General Discussions

[black_zion]

Will be interesting to see if this AGESA is able to iron out the core speed disparity. The excerpt suggests as much with all cores hitting the same speed, though it is translated from German and is a beta BIOS so who knows if it is really the case.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-amd-ryzen-3000-firmware-microcode-40549-performance

[ajlueke]

I wonder if the processors will start throttling themselves if installed on a X370 and X470 chipset.  To make it seem like those high end VRMs are worth it.  Right now, the only reason to get a X570 board is PCIe 4.0, and if you want your chip to use more power from the wall while it idles.

[black_zion]

Well the X570 boards also allow usage of all M.2 slots without sacrificing bandwidth or even usability of other slots whereas on the X470/X370 boards you lose access to some PCIe slots if others are utilized. I don't think they will throttle though, but I wouldn't doubt the X570 boards will allow higher boost clocks since they are more tuned to the Zen 2 architecture, but it's not going to be anything drastic.

[ajlueke]

X570 does massively raise the power consumption at idle.  They effectively negate the efficiency gains of the 3000 series over the 2000 series.

AMD Ryzen X570 Motherboards Draw So Much Power, It's Warping CPU Comparisons - ExtremeTech 

As far as I can tell, the Ryzen 3000 series is effectively voltage bound when boosting.  You're not hitting PPT, TDC, EDC or thermal boundaries during single core boost, just F-max.  If you raise, Fmax using the auto-overclock feature...nothing happens.  So all the extrat PPT, TDC, EDC headroom on the X570 does absolutely nothing.

Even in multicore boost, my 3900X is slightly EDC bound on an all core boost.  If I raise it up using PBO, I hit another voltage limit with my EDC at 63% or so (155A).  All that extra headroom is wasted on the X570 series.

The way I understood precision boost overdrive in the 2000 series, was that your processor would boost until it hit the PPT, TDC, EDC or temperature boundary.  If it didn't hit any of those, it boosts to Fmax, which it will never go past (you can raise Fmax by up to 200MHz).  The 3000 series clearly doesn't do this.  You can be below every limit, and the processor will still stop boosting because there is also clearly a voltage limiter.  My CPU will not go past 1.325V on all core boosts, and 1.485V appears to be the limit for single core.  You hit that limit way before PPT, TDC or EDC limits are reached, even on my X470, so what is the point of more headroom?

AMD seems to be pretty quite about the voltage limits, and a cynical person might think because they want partners to sell more X570 boards with the redone chipset.  But really, all anyone seems to get out of it is a higher power bill.

[black_zion]

Thing about power is that it's very dependent on the motherboard. Take the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate (Ryzen 2600X) and the ASUS Prime X570-Pro (Ryzen 3600X), both are 6 core 12 thread processors, idle power is the same, and even slightly lower when overclocked on the X570, and overall load power is lower too, so power bill is not higher.

X470 - https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-x470-taichi-ultimate/14.html

X570 - https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus-prime-x570-pro/15.html

[ajlueke]

Yes, the power draw is the same, between an 2600X on X470 and 3600X on a X570.  Which is exactly what I said initially.  "They effectively negate the efficiency gains of the 3000 series over the 2000 series."

If you drop that 3600X into an X470 board, it will use less power than the 2600X in the identically motherboard.  Power usage goes up if you put it back into a X570 motherboard.  So yes, using a 3600X in an X570 motherboard raises the power bill vs dropping the identical processor into a X470.

[hardcoregames_]

Nothing for my MSI X470 Gaming Plus yet. Guess I have to wait it out again.

Still lots of problems with defaults for my RAM. Manual settings are needed to prevent BSOD problems.