Gaming Discussions

[Anonymous]

AMD: Marketing VS Reality!

• Marketing:

Reality:

I own a X370-F and it has been more than 6 months without any bios update, no ABBA 1.04 with per CCX overclocking.
AMD sold me a 3600 with a very bad silicon quality, one of the CCX can't even boost to 4.2Ghz reliably.

So i really need per CCX oc to replace Ryzen Master because it can't apply the oc automatically at boot!

Can the Community Manager woke up some folks at AMD to force ASUS to deliver a bios update for the old x370 board, enforcing the AMD policy marketed in the slide posted before!
Also the x370-F is kinda a flagship mb, it still sell for 230e here in France, still no real support from both companies!

To sum up, i had the choice between an Intel 8700k and an AMD 3600, i did the wrong choice and i regret going AMD.

Not because of the mb, i got no real trouble with ASUS this time, aside the bios updates.
But overall, even if the 3600 is cheaper, some of these cpu have a very bad silicon quality that make me regret even a bad 8700k.

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts asking to try this or that, thanks you!

Bonus: The Rig we are speaking about, built initially for streaming games and withstand high compute loads.

Stable under heavy load: 3600@4225/4175Mhz, DDR/FCLK@1900Mhz C16, GTX1080@2152Mhz!

[nec_v20]

First Gen Ryzen motherboards were craptastic at best.

This is because the motherboard manufacturers didn't know if Ryzen would make any impact and they didn't want to put their resources into Ryzen motherboards when they could be making loads of money from selling Intel motherboards.

Not only that, but Intel quite literally bribes motherboard manufacturers to make Intel motherboards, to the extent that motherboard manufacturers make more from Intel per board sold than they do from the actual sale itself.

This is not the case with AMD, where the motherboards have to be profitable on their own merit.

There was no incentive for them to make high end motherboards for the first gen Ryzen CPUs.

First gen boards may work with first and second gen Ryzen, but the VRMs and other componentry just cannot be depended on to work reliably with third or even fourth gen Ryzen.

MSI will be bringing out a new board soon called the MSI X570 Tomahawk WiFi for around $210 and you might want to give that a look.

It has features that you normally don't find on a motherboard for under $300+

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts asking to try this or that, thanks you!

[Anonymous]

• Moment of Joy:

Finally, even if it is very late!

Thanks you!!!!!

[Anonymous]

• But:

[Anonymous]

• Meanwhile:

Now, how much ASUS users with old x370/b350 will have to wait to get this 1.0.0.5 microcode update?

It took nearly 7 month to deliver a bios that is 5 month old dated, for the x370-F Strix?!
Maybe when AMD tape out the Ryzen 4 series?!
This is really unacceptable!!

[benman2785]

as rainingtacco said - its ASUS fault and not AMDs...

i dont have that problem with my Gigabyte X370 Gaming 5

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts, asking to try this or that, thanks you!

[benman2785]

Dude, if you want to send something soley to AMD Employees you should consider eMail and not a community forum.
and 2 guys now told you that you barking on the wrong tree and you still dont get it...

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts, asking to try this or that, thanks you!

[benman2785]

learn how to forum...
learn who to blame the right one...

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers "..." thanks you!

[benman2785]

dont you get it - YOU ARE NOT SPEAKING TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE.
AMD CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT ASUS NOT PROVIDING BIOS UPDATES!

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers "..." thanks you!

[rainingtacco]

AMD never promised that every motherboard will support new gen of CPUs. You must have misunderstood them. AMD said that AM4 will be compatible with next gen CPUs, but it's up to the motherboard producers to introduce compatibility patch. AMD doesn't force anyone to do that. 

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts, asking to try this or that, thanks you!

[rainingtacco]

Lol and what do you want from AMD? Go send a message to frigging Asus, unload on them, instead on bickering on AMD forum. 

Also you try to imply that your ryzen 3600 CPU has to run all cores on 4,2GHz stock/vanilla, by showing the 41x multiplier. No it will not run 4,2ghz on all cores stock/without OC -usually it run 3,9-4 ghz on all cores when under max load. You can only run that with OC only. And again, why it is AMD fault that your mobo manufacturer, locked higher multipliers than 41?. 

