What was your AM4 experience?

[A Computer Guy]

With AM5 around the corner let's take a look back at AM4 and review what went right, what went wrong, and what could be improved going forward into AM5.

 

[GerKNG]

Overall disappointed with tons of issues that appeared with every generation over and over again.


Zen +:
2700X a bit degraded after two years at 1.42V sold to a friend (still in use)

Zen 2:
3600 on a b450 gaming plus max (CPU PCIe lanes for the NVMe Drive were bad because every SSD in that slot on all of my motherboards corrupted within a Minute, replacement worked on all boards)
3700X and 3800X no issues.

Zen 3:
first launch 5800X with a B550 Strix F non stop idle crashes.
second 5800X was sold.
first 5900X was unstable in P95 (Stock)
second 5900X works fine.
5950X on a B550 Strix F (another one) did not run anything but is completely fine on my first and second B550 Tomahawk.
5800X3D (current CPU) runs -25 all Core (Core Cycler heavy AVX2 stable) and replaced my 12700K for my gaming rig.

so far Intel was (at least until Alder Lake on Launch) a smoother ride.
i'll pretty sure switch to AM5 but i rather wait a year until they don't have to release 8 AGESA Updates per week.

 

[freeagent]

My experience has been smooth. Better for me than 939 was. As good as my previous intel setups. 5600X and 5900X on Strix F with B-Die was stable as a table. So good I wasted a bunch of cash on the Strix XE lol.

 

[tussinman]

Overall solid (especially compared to the prior 2 sockets) but in retrospect a little over-rated.

Zen 1 (1000 and 2000) had weak IPC and lots of memory issues

Zen 2 was alot better but still had some memory issues and it wasn't any faster in gaming then the 2 year old intels at the time

Zen 3 was amazing but over-shadowed by there not being a sub $300 option until 18 months into it's cycle

 

[neatfeatguy]

Got my 5900x, installed everything and was getting slapped around with WHEA errors. Thankfully, just a couple days after I had my new system and was getting these stupid errors (everything I tried didn't fix it, I was on the verge of RMAing if I couldn't get it solved), an updated AGESA was pushed out by ASUS. I was able to update the BIOS that had AGESA 1.2.0.0. All the WHEA errors stopped with the update.

I haven't had a single BSOD since.

The start was a bit bumpy, I never had any issue with AMD or Intel CPUs prior to Zen (I never had Zen 1 or Zen 2) so it was kind of frustrating when I started up my new build using Zen 3 and I was running into this issue of crashes what WHEA errors.

 

[tabascosauz]

Mixed bag:

• 3700X: pre-launch (June 2019) production, absolute disaster - day 1 continuous problems with AGESA until 1004, bad and deteriorating IF clocking only to 1800MHz and then later requiring Cstates off to avoid constant Bus/Interconnect, bad cores OC, then deteriorating cores requiring global Cstates off to avoid Cache Hierarchy
• 4650G: early mid-2020 production, terrible AGESA experience for about a year, degraded easily within a week of all-core, retired to an easy life after seeing IF and iGPU start to decay under OC
• 5900X: early 2021 production - basically no PBO headroom no core can clock past stock 4950MHz limit, 15°C+ core deltas, fTPM stutter and audio pop until AGESA fixed, but for the first time it works fine as daily, 1900 IF, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" AGESA
• 5600G: mid 2021 early production, bad SP sample, iGPU and IF clocking worse than 4650G
• 5700G: mid 2021 early production, AGESA and iGPU woes at AGESA 1201(?), 2300MHz iGPU and 2166MHz IF , unfortunately died after board died
• 5700G: 2022 production, no complaints at 2300/2166, best core deltas

Others around me bought late production Ryzen 3000 and 5000 and have had much fewer issues.

AM5 looking good, but I won't be their guinea pig for launch production chips anymore.

If AMD can fix just two things on AM5 - launch day silicon quality and QA, and AGESA the bug-manufacturing demon - many more happy campers will there be, and getting rid of the few remaining reasons to go intel.

In 9th and 10th gen Intel I was considering jumping ship, but after 12th gen I'm not so sure they have a clear upper hand in stability anymore (esp. with 14th gen coming up, hopefully not their Ryzen 3000 moment).

 

[Dristun]

2400G: Lots of black screens and crashing, did not enjoy.
3600X: Fine!

Back on Intel for now, will follow the developments with interest while the time for an all-new build comes in a year or two. Curious if Thunderbolt actually works ok on AM5 now, because on AM4 it was a mess.

