Ryzen

[LunarMist]

So you are relying on Windows. It's a resource hog, same difference.

 

[Santilli]

The people here are who suggest good software. Without you all, I'd have long been in a hole.
AV is Eset
NordVPN
I think bloatware is EXACTLY WHAT Jfr is saying.
I use Brave, and Chrome.
Shut IE off.
NEVER Outlook.
Thank you DD, Merc, etc. for suggestions on software.
And I listen to what everyone suggests...
I'm sorry for those that have to use, or install junkware, due to work.

 

[Mercutio]

I loathe Outlook deeply.

I have all my customers on Google Workspace in part because I hate Outlook so fucking much. Being able to ditch Exchange for the people who wanted it was a game changer for me, and I'm never going back and I won't let anyone I support go back either.

Because many people want the Outlook-like combination of features in integrated Scheduling, Contacts and Email, I put people on EmClient, instead. EmClient has a one time payment of $35/business user or $75 for lifetime upgrades/user and I think I have a grand total of one person who isn't happy with it. It's dramatically faster than Outlook and transacts directly with Google Workspace and a bunch of other calendar/contacts platforms. The only person I know who doesn't like it is just mad because she had almost 300GB worth of local PSTs that I refused to import into her account.

There are human beings in the world who can only understand stuff that's on their computer by way of "something they can find inside Outlook" and when I rule the world they'll be seventh or eighth against the wall. Outlook is not a filesystem but oh my god I know a couple people who will absolutely argue otherwise.

 

[sedrosken]

We're a 365 shop, and there's only been one customer that we didn't go through with transitioning them completely away from Google Workspace to M365. While I personally think Google Workspace is the right choice for a lot of small business, our partnerships demand we sell them on the Microsoft stack.

Curious about eM client -- I'm going to give it a try and see if it can integrate with 365 as well as you say it does Google, because I personally have my own 365 tenant and hosted email, and if it works out I might well prefer it.

Interesting to note so far that it will still run -- without complaint, even -- on Windows 7, I like trying things on it first to see if they're good interim solutions for people who aren't ready to move on just yet. Also, I like using my Dimension 9200 with the QX6700 for some things still, and it runs Windows 7 primarily. Thunderbird I had to use an old version of (115.x, spring '24, still supported in esr branch right this second afaict) and an exchange online connector plugin to work with. eM Client worked off the bat with it, albeit clunkily -- I couldn't set it up as part of initial client setup, I had to click through and go through the accounts wizard once it was already set up and then it'd let me log in.

Merc, I'm relying on your experience with it -- I know you said you refused to transfer 300GB of PSTs to a customer's copy of it, but is that because of the volume or because there's no good way to use PST/OSTs with it? I'm trying to gauge it as something to potentially recommend to friends and family. Especially if they can remain within the bounds of its free license -- I'm a little intimidated by the $149.99 price tag of the personal edition with lifetime upgrades, myself, but I know for a fact I don't want to pay a subscription for it.

 

[Mercutio]

Merc, I'm relying on your experience with it -- I know you said you refused to transfer 300GB of PSTs to a customer's copy of it, but is that because of the volume or because there's no good way to use PST/OSTs with it?

Because I didn't want to deal with 300GB of PSTs.

To put this in perspective, I have an IMAP server at home where all of my non-spam email ends up. When I say all, I mean All. For all time. Since 1990. The total size of my mail spool on there is 28GB. All in the same inbox.

 

[ddrueding]

I only have since 2005 (when I started with GMail) and it is 48GB. But I haven't bothered to go through and remove large attachments from old messages or any other low-hanging fruit to manage that.

 

[jtr1962]

Nowadays storage is so cheap and vast it's easier to just keep everything, instead of expending time trying to see what you might not need. To use analogies, back when I first got into computers in the early 1990s storage was like a small apartment. You had to be selective about what to keep. Nowadays it's like the Empire State Building. You can keep every bit of junk without worrying about filling it.

I've saved all my emails on Zimbra since forever. I'm not even at 13 GB yet.