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers and it is solely directed to AMD Staff.

Also i'm a fine overclocker, hardware reviewer working in the IT field, no need to come here with not knowledgeable posts, asking to try this or that, thanks you!

[cyberstorm64dd]

AMD of late has been very accurate when it comes to Marketing vs Reality.

For example, TDP Ratings on the AMD website are generally more

accurate than what intel publishes. Note: Intel will tell you the Minimum

TDP, but not the Maximum achievable TDP.

AMD has been constantly evolving their designs and products. For

Example Physical Archture of Chips has changed a lot compared to intel Core

Architecture. Intel has stayed with the Core Design for a long time...

AMD, on the other hand, has gone through a lot of Different Archetutures

and hasn't really stayed with a predetermined architecture until A-Series

and Zen(including different iterations of Zen architectures)When it comes

to the latest Designs, the Goal is to build a highly efficient chip that is

designed to take the crown back from Intel.

So what about Marketing? Intel has Market their Products as Faster, Better,

More efficient, etc. while until recently AMD has been either not

publishing Advertisements or hasn't had very much in detail to say how good

they are. For example, a lot of AMD's Videos are relatively new. AMD

advertising is now becoming much better than intel (ie. This is an amazing

product and you should buy it because, well you should(AMD) vs. We're the

best and you know it, so buy our stuff because you would trust us even

though we are ripping you off... (intel)) (note: in my

opinion pricing something that is lower quality than a competitive product

higher than the price of the competitive product is a ripoff)

So how am I writing this? AMD has been my Goto Choice for a product for

years. My first laptop was a Cheap Toshiba with an intel Celeron processer,

my current laptop has an AMD A129700P CPU. Actually, my first one was a bit

better, it had a four-core Pentium CPU inside, and it was awesome... But

for some reason, even though the CPU was good, the laptop sucked... I died

and got replaced by the aforementioned Toshiba Replacement... My current

machine has gone through a few upgrades namely RAM, and SSD replacing the

HDD... I am planning on building a workstation using AMD Opteron CPU's and

Radeon Pro GPU's it is just meant as a replacement to my laptop, with some

added multi-thread Performance.

[cyberstorm64dd]

Sorry for the super long post...

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 1:50 PM Alexander Hixson <alexanderh3014@gmail.com>

[Anonymous]

This thread required no answers "..." thanks you!

[Anonymous]

• The Ultimate Nope Toward Customer Friendliness:

I suppose it doesn't required any further comments!

The story ends here!

[Anonymous]

@AMD:

• The bios size "issue":

Following the AMD support debacle, i noticed that a lot of media outlet picked up the story about this BIOS size issue.

I'm a bit perplex about the reason AMD is bringing, regarding why there will be no further CPU support.
From what i learnt, UEFI and BIOS in general are written in C programming language, pretty close to Assembly language.
One of the key strength of C language are compact and fast programming execution, for low level hardware application.
But here AMD seems to imply that now bios have a size issue, due to code length limitation.

I'm a bit baffled by this bold statement, which imply that developers couldn't figure out how to get it works properly in C??!
But low level languages are by definition highly portable and customizable, to accommodate even the smallest memory sizes place holder.
Is AMD having an issue with its development team, because it's the first time i got said one couldn't fit code, using such low level language.

I think it is setting up a bad precedent for the industry, that highlight either AMD incompetence or simple greed.
I don't think the industry, developers inside and outside AMD, are really pleased with such statement.
Programming is a wonderful and difficult world by itself within the industry, with some betting more on it than others.

It seems here AMD didn't bet on it at all, something that have already been shown with some other AMD piece of code or programs.

I'm a bit baffled how AMD could fall on such issue, when leading the industry with leading foundry advantage.
It doesn't bode well when a company with such advanced tools, fall of the cliff form C language code size issues!

In my opinion, this is a huge lack of respect toward developers in the field, especially whom who deliver decent code to their customers!!
If other companies have been able to deal with this "issue", why in the other hand, AMD isn't capable to do the same?

