AMD's New AGESA Update Promises Increased Memory Support And Overclocking

[Guest]

AMD announced via a community update that its new v1.0.0.6 AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated System Architecture) update is available for motherboard vendors.

AMD's New AGESA Update Promises Increased Memory Support And Overclocking : Read more

 

[dudmont]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

 

[JamesSneed]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

It should just improve memory OC not CPU OC's. However 4000Mhz memory may make an impact-full performance gain. Maybe toms can get gskill and Asus to hook them up with a 4000Mhz capable kit to test out?

 

[hannibal]

It should been soon possible to make full Ryzen memory speed vs. Over all speed test. 4000Mhz is near what best memories can achieve. It would be nice to see what is the sweet spot for Ryzen considering the memory speeds!
How much to pay and how much you can gain...

 

[ammaross]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

This update wouldn't affect max OC of Ryzen. It will, however, allow faster RAM to increase the inter-CPU communications across Infinity Fabric, which would improve poorly multi-threaded apps (games). As games issue patches for Ryzen, they're performance will improve more significantly than with these updates. If you're stuck on that small FPS increase, you might as well get the new overclockable i3 and crank it up to 5Ghz. If you go ahead and buy the i7 instead, it's that same reasoning that you would want to seriously consider a Ryzen. Yes, there's a small performance delta at high FPS, but doubling your cores will help you out tremendously as your computer ages.

 

[Antonio_34]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

Since there was no comma in front of the "and" in the article title, the overclocking is directly associated with the noun that proceeds it.

 

[redgarl]

So funny to see people complaining about this. It's getting there, be patient. So far my 1700x rigs is better than my 4770k rigs with the same GPU.

It's true that I am at 4k, but it deliver and I gain around 5-7 fps in The Witcher 3 which I was really surprised about.

 

[alextheblue]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

It should just improve memory OC not CPU OC's. However 4000Mhz memory may make an impact-full performance gain. Maybe toms can get gskill and Asus to hook them up with a 4000Mhz capable kit to test out?

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but don't get hung up on clock speeds. Latency is equally important. A lower clock can end up being as fast or faster with aggressive timings.

 

[dusty13]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

you should not buy ryzen soley for single threaded tasks.

this cpu in the current version will not be able to clock as high as a core i7, that is just not in the picture. future refinements may tickle out a bit more headroom but easy overclocking to 3.9/4.1ghz right now is the limit and i would be very much surprised if this went beyond 4.5 on ryzen v1 as time goes on.

ryzen shines when it comes to threaded tasks.

so if your main or only usecase demands highest possible single thread performance do NOT buy a ryzen cpu. its by no means slow but there are faster offerings out there for this type of workload.

however you mentioned gaming ... not to put to fine a point on it but most games that are badly optimized for multi thread are older titles. yes they run slower than on i7 ... but whats the difference between 156 and 169 fps on a 1440p/144hz monitor? or 71 and 85 on a 4k/60hz monitor?

the new games that come out usually are better optimized and should handle the additinal threads appropriately (outliers will always exist). if you are going for high fps my suggestion would be to ignore the overclocking headroom, go for a ryzen 5 and spend the saved money on a more beastly gpu. that will add much more performance than any cpu upgrade could.

 

[dusty13]

So funny to see people complaining about this. It's getting there, be patient. So far my 1700x rigs is better than my 4770k rigs with the same GPU.

It's true that I am at 4k, but it deliver and I gain around 5-7 fps in The Witcher 3 which I was really surprised about.

i can definitely second the "its getting there". started out with my gskill 3200/14 ram on 2166, no way to get it to overclock stable.

one bios release later and i am at 2666 with manual tweaking.
AGESA 1.0.0.4 out and now i am at 3000 (299... whatever you know how that goes) on XMP profile 1 without any tewaking (XMP2 for 3200 still won't budge)

... so lets see what AGESA 1.0.0.6 has in store.

so far i have seen tangible progress in stability and performance on a monthly basis. for a platform that is a few months old that is excellent progress and so far no major bugs or shortcomings have been seen either. not bad for a completely new system.

 

[JamesSneed]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

It should just improve memory OC not CPU OC's. However 4000Mhz memory may make an impact-full performance gain. Maybe toms can get gskill and Asus to hook them up with a 4000Mhz capable kit to test out?

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but don't get hung up on clock speeds. Latency is equally important. A lower clock can end up being as fast or faster with aggressive timings.

I understand how it works, very well. Thats why I'm hoping we see some testing so we can can get some real data on it. The communication between the CCX's run at 1/2 the memory frequency so yes memory latency is important but also the pure Mhz has a nock on effect to reducing the latency of communication between CCX's which is also important.

 

[Olle P]

... memory latency is important but also the pure Mhz has a nock on effect to reducing the latency of communication between CCX's which is also important.

From the tests I've seen it's sort of a balance act.
For some tasks clock speed is king, for others timing makes more of a difference.
I think the best option is to try finding the best balance of low timings and increased clock speed with the hardware at hand.

