AMD Fixes More Ryzen Issues with New BIOS Firmware Microcode
Performance keeps on improving in games with Ryzen, that would be the generic message AMD is evangelizing in a new Blog post. It seems that AMD has made good progress on the software side of things. Yesterday we already reported on the Ashes update with a very significant performance boost. Today Dota 2 is getting that TLC. More importantly there is a microcode update planned that will improve memory latency, and thus again 1080p game performance.
The new microcode will go along with a BIOS update. With the AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture (AGESA) 1.0.0.4 update the overall memory latency will drop with roughly 6 nanoseconds. By itself that doesn't sound huge, but as we have shown you in our reviews, memory timings, frequency and thus latency matters quite a bit for Ryzen relative to CPU game performance and sure, that would be a 8% imprivement in overal memory latency. The microcode update will help applications sensitive to exactly that, memory latency.
The earlier FMA3 benchmark bug also is fixed with the new motherboard firmware updates, but we reported on that one earlier already. Also an Overclock-sleep mode bug will be fixed. Last and not least, AMD Ryzen Master no longer needs the High-Precision Event Timer.
As a brief primer, the AGESA is responsible for initializing AMD x86-64 processors during boot time, acting as something of a “nucleus” for the BIOS updates you receive for your motherboard. Motherboard vendors take the baseline capabilities of our AGESA releases and build on that infrastructure to create the files you download and flash.
We will soon be distributing AGESA point release 1.0.0.4 to our motherboard partners. We expect BIOSes based on this AGESA to start hitting the public in early April, though specific dates will depend on the schedules and QA practices of your motherboard vendor.
BIOSes based on this new code will have four important improvements for you
- We have reduced DRAM latency by approximately 6ns. This can result in higher performance for latency-sensitive applications.
- We resolved a condition where an unusual FMA3 code sequence could cause a system hang.
- We resolved the “overclock sleep bug” where an incorrect CPU frequency could be reported after resuming from S3 sleep.
- AMD Ryzen™ Master no longer requires the High-Precision Event Timer (HPET).
The new BIOS updates with updated micro-code will be released in April. Below you can check some benchmark results (from AMD) on Ashes of the Singularity and DOTA 2.
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Awesome!

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Any improvement is welcome.

Keep it coming. I will likely be building a new core system end of June as a birthday present to myself. As of now I'm leaning towards 6800k but if gaming performance comes around like this across the board R7 1700x jumps to the top of my list.
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Ryzen gets better and better. I'm on the verge on upgrading to a Ryzen 5 hexa core instead of an i5. Have already an i5 and for me it's boring to spend money to get an i5 yet again. I'm happy to see AMD ironing out the issues.
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I will bet the elimination of the dependence on HPET will help quite a bit. After prolonged experimentation of my own with an FX-8320e clocked to 3.6/4GHz, I've concluded that I get better performance in Win 10x64 build 15063 with the HPET disabled in Win10. I'd think anyone really into gaming isn't going to be enamored all that much with 1080P anyway--buying Ryzen and putting the savings into a better GPU & Monitor would seem the way to go, imo.
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As someone about to build their Ryzen rig this weekend, I am pleased to see progress being made. Hoping the ram speed improvements comes along with the may update.