DerBauer hardware survey highlights issues with max boost clock on Ryzen 3000 "It's worse than I thought"

[RejZoR]

@Necrotic

Sure, single core. But were temperature and power parameters also met? This is no different than stated torque figures with cars. Sure, they have lets say 500Nm of torque. At 8000 RPM. Meaning most of the time if ever you'll never see those torque figures. 90% of the time it'll be way less. That's how I see this max boost clock. That's the peak measurement in most impossibly ideal conditions. Does that suddenly make the car bad? No. So, why does the processor even though it has proven itself more than once it's an incredibly capable piece of hardware?

[Curious Pineapple]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

@Necrotic

Sure, single core. But were temperature and power parameters also met? This is no different than stated torque figures with cars. Sure, they have lets say 500Nm of torque. At 8000 RPM. Meaning most of the time if ever you'll never see those torque figures. 90% of the time it'll be way less. That's how I see this max boost clock. That's the peak measurement in most impossibly ideal conditions. Does that suddenly make the car bad? No. So, why does the processor even though it has proven itself more than once it's an incredibly capable piece of hardware?

Because this forum has a large volume of shouty Intel fans and people who want MOAR BIG NUMBAS!

[5x5]

31 minutes ago, Necrotic said:

If you look at the start of the video he discusses this, including the fact that his average viewer isn't a newbie or the fact that boost limitation isn't tied to specific cheaper boards. You also can't claim that "listed a given boost, not what users need to achieve it" as in legal terms that doesn't reasonably stand, its called false advertising and its illegal. When you promote something in marketing its something that has to be reasonably understood by the population, you can't just say that you have a different definition. Please  see the bulldozer settlement if you want to see an example of that. What will let them off the hook is that they probably say "up to" or "max" which doesn't necessarily guarantee it.

Not really - the variables are too great to take this as evidence of anything

 

Also - by your own definition, any boost clock is illegal. Be it Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Mediatek or whatever - fact is, there are a good 20-40% of users achieving listed or higher clockspeeds making any lawsuit attempt dead in the water.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, porina said:

"up to" is one of the most intentionally misleading marketing phrases that is widely used, not just by AMD. It's a way of looking like you're giving useful information when you're really not, as it could be anything lower.

 

It has a definition. That a few either choose to ignore it or want it to mean something else, is their problem, not Intel's.

Internet speed "up to XMbps" is the worst misleading statement ever seen, and when seen in the context of "horsepower" eg CPU speed or Engine speed, it's very misleading because you can create a scenario where that number is true, but only if certain common situations are also true.

 

Like I'd ask how many people were using a stock cooler, and are in an air conditioned room. Because that very likely changes the maximum boost speed. If you are in a warmer climate that means you hit the the thermal throttle much sooner.

[justpoet]

"What do you mean my sealed glass box doesn't cool well on the stock cooler?  I added more RGB so it is FAST!"

[Guest]

No one cares about boost clocks really, but if they advertise them it leads up to a lawsuit.

[williamcll]

Intel must be laughing very hard now.

[Necrotic]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@Necrotic

Sure, single core. But were temperature and power parameters also met? This is no different than stated torque figures with cars. Sure, they have lets say 500Nm of torque. At 8000 RPM. Meaning most of the time if ever you'll never see those torque figures. 90% of the time it'll be way less. That's how I see this max boost clock. That's the peak measurement in most impossibly ideal conditions. Does that suddenly make the car bad? No. So, why does the processor even though it has proven itself more than once it's an incredibly capable piece of hardware?

As DeBauer said, he still recommends it. The point is that we shouldn't encourage misleading advertising. If you are going to promote something, it has to be within reasonable conditions and could be reproduced, otherwise why not just advertise liquid nitrogen boost clocks? or a number that works at least thru Post?

PS. Your argument on the car defeats your purpose, as you stated they provided a condition ("8000RPM" and it probably shows a standardized ISO testing scenario which controls for temperature and pressure). If AMD wants to say "Max boost clock of X Ghz with X470 and liquid cooling" then sure, it has a reasonable stated condition, but they didn't...

7 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Because this forum has a large volume of shouty Intel fans and people who want MOAR BIG NUMBAS!

Except in this case the one advertising MOAR BIG NUMBAS! is.... AMD.

Ignoring anything you don't agree with by claiming they are an intel fanboy just shows that you are an AMD fanboy....

