Updated AMD Zen CPU Microcode Posted

[MarcT]

Well, I can say that it updated the uCode on my Ryzen 7 2700x system from 0x08008204 to 0x0800820b.
What it actually does, I've no idea...! A changelog would be nice.

[HarlemSquirrel]

Oh boy, I hope this microcode includes some fresh NSA back doors!

[Grim85]

Yeah, I suspect you're right there (don't have any links/proof myself), but I upgraded from a 1700 (Week ?5? with the original performance marginality issue that I never bothered RMAing) to a 2700 a few months ago, and my machine went from hanging every few days to being rock-solid stable.

I never saw the issue for the first 6 or 8 months I had it, then it was every other day, changing the power supply setting is enough of a work around for me for now, I get the impression that my B350 board will be supported for a couple more iterations of Zen, when they change the socket I'll pickup up a newer one to get the most out of this board

[Darknation]

Odd, maybe I'm just lucky but I haven't had any hangup issues with either my R5 1600 or my R7 1700.

[Veerappan]

This is a hardware bug in the first generation of Zen CPUs and I doubt it can be fixed. Your best bet is to upgrade to Zen+ now (no need for new motherboard in such case) or Zen 2 later. This bug was very annoying in my 1700X and is completely gone in 2700X.

Yeah, I suspect you're right there (don't have any links/proof myself), but I upgraded from a 1700 (Week ?5? with the original performance marginality issue that I never bothered RMAing) to a 2700 a few months ago, and my machine went from hanging every few days to being rock-solid stable.

[shmerl]

Hopefully it fixes the random freezes when changing C-State, so that we can set the power supply settings back to low

This is a hardware bug in the first generation of Zen CPUs and I doubt it can be fixed. Your best bet is to upgrade to Zen+ now (no need for new motherboard in such case) or Zen 2 later. This bug was very annoying in my 1700X and is completely gone in 2700X.

[starshipeleven]

Does it require new UEFI or it can be loaded without changing the above?

microcode is updated in the CPU by Linux during boot if the UEFI's loaded version is older. This update is not permanent though, and will happen again every time you reboot.

[Grim85]

Hopefully it fixes the random freezes when changing C-State, so that we can set the power supply settings back to low

[flubba86]

AMD was behind in releasing microcode update files, even after some UEFI/BIOS shipped it already.

Yeah, that was my thought too. If AMD is releasing Microcode updates, chances are there are already some BIOS updates shipping with it included.

The release notes of those BIOS updates might shed some more light on what has changed.

[chithanh]

Could be for spectre. AMD was behind in releasing microcode update files, even after some UEFI/BIOS shipped it already.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1062370934227521536

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1062383945692569601