[Anonymous]

@AMD

• Matisse 2 refresh:
  
  I usually do not pay attention to leaks when reviewing stuff, long time this ship sailed for me.

I simply analyze what companies put out, then look at the product engineering until my knowledge permit and draw conclusion, based on my industry and big companies experience.
Most of the time, with enough knowledge, one can read along the lines to see through the marketing that businesses deliver to advertiser and resellers.

Still some leaks announced the Matisse refresh, along a lot of APU launching this month with B550.

Luckily the APU leaks have been confirmed, so now whats are the chances that Matisse refresh will come to light.
It doesn't bode well when leaks announced that this refresh would only be compatible with the x500 series bios update.

Looking at the AMD cpu support debacle, i can now imagine a cpu support cut as a possible outcome.

I mean, from an industry point of view, there is nothing against proposing a refreshed portfolio of products to its customers.

Usually these new products are still compatible within the previously launched ecosystem.

Not supporting refreshed products is not usually viewed as a nice customer friendly practice.

Especially if you deal with big companies having bought big big chunks of your assets.

Fortunately it's not the case worldwide in big big businesses, aside for some AMD partnerships, i still deal lately only with Intel products.

The only products coming from AMD were 10+ years old computers of the Athlon 64 era, memories, that i retired because left or forgotten somewhere around.

What bother me the most, is that my early R5 3600 is a real pile of garbage silicon wise, compared to the CCD AMD shipped in a R9 3950x for example.
Obviously, i was not happy to learn that the product i bought was a discarded silicon.

Coming from the binning of high end product, meaning that the initial yields were not so good at the end for n7.

I'm not happy to leverage that users can now run decent clocks with decent voltages on newer R5 3600 parts.

Meaning that this binning process have been modified or the wafers yields finally got better and better on the n7 process.
To give you an example, my 3600 can't take 4.2Ghz at 1.3v, it simply savagely shut down the whole machine when launching P95 with a such low voltage.

Mine require at least 1.35/1.38v for one CCX, the other being utter garbage because not being stable past 4150Mhz, no matter the voltage.

So now leaks are pointing out that even if AMD refreshed the 3600 with lets say a 3650, i still couldn't get it on my X370.
It's the same as saying the 2600 couldn't work with X370 board, even if the 1600 could.
And again i do not find this move really customer friendly at all and does absolutely not reflect the roadmap provided by AMD to the public.

I can completely understand the companies greed, but it's not a mandatory behavior that companies should take.
If everything sort out to be true, this will be another bad marketing move toward AMD customers that will not please some.
More importantly i don't think AMD will really come back into charming system integrator and big IT department in this way, to build up ecosystems in big big companies.

AMD have already some issues with providing big big volumes compared to Intel, so who would change to another ecosystem that provide such low volumes and such poor trust.
I mean, IT departments of big big firms are already a clusterfuck believe me, due to how much asset one need to take into account.

So no way one would put on top of that a poor developed ecosystem, it would add too much strain into common software validation processes.
I mean, Intel and Samsung are the worldwide leader of silicon manufacturing, because they essentially manufacture silicon chips, what AMD can't do by itself.
I hope being wrong, due to my extended lack of knowledge in some fields, but in my opinion, not sure AMD can come back into big companies like it was with the Athlon 64, with this kind of poor PR.

Being deceptive toward basic consumers it's easy, being deceptive when someone lend you a couple of billions for your IP is maybe not so easy to get away with.

[Anonymous]

• The shift toward the gaming industry practices:

Other than following the technological advances, i'm an old gamer also following the gaming industry evolution in the past 25 years.
If some are not familiar with the current state of the art of the gaming industry, there is only one keyword that rules them all: monetization.
The whole gaming industry key points are monetization scheme and big data resources as main economy driver.

Rather than relaying on innovation and creativity, games publishers are making big big margins on behalf of consumers with all sorts of monetization practices.

Monetization quite often shady, mostly leading to less than desirable quality games releases.
To the point that the games, creativity, innovation do not matter anymore as extracting the most money possible, at any cost.

The gaming industry is not anymore the art of the past but rather became one of the leading business worldwide nowadays.

