My recent experience with the new AMD 7000 series processors and related motherboards

[lmitche]

In searching through AS, unless I have missed something, there has been almost no discussion of the AMD 7000 ZEN4 series CPUs and motherboards released 10 months ago. This post is to share my recent experience with the new AMD 7000 series processors and related motherboards.

 

Some background - for years my "best sounding" machine has been a 10 core, Intel 4.7GHz CPU with 19.245MB cache, using a X299 motherboard with 64gb of quad channel memory running at 3600mhz, along with 2 PCIE3 cpu direct NVME drives, one for the OS and one for music storage. This machine runs Roon on Audiolinux with the custom kernel option. This means that the Linux kernel is compiled with a microarchitecture aware compiler, (Clang/LTO) for the Cascade Lake series CPU. The resulting kernel lowers power consumption and temperature and makes an audible difference in SQ.

 

Great care needs to be taken to keep this Intel processor from running at full throttle and within the limits of a fanless rig. Once configured SQ is terrific.

 

It should be said that this machine runs Roon bit-perfect straight out of the box, with no upsampling with Roon or Hqplayer. For the exception of offline solutions like PGGB, I have never heard a real-time upsampling algo that beats bit-perfect playback.

 

Always on the lookout for the next thing, the 8 core AMD 7700 65 watt, (90 max) CPU, using a b650 motherboard with 4 sticks of 16 gb DDR5 memory running at 6000mhz (almost double the 3600mhz rate above), 5.3GHz processor clock speeds, direct to CPU PCIE 4 and 5 NVME drives was too tempting to ignore. A prototype machine was built.

 

Would the increase in clock speed, memory and PCIE speeds improve SQ? Yep.

 

Months later, having tested many different hardware and configurations, the resulting music server is the "new" best sounding machine built here. SQ is at a new level with improved transients, better low and high end extension, increased depth, and razor sharp imaging across the full range of rock, jazz and classical recordings. The image has a new level of density across the spectrum so hidden details are now audible, creating the next level of presence in a natural and engaging way.

 

The AMD 7700 is one of a family of ZEN4 processors. Unfortunately, at this time the Clang/LTO compiler for ZEN4 is not ready, so this server runs a ZEN3 custom kernel version of Audiolinux. Expectations are that the ZEN4 Clang/LTO release will be released in the fall of 2023, so a further improvement in SQ is anticipated.

 

Note - The machine runs cool, with the CPU package consuming about 30 watts of power during playback avoiding the need for megawatt power supplies.

 

The resulting sound quality is just magical.

 

I look forward to hearing more about the experience of other AS members with the new AMD 7000 series. 

Larry

[MarcelNL]

thanks for being inquisitive ! I wondered about that new range for a while but turned to starting a dual Xeon build....

[AudioDoctor]

How did you get 4 sticks of DDR5 RAM to clock higher than 3600mhz?

[lmitche]

10 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

How did you get 4 sticks of DDR5 RAM to clock higher than 3600mhz?

 

Reading the experience of other builders, I too was apprehensive about getting 4 sticks of DDR5 to play together.

 

It should be said that DDR4 sticks can be purchased in lots of 2 or 4 sticks that are matched and designed to work together. For DDR5 there are no QVL listings for 4 sticks anywhere to found, only paired sticks.

 

Experience tells me that installing ram pairs in paired slots ensures that the matched set at least share the same channel.  This has eliminated any issues with 4 sticks of DDR5 on multiple ZEN4 builds.

 

BTW, 6000mhz is said to be the ram speed "sweet spot" for the AMD 7000 series.

[AudioDoctor]

7 hours ago, lmitche said:

 

Reading the experience of other builders, I too was apprehensive about getting 4 sticks of DDR5 to play together.

 

It should be said that DDR4 sticks can be purchased in lots of 2 or 4 sticks that are matched and designed to work together. For DDR5 there are no QVL listings for 4 sticks anywhere to found, only paired sticks.

 

Experience tells me that installing ram pairs in paired slots ensures that the matched set at least share the same channel.  This has eliminated any issues with 4 sticks of DDR5 on multiple ZEN4 builds.

 

BTW, 6000mhz is said to be the ram speed "sweet spot" for the AMD 7000 series.

 

You still didn't say how you managed to get 4 sticks to 6000mhz.

[lmitche]

18 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

You still didn't say how you managed to get 4 sticks to 6000mhz.

