AMD Zen Discussion Thread

thecomedian

I’m thinking of changing my MB.
Is it worth paying the extra and going for a B550 board over a 450 board?
I’m thinking of keeping my 3600X cpu for the moment but I might change to a 5000 one by the end of the year?

BloodBath

Depends what gpu you have and what resolution and refresh your monitor is.

A 3600 will be a pretty big bottleneck with one of the latest high end cards in some games at high refresh rates.

If your gpu is more 3070/6700xt level or below I think the 3600 is still fine.

Squidgy Black

thecomedian wrote: »

I’m thinking of changing my MB.
Is it worth paying the extra and going for a B550 board over a 450 board?
I’m thinking of keeping my 3600X cpu for the moment but I might change to a 5000 one by the end of the year?

For the sake of 50 quid or so you're probably better off with a B550 and get PCIE gen 4 as well as better VRMs in a lot of cases.

thecomedian

BloodBath wrote: »

Depends what gpu you have and what resolution and refresh your monitor is.

A 3600 will be a pretty big bottleneck with one of the latest high end cards in some games at high refresh rates.

If your gpu is more 3070/6700xt level or below I think the 3600 is still fine.

Gpu is a 1080ti, monitor is 144/240 and usually at 1440

I’m just wondering will it make much of a difference.

AlmightyCushion

BloodBath wrote: »

Depends what gpu you have and what resolution and refresh your monitor is.

A 3600 will be a pretty big bottleneck with one of the latest high end cards in some games at high refresh rates.

If your gpu is more 3070/6700xt level or below I think the 3600 is still fine.

Is it really worth it though. The 5600x is around £300. It only really makes a big enough difference at 1080p to be worth upgrading but is it really worth spending £300 to get an improvement in 1080p performance when a 3080 or 3090 will already give you really high FPS in games at that resolution any way?

BloodBath

thecomedian wrote: »

Gpu is a 1080ti, monitor is 144/240 and usually at 1440

I’m just wondering will it make much of a difference.

A 3600 is fine then. It would be pretty pointless upgrading the board and cpu until you get a better GPU first.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Is it really worth it though. The 5600x is around £300. It only really makes a big enough difference at 1080p to be worth upgrading but is it really worth spending £300 to get an improvement in 1080p performance when a 3080 or 3090 will already give you really high FPS in games at that resolution any way?

It's worth it if you are blowing 700-1000 on a GPU even at 1440p. The lows and averages would be reasonably better with a 5600x+ cpu than the 3600 in that scenario. Especially if you have a 165hz+ monitor. Not all games sure but some games are heavy on the cpu if you want high frames assuming you don't hit a gpu bottleneck first.

Most of the games you want to push high frames in will be competitive multi player games like fps where you will turn settings down for better vissibility and frame rates anyway. That's where your cpu bottleneck comes in.

You buy parts to match other parts if you want to get the most out of them. It's not 100% necessary but it's not costing a lot more in the grand scheme of things. Depends what games you play and what kind of frames you want to push as well. If fps games aren't your thing then it's probably a lot less important.

AlmightyCushion

BloodBath wrote: »

A 3600 is fine then. It would be pretty pointless upgrading the board and cpu until you get a better GPU first.



It's worth it if you are blowing 700-1000 on a GPU even at 1440p. The lows and averages would be reasonably better with a 5600x+ cpu than the 3600 in that scenario. Especially if you have a 165hz+ monitor. Not all games sure but some games are heavy on the cpu if you want high frames assuming you don't hit a gpu bottleneck first.

Most of the games you want to push high frames in will be competitive multi player games like fps where you will turn settings down for better vissibility and frame rates anyway. That's where your cpu bottleneck comes in.

You buy parts to match other parts if you want to get the most out of them. It's not 100% necessary but it's not costing a lot more in the grand scheme of things. Depends what games you play and what kind of frames you want to push as well. If fps games aren't your thing then it's probably a lot less important.

