Vermeer (Ryzen 5000) Memory/Fabric Potential

[svmlegacy]

Summary

Currently, Vermeer CPU's (Ryzen 5000) do not hit 2000 MHz fabric clock with any sort of ease. This is what is needed to make 4000 MT/s memory the "sweet spot" for these CPU's. While no CPU is guaranteed to hit this speed, AMD is working on AGESA updates to enable 1900 - 2000 MHz fabric clock, potentially enabling this speed for the average user.

 

Quotes

Quote

I reached out to AMD to see what was happening, and this was the response:

 

"We are working on additional optimizations for 1900-2000MHz fabric clocks in our next AGESA release. AMD cannot guarantee any samples, including your own, will be able to hit these speeds. Although some current Ryzen 5000 samples are able to achieve a 1900+ fabric speed we feel confident even more users will be able to obtain these speeds with the forthcoming optimizations. If you recall on the 3000 series many, but not all, users were able to achieve a fabric speed of 1900. We believe this will be a similar situation with 5000 series processors and 2000MHz."

 

My thoughts

Currently, Vermeer's sweet spot seems to be 3600 - 3800 MT/s memory. I sincerely hope that the AGESA updates help boost this clock up, and there is the potential it could trickle down to Matisse CPU's as well, given they share the same I/O die. 3600 MT/s memory is currently ideal on a performance and price point, most users will be perfectly fine picking this for Vermeer CPU's for the time being. Early adopters of Vermeer may wish to choose 4000 MT/s memory, in hopes that a future BIOS update will enable it to run 1:1 with fabric clock. For the time being, it's likely best to set these kits at 3800 MT/s.

 

Update 2020-11-07:

AMD made a blog post on November 5th regarding AGESA and getting Vermeer support on 500-series motherboards. Latest patch is "AGESA 1.1.0.0 Patch D" at this time. A number of people having issues with fclk clocks appear to be on "Patch C". With patience, the newer AGESA should be made available for your boards in time.

 

Quote

What’s new in AGESA 1.1.0.0 for Ryzen 5000 Series:

• General performance improvements for many types of workloads
• Improved support for loading and applying overclocked memory profiles
• Improved BIOS overclocking robustness
• Improved USB hotplug detection
• Improved SATA device detection on select SATA ports
• Adds support for Eco Mode for automatic TDP reduction (AMD Ryzen Master)

...

Beyond AGESA 1.1.0.0 for Ryzen 5000 Series:

• Returning support for negative core voltage offsets (“undervolting”) with all-new AMD functionality for better frequency, voltage, and performance tweaking
• Additional AMD optimization for performance and stability at ~2000MHz fabric clock. While not all processors are innately capable of reaching this frequency, our tuning is intended to help stabilize the overclock on capable samples - good luck!
• Additional functionality tuning for benchmarking under extreme OC conditions (e.g. LN2)

...

Not all BIOS releases for a motherboard need or use an updated base AGESA, nor is the latest patch (e.g. "Patch D") explicitly required.

 

Sources

https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-zen-3-infinity-fabric-lottery/

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2020/11/05/prepping-your-motherboard-for-the-amd-ryzen-5000-series

Edited November 7, 2020 by svmlegacy
Updated based on AMD Blog Posting

[Jurrunio]

Seems like the absolute top samples can do 2133MHz on FCLK, but in general expect 2000-2100 for most of the samples and 1900 for the bad ones (quote: they average between 2033 and 2066MHz, 95% of them can do 2000MHz or more)

 

he works for MSI btw

[svmlegacy]

4 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Seems like the absolute top samples can do 2133MHz on FCLK, but in general expect 2000-2100 for most of the samples and 1900 for the bad ones (quote: they average between 2033 and 2066MHz, 95% of them can do 2000MHz or more)

 

he works for MSI btw

That leaves very good promise that things will improve with an AGESA update for consumer boards!

[SkilledRebuilds]

Asus released an Update to enable higher values, for users to try.

[Jito463]

I was very confused when I first read the title.  Vermeer is an agriculture utility manufacturing plant from a town near where I grew up.

[Deli]

14 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I was very confused when I first read the title.  Vermeer is an agriculture utility manufacturing plant from a town near where I grew up.

Vermeer is a Dutch painter.

[S w a t s o n]

19 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Seems like the absolute top samples can do 2133MHz on FCLK, but in general expect 2000-2100 for most of the samples and 1900 for the bad ones (quote: they average between 2033 and 2066MHz, 95% of them can do 2000MHz or more)

 

he works for MSI btw

I am STRUGGLING with my 5950x. Aorus Master didnt release a new bios for launch yet but it's the same AGESA patch that  ASUS just released 1.1.0.0 Patch C but from October. Mine gets whea errors at 1867 and cant do 1900 even with tons of soc/vddp/vddg voltage. I'm getting pretty salty

[Jurrunio]

2 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

I am STRUGGLING with my 5950x. Aorus Master didnt release a new bios for launch yet but it's the same AGESA patch that  ASUS just released 1.1.0.0 Patch C but from October. Mine gets whea errors at 1867 and cant do 1900 even with tons of soc/vddp/vddg voltage. I'm getting pretty salty

Gigabyte plz fix

[DildorTheDecent]

3 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Mine gets whea errors at 1867 and cant do 1900 even with tons of soc/vddp/vddg voltage. I'm getting pretty salty

Oof. I'll trade you my 3950X which does 1900 ez, kek.

