[isotypic]

The "No fix planned" is specifically for just the Ryzen 3000 desktop series. While obviously a fix would be better, given the age of this series as well as the need for ring 0 access to exploit the vulnerability, the actual impact from leaving it unfixed on those CPUs will probably be pretty limited.

[wlesieutre]

I know more than one person running a Ryzen 3700X (launched 7/7/2019) or similar and it's still a perfectly solid CPU.

There are at least upgrade options compatible with the same socket, unlike a certain other CPU manufacturer, but it's not like these are really worth replacing yet.

UserBenchmark scores the 5800x3d about 17% higher for $340.

[outworlder]

I am still running a 3600X. Zero reason to upgrade, the CPU has not been a bottleneck on anything I can throw at it. And if I do need to upgrade, that means new motherboard and memory too.

[edward28]

The 5700x3d is a cheap upgrade that stays on am4 and brings performance inline with zen 4 6 cores.

[wlesieutre]

Still over $200 for something that doesn't need an upgrade except for this unpatched security issue. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather do with $200.

At minimum, save it toward a GPU upgrade that would actually be useful, rather than replacing my CPU that isn't a performance bottleneck.

[edward28]

I wouldn't trust userbenchmark, they are extremely anti AMD biased. The 5800x3d is closer to 50% faster than the 3700x in most tasks.

[nullifidian]

>given the age of this series

It's from the Jul 2019. Not very old. CPUs from the early 2010s, with enough ram, are still perfectly usable for light browsing and text editing tasks.

[arghwhat]

Calling 3900 “very old” is stretching it, but they’re certainly “old”.

Chips from the early 2010s are very old and inefficient - it’s just that you listed tasks that demand nothing, and if battery power is not required it will certainly do the trick.

Being very old and being usable are very things, as any senior person or tech collector will tell you.

[Vegenoid]

> Calling 3900 “very old” is stretching it, but they’re certainly “old”.

No, I will contest <5 years old CPUs being called "old". This perspective is warped by the marketing teams of computer hardware companies. There are many 3000 series processors which are perfectly powerful enough for powerful modern software.

[arghwhat]

To nitpick, they are not “<5 years”, they are officially more than 5 years and one month old depending on the model. They have been superseded 3 times (5000, 7000 and now 9000), fallen off comparison charts. Even 5000 to 9000 nets you 2x real-world performance for the same power, 3000 was slower and hungrier than that.

There is nothing wrong with using or intentionally buying old things that work. But being “powerful enough to run modern software” doesn’t mean more than “is AMD64 and support a minimum of 8GB of RAM”. I also have a 3rd gen intel i7’s laptop that is “powerful enough to run modern software”, but it’s still very old and incredibly power hungry for the little work it does. I also have a 14 year old car that performs its functions as well as when it was new - much to my dismay - but it’s still objectively old.

[Vegenoid]

If we're nitpicking, then the some were released in July 2019, some were released in October 2019, and some in 2020. And practically, if the earliest they were shipping was July 2019, the wide majority of owners will have had the unit for <5 years.

> But being “powerful enough to run modern software” doesn’t mean more than “is AMD64 and support a minimum of 8GB of RAM”. I also have a 3rd gen intel i7’s laptop that is “powerful enough to run modern software”, but it’s still very old and incredibly power hungry for the little work it does.

If the hardware can run just fine, what makes it old? Why call it old? Increased power efficiency? That is a good thing to strive for, but from a carbon emissions perspective, most computers cost much more carbon to manufacture than to operate across their lifespan.

> I also have a 14 year old car that performs its functions as well as when it was new - much to my dismay - but it’s still objectively old.

It isn't "objectively" old. "Old" does not have an objective definition. I also have a 14 year old car, that I do not consider to be old. I don't consider it to be old because it functions well, matches the aesthetic style of the majority of cars on the road, and getting maintenance on it is easy, as the wide majority of mechanics will be familiar with it. Sounds like your car is in the same boat as mine.

That you consider a 5 year old processor and a 14 year old car to be old is a reflection of your own opinions. I do not agree and think that perspective is consumerist, exactly what corporations spend lots of money to try and make people think.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

[arghwhat]

> the wide majority of owners will have had the unit for <5 years.

No one cares about how long you had the CPU in your possession, nor are we worried about the silicon expiring. If you restarted the factory line and got a brand new chip today, it would still be considered 5 years and 1 month old. Like finding a factory-sealed retro console.

> If the hardware can run just fine, what makes it old?

When something is "old" is context specific, related to how fast the world moves away from it.

To give some easily digestable examples:" A 1 year old person is very young, a 1-year old ant is very old. A 70-year old CEO is old, but might perform the best they ever have in their entire life. A 50-year old car is old, but fully compatible with modern roads and fuels (depending on spec). Despite no formal definition, these are quite objective in that no-one not playing devils advocate could possibly disagree.

