AMD Ryzen CPU

[Denniss]

AMD is back on par with Intel although the platform still suffers from some initial release issues.
Motherboards and Bios still have multiple issues, especially regarding memory compatibility.
Win 10 sheduler is still an issue as it tends to shuffle task between the core complexes instead of trying to keep them in one (probably suffering from a Bulldozer patch) and also from Core parking (not used by or disabled for Intel CPUs) in balanced power energy mode setting in Windoze. Win 7 sheduler supports Core parkign too but acts differently. I have not seen any cross-OS test which includes Win 8.1

Judging from the 1-2 Beta or retail Bios released per week per motherboard one might guess the motherboard manufacturers did not invest a lot into stability/compatibility testing prior to launch. Really surprising as the AM4 platform is available since ~6 months and test CPUs (even in the now-released form) were available for multiple months.

[Pudgie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6laL-_hiAK0

This is the Youtube video of Pc Per's article which explains this very well. It is somewhat geeky though...........

https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBORHnYLLgyY
https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DJbryPYcnscA

Here are 2 more Youtube videos of a user using Process Lasso to demonstrate the latency issue on AMD Ryzen 7 8-core CPU's when threads sharing CPU cores have to cross the CCX's across the Infinity Fabric interconnect vs threads sharing CPU cores within a single CCX alone and the performance impact associated. He is using CPU core affinity to accomplish this, thus the importance of using CPU core affinity (and CPU core priority) on multi-core CPU's w\ >4 physical CPU cores (yes, Intel X99 6-core & up CPU's will also benefit from this as well) either on a single die or on separate dies to optimally target an app (or a game) threads to the optimal number of CPU cores needed to gain maximum CPU core processing time for the app AND to reduce induced latency from context switching between CPU cores by keeping the cores being used close together as in a "separate" node cluster (similar to AMD's CCX cluster design) and away from CPU core0 (Windows will try to load this CPU core 1st by design w\ threads from ALL software--including the OS itself, drivers, etc which will create excessive CPU core latency if Windows is switching threads to CPU cores farther down the binary line from CPU core0 than is necessary--the greater the number of CPU cores present for Windows to pick from the larger the issue will get).....but a user\developer WILL need to understand and know the binary CPU core numbering system that Windows uses to identify\assign threads to the particular CPU core(s), whether w\ SMT enabled OR disabled, to properly set CPU affinity manually so all works in smooth and complete harmony and maintain good CPU power\load balancing to properly maintain heat dissipation across the CPU cores......... I have witnessed this happening w\ my Intel I7 5820K 6-core quite frequently and am pretty sure this will be worse on a 8-core CPU and even worse on a 10-core CPU....and SMT isn't gonna resolve this at all for lightly to medium threaded apps\games running on these type CPU's. This is why the OS has CPU core parking code written into it....this can solve the issue w\ the logical CPU cores but NOT the physical ones....only CPU priority\affinity can solve this across the board regardless of SMT usage or not for all apps\games. When software is heavily threaded all this will go away as the OS will be actively using all CPU cores in the very manner in which the CPU core architecture was specifically designed for....heavily multithreaded usage.....which most apps\games ain't. The hidden beauty in using 1 of these type CPU's is the actual CPU power savings that can be gained by not needing high CPU core clock speed to effectively get as high\higher CPU data bandwidth output as long as the rest of the CPU (L2-L3 cache\branch output)\mobo subsystem is properly designed and configured. I have witnessed this w\ my Haswell 6-core CPU running on this Intel X99 platform as well and would expect to see similar results on even larger multi-core CPU's whether AMD Ryzen or Intel when used in the same manner.