[S w a t s o n]

1 minute ago, DildorTheDecent said:

Oof. I'll trade you my 3950X which does 1900 ez, kek.

I've heard that Gigabyte's "launch" BIOS for Ryzen 5000 is just about the worst so I'm hoping that this fixes when on bios update. I'm also planning on switch to an asus dark hero long term anyways so lets hope it's the shit bios.

[CarlBar]

4 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

I've heard that Gigabyte's "launch" BIOS for Ryzen 5000 is just about the worst so I'm hoping that this fixes when on bios update. I'm also planning on switch to an asus dark hero long term anyways so lets hope it's the shit bios.

 

Or what, your profile pic?

 

Sorry couldn't resist a bit of fun.

[Bombastinator]

23 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Seems like the absolute top samples can do 2133MHz on FCLK, but in general expect 2000-2100 for most of the samples and 1900 for the bad ones (quote: they average between 2033 and 2066MHz, 95% of them can do 2000MHz or more)

 

he works for MSI btw

*does not speak any type of Chinese*. 
 

I don’t even know what dialect of Chinese that is (not that I could even tell.  One assumes mandarin, but I don’t know which one is even most commonly spoken in Taiwan.  It could even be Cantonese for all I know) 

 

Are there any suggestions for machine translation?
 

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t even know what dialect of Chinese that is (not that I could even tell.  One assumes mandarin, but I don’t know which one is even most commonly spoken in Taiwan.  It could even be Cantonese for all I know) 

Technically it is mandarin, just heavy Taiwanese accent.

 

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Are there any suggestions for machine translation?

[RejZoR]

Maybe there is potential, but the price is just too much. 4000MHz RAM is so much more expensive for those extra 400MHz compared to 3600MHz RAM. It's basically twice the price. That's a hard thing to swallow for questionable benefits you may or may not get from it.

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting. Though just in general much higher clocked RAM is so much more expensive it's insane.

[Actual_Criminal]

I am missing something. Sorry, can someone explain to me why only 2000 MHz?

 

I thought Ryzen Zen 3 series was rated for 3600 MHz?

[Craftyawesome]

1 minute ago, Actual_Criminal said:

I am missing something. Sorry, can someone explain to me why only 2000 MHz?

 

I thought Ryzen Zen 3 series was rated for 3600 MHz?

DDR is double data rate. For example, DDR4-3600 is actually 1800 MHz.

[RejZoR]

6 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

DDR is double data rate. For example, DDR4-3600 is actually 1800 MHz.

To extend on this, DDR or Double Data Rate means memory does data transfer on both electrical swings of the clock cycle (lows and peaks as the signal fluctuates similar to heart sine wave). So, DDR4-3600 actually operates at 1800MHz, but effectively does same work as it would at 3600MHz if transfers only happened on clock peaks as it's common with SDR (Single Data Rate). So, Zen 3 can peak at 2000MHz on its internal memory controller and to achieve peak performance, RAM should also operate at that speed to achieve 1:1 ratio (both memory controller and RAM running at same speed). And to achieve that you'd need DDR4-4000 which is actually a 2000MHz memory.

 

SDR = Single Data Rate = Clock you see is the actual clock

DDR = Double Data Rate = Advertised clock is actually a 2x of actual operational clock (and actual speed is actually 2x at that clock)

QDR = Quad Data Rate = More common on graphic cards as GDDR5 memory, advertised clock is 4x of actual operational clock (and actual speed is actually 4x at that clock)

 

This image is a good explainer how memory works and why the difference between advertised and actual clocks as it's doing more work on single clock cycle (every step is one cycle).

[Orange1]

On 11/6/2020 at 11:32 AM, SkilledRebuilds said:

Asus released an Update to enable higher values, for users to try.

Every little bit helps for every little bit of fps

[Jurrunio]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Maybe there is potential, but the price is just too much. 4000MHz RAM is so much more expensive for those extra 400MHz compared to 3600MHz RAM. It's basically twice the price. That's a hard thing to swallow for questionable benefits you may or may not get from it.

Is the Patriot 2x8gb 4000C19 kit gone? That's $140 i think

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Is the Patriot 2x8gb 4000C19 kit gone? That's $140 i think

2x8GB is pointless in all honesty. You don't buy top of the line CPU just to pair it with underwhelming RAM capacity and then struggle with adding more later as DDR5 overtakes it or have problems coz you're then using 4 sticks. Which is why I'm looking at 2x16GB of 4000MHz RAM now. It's what should be paired with Zen 3. And that's expensive. 3600MHz one isn't however.

[Jurrunio]

7 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

2x8GB is pointless in all honesty. You don't buy top of the line CPU just to pair it with underwhelming RAM capacity

that's not me then, I never manage to get RAM usage above 12GB unless I delibrately try break it (memtest most of it, for example)

 

of course then there's this, fresh out of tech Jesus

 

so 2x16gb may eventually make more sense to me, just not for capacity reasons