 

[Dr. Dro]

My feelings overall correspond to "meh" but I'm voting "bad" because while things are more or less fine now, it was after having to replace my perfectly good ROG Crosshair X370 motherboard because AMD OPENLY LIED about it being impossible to update AGESA on 300 series chipsets to provide support for newer processors, going as far as having their PR guy run a false cover-up story with a made up lie that motherboard boot ROMs were not large enough. Just this week the Crosshair 6 series received AGESA 1.2.0.7 support with no features lost(!), just to prove that one. That's one breach of trust I personally won't forget.

Not only that, I've run into EVERY major problem with AGESA - from broken memory training to the notorious USB drop problem, the TPM stutter - I've been affected by them all. They did fix the most egregious issues such as the ones I've listed, yes, but the point is that they shouldn't be happening at all, especially not on a platform that has been released to the public since 2017. Zen 2 and Zen 3 are great processors. However, the AM4 platform was buggy for most of its service life, and that is something I cannot overlook given none of my previous Intel systems have ever had such problems.

 

[ir_cow]

Pretty much didn't care for it until Zen2 and X570 came out. Before that I like AMD because it forced Intel to start developing something new.

But the previous socket was awful. Anyone remember FX 8350? I bought one thinking it was a good compromise. Nope couldn't even keep up with Intel's i5 and ran at 90c. I loved my XP and X2, but after that AMD became a joke for a number of years. Even first gen Ryzen was easy to write off.

 

[Fouquin]

Got the privilege of working with Ryzen before it launched and saw a lot of the main issues worked out before it hit the street. My personal system was our pre-launch 1600X sample combined with the Biostar X370GTN and after AGESA 1.0.0.6 (the original from 2017) fixing DRAM compatibility on Zen 1, it was smooth for two full years. Upgraded to the 3600X on launch day, ran that with no issues until getting the current 5600X in February 2021. Still running with no issues. I swapped to an ASRock X470 when I got the 5600X since I didn't feel like doing the BIOS hacks to the Biostar to get Zen 3 support at the time, but since X370/B350 officially became supported I went back to the Biostar just to see how it is, and it works perfectly.

My biggest gripes were early on with the DDR4 issues but again those got worked out pretty early on. The review sample 1600X and our 1700X are still both running every day in two systems I built for family members, one serves in a recording studio and the other is a development machine.

But the previous socket was awful. Anyone remember FX 8350? I bought one thinking it was a good compromise. Nope couldn't even keep up with Intel's i5 and ran at 90c.

You've made that claim in other threads and everyone who's daily driven FX has rightfully been skeptical. 90C is not realistic for FX, especially not the 8350, when they have a tCase of under 70C. Even the stock box cooler keeps them under 90C. Sorry your experience sucked, but there's no need to exaggerate to make your point. Just say the chips are slow, we all agree there. I ran my FX 8350 at 5.2GHz on a Cooler Master Hyper 212, 1.55v, and it still wasn't over 85C. Barely as fast as the i7-3770 in games though even at that speed.

 

[Sithaer]

I only had a 1600X for almost 4 years, never upgraded further so my experience is a bit lacking but with that CPU I did not have many issues except my 3200 Mhz G.Skill Ripjaws refused to run stable at 3200 so I had to settle with 3000.
IPC was a bit lackluster/side grade coming from a Haswell i 3 but in overall it did its job, its just that I often play crappy optimized single thread/IPC heavy games so yeh thats why I'm on Alder lake now.

In overall I did not regret going for that 1600x, if I knew that in time we will have a non X 5600 and my specific B350 mobo would get support for it most likely I would still be on that platform but whats done is done I'm back to Intel for now.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I was a bit of a late comer, but I had only a single issue that was my fault with my Zen 2 system. Zen 3 system still in the works.

 

[Psychoholic]

Its not my main rig but my old 3900x/X570 never gave me any trouble and is now rock solid stable in my VMware server.

 

[ir_cow]

You've made that claim in other threads and everyone who's daily driven FX has rightfully been skeptical. 90C is not realistic for FX, especially not the 8350, when they have a tCase of under 70C. Even the stock box cooler keeps them under 90C. Sorry your experience sucked, but there's no need to exaggerate to make your point. Just say the chips are slow, we all agree there. I ran my FX 8350 at 5.2GHz on a Cooler Master Hyper 212, 1.55v, and it still wasn't over 85C. Barely as fast as the i7-3770 in games though even at that speed.

