Friday, March 12th 2021

AMD Fixes Intermittent USB Connectivity Issues on 500 Series Chipsets, BIOS Update Arrives in April

AMD has four weeks ago acknowledged that there was a problem with 500 series motherboard chipsets. The problem has occurred with a few chipset functions like USB connectivity, USB 2.0 audio crackling (e.g. DAC/AMP combos), and USB/PCIe Gen 4 exclusion. To fix these problems, consumers were forced to either put up with problems or lower the PCIe standard from Gen 4 to Gen 3 and switch USB protocol revision from 3.0 to 2.0. This of course wasn't the ideal solution, especially for bandwidth-heavy applications. Users have submitted many reports to AMD, and the company appears to have found a root cause of these issues. AMD has published a Reddit thread, that reports that the company found a solution to the problem and that we are going to see a fix for it in a form in AGESA BIOS update.
AMD RedditAMD has prepared AGESA 1.2.0.2 to deploy this update, and we plan to distribute 1.2.0.2 to our motherboard partners for integration in about a week. Customers can expect downloadable BIOSes containing AGESA 1.2.0.2 to begin with beta updates in early April. The exact update schedule for your system will depend on the test and implementation schedule for your vendor and specific motherboard model. If you continue to experience intermittent USB connectivity issues after updating your system to AGESA 1.2.0.2, we encourage you to download the standalone AMD Bug Report Tool and open a ticket with AMD Customer Support.
Source: AMD Subreddit
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107 Comments on AMD Fixes Intermittent USB Connectivity Issues on 500 Series Chipsets, BIOS Update Arrives in April

#51
Tom Sunday
bugIntel has always been the more stable platform....
The only really good thing to date about AMD has been their stock which in just 10 month time made a lot of cash for many! Before leveling off and still dropping $$$ as even the hype is now wearing thin. Most AMD users continue to be plagued with BIOS, memory, compatibility and other connectivity issues. With Alder Lake virtually on our doorstep and with its all new revolutionary architecture, even more challenging days are ahead for AMD. One thing has stood out very clearly and with INTEL always having been the more stable and mature platform right out of the box.
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#52
RJARRRPCGP
Tom SundayThe only really good thing to date about AMD has been their stock which in just 10 month time made a lot of cash for many! Before leveling off and still dropping $$$ as even the hype is now wearing thin. Most AMD users continue to be plagued with BIOS, memory, compatibility and other connectivity issues. With Alder Lake virtually on our doorstep and with its all new revolutionary architecture, even more challenging days are ahead for AMD. One thing has stood out very clearly and with INTEL always having been the more stable and mature platform right out of the box.
But, I'm having good luck from the get go with my Ryzen systems, including my first Ryzen CPU, a Ryzen 3 3200G. Memtest passed with XMP, despite the horror stories about XMP with AMD.
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#53
Patriot
RJARRRPCGPBut, I'm having good luck from the get go with my Ryzen systems, including my first Ryzen CPU, a Ryzen 3 3200G. Memtest passed with XMP, despite the horror stories about XMP with AMD.
Yeah, that was a load of hyberbolic fud... only first gen zen had memory issues running above 2933
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#54
Turmania
It is true that Intel is more reliabe as a system package all together. However, even though I myself more Intel leaning there is no way I can recommend them these days above zen 3. The trouble with AMD is once in a generation they make a product that is better but then they raise the price to unseen levels. And there is shortage of their products and or chipset is not upto standards. In other words they shoot themselves in the foot just when they are about to sprint.
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#55
chrcoluk
TumbleGeorgeAll this will be fixed generally when stop support of older generations like USB 2.0, PCIe 1/2/3.0, 1G network controller, VGA and DVI, COM and other ancient "technologies" and reduce size of BIOS and drivers. Too many old compatibles, too long code=more bugs
Who can old tech, there is second hand market!
I wouldnt consider pcie 3.0, usb 2.0, gigabit lan ancient. Maybe you are a cutting edge type of guy/girl, but things dont become useless the moment something new comes along.

Imagine the grief AMD would got if this chipset didnt support the techs you mentioned, instead of people having a workaround, they would have just been SOL.

Many vendors still make devices using these tech's, people still have older monitors etc, one of the great things about PC's is been able to mix and match hardware.

