I've been using AMD Ryzen chips and MSI B350 MATE motherboards as PC upgrades across the whole office. (Work for a big games company.) No problems for me with these systems, although primarily Windows 10. Also, I've been specifying Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB as the standard graphics card.

Also, of interest is the latest breaking news on the Intel chip design flaw, which can be fixed two ways - (a) A new Intel chip released without the flaw, or (b) Operating System Kernel fixing to stop the flaw being exploitable.

The OS fixes are likely to slow down Intel chips by 20% of their current performance. "Just Sayin'"

Quoting: g000hThe OS fixes are likely to slow down Intel chips by 20% of their current performance. "Just Sayin'"

It's funny how everyone has their own percentages for this, and very few are based on actual benchmarks. Phoronix actually [tested](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests) some games with PTI enabled, and there doesn't seem to be any impact at all. Unless you game in a VM, maybe? It's definitely a problem for some memory-heavy real-world workloads though.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: g000hThe OS fixes are likely to slow down Intel chips by 20% of their current performance. "Just Sayin'"

It's funny how everyone has their own percentages for this, and very few are based on actual benchmarks. Phoronix actually [tested](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests) some games with PTI enabled, and there doesn't seem to be any impact at all. Unless you game in a VM, maybe? It's definitely a problem for some memory-heavy real-world workloads though.

Every single game is going to be affected differently (as well as affecting different Intel processors differently). You can't put an exact percentage until you have a specific system, benchmark the specific game, apply the patch, and benchmark the game again.

People have been mentioning slow-downs of between 7% and 30% typically across the internet. My take on that is you could easily expect 20% slow-down as a ball-park figure.

Quoting: g000hI've been using AMD Ryzen chips and MSI B350 MATE motherboards as PC upgrades across the whole office. (Work for a big games company.) No problems for me with these systems, although primarily Windows 10. Also, I've been specifying Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB as the standard graphics card.

Is any of the PCs runnning Linux? If so which distro?

Quoting: g000hAlso, of interest is the latest breaking news on the Intel chip design flaw, which can be fixed two ways - (a) A new Intel chip released without the flaw, or (b) Operating System Kernel fixing to stop the flaw being exploitable.

The OS fixes are likely to slow down Intel chips by 20% of their current performance. "Just Sayin'"

I don't think AMD is not affected as written in the other thread. However as I plan to wait for Ryzen 2 or the next gen Intel CPU I'm awaiting a hardware fix for this bug. Therefore this will not affect my solution (as long as all parties deliver a hardware bugfix).

Quoting: g000h

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: g000hThe OS fixes are likely to slow down Intel chips by 20% of their current performance. "Just Sayin'"

It's funny how everyone has their own percentages for this, and very few are based on actual benchmarks. Phoronix actually [tested](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests) some games with PTI enabled, and there doesn't seem to be any impact at all. Unless you game in a VM, maybe? It's definitely a problem for some memory-heavy real-world workloads though.

Every single game is going to be affected differently (as well as affecting different Intel processors differently). You can't put an exact percentage until you have a specific system, benchmark the specific game, apply the patch, and benchmark the game again.

Yes. I know what benchmarking means. So does Michael at Phoronix, usually. (I usually avoid his site for completely unrelated reasons.)

Quoting: g000hPeople have been mentioning slow-downs of between 7% and 30% typically across the internet. My take on that is you could easily expect 20% slow-down as a ball-park figure.

My point was that your ball-park figure is completely meaningless, especially if it's based on ball-park figures other people have come up with around the internet. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that this is a real problem, but throwing around numbers based on guesswork isn't helpful.

Trying to save my thread by bringing back the Question regarding your experiences regarding Linux drivers for the current Ryzen/Epyc platform. Anything bad or good to say?

Also the question regarding mobo vendors. Is there one more 'Linux afine than the others? I tend to buy supermicro. Which vendor do you prefer?

I'm curious what do you mean motherboard drivers support? - In 21 years I have never had Linux not work due to the motherboard nor have I ever loaded any special drivers to it.

In the past 6 or so years the only time I can even recall having driver issues was;

• Ubtuntu 16.04 providing stock drivers on the boot cd that would turn off the screen on computers with Nvidia GTX 970


• My Crucial M4 SSD needing a firmware update that had to be done from a dos boot disc

The first is just Canonical being asses and refusing to update their ISO with drivers that work, the second was a hardware thing.

Every thing else I've plugging into/installed in my desktop has just worked, so are you just being cautious or have you genuinely had driver issues with Linux in recent years?

ps. not attempting troll here - just genuinely curious

My experience with Ryzen has been very positive since I built mine. I've had almost zero issues with it so far.

My Specs:

Ryzen 7 1700X
Asus Prime B350M-A Motherboard
2x 8GB G.Skill Memory - Running at 2800MHZ
MSI GTX 1060 6GB
Western Digital 2TB HDD

Back when I built this, Ryzen had been released for about 3 weeks and I installed Mint 18.1 (Comes with Kernel 4.4). Aside from the CPU temperature readings, it recognized everything I've thrown at it and the system has been stable all along. Currently still running Mint 18.1 / updated with kernel 4.14.8.

It's not Linux specific, but my experience with Asus motherboards is a good one, they also released many Bios updates (12 in total) for my board.

Quoting: Avehicle7887It's not Linux specific, but my experience with Asus motherboards is a good one, they also released many Bios updates (12 in total) for my board.

I've been happy with Asus for a couple of decades as well. Even when things go wrong (and sometimes they do regardless of manufacturer), their RMA process has been painless in my experience.

THX for all the replyes so far. Good to hear that there seems to be no special issues so far with AMD. I'm lacking any experince with AMD since them since my switch to intels core CPUs.

Quoting: GuppyI'm curious what do you mean motherboard drivers support? - In 21 years I have never had Linux not work due to the motherboard nor have I ever loaded any special drivers to it.
[...]

Mainly I'm still suffering from a nightmare with my Athlon XP and Linux more than a decade ago. :-)

However there is another company where just the name is causing bad feelings: Realtek Semiconductor. I had issues with:
- LAN Chips (Okay this seems to be solved so far)
- WLAN is still a nightmare
- 4 Years ago I remember issues with the HD audio chipsets with my actual PC - I ended up by disabling onboard sound and buying an external DAC. I know the issue is fixed meanwhile but I'm used to my DAC, HDMI audio and an USB headset.

Every Time I installed Linux on a peace of hardware containing a quite new realtek chip I was suffering with the drivers. It feels like that it take ages for getting solid drivers for realtek stuff and many of them never become part of the Kernel because they are not open.

Most other issues I'm currently remebering are more or less laptop specific like synaptic touch pad etc.

From my work I also have only experience with Intel stuff

Maybe I'm just to long with Linux and have to many bad experinces but I'm still evaluating if it runs under Linux before buying a peace of hardware.