The beauty of all this is that you don't need a 3rd party software (like Prio or Process Lasso) to apply CPU priority\affinity as this can be done on a per-application basis thru a Windows application shortcut created thru Windows CMD editor.......Windows has the capability already written into it to do this and has had this capability since Win Vista days. What Windows doesn't have written into it (yet) is the LOGIC to properly determine the proper usage of either CPU priority\affinity to optimize a running app\game, so currently this has to be done either 1.) by the end user by typing the proper syntax into the shortcut's location line so when the app\game is started thru the shortcut the OS is instructed to set the desired CPU priority\affinity selected or 2.) by the software developer who can insert code into the client software to instruct the OS to set this up for their client software as warranted\needed upon client execution. If MS has their way, this will stay this way.....and most game developers will prefer that the end user do this so that they don't have to spend (to a software developer, read waste here) time trying to do this to accomodate their client's performance across a myriad of CPU\mobo configurations as they will leave this to the OS to do....which for software developers makes perfect sense, I might add. I am currently using CPU core priority\affinity w\ AHIII right now and have been for quite some time w\ my Intel I7 5820K 6-core CPU w\ HT (SMT) disabled and the results speak for themselves vs allowing Windows to "optimize" this itself. The Game Mode model MS is implementing w\ Win 10 Creators Update is MS attempting to implement OS logic into optimizing game threads thru the OS...which includes Directx.

As for CPU core parking control, there is no need for any 3rd party software to do this as well as this is already written into the Windows OS as well since Windows Vista. It is hidden in the Windows registry and only needs to be activated for this setting to show up in ALL Windows power plans.....not just the High Performance plan. I also have this activated in my copy of Windows 7 HP SP1 and can access it within the Balanced power plan right now.....but since I have HT disabled there isn't any use for it as I'm not using any logical CPU cores, only all physical CPU cores running 1 thread per instruction cycle (Windows cannot physically "park" a physical CPU core, only allow the CPU core not needed to go into a low power state (or sleep mode if you prefer)....why you will see the unused CPU core(s) around 1%-2% usage....this isn't a good thing to have happening when a game is running on 1 of these behemoth CPU's and Windows OS suddenly tried to assign a running game thread on a short time slice schedule to 1 of these CPU cores in this low power state (Windows OS WILL use every physical CPU core available to it at some point during operation--regardless of whether it is really needed or not)....it WILL throw off a GPU under a game load by interrupting the timely streaming of data to the GPU causing a stutter at minimum--up to a potential TDR-induced BSOD at worse). CPU affinity\priority used properly can help to alleviate this issue. You also can fix this thru the Balanced power plan thru the advanced settings, Processor Power Management, min CPU power % setting by resetting this off the default 5% min setting to at least 75% (this stops Windows from cutting the CPU core power too low thus stops the lowering of the operating CPU core FREQUENCY to levels that will cause the CPU core to stumble when a running thread on a short time slice schedule is assigned to it.......all the High Performance Power plan is doing is attempting to set this min CPU power % setting to 100% by default so the CPU doesn't receive ANY CPU power management control from the OS and runs at 100% power thus frequency all the time). It is better to use the Balanced Power plan then make the min CPU power% setting change to achieve the desired results when using a Basic up to the Home Premium versions of Windows OS as the High Performance Power plan doesn't work in these versions since MS Vista (most likely disabled on purpose IMHO)....another reason to use the Pro versions & up of Windows OS. I have tested this to be true w\ my copy of MS Win 7 SP1 OEM..........

But all this posting is subjective to most folks who are still using mainstream computer platforms as most of this won't have a noticeable impact on those packages outside of applying CPU priority alone for games as the CPU core counts (=<4 physical CPU cores) are within the optimized realm of most Windows OS's as well as most software developer's client software is written to run native within Windows meaning they allow the OS to optimize the client running to a large degree and will only get specific if the OS can't give the desired performance for their client software on it's own.

The onset of the AMD Ryzen 7 CPU's has effectively laid open the curtains on OS\software issues IMHO that were effectively masked by MS AND Intel concerning multi-core CPU usage using mainstream thread usage loads in which they took advantage of in the marketing sector for profit....until now.

AMD just blew a huge hole in this scheme w\ the advent of Zen.......now let's see if AMD can take advantage of it.

