Glad to see great improvements are coming and at a fast rate 🙂 . Going forward it's just going to get better and better !

when it comes to enthusiast level hardware, it should 'just work'.

Um, lol? I'm sorry but you seem to have mistaken the general populous for enthusiasts level hardware. I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice if it always did "just work", but i'll put it into perspective. #1 reason i hear people state as to why they don't want to do PC gaming and rather do console: Because consoles 'just work', while PCs require some relative knowledge to make sure they work to their best. #1 reason i hear people state they do not want to build their own PC, even if they know how: Because pre-built PCs 'just work', rather then have to worry that something might not be compatible, or research into what the best RAM is or etc. They just want something that "works". The list can go on, the "enthusiast" section is not the "just works" section.

Should hardware conform to software, or should software conform to hardware?

Software should ALWAYS conform to hardware, otherwise you're limiting technology for absolutely no reason. You kinda imply you believe it should be the other way around, so tell me, if a processor was able to get 50% more performance from a hardware change that required a software update to understand how to use it, otherwise it would not be able to take advantage of that 50% more performance, what do you think should happen?

The hard part of things is hardware, that's the truth.

-Limited cooler support at launch since they changed the board specs -RAM speeds are still an issue for 90% of boards -Majority of UEFI's are glorified beta releases -The goddamn 20 degree temp offset for -X processors, which causes most CPU fans to ramp up unnecessarily -Unless proven otherwise, XFR is underwhelming in relation to the $60-$100+ premium -Requires hacks and tweaks for maximum performance AMD's products have always been fairly impressive on paper, but they utterly lack when it comes to the delivery.

Those are reasons of course and I agree with some. My main point that gets everyone emotional is that the market ultimately determines success or not. The NASDAQ is up ~1% since launch of Ryzen but the vendor sales flop has sent AMD's stock down 11% (and today was a good day). AMD made a processor that is a wildly good value but didn't change the market. Intel's prices didn't cut in half and their sales are up since March 1. We needed a "wow" product that exceeded Intel's HEDT offerings by 10% at 33-50% lower prices. What we got were products equal or a bit under performance at 50% lower prices. Whether fair or not, I don't get bogged down in opinions or summarizing an argument with comebacks like "LOL" - I just look at the numbers and the numbers are disappointing.

It's too early to judge, you need at least a year for that.

The power plan won't install. have error code 0x800700b7

The power plan won't install. have error code 0x800700b7

Same here. I have Windows 10 Creators update.

Or a sad admission that the design is wildly flawed and needs custom Windows tweaks to function properly. I have said this many times and will say again, this launch has been a failure from a market perspective. AMD's stock continues to decline (14.94 at launch, 13.27 at close yesterday) and was just flagged as sell by Goldman as it will continue to fall because of poor March sales. We needed Ryzen to exceed Intel performance offerings at a fair price. It needed to give you more for less. Instead it gave you a bit less for a lot less. Good value, not a disruption.

OK, now you have repeated this gobbledygook enough--got it out of your system yet?...;) What we are seeing is simply the normal teething pains any new cpu architecture has when first released--new Intel architectures go through exactly the same process--exactly. Remember, the iXXX x86 architectures sold by Intel today have been under development and refinement and bug fixing, etc. for the last ten years or so--Ryzen is not ten months old, yet...;) The Intel stuff is as good as it will ever be prior to the next new Intel architecture--Ryzen is nowhere near as good as it's going to be before the next new AMD cpu architecture...;) Even so Ryzen is crushing Intel cpus costing 2x as much in several key business-compute metrics--already! Also, try and get it through your head that the stock market pretty much works the opposite of how you think it does...;) Finance companies & stock brokers make rotten cpu design companies as a general rule. Investors do not buy and sell stocks for the same reasons that that techies buy and sell computer gear. It pays to remember that. The bulk of the Ryzen story has yet to be written--the bulk of the i3/i5/i7xxx story is over and done.

OK, now you have repeated this gobbledygook enough--got it out of your system yet?...;) What we are seeing is simply the normal teething pains any new cpu architecture has when first released--new Intel architectures go through exactly the same process--exactly. Remember, the iXXX x86 architectures sold by Intel today have been under development and refinement and bug fixing, etc. for the last ten years or so--Ryzen is not ten months old, yet...;) The Intel stuff is as good as it will ever be prior to the next new Intel architecture--Ryzen is nowhere near as good as it's going to be before the next new AMD cpu architecture...;) Even so Ryzen is crushing Intel cpus costing 2x as much in several key business-compute metrics--already! Also, try and get it through your head that the stock market pretty much works the opposite of how you think it does...;) Finance companies & stock brokers make rotten cpu design companies as a general rule. Investors do not buy and sell stocks for the same reasons that that techies buy and sell computer gear. It pays to remember that. The bulk of the Ryzen story has yet to be written--the bulk of the i3/i5/i7xxx story is over and done.

