[HN Gopher] Finally fixed my PC's persistent graphics and audio ...
___________________________________________________________________
Finally fixed my PC's persistent graphics and audio stutters
Author : pimterry
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-08-24 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctrl.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctrl.blog)
| bigdollopenergy wrote:
| It looks like with a series of changes they were able to mitigate
| the issue _almost_ completely, but it 's still there and the
| motherboard is obviously deficient in some way.
|
| They mentioned they put the ram in 2 years ago and they've had
| this issue for 2 months. I suspect maybe it started when their
| OS's started using their TPM's but it's possible their board has
| just broken randomly. Likely on a hardware level.
|
| I do see value in diagnosing the issue and making a post about
| mitigation's. I love people who do this so others with the issue
| can find it and get their boards refunded/RMA'd before their
| warranties expire. But once the tpm/ftpm was identified as being
| the issue and it was hardware/firmware related, they need to get
| a new board, not more mitigations (hopefully by getting a
| refund/RMA so the board manufacturer doesn't get a pass on this).
| I don't see how someone working in the tech space (we are VERY
| privileged salary wise) would tolerate having obviously faulty
| electronics.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Reminds me of the days when you had to optimize your IRQ's
|
| Big reason why lot of audio engineers use an external audio box -
| latency is super noticeable with audio and motherboards are
| rarely going to cut it
| capableweb wrote:
| Another reason for a proper, external audio interface is noise.
| My previous ASUS mother board introduced a noticiable buzzing
| noise when using it for receiving audio, even though it was
| claimed that the isolation was good. Maybe something else in my
| desktop was outputting stronger interference than what they had
| tested with. Newer ASUS motherboard doesn't suffer from the
| same issue.
|
| Although the noise sucked, the real reason I got a external
| audio interface was the 1/4"/XLR connections anyways, so
| matters less.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I was hoping to read how he debugged his system and found the
| rout cause. Instead I just get some ramblings from a guy who just
| tried different things from stuff he read somewhere.
| daneel_w wrote:
| My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows 10,
| TPM completely disabled, no stuttering whatsoever.
| navjack27 wrote:
| My stationary PC is a modern AMD Zen 3 setup. It runs Windows
| 11 pro for workstations latest developer release, TPM and other
| settings completely enabled, no stuttering whatsoever.
| daneel_w wrote:
| That's great. Eventually I'll have to emigrate from Windows
| 10 as well. Hopefully AGESA 1.2.0.7 solves the problem.
| gambiting wrote:
| I have a Windows 10, 5900X+X570 machine with fTPM _enabled_ and
| I get zero stuttering. Still using a pre-release BIOS with
| early Zen 3 support from August 2020 since I never saw any need
| to update it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I am scared of upgrading from my i7-6700 system because it is so
| rock solid - it never crashes and just runs for days without
| weirdness or Windows 10 imploding on itself.
| cgb223 wrote:
| I've had an audio crackle that happens only sometimes on my PC
| for years now.
|
| Windows 10, Z170-A motherboard with driver for built in audio
|
| Tried different cables, inputs (optical vs aux etc) installing
| different drivers, old drivers, new drivers, nothing fixes it
|
| Super annoying when I want to listen to spotify or YouTube or
| anything
| capableweb wrote:
| Probably your speakers, have you tried other ones? Cheap
| speakers sometimes (or OS "power saving" features) turns off
| various components after being inactive for a while, and when
| they come alive again, there is a pop happening as electricity
| enters the circuits. Happens if you turn on whatever the
| speaker is connected to after turning on the speakers as well,
| while vice-versa is fine with no pop.
| smallstepforman wrote:
| When I assembled by PC in 2020, stuttering was caused by the RAM
| RGB light driver. No more GSkill-Z Trident RGB in this box. Or
| any RGB driver.
| nix0n wrote:
| That was just your PC playing "red light/green light"
| postcert wrote:
| The random crashing at low usage sounds very similar to an issue
| I had with my previous 5950x. There seems to be a real problem
| with 59{00,50}x's where you either need to disable PBO (I think
| that's the name) or bump voltages. After finding out it was a
| silicon lottery thing I sent my cpu right back to Amazon and the
| replacement has been perfectly fine from first boot (outside of
| figuring out the upper memory clock for 4 dimms)
| codedokode wrote:
| > The fTPM clearly affects the system stability, even under an OS
| where it's not in use.
|
| This is probably a code that works in SMM mode, and it has a
| priority even over ring 0 code. SMM is one of the worst CPU
| features, it is basically a backdoor in your system that can do
| anything and you cannot even see it. Even if you run Linux you
| have no control over SMM code, it can hang your system and you
| cannot even debug it.