 

[Vinkman]

Interesting Thread. I have found the same issue with windows scheduler and AH on multi-core machines. I posted a couple of years ago about picking up 10-12 fr/sec by setting affinity for AH to 2 cores and setting the priority to High ilo Normal.

So when I upgraded this time around I looked to get fewest but fastest cores, and I did go with the Ryzen for that reason.

Gaming is a broad term. Cores and GPUs that brag about capability often seem to based it on their multithreading capability, which may be great for some games, but don't help with AH that much. I think Skuzzy said many moons ago that AH runs best on two really fast cores, and 1 really fast GPU with over 2G of vRAM.  This time around I tried to follow this advice. I'll see if it works out, when I get this thing up and running. Maybe tomorrow.

Vinkman

[Bruv119]

so to buy or not to buy this is the question! 

[Vinkman]

so to buy or not to buy this is the question!

I'll post back with some results. But my vid card is Radeon 5970. Again a dual GPU multi threading card that never helped my AH frame rate over my Nvidia single GPU card.  But being CPU limited in the past, I could never tell if the card could perform well when running AH. Now I'll find out if this card is the bottleneck, despite its claimed superpowers.

[Lusche]

so to buy or not to buy this is the question!

*looks into wallet* ...  no, no question at all... 

[Vinkman]

BTW, lots of good info Pudgie. 

[Pudgie]

I remember back in the day (circa 1992) when Intel was in the process of developing\implementing Hyperthreading that another company that built the Solaris OS back at the same time (Sun Microsystems) was contending that Intel was hyping the validaty of HT to address the real issue of maximum CPU performance across a single CPU core over the application of multiple physical CPU cores being used on a single die to achieve maximum CPU performance w\ multithreaded apps.

Intel won this argument at that time due to noone being able to build a multi-core CPU efficient & cost effective enough for mainstream use (only w\ server usage) to prove this out in Sun's favor, but the potential of their argument was a very sound one as this is the direction that the industry is going now.........and it appears to be across the board...........

A little history to go w\ this thread on the subject. This article was written 10 yrs later in 2002...................

https://web.archive.org/web/20090327002504/http://www.sun.com/software/whitepapers/solaris9/multithread.pdf

 

[Pudgie]

Interesting Thread. I have found the same issue with windows scheduler and AH on multi-core machines. I posted a couple of years ago about picking up 10-12 fr/sec by setting affinity for AH to 2 cores and setting the priority to High ilo Normal.

So when I upgraded this time around I looked to get fewest but fastest cores, and I did go with the Ryzen for that reason.

Gaming is a broad term. Cores and GPUs that brag about capability often seem to based it on their multithreading capability, which may be great for some games, but don't help with AH that much. I think Skuzzy said many moons ago that AH runs best on two really fast cores, and 1 really fast GPU with over 2G of vRAM.  This time around I tried to follow this advice. I'll see if it works out, when I get this thing up and running. Maybe tomorrow.

Vinkman

Hi Vinkman,

Don't worry I'll be following you up w\ a potential AMD Ryzen 7 CPU\Gigabyte GA350B Gaming 3 microATX build (unless someone builds a X370 microATX mobo) sometime in the near future (thinking around the end of summer as I'm in the middle of a potential transfer in the short term from working for a living to being retired....depending on whether the company that I work for actually sells the business unit that I am currently assigned....should find out within a month or so. I've had my portfolio ran by 2 financial planners who've said that I have enough to retire on and maintain my current standard of living w\ some extra to boot w\o having to need SS at this time). Should be fairly easy as all I'll need is the CPU\mobo combo & the AM4 mounting bracket for my Corsair H80i V2 AIO....got all the rest on hand already & Gigabyte has the tool available to facilitate the install of Win 7 64-bit OS on an AMD Ryzen CPU Gigabyte mobo............but I also own a legal retail copy of Win 10 Home as well.

Appreciate you posting on your progress!

