I was minding my own business then bam! I own a 3800X uh oh...

SpongeBob

The Contraceptive Under the Sea
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Jan 15, 2011
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I wasn't planning even in the slightest to get a 3800 but where I live the prime day sale was a 3800x. It was less then a 3700x and $85 below it's average price and I wasn't looking at a 3700x either. I figure I can return it if I don't use it if the 5600 blows it away. I'm not going to return a used product just cause. I hope this was intelligent buy and next gen games will utilize the 8 cores (trying to avoid buyers remorse this was still a lot of $$). Up until this point I wasn't planning on going AMD it was likely going to end up being a 10400/ 9600K, 9700 (non K) something great for FPS that I could pick up on the cheap. They are gouging on 3600's here so I wasn't paying attention. Now I need to play catch up, keep in mind I'm on a i7 4770k so not super up to date. Exciting to get back to AMD, my favorite chip ever was a AMD Barton 2500+.

As much reading as I'm doing I'm at a point where I'm confusing myself and hoping you AMD Pros can clarify some things for me.

B550 motherboards apparently if you use M.2's you lose SATA ports? Is this on all of them? How many ports do you lose if you use a M.2?
If I run a M.2 does it knock my PCIe slot for my video card down to PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIE 4.0?

Another thing I keep reading about is people suggest with Ryzen going 3600Mhz instead of 3200Mhz. Is there something about the architecture that really benefits or are people just saying going 3600 cause it's obviously faster. If there is something about 3600 does it matter much about the timings? Or is it just best to get the Ryzen paired to 3600 instead of needing crazy timings?

Why is the Ryzen ram calculator so important people talk about it a lot but I'm not sure why?

Is this chip even worth overclocking or should I just run ClockTuner for Ryzen (CTR) and be done with it?

I've been having a hard time figuring out what max OC average on the stock cooler would be?

Which mobo manufacturers do you think are nailing it for B550/X570 driver support right now?

Thanks in advance I'm sure I'll think of something else.
 
One big part of Ryzen is the "Infinity Fabric" which is the interface that all the chiplets on the CPU talk through. It runs 1:1 with the MHz your RAM is running at.

So, if you're running 2800 RAM at 2800 MHz, the Infinity Fabric runs at 2800 MHz. If you swap over to 3600, and run it at full 3600 MHz, then your CPU's Backbone (essentially) gets the bump to 3600 as well, making for a dramatic improvement in CPU performance. (For the minor change.)

Faster RAM running at proper timings and speed is the single best boost for a Ryzen CPU you can get.

Edit: This is a livestream, but it will talk about a lot of things you're asking about.
 
One big part of Ryzen is the "Infinity Fabric" which is the interface that all the chiplets on the CPU talk through. It runs 1:1 with the MHz your RAM is running at.

So, if you're running 2800 RAM at 2800 MHz, the Infinity Fabric runs at 2800 MHz. If you swap over to 3600, and run it at full 3600 MHz, then your CPU's Backbone (essentially) gets the bump to 3600 as well, making for a dramatic improvement in CPU performance. (For the minor change.)

Faster RAM running at proper timings and speed is the single best boost for a Ryzen CPU you can get.

Edit: This is a livestream, but it will talk about a lot of things you're asking about.


I read this everywhere but decided to ignore it back when I bought my 2700X years ago and went with 2400MHz RAM and everything was fine. Just recently I realized I needed more for FS2020 so upgraded to a 32GB kit of 3200MHz CL14 stuff with XMP enabled (2700x's don't like anything faster) and didn't notice a thing.

I guess all this talk of this "dramatic improvement" is if you're into benchmarking as a hobby? I just didn't see it, day to day at least. I wanted to!

Either way, i'm following this thread to learn about the B550 and SATA port thing. I'm well aware of the limitations of the PCIe 4.0 M.2 situation, however I haven't heard anything about it limiting SATA ports.
 
I just sold my 3800x - for a measly $275. But, to answer your questions.

You can have a primary M.2 and graphics card at PCIE 4.0. The secondary M.2 is PCIE 3.0. As far as sata ports being disabled, I think it depends on the board.

