AMD's Ryzen Will Really Like A Newer Linux Kernel

[L_A_G]

Well, who knows it might even work fine on Ubuntu as Lisa's Footnote on 52% improvment mentioned that was tested on some Ubuntu 16.x with SPECint06 - see this under SLIDE 10 ( for those of us who like reading little letters )

That does not mentioned kernel of course, so we can only guess - i don't think, but it might even work fine with default on 16.x whatver that is

We're talking about AMD themselves, if anyone's going to be able to use yet-to-be-released patches it's them.

Please correct me if I am wrong but isn't the main difference between 1700 and 1700X that the first one doesn't support XFR?

From what I've understood they just haven't released the XFR frequencies of the 1700 and even if the 1700 doesn't get support you can still clock it manually. Somebody's already boosted the base clock to over 4 GHz so with a good cooler the non-X 1700 could offer pretty good value.

[Jabberwocky]

Last week I preordered exactly the same components as Michael. Ryzen 1700 and ASUS Prime X370-Pro. I would be awesome to see some tests here and compare it to my own setup. I hope I don't need to wait too long for it to arrive in South Africa.

[qsmcomp]

So, no free motherboards from MSI?

[ernstp]

Thanks for the details! Yeah, also wondering about things like sata controller etc.

[Michael]

Michael, you mention you haven't received any testing samples. In case you really won't at all, what Ryzen CPU(s) will you buy on your own?

I mentioned that in this very article...

[LeJimster]

I too ordered a R9 1700 this Saturday, thou with a B350 rather than X370 motherboard, along with an improved cooler as the manufacturer of the one in my current machine decided not to make AM4 mounting brackets for it and thus prevented me from re-using it. I almost can't wait to see how close to or beyond the 1700X (with stock cooling) you can push the regular 1700 with improved cooling and how the dynamic clocking responds to a proper cooler with a big heatsink and a 120 mm fan. The main difference between the 1700 and 1700X seems to only be the base clock and the stock cooler (which is a bit beefier on the 1700X).

From what I've read the B chipsets don't have the power to push over clocks as far as the top tier X chipsets. 4Ghz is possible on 1700 but not much more apparently. I'm also betting the 1800X have been speed binned. Looking forward to all the benches!

[Michael_S]

For anyone using Ubuntu 16.04 on an x86_64 processor, to get a newer kernel go to http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ and go into the subdirectory for the Ubuntu build of kernel you want, e.g. v4.10.1. Then you want to download the linux-headers-(numbers and letters)_all.deb, linux-headers-(numbers and letters)-generic_(more numbers and letters)_amd64.deb, then linux-image-(numbers and letters)-generic_(more numbers and letters)_amd64.deb.

Then in the directory with the downloads, do "sudo apt install ./linux...." each file in order (first the linux-headers with the all.deb suffix, then linux-headers with amd64.deb suffix, then the linux-image with the amd64.deb suffix). Just make sure to put the ./ in front of the name of the file so apt looks for it in the current directory instead of the default Ubuntu repositories.

I've been using that to get kernel 4.9 for better AMD RX-480 support for months without problems.

[drSeehas]

... the real question is the ratio of SATA:M.2 ports (and how many of these are shared).

???
Current M.2 SSDs use PCIe and not SATA, so there is no sharing with SATA ports.

... Any 3.1 ports we'll see will still be coming from additional controllers.

AFAIR AMD has USB 3.1 support built-in, so it depends on the motherboard manufacturers.

[torsionbar28]

Typically, that's what causes problems in Linux. Manufacturers add all sorts of 3rd party chips to the motherboard, trying to differentiate themselves, and those chips tend to be a little more "exotic" and slower to gain Linux support.

That being said, SATA is of lesser concern, the real question is the ratio of SATA:M.2 ports (and how many of these are shared).
USB, sadly, is still stuck at 3.0. Any 3.1 ports we'll see will still be coming from additional controllers.

Every Ryzen chip and every AM4 mobo I've seen lists USB 3.1 in the spec. Whether that's on-die with the CPU, or a chip on the mobo, I'm not sure many users care either way. The hardware support is there, so until the Linux reviews start appearing, any discussion of driver support is speculation.

[Rodrix]

Would be interesting to see how fast a kernel will be compiled comparing previous AMD chips.