 

[LunarMist]

Storage is not all that cheap in 2024. I was just looking at what it costs to store 132TB actual, i.e., $6000 for a modest NAS with 8x24TB in RAID Z2. It can be cheaper if you can homebrew with some gigantic, heavy setup using a greater number of smaller oddball drives, but 8-bays is reasonably portable at under 30 lbs. When it's time to leave for another zone you can take it quickly or pull and ship just the drives.

 

[Mercutio]

I think you could cut that price down by about 15% just by taking 22TB drives instead of 24 and you'd still get 132TB. Run TrueNAS core or UnRAID on a cheap SAS HBA with an old desktop you pull out of storage and I'll bet you can save another $1000 and still keep the weight to 30lbs, too.

 

[jtr1962]

Storage is not all that cheap in 2024. I was just looking at what it costs to store 132TB actual, i.e., $6000 for a modest NAS with 8x24TB in RAID Z2. It can be cheaper if you can homebrew with some gigantic, heavy setup using a greater number of smaller oddball drives, but 8-bays is reasonably portable at under 30 lbs. When it's time to leave for another zone you can take it quickly or pull and ship just the drives.

It depends upon your needs. I'd be hard pressed to imagine what I'd need 132TB for. For saving the kind of stuff I do even a few TB is plenty. To put things into perspective the first drive I bought was 8.4GB and it cost $100. That seemed like oodles of storage at the time but I still would have had to be selective about what I saved. A few weeks ago I bought a 256GB thumb drive from BestBuy for $10.88 shipped. They sent me a $10 promotion so I tried to find something useful. The drive was on sale for $19.99. With tax and the promotion, $10.88 is what I paid. 30 times the storage for 1/10th the price, or actually about 1/25th the price if you correct for inflation. Granted, 256GB won't store all my data but any decent SSD of a few TB will, along with drive images of my OS. At this point I see no need to worry about deleting stuff I might never need. I can save it all.

 

[Mercutio]

Ryzen 9000 Series Community Update: Gaming Performance

The new “Zen 5” architecture first introduced in high end laptops earlier this summer is now available in a full stack of desktop processors with the AMD Ryzen 9000 Series. And while “Zen 5” is delivering leadership performance across content creation, productivity and AI applications, we’ve...

community.amd.com

 

[Santilli]

Ryzen 9000 Series Community Update: Gaming Performance

The new “Zen 5” architecture first introduced in high end laptops earlier this summer is now available in a full stack of desktop processors with the AMD Ryzen 9000 Series. And while “Zen 5” is delivering leadership performance across content creation, productivity and AI applications, we’ve...

community.amd.com

Why AMD-generated gaming data differs from reviewer data: For our Ryzen 9000 launch, AMD internal labs generated data that showed a 9% average generational uplift in 1080P gaming versus Ryzen 7000 Series, and an average of 6% higher performance across more than 30 games when compared against the competition’s best. Not all reviews are seeing these results, and this reflects the complexity of high-performance PC testing today given the number of system and software variables. There are several factors specifically creating these

 

[LunarMist]

"Zen 5" will see the biggest boost, but this Windows update will improve performance for "Zen 4" and "Zen 3" as well. We're collaborating with Microsoft to roll out this optional update to all Windows 11 users soon.

Basically Windows 11 is required and they will fix it later. Fortunately I did not fall for the AMD BS and buy the 9950X. It's not clear if there is some other bug in the CPUs or just when there are multiple CCDs.

 

[Mercutio]

Windows 10 hasn't seen a major update since 2022, LM. It's not exactly the future of computing.

 

[Mercutio]

LM, why not consider a Windows Server with Desktop Experience install? You'll lose some Microsoft Store applications like Your Phone, but that also removes a lot of the nonsense of Windows 11.

 

[sedrosken]

I'm able to procure a genuine Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 license from my distributor -- it's not cheap, it's $295 -- but I'm assuming at some point here soon I'll also be able to grab licenses for IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024, aka Win11 24H2 but without a lot of the bull. That would also do the job. I'll keep my eyes peeled and let you know when I see it hit the catalog, if you'd like.

 

[LunarMist]

LM, why not consider a Windows Server with Desktop Experience install? You'll lose some Microsoft Store applications like Your Phone, but that also removes a lot of the nonsense of Windows 11.