A good picture of this shift would be LucasArts MonkeyIsland and the nowadays EA FIFA Ultimate Team Packs.

The gaming industry have been closely followed by gaming media industry, that often push less than ideal reviews and criticisms.

Fearing repercussions from publishing companies on early access data and insiders previews.
The real criticisms are now being pushed usually by consumers themselves and asked to vote with their wallet.

Repetitive big outrages begin to tarnish the image of some of the biggest publishing groups nowadays.
Consumers have to spend money forward to discover themselves what really lie withing games they bought.

In few words, the narrative in the gaming industry is not anymore about publishing a game.

But rather how much the industry can push back and forth the consumers, to deliver monetization schemes embedded into the games.
Media and industries building narratives to influence a big chunk of the gaming population, where on the other hand consumers not being protected by any kind law or knowledgeable entities regulating the field.

Now if one observe closely the AMD cpu support debacle, one can easily spot some similarities with the gaming industry practices.
AMD did not clearly forward data and information about its plans to support further cpu's, not until the blog-post declaring end of support.

There was not a public knowledgeable collection of data that could have pointed consumers toward one choice or the other.
It feels as AMD adopting the back and forth tactics of the gaming industry, rather than giving knowledgeable clues, that could have been used by professionals, media in the field.

AMD simply probed the consumers about how much it could get away with, using this kind of end of the line support.
One does not simply change winning tactics, obviously the uproar was quite expected, as we leverage commonly nowadays in the gaming industry.
AMD back pedaled obviously, releasing a statement about the newly revised cpu support plan, that i will not even bother to spent time with.

In my opinion, this is not the kind of behavior high tech companies with leading technical advantages like AMD, should adopt.
This lead to lower trust toward the company that does not disclose straightforward knowledgeable data to its consumers and partners, to deliver good support for its products.
More knowledgeable users and industry workers will see through this kind of behaviors, reflecting the internal company decision making.

That somehow, not being on par with the technological and engineering advances gained, compared to others competitors like Nvidia.
The upgrade path should have been discussed and planned long long time before one came to the final destination of no return.

With either a strict no upgrade or an carefully crafted support plan.
No customer, public and media narrative outrage should be responsible of companies decision.

When it happen, this is a clear signal that something went wrong in the management of the whole situation by the company.

I would simply not advise the AMD ecosystem at all with the current state of the company, until AMD decide to be more knowledgeable with its users and partners.
I personally also feel a lack of trust toward the newly launching console market powered by AMD and the further implications between consoles and computer gaming going forward.

Once again i maybe lack extensive knowledge in some fields, but i can only strongly advice AMD management to look forward long term benefits and partnership rather than quick cash grab revenue.

Bonus: One can say anything about Intel, but Intel disclose a lot of its technical data for its partners helping them building the infrastructure needed.
One cannot say the same regarding AMD, to date and my knowledge, there is no public documentation of the family 17h processors regarding the bios development.

I couldn't find these documents on AMD resource site, unlike the previous 15h cpu architecture.
Some already asked multiples time that AMD release more knowledgeable information about how its cpu works, for development purposes.

If some of you still want to get a glance at the AGESA system included into the UEFI bios image, some researches explained very well in this video.

It could help some to clear their mind and understand better the bios issues AMD state to have, regarding its future cpu support plan.

Wonder how the PSP and AGESA will evolve with newer iterations of AMD cpu's.

36C3 - Uncover, Understand, Own - Regaining Control Over Your AMD CPU

[Anonymous]

• Another great winning time for the great AMD Customer Friendly Department:

Price in France this morning as posting this 7/7/20:

The 3600XT is 32euro pricier than the 3700X.

Would like to point out that usually a refreshed product would be cheaper and better.

Can't wait to leverage the price of other AMD XT product line!

[Anonymous]

• A Few Moment Later:

The 3800XT price is out, pricier than a 3900X, the 3800X also got a 8euro price increase in less than one hour! 

[Anonymous]

• A Few Hours Later:

At this point i don't know what to think about this refreshed cpu launch, along with the new cpu pricing.

