A Timely Discovery: Examining Our AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Results
by Ian Cutress & Ryan Smith on April 25, 2018 11:15 AM ESTAMD and Intel Have Different HPET Guidance
A standard modern machine, with a default BIOS and a fresh Windows operating system, will sit on the first situation in the table listed above: the BIOS has HPET enabled, however it is not explicitly forced in the operating system. If a user sets up their machine with no overclocking or monitoring software, which is the majority case, then this is the implementation you would expect for a desktop.
AMD
We reached out to AMD and Intel about their guidance on HPET, because in the past it has both been unclear as well as it has been changed. We also reached out to motherboard manufacturers for their input.
For those that remember the Ryzen 7 1000-series launch, about a year ago from now, one point that was lightly mentioned among the media was that in AMD’s press decks, it was recommended that for best performance, HPET should be disabled in the BIOS. Specifically it was stated that:
Make sure the system has Windows High Precision Event Timer (HPET) disabled. HPET can often be disabled in the BIOS. [T]his can improve performance by 5-8%.
The reasons at the time were unclear as to why, but it was a minor part in the big story of the Zen launch so it was not discussed in detail. However, by the Ryzen 5 1000-series launch, that suggestion was no longer part of the reviewer guide. By the time we hit the Ryzen-2000 series launched last week, the option to adjust HPET in the BIOS was not even in the motherboards we were testing. We cycled back to AMD about this, and they gave the following:
The short of it is that we resolved the issues that caused a performance difference between on/off. Now that there is no need to disable HPET, there is no need for a toggle [in the BIOS].
Interestingly enough, with our ASUS X470 motherboard, we did eventually find the setting for HPET – it was not in any of the drop down menus, but it could be found using their rather nice ‘search’ function. I probed ASUS about whether the option was enabled in the BIOS by default, given that these options were not immediately visible, and was told:
It's enabled and never disabled, since the OS will ignore it by default. But if you enable it, then the OS will use it – it’s always enabled, that way if its needed it is there, as there would be no point in pulling it otherwise.
So from an AMD/ASUS perspective, the BIOS is now going to always be enabled, and it needs to be forced in the OS to be used, however the previous guidance about disabling it in the BIOS has now gone, as AMD expects performance parity.
It is worth noting that AMD’s tool, Ryzen Master, requires a system restart when the user first loads it up. This is because Ryzen Master, the overclocking and monitoring tool, requires HPET to be forced in order to do what it needs to do. In fact, back at the Ryzen 7 launch in 2017, we were told:
AMD Ryzen Master’s accurate measurements present require HPET. Therefore it is important to disable HPET if you already installed and used Ryzen Master prior to game benchmarking.
Ultimately if any AMD user has Ryzen Master installed and has been run at any point, HPET is enabled, even if the software is not running or uninstalled. The only way to stop it being forced in the OS is with a command to chance the value in the BCD, as noted above.
For the Ryzen 2000-series launch last week, Ryzen Master still requires HPET to be enabled to run as intended. So with the new guidance that HPET should have minimal effect on benchmarks, the previous guidance no longer applies.
Ryzen Master is not the only piece of software that requires HPET to be forced in order to do what it needs to do. For any of our readers that have used overclocking software and tools before, or even monitoring tools such as fan speed adjusters – if those tools have requested a restart before being used properly, there is a good chance that in that reboot the command has been run to enable HPET. Unfortunately it is not easy to generate a list, as commands and methods may change from version to version, but it can apply to CPU and GPU overclocking.
Intel
The response we had from Intel was a little cryptic:
[The engineers recommend that] as far as benchmarking is concerned, it should not matter whether or not HPET is enabled or not. There may be some applications that may not function as advertised if HPET is disabled, so to be safe, keep it enabled, across all platforms. Whatever you decide, be consistent across platforms.
A cold reading of this reply would seem to suggest that Intel is recommended HPET to be forced and enabled, however my gut told me that Intel might have confused ‘on’ in the BIOS with ‘forced’ through the OS, and I have asked them to confirm.
Looking back at our coverage of Intel platforms overall, HPET has not been mentioned to any sizeable degree. I had two emails back in 2013 from a single motherboard manufacturer stating that disabling HPET in the BIOS can minimise DPC latency on their motherboard, however no comment was made about general performance. I cannot find anything explicitly from Intel though.