Do you have a question about some other technical aspects of the 4 stick DDR5 memory installation process?

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Do you have a question about some other technical aspects of the 4 stick DDR5 memory installation process?

 

Considering no one else on the planet has been able to accomplish this, I am curious to know how you did it.

[lmitche]

On 7/21/2023 at 1:21 PM, AudioDoctor said:

 

Considering no one else on the planet has been able to accomplish this, I am curious to know how you did it.

Based your response, I looked around and do see others have had issues with 4 sticks on AMD, but others have got it working.

 

Two things:

 

1) My AMD/DDR5 motherboards are set to always run full memory training, making 6000mhz reliable with 4 sticks. Boots times are long, >1 min <2 mins, but always complete successfully.

 

2) The DDR5 DIMM connectors are new and finicky, and re-seating DIMMs when there are training problems seems to help.

[AudioDoctor]

On 7/23/2023 at 3:07 PM, lmitche said:

Based your response, I looked around and do see others have had issues with 4 sticks on AMD, but others have got it working.

 

Two things:

 

1) My AMD/DDR5 motherboards are set to always run full memory training, making 6000mhz reliable with 4 sticks. Boots times are long, >1 min <2 mins, but always complete successfully.

 

2) The DDR5 DIMM connectors are new and finicky, and re-seating DIMMs when there are training problems seems to help.

 

Can you show me a link to someone who has it working? AMD themselves say 4 sticks is limited to 3600mhz.

[botrytis]

12 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Can you show me a link to someone who has it working? AMD themselves say 4 sticks is limited to 3600mhz.

Depends on the MB manufacturer and bios used.

[AudioDoctor]

30 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Depends on the MB manufacturer and bios used.

 

Fair point I suppose but I still have not seen any evidence of anyone getting 4 sticks to 6000mhz no matter the equipment used. And the ones that are getting more than 3600mhz have had to go through incredibly detailed manual overclocking to get to 4000mhz, I think I recall a 4200mhz. It's not plug and play.

[MarcelNL]

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/ddr5-ryzen-7-7700-ddr5-memory-scaling-review,11.html

[AudioDoctor]

31 minutes ago, MarcelNL said:

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/ddr5-ryzen-7-7700-ddr5-memory-scaling-review,11.html

 

Go back to page 1... this is done with a 2 stick configuration of 2x16GB sticks for a total of 32GB. I have 2x32 DDR5 CL30 @6000MHZ right now. 4 Sticks would run at 3600mhz.

 

2 sticks = easy. Enable EXPO and reboot

 

4 sticks = not possible.

 

edit: I have this exact kit:  https://www.gskill.com/product/165/393/1665020366/F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5N

[AudioDoctor]

GSkill does not even offer a DDR5 kit with 4 sticks, for good reason.

[yamamoto2002]

I'm using 2x 48GB DDR5, total 96GB memory on this AMD 7950x computer. This machine is not suitable to be placed in a audio room, high pitched coil whine acoustic noise is heard

 

[lmitche]

16 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

edit: I have this exact kit:  https://www.gskill.com/product/165/393/1665020366/F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5N

Thats interesting . . . what bios are you running on your ASUS Hero x670E motherboard?

[AudioDoctor]

12 hours ago, lmitche said:

Thats interesting . . . what bios are you running on your ASUS Hero x670E motherboard?

 

I have an Asus X670E Pro Art because it has a 10GB port.

 

You still haven't answered my question. You answer mine, I'll answer yours.

[AudioDoctor]

20 hours ago, yamamoto2002 said:

I'm using 2x 48GB DDR5, total 96GB memory on this AMD 7950x computer. This machine is not suitable to be placed in a audio room, high pitched coil whine acoustic noise is heard

 

 

Again, no one is disputing that 2 sticks can be made to easily run at EXPO speeds. @lmitche claimed he has 4 sticks running at 6000mhz. I want to know how because it seems like a motherboard and/or chip redesign might be the only way as the memory controller on the CPU is just overwhelmed with 4 sticks at higher speeds.

[yamamoto2002]

I did read the specifications and avoided 4 DIMM configuration, for it should be somewhat slower than 4 DIMM and 96GB should be enough for my workloads. But in the future, if memory exhausts and computer starts thrashing, I do not hesitate to add another 96GB

 

IMO 16GB x2 is better than 16GB x 4 for this CPU

[lmitche]

On 7/26/2023 at 10:37 PM, AudioDoctor said:

 

I have an Asus X670E Pro Art because it has a 10GB port.