The 3800XT is pricier than a 3900XT, which is a  total nonsense!

Paper launch and hijacked pricing have become a common habit in the computer industry!

I would not advice to buy any AMD XT products at launch, the higher pricing is absolutely not worth the performances and silicon quality gain.

On a side note, these new XT cpu's are tagged as X counterpart, with the current version of CPU-Z!

Second side note 12/7/20, the XT launch prices felt back into the decency realm, still very high and the 3800/3900XT not available at the lowest price on the site.

Third side note, Threadripper getting a new chipset and socket, new XT cpu launch, AMD doesn't know what to do anymore with all these binned chiplets?

Fourth side note, Threadripper evolution need a whole article by itself, it took 4 generations, 3 sockets and 4 years, to actually reach EPYC usefulness for consumers.

[Anonymous]

• AMD Naming Scheme.

It is really difficult to keep up with the AMD cpu product naming scheme, at least for me.
It has become harder and harder to get a full picture of the AMD product stack, just by looking at the SKU product name.

As always, pictures are often worth thousand words.

Let's look at it more closely:

• Zen architecture debut with the 1000 series name on desktop and 2000 series for mobile and APU. 
• Zen+ debut with 2000 series on desktop and 3000 series for mobile and APU.
• Zen2 debut with 3000 series on desktop and 4000 series with for mobile and APU.
• On the other hand, one can also find 1000 series cpu, displaying Zen+ architecture like the 1200AF, 1600AF.

• One can objectively find the naming scheme difficult to digest, i do not understand why it have been decided that the mobile and APU segments should take a different name.
  Which mean one can find two completely different cpu architecture within the same naming scheme.
• Using an older naming scheme to rebrand a newer architecture is far for being logical and quite confusing.
• This kind of naming scheme makes things more complicated when support plans are announced.
  Until now AMD officially cut cpu support two times already, both were a total mess.
  One never know which cpu, motherboard, combo is impacted, requiring a careful manual check.
• When discussing with others about future architecture releases, the painters naming scheme does not amalgamate well with the previous and current architecture naming schemes.
  The architecture roadmap names feel a mess without continuity, instead of clearly defining the company heading.

Now looking at other companies in general, one will notice that the naming scheme AMD adopted is not common at all.
Usually a new product name is made by simply adding one the previous naming, retaining the previous product history.

One can think naming schemes are something useless, being used mainly to fit the company roadmap.
The later statement is right if one speak about roadmaps, but wrong if one consider human being.
Human being behavior is greatly influenced by classification, names and the meaning associated with it.
If one constantly change naming scheme, the products will have less and less impact, no matter if being good or not.
The sum of feelings, places, actions, persons, names, etc, are associated together by the brain to build up a memory block.
Having a difficult to digest naming scheme, does not help the human brain to associate something good to it.
A clear example can be done with the AMD brand, i'm following a Dev course and helping other with laptop hardware choice.
All being poorly knowledgeable on newer tech, i proposed them the new 4000 series AMD based laptops.

Told them to check users review for noticeable flaws and the cooling, otherwise perfectly fine for general usage.
Two straight relied i quote:"AMD is s**t!", the others two bought an Intel based ultra-portable from Asus, yikes.

Overall, i don't think that the naming scheme AMD developed, facilitate the general public adoption of its products. 
I would have rater liked a simple naming scheme that extend to the whole cpu architecture.
All the Zen2 architecture cpu should be named 3000 series,  APU and mobile included.
Something like  3700XG/3700GX or simply 3700GE would have been perfectly fine and easy to grasp.
I can understand why it is so, when Zen launched AMD couldn't provide 8 cores mobile/APU dies.
But knowing the internal roadmap and let me guess, a bit of tech, one could have foreseen Renoir cpu.

Because the 4700GE is the same as any others cpu we have seen before, like any other monolithic architecture.
Building a smart naming scheme from the beginning would have been a more profitable option, in my opinion.

If there is hidden somewhere a study proving that this kind of naming scheme is actually more profitable to enhance product adoption, then discard this piece.
Otherwise, if i struggle with this naming scheme, imagine someone that actually really don't care at all.
Even worse, it enhance the general consensus about AMD not being on par with its competitors, which is far from being always true! 