Yeah but a 3080 class card or better combined with a 3600 will get really high FPS in those scenarios already. Sure, a 5600x will get more but does getting 200 FPS instead of 180 FPS really make a difference. For some games that are more CPU bound or run at low enough FPS on that setup like Microsoft Flight Simulator then it might be worth considering but it seems for the vast majority of games there isn't really a noticeable difference between a 3600 or a 5600x. If they were the same price or the 5600x was a few quid extra then it would make sense but at double the price (and that is for new, not someone upgrading where the difference is more) is just doesn't seem worth it for gaming outside of a few titles.

BloodBath

Probably not for most people but if you're going to bottleneck your gpu then just buy a weaker gpu.

Pairing an €800-1000 gpu with a €150-200 cpu makes no sense.

You can expect games to get more cpu demanding in the coming years as well now that they aren't required to run on 8 year old jaguar cores.

Aodhan5000

https://youtu.be/mrzqoeQVg4k
Skip to 9:36. Ryzen 5 3600 will do fine for now at 1440p. He'd probably be better off upgrading with AM5 tbh or waiting for 5600 non x

thecomedian

Thanks everyone. There doesn’t seem to be too much difference between the 450 and the 550.
With the new chipset coming I might as well wait for that before doing a major upgrade

minitrue

The 5600X is already a 65W part so what would a 5600 non X be? Half the L3 cache? I wouldn't expect anything like that except perhaps as an OEM only pennypincher.

Slutmonkey57b

thecomedian wrote: »

Thanks everyone. There doesn’t seem to be too much difference between the 450 and the 550.
With the new chipset coming I might as well wait for that before doing a major upgrade

There is no point buying a new motherboard for the sake of it. Even if you bought a pcie 4 nvme drive, it's backwards compatible and very few consumer workloads will benefit from the performance increase. Other than that, the only difference between 450 and 550 is lower operating temps. It wouldn't benefit your 3600.

Aodhan5000

minitrue wrote: »

The 5600X is already a 65W part so what would a 5600 non X be? Half the L3 cache? I wouldn't expect anything like that except perhaps as an OEM only pennypincher.

Could be lower clocked chip, idk. Would seem stupid to not made a lower end hexa core chip though considering intel are actually better in that area with their 10400f and 11400f.

MidlanderMan

minitrue wrote: »

The 5600X is already a 65W part so what would a 5600 non X be? Half the L3 cache? I wouldn't expect anything like that except perhaps as an OEM only pennypincher.

It will just be clocked slightly lower out of the box and be less throughly binned, but probably match the x when manually OC'd, the same as the non-x model of every other Ryxen CPU so far.

Simi

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Could be lower clocked chip, idk. Would seem stupid to not made a lower end hexa core chip though considering intel are actually better in that area with their 10400f and 11400f.

The 3600 fills that niche pretty well as is. I doubt there's much point releasing a 5600 non-OEM part.

If you look over on Amazon there's a nice pricing differential between the 5600x, the 3600 and the 2600. There's not all that much room to fill with the 3600 still available.

minitrue

MidlanderMan wrote: »

It will just be clocked slightly lower out of the box and be less throughly binned, but probably match the x when manually OC'd, the same as the non-x model of every other Ryxen CPU so far.

For every retail Ryzen CPU so far where there has been both an X and non-X version the X version has had an increased power consumption (95W or 105W) to provide the increased clocks that you can generally get by manually overclocking and increasing the power to the non-X. The non-X in every case has also been a 65W part, the same as the 5600X. The non-X 5800 and 5900 are both 65W parts continuing the pattern, but OEM only. The 3700X was like the 5600X, a 65W X part and there was no 3700, only an OEM only 3700 Pro where the only differences are it's locked and doesn't come with a cooler.

The 3500 (OEM) and 3500X (China only) are the outliers, in their case the 3500X has double the L3 cache and they draw the same power. The OEM only "Pro" models have also been odd with no real pattern I think.