I have no idea what that version of Windows entails, but it's probably not available to mere mortals like me.
There is no Your Phones program that I'm aware of on any on my computers and in fact no microphone in the system for security reasons. The laptop have them, but I stay off.

 

[Mercutio]

I have no idea what that version of Windows entails, but it's probably not available to mere mortals like me.
There is no Your Phones program that I'm aware of on any on my computers and in fact no microphone in the system for security reasons. The laptop have them, but I stay off.

The application is either Phone Link or Your Phone depending on the Windows version. It can display your phone's screen on your PC, show you files, photos and notifications and can in some cases can also allow you to take calls and display your SMSes, but it's something that doesn't work on Windows Server.

You can always install a trial copy of Windows Server and then get a product key to switch to a perpetual license. That nicely solves the problem of all the things that suck about Windows 11 (IMO these are all pretty much Microsoft account related) if you don't feel like mitigating them by modifying the installation or trusting someone else's modifications.

 

[LunarMist]

There is an App called Phone Link, but it does not do anything since I avoid the MS accounts.

 

[Handruin]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Horrible-Ryzen-9-9950X-inter-CCD-latency-which-is-more-than-twice-vs-Ryzen-9-7950X-is-reportedly-getting-fixed.880285.0.html

 

[Mercutio]

That is a very weird problem to not catch prior to release.

I still haven't pulled the trigger on my upgrade yet. I know the X3D products won't do anything for me but there have already been slight price cuts on 9000 series Ryzen in a few places.

 

[Handruin]

Agreed it is weird it wasn't caught, so I'm cautiously optimistic that there may be a fix for it to give these maybe a little more bump in performance.

I've also seen the price cuts happening and even though I'm not really in the market for one, I may reconsider for my homelab if the price is right and there's the aforementioned fix.

 

[LunarMist]

A BIOS level fix would be better than relying on the vagaries of various OS, but I'm not expecting any miracles. Maybe all-core and single-threadly will be 10% better than Zen part 4. I also feel it would be better to wait for the X3D to see what that brings.

 

[Mercutio]

I should finally have my 9950X running by the end of the week. For now, I am going to pair it with an A770 and an Arctic Liquid Freezer 3. I actually hope that I'll be able to undervolt it a bit and maintain its performance. Since it's going in another Be Silent Base 802, I'll be able to compare the AIO with the Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 (basically the NH-D15 but for Threadripper).

I'm waiting to see what options Intel puts on the table with Battlemage. I can't bring myself to spend $800 on a 12GB nVidia card, but the 20GB 7900XT for $650 is extremely viable for Resolve Studio

 

[sedrosken]

Agreed it is weird it wasn't caught, so I'm cautiously optimistic that there may be a fix for it to give these maybe a little more bump in performance.

Personally I think it smacks of being rushed out the door. This was clearly a marketing opportunity with Intel machine-gunning their foot -- they could very well have said they're having production issues and doing the QA work that Intel should have been and I'm sure everyone would have loved them for it especially when the 7000 series was already so, so, so good.

I really want to see if Intel can pull out of the tailspin it's in, because I do not want to use another machine with a buggy, stupid Asmedia USB controller. That's the main thing I loathe about my Ryzen box -- that and my seeming complete inability to use either of the open DIMM slots on Zen3 without major, major compromise.

 

[Mercutio]

And here's an incoming fix for inter-CCD latency reporting. No idea if it actually does anything.

re: being rushed, we're talking about a CPU design that has been in development for probably years. It's possible or even likely that AMD has internal tools and idiosyncratic OS builds that we are not blessed to see. It may be marketing just lied its pants off. But Zen 5 releasing this summer has been planned at least since the beginning of the year.

What's wrong with your DIMM slots on your AM4 board? It's Zen4/Zen5 that have issues with high clocks on more than two DIMMs so far as I know.

 

[sedrosken]

Zen's IMC has never been good, to be quite honest. Zen 2 was a massive leap forward over Zen and Zen+, but it's still known to not be great. I just have had poor luck and not a ton of money or patience with which to keep buying new kits to find some goldilocks situation where everything works as-is.

