Is AMD really ready for prime time?? I'm not so sure based on what I see

[mdzcpa]

Hey guys,

I've been a member here for about forever. I'm a very experienced system builder that used to competitively overclock years back. The last few years I've dialed way back and now build high end mainstream PCs for work and gaming. I absolutely require stability. My current build is a 9900k @ 5.1Ghz on a Maximus Hero XI with all top of the line goodies that were available 22 months ago.

Looking for a new build. I was thinking of going AMD this time with Zen 3 just looking too awesome to pass up. I've been hankering over a 5950X and Hero Dark when it comes out. I haven't been AMD since the Intel Core 2 came out a decade ago. I was anxious to go AMD this time. But now I see the forums chock full of problems. How is it that a CPU/Mobo combo has a problem running 4 sticks of RAM out of the box? Or that RAM cannot run at rated speeds (and I mean mainstream speeds like 3200, 3600, 3800) Intel has their security issues and all...but seriously...the AMD stability issues make AMD look half baked again.

Are all these problems perpetual AMD "teething" issues? Is it possible to build a top of the line new AMD system with 32 or 64GB or RAM at decently rated RAM speeds with stability? Or will I be faced with experimenting with RAM kits and UEFI settings until the cows come home. All I want is a system with top end parts that runs fast and stable with a light overclock. Should I stick with Intel?? Or am I getting the wrong impression about the Ryzen chips and AMD platfom?

[wyliec2]

Having retired from a lifetime career in IT, I now build my high performance PCs and servers as a hobby with image processing and video encoding projects.

I want high performance with reliability - I'm not after OC bragging.

I've built Intel 4770K, 5960X, 10600K and 10700K systems that have all been rock solid. XMP and maybe a minor overclock but targeting to keep long-term temps under 70C.

I've built my 3950X with quality parts - PSU, mobo and RAM. The 3950X absolutely smokes everything I've used for video encodes. But I'm finding the last several BIOS versions are giving me WHEA errors and frequent restarts.

I was planning on swapping for a 5950X which was driving my BIOS updates. Now I'm struggling just to get back to where I was a few months back with the 3950X. At best, that stability was somewhat less than my Intel experiences.

In the back of my mind I've wondered this exact question. It's frustrating because for the type of work I'm interested in, Intel can't come close without getting into serious XEON territory....

[danjw]

wyliec2 wrote:
Having retired from a lifetime career in IT, I now build my high performance PCs and servers as a hobby with image processing and video encoding projects.

I want high performance with reliability - I'm not after OC bragging.

I've built Intel 4770K, 5960X, 10600K and 10700K systems that have all been rock solid. XMP and maybe a minor overclock but targeting to keep long-term temps under 70C.

I've built my 3950X with quality parts - PSU, mobo and RAM. The 3950X absolutely smokes everything I've used for video encodes. But I'm finding the last several BIOS versions are giving me WHEA errors and frequent restarts.

I was planning on swapping for a 5950X which was driving my BIOS updates. Now I'm struggling just to get back to where I was a few months back with the 3950X. At best, that stability was somewhat less than my Intel experiences.

In the back of my mind I've wondered this exact question. It's frustrating because for the type of work I'm interested in, Intel can't come close without getting into serious XEON territory....

Have you tried rolling back to the BIOS that worked well? If you started updates once the 5000 processors were adding support, that is known to cause problems. AMD and Asus are tuning these to 5000 series of processors.

[Frostie36]

Must admit I do find this amd vs intel & stability thing quite amusing, especially from my own experiences of using both platforms over the past 19 years. Most of my builds have been amd, going back to the athlon thunderbird days, through to athlon xp, athlon 64 and then onto thuban and through to the fx series, I never had any issues with any of those systems.

Back in 2015 I decided to go intel as the fx8350 was crap at ipc so I built a 6700k system using the asus maximus board, used the ram qvl to get suitable ram and I can tell you now, for the 3 years I ran that system it was nothing but hassle, bios issues galore & especially ram issues & I never knew if the bios would post every time I started up the system, quite frankly I was glad to get rid of it and went back to amd with the 2700x on a crosshair vii hero board, zero issues with it and now I'm running a 3900x on the same board, again zero issues. I'm running 4 sticks of gkill flare x 3200 (2 16gb kits purchased months apart) and again zero issues, everything is running sweet even with the ram overclocked to 3600mhz using the dram calculator.

So from my own experience there is absolutely nothing wrong with stability with amd and cerainly not with ryzen, doesn't matter what software I'm running, everything just works. I really don't know where intel gets this reputation of being more stable because that platform certainly wasn't when I decided to build a system around it! I remember searching on the internet at the time & there was so many issues with other users skylake builds!

[njbongo]

One thing to remember, when you come to forums like these, you're mostly going to see complaints....happy people don't post much, lol.

I have the Crosshair VIII Hero with a 5600x that I got overnighted (will get a 5900x at some point) the day after launch. 32GB of Trident Z Neo - 3600MHz, CL14 in 4 sticks (8GB Each). Everything other than DOCP is basically auto, with the exception of PBO set to enabled rather than auto.

I've tried every BIOS released on the regular support site, and the ones posted here....never a problem.

My ONE MAIN PROBLEM? I want a 5900x and an RX6800XT GPU. lol

[Spook161]

I believe that many people believe that clocking infinity fabric, and advance timings is a right... not a privilege. After Zen2, hitting 3800/1900 was pretty easy, and provided a slight boost across the board. Put the new chip in, and there are problems with advanced timings and infinity clocks. Well, 3800/1900 is above spec, and consider OCing. So, its not a given. That being said, we know the hardware will do it, I'm just hoping that it takes a little more tweaking/optimizing on the bios revisions. For now, I was able to get 3600/1800 working, and I'll just be happy with that. I've had no more mystery reboots in over 48hours so far.

