhz multi-core with the 4.8 single core.

Back running 1800Mhz on the RAM for the moment.

 

Still can't buy a 5900x where I live : / Oh well, I guess I'll wait until february and the 3800TI to upgrade everything in one move...

 

A 5800X has been available for a couple of days in a local retailer but it is sooo hard to justify. 475€ for an 8 core CPU when the 10700K is 360€. With that money I could buy the i7 and an MSI mobo as I’d get a 80€ discount. Even the 10850k with 10 cores is cheaper.

 

Almost 4 weeks after the last post, the 8-core 5800X is still severely overpriced at >450€ and the 5000 Ryzen 9 models are nowhere to be seen.
Basically, everything that launched in Q4 2020 is still a shitshow. Or rather a no-show.

This is the worst time ever to think of making a general CPU+GPU+RAM upgrade, which is what I intended to do.

 

In France 5800 and 5900 are available now. Kind of overpriced, but not "ebay scalper" overpriced. Now I'm just waiting for a 3080ti...

 

Hoping by February-March there will be better stocks. My wife needs an upgrade.

 

Almost no-one can get ahold of anything, many complain about PS5 not being in stock etc.

 

Ryzen 5000 Mobile announced at CES.

- Up to 8 Zen3 cores

- Top end ultra-mobile 5800U is 8c/16t up to 4.4GHz within 15W

- HX brand for gaming laptops, unlocked for overclocking
- 5900HX is 45W+, 4.6GHz

- Expected +50% more design wins compared to Ryzen 4000 mobile in 2020.


Before this announcement Lisa Su had a "videocall" with Surface's Panos Panay, where they essentially said "hey, it's been great working together, congratulations. Bye!".
So.. yeah.. weird.

 

Hmm, have avoided looking at pricing/availability since I bought mine.
The price looks about the same but only seem to have 5800x in stock, others on order with estimated shipping dates from over a week out, up to 8 March

Performance update my side: I've been messing with PBO settings & even Curve Optimiser more.
While absolute max speeds can be got with tweaking the 3 values to just above 100%, what I've seen quoted elsewhere & in practice feels best is just setting Auto OC profile with the PPT bumped from 76W default (for 5600X) to still quite low 85 or 95W, TDC/EDC on stock 60A & 90A respectively + boost limit set to 200Mhz max.
You get a good bit of extra all-core clock & it'll hit the 4850 single core limit reliably with minimal effort & minimal out-of-specness.

Curve Optimiser: its definitely good but seems to be tricky to find truly stable setting.
From various posts I've seen & my own experience instability seems to mostly come during low power usage eg while idle overnight unless you've set something silly like -25 all core.
eg With current beta AGESA v1.1.9.0 BIOS for my board -20 all core seemed like it was stable for over a day of various tests then my normal usage including overnight idle but then I fired up Passmark & it crashed part way through the tests, not on one of the CPU ones.
-15 all core I haven't managed to get to crash over a few days before/after the period with -20.

It does make a decent difference, some tests (eg CPU-Z Bench) hit over 4800Mhz all core on -20 vs ~4500 without, -15 gives more like 4650.
Without Curve Optimiser you see voltage occasionally hit or pass 1.5v to hit that 4850Mhz limit, with -15 CO it does it on about 1.4v.

Performance gain on this beta firmware eg Cinebench r23
Stock settings except XMP profile set in bios gives 1529/10706 (single/multicore)
Auto OC 200Mhz, 95/60/90 gives 1566/11462
add in -15 curve optimiser gives 1597/11686
-20 was 1578/11814
With -10 curve optimiser & Auto OC 200MHz, 115/65/125 I get 1590/11811

Arguably overall probably not a massive noticeable difference in real usage but I think not too bad for what boils down to turning on a couple of options & setting a couple of values.
Might even save power overall with curve optimiser also dropping voltage all along the curve & my usage including plenty of largly idle time.


I love how with my recent 5600XT & this new 5600X I can just sit on desktop with a couple of browsers open (way too many tabs), watching Youtube & faffing around on forums/news, with the GPU doing about 50Mhz, 25w & fan off while my CPU cores are idling down mostly in the low half of triple digit Mhz, some sleep time & ~40W package power