What was your AM4 experience?

[AnotherReader]

I jumped early on the AM4 platform, and luckily, I didn't have any problems for nearly three years. After that, my experience was mixed:

1. 1700X + AsRock X370 Taichi with 32 GB of ECC DDR4 2400 and a 290X from May 2017 to December 2019. No problems at all
2. upgraded to a Vega 64 in 2018 and a 3600X in December 2019
3. a couple of months into 2020, the problems started: my computer would be fine if kept busy, but being idle for anything over 3 minutes would result in a BSOD with WHEAs in the Event Viewer. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on a spare SSD and the computer was stable in it so I thought it was Vega driver issues
4. upgraded to 32 GB of ECC DDR4 3200 in December 2020; computer refused to boot with it and didn't even boot with the old RAM
5. bought an X570 board in December 2020 to test components. Vega 64 had moved to an old Phenom II build while I waited for time to rebuild my AM4 computer and was rock stable in it. It turned out that all of my problems were due to that Taichi
6. Since late 2020, the computer has been very stable and I haven't had any of the issues that Reddit and the forums are full of
7. Bought a 5700X recently, but haven't installed it as I'm trying to sell my 3600X

All in all, if I had taken the time to test components more fully, my experience would have been better, but I'll still upgrade to AM5 once ECC DDR5 6400 is supported. Golden Cove is a superior architecture, but the longevity of AM4, and hopefully, AM5, would make me stay with AMD.

 

[mechtech]

Nothing really
Still running my 1700 and AX370. Couldn't really OC the memory, but never put much effort into it or OC in general, maybe that's why I didn't really have any issues? Had a few glitches over the years, but who knows if it was win10 and all those 6 month updates getting pushed, or drivers, or hardware or other??
Kids pc is a 3400G on a B550 pro CSM mobo, no issues either...........that I'm aware of.

 

[ZoneDymo]

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!

I have intel and mine most def doesnt just work...

On topic, both my sisters have AMD Ryzen, 1700 and 3600 and both have been problem free.

 

[SpittinFax]

I upgraded some office machines to Ryzen 3100's a few years ago and they've been 100% trouble-free. The Haswell/Skylake Core i3's they replaced had constant issues.

Zen 3 has been great, I jumped straight onto a launch-day 5600X. No crashes or instability, no motherboard or RAM issues at all. And thankfully it doesn't suffer from the "saw-tooth" temperature spikes that Zen 2 did so there's no need to tweak fan delays to stop them ramping up-and-down constantly. Zen 3 is definitely more "Intel-like" than Zen 2 in its thermal behavior.

 

[Palladium]

Most fuss-free platform I ever used, at least on Win 10 on 3600/5600 + cheapo B450/550.

 

[tussinman]

I'm really debating that too. Should I just dive right on in with AM5 or go with an Intel Core i7-12700K?

Intel Core i7-12700K, ASUS Z690-A ROG Strix Gaming WiFi DDR4, CPU / Motherboard Combo - Micro Center

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Very tempting.

12700k is such a fast processor that I doubt 13700 or 7700X will be signficantly faster in most real world usages. AM5 would have some risk but higher upside though

I'm thinking the same, wanting to get on the trailing edge instead of the leading edge of releases, for a change. Tired of paying more for less. 11th gen let me down last time, though, from the rumors I'm not blown away by 13th gen. If not, AM5 is chock full of life - waiting for 8000 is easy.

I should revise my statement - 6 months into production seems to be the golden ticket for AMD. Yields and AGESA have matured to a point where CPU is exactly as advertised, and might even get in on some price drops too.


But there's no reason why we should consider that "acceptable". 6 months is halfway to the next release...

Yeah if I did end up with AM5 I would wait 3-4 weeks after launch for the B series boards to come out. That would give enough time to see how people are reacting to it and by then the first updated bios should be out. If I did end up that route I would for sure take the safe approach (no overclocking of the CPU and buying the lowest risk ram speed, rumors are 5200 and 5600 being the low risk speeds for those that want the best chance of out of the box compatability)

 

[trparky]

12700k is such a fast processor that I doubt 13700 or 7700X will be signficantly faster in most real world usages.

The great part about going that route is that I could re-use my existing DDR4 memory.