Side note: New Asus X370-F bios, Pi_1.0.0.6, 5601 available for download, personally it destroyed my memory overclock.

Can't do 3800/1900 C16 anymore, no new options, came back stock, my cabbage not being able to boost past 4150Mhz.

Side note two: The share market is hot right now, yikes!

[Anonymous]

• ReppirDaerht Platform Stability:

Some say a picture is worth a thousands words.

From a complete objective point of view, i can't say the ReppirDaerht platform won the crown of the most stable platform ever.

The ReppirDaerht platform got hit with numerous issues along its product life, that i will not bother to list here.

But for the sake of customers who invested into the platform, it is still worth to mention these various issues.

I'm still wondering as today, how many Enthusiast Gamers or Streamers really need a 32/64 cores platform.

The whole ReppirDaerht platform landscape, at the moment, resemble more to this:

If we build a rough timeline of AMD products launches, it resemble more to this:

If some want to revive 2017 the glorious ReppirDaerht launch with me, a simple Techpowerup news, RSS search will do the job.

To be honest, looking back in time, i didn't expected the platform roadmap to be what it is today.
If a company doesn't acknowledge and endorse its previous products, why would customers endorse the company future products in first place?

[Anonymous]

• Memory Capacity

"AMD Declares 4GB of GPU VRAM 'Not Enough' for Today's Games"

Also AMD:

Then when i read the next generation console RDNA2 specs, i can find articles citing things like this:

Can someone knowledgeable with games development at AMD can highlight us about the GPU vram questions?!

Especially regarding the next generation of games and engines using the RDNA2 architecture, ported from consoles to pc?!

Because clearly 3, 4, 6GB of gpu memory seems to not be enough to provide a decent gaming experience on incoming titles.

[Anonymous]

• AMD Lacks Of Clairvoyance

The AMD fanshop introduced bikes to its customers, nothing strange for me, creativity and innovation are welcome nowadays.

But:

And:

I don't know who at AMD thought that it would be a wonderful idea to just pick Walmart Kent bike and repaint it.

Then charge 150$ on top for the AMD logo, add to this 50$ for shipping US only, for a total of 350$.

I don't know either how this kind of poor job has been allowed by the upper management teams.
But this is a clear lack of clairvoyance, it seems management teams are working against the AMD brand!

Edit 29/10/2020: AMD removed the bike listing from the Shop after GamerNexus review video.

One can still find the original listing on the Internet Archive if searching for the Fan shop.
I cannot link directly the Archive Shop page because it trigger the moderation tool, that's why i had to repost this.
There is no moderator in this forum section, so the post are not evaluated and simply disappear forever!

[rainingtacco]

Man, keep it coming! That's hillarious, a rebranded wallmart brike with 100% premium for paintjob. For die hard fans only. 

[Anonymous]

• Insert Title Here

5600x French Price

5800x French Price

5900x French Price

5950x French Price

AMD Price

AMD French Resellers

AMD Suggested Prices After Conversion To EU

1. 5600x: 299$ = 251e x 20%VAT = 301e total
2. 5800x: 450$ = 380e x 20%VAT = 456e total
3. 5900x 550$ = 465e x 20%VAT = 558e total

Like any other respectable reviewer, i sent some questions to the Press Staff of Rue Du Commerce e-shop, about the AMD leaked documents asking to take measures for the new AMD cpu launch.
I sent a mail before the embargo lifts the 21/10/20 and another the 5/11/20 after the embargo lifted, Rue Du Commerce did not provided any answer about the matter at the time.
Also Rue Du Commerce is the only french e-commerce that did not scam french consumers and behaved decently during the AMD product launch.

In fact, french customers praised Rue Du Commerce for its behavior, other french resellers from the list i posted above known by AMD, did not behaved in such good faith and proceeded to scam french consumers with hijacked prices.

[rainingtacco]

Lol what 5600x price is 480 euro. That's insane xD. Either sellers in france are price fixing, or AMD is lying. 