Dang Walt they need to hire you for PR spinning online...but actually VERY WELL SAID AND ALSO 100% true. /side note I was only pointing out earlier in the thread that Skylake is still having issues but no one talks about it nor does Intel offer fixes in over a year. Was not Intel vs AMD. /2nd Side note cause of you and others here and there I am starting to plan a Ryzen build upgrade to my Skylake i5 6600k over the coming months.

I wonder if this will improve performance on Intel as well. Does it just affect all CPUs?

No, and it won't help performance with Ryzen either if you were already hitting your expected clock speed under load. The article says this. This power plan simply lets the Ryzen CPU properly downclock at idle/light work loads. To understand why this was needed at all, you would need to have already known that Ryzen was having issues going full speed under the default Balanced power plan. The High Performance power plan fixed that. But the CPU would stay at full clocks. This is a quick fix for that.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice if it always did "just work"

Don't get uppity, just because you happen to label yourself an 'enthusiast' and hold yourself above the general market. 'Just works' is both a broad but specific term--'if I follow X, Y, and Z, the product and its features should work as specified'. It doesn't matter who you are--whether you're work as IT for big-business, or some novice building his first gaming rig, if that hardware doesn't follow this cardinal rule, by definition it doesn't 'just work'. Boy, I sure love spending an additional $100+ for QVL RAM just because my go-to RAM doesn't run at XMP specs, only to find that QVL RAM doesn't either. And yes, hardware DOES have to conform to software to some extent. Both Bulldozer and Steamroller were very promising on paper, but vastly underwhelming in practice because single-threads are king, and the Windows OS simply didn't accommodate AMD's unique architecture. We're seeing a similar behavior with Ryzen, which is only partially mitigated, at least in regards to gaming, with DirectX 12. Software and hardware is the ol' 'chicken or the egg', in which this case, the operating system, programs and games already exist, in which both AMD and their users are now expecting developers to accommodate it's unique architecture yet again.

No, and it won't help performance with Ryzen either if you were already hitting your expected clock speed under load. The article says this. This power plan simply lets the Ryzen CPU properly downclock at idle/light work loads. To understand why this was needed at all, you would need to have already known that Ryzen was having issues going full speed under the default Balanced power plan. The High Performance power plan fixed that. But the CPU would stay at full clocks. This is a quick fix for that.

Not exactly...see my posts in these threads...on average from what little testing on what I posted shows about an average 100 ms less system latency across the board. To you that may not be anything but to audio recorders, professional gamers and such will like that on Intel Skylake and KB with Speed Shift set up correctly. So yes these changes can have other effects we are not aware of yet...Speed Shift was designed to save even more power and was geared to laptops. BUt it has uses other then what it was designed for..however the correct settings are hidden by default by MS and Windows 10, and even then the actual defaults need to be adjusted from what MS decided they should be.

just do this for the "hidden options" https://3ijwcq.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y4mpo6VjqbR1PkVxGj_0p4pemgMzUfyztQtRiKkUKX_3rXZPhnPqu36_68gu_puWshW-95dvn1g6oW2H1eoJjLRLJcF5uS0AzTLP0Xl7z9TDRv9f5A6KuZ2gpAM2QeAv1Lshtp9T-aEqrt3XfW23NFnw4p_5LKqF_AcKl2oBf18Eda0oOBIUp1r7oFgy21TEWH-jG8wxfiFgAZF37Baqsvayg?width=854&height=450&cropmode=none

just do this for the "hidden options" https://3ijwcq.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y4mpo6VjqbR1PkVxGj_0p4pemgMzUfyztQtRiKkUKX_3rXZPhnPqu36_68gu_puWshW-95dvn1g6oW2H1eoJjLRLJcF5uS0AzTLP0Xl7z9TDRv9f5A6KuZ2gpAM2QeAv1Lshtp9T-aEqrt3XfW23NFnw4p_5LKqF_AcKl2oBf18Eda0oOBIUp1r7oFgy21TEWH-jG8wxfiFgAZF37Baqsvayg?width=854&height=450&cropmode=none

Really you think that is all the hidden setting for power? Let me show you. I do not think you know we are referring to options that either need a powercfg command or registry edit to show. But these are some of the hidden ones AMD referred to. Note it took 3 seperate screen shots to just show some of the hidden Porcessor power management option. Warning Graphic intensive. 🤓 http://i.imgur.com/PTpy0gv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DUXjOds.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0BWwcwt.jpg