Then again, I've been wanting to build an AMD-based system for a while simply because I want to support the underdog. The only problem is that I'd have to buy all new memory so that's an added cost. OK, I could go for AM4 but that's at the end of the line so that's no good. Yeah, it's very tempting to just go ahead and go with the i7-12700K and be done with it.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The great part about going that route is that I could re-use my existing DDR4 memory.

Then again, I've been wanting to build an AMD-based system for a while simply because I want to support the underdog. The only problem is that I'd have to buy all new memory so that's an added cost. OK, I could go for AM4 but that's at the end of the line so that's no good. Yeah, it's very tempting to just go ahead and go with the i7-12700K and be done with it.

Not entirely sure AMD, as far as CPU division goes, qualifies as "underdog" anymore, with the prices being what they are, the performance being what it is and the market share they've clawed over the past few years

What I would personally do is build the LGA1700 platform and get a cheap Celeron or Pentium CPU, rock that for a little while and go straight for a i9-13900K.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Not entirely sure AMD, as far as CPU division goes, qualifies as "underdog" anymore, with the prices being what they are, the performance being what it is and the market share they've clawed over the past few years

What I would personally do is build the LGA1700 platform and get a cheap Celeron or Pentium CPU, rock that for a little while and go straight for a i9-13900K.

Considering their size and much smaller R&D budget vs Intel/Nvidia I would still consider them the underdog. I think people should mostly ignore pricing from the last 2 years for all companies silicon shortages mostly dictated pricing. It will be interesting how both companies behave going forward.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Not entirely sure AMD, as far as CPU division goes, qualifies as "underdog" anymore, with the prices being what they are, the performance being what it is and the market share they've clawed over the past few years

They have clawed back to a full 22% market share, excluding certain markets they do not serve....

I reckon they are definitely the underdog still.

 

[tussinman]

Not entirely sure AMD, as far as CPU division goes, qualifies as "underdog" anymore, with the prices being what they are, the performance being what it is and the market share they've clawed over the past few years

Console deal was big as well from a CPU standpoint. Over 200 million consoles sold in the last 9 years that use AMD processors

 

[Dr. Dro]

They have clawed back to a full 22% market share, excluding certain markets they do not serve....

I reckon they are definitely the underdog still.

That is a lot accounting for the Intel-dominated laptop market, but if you look at the PC DIY segment, it's gotta be more than that. Ryzen has consistently been the top seller at least since the Ryzen 5 1600 "AF" (Zen+ refresh) came out. Anyhow, I would honestly just consider my own needs before allegiance to any brand

 

[AusWolf]

I only got into AM4 with Zen 2 and the B550 platform. There were a few hiccups, like the USB dropout issue, that were fixed in the early BIOSes. Other issues had already been ironed out, so I wouldn't know what the initial problems were with older AM4 systems.

Now I'm on Intel with a B560, Rocket Lake system. Again, no issues. I've never seen a computer platform that's unusably bad, so I think the question "how is AM4" or "how is this or that platform" can only be answered with "fine".

 

[The King]

My first Ryzen experience was with a 1700X and Asus Crosshair VI Hero.
Was good until the Asus board threw a Code 0 and never worked again.
Max OC I got stable was 3.9GHz all core.

I decided to get a "cheap" replacement mobo which is my current MSi B450M Mortar Max, this is when it became excellent!
Managed to get 4.1Ghz stable in most bechmarks along with RAM @ 3600 CL14 on first Gen Ryzen with no problems and it got me a few HWBOT records which I still have.

Since then I bought another MSi B450M Mortar Max and 2 ZEN 3 CPUs 5600 and 5600X both systems are rock solid running +3800MT daily.

My infamous 1700X is resting in the Asus Crosshair Hero. Probably will get it framed and turn on the RGB light. lol

Spoiler: 1700X 1966 FCLK

 

[Athlonite]

Mostly good apart from mobo issues that weren't solved with BIOS/Agesa updates the Asus TUF x470 Gaming was a piece of shite with both the Ryzen 2700(nonX) and the 3700X not upclocking like they were supposed to but instead sitting on base clocks non stop. Sold to a friend who uses it with Linux Mint and seems to work perfectly for him
updated mobo to Asus ROG Strix x570F - Gaming + Ryzen 3700X ran well but then got a Ryzen 5800X on a good deal but I can't get the 5800X to run 4000MT/s (2000MHz) without suffering WHEA errors so it runs 3933MT/s (1966MHz) instead

 

[Ferather]

Went from AM3 FX (990fx) to AM4 R5 (x570), while the 7nm technology and wattage has gone down from FX, the cores are not much different in performance.
Going from 8 true cores, to 6 with clustered multi threading, I gain roughly 55% performance, where 12 is 50% greater than 8.