I have here? I could have, but its not a "claim". For me its a fact lol. Those CPUs couldn't keep up in gaming or rendering. All you need to do for a refresher is look at old reviews. I even RMA the first CPU, the replacement was about the same so I sold the system and went back to Intel.

 

[Fouquin]

I have here? I could have, but its not a "claim". For me its a fact lol. Those CPUs couldn't keep up in gaming or rendering. All you need to do for a refresher is look at old reviews. I even RMA the first CPU, the replacement was about the same so I sold the system and went back to Intel.

I don't need to read old reviews, I still own the physical hardware and can validate whenever I please. I can assure you that without creating a thermally restrictive environment or tampering with the cooler in some way, I cannot and have never been able to produce 90C operating temps on a stock FX 8350.

As for rendering I actually have an interesting stat there, here's Blender's BMW render time on 2.83.12 LTS using a few different chips:



Fair enough the 990X beats it, but the 990X was still close to it's original $1000 MSRP. The glory days of cheap X58 were not remotely on the horizon yet.

 

[Batou1986]

2600X on Asus X470 prime pro had zero issues besides my screwup on ram upgraded to 5900X had the fTPM stuttering on win11 which was fixed.
The only slight issue I had was sometimes on boot the 2600X would need to retrain my non QVL memory until I manually entered all the XMP timings my fault for not buying the right ram no issues with my new 32gb QVL kit.
Overall I would say it was a good platform if you where on 2xxx series chips and 4xx boards with QVL memory the 1xxx series and 3xx boards where flaky and picky about memory which seems to be common between new Intel and new AMD launches so I always wait for the refresh.

 

[ir_cow]

I don't need to read old reviews, I still own the physical hardware and can validate whenever I please. I can assure you that without creating a thermally restrictive environment or tampering with the cooler in some way, I cannot and have never been able to produce 90C operating temps on a stock FX 8350.

Hmm. Well I don't have the CPU anymore and from i'm reading the Tjmax was 61c. All I really remember was the thermal throttling. So it looks like 90c isn't possible and I'm wrong about that. I do remember the i7 4770K just wiping the floor with it in gaming and rendering though. It was cheaper too.

 

[thegnome]

Pretty smooth, my zen+ chip did fine, although it wasn't the fastest in certain games, and my current 5600x is doing great, besides my own problems (using bad/outdated bios and not testing undervolting right). Could only wish for some extra cores for background applications, so I don't get as much FPS loss as I would have now.

 

[P4-630]

Did not even try it...Past few years reading forums and AMD CPU's and memory issues what not... I went straight with intel again this year.. It just works!

 

[trparky]

This is with my father's system. His initial foray into using AMD was with a Gigabyte motherboard and a Ryzen 5 2600X. Getting memory to work properly at the rated speed was a pain in the ass, I ended up having to down-clock the memory to get system stability. I've dropped a Ryzen 5 5600X into the same motherboard and right from the very beginning RAM worked with no issues, no stability issues at all.

I want to build a new Ryzen system when Ryzen 7000 comes out, but I may wait a month until all the bugs are fixed. I hope AMD gets it right straight out of the gate.

 

[sLowEnd]

I've had no issues with my R5 3600 system. I'm still on Win10 though, so I can't really speak for any Win11 TPM stutter or anything of that sort.

 

[xtreemchaos]

2700x then 3900x all run fine both still in use havnt overclock 3900x as theres no point it dos a good job at stock.

 

[outpt]

I’ve had a 2600,3600,3700x and they were good. The 5800x was a dog. It wouldn’t oc at all and be stable. It wouldn’t run pbo and co at the same time without it being a blue screen fest. My 5950x is just the opposite. Now, rdna1 was just a soup sandwich.

 

[Deleted member 185158]

Meh, just a normal overhyped computing experience.

Yep. Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3.

Ryzen 5000 finally with some decent Epeen.

Already spending great deals of money just onn the 1st 2 Generations and to see my 8700K still clobber the 3rd generation, Me and the wallet just didn't have it in us to make more AMD purchases.

Ryzen Infinity Fabric beyond 4000mhz was overhyped. Or rather a straight lie.
If these chips didn't loose 20% by running 1:2 mclk : Fclk, maybe it would had been more enticing for me personally.

Ah well, off to 12th Gen Intel and DDR5.

Hopefully AMD can fully fill promises this time around. AM5 6000mhz ddr5 clock speeds, I have my doubts honestly.

 

[trparky]

Ah well, off to 12th Gen Intel and DDR5.

I just can't do it. I really want AMD to win and to completely smash Intel. Why? To finally make the Intel fanboys shut up and stop all their gloating.