 

[JamesSneed]

... memory latency is important but also the pure Mhz has a nock on effect to reducing the latency of communication between CCX's which is also important.

From the tests I've seen it's sort of a balance act.
For some tasks clock speed is king, for others timing makes more of a difference.
I think the best option is to try finding the best balance of low timings and increased clock speed with the hardware at hand.

Agree, and I hope toms does this for us so we don't have to buy 4000Mhz capable ram to find out 3200 would be just as good.

 

[alidan]

well let's just dump this here

most motherboards have asega 1.0.0.4 or some variation, no 1.0.0.5 bioses ever came out of beta, the 1.0.0.5 update increased ipc by 3% across the board, some things getting significantly more but had a bare minimum of 3% uptick.

this update will hopefully make memory run at rated speeds, I personally have 3200 clocked 32gb in mine forced to clock at 2400

now, the 1.0.0.5 bios also had another side upgrade, where people who used the beta bioses noticed they were able to hit overclock with .05 less voltage then they were using previously, which either let them run the cpu stabley at a lower voltage, or let them overclock another 100mhz.

@dudmont
Its only a weakness in applications that do not use more than 4 cores, and even then, maybe more than 3 cores, as amds threading is a bit further ahead than intels, where amd sits is the middle ground between good enough performance single core but when you need more or you do more then one thing at once, extra cores to balance the load better, its kind of fascinating watching my 1700 use 8-20% of the cpu, and then open a game like the cpu isnt even being used.

@dusty13
I would argue heavily in favor of ryzen even if single core was all you used, as you could simply dedicate cpu+threads to the program and make every other program not touch it, effectively giving the program its own cpu to run off of. the distance intel is ahead in single core is not bigger than amds advantage in multicore.

 

[dudmont]

well let's just dump this here

most motherboards have asega 1.0.0.4 or some variation, no 1.0.0.5 bioses ever came out of beta, the 1.0.0.5 update increased ipc by 3% across the board, some things getting significantly more but had a bare minimum of 3% uptick.

this update will hopefully make memory run at rated speeds, I personally have 3200 clocked 32gb in mine forced to clock at 2400

now, the 1.0.0.5 bios also had another side upgrade, where people who used the beta bioses noticed they were able to hit overclock with .05 less voltage then they were using previously, which either let them run the cpu stabley at a lower voltage, or let them overclock another 100mhz.

@dudmont
Its only a weakness in applications that do not use more than 4 cores, and even then, maybe more than 3 cores, as amds threading is a bit further ahead than intels, where amd sits is the middle ground between good enough performance single core but when you need more or you do more then one thing at once, extra cores to balance the load better, its kind of fascinating watching my 1700 use 8-20% of the cpu, and then open a game like the cpu isnt even being used.

@dusty13
I would argue heavily in favor of ryzen even if single core was all you used, as you could simply dedicate cpu+threads to the program and make every other program not touch it, effectively giving the program its own cpu to run off of. the distance intel is ahead in single core is not bigger than amds advantage in multicore.

I wouldn't debate anything you're saying, or anything anyone's else has said(I'm not in the market for a new build, 2-3 years away, 4790k is still adequate....), but what I want to see is the gap on lightly threaded stuff closed a lot more. AMD solution being superior to Intel is to all computing enthusiasts advantage. I'm truly rooting for AMD here, forcing Intel to address pricing/performance from a position of parity or worse is heaven for folks who build their own systems.

 

[alidan]

well let's just dump this here

most motherboards have asega 1.0.0.4 or some variation, no 1.0.0.5 bioses ever came out of beta, the 1.0.0.5 update increased ipc by 3% across the board, some things getting significantly more but had a bare minimum of 3% uptick.

this update will hopefully make memory run at rated speeds, I personally have 3200 clocked 32gb in mine forced to clock at 2400

now, the 1.0.0.5 bios also had another side upgrade, where people who used the beta bioses noticed they were able to hit overclock with .05 less voltage then they were using previously, which either let them run the cpu stabley at a lower voltage, or let them overclock another 100mhz.

@dudmont
Its only a weakness in applications that do not use more than 4 cores, and even then, maybe more than 3 cores, as amds threading is a bit further ahead than intels, where amd sits is the middle ground between good enough performance single core but when you need more or you do more then one thing at once, extra cores to balance the load better, its kind of fascinating watching my 1700 use 8-20% of the cpu, and then open a game like the cpu isnt even being used.

@dusty13
I would argue heavily in favor of ryzen even if single core was all you used, as you could simply dedicate cpu+threads to the program and make every other program not touch it, effectively giving the program its own cpu to run off of. the distance intel is ahead in single core is not bigger than amds advantage in multicore.

