I think a lot of the issues we see stem from the fact that AMD are playing catch-up. Intel is not without it's issues but where it comes to platform support and stability they have a lot of experience over AMD. AMD has not had a new architecture for over a decade before Ryzen hit, they got used to the simplicity of releasing minor UEFI tweaks and microcode updates during that time. Ryzen was nowhere near ready at the time of it's release. The firmware alone needed another 6 months to a year of vigorous testing and tweaking in conjunction with other hardware manufacturers. This never happened.
Now they are pumping out AGESA updates like crazy trying to catch up and mitigate performance and stability deficits when compared to intel. AMD are not being as careful and thorough with their testing as manufacturers are used to. On top of that there are users clamoring that updates are not flowing fast enough, X or Y vendor already released updates for this, why doesn't my board have an update yet? etc. When intel releases a major core platform update it is fairly safe to assume it has been thoroughly tested, it's changes documented and distributed to hardware vendors and major bugs and tweaks have already been addressed. I can only guess but I am almost 100% certain the same is NOT true of AMD with Ryzen.
Yes, we are seeing some fairly high instances of bricked boards via UEFI update issues and failures but this is not happening to all boards. This indicates either an issue with particular hardware combinations or users not following the proper procedure when updating. I frequently find that a user has failed to restore factory defaults before updating for example. This alone can easily cause issues, especially if the system isn't completely stable at the overclock the user has set. In a fair number of cases with the newest updates however it does seem that certain hardware seems to be resulting in failed (bricked) updates.
I have passed this information on to ASRock and they are looking into the issue. They have a lot to deal with regarding Ryzen with the demand for updates being what it is. They must walk a fine line between trusting AMD did their due diligence in testing and not trusting them and running more tests in house before updates are released. This takes time, often resulting in angry users over slow update releases. It does not help that users flock here or use the ticket system to demand updates ASAP.
This is not an ASRock specific issue by any means and my post applies to other brands too. I am not defending ASRock or just pointing fingers at AMD. AMD did what they needed to in order to remain viable and now are shoring up the issues that move caused. It isn't surprising and I don't hold it against them, my Ryzen system is the best system I have owned in years.
Edited by Xaltar - 18 Jan 2018 at 10:32pm
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Dibdidu wrote:
