AM5 boot times improve RADICALLY with memory context restore enabled

[Space Lynx]

Asrock's range of steel legend boards for AM5 are the best for fast boot with MCR enabled. Your boot times to windows match mine. But agesa versions may play into this. I'm still on 2.00 bios.

latest BIOS just came out on the 15th non-beta official support for 9000 series. I installed it yesterday actually, its rock solid. 3.10 bios number.

but yeah this is my first ever AsRock board, and I have to say I am very impressed for the price I paid. $179 was a very fair price for this board.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

idk honestly, given how agesa has had 5+ years of basically being held together by twine, I guess nothing is impossible

Is that why my Ryzens perform well, albeit being buggy months ago? I'm still on AM4, so I can't say anything about Raphael.

 

[kiniku]

I have 2 32GB sticks of DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5600 memory in my 7900X3D, ASUS X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Tough Gaming. And this has been a nightmare for me. It started with the "slow boots". So, reading around, I decided to enable MCR. Great! Fast, normal, boots again! Until it doesn't post at all. Power on, power off, reset UEFI, doesn't matter. It does not make it to POST, often. And I noticed it occurs after overnight shutdowns/morning power ups. So while troubleshooting this, I disconnected my two DP connected monitors and low and behold, it eventually makes it to post. This is a ridiculous workaround. But it HAS worked when this BS occurs in my mornings. Really, fast(er) boots are great. But having to do this rain dance on many of my mornings is not fun.

Here's what I understand about MCR -apologies to the people that know this already. MCR retains the last successful memory training settings for boot and uses those same settings for every subsequent boot. As we know, that reduces memory training to improve boot speeds. But DDR5 memory training is a complicated process. Especially with 64GB of RAM that I have. Environment factors can impact it. For example, a colder case in the mornings? So what I have decided to do is switch MCR off and live with slower boots. I'd rather my PC power on reliably than deal with this nonsense. I'll try this for a couple weeks and post later on this again.

 

[AusWolf]

I have 2 32GB sticks of DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5600 memory in my 7900X3D, ASUS X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Tough Gaming. And this has been a nightmare for me. It started with the "slow boots". So, reading around, I decided to enable MCR. Great! Fast, normal, boots again! Until it doesn't post at all. Power on, power off, reset UEFI, doesn't matter. It does not make it to POST, often. And I noticed it occurs after overnight shutdowns/morning power ups. So while troubleshooting this, I disconnected my two DP connected monitors and low and behold, it eventually makes it to post. This is a ridiculous workaround. But it HAS worked when this BS occurs in my mornings. Really, fast(er) boots are great. But having to do this rain dance on many of my mornings is not fun.

Here's what I understand about MCR -apologies to the people that know this already. MCR retains the last successful memory training settings for boot and uses those same settings for every subsequent boot. As we know, that reduces memory training to improve boot speeds. But DDR5 memory training is a complicated process. Especially with 64GB of RAM that I have. Environment factors can impact it. For example, a colder case in the mornings? So what I have decided to do is switch MCR off and live with slower boots. I'd rather my PC power on reliably than deal with this nonsense. I'll try this for a couple weeks and post later on this again.

Exactly. That's why it should be disabled by default, unless it works with your specific memory configuration, which is not guaranteed.

I envy the person whose biggest problem is a 20-second boot time on his PC.

 

[tabascosauz]

I have 2 32GB sticks of DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5600 memory in my 7900X3D, ASUS X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Tough Gaming. And this has been a nightmare for me. It started with the "slow boots". So, reading around, I decided to enable MCR. Great! Fast, normal, boots again! Until it doesn't post at all. Power on, power off, reset UEFI, doesn't matter. It does not make it to POST, often. And I noticed it occurs after overnight shutdowns/morning power ups. So while troubleshooting this, I disconnected my two DP connected monitors and low and behold, it eventually makes it to post. This is a ridiculous workaround. But it HAS worked when this BS occurs in my mornings. Really, fast(er) boots are great. But having to do this rain dance on many of my mornings is not fun.

Here's what I understand about MCR -apologies to the people that know this already. MCR retains the last successful memory training settings for boot and uses those same settings for every subsequent boot. As we know, that reduces memory training to improve boot speeds. But DDR5 memory training is a complicated process. Especially with 64GB of RAM that I have. Environment factors can impact it. For example, a colder case in the mornings? So what I have decided to do is switch MCR off and live with slower boots. I'd rather my PC power on reliably than deal with this nonsense. I'll try this for a couple weeks and post later on this again.

I'm 95% sure that while MCR is picky, it's not nearly as picky as what you're suggesting. My 2x32GB Hynix kit has never missed a beat with MCR training on my finalized 6000CL30 profile. It's only when the profile is not entirely stable (6400CL32 that I'm still fighting with because of sporadic errors) that MCR starts crapping out.

In that case, slow boot is definitely better, but it's still not an excuse not to properly verify RAM stability. Right now I do overnight TM5 and then overnight ycruncher VT3.