I'm running (in userbench, CPU and GPU hit 95th percentile):

Mobo: Asus Prime x570 Pro, bios 4403.
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 @ 4085mhz.
RAM: 32GB DDR 3600.
GPU: RX 6600 8GB.

According to the bios update I can select up to 6000mhz RAM, and it should support Zen3 (see here)

 

[AusWolf]

I forgot to add that my only bad experience of the AM4 platform was not directly related to the platform itself. I've found chiplet-based CPUs difficult to cool in small form factor systems. Or maybe it was the IHS design, which hopefully will improve with AM5.

 

[Tomgang]

I have been fairly happy with AM4. I am not dissapointed. Only a few bumps over the past year i´ve been on AM4. But nothing major. Maybe because i was far from a early adopter. I first came om AM4 with Zen 3 halp a year after zen 3 lauched or June 2021. I will never be an early adopter, cause that´s where you will get the most and worst trouble. Like the USB and memory problems on the first gen of Zen chips like 1700X. Being an early adopter, also means you must be prepared for trouble and problems. That goes for Intels as well or for that matter any new hardware as well. Also not all problems on AM4, has to do with the cpu or chipset. It can just as well be the motherboard it self, that is the culprit. Specially on cheaper boards, where vendors had bad VRM´s or to bad cooling so VRM got to hot and CPU was forced to throttle
by the motherboard = giving you worse performance and a shorter lived motherboard.

Now with a 5600X in a B550 board and a 5950X in a X570 board bofh from Asus (i all ways chose Asus as my motherboard choise. I have just got only good things with asus). I think i can say i have teste AM4 properly in my daily use. I have got a few spontan BSOD early on and updated bios. That fixed that problem. Else i really have not had nay major problems. I´m satisfied. Also what i like about Zen 3, is the efficientcy and that 5600X and 5950X are not that hard to cool. Even on aircooling i got far better overclock results from my 5950X, that i exspected. Also 5600X can oc a little bit despite i´m using a low profile air cooler on it. But there are off cause not much headroom throw. My point is that Zen 3 is not a power hog and easy to cool, compared to intels alder lake.

So i voted: Good, a few bumps on the way. But that really is also all i have had. Would i consider AMD again, yeah i would. But not as a early adopter. I will wait a for some time or even wait a gen before jumping on AM5 as exsample. There are a good chance of early problems. Specially with AM5 also moves to DDR5 and PCIe 5.

 

[SonicZap]

A few bumps, but still overall satisfied. Voted for the second option.

- I had RAM compatibility issues when I hopped into AM4 in late 2017 with a Ryzen 5 1600X. System was not fully stable with RAM at 3200 MHz, had to lower the clocks to 2933 MHz.
- Motherboard BIOS updates helped with the memory compatibility.
- My laptop with a Zen+ APU (Ryzen 7 3750H) experienced some BSODs back in 2019, but BIOS updates have made it stable since then.
- Upgraded my desktop a 5700X, which brought a very nice performance improvement without a motherboard upgrade. It worked well for 2 months, but the system has been experiencing trouble since then (I created a thread about this). Probably not AM4's fault though.

 

[ymdhis]

3600 + asrock b550m.

Had some hiccups that later BIOS revisions fixed (the USB3 glitch). The only real problem with this was heat output and idle wattage which was impossible to tweak. SoC voltage was around 11W idle, total package power was reported at ~25W or so with zero load!

Replaced it with a 5600G. After the initial setup required (BIOS refresh, redoing all settings, needed to update all drivers), it performed pretty much all the above problems. SoC now uses minimal power, heat output is far lower and cooling is more efficient. I attribute all these changes to the fact that it uses a single monolithic die instead of the chiplet design. The main reason for switching wasn't all the above but the fact that I stopped using discrete GPUs, but even with a discrete GPU in, the power usages is measurably lower on the 5600G.