Also if I am not mistaken a reason boards still include usb2 ports is for compatibility with booting, making sure keyboard/mouse works in bios etc.
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#56
TheLostSwede
News Editor
RJARRRPCGPBut, I'm having good luck from the get go with my Ryzen systems, including my first Ryzen CPU, a Ryzen 3 3200G. Memtest passed with XMP, despite the horror stories about XMP with AMD.
It's exaggeration as so many other things. Older RAM and certain modules simply won't do XMP. However, as it's an Intel standard, it's not hard to see why. Besides, a lot of RAM seems to be able to run with tighter timings on a Ryzen setup compared to an Intel Core platform, so there's that benefit as well of doing it manually.
chrcolukI wouldnt consider pcie 3.0, usb 2.0, gigabit lan ancient. Maybe you are a cutting edge type of guy/girl, but things dont become useless the moment something new comes along.

Imagine the grief AMD would got if this chipset didnt support the techs you mentioned, instead of people having a workaround, they would have just been SOL.

Many vendors still make devices using these tech's, people still have older monitors etc, one of the great things about PC's is been able to mix and match hardware.

Also if I am not mistaken a reason boards still include usb2 ports is for compatibility with booting, making sure keyboard/mouse works in bios etc.
Actually, the best example of this is Apple. USB-C/Thunderbolt on all their laptops, which means people need to use awkward dongles to connect to pretty much everything.
Yes, things need to progress at some rate, but you can't just do a clean slate reboot like they've done when the rest of the world isn't ready to move along as well.

Technically a USB-C port can do everything a USB-A port can and then some, but do people want to use adapters or swap cables just so they can use their keyboards and mice?
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#57
TumbleGeorge
chrcolukI wouldnt consider pcie 3.0, usb 2.0, gigabit lan ancient. Maybe you are a cutting edge type of guy/girl, but things dont become useless the moment something new comes along.

Imagine the grief AMD would got if this chipset didnt support the techs you mentioned, instead of people having a workaround, they would have just been SOL.

Many vendors still make devices using these tech's, people still have older monitors etc, one of the great things about PC's is been able to mix and match hardware.

Also if I am not mistaken a reason boards still include usb2 ports is for compatibility with booting, making sure keyboard/mouse works in bios etc.
There are produced enough devices with the old technology, so who is willing to continue to use them has a choice, and quite cheap. For the electronics of industrial machines, for example CNC milling machines are produced special industrial computers with a separate class of components. Aren't we discussing parts for home desktop computers here?
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#58
Space Lynx
Astronaut
bonehead123Just ANUTHA reason not to buy Rev1 of any pc hdwr..... :D

The REAL question is (IMHO): why this was not discovered & fixed PRIOR to release ?????
I still have not experienced this issue a single time, and I have no intention of using the new BIOS, all my OC's are fully stable and I'm having a blast, SAM enabled, Rage Mode, all of it pedal to the metal.
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#59
TheoneandonlyMrK
TheLostSwedeSorry what? What kind of utter drivel is this?
What does I/O and physical interfaces have to do with it?
If you have an issue with drivers, take that up with Microsoft. Most drivers are tiny in Linux.
PCIe is a backwards compatible technology by design. Ethernet doesn't cause any known issues. USB is in every single modern computer.
Sure, we can get rid of VGA and DVI, but considering that most VGA ports today use a D/A chip and takes a digital signal from the GPU, it's hardly an issue.
DVI uses more or less the same standard as HDMI, so should we get rid of HDMI too then?
COM ports might not be useful to you, but the serial bus is still used in a ton of devices. It's not something that's going to have a detrimental effect on the system.
Sure, tidy up the code, but that's not the same as getting rid of still widely used standards just because you don't like them.


Can you please provide proof of this?
There seems to be a fair amount of issues with Intel these days too and always have been.
Shit, Intel used to make some horrible motherboards back in the days.


Why? What new technology could they possibly have added that would've made sense?
And if this is a USB issue that is not exclusive to the 5000-series CPUs or the two (by two different companies I should point out) 500-series chipsets, as it clearly affects the 400-series in some cases as well, what use would a new chipset have been? Please enlighten me.
Too true, I'm into pc because of it's Epic engineering viability in connection terms.
Loosing that makes it a phone or iMac alternative.


Plus judging things I experienced , like Icue, swarm, Asus aisuite or grid or vast amounts of other softwares frequently Janky operation, how many times is AMD and intel ftm hardware getting blamed for what are software issues.

Still the negative waffling of some of the intel fanbois on here is comedy, all trying to pretend they're not uttter fanbois in a tangential AMD usb thread shitposting about perceived stability without proof or reason.
And without a clue what they're perception tells us about them.
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#60
TheLostSwede
News Editor
TheoneandonlyMrKToo true, I'm into pc because of it's Epic engineering viability in connection terms.
Loosing that makes it a phone or iMac alternative.