The harder part about AM5 compared to AM4 is that unlike the latter, memory controller stability is now a real additional factor in addition to RAM and FCLK (whereas it wasn't for 99% of people on AM4). Especially when there is little to no definitive guidance as to the various important voltages.

 

[Space Lynx]

I decided I am stay with EXPO only and default everything, which for this board default is MCR turned on, had 0 issues, so rock on! Going to keep life simple I think.

 

[lolek86]

I have 2 32GB sticks of DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5600 memory in my 7900X3D, ASUS X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Tough Gaming. And this has been a nightmare for me. It started with the "slow boots". So, reading around, I decided to enable MCR. Great! Fast, normal, boots again! Until it doesn't post at all. Power on, power off, reset UEFI, doesn't matter. It does not make it to POST, often. And I noticed it occurs after overnight shutdowns/morning power ups. So while troubleshooting this, I disconnected my two DP connected monitors and low and behold, it eventually makes it to post. This is a ridiculous workaround. But it HAS worked when this BS occurs in my mornings. Really, fast(er) boots are great. But having to do this rain dance on many of my mornings is not fun.

Here's what I understand about MCR -apologies to the people that know this already. MCR retains the last successful memory training settings for boot and uses those same settings for every subsequent boot. As we know, that reduces memory training to improve boot speeds. But DDR5 memory training is a complicated process. Especially with 64GB of RAM that I have. Environment factors can impact it. For example, a colder case in the mornings? So what I have decided to do is switch MCR off and live with slower boots. I'd rather my PC power on reliably than deal with this nonsense. I'll try this for a couple weeks and post later on this again.

Make sure memory power down also enabled

I envy the person whose biggest problem is a 20-second boot time on his PC.

I would say even 10second boot is kinda cringe in this day and age of monster manycore cpus, 100GB/s ram, 7GB/s SSDs. Much better results would be possible If OS was designed for max performance, tuned for latest hardware and not max spying. What we have is little steps and compromise with 30 year old junk.

 

[R0H1T]

I would say even 10second boot is kinda cringe in this day and age of monster manycore cpus

Try hybrid sleep or hibernate ~ it just works & you have sub 5 sec boot!

 

[AusWolf]

I would say even 10second boot is kinda cringe in this day and age of monster manycore cpus, 100GB/s ram, 7GB/s SSDs.

Having grown up on super slow HDDs and Windows 95, I disagree. If I get a 20-second boot time, but my PC is super fast after that, I can live with it.

Much better results would be possible If OS was designed for max performance, tuned for latest hardware and not max spying. What we have is little steps and compromise with 30 year old junk.

Windows being designed for spying is a different matter altogether. And Linux is always there once we've had enough.

 

[lolek86]

Having grown up on super slow HDDs and Windows 95, I disagree. If I get a 20-second boot time, but my PC is super fast after that, I can live with it.


Windows being designed for spying is a different matter altogether. And Linux is always there once we've had enough.

When you put it like that, well yeah. But much more could be done on windows side for performance enthusiasts. You can almost feel all telemetry when opening explorer.

As a matter of fact, just rebooted from archlinux based CatchyOS, try it. Its performance optimized distro, everything that could be done is implemented, x86v4, latest amd cppc things , kernels galore, you name it. BTW its astonishing how fast boot is once ramdisk is loaded or file explorer opening.

 

[mama]

Wow guys thanks for all the replies, didnt think this thread was gonna get all this attention at first. I've been reading all of your comments, im not sure if "power down mode" is enabled or not in my bios, didnt change it at all, just enabled MCR, so i guess it is enabled. Did this just yesterday, so i cant tell if its going to be stable 24/7 or not, as i said ill post here if anything weird happens.

Have to clarify my situation though. I've been having an Asus B650-A Gaming for the last year, with the same 64gb of ram and the EXPO profile enabled. Never enabled MCR in that board, because the boot times were "decent" (around 50 seconds, which is still awful for a pc with a pcie 4.0 7500mb/s m.2 ssd...) but i could deal with it and didnt care that much. But with this msi board it was just unacceptable, over 250 seconds is just too f*cking much. At first i thought it was gonna take that long only on the first boot after building the pc, but the 250 seconds were still there after 3-4 boots.

Just if anyone wants to know, enabling MCR, your XMP or EXPO profile, setting UCLK DIV1 MODE to 1:1 and using the curve optimizer (PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) -> Curve Optimizer set to All Cores -> All Core Curve Optimizer Sign set to Negative -> All Core Curve Optimizer Magnitude set between 5 and 30 (set mine at 20)) is the way to go when dealing with AM5 bios settings if you just want a pretty easy way to optimize your ryzen 7000 build.

Yep, those settings make an easy setup. I have the same but negative 15 on CO.

As an aside, my boot times are 10 seconds or so, so I'm not really getting what the fuss is about. Of course, if there is memory training that is longer but that's usually a once off when upgrading the bios or tinkering.

 

[kapone32]

I think the issue with long boot times is people who don't buy Expo verified DRAM. With that all you have to do is make sure in the BIOS that the first Expo profile will mean faster boot times. If you make the mistake of picking the 2nd Expo profile the memory will do training every single time you boot leading to much longer boot times. I don't even have the fastest RAM(5200 Mt/s) and my 32GB loads in about 7-10 seconds.