I have experienced one issue tonight after a windows update. The video driver (amdwddmg) crashed and the screen hanged up then went black. Sometimes it recovered but usually not and required a hard reboot. Oddly it worked before tonight, doing a windows update seemed to have triggered it. Most reports online attribute this to RAM issues; removing XMP did not fix it, but tweaking the SoC voltage did. I was using -0.100V negative offset which I put back to Auto, and so far I did not get any hangs. SoC power usage went up from 1-2W to 3-4W, but I can live with that.

Entire machine uses ~44W idle right now, that's with a dual 10G NIC and around 6 fans total - the NIC alone uses some 15W according to the specs (didn't try measuring it with it removed). So I'm pretty satisfied with this, and in the process of converting my file server to a similar config.

 

[AusWolf]

3600 + asrock b550m.

Had some hiccups that later BIOS revisions fixed (the USB3 glitch). The only real problem with this was heat output and idle wattage which was impossible to tweak. SoC voltage was around 11W idle, total package power was reported at ~25W or so with zero load!

Replaced it with a 5600G. After the initial setup required (BIOS refresh, redoing all settings, needed to update all drivers), it performed pretty much all the above problems. SoC now uses minimal power, heat output is far lower and cooling is more efficient. I attribute all these changes to the fact that it uses a single monolithic die instead of the chiplet design. The main reason for switching wasn't all the above but the fact that I stopped using discrete GPUs, but even with a discrete GPU in, the power usages is measurably lower on the 5600G.

I have experienced one issue tonight after a windows update. The video driver (amdwddmg) crashed and the screen hanged up then went black. Sometimes it recovered but usually not and required a hard reboot. Oddly it worked before tonight, doing a windows update seemed to have triggered it. Most reports online attribute this to RAM issues; removing XMP did not fix it, but tweaking the SoC voltage did. I was using -0.100V negative offset which I put back to Auto, and so far I did not get any hangs. SoC power usage went up from 1-2W to 3-4W, but I can live with that.

Entire machine uses ~44W idle right now, that's with a dual 10G NIC and around 6 fans total - the NIC alone uses some 15W according to the specs (didn't try measuring it with it removed). So I'm pretty satisfied with this, and in the process of converting my file server to a similar config.

It's good to see that I'm not the crazy one here for thinking that the chiplet design is bad for heat output. I've had similar experiences as you with a 3600 that I gave to a friend after a week of struggle trying to keep it cool in a SFF system. It's so weird that I can push nearly double the wattage through the i7 11700 that I could through the 3600 with the same cooling solution. Idle power consumption is a lot better, too.

 

[bug]

I had to vote "terrible". I got my CPU, mobo, wouldn't start. Debug leds on the mobo wouldn't even light up. Looked the problem up, seemed like the mobo was using an old BIOS, without Zen3 support. Got a cheap Athlon, still no boot. Debug leds light up, give me a code that wasn't in the manual. Sent mobo in for service, got confirmation it was faulty and that it will be replaced. Got sent back the same mobo, same problems.
At about $500 in, I decided to cut my loses and went back to Intel.
I realize this is (probably extremely) rare, but it is my experience

 

[Athlonite]

I had to vote "terrible". I got my CPU, mobo, wouldn't start. Debug leds on the mobo wouldn't even light up. Looked the problem up, seemed like the mobo was using an old BIOS, without Zen3 support. Got a cheap Athlon, still no boot. Debug leds light up, give me a code that wasn't in the manual. Sent mobo in for service, got confirmation it was faulty and that it will be replaced. Got sent back the same mobo, same problems.
At about $500 in, I decided to cut my loses and went back to Intel.
I realize this is (probably extremely) rare, but it is my experience

Why didn't you just update the BIOS/UEFI or was there no update for ZEN3 at that time for the older chipset (X370 or X470)

 

[bug]

Why didn't you just update the BIOS/UEFI or was there no update for ZEN3 at that time for the older chipset (X370 or X470)

Why didn't I just update the BIOS on a motherboard that won't start? That's tough.
Anyway, it turned out the BIOS actually supported Zen3, the problem was (and still is) elsewhere.

 

[Cowboystrekk]

2400G: Zero issues
3600: Zero issues
5600X: A bit of stuttering when ram was overclocked\tuned on first bios, but got fixed after agesa 1.2.x.x

A bit off-topic, but mye i5 12400F has been a nightmare bioswise, now after the fith bios things are finally 99,9% stable.