As far as RAM is concerned, 3600mhz is a good speed. The 3800x should be able to run Infinity Fabric at 1800MHZ (IF is doubled). So 3600mhz RAM, 1800mhz IF. 3200MHZ RAM, 1600 IF. I have 3200 MHZ RAM that I overclocked to 3600.

The RAM calculator gives you a bunch of numbers to plug into the BIOS to tighten your timings. You can set your main timings, lets say 16-16-16-38 and leave all the other secondary timings on auto. but if you want to squeeze out every little bit, you can use the Ryzen Timing calc to manually put them in. I use it and it really helped. But if you don't know what you are doing, and don't have a lot of time to dick with the settings, then it's a pain in the ass.

The CPU in my opinion is not worth overclocking. Enable PBO and just forget about the rest. Unless you can get 4.5ghz stable on all cores, it's not worth it. Because single threaded apps could potentially boost it to 4.6ghz.

The CTR - same thing, it's a neat tool, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

As far as whos really nailing B550 boards, IDK, I typically stay with Gigabyte and MSI. I currently have a B550i Pro AX, and its solid.
 
I read this everywhere but decided to ignore it back when I bought my 2700X years ago and went with 2400MHz RAM and everything was fine. Just recently I realized I needed more for FS2020 so upgraded to a 32GB kit of 3200MHz CL14 stuff with XMP enabled (2700x's don't like anything faster) and didn't notice a thing.

I guess all this talk of this "dramatic improvement" is if you're into benchmarking as a hobby? I just didn't see it, day to day at least. I wanted to!

Either way, i'm following this thread to learn about the B550 and SATA port thing. I'm well aware of the limitations of the PCIe 4.0 M.2 situation, however I haven't heard anything about it limiting SATA ports.

well, When you're dealing with modern CPU's, unless you're looking at synthetics you won't feel much of a change in daily use because they're all bloody fuckin' fast. So unless you're using something to test the limits, you won't see them.

I can't speak to B550 and Sata ports, but my z170 i7 6700k system loses 2 SATA ports when I plugged in the NVME on the board. So it's not an AMD feature/issue exclusively.
 
I wasn't planning even in the slightest to get a 3800 but where I live the prime day sale was a 3800x. It was less then a 3700x and $85 below it's average price and I wasn't looking at a 3700x either. I figure I can return it if I don't use it if the 5600 blows it away. I'm not going to return a used product just cause. I hope this was intelligent buy and next gen games will utilize the 8 cores (trying to avoid buyers remorse this was still a lot of $$). Up until this point I wasn't planning on going AMD it was likely going to end up being a 10400/ 9600K, 9700 (non K) something great for FPS that I could pick up on the cheap. They are gouging on 3600's here so I wasn't paying attention. Now I need to play catch up, keep in mind I'm on a i7 4770k so not super up to date. Exciting to get back to AMD, my favorite chip ever was a AMD Barton 2500+.

As much reading as I'm doing I'm at a point where I'm confusing myself and hoping you AMD Pros can clarify some things for me.

B550 motherboards apparently if you use M.2's you lose SATA ports? Is this on all of them? How many ports do you lose if you use a M.2?
If I run a M.2 does it knock my PCIe slot for my video card down to PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIE 4.0?

Another thing I keep reading about is people suggest with Ryzen going 3600Mhz instead of 3200Mhz. Is there something about the architecture that really benefits or are people just saying going 3600 cause it's obviously faster. If there is something about 3600 does it matter much about the timings? Or is it just best to get the Ryzen paired to 3600 instead of needing crazy timings?

Why is the Ryzen ram calculator so important people talk about it a lot but I'm not sure why?

Is this chip even worth overclocking or should I just run ClockTuner for Ryzen (CTR) and be done with it?

I've been having a hard time figuring out what max OC average on the stock cooler would be?

Which mobo manufacturers do you think are nailing it for B550/X570 driver support right now?

Thanks in advance I'm sure I'll think of something else.