There won't be 5600 to the 5600X in the same way as there was a 3600 to the 3600X, the 5600 is already the non-X part in all but name. There's more chance of a 5600XT or 5600XX or whatever they decide to call it where they charge more to clock up the 5600 even faster by having it draw more power by default.

Aodhan5000

Simi wrote: »

The 3600 fills that niche pretty well as is. I doubt there's much point releasing a 5600 non-OEM part.

If you look over on Amazon there's a nice pricing differential between the 5600x, the 3600 and the 2600. There's not all that much room to fill with the 3600 still available.

I mean if you look at the benchmarks, the 10400f generally bests the 3600 in gaming (although not by much). Currently on Amazon for £135 (£125 on Curry's but they won't ship here). Granted the motherboard will be a little more expensive but the 3600 is like £175 pounds in CCL and they don't ship here and is not available on Amazon

I know the difference isn't unbelievable but paying less for more (and actually being available from Amazon UK) is simply a better option. If AMD want to dominate the 200/sub 200 category, they're gonna have to do better than a 5600X or else reduce its price over time.

Cuddlesworth

minitrue wrote: »

For every retail Ryzen CPU so far where there has been both an X and non-X version the X version has had an increased power consumption (95W or 105W) to provide the increased clocks that you can generally get by manually overclocking and increasing the power to the non-X. The non-X in every case has also been a 65W part, the same as the 5600X. The non-X 5800 and 5900 are both 65W parts continuing the pattern, but OEM only. The 3700X was like the 5600X, a 65W X part and there was no 3700, only an OEM only 3700 Pro where the only differences are it's locked and doesn't come with a cooler.

The 3500 (OEM) and 3500X (China only) are the outliers, in their case the 3500X has double the L3 cache and they draw the same power. The OEM only "Pro" models have also been odd with no real pattern I think.


There won't be 5600 to the 5600X in the same way as there was a 3600 to the 3600X, the 5600 is already the non-X part in all but name. There's more chance of a 5600XT or 5600XX or whatever they decide to call it where they charge more to clock up the 5600 even faster by having it draw more power by default.

Eventually AMD will end up with enough 6 core chiplets that don't clock high enough for the 5600x sku, they might create a 5600 to sell them. Let alone the eventual 2 and 4 core models that will come out.

H3llR4iser

So, update - the 5950x arrived, delivered with Tiptrans no hassle whatsoever. Would definitely use again.

I've installed it, all good - actually, gotta say "more than good", I don't think I was this impressed with a pure CPU upgrade since the day I took out my 486DX/33 and dropped in a 486DX2/66.

The only definition I can come up with for this CPU is "beastly", and I'm not one for hyperbole; But it really is - just dropped in, reset every setting on the mobo to "auto" except for the RAM (XMP) and the thing barely breaks a sweat undertaking long, 100% load tasks hardly breaking past 65c (the 3900X would regularly shoot up to 75, with the same Kraken X62 aio on it). Noticeably quicker in these tasks and the CB scores back it up (I'm pretty much getting the same scores most reviewers have been posting, around 10k, give or take 200 points based on whatever crap I forget to close before the test ).

Still gotta figure out what the heck is going on with PBO "enabled" as its only effect is apparently to increase heat generation massively while not gaining any real world performance - considering I will eventually need to get a motherboard for the 3900X which now sits in a box, I might drop the 5950X in whatever I end up ordering to see if it makes any difference.

Aodhan5000

Might be worth trying PBO2. Is very effective on lower end stuff like the 5600X

H3llR4iser

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Might be worth trying PBO2. Is very effective on lower end stuff like the 5600X

Yeah I shall take a look into that. Bit of a hassle really, but I guess the joke is on the mainboard - you'd expect that setting PBO to "enabled" or "auto" would use decent values.

Tinkered a bit over lunch and just by changing the TDC and EDC in RyzenMaster, I got nearly 11k in CB20 at around 72c. Not bad.

