On 04/10/2017 12:07 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote: >> He [Alan Grimes] has new hardware (Ryzen) that needs 4.10 for proper support. > > I too have new hardware (An Asus Prime X370-PRO MB with a Ryzen 1700X > processor), indeed so new that my first attempt to boot a minimal CD was > less than an hour ago. > > The attempt, one must admit, was wholly unsuccessful. I can boot into > the minimal CD's opening overtures, at which I'm prompted to select a > "kernel". If I choose memtest86, it loads and displays its initial > screen, then promptly crashes the system, leading to an automatic > reboot. gentoo-nofb boots, displays something about the number of cores > present (It counts up to #16), displays some information about "PCI" > (on, perhaps, 20 lines) and promptly crashes, blanking the screen and > rebooting. > > My minimal CD is install-amd64-minimal-20170406.iso, so fairly recent, > but built with kernel 4.9.16. > > Question: do I need a 4.10 kernel to be able to boot a Ryzen system at > all? If 4.10 is necessary, is it sufficient?
I've been doing a lot of research on Ryzen as I was considering an upgrade myself. 4.9 has some support, so it should boot at least. From what I read only 4.10 has full support. Do be aware that there was a show-stopper bug in firmware[1] that was causing hangs and lockups, have you upgraded your motherboard firmware? I figured I'd wait another six months before committing to the thought of any upgrade to give AMD time to sort the chips out. I myself was eyeballing the 1700X or 1800X processor. You might be better off booting a systemrescuecd or something like a Mint CD. I flip-flop between the two of them. Dan [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246304-amd-fix-coming-fused-multiply-add-fma3-ryzen-bug