First NVME doesn't lose you anything on any AMD board. The GPU and first NVME on B550 or X570 are ALWAYS pcie 4.0 (but backwards compatible, so you can toss a pcie 3.0 NVME in without issue) unless you change settings in the BIOS. The second NVME can either have you lose out on SATA ports OR you may lose your PCIE x4 slot (most MSI B550 boards do this, not sure of others). Verify with the manufactures Manual before purchase. The only real difference between boards are the VRM's, USB/Ethernet and RGB options... other than that, the drivers are the same for all B550's and the drivers for X570's would be the same since the chipsets themselves are what the driver are for. So driver support from one B550 to another is no difference, and driver support between an X570 and another is no difference. That doesn't mean they are all created equal, but if running at stock you won't see a difference outside of the margin of error from one board to another. That said, better VRMs and high quality components/features can make differences when you're using things.

Ryzen DRAM calculator is just a tool to get you a baseline for memory tweaking, AMD chips tend to have more benefit from tightening up memory timings than Intel (do to having worse latency), so the dram calc is a good place to get started.

Going 3600 means the IF (infinity fabric) can be clocked 1:1... which sounds weird, since 1:1 with 3600 ram actually means 1800MHz (it's DDR, so DDR 3600 actually has a clock speed of 1800MHz, DDR means you get two data actions PER clock cycle, so 3600). Worth tuning is relative to the person, but normally you won't get a ton of overclocking overhead, but if you like to tinker have at it. You'll likely see better performance increases with ram timings. Stock cooler, you really won't get much OC since it will thermal throttle.

I think I hit most of your questions, if you have any specific, let me know!
 
I just sold my 3800x - for a measly $275. But, to answer your questions.

You can have a primary M.2 and graphics card at PCIE 4.0. The secondary M.2 is PCIE 3.0. As far as sata ports being disabled, I think it depends on the board.

As far as RAM is concerned, 3600mhz is a good speed. The 3800x should be able to run Infinity Fabric at 1800MHZ (IF is doubled). So 3600mhz RAM, 1800mhz IF. 3200MHZ RAM, 1600 IF. I have 3200 MHZ RAM that I overclocked to 3600.

The RAM calculator gives you a bunch of numbers to plug into the BIOS to tighten your timings. You can set your main timings, lets say 16-16-16-38 and leave all the other secondary timings on auto. but if you want to squeeze out every little bit, you can use the Ryzen Timing calc to manually put them in. I use it and it really helped. But if you don't know what you are doing, and don't have a lot of time to dick with the settings, then it's a pain in the ass.

The CPU in my opinion is not worth overclocking. Enable PBO and just forget about the rest. Unless you can get 4.5ghz stable on all cores, it's not worth it. Because single threaded apps could potentially boost it to 4.6ghz.

The CTR - same thing, it's a neat tool, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

As far as whos really nailing B550 boards, IDK, I typically stay with Gigabyte and MSI. I currently have a B550i Pro AX, and its solid.

Pardon my "specialness" but just so I understand this 1:1 infinity fabric thing. Are you saying it's best to run DDR 3200 or DDR3600 at their stock speeds so you can achieve 1:1. So if you have DDR 3200 but you are running it at say I dunno DDR 3266 or 3800 you're no longer at your stock 1:1 and it's not going to run as effectively? Or am I straight missing something?

So with Ryzen DDR4 3200 vs. 3600 as long as you are running it at stock speeds the 1800 or 1600Mhz is where you want to be. Instead of overclocking your ram which throws off the 1:1 you just want tighter timings... I think..
 
Pardon my "specialness" but just so I understand this 1:1 infinity fabric thing. Are you saying it's best to run DDR 3200 or DDR3600 at their stock speeds so you can achieve 1:1. So if you have DDR 3200 but you are running it at say I dunno DDR 3266 or 3800 you're no longer at your stock 1:1 and it's not going to run as effectively? Or am I straight missing something?

So with Ryzen DDR4 3200 vs. 3600 as long as you are running it at stock speeds the 1800 or 1600Mhz is where you want to be. Instead of overclocking your ram which throws off the 1:1 you just want tighter timings... I think..