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Spunjji - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Is there any other kind? Either you're at the budget end where everything is GPU limited or at the high-end where not spending a decent amount on a monitor to go with your £500 GPU is a crying shame.There's a niche where Intel has a clear win, and that's people running 240Hz 1080p rigs. For most folks with the money to spend, 2560x1440 (or an ultra-wide equivalent) @ 144hz is where it's at for the ideal compromise between picture quality, smoothness and cost. There are a lot of monitors hitting those specs right now.
eva02langley - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
I was mentioning in the review that 1080p benchmarks need to go... now it is even more true with HPET.Kudos on this guys, it is really interesting to read.
DanNeely - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
>93% of Steam gamers main display is at 1080p or lower.If the new review suit split what GPUs were run at what resolutions, dropping 1080p from the high end card section might be reasonable. OTOH with 240hz 1080p screens a thing there's still an enthusiast market for 1080p combined with a flagship GPU.
IndianaKrom - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
* Raises hand, that's me, someone with a GTX 1080 and 240Hz 1920x1080 display.The industry seems obsessed with throwing higher and higher spacial resolution at gamers when what I really want is better temporal resolution.
eva02langley - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
1080p @ 60Hz which is a non issue because we are talking about RX 580/1060 GTX or below. At that point the GPU is the bottleneck.It only affect 1080p @ 144Hz with a 1080 GTX/Vega 64 minimum which is really < 2%.
You are really the exception, however the 1080p CPU bottleneck focus on you entirely without even taking in consideration other Use Cases.
Holliday75 - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
I am willing to bet that 95%+ of Steam users have no clue what we are talking about and don't care.mapesdhs - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
IndianaKrom, are you aware that using high(er) frequency monitors retrains your brain's vision system so that you become tuned to that higher refresh rate? New Scientist had an article about this recently; gamers who use high frequency monitors can't use normal monitors anymore, even if previously they would not have found 60Hz bothersome at all. In other words, you're chasing goalposts that will simply keep moving by virtue of using ever higher refresh rates. I mean blimey, 240Hz is higher than the typical "analogue" vision refresh of a bird. :DIMO these high frequency monitors are bad for gaming in general, because they're changing product review conclusion via authors accepting that huge fps numbers are normal (even though the audience that would care is minimal). Meanwhile, game devs are not going to create significantly more complex worlds if it risks new titles showing more typical frame rates in the 30s to 80s as authors would then refer to that as slow, perhaps criticise the 3D engine, moan that gamers with HF monitors will be disappointed, and I doubt GPU vendors would like it either. We're creating a marketing catch22 with all this, doubly so as VR imposes some similar pressures.
I don't mind FPS fans wanting HF monitors in order to be on the cutting edge of competitiveness, but it shouldn't mean reviews become biased towards that particular market in the way they discuss the data (especially at 1080p), and it's bad if it's having a detrimental effect on new game development (I could be wrong about the latter btw, but I strongly suspect it's true from all I've read and heard).
We need a sanity check with frame rates in GPU reviews: if a game is doing more than 80 or 90fps at 1080p, then the conclusion emphasis should be that said GPU is more than enough for most users at that resolution; if it's well over 100fps then it's overkill. Just look at the way 8700K 1080p results are described in recent reviews, much is made of differences between various CPUs when the frame rates are already enormous. Competitive FPS gamers with HF monitors might care, but for the vast majority of gamers the differences are meaningless.
Luckz - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
So the real question is if someone first exposed to 100/120/144 Hz immediately squirms in delight, or if they only vomit in disgust months later when they see a 60 Hz screen again. That should be the decider.Spunjji - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
1080p is popular in the Steam survey where, incidentally, so is low-end GPU and CPU hardware. Most of those displays are 60hz and an awful lot of them are in laptops. Pointing at the Steam surveys to indicate where high-end CPU reviews should focus their stats is misguided.I'm still not certain that testing CPUs in a way that artificially amplifies their differences in a non-CPU-reliant workload is really the way to go.
ElvenLemming - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
You can just ignore the 1080p benchmarks if you don't think they're meaningful. As DanNeely said, 93% of surveyed Steam users are 1080p or lower, so I'd be shocked if more than a handful of review sites get rid of it.