AMD Ryzen sleep bug acts like a speed hack in ESO

ZeroXFF · March 2018

This isn't technically a game bug, and rather a hardware bug, but something that the ESO team should be aware of. The AMD Ryzen sleep/timer bug (explanation:

https://youtu.be/nTdgB63xGX8 ) causes in-game animations to be faster and allows the player to move noticeably faster with their character. This also causes NPCs to walk faster, and in some cases causes them to teleport rather than run.

I have an R7 1700 with an MSI B350 Tomahawk mobo. Today I put my PC to sleep when I went away for a few hours. When I woke it up, I started ESO, and noticed that I'm moving faster. First I thought it's a bug with the game, but restarting the game didn't fix anything. Then I remembered this bug with the platform, and checked the time, and indeed in the hour or so that the PC was on, the clock was 10 minutes ahead of that on my phone and watch. Now this is actually the inversion of the time correlation from the video, but with stuff like this anything is possible. Restarting the PC fixed the bug.

I repeated the process to make sure it's not a one-off glitch, and indeed after the sleep I had the same issue. For every 47 seconds according to my phone 1 minute passed according to the PC. Restarting the PC again fixed it.

HjorrMundGandr · March 2018

Hi there,
That is an interesting thing to be aware of. I don't have my system set to sleep mode so I guess i'm good.

Just a question or two.
Have you overclocked your 1700? Any tips and tricks? I'm a noob for OC'ing and need a little help.
Also what frames do you get when in say, Vivec city?
What is your Graphics card?

ZeroXFF · March 2018

Yes, I have overclocked it, but only as far as I could go while leaving voltage at "auto", which is 3.775 GHz on all cores. I can go up to 3.9 GHz @ 1.3625 V, and still stay under 80C while running a burn test (which results in less than 60C at all times while playing ESO), but I'd rather not risk it for an improvement I don't even notice.

And don't take these numbers and just apply to your CPU and assume it will work, because every chip is different and motherboards are different too. Gigabyte boards for example are usually under-reporting the voltages that they supply to the CPU, so what you see as 1.3V might actually be 1.4V and you might fry your CPU with that.

I also have one of the best air coolers on the market (which is better than most if not all sub-120€ water coolers), so don't try it with the box cooler you got with the CPU. Temperature is the biggest threat to your CPU. For Ryzen an operating temperature of 75C is considered the highest that is certain not to cause any damage to the CPU in the long term. And again, every chip is different, so you might see no degradation up to 80C or even higher, but anything over 75C is gambling.

As for my graphics card, it's a prehistoric potato, because I can't upgrade with the current prices. It's an HD7850 2GB. But with the settings I'm using it's hardly ever over 60% load, so it's definitely the CPU limiting my FPS in some scenarios.

Speaking of which... I didn't run any benchmarks under controlled conditions to see if my 2% OC over stock turbo speeds makes any difference. I am also running with v-sync on, so when I see 60, my PC might as well be able to render 150, but I don't know that. So all I can really tell you is situations when my FPS drops.

In Elden Root when it's empty I get 60, but during busy times it's about 40.
In ICP in the room with traps my FPS drops noticeably, to about 30-40.
In Fang Lair in the room with the last boss, when I look in the direction of the entrance to the room, the FPS drops to about 30.
In 12-man raids during the fights my FPS usually stays between 20 and 30.