|
| Also this shows a weakness of an "open" PC model where poorly
| tested hardware and low quality firmware from different vendors
| are assembled together. I cannot imagine this happening on an
| iPhone for example.
| mkopec wrote:
| > This is probably a code that works in SMM mode
|
| AMD fTPM runs on the PSP coprocessor, not on the x86 cores.
| raverbashing wrote:
| And it's frankly absurd that ASUS/AMD etc won't run a test to
| see if the board runs under Windows/Linux without stuttering
|
| ATI drivers back then were already in a different league of
| quality than nVidia ones, looking like amateur hour sometimes
|
| SMM code writers seem to not give a F about any OS except
| Windows (current version) and even then.
|
| If AMD wants to win the datacenter they need to be extra
| attentive to this
| navjack27 wrote:
| > so I quickly reinstalled
|
| Dude needs to stop quickly reinstalling things. Instead they need
| to slowly work through what is going on in the operating system
| that could be causing the observed issue. What does the Windows
| system information program say when it is run as an
| administrator? Is secure boot enabled? Is the pcr7 configuration
| on "binding possible"? What about kernel dma protection or
| virtualization based security?
| gambiting wrote:
| I've had this random graphics stutter that would never ever show
| up in any benchmark at all, but weirder than anything else was
| that it also wouldn't show up in recordings made on that machine.
|
| To save you the story of weeks-long debugging efforts - the
| problem turned out to the monitor. It was a Dell Ultrasharp 25",
| and (as I now know) they all had an issue where the monitor would
| freeze roughly every 20 seconds for a frame, because the monitor
| was advertising the refresh rate to windows as 59.95Hz but it was
| actually refreshing at 60Hz internally - the timing would get out
| of sync pretty much exactly every 20 seconds, causing the monitor
| to "pause" and freeze - which looked like stutter when playing
| games. The solution was using some kind of program(forgot the
| name now) which basically overrode the refresh information being
| sent from the monitor and forced windows to refresh at exactly
| 60Hz and no less - then it worked fine. But of course if you used
| it with a PS4 then you didn't have any way to do that and just
| had to suffer this stutter every 20 seconds.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Now that sounds a lot like a video version of an audio issue
| that I have with my Android phone and a BluStream hands-free
| kit. When playing music from any source, there will be skips at
| long, random intervals. I could back up the song, play the
| suspect phrase over, and it would be perfect. It's almost like
| there's some sort of subtle clock mismatch somewhere that
| eventually can't be papered over.
|
| I've had it happen on more than one phone, and I'd also note
| that my Sony headphones don't skip.
| [deleted]
| itsboring wrote:
| Oh wow, that would drive me mad. That's one of those subtle
| human-machine interaction problems where sometimes people don't
| believe you (and maybe you start to doubt yourself even). And
| then people start throwing around studies saying humans don't
| perceive this or that under some millisecond threshold or
| whatever.
|
| Before high refresh rate screens, I was one of those people
| that would turn off v-sync in games because the additional
| input lag bugged me just enough, JUST on the edge of
| perception. I wasn't even a competitive player or particularly
| good, but it felt....mushy. Similar problem with playing old
| NES games on modern LEDs.
|
| For many years I had a mechanical keyboard I loved, but slowly
| and subtly over time the enter key would miss a keystroke. It
| was like 1 out of 300 times maybe, but it was just often enough
| for me to start doubting my own fingers. Finally couldn't take
| it anymore and just bought a new keyboard.
|
| Just goes to show that very subtle problems in a computer
| interfaces can have a big impact.
| lawstorant wrote:
| Mate, Dell U2518D. I still have it and had the same span of
| feeling that something is off. I managed to capture it with a
| high-speed camera and it's even funnier than just a stutter. It
| produces VERTICAL tearing every 20 seconds. Nobody would belive
| me something like that is even possible. I wouldn't belive me
| if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
|
| Dell actually made a firmware verison that address it and
| people reported that it indeed fixed it. But guess what? You
| cannot download it! The only way to get newer FW was to buy a
| monitor from a newer production batch.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I had the same sort of firmware issue with a Dell UP2414Q
| which was released in 2013. Major problems like half the
| screen not working or no picture at all.
|
| No you can't have the firmware update. You can exchange it
| for a refurbished monitor and "should" get the new firmware.
|
| There's a 53 page Dell forum thread about that disaster of a
| monitor: https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/UP3214Q-UP24
| 14Q-1-2-...