For the 1:1 - the IF has to be half of your RAM speed. No matter what the RAM speed is.
As long as it is 1:1 you will have full effectiveness.... As soon as it is 1:2 then you'll be losing some performance.

The screen shot below shows all the dividers, all the way up to 3000mhz for the IF. So you can run 3266 MHZ on the RAM, as long as you select the correct IF
 

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Under and up to 3600mhz the IF is run at a 1:1 ratio. Over 3600mhz and the ratio switches and you don't get the ideal ratio of 1:1 anymore. You can force the IF to run 1:1 above 3600mnhz, but the IMC won't run past 1900mhz so that limits overclocked ram to 3800mhz. If you had a chip whose IMC could run IF at say for giggles 2000mhz, then you could run 4000mhz ram.

All that said, the differences aren't that large but it's still worth trying to get close to the 3600mhz ideal
 
IF is guarenteed to work up to 1800MHz (DDR4 3600). It works 1:1 lower than that as well, but once you go higher than 3600 you may or may not be able to keep 1:1, and as soon as you can't, you will most likely lose performance. So 3600 with the best timings you can get is normally the target. Some like to go crazy for benchmarks and such (or some get lucky and are able to keep IF 1:1 at 3800Mhz), but the point was 3600 is the "normal" target for memory frequency. The lower latencies you can achieve, the better. If you're not going crazy with OC and don't want to test your luck, 3600 is the max *supported* frequency.
 
technically, the max speed for infinity fabric to keep 1:1 is a little higher. Lime 3733mhz or something. But 3600 is very available as an off the shelf, pre-programed speed. and affordable.

techpowerup has a really good article about Ryzen and RAM. And it shows how you really do gain from manually tweaking the sub timings.
 
Ryzen DRAM calculator is just a tool to get you a baseline for memory tweaking, AMD chips tend to have more benefit from tightening up memory timings than Intel (do to having worse latency), so the dram calc is a good place to get started.

I think I hit most of your questions, if you have any specific, let me know!

All those other bazillion numbers seem like a great way to end up yelling at my computer after hours of tweaking. If I just run the DRAM calculator it will just run a scan or a benchmark and give me pretty optimal numbers or just slightly better than running XMP? Or do you need to set your ram in XMP then run the calculator?
 
Most people just run the calculator and disable XMP, but I mean, there isn't just one way to do things. Most of the time though, you set it back to baseline and then take all the settings from the calculator (SAFE is probably a better bet that you won't run into issues) and fill them into your BIOS. If you want to further tweak, you can try FAST settings, or you can slowly adjust the SAFE settings until it gets unstable (running some sort of memory stress test). Some people just start off with fast settings and they just run, others don't have as good of luck. Like I said though, if you're not trying to ring out every last ounce of performance with countless hours of tweaking, just throw in the SAFE settings and test it out, if it works, just leave it and be happy as the settings will be more aggressive than XMP/DOCP and give you a decent bump in performance. Like any other overclocking, results can vary.. there have been a few instances where people couldn't even get the safe settings to work (typically a slight increase in memory voltage or mem soc voltage cures it, but it's still overclocking so no results are guaranteed).

ps. It's always recommended to keep track of settings that you are messing with so if you have to (or PC does automatically if it crashes multiple times) clear the bios you know the last value that were stable (or close to it).
 
I read this everywhere but decided to ignore it back when I bought my 2700X years ago and went with 2400MHz RAM and everything was fine. Just recently I realized I needed more for FS2020 so upgraded to a 32GB kit of 3200MHz CL14 stuff with XMP enabled (2700x's don't like anything faster) and didn't notice a thing.

I guess all this talk of this "dramatic improvement" is if you're into benchmarking as a hobby? I just didn't see it, day to day at least. I wanted to!

Either way, i'm following this thread to learn about the B550 and SATA port thing. I'm well aware of the limitations of the PCIe 4.0 M.2 situation, however I haven't heard anything about it limiting SATA ports.
Flight Simulator 2020 limiting resource use is that it's terribly single threaded.
 