 

[Fokker]

I think the issue with long boot times is people who don't buy Expo verified DRAM. With that all you have to do is make sure in the BIOS that the first Expo profile will mean faster boot times. If you make the mistake of picking the 2nd Expo profile the memory will do training every single time you boot leading to much longer boot times. I don't even have the fastest RAM(5200 Mt/s) and my 32GB loads in about 7-10 seconds.

In my case it was EXPO verified and from the MSI compatibility list for that board. I still had to set MCR on to stop the extended training sessions.

 

[AusWolf]

When you put it like that, well yeah. But much more could be done on windows side for performance enthusiasts. You can almost feel all telemetry when opening explorer.

As a matter of fact, just rebooted from archlinux based CatchyOS, try it. Its performance optimized distro, everything that could be done is implemented, x86v4, latest amd cppc things , kernels galore, you name it. BTW its astonishing how fast boot is once ramdisk is loaded or file explorer opening.

I don't open Explorer, but the same can be said about Chrome. I'm currently on Windows 10, but reading about changes in all Windows OSes recently, I'm an inch away from waving goodbye and switching to Linux.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I have 2 32GB sticks of DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5600 memory in my 7900X3D, ASUS X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Tough Gaming. And this has been a nightmare for me. It started with the "slow boots". So, reading around, I decided to enable MCR. Great! Fast, normal, boots again! Until it doesn't post at all. Power on, power off, reset UEFI, doesn't matter. It does not make it to POST, often. And I noticed it occurs after overnight shutdowns/morning power ups. So while troubleshooting this, I disconnected my two DP connected monitors and low and behold, it eventually makes it to post. This is a ridiculous workaround. But it HAS worked when this BS occurs in my mornings. Really, fast(er) boots are great. But having to do this rain dance on many of my mornings is not fun.

Here's what I understand about MCR -apologies to the people that know this already. MCR retains the last successful memory training settings for boot and uses those same settings for every subsequent boot. As we know, that reduces memory training to improve boot speeds. But DDR5 memory training is a complicated process. Especially with 64GB of RAM that I have. Environment factors can impact it. For example, a colder case in the mornings? So what I have decided to do is switch MCR off and live with slower boots. I'd rather my PC power on reliably than deal with this nonsense. I'll try this for a couple weeks and post later on this again.

I am currently finishing up a system for someone with 64GB DDR5 6000 and same board as you and MCR and power down enabled has zero impact on boots. Still about 60 sec. I think Asus broke the setting with latest BIOS.

EDIT: LOL nevermind. Booted today in 13 sec. I guess i needed to do a full shut down for it to take

 

[phxrider]

My ASUS B650E-F went from like a minute to POST, to just a few seconds with this. On Asus it's in two places, just use the search to find them. You should enable both of them. I've had no negative effects from setting this.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Thanks for the thread and feedback everyone.

I went with the ASRock B650E PG Riptide which will be here today. 2x16GB Team Group T-Create Expert 6000 CL30 and 7800X3D which I got NIB for $240 from a absolute legend on another forum. Hoping my experience with boot times and ASRock are as good and stable as what I read here. I didn't even check the QVL list for memory, I haven't done that for my own builds since the OG Zen days.

 

[jarablue]

I have a Asus X670-P WIFI board with a 7900X and 32gb of ddr6000 memory that does xpo no problem. System is great with my 4090! Went from 40sec boot times to almost literally 3 seconds with context restore enabled. On my asus board it is under memory timings. Only had to set it there.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I have not stop watched it, but from power on to login screen is about 12-15 seconds with OOB settings and highest EXPO. Slower than my best AM4 systems, but still plenty fast enough. Scores right where it should in the 3DMark suite and I am just trying to see how much of a negative offset I can use stably now.

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah my rig also boots in about 15 seconds now, 20s to Windows sign in

 

[uvtrollet]

First post!

Thanks to this thread (found high ranked on google) I have now shortened my boot times dramaticly.

I have also understood that the stability can change over time but then I know why and can adjust accordingly.

Hardware tested:
ASUS TUF Gaming B650-PLUS WIFI
Ryzen 7 7800x3D
Kingston 2x16GB 6000MHz CL30 Fury Beast

 

[phxrider]

I have also understood that the stability can change over time but then I know why and can adjust accordingly.

I thought I had a stability issue with it, but it turned out to be a false-positive for a different root cause. I'm on an Asus B650E-F and also a B650E-I and they both work great with it and POST in seconds.

 

[gasolin]

260 sec why did you have so long boot time, mine has always been under 30 sec until my desktop for many years

 

[BlaezaLite]

My boot times were at max a minute when first built. Then updated to 1.E0 1.2.0.0.a and maybe 20 seconds now. Livewithable

 

[AusWolf]

I just go with 4800 MHz JEDEC RAM speed, no EXPO, no fiddling with voltages, etc. I lose maybe 0.1% gaming performance, but my boot time is instantaneous, and my CPU temps are considerably lower as well.