[wyliec2]

As long as we base our opinions on direct experiences, then it's all fair. I dislike blind fanboy-ism!

I have continually espoused how awesome the 3950X is on other forums - it will do more than double the amount of work that my 10700K does and use less power doing it. It crushed my dated 5960X which I replaced by going AMD with the 3950X last March. I wouldn't have been able to do the optimizations I've done with the thousands of encodes I've completed since getting it up and running.

That said, I was using it for my daily driver as well doing Word, Excel, browsers, Access and other non-intensive applications. When I'm away, I like my machines to sleep in a low power state. Unfortunately there were too many instances where it would be running but wouldn't respond and I'd have to hard-reset it. A couple of times I had to restore my C: drive from backups because Windows became corrupted from the crashes. Other times I would come back to find that it had crashed and restarted while I was away which was problematic if I'd left documents open.

I built my wife a 10600K (I live near a Microcenter and have trouble passing up some of their great CPU deals....that's how I wound up with the 3950X). We both putter around in the office in our home and I became envious of how her machine "just worked". She'd be away for an hour, hours or a couple of days and sit down, hit the shift key and get on with whatever she was doing.

When Microcenter had a deal on 10700Ks I bought one and built that for my daily driver. It also, "just works". I put Win10 Pro on the 3950X and put it in my basement and remote into to it to run my encodes - this has reduced my frustration somewhat.

When the 5950Xs were getting released, I updated BIOS which began on ongoing saga - I've been through 2311, 2401, 2701, back to 2206 and keep getting WHEA errors and restarts when I have DOCP enabled. My RAM is a dual-channel set of 2 16 GB sticks G.skill Trident Neo 3600 CL16 on the QVL.

I've never had an issue with XMP on Intel. I'm not looking for crazy OC on AMD but I would like to get the performance I paid for. This has stalled my plans to upgrade to a 5950X when they're available. It seems those with more demanding applications requiring 4 sticks of RAM have it even worse.

I hope this winds up getting resolved - again my use is strictly hobby. I would feel a bit antsy about this platform (maybe the Thread-Rippers are more stable) if I was depending on it day-in/day-out to do high=intensity workloads for my income.

[xeizo]

You have to play around a little more with timings/subtimings, D.O.C.P/XMP is not a given, but once finding the right settings it's rock stable. I have and use 2700X, 3700X and 3900X and zero stability issues after configuration is done. Stock is another story, it can expose diverse bugs and instabilities. My conclusion is the hardware is great, the bioses are wonky.

A enthusiast will have little problems with the above, but it can be a hell of a lot frustrating for a newbie or for someone who expects everything to work exactly as in the manual(old timer sys admins).

[mdzcpa]

I appreciate the thoughts of everyone that took the time to answer.

To be honest, I am absolutely certain I posses the skills necessary to tweak the AMD platform and find great stability if indeed that is even needed and its obtainable. The issue I have is time. I love doing new builds and I enjoy researching and selecting the parts, I don't mind a few days to tweak the system either. Squeezing out the most performance. But my life requires little time for any perpetual debug phase and I rely on my machines for work as well as gaming. I cannot afford spontaneous reboots in the middle of a work day.

This thread is not about AMD vs Intel. Both are fine choices and if I was simply building a gaming rig, I'd go AMD if little hesitation. I have fond memories of using the A slot goldfingers, closing the bridges on the Thunderbirds with liquid metal to open the multipliers, and soldering on my ABit NF2 boards to raise the FSB well of 200mhz. Those we great times. But back then the little niggling issues with the VIA chipsets and ram incompatibility never phases me. I enjoyed the trouble shooting and sharing discovering on the forums.

Today however I just cannot spend the same kind of time. I realize the forums are where folks come with problems. But they are also places where enthusiasts come to discuss issues and solutions and a quick look around here or OC.net tells me there are a few more issues with AMD then I've seen with Intel.

Thanks again for the input. I may still go AMD. The performance is certainly there and I want something different. I just have to go in knowing the debug phase might be a little longer and to be patient before I deploy the new build into my work space.

[Super_Gnome]

I'm not very tech savvy, but have built three systems. The first was built in 2011 and has a Rampage III Black Edition and a 990x six core Intel CPU--which was a first rate system back then, and still holds its own today (old but very stable gaming and doing anything really, and runs on Windows 10 beautifully). The system was fine for a few years, but then had regular crashes and a lot of trouble with Windows 7 updates that simply would not install. More recently I built a system with an R6 Extreme Omega motherboard and an Intel 9980x. It was fine for about a year, then with one of the Bios updates the CPU was stuck at Turbo speeds at all default settings. Reverting to the previous Bios seemed to work fine, except that HWMonitor regularly reported super high clocks speeds after a couple hours, and so I stopped using the rig and built another with an AMD 3950x and a Crosshair VI Formula. The AMD system worked fine for about half a year and then with a recent Bios, crashed a couple of times (the first and second ever crashes) the second day after install.

My conclusion: It's a toss up in terms of stability, but current problems will probably be worked out over time. Other things I've noticed that may or may not matter and for which the comparison may not be on a level playing field: The AMD system's cooling is a bit loud and then quiet in turn. The AMD system is faster but gets hotter and the temperature goes up and down in short cycles. The AMD system seems to be more responsive. It used to be that you got more bang for your buck with AMD chips, but Intel seems to have addressed that.