Plus judging things I experienced , like Icue, swarm, Asus aisuite or grid or vast amounts of other softwares frequently Janky operation, how many times is AMD and intel ftm hardware getting blamed for what are software issues.

Still the negative waffling of some of the intel fanbois on here is comedy, all trying to pretend they're not uttter fanbois in a tangential AMD usb thread shitposting about perceived stability without proof or reason.
And without a clue what they're perception tells us about them.
I don't think anyone of us that are using AMD in one of our rigs hate on Intel because AMD is better.
I mean, I have more Intel hardware than AMD hardware, as both my NAS and my laptop are Intel powered, whereas my desktop is my only AMD system.
Over the years I have owned everything apart from an IDT Winchip and the IBM branded Cyrix processors, but I have had AMD, Cyrix, Intel and VIA powered systems, although I have never had a VIA powered one as my main rig.
Cyrix wasn't that great, but it sure was cheap.
My first AMD CPU (well, technically second, but that's another story) which was a 5k86 P75 couldn't even compile Linux without crashing...
All these companies have made bad products over the years and sometimes the deserve to get bashed, as they screwed up badly.
What I don't get is the bashing of users just because they have different hardware than you, I mean, does it really matter? Are you happy with your computer? Great. That's it then. I have no reason to slag you because you got whatever hardware you got.
On the other hand I don't get people that are standing up for a large corporation no matter what they do or how pants their products are, just because...
Posted on Reply
#61
Space Lynx
Astronaut
TheLostSwedeI don't think anyone of us that are using AMD in one of our rigs hate on Intel because AMD is better.
I mean, I have more Intel hardware than AMD hardware, as both my NAS and my laptop are Intel powered, whereas my desktop is my only AMD system.
Over the years I have owned everything apart from an IDT Winchip and the IBM branded Cyrix processors, but I have had AMD, Cyrix, Intel and VIA powered systems, although I have never had a VIA powered one as my main rig.
Cyrix wasn't that great, but it sure was cheap.
My first AMD CPU (well, technically second, but that's another story) which was a 5k86 P75 couldn't even compile Linux without crashing...
All these companies have made bad products over the years and sometimes the deserve to get bashed, as they screwed up badly.
What I don't get is the bashing of users just because they have different hardware than you, I mean, does it really matter? Are you happy with your computer? Great. That's it then. I have no reason to slag you because you got whatever hardware you got.
On the other hand I don't get people that are standing up for a large corporation no matter what they do or how pants their products are, just because...
yep I have a intel laptop for work, and intel gaming laptop i used in grad school with a gtx 1070. happy with both. and happy with my all AMD desktop, purely for nostalgic reasons. glad to see competition playing ping pong, it's fantastic since I love high refresh gaming.
Posted on Reply
#62
Chrispy_
TheoneandonlyMrKPlus judging things I experienced , like Icue, swarm, Asus aisuite or grid or vast amounts of other softwares frequently Janky operation, how many times is AMD and intel ftm hardware getting blamed for what are software issues.

Still the negative waffling of some of the intel fanbois on here is comedy, all trying to pretend they're not uttter fanbois in a tangential AMD usb thread shitposting about perceived stability without proof or reason.
And without a clue what they're perception tells us about them.
So many "hardware problems" are "fixed" by a clean Windows install and using only WHQL drivers. OEM vendor utilities are universally garbage. The best case scenario is that they are only an eyesore and don't actually cause problems.
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#63
efikkan
Chrispy_So many "hardware problems" are "fixed" by a clean Windows install and using only WHQL drivers. OEM vendor utilities are universally garbage. The best case scenario is that they are only an eyesore and don't actually cause problems.
Everyone should re-install their OS regularly, and especially after major hardware changes. And it does for sure help reduce problems. I'm a firm believer in having a dedicated OS drive which is "disposable", where all personal files, games etc. are on a different drive, to make re-installs quick and easy, plus the dedicated OS drive takes the majority of the wear.

The biggest culprit in terms of stability problems is caused by "user error"; running overclocked memory. If everyone but experienced overclockers stuck to stock memory speeds, it would probably eliminate more than half of support threads in forums like this.

But you can't deny the fact that AMD has to put out a long series of firmware updates before they achieve relative stability, far more than Intel has to after each CPU release. Essentially, AMD CPUs are in beta testing for 3+ months. And for those of us using Linux on workstations, there has been some serious boot issues with most releases from AMD. They clearly need more time to test their products prior to release.
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#64
TumbleGeorge
efikkanEveryone should re-install their OS regularly, and especially after major hardware changes.
For this we paid money on Microsoft? How many years exist Microsoft Windows and users are forced to take such measures that they should not have had to do for a long time?
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#65
efikkan
TumbleGeorgeFor this we paid money on Microsoft? How many years exist Microsoft Windows and users are forced to take such measures that they should not have had to do for a long time?
Well, in theory it shouldn't be required, but we all know there are all these obscure problems that seem to pop up. And even though many of them are ultimately "solvable" with enough effort and trial and error, I just think a clean re-install is preferable. This is my opinion, but I respect that you may disagree.