 

[Mercutio]

9950X is up and running. It took over five minutes for it to identify my RAM and boot, even longer than it did with the 7600X, but it's been fine since. I don't have a GPU running on it. I need to figure out a different way to mount all my drives because clearance with cards installed is a problem. I'm using an ASRock x670E Lighting, which has three physical x16 slots, which are currently meant for my GPU, IB NIC and u.2 HBA.

The Arctic Freezer 3 360 was easier to install than I would've guessed, but if my Silent Base 802 case were even a millimeter smaller, it would've had a clearance issue with the heat sinks on the top left side of the board. It's quiet but I couldn't say one way or the other that it's better than a Noctua. It WAS cheaper by about $30. I'm sure it'll be ok at least over the next year or so. Not as bad as I thought it would be.

I'm missing substantial portions of my workstation but I think it's around ~25% faster with 50% fewer cores than my threadripper.

 

[Mercutio]

I could only get 160GB G.Skill DDR5-6000 EXPO to post at 4800MHz. I guess I'm not surprised by this.

 

[Mercutio]

This thing will let me use 4x u.2 @ PCIe 4 speeds. Right now I only have a mix of Intel and Crucial PCIe 3.0 drives but all three of my x16 slots actually do seem to work at x16 if I only use two of the m.2 slots. That's a trade I'm happy to make.

 

[ddrueding]

I remember hearing somewhere that the speed compatibility issues are worse not only if you have 4 sticks of RAM, but if the motherboard even supports 4 sticks of RAM. I'll be considering an ITX board for my next system specifically for this.

 

[sedrosken]

Yeah, no, from now on anything AMD I treat as a two-stick max machine. It sucks, but it's what you pretty much have to do.

 

[Mercutio]

I remember hearing somewhere that the speed compatibility issues are worse not only if you have 4 sticks of RAM, but if the motherboard even supports 4 sticks of RAM. I'll be considering an ITX board for my next system specifically for this.

That's leaving PCIe lanes on the table and we can't have that!

 

[ddrueding]

That's leaving PCIe lanes on the table and we can't have that!

So long as the motherboard has 2.5GbE+ onboard I only need a GPU.

 

[sedrosken]

With how I leverage my NAS, I need more throughput than even 2.5GbE can do. I'm actually pretty glad for the 10GbE NICs I've fitted in my server and my workstation, so I'd definitely need more than one slot available.

 

[Mercutio]

Apparently, there are some obscenely patient people who have worked out manual timings to get specific memory kits running at full speed with all slots populated. Everything has to be set manually. As a fun side effect, with absolutely nothing in auto mode, these PCs typically boot faster as well. I want to keep messing with this but the scary and highly variable amount of time my Asrock board spends after every settings change definitely puts a damper on my enthusiasm.

 

[Mercutio]

Here's somebody's Reddit post describing their tuning for 4x DDR5-6000, which seems to match the G. Skill modules I have.

 

[jtr1962]

Isn't that similar to when people overclocked their memory? They change one setting at a time until it doesn't POST, then maybe go back a notch or two to ensure stability. As an EE, I'd say the issues with four slots are likely caused by the greater capacitance on the data lines relative to two slots. This is rearing its ugly head more and more as memory has gotten faster.

 

[Mercutio]

We are literally overclocking our RAM. JEDEC has set official speeds and voltages for every generation of SD-RAM and technically the spec includes everything up to DDR5-8800, but anything over IIRC 5600 is an overclock, at least in AMD-land. In theory EXPO and XMS are intended to represent manufacturer and motherboard agreed-upon values for overlock timings, but these standards break down with more than two modules and in fact every AM5 motherboard manual I've seen will have a section that says something like "Hey you 're probably only going to get 6400 with two DIMMs, 5600 with 3 and 4800 with all four slots populated."

 

[ddrueding]

My understanding of the issues caused by motherboards with 4 DIMM slots (whether populated or not) relates to the length of traces required, and reflections in the longer trace leading to interference due to the travel time approaching the signalling time. But capacitance would also be a thing.