[Anonymous]

• Insert Title Here

AMD 5000 Series IPC Claim

The Stilt IPC Bench Clock to Clock Ryzen 5000 vs 3000

Since i cannot post links without triggering the auto moderation, one can find the link of the test on Overclock dot net, looking for the Stilt thread: "End of an ERA - "Vermeer" has arrived".

I'm not fond of The Stilt reviews, but he is one of few i found that really spent time to check the IPC claims.
If one looks for its bench, the IPC gains clock to clock against Matisse vary between workloads, some see a 30% increase but others display only 5-8% increase.

I was not sure how AMD could claim almost 20% overall IPC gain against Matisse clock to clock, but in reality this figure vary between workloads.

The rest of the performances being brought by achieving decent all cores clocks compared to Matisse.
I will not spent time to write some Assembly code to test really each AMD claims, but it is what reviewers should do regarding the Vermeer architecture changes.

I want also to point out that none of the mainstream reviewers proposed a clock to clock comparison in games for example.
I was even more surprised that Anandtech, that should be better than the basic youtube reviews, verified the AMD IPC claims without explaining what Industry Standard means???!!

In my opinion,  Dr. Ian Cutress bold statement of 19% IPC gain to back up AMD claim does not hold up when one look into a particular workload.

Anandtech IPC Test

Anandtech Industry Standard

I was also surprised that Igor's Lab did not performed more in depth test to verify the AMD IPC claims.

On overall i'm a bit deceived by the reviewers in general, compared to what the reviewers were able to deliver years ago.
I really miss the Hardware dot fr reviews and wish it would still be alive today!

Side Note: One need to give credit where it is due!
One can check the 5000 series German review at ComputerBase dot com, it is the only site i found that proposed clock to clock gaming performances.
It explain clearly where the gaming IPC gains stands and the clock contribution to overall performances!
Once again i'm baffled by AMD marketing and overall 5000 series reviews, i can feel and hear AMD engineers, technical staff, bashing their head onto the table.

[Anonymous]

• X370-F Bios 5604 Overclocking update

Just for the sake, i checked if Asus would had released a new bios update for the X370-F Srtix.
Asus indeed released the bios version 5601 AGESA 1.0.0.6 the 27/7/20 that i briefly tested and noticed that it completely killed the memory and FClock overclock in my case.
So i reverted to the 5406 because i couldn't get anymore the fabric clock to reach 1900mhz.
Then Asus released another bios version 5603 AGESA 1.0.0.6 the 10/8/20 that i had not yet tested, so i spent some time checking if something changed.

Disclaimer, my 3600 cpu is really really bad sample, it requires a lot of voltage to even reach 4.2 all cores.
The CCD1 not being stable unless cooled decently while pushing high voltages, usually it can't take more than 4.175Ghz.
The FClock and memory overclocking seems to be decent, reaching 1900Mhz FClock 1:1 stable with 1.15v to 1.175v SOC voltage.
At the moment i'm running 1900Mhz 1:1 CAS16, TRFC 293, 1T, geardown disabled, the cpu is set to 4.15Ghz all cores at 1.468v.
The cpu is stable under Cinebench 76°, Prime95 no AVX 85°, Prime95 AVX 95°/100° short test  bios 5406.

First thing, when flashing the new bios i noticed that the flash would take much longer than usual.
Which mean Asus did update more bios blocks this time compared to the previous ones, sparks of hope.
I decided to give it a try and i noticed immediately that Asus devs spent some time upgrading the failed overclock recovery mechanism.
Before i had to spend sometime between 2 to 5 minutes to recover from a bad overclock, shutting down the computer psu multiples times before the motherboard recover.
The board is not able to recover by itself just shutting down the computer using the power button with the 5406 bios.
Now with the 5603 bios, the board is able to recover much more easily, greatly improving the overclocking experience compared to previous bios.
The time lost and the frustration brought by not recovering easily from a fail overclock is huge for hard overclockers.
I mean, this is a high en board, so it should be directed at least a minimum toward overclockers, but until now the feature did not worked really well.