I didn't mean to link FS2020 to my CPU performance findings. That was only my reasoning for getting more RAM.
No sweat, I just wish they'd work on it bc locked 1 thread looks like a POC.
Not a shipping game that costs $ to play.
 
All those other bazillion numbers seem like a great way to end up yelling at my computer after hours of tweaking. If I just run the DRAM calculator it will just run a scan or a benchmark and give me pretty optimal numbers or just slightly better than running XMP? Or do you need to set your ram in XMP then run the calculator?
The simple takeaway here is; Buy 3600mhz Ram, because that is easiest way to get max speed out of the infinity fabric. Infinity fabric is how the CCX modules "talk to each other", so maximum speed is really really good. Buy good low latency 3600mhz ram, and then odds are xmp will just work, and you wont need to yell at your computer. If you want to tweak, use the dram calculator. If you want easy fast, buy quality low latency 3600mhz ram.
Infinity fabric is like the foundation Zen is built on. Its also directly tied to ram speed. Faster ram, (in this case up to 3600 for complex reasons) faster cpu, more so than just a cpu with faster ram. It actually makes the cpu faster (cause infinity fabric).

I'm actually sitting back hoping the 5xxx launch depresses the 3xxx prices a bunch so I can upgrade all my older AM4 gear. Exciting next few weeks. then boredom while we all wait for stock and MSRP.
 
For whatever reason i'm not at 1:1. It's at 3:54 but i have everything set properly. My memory is 3600mhz using DOCP and set infinity to 1800. Is this just the way CPU-Z reads it or am i missing something? I even tried setting everything manual to the DOCP speeds and i get the same results.
 
For whatever reason i'm not at 1:1. It's at 3:54 but i have everything set properly. My memory is 3600mhz using DOCP and set infinity to 1800. Is this just the way CPU-Z reads it or am i missing something? I even tried setting everything manual to the DOCP speeds and i get the same results.

That's just the way cpuz reads it. Download zen timings to confirm your actual clocks for mclk, fclk, and uclk. If those three are 1800, you are good.
 
Alright everyone. I still have my unopened 3800X and I'm having one hell of a time figuring out which CPU. 3800X which I bought for $391 or do I go for a 5600X for $420. I find the benchmarks on some sites kinda useless since games that are getting 500FPS aren't exactly ideal for looking at next gen titles.

Which is the better value for the money. Better cooler and extra cores or less cores but faster and a cooler that doesn't seem to let you hit the max boost speeds from the one video I watched anyway. I don't plan on upgrading again for at least a few years.
 
Alright everyone. I still have my unopened 3800X and I'm having one hell of a time figuring out which CPU. 3800X which I bought for $391 or do I go for a 5600X for $420. I find the benchmarks on some sites kinda useless since games that are getting 500FPS aren't exactly ideal for looking at next gen titles.

Which is the better value for the money. Better cooler and extra cores or less cores but faster and a cooler that doesn't seem to let you hit the max boost speeds from the one video I watched anyway. I don't plan on upgrading again for at least a few years.
what are you main use cases for your PC?

5600x is definitely faster in gaming.

However, things change a bit in multi-threaded stuff. Rendering still definitely favors the extra cores. For encoding, the 5600x fully meets or even slightly beats a 2700x. But is still a little behind Zen 2 8 cores such as the 3800x.Not a lot, though. If you are encoding on the CPU sometimes, the 5600x is not a bad choice. Everywhere else, the 5600x and 3800x seem to be pretty similar (compiling, encryption, etc).

I suspect the 3800x would be better for streaming and gaming from the same machine. But I haven't seen any tests investigating that, yet.
 
This is definitely a gaming rig / entertainment. I do 0 encoding or compiling or anytime of professional work besides accessing a work email account.
 
I would get the 5600X if I had a high-end GPU or planned to buy one in next 1-2 years. If not, 3800X will be great CPU for years.
 
This is definitely a gaming rig / entertainment. I do 0 encoding or compiling or anytime of professional work besides accessing a work email account.

Then I'd get the 5600x for $420. Ideally though, you might look into a 5800x if you can find one.
 
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