 

Now AHIII does show to use more than 2 CPU cores, depending on how you're using them, but after 4 cores w\o HT enabled I've found very diminishing returns....not so much due to AHIII itself...but mostly due to Windows OS's inability to properly maintain CPU core optimization on it's own across more than 4 CPU cores w\ AHIII running (tends to not maintain a tight CPU core group creating some unwanted CPU core latency when allowed to switch across all 6 of my CPU's cores which shows up in the GPU frametime graphs) but this is also an area where Hitech can, if he desires, to revisit the game client to see if he can take even better advantage of this hardware from their side to bring even more features to light that I'm sure they have in the que.

To be fair, the CPU core performance isn't terrible at all w\ Windows handling all 6 CPU cores w\o CPU priority\affinity applied and most folks wouldn't even notice this as a lot of what will be seen will be chalked up to a graphics card's GPU being less than. I do notice this since I've found the sweet spot by using CPU proirity\affinity and have witnessed the difference so it's VERY noticeable to me....and it's even worse to me when I had HT enabled on top of it....which has shown itself to be a red herring w\ these multi-core CPU's when the thread loads are light\medium as Windows kept the 6 logical CPU cores constantly parked regardless of usage.....which essentially Windows OS "disabled HT\SMT itself" & was only using the 6 physical CPU cores on this Intel I7 5820K CPU anyway, but if you listen to all the hype on how good HT will help w\ gaming you do need to know where this line is actually drawn as to where HT\SMT will help vs where it doesn't.

Unless we're careful I see AMD's Ryzen going down this same hype road unless it's implementation of SMT is put in proper perspective concerning gaming usage with this CPU and MS gets off it and gives Ryzen the very same treatment w\ it's version of SMT that they did for Intel's HT to achieve a level playing field as far as the Windows OS is concerned (the latency issue(s) across the Infinity Fabric interconnect concerning the AMD CCX module structure)........

 

[Vinkman]

So I got my rig working on Saturday and used it for two days.

Old system
 Core Duo Quad Q6600
 Dell BTX Motherboard
 8M RAM DDR3
 Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX [upgraded to a Radeon 5970 Graphics card with 2G vRAM]
 Window 7 'Home' 64 Bit

My New system has:
 Ryzen 7 1800x,
 ASUS AM4 socket motherboard
 32G of DDR4 2400 RAM
 Radeon 5970 Graphics card with 2G vRAM carry over from my old system]
 Windows 7 'Pro' 64 bit

The improvement in game play and graphics is significant over my old system, even though the video card is the same card in both builds

AH3 on my old rig to achieve frame rates in the 40s...
Disable reflections, bump mapping, shadows, clutter, clutter in flight
Video resolution at 2048
2x anti aliasing
Object detail slider 50%
Ground detail Range 25%
Tree detail slider 10%
Terrain detail Slider 50%
Environment map = None

AH3 on my New rig to achieve frame rates of 60 FR/s...
Disable shadows
Video resolution at 4096
12x anti aliasing
Object detail slider Max%
Ground detail Range Max%
Tree detail slider 20%
Terrain detail Slider Max%
Environment map = None

Game looks beautiful with no issues. I still can't run shadows with the terrain detail and ground range at Max...because that's an awful lot of shadows to calculate. And I can't increase the side per frame on the Environment Map with the other settings at Max.

The only issues appeared when the furball moved over a airbase town and the number of air-cons within 8K got near 30. Frame rate dropped into the 30s but there was stuttering and choppiness that seemed worse than the indicated number. Like when the frame freezes because something is caching. Video Ram was showing 1000M used out of 2000M available. This might be corrected by backing off the sliders a bit. I will look more into what ends up being and optimum slider setting.

I have not plaid with any chip settings/overclocking etc. This is out of the box settings.

My shooting and flying have not improved.   

