official acknowledgement: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lnmet0/an_update_on_us...

later update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/m2wqkf/updated_agesa_c...

general discussion, a couple of which are post-update:

this one is interesting because the user has traced it to specific USB controllers and notes that one controller is perfect while the other 2 have problems: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lrcp8q/x570_usb_dropou...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/p5ygve/anyone_consider...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/wud1xo/was_the_usb_dro...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/twph8r/if_youve_build_...

this is all my personal summary/analysis and not fact, but: it does not seem to be tied to a particular generation of CPU or model of chipset (and this is significant because X570 is actually completely different from every other chipset which are all OEM'd by Asmedia). The symptom is that the USB controller stops responding under load (and I think probably drops frames at that point). Since VR is a very heavy USB load (especially Oculus) this is a semi-reliable reproducer but there's nothing inherent to VR that causes the problem, I think it just seems to be a "happens under load" issue.

AMD put out an AGESA patch which seems to significantly reduce the problem. And again, I think the idea that microcode fixes the problem, and that the problem exists across both AMD OEM and Asmedia OEM chipsets, suggests it's not a hardware problem with the chipset. Actually it may be the opposite, and the problem exists with the SOC implementation of USB and the chipsets themselves are fine. Some boards use the onboard SOC to drive the USB and that sounds like maybe the problem - others drive it off the chipset's USB and maybe that works better. It's possible the CPU themselves have a hardware defect or it may be a problem with the USB software stack inside the SOC. The AMD PSP is like the Intel ME, it gets in underneath the user experience and while you'd hope that USB is not implemented there maybe it is, or maybe it's interfering (mailbox overflow?) or something like that.

Again it's hard to know whether the residual crashes are something the mobo companies themselves might be doing to try and fix AMD's problems... maybe a fix that worked before is now crashing something else. It's hard to say. That's the problem with shipping glitchy microcode to partners. A lot of partners literally have one or two core BIOS devs for the whole company. This came up during the crisis around Zen2/Zen3 BIOS support, and after elmor left ASUS, that basically ASUS really only had a couple guys for the whole damn company and they're not the only ones. And AMD in particular pushes a lot of workload onto their partners. Great that they're moving fast but they break stuff which ends up being someone else's problem, and they're churning code so fast they break the fixes other people are doing for them. They don't publish source, only binaries, and they make the partner's lives very difficult.

https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=1276

https://youtu.be/36kCBQt7YBk?t=237

https://www.overclock.net/search/1039852/?q=agesa&t=post&c[u...

If I was personally in this situation I would try a standalone USB card, and pick from the list curated for the Oculus rift even if you are not using a rift, I think they are just better USB controllers. Put it in a CPU-direct slot and not one attached to the chipset. See if that helps, go from there. Maybe the card works in a chipset lane, maybe the chipset lanes work natively, etc, once it's working try to pin down the delta that causes crashing.

But like... there is this whole gaslighting cycle with the AMD fans. You saw the same thing with the 5700XT. "I have one, there are no crashes, it's 100% stable for me, you're making it up" -> lots of users report it and the gaslighting intensifies (HUB finally ran a poll on 5700XT after months of denial and it turned out over 1/3 of their very technically adept and very pro-AMD userbase reported issues) -> AMD acknowledges there is actually an issue and they're working on it -> patch released and it doesn't fix the issue for everybody -> "OK so there was an issue but it's all better now, if you're still having problems it's your fault!" -> everybody moves on to the next product and if you still have problems welp sucks to be you, my 5800X3D is amazing!

Same thing happened with defective Zen2 early silicon... GamersNexus had their 3950X miss its advertised boost clocks by up to 450 MHz (they actually understated it by 100 MHz, the advertised clock was 4.7 not 4.6), basically 10% of its advertised speed. People did the "it says up to", some people went as far as making programs that just run NOPs in a loop to show that a program could actually hit the advertised clocks so it wasn't technically false advertising. AMD acknowledged an issue, released a patch that didn't help (GamersNexus' review was after the patches, they go into F10c later in the video), the fans moved back to gaslighting, and everyone moved on and forgot about it. Later silicon was higher quality I think and just didn't have a problem but AMD wanted to ship some marginal silicon that didn't quite meet spec and didn't think anybody would call them on it. And indeed they were pretty much right, the fans shrugged and moved on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3sNUFjV7p4&t=254s

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/cfli2n/i_discovered_ho...

Issues with Intel or NVIDIA are front-page news, everyone freaked about POSCAP-vs-MLCC back at 30-series launch, the connector at the 40-series launch, some soldering defects with EVGA 1080s, the whole New Worlds thing (even though that killed some AMD cards too, everyone treated it as an NVIDIA issue), etc, and the AMD stuff is completely downplayed and shoved under the rug even though it's pretty often not fixed, or not fixed 100%, and it's pretty aggravating.

But AMD really stokes the reddit set, they were pioneers in going direct-to-consumer and stoking the fires. GN talks about it earlier in one of those videos, and LTT and Der8auer have said the same thing. Like, it's calmed down a lot over the last couple years but during 2017-2021 it was bad.

https://youtu.be/JluNkjdpxFo?t=259

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x03FyPQ3a3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rscDxMrZmGU&t=1304s (this is the LTT video that got him set up with a bribe from AMD to bury his Vega FE review, the threadripper preview and the holocube, if anyone remembers that little bit of pocket-sand!) https://youtu.be/oVxVIkw0xd8?t=261

And honestly the gaslighting aspect of that really has not gone away, which I still find incredibly annoying as far as internet discourse. Say there's a problem and people get defensive and will happily generalize their own experiences to tell you yours aren't real. Just say "AMD has driver problems" and someone will pop out of the woodwork to tell you they've been good for 10 years now, as if 5700XT and Vega and Fury X just all didn't happen. Sometimes the drivers/firmware/BIOS are great, sometimes they're not, and if they're not they don't always get fixed, or don't get fixed fully for everyone.