MSI introduces Latency Killer to improve DDR5 latency on AM5 motherboards — feature reportedly reduces latency by up to 8ns

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U3011@reddit

I'm on AM4 with a 5900X. How is AM5 these days? I was one of those big time hopefuls about Arrow Lake and wanting to move back to Intel. I haven't had any issues with AMD/AM4 since launch week of the 5900X. I was also looking forward to Zen 5 given some of the juicy rumors.

After a month and change away from an reliable connection the news of the releases hit like a freight train. The 5900X is more than enough for my needs if not excessive. But the chase for the newer and shinier gizmo is always a rush.

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Standard-Potential-6@reddit

5950X here and holding out for Zen 6. Fast DDR5 will only get cheaper and I really want the new I/O die with newer integrated graphics and new chipset features, otherwise I’d move already.

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U3011@reddit

Have those been confirmed? It's been discussed for over a year now since MLID brought it up. If Zen 6 is a 2027 product then it opens the possibility of AMD releasing it on a new socket and not AM5 going by their longer cadence.

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Standard-Potential-6@reddit

I’m basing it off my own sense that DDR6 isn’t close enough to mass production and that AMD’s performance this generation was kneecapped by the poor memory controller carried over from Zen 4.

Certainly I doubt AMD would release their next product without an at least RDNA3 iGPU, which I want for my Linux host.

Anything is possible!

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VenditatioDelendaEst@reddit

Certainly I doubt AMD would release their next product without an at least RDNA3 iGPU

Eh... consider how long they stuck with Vega for APUs (even mobile!) when the lack of AV1 decode was killing them on battery life.

But if you haven't bought into AM5... why do you care if Zen 6 is compatible with it? Don't want to early-adopt a chipset?

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Standard-Potential-6@reddit

Mm, I love AV1 hardware decode, but it doesn't really kill battery not to have it. YouTube so far has preferred showing VP9 when that's what the hardware supports, and software decode of AV1 is actually pretty fast and low power.

Right, I'd prefer if Zen 6 was on AM6. Still I'll be upgrading then either way.

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U3011@reddit

You seem to be right. I was under the impression it was under some level of production already. That may work out well for AMD given Zen 4's release was mired with high DDR5 prices.

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Standard-Potential-6@reddit

I don’t, but r/overclocking can probably help, one post there now with some discussion.

https://old.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/1guyggs/9800x3d_ddr_8000mhz_stable_but_bad_performance/

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U3011@reddit

Thank you! My original plan based on the BS rumors of Zen 5's incredible performance or Arrow Lake's early on in the year was to slap together a system maxed out on cores and DDR5 promises of 128GB (64x2). That plan is dead in the water. If the rumors of the 9950X3D turn out to be true I may upgrade to that.

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VenditatioDelendaEst@reddit

If they're on AM4 now and they're not opposed to early-adopting, it doesn't matter what socket Zen 6 is on, does it?

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NickNau@reddit

am5 is good. I transitioned to team red after owning only intel pcs since Pentium 133. got 7950x to replace aging 8700k. I really did not like the idea of e-cores on desktop introduced by intel back then. meanwhile ryzen with 16 real cores... so long story short, I am happy. got second 7700x build for ai stuff. am5 is ruling at this point of time, esp with x3d stuff.

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U3011@reddit

Yes, I'm the same as you. My only two AMD systems were 20 years ago during the Pentium era. The rest had been Intel machines. Zen 3 was a no brainer compared to Intel Core 10th generation. I'm likely to hold off until some preliminary info about Zen 6 or Nova Lake slip out before deciding to wait or bite the bullet and purchase current hardware.

At this rate I'm expecting Blackwell to be equally lackluster for frequent upgraders but it should be good for those of us with Pascal cards.

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AppropriateDuck6404@reddit

intel is blown out of the water

amd5 will suport ryzen 10000x3d . . on a 650 chipset

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lovely_sombrero@reddit

Ironically, the only problem I had was with the onboard Intel network card.

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gfy_expert@reddit

How long does it takes normal boot?

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Slyons89@reddit

Takes about 15 seconds for my newly built AM5 system to hit the windows login screen. Almost exactly the same as my AM4 system.

Memory training takes about 4 minutes with 48 GB ram but it only needs to do it after making BIOS changes.

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gfy_expert@reddit

4 minutes on xmp(expo)?!?did they got rotten at amd hq due to ram training times?!?

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Slyons89@reddit

RAM training takes a while but it only needs to do RAM training after you make BIOS changes. It also takes longer based on the RAM capacity, so my system with 48 GB takes longer than a system with 32 GB.

It doesn’t affect daily usability at all.

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Dackel42@reddit

Wait this ram training is after any bios changes? No matter what? My PC takes super long to boot, and CPU and RAM Led light up, should i just let it run and let it do its ram training instead of forcefully shutting it down till it boots?

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Slyons89@reddit

You should try giving it 5 minutes to see if it boots. If it boots, try going into the BIOS and enabling the feature called “Memory Context Restore”. That is what allows it to skip doing the memory training whenever possible. It shouldn’t be doing it on a regular startup unless you went into the bios and changed a setting.

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korodic@reddit

Can confirm, my Asus board (hero x670e) did training every time and also jacked up windows sleep mode. Turning this off made the issue go away.

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Dackel42@reddit

Ok thank you very much, im struggling with this issue for a while not its super annoying, maybe this solves the issue.

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SJGucky@reddit

Already have the lastest BIOS 1.2.0.2b. How long it takes depends on if your RAM needs to be trained.
You can disable training, but it will still occasionally do it.

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gfy_expert@reddit

No training,on xmp aka amd expo

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COMPUTER1313@reddit

This feature was introduced to combat purported memory latency degradation that started with AGESA 1.2.0.2a on AM5 motherboards—1.2.0.2a was the microcode update that added support for Ryzen 9000X3D CPUs.

The BIOS description for Latency Killer reads, "enhances latency performance but could potentially reduce CPU performance."

Regardless, this latency degradation issue is purportedly going to be rectified in future AGESA microcode updates for AM5 motherboards.

The impression I’m getting is that there’s nothing special about what could be a temporary measure.

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samiamyammy@reddit

What's special is instead of waiting for Agesa updates they are progressive about creating at least a temporary solution. Meanwhile with an ASRock I'll probably be waiting for the official Agesa

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PotentialAstronaut39@reddit

Reality: "MSI fixes lag introduced by latest AGESA."

Marketing: "MSI introduces Latency Killer."

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Majortom_67@reddit

This is marketing: creation of problems and appear as an hero for solving them

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Significant-Effect56@reddit

I have a 7950x and a X670E mobo rocking DDR5 6000MHz RAM. With the same CPU and RAM, is there any RAM based performance benefit to move to X870E? Even minor say latency or stability? Please can someone comment on this?

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Kelutrel@reddit

The consensus is that X870E *may* allow an easier RAM overclocking, but out-of-the-box it offers no performance increase of any kind.

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ShadowFox_BiH@reddit

The quality of reporting on this article is absolute trash tier. The memory enhancement feature has been there since the board has launched and you have had the option to play with these settings ever since; there is a slight latency increase increase on the latest AGESA but it’s not that big; compared to previous versions. The changes the memory enhancement feature makes is to adjust the secondary timings to be tighter than standard EXPO and requires training; you have a few options available and while some may work others will introduce instability because the timings are too low. I have spent quite some time with these and the latency decreases are much larger than 8 ns at least on my 8000 MT/s kit which provides a boost in bandwidth as well. This feature exists on other boards like the Gigabyte Aorous series as well so it’s not exactly a newly discovered thing.

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