Even for Linux I've given up tracking down "unexplainable" problems. If I can't find the problem pretty quickly, I just format and re-install the OS, just a base Ubuntu, graphics driver and a couple of scripts and it's back up in 15-30 min. For Windows installs it usually takes me a little longer, and I've haven't bother to semi-automate it, but still usually quicker than spending days looking for issues.

As for paying Microsoft for this, there are many other issues I have with Windows and the quality of the product than this. This problem is at least not solely Microsoft's fault, but a combination of iffy driver quality and software bloat from various hardware makers.
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#66
DeathtoGnomes
TheLostSwedeSo what is the virtual pitch fork squad going to bash AMD for now?

Obviously an annoying issue for those that experienced it, but it was clearly not a hardware flaw as some seemed to suggest.
Sorry I'm late to the party, pass my pitchfork please. :p :rolleyes:
TheLostSwedeI don't think anyone of us that are using AMD in one of our rigs hate on Intel because AMD is better.
This used to mean that the size of the wallet determined which camp you joined.
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#67
deu
windwhirlDon't get AMD, get MAD? Or Don't get MAD, get AMD? LMAO

In all seriousness, though, both companies have their history of fucking up something here or there. No point in getting all defensive for one or the other.
Haha, could have been AMDs slogan a few years ago when it was not going so well! :D To you second line: precisely! I applaude whoever fixes their mistakes (Intel or AMD :) )
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#68
windwhirl
deuHaha, could have been AMDs slogan a few years ago when it was not going so well!
I take it you didn't see some of AMD's official marketing:




I'm kinda hungry now, though :D
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#69
Nkd
newtekie1Or is it a hardware flaw covered up by a software fix that affects performance? That's my guess. I bet people doing tests before and after will find USB performance will be worse after this update.
Damn you are so certain about everything lol.
Posted on Reply
#70
TheLostSwede
News Editor
Tom SundayThe only really good thing to date about AMD has been their stock which in just 10 month time made a lot of cash for many! Before leveling off and still dropping $$$ as even the hype is now wearing thin. Most AMD users continue to be plagued with BIOS, memory, compatibility and other connectivity issues. With Alder Lake virtually on our doorstep and with its all new revolutionary architecture, even more challenging days are ahead for AMD. One thing has stood out very clearly and with INTEL always having been the more stable and mature platform right out of the box.
Oh please, stop spreading FUD.
My system has been stable for ages, not had any memory issues, but then again, I knew there were issues with older Corsair LPX modules and I didn't expect XMP - an Intel standard - to work.
The UEFI has been stable since three months after launch of the 3000-series and you'll see that I was very pissed off at one stage of you go through the forums.
I haven't seen any other compatibility issues.

Yes, AMD needs to spend more time testing things before launch and maybe not rush out products like they've done, but there current situation is not like what you're describing.
Two mates got Ryzen 7 5800X systems and neither of them have had any problems.
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#71
Ahhzz
So, pop quiz: Who can tell me which post number was the last one to actually address the original topic?
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#72
Caring1
AhhzzSo, pop quiz: Who can tell me which post number was the last one to actually address the original topic?
#1?
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#73
Redwoodz
You people need to get real. I live in Silicon Valley and I had to do without toilet paper for months this past year and you guys are crying about waiting a couple months for a driver update.
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#74
DeathtoGnomes
AhhzzSo, pop quiz: Who can tell me which post number was the last one to actually address the original topic?
Caring1#1?
I'm agreeing with this guy ^, he is number one! :p
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#75
Ferrum Master
Gosh... VIA, SIS, Cyrix I feel old now...

I have not seen any errata free datasheet actually for any of those hubs, bridges etc...

Basically what is the fuss? They both have had issues. It is hard to top Intel i820 MTH fiasco tho...

But other than that, disabled SATAs and on X79 comes as last major errata if we speak about south bridges.
Also the PCIe 3 bugs in CPU, various redrive fixes, workarounds... sheesh Intel is no saint.

AMD also has some issues with PCIe to PCI bridges etc for example... AGESA has some problems, but nothing game breaking, but it is normal in my books. The only ones that does not mistake are the ones that do nothing.
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