I then proceeded to check if my max core overclock would have improved, from stock settings i dialed 4.2Ghz at 1.5v LLC4, full phase mode.
It managed to complete Cinebenchs runs without crashing, all the other bios setting were stock, very low memory and FClock frequency.
I also did some tests with PBO and the EDC bug, but as usual, only the core 0 reached 4.2Ghz once, 4Ghz all cores under heavy load.
And i really did not expected to improve at all, AMD tags the silicon quality of the dies into the AGESA part residing inside the cpu.
So if the PBO perform poorly, it will continue to perform poorly until the cpu die and there is nothing we can do about.

I proceeded then to set back my previous memory and FClock setting and the true nightmare began.
I was not able to overclock the memory and the fClock at all past 1700Mhz, the board refused absolutely to cooperate.
I mean i'm not Buildzoid when it come to memory and FClock overclock, but i always managed to tame boards in a way or the other.
This time with the bios 5603 i was not able to achieve anything good, the cpu would lock up at boot, not even trying to train the memory when dialing decent settings.
Even with loose memory timing, geardown enabled, various Soc, VDDG CCD, VDDG IOD, cLDO VDDP voltages, fast boot disabled, etc.
I really felt the board giving up, refusing to train memory and locking the cpu up when trying set higher fabric, memory clocks.
I was not even able to reach windows, the computer just keep recovering from a failed overclock over and over despite all my efforts.

I noticed that playing with VDDG CCD, VDDG IOD voltages did not help at all, the opposite, setting something other than auto lead to nowhere.
It was already the case for me when these setting made their apparition into the bios and i never really used them.
Luckily Asus did upgrade the failed overclock recovery procedure, otherwise i would not had spent 6h playing around.
I would had gave up after 5 minutes as when i tested the 5601 bios, if the overclock recovery feature did not got an update.

Overall i have the feeling the board is being downgraded, at least with my cpu and my particular configuration.
The last 2 bios claims improved stability, yeah it is so stable now that i can't overclock and push the system anymore.
I mean, not even reaching windows to check stability is a huge steep back compared to what i am used to with this board.
I maybe miss keys setting setting, but i suppose that a couple of settings would not destroy completely the board as i experienced now.
I tried to look for others having the same issue, but most of the consumers bought the ROG Crosshair VI at the time, i only found a couple of post reporting similar feeling when using the last 5603 bios and the X370-F.

Aside AMD not being completely fair with the silicon quality of the early Ryzen 3000 samples, i feel that not enforcing any bios control is a huge issue.
That's why AMD already lost me as GPU customer and that's why AMD lost me as CPU customer.
As one grow up, one realize that the real performance is being able to enforce decent software stability and trust over time.
AMD did not took this route, that's why even if AMD peak performance as now reached and beat Intel old node and architecture proposition, i'm still very worried about platform stability.
AMD did not beat Intel in software stability, myself not being a huge company, i'm a lone customer lacking time and also knowledge to fix what AMD and its partners left over.
I cannot spent time doing software validation on AMD hardware and develop myself the ecosystem to get the things done as they should.
I would have rather have spent the 54mill of bonus perceived by Dr Lisa Su into having an homogeneous bios development platform.
Every AMD customers should get the best ecosystem AMD workers can provide, instead of leaving customers fate bind to third party companies.

The potential of AMD and all its working labor have been thrown under the bus by bad management decisions, this is may take on AMD now, for what my opinion is worth.

[Anonymous]

• Thread Closing
  

It have been a long journey for me and i learnt a lot, from when i decided to participate to the AMD Vanguard Program troubleshooting issues with my old R9 290 to nowadays release of Consoles, Ryzen 5000 and RX6000 series.

Looking back, i don't feel that going forward posting articles here have been a big game changer, maybe aside the naming scheme update of Ryzen 5000, that imprinted enthusiast minds with another botched cpu and possibly gpu launch.

But as engineer, enthusiast and tech lover, i'm still convinced that AMD company, workers and customers deserved the same glory as when i was playing with my Barton cpu and volt modding, unlocking my X800GTO2.

This thread will not be updated, the moderation can freely delete it or move it down into the forum.

Take care, stay safe.
Wimpzilla 0/

[Anonymous]