 

You still haven't answered my question. You answer mine, I'll answer yours.

Really?

 

Perhaps something in this picture will help you.

 

[AudioDoctor]

37 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Really?

 

Perhaps something in this picture will help you.

 

 

Doubtful as everything is on auto and that would automatically set 4 sticks of DDR5 at 3600mhz. So you either have 2 sticks, which would work at 6000mhz or...

[AudioDoctor]

That board has zero EXPO 4 stick combos in its QVL, according to ASUS.

 

The problem is down to the design of the IMC on the Ryzen 7000 CPU. It's not something a BIOS can fix. CPUs that use Registered ECC RAM do not have this problem because their IMC only sees the Buffer, not each individual rank of RAM on Each stick. Right now, 4 sticks of 16GB RAM is 8 ranks of RAM and that is just too much for the IMC on the Ryzen to handle at high speeds. It will not go higher than 3600mhz without manual tuning. Setting the Expo profile won't do it.

 

Look for yourself:  https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-x670e-hero-model/helpdesk_qvl_memory/

 

 

[lmitche]

On 7/27/2023 at 4:06 AM, yamamoto2002 said:

I did read the specifications and avoided 4 DIMM configuration, for it should be somewhat slower than 4 DIMM and 96GB should be enough for my workloads. But in the future, if memory exhausts and computer starts thrashing, I do not hesitate to add another 96GB

 

IMO 16GB x2 is better than 16GB x 4 for this CPU

In generally, across Intel and AMD product lines, without fully populated memory slots it is difficult to achieve the kind of "liquid" sound quality that so many of us hope to obtain.

 

This is a shame as memory is expensive.

[lmitche]

10 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

That board has zero EXPO 4 stick combos in its QVL, according to ASUS.

Agreed, the QVL of the B650 motherboard used here does not indicate support for 4 DDR5 sticks. Yet it works.

 

BTW, sometime during my research into the AMD 7000 series a ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI motherboard was acquired with the intention of testing SQ to learn if the upgrade was worth double the cost of the b650 motherboard. A CPU and 4 memory sticks that had been previously stable in an AMD B650 motherboard were used for this test.  After 8 hours of changing bios settings, and trying various bios releases without success, I gave up on getting 4 sticks to play nicely and returned the motherboard to the vendor.

 

Also, as shown above, this server is using 4 x 16gb DDR5 sticks for a total of 64 GBs. These are based on the old "power of 2" memory size multiples. The new 24gb, 48gb DDR5 multiple DDR5 sticks need a bios update that includes AGESA version to Combo AM5 PI 1.0.0.7.a. at least according to ASUS.

 

Note - Call me old fashioned but having spent months of my life staring at a digital logic analyser to debug an Intel cpu, any memory stick not sized by the power of 2 is suspect.

 

[AudioDoctor]

7 hours ago, lmitche said:

Agreed, the QVL of the B650 motherboard used here does not indicate support for 4 DDR5 sticks. Yet it works.

 

BTW, sometime during my research into the AMD 7000 series a ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI motherboard was acquired with the intention of testing SQ to learn if the upgrade was worth double the cost of the b650 motherboard. A CPU and 4 memory sticks that had been previously stable in an AMD B650 motherboard were used for this test.  After 8 hours of changing bios settings, and trying various bios releases without success, I gave up on getting 4 sticks to play nicely and returned the motherboard to the vendor.

 

Also, as shown above, this server is using 4 x 16gb DDR5 sticks for a total of 64 GBs. These are based on the old "power of 2" memory size multiples. The new 24gb, 48gb DDR5 multiple DDR5 sticks need a bios update that includes AGESA version to Combo AM5 PI 1.0.0.7.a. at least according to ASUS.

 

Note - Call me old fashioned but having spent months of my life staring at a digital logic analyser to debug an Intel cpu, any memory stick not sized by the power of 2 is suspect.

 

 

That was the QVL for the X670 E Hero you claimed to have. You have shown absolutely nothing to make me believe your claim that you are somehow smarter than everyone else on the planet and have made this work.

 

However, I encourage everyone else to try it and see what happens when you set your 4 RAM sticks to EXPO and Auto. Make sure to post back asking how lmitche did it.