|
| Amazing that nearly 10 years later they still can't update
| monitor firmware in the field.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I was having some issues with a Dell 4320 (?) and one of
| the things Dell support suggested was updating the firmware
| (download from Dell website). That was the first time I'd
| ever heard of updating firmware in a monitor.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I found out that Dell doesn't make the firmware user
| upgradeable when I checked for any for my AW3420DW. The
| annoyance I'm trying to fix is minor enough that I decided
| it's not worth RMAing it to hope I get one that is both in
| good condition and has the new firmware. I'll have to be
| pretty desperate to buy a monitor from Dell again though.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yep, that's exactly it! It makes me very happy to know that I
| wasn't the only one to notice it(and it definitely felt like
| I was going mad for a while- seeing stutter where literally
| no tool could detect it).
|
| I found a forum thread on Dell's forums about it ages ago, I
| remember people sharing the refresh rate override fix, but I
| wasn't aware that Dell did eventually "fix" it in a later
| batch of monitor.
|
| That monitor did actually die for me literally 2 months
| ago(and just few months out of warranty, typical) but I was
| very glad to replace it with something else.
| jiggunjer wrote:
| This reminds me of a weird phenomenon in my parents living
| room: Our Samsung TV would stutter and colors would distort
| when lighting the candles with a lighter (one of those long-
| neck trigger models). Never figured out why but I suspect an EM
| pulse was created with each trigger "click", which affected the
| cable signal.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Similarly I have a monitor at home that, for whatever reason,
| will stutter on a game in fullscreen UNTIL i go and manually
| set its refresh rate.
|
| I have to flip it between 59.95Hz and 60 Hz in the windows
| advanced settings, changing that setting basically makes the
| monitor re-initialize and then everything is fine. It happens
| every time I wake the monitor from sleep (ie: my computer
| rarely, if ever goes to sleep, but the monitors will turn off
| after 10 minutes of inactivity)
|
| This only really happens with games. DirectX or Vulcan doesnt
| matter. Doesnt affect things like youtube, plex etc.
|
| But any game in fullscreen or borderless windows on that
| screen, i have to basically just change that setting back and
| forth to keep my sanity.
| Dwedit wrote:
| How are you able to pick between 59.95Hz and 60Hz? From what
| I've seen in Windows, it is keeping track of refresh rates as
| big rational numbers with full precision, but then when it's
| time to actually switch to a video mode, everything gets
| _rounded to an integer_ , and it just picks whatever mode is
| closest to that integer value.
|
| Would probably need to use Custom Resolution Utility to
| define a refresh rate that you really want.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| In windows its just
|
| right click on desktop>Display Settings>scroll to
| bottom>Advanced Display Settings
|
| Then select your monitor in the drop down and the refresh
| rate. Which is negotiated by the monitor and the video
| card. I suppose unplugging and pluggin the cable back in
| may help. But ive changed cables, bought new ones, tried
| adapters to change the type (ie: hdmi to DP etc).
|
| Its just something with the display. And Im too lazy to
| bend over and unplug/plug it in, so i just do the refresh
| rate trick.
| danudey wrote:
| This reminds me of a sound card I bought way back when (22
| years ago or so); it was a wavetable-supporting, Soundblaster
| Pro-compatible card that I got on sale for 50% off without
| making any effort at all to look it up online or even check
| the kernel for Linux support.
|
| It worked and sounded great in Windows; it also worked and
| sounded great in Linux, with one exception: the card
| supported ISA PNP, which was great, but the kernel module for
| the sound card wouldn't load unless I did `cat /proc/isapnp`
| first.
|
| I had no idea why, and it took a few reboots and trial-and-
| error to narrow it down to this janky workaround, but it
| worked so I just configured modprobe to run `cat /proc/isapnp
| > /dev/null` before trying to load the module and I never had
| to worry about it again.
|
| Technology sure is weird sometimes.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| Many years ago, I had an Athlon 64 workstation paired with
| some type of 3Ware SATA RAID controller (a 9650SE, I
| think).
|
| Every _other_ boot, the BIOS would fail to initialize the
| controller, leaving the computer stuck at a "non-bootable
| device" error until I could manually reboot it.
|
| My solution? A perpetually plugged-in USB flash drive with
| a small boot loader that would simply reboot the machine
| again, set to a lower boot priority than the SATA RAID
| controller.
|
| It was pretty stupid, but if it's stupid and it works...
| bombcar wrote:
| I had something similar and just used the USB to hold ...
| LILO at the time? Can't recall.
| goosedragons wrote:
| My ThinkPad has something similar with the