Notes

AMD's robert hallock did a pretty decent bios guide already, and it's pretty good.

It leaves a few things out that can improve performance of usb devices and general overall system latency, however, and doesn't mention that modern os's should be installed on a pure EFI system to make use of all the fantastic features and performance benefits of the AMD architecture, going as far back as Bulldozer. A lot of the performance issues people experienced with that chip-set and architecture had to do with poorly configured motherboards. Intel did a better job of forcing certain settings to be default by moving them into the chip back then. You could, however, get great performance out of an AMD system even back then by doing similar to what I'm about to tell you.

I develop in VR as a hobby and have several headsets, so ultra low latency is really important to me. I also game and really enjoy under 4ms click to response rate.

Here's a quick guide for the FX series chipsets and ZEN and above etc. This is what I do when I reinstall or build a system.

Essentially, I recommend a fresh OS install of windows 10 FCU. This makes sure you don't have to do a bunch of conversion after the fact.

If you have a normal SSD and not NVME m.2 - splurge a little and get the upgrade, that's my recommendation - but any disk will work.

Once you have a disk you can do a fresh windows 10 install on, go download the windows 10 media for FCU.

However, we won't be making a USB, we'll be using an ISO and creating an EFI bootable disk using RUFUS.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Unplug all other drives except the one for the new install.

Go into your "bios"/EFI and load optimized defaults. Save and exit, and turn your computer off. Then, go back in. This is done because sometimes these settings require a full motherboard cycle and not a soft boot.

Next, make sure you have and install the latest bios for your board. For my gaming 5, this is F22b.

Next, enable XMP on your ram. Save and exit as before. You should actually see a "double reboot" in most cases - again this is due to changes to the cpu.

Next - here's all the big ones.

Under devices - disable serial port entirely. You're not using it and it's occupying your cpu as an addressed device. The change is tiny but we're talking about absolute maximum resources here right?

Disable the network adapter you're not using if you have two (and not using both). You can always turn it on later but there's no reason to include it if you never use it. Again - it's using address space you don't need. The benefit might not even be noticeable but we're talking about absolutely ideal settings.

Disable Legacy USB. Disable XHCI handoff. Disable HPET. Disable CSM. Disable EHCI handoff. You -may- want to enable "above 4g limit"

This is a change that allows 64 bit addressing on GPU memory. It doesn't affect performance most of the time unless you have multi-gpu systems - but it's possible that some modern WDDM 2.3 drivers combined with things like dx12 and vulcan might actually see some performance benefits.

Set an aggressive fan curve so your system opts to cool rather then throttle 99% of the time.

Install windows 10 FCU. Marvel at the speed at which it installs, I promise it will shock you.

Allow windows to install ALL the drivers from windows update before manually installing drivers.

Go to AMD's website and install the chipset drivers and reboot. Then, install the GPU drivers and reboot.

Install your gpu's fan management tool (or use wattman) and be sure to allow the fan to be more aggressive. We don't want latency from card throttling. We all wear headphones. I'm not personally allergic to a little fan noise, and I value the lifespan of my hardware.

Go into device manager and find the SM bus controller. Right click, properties, update driver. point it at c:amd and tell it to look in sub directories. You'll be surprised to find it finds an updated driver.

Install the manufactuer's tool for your SSD. This makes a huge difference people don't realize. NVME SSDS have their own controller and the Samsung software allows for major performance benefits. Non nvme ssds can benefit from a caching scheme that allows for up to 2000mbps. Modern Windows 10 can make use of this.

You'll want to do the same with any other driver that has the word (microsoft) next to it that is a hardware device. Point it at the AMD chipset directory and see if it finds anything.

Your IDE/ATA should say "AMD SATA Controller" You should have AMD GPIO drivers.

Your usb should say "AMD USB 3" and "AMD USB 3.1" root hubs and controllers. you should see "AMD xHCI".

Sometimes the drivers from Microsoft Update ARE up to date from AMD, but this isn't always the case. Most of the time the drivers included in the chipset package but not installed by default are newer and remain that way for a while. This is required stuff on server 2016.

Disable hibernation in windows by command prompt as admin so your system reboots properly when it needs to:

powercfg /hibernate off

Run the following in command prompt as admin:

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

Deferred procedure calls (DPC(s) Latency) usually in bios...

you disabled CSM right?? We have EFI now and a modern OS. We don't need Bios stuff.

...allow programs to queue actions to be done quickly in the processor scheduler, and they hang the whole computer until they get processed.

Disabling HPET allows an unrestricted input output to occur and results in a very raw and extremely responsive connection between you and your machine. It also removes a ton of micro-stuttering and screen tearing.

1000us = 1ms HPET ON: between 100-150us delay HPET OFF: between 5-15us delay

3-4 frames per second loss, single card with HPET OFF, chance of stuttering decreased accordingly.

Even though it doesn't seem like much, but imagine every action and each PC component is effected by that same 100-150us delay, It can add up to MANY milliseconds and significant performance loss. The end result is, to higher end systems, another step forward is crispier and snappier inputs and actions across the board.

All the above changes provide a baseline for the best possible stock performance out of your system. You WILL notice a pretty big difference in lots of little ways - I promise.