7 hours ago, 5x5 said:

Not really - the variables are too great to take this as evidence of anything

 

Also - by your own definition, any boost clock is illegal. Be it Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Mediatek or whatever - fact is, there are a good 20-40% of users achieving listed or higher clockspeeds making any lawsuit attempt dead in the water.

Although not perfect, it can't just be ignored. Before this it was isolated to specific reviewers seeing things that didn't make sense but it could easily just be their samples. Now you have evidence of thousands of people, with different equipment, of which half or more are unable to reach the boost clock. This shows that more work needs to be done but there is strong indication of an issue here (though in the view of many, a minor one at that).

 

I don't understand what you argue about the boost clock as part of my definition making anything illegal. As far as I know, Intel for the most part can reach the boost clock on a single core and AMD could easily as well. If they had set the advertised max boost clock maybe 100mhz less, they would have reached it. Do they need to reach 100%? no, I think statistically that is impossible, but I think ~90% of customers is a reasonable number (a little less than 2 sigma). 

[Necrotic]

1 hour ago, williamcll said:

Intel must be laughing very hard now.

I don't think they are, they got caught out of position and are having to sink a bundle of money to try to catch up. At this pace they will basically bypass their 10nm and go right for their 7nm process. Though I suspect the EUV technology being developed for their 10nm process will eventually help them on 7nm (which aparently uses more traditional technology) and beyond...but that doesn't help them right now though.

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, Necrotic said:

Although not perfect, it can't just be ignored. Before this it was isolated to specific reviewers seeing things that didn't make sense but it could easily just be their samples. Now you have evidence of thousands of people, with different equipment, of which half or more are unable to reach the boost clock. This shows that more work needs to be done but there is strong indication of an issue here (though in the view of many, a minor one at that).

And if the clocks can be improved, meaning it's not simply a sample quality issue, by BIOS/AGESA updates then that should have been sorted out and QA'd before product release. AMD provides the AGESA binaries to motherboard vendors so they have no ability to fix any of these issues without more indirect or brute force methods like vcore. All the reviewer issues were sorted out by updating AGESA versions, some vendors like Gigabyte just managed to get these out quicker than others, so it seems to me that potentially if AMD had waited longer to release and the clocks as they are now may have never been noticed. Not that it's a good thing but I don't think we'd have gone down the path of getting many user submissions measuring the boost clocks otherwise.

[RejZoR]

AMD should just pull NVIDIA boost clocks nonsense and rate all Ryzens at 4GHz boost. And then always boost past that and everyone will be orgazming because it'll go past the stated boost clock :rolleyes:

[ThreePinkApples]

From what I've gathered following the discussions on /r/amd since launch, I've formed a guess as to what happened.

AGESA 1.0.0.2 appears to have the advertised boost speeds according to several reports on different forums, but AGESA 1.0.0.3, which released very close to launch, has the current reduced boost behavior. This is the AGESA that came with the last-minute BIOS update reviewers got two days before release.

According to some of the BIOS developers (from ASUS and Gigabyte), AMD might have concluded that the boost behavior in AGESA 1.0.0.2 was too aggressive for long-term reliability, but this realization came way too late, and all marketing information were already printed with the boost speeds of 1.0.0.2.

The reason AMD hasn't stated anything publicly yet cloud be that they hope to address this in a future AGESA update, but BIOS developers have indicated that an AGESA 1.0.0.4 exists (or a beta of it), that does not have any changes to boost.

 

The important part is that reviewers (or at least most of them) did the review with the current boost behavior people are seeing, so if you do any research before buying, you're not going to find numbers that are notably higher than what you'll end up with. But it's still a marketing fuck up by AMD that they should rectify in some way.

 

I'm happy with the 3900X, as it performs as reviewed, but I wouldn't mind even higher boost in the future, my Corsair H115i should handle the heat.

[ravenshrike]

15 hours ago, Necrotic said:

You also can't claim that "listed a given boost, not what users need to achieve it" as in legal terms that doesn't reasonably stand, its called false advertising and its illegal. 

Car manufacturers list horsepower and torque levels all the time that assume specific conditions to reach.

[porina]

52 minutes ago, aerandir92 said:

AGESA 1.0.0.2 appears to have the advertised boost speeds according to several reports on different forums, but AGESA 1.0.0.3, which released very close to launch, has the current reduced boost behavior. This is the AGESA that came with the last-minute BIOS update reviewers got two days before release

The two older generation mobos I own, X370 mobo went from 1.0.0.2 at Zen 2 launch to 1.0.0.3AB currently. Similarly B450 mobo went from 1.0.0.1 to 1.0.0.3ABB. There are multiple versions of 1.0.0.3 going around which might further confuse matters.