Vinkman

[Pudgie]

Here is a video of me flying around in AHIII Patch 27 Dx11 on my box w\ the setup as follows:

Intel I7 5820K 6-core CPU setup:
HT disabled (6C\6T config), CIEST enabled (to enable Windows Power Management thru the Balanced Power plan in Win 7 HP SP1), all else set in Auto.
AMD R9 FuryX graphics card:
Using Radeon WattMan to control power to graphics card except for the HBM mem (for some reason WattMan can see this mem but can't hook into it to control mem clocks....all set up in AMD default power control....using MSI Afterburner 4.3.0 to control HBM clocks @ 650 MHz max allowable thru vBIOS)
Crimson 17.2.1 WHQL drivers (AMD FreeSynch is enabled in driver & in Asus MG279Q Gaming monitor w\ res @ 2560 x 1440 native @ 90 Hz Vsynch)
AMD ReLive recording in 1080p @ 60 FPS

Win 7 HP SP1 OS:
AHIII has Win 7 CMD-created shortcut to set CPU core priority @ High & CPU core affinity to CPU core1, core2, core3 & core4 when AHIII is executed & running (all else uses CPU core0, core5 when AHIII is running).
Win 7 Balanced Power plan:
All settings including Advanced settings are set to provide max performance except the following:
Processor Power Management, Min Processor State set @ 80% (this setting tells CEIST to set the CPU min power level which also sets the min CPU frequency or clock speed to go to when a min CPU load is detected thru CEIST....this is on purpose for this video).

Also have 16 other component monitoring software running in the background during this video (last check approx 78-80 processes outputting 1135 threads)..............

In this video I have the Gigabyte 3D OSD overlay running in real time displaying the CPU\GPU vitals.
Please note the CPU usage loads & the CPU clock speeds vs the GPU clock speeds, mem clock speeds vs FPS

Then read back over some of my prior postings to refresh on what was posted.......................

Enjoy!



 

[Pudgie]

So I got my rig working on Saturday and used it for two days.

Old system
 Core Duo Quad Q6600
 Dell BTX Motherboard
 8M RAM DDR3
 Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX [upgraded to a Radeon 5970 Graphics card with 2G vRAM]
 Window 7 'Home' 64 Bit

My New system has:
 Ryzen 7 1800x,
 ASUS AM4 socket motherboard
 32G of DDR4 2400 RAM
 Radeon 5970 Graphics card with 2G vRAM carry over from my old system]
 Windows 7 'Pro' 64 bit

The improvement in game play and graphics is significant over my old system, even though the video card is the same card in both builds

AH3 on my old rig to achieve frame rates in the 40s...
Disable reflections, bump mapping, shadows, clutter, clutter in flight
Video resolution at 2048
2x anti aliasing
Object detail slider 50%
Ground detail Range 25%
Tree detail slider 10%
Terrain detail Slider 50%
Environment map = None

AH3 on my New rig to achieve frame rates of 60 FR/s...
Disable shadows
Video resolution at 4096
12x anti aliasing
Object detail slider Max%
Ground detail Range Max%
Tree detail slider 20%
Terrain detail Slider Max%
Environment map = None

Game looks beautiful with no issues. I still can't run shadows with the terrain detail and ground range at Max...because that's an awful lot of shadows to calculate. And I can't increase the side per frame on the Environment Map with the other settings at Max.

The only issues appeared when the furball moved over a airbase town and the number of air-cons within 8K got near 30. Frame rate dropped into the 30s but there was stuttering and choppiness that seemed worse than the indicated number. Like when the frame freezes because something is caching. Video Ram was showing 1000M used out of 2000M available. This might be corrected by backing off the sliders a bit. I will look more into what ends up being and optimum slider setting.

I have not plaid with any chip settings/overclocking etc. This is out of the box settings.

My shooting and flying have not improved.   

Vinkman

Not bad at all!

Glad you got her all sorted out!

Keep us posted!

 

[Pudgie]

Oh, please check out this thread where I posted my 1st video of same box running w\ Gigabyte 3D OSD overlay running for comparison to the 1 that I posted here earlier...................

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,385979.0.html

Enjoy!

 

[PR3D4TOR]

This is the perfect CPU for me. I do a lot of video editing and gfx work, and instead of spending $2000 on an i7 6950X i get a whole computer for that! Great gaming rig too.



https://youtu.be/ed4GZ61B0yg

[oboe]

Really need me a drooling emoticon....