For chips, they are old after 4-5 years because the chip world moves fast. This chip has been superseded many times (a great-grandparent at this point), is in the bargain bin as of late last year at somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/6th the price depending on ongoing sales as shops clear unwanted deprecated stock, and now does the work in more than twice the time and with more than twice the energy than the current product in its own line. No one would reasonably look at this side by side with the current offering and think "that's not old!".

(Note: Pre-Ryzen and Apple silicon, the "time to old" was longer because Intel's monopoly and laziness had caused complete stagnation within desktop CPU development, which is what we have grown sued to.)

Buying an old chip is done for the same reasons as buying an old car: If you don't really need it much, it also can't bring you a lot of value and so something something brand new won't mean much to you. Getting a bargain on something old and/or used is great. Whether it is a chip or a car, efficiency doesn't matter if its mostly off anyway. And just like any NES plays NES games as well as it did from day one, the old car if serviced still does the same job it did when it was new.

> It isn't "objectively" old. "Old" does not have an objective definition.

If you believed this, it would invalidate your entire line of argument that the chip (and your car) cannot be considered old as age cannot be classified and is irrelevant: considering the chip not old is therefore also wrong.

Considering that you are specifically attacking the idea of considering the old with the idea that their useful life should be longer, completely ignoring that I mention that devices can be used irrespective of their age, I do not think you actually believe that the age should not be classified. At the same time, if you did not think it was objective, your argument would have focused on saying it was subjective or context-specific rather than saying the classification was wrong.

> that perspective is consumerist, exactly what corporations spend lots of money to try and make people think.

That consumerism is also why the chip is a bargain and new chips are affordable, and the only argument for buying an EOL chip is price. Having any sort of used market for things that get better with time requires people to often buy new things and get rid of old things. Having new things be affordable for anyone requires a significant churn.

> a carbon emissions perspective ...

... is not relevant as I make it very clear that being old does not mean it needs to be replaced. Even if it ends its service life with you, a responsible person would sell it or give it away so someone else can use it instead of buying new.

[spencerflem]

Totally, I'm chilling with a 2016 skylake i5 and have no desire to upgrade whatsoever.

[dbdbdbdbdb]

According to Wikipedia the Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were released on 7 July 2019:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_2

That's not very old.

I guess maybe they can't fix them or something. This is very bad for their reputation.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Given the relative CPU stagnation, even a ten year old chip (2014) is still more than capable of doing tasks the average user requires.

[Sakos]

I still have an i5 2500k chugging along being able to do everything that isn't a heavy workload with ease. This kind of exploit for a CPU that is only 5 years old not getting a fix is embarrassing and shameful.

[PedroBatista]

Yes, all of that but.. that's exactly the way of looking at things that a chip company like AMD are not allowed to have ( or at least to say publicly ).

The CPUs are "old" they are "limit" as an installed base but only comparing to today's AMD market share because I'm pretty sure there are hundred of thousands ( if not a few millions ) of these CPUs all over the World.

My main point is: going the extra-mile/cost to fix these cpus would be the cheaper route for them because image and credibility matters.. a lot.

[Retr0id]

As someone currently thinking about upgrading a 3000-series desktop, it's not exactly making me feel good about sticking with AMD.

[eropple]

Intel's literally-everything will make you feel much worse about switching.

[aleksanb]

I bought my 3900x just under 5 years ago. Norwegian consumer protection laws give me 5 years where the producer is required to fix any defects that came with the product.

As this bug now has become known to always have been there, i could probably force amd to replace my 3900x if they don't provide software patches.

Has anyone else attempted a similar RTM for software defects?

[f1shy]

I do not think this includes security problems. The main function is given, so I do not think you can do anything.

[kuschku]

It absolutely includes security issues, across the entire EU and EEA btw.

(Though in most EU/EEA countries you only get 2 years, which is why phones now get 36 months of security updates if they're on sale for 12 months).

[christophilus]

My main rig is a 3600. It’s plenty fast and powerful. The fact that they won’t fix is unacceptable to me.

[sqeaky]

Why? I'm anal about security and this barely registers with me but not as something to be angry about.

Somebody with ring 0 privileges (a prereq for this) on your CPU already has root and you have to presume they've already had the ability to write to your BIOS and VBIOS, and this is just confirmation of that. If you're actually worried about this stuff then how can you be sure that someone hasn't paid Microsoft to put stuff into your firmware?

[dtx1]

Step 1: Lease a Server for a month Step 2: Compromise that server Step 3: Cancel the lease Step 4: Wait for it to be reused Step 5: Next Customer in line is now compromised

[CamperBob2]

If the cloud provider is giving metal ring-0 access to their customers, this particular issue is the least of their worries (and their customers').

[sqeaky]

Real hardware running midrange AMD only CPUs? This doesn't hit Intel or AMDs Epyc or Threadripper.

[christophilus]

That’s fair. I’d missed the ring0 part.