 

I can't say I looked at boost clocks too closely with either. I do recall initial testing with 3600 on 1.0.0.1 I never directly saw a single thread task go to rated boost, but if I left hwinfo64 logging, it did detect it at some point. It may be changing faster than the monitoring sample rate so get missed. Or maybe it is a measurement effect, that when doing a measurement you effectively have a 2nd active thread so you don't get single core boost. At least ram support got a LOT better from 1.0.0.1 to 1.0.0.3x.

[Flying Sausages]

I smell another AMD lawsuit about this as misleading advertisement. I can see the lawyer eyes $$$. 

[Flying Sausages]

1 hour ago, ravenshrike said:

Car manufacturers list horsepower and torque levels all the time that assume specific conditions to reach.

Not in the case with the Toyota new Supra puts out 335 horsepower according to Toyota,  but in Dyno test it puts out more than 335 horsepower and more torque than Toyota specs without any mod at all. 

[suits]

I hear a class action lawsuit

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, ravenshrike said:

Car manufacturers list horsepower and torque levels all the time that assume specific conditions to reach.

And get sued for misleading about figures like that and gas mileage too. Makers of shop vacs got sued for misleading about "peak hp" ratings. Briggs settled a lawsuit over inflated horsepower on their mower engines. Fluffed numbers get companies sued or worse fined by the FTC. 

[5x5]

45 minutes ago, OlympicAssEater said:

I smell another AMD lawsuit about this as misleading advertisement. I can see the lawyer eyes $$$. 

 

32 minutes ago, suits said:

I hear a class action lawsuit

Not likely as stated above. Boost clock is not guaranteed. That's what base clock is. It's why intel can get away with massive variation in their boosting behaviour on B/H series boards.

[williamcll]

I hear from discord that updating chipset drivers will solve the problem.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, OlympicAssEater said:

Not in the case with the Toyota new Supra puts out 335 horsepower according to Toyota,  but in Dyno test it puts out more than 335 horsepower and more torque than Toyota specs without any mod at all. 

That's just a spec decision. They could say it has 30 HP and then everyone would lose their shit if it actually had 10X the HP on a dyno. Coz wow it goes so far beyond the stated spec, it must be insane! But we all know it would be BS. Just like it is whining about not reaching max boost clock. It has fuck tons of cores, auto clocks as high as it can get based on several parameters and people still bitch about it. Sigh.

[Necrotic]

2 hours ago, ravenshrike said:

Car manufacturers list horsepower and torque levels all the time that assume specific conditions to reach.

1) ....that are published industry standards (think ISO/IEC/ANSI) that highlight the conditions (most of which are very reasonable, usually 25C, sea level, etc). I see no AMD or industrial published standard.

2) When car companies list horsepower or torque they will also list additional information as to when (ie a certain RPM).

3) The conditions are based on a stock car, otherwise they could claim twice the horsepower and simply say "well if you add a turbo you can get that hp". In the same way, you can't claim that AMD would require additional cooling than their stock cooler to reach those max boost clocks (yet in any case, many of the people with additional cooling also can't reach those higher boosts, so it isn't cooling limited apparently).

[Crowbar]

23 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

So AMD should be advertising boost clocks based on averages using the stock cooler, otherwise its a bit misleading if boost clocks aren't consistent.

So how should intel be setting their boosts then since not all of their CPU's come with a stock cooler despite being priced higher?

 

As much as I enjoy a lot of derbauer's content this one is completely brain dead. You can't blame AMD when everyone is running a different system and I'm willing to bet a lot with completely shit airflow cases with solid front panels since trend whores prioritize rainbow lights and glass over actual function.

[Crowbar]

21 hours ago, porina said:

"up to" is one of the most intentionally misleading marketing phrases that is widely used, not just by AMD. It's a way of looking like you're giving useful information when you're really not, as it could be anything lower.

 

It has a definition. That a few either choose to ignore it or want it to mean something else, is their problem, not Intel's.

Intels TDP is a straight up lie in every real world situation. 

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Crowbar said:

Intels TDP is a straight up lie in every real world situation. 

Following link is best write up of it I've seen. Read it. Move on.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14582/talking-tdp-turbo-and-overclocking-an-interview-with-intel-fellow-guy-therien