My AMD experience with Ryzen
Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:44 am
Its more a rant, but i have now my fair share of testing Ryzen with 5950x and 5900x for more than 6 months, marvelous cpus, faster and more efficient than Intel 10/11gen, its nice to see AMD really putting some hard competition with intel, but not all is great with them.
The problem for me with AMD is that the CPU/motherboards are tweaked into boosting very aggressive even with mid end tasks (have tested MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte), while intel is more down to earth into where it needs to do some aggressive boosting. I know you can do a lot of tweaking, and even undervolting, probably disabling boosting, etc, as for sure the AMD cpus are superior to Intel offering, but the way they come setup is what bothers me.
I'm fine with having noise when a task demands it, like encoding, streaming, transcoding, rendering, etc. But here is where AMD is better, when you use all the cores, the boosting is well done, i never even reach 80c, its like they limit very well the voltages and the clocks so the cpu remains cool and performs very well. My issue is when not all the cores are used, which is most of the day for me, for example opening my Surveillance cameras software, gaming (depends on the game), some rendering of videos that don't use the GPU, its like the CPU knows it will not use all cores and starts boosting very aggressive, i tried to keep my fan profiles as high as i can before load, NH-D15s with NF-A15 at 900rpms idle, this is to sustain the load, and keep them like that for as long as i can, in my case 70C, where i ramp them up, if i don't do this, i wont catch the cpu before it throttles. The problem is i trigger the NxWitness (camera software) and suddenly im at 80C with fans already going into 1250rpms, not super noisy but not quiet, i start doing other stuff, the load increases and so will the fans will punish me with more noise.... all of this with my intel 9900k is less than 55C average 60C peaks, this is with the CPU fans at 500rpms totally silent. So fine, i cant use my surveillance software with anything else with AMD, alright not a big deal, its only one app right. Well with gaming, games like BF5 or APEX will send the CPU to 75C minimum with 80C+ peaks, not quiet again, and you need to drop things on the background to avoid more noise. Who would have thought in gaming i now hear the CPU while i cant the GPU, ironic no?
Im still going to try the dynamic undervolting, but BIOS releases still have been fairly often so im still waiting to see them more stable.
Either way, i can tell you without much tweaking, intel is quieter for my line of use, probably not as capable as the 5900x/5950x, but here is my summary,
IDLE = AMD and Intel are fine
MID LOAD = Intel is much cooler and quieter multi tasking.
HIGH LOAD = AMD is better, here is where intel will do more noise and AMD is more capable and efficient
Take my comments with a grain of salt, people with 5600x/5800x with less cores and lower factory boost clocks, are less likely to encounter temperature/noise issues under the same loads i work with.
PS, AMD 6900XT is amazing, not only is super quiet, never seen it even hit 70C. The way it manages voltages with multi monitor is better than Nvidia, no flickering, no high clocks/temperatures with 3 monitors, Nvidia struggles with this, and its very picky with refresh rates with multi monitor, while AMD seems to do it fine without any issues.
The problem for me with AMD is that the CPU/motherboards are tweaked into boosting very aggressive even with mid end tasks (have tested MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte), while intel is more down to earth into where it needs to do some aggressive boosting. I know you can do a lot of tweaking, and even undervolting, probably disabling boosting, etc, as for sure the AMD cpus are superior to Intel offering, but the way they come setup is what bothers me.
I'm fine with having noise when a task demands it, like encoding, streaming, transcoding, rendering, etc. But here is where AMD is better, when you use all the cores, the boosting is well done, i never even reach 80c, its like they limit very well the voltages and the clocks so the cpu remains cool and performs very well. My issue is when not all the cores are used, which is most of the day for me, for example opening my Surveillance cameras software, gaming (depends on the game), some rendering of videos that don't use the GPU, its like the CPU knows it will not use all cores and starts boosting very aggressive, i tried to keep my fan profiles as high as i can before load, NH-D15s with NF-A15 at 900rpms idle, this is to sustain the load, and keep them like that for as long as i can, in my case 70C, where i ramp them up, if i don't do this, i wont catch the cpu before it throttles. The problem is i trigger the NxWitness (camera software) and suddenly im at 80C with fans already going into 1250rpms, not super noisy but not quiet, i start doing other stuff, the load increases and so will the fans will punish me with more noise.... all of this with my intel 9900k is less than 55C average 60C peaks, this is with the CPU fans at 500rpms totally silent. So fine, i cant use my surveillance software with anything else with AMD, alright not a big deal, its only one app right. Well with gaming, games like BF5 or APEX will send the CPU to 75C minimum with 80C+ peaks, not quiet again, and you need to drop things on the background to avoid more noise. Who would have thought in gaming i now hear the CPU while i cant the GPU, ironic no?
Im still going to try the dynamic undervolting, but BIOS releases still have been fairly often so im still waiting to see them more stable.
Either way, i can tell you without much tweaking, intel is quieter for my line of use, probably not as capable as the 5900x/5950x, but here is my summary,
IDLE = AMD and Intel are fine
MID LOAD = Intel is much cooler and quieter multi tasking.
HIGH LOAD = AMD is better, here is where intel will do more noise and AMD is more capable and efficient
Take my comments with a grain of salt, people with 5600x/5800x with less cores and lower factory boost clocks, are less likely to encounter temperature/noise issues under the same loads i work with.
PS, AMD 6900XT is amazing, not only is super quiet, never seen it even hit 70C. The way it manages voltages with multi monitor is better than Nvidia, no flickering, no high clocks/temperatures with 3 monitors, Nvidia struggles with this, and its very picky with refresh rates with multi monitor, while AMD seems to do it fine without any issues.