I wouldn't debate anything you're saying, or anything anyone's else has said(I'm not in the market for a new build, 2-3 years away, 4790k is still adequate....), but what I want to see is the gap on lightly threaded stuff closed a lot more. AMD solution being superior to Intel is to all computing enthusiasts advantage. I'm truly rooting for AMD here, forcing Intel to address pricing/performance from a position of parity or worse is heaven for folks who build their own systems.

from my understanding, and its iffy at best on this topic, amd cpus had higher ipc than intel ones as intel does 4 things a cycle ryzen cores do 5. however they are limited by a few factors, some of which relate to compilers made for intel, people still using intel gimped compilers even well after intel was sued and lost because of their gimping, or other various bottlenecks inside the cpu, it's going to be interesting to see when the first batch of formerly made for intel programs come out with an updated version for ryzen, though I wouldn't expect to see the major uptick to happen till ryzen 2.

Again its a limited understanding because I don't want to read the technical details and the people who have so far are kind of douchebags when it comes to telling you anything.

 

[gggplaya]

well let's just dump this here

most motherboards have asega 1.0.0.4 or some variation, no 1.0.0.5 bioses ever came out of beta, the 1.0.0.5 update increased ipc by 3% across the board, some things getting significantly more but had a bare minimum of 3% uptick.

this update will hopefully make memory run at rated speeds, I personally have 3200 clocked 32gb in mine forced to clock at 2400

now, the 1.0.0.5 bios also had another side upgrade, where people who used the beta bioses noticed they were able to hit overclock with .05 less voltage then they were using previously, which either let them run the cpu stabley at a lower voltage, or let them overclock another 100mhz.

@dudmont
Its only a weakness in applications that do not use more than 4 cores, and even then, maybe more than 3 cores, as amds threading is a bit further ahead than intels, where amd sits is the middle ground between good enough performance single core but when you need more or you do more then one thing at once, extra cores to balance the load better, its kind of fascinating watching my 1700 use 8-20% of the cpu, and then open a game like the cpu isnt even being used.

@dusty13
I would argue heavily in favor of ryzen even if single core was all you used, as you could simply dedicate cpu+threads to the program and make every other program not touch it, effectively giving the program its own cpu to run off of. the distance intel is ahead in single core is not bigger than amds advantage in multicore.

I wouldn't debate anything you're saying, or anything anyone's else has said(I'm not in the market for a new build, 2-3 years away, 4790k is still adequate....), but what I want to see is the gap on lightly threaded stuff closed a lot more. AMD solution being superior to Intel is to all computing enthusiasts advantage. I'm truly rooting for AMD here, forcing Intel to address pricing/performance from a position of parity or worse is heaven for folks who build their own systems.

The GAP is really close in single thread operations at the same clock speed. It's just that intel products are far more mature with several years on their current architecture, so factory 4.5ghz clock speeds really make a huge difference whereas Ryzen is really only good for a solid 4ghz for most binned chips. This is only the initial release of Ryzen, i'm sure they'll be able to get to 4.5ghz with later releases of Zen+ or Zen2. I'm just happy that they'll keep AM4 for a while, so it'll just be a drop in upgrade for me . I've been burned by intel in the past with them changing sockets all the time. So I have to go longer between upgrades.

 

[alextheblue]

what I want to see is the gap on lightly threaded stuff closed a lot more.

What I want to see is better threading in applications that have tasks which are parallel in nature and/or have multiple tasks going on at once which can be run in tandem. Especially if they're built to scale, rather than being hardcoded for a specific number of threads.

 

[Jorge Nascimento]

I have a Ryzen 5 1600X on a Gigabyte AB350 gaming, with a couple of gskill flareX 3200MHZ CL14 (2X8). Currently i am running all 6 cores @ 4.1 and memories @ 3.2 CL14.
Very stable, no problems after stress testing it.
Even My Sapphire rx480 nitro OC + 8gb after flashing to RX580 Nitro + is running tip top.

 

[hqxt1964]

Now we need Gigabyte to release the BIOS with 1.0.0.6 for their motherboards.... still on beta as of today.

 

[Jorge Nascimento]

Now we need Gigabyte to release the BIOS with 1.0.0.6 for their motherboards.... still on beta as of today.

F5c is agesa 1.0.0.6, beta or not its the real thing, don't be so narrow minded Tom's hardware is like under 1% of all info about pcs on the internet.
Btw if you want to check for the most recent bios for gigabyte before they even get posted on the official site check Gigabyte official Forums.

Just because it says beta doesn't mean its not the final 1.0.0.6.
People see beta and assume it not final.....
This are not games this is different.

 

[Jorge Nascimento]

Is this going to improve overclocking of the CPUs themselves? It, appears to me at least, to be the biggest single weakness of Ryzen. Without serious improvements to the overclocking, single and lightly threaded(relatively speaking to the resources, i.e. games......) operations are where the chips lag the most.

It should just improve memory OC not CPU OC's. However 4000Mhz memory may make an impact-full performance gain. Maybe toms can get gskill and Asus to hook them up with a 4000Mhz capable kit to test out?

Forget Asus on ryzen, they are just second grade, too many problems, only the top tear MB works ok.
I can do wonders with my gigabyte ab350 gaming compared to Asus AM4.
On intel everything is ok and i can even recomend ASUS, but not for Ryzen.