Ordered a B550 board to "rehome" the 3900X (I'm on an early X570), but I'll test the 5950X on that one as well, I'm curious to see if there's any difference in practical terms between the chipsets (besides the obvious ones).

K.O.Kiki

https://twitter.com/GamersNexus/status/1385275530996600835

H3llR4iser

Mmm folks, any caveats I need to know about PBO and PBO2? I've rooted around the settings a bit, and I'm getting super-weird results.

Pretty much, setting the values oddly low has the best results; Also, setting "high" values in the BIOS and lower values through RyzenMaster seems to boost performance a lot.

E.g. through RyzenMaster, I found that PPT 250, TDC 135 and EDC 145 produce the best results - around 11k in CB20. However, if I set these values from the BIOS, I only get around 10k - and the CPU boosts much lower (around 4.1 Ghz vs over 4.3 all cores). All the info I can find around, just seems to suggest that settings high values in the BIOS will take care of things - either I'm missing something, or my BIOS has been smoking a whole forest

PS. Haven't touched the curve settings yet.

Simi

Using a 5600x I get the best results using the PBO 2 curve optimizer to undervolt. Set it to negative and start at 5 and go as far as you can.

Try using the all cores setting until you lose stability, then you can work on lowering individual cores until you find the best balance.

With the 5600X all cores are stable at negative 30 (no idea what these units actual equal in Voltage) for me, which I believe is the maximum value, but others have reported going lower.

From what I understand that the 5900X and 5950X require more fine tuning due to their dual ccx nature. So you might end up with core 1 -15, Core 2 -5, Core 3 -15, Core 4 -20 etc.

You can also increase the maximum frequency and use increased power limits in tandem with this. Personally I like to leave the stock limits in place to keep things cool.

This guide has the basics https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/khtx1o/guide_zen_3_overclocking_using_curve_optimizer/

Calibos

Simi wrote: »

Using a 5600x I get the best results using the PBO 2 curve optimizer to undervolt. Set it to negative and start at 5 and go as far as you can.

Try using the all cores setting until you lose stability, then you can work on lowering individual cores until you find the best balance.

With the 5600X all cores are stable at negative 30 (no idea what these units actual equal in Voltage) for me, which I believe is the maximum value, but others have reported going lower.

From what I understand that the 5900X and 5950X require more fine tuning due to their dual ccx nature. So you might end up with core 1 -15, Core 2 -5, Core 3 -15, Core 4 -20 etc.

You can also increase the maximum frequency and use increased power limits in tandem with this. Personally I like to leave the stock limits in place to keep things cool.

This guide has the basics https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/khtx1o/guide_zen_3_overclocking_using_curve_optimizer/

I forgot about the dual CCX thing when I saw the 5900x back available and thought to myself, ‘4 more cores for €100, sure why not!” Too late to change back, PC gets delivered tomorrow.

wotzgoingon

Dual CCD lads. CCX is in Zen 2 and older. Zen 3 moved to a full 8 core CCD rather than two 4 core CCX's to make up one CCD.

KD11

5900x is in stock at Currys/PCworld.ie for €620 if anyone is still looking. Cheapest I could find one.

Inviere

KD11 wrote: »

5900x is in stock at Currys/PCworld.ie for €620 if anyone is still looking. Cheapest I could find one.

How does the 5900X compare against the 5800X from a gami g perspective?

BloodBath

Inviere wrote: »

How does the 5900X compare against the 5800X from a gami g perspective?

Often outperforms it. Doesn't seem to have the downside the older chips had.

K.O.Kiki

Inviere wrote: »

How does the 5900X compare against the 5800X from a gami g perspective?

5900X generally seem to be better-binned than 5800X but for gaming, you might as well save yourself the money and cooling requirements by going for a 5600X, or going Intel with i5-10600K/i5-11600K, i7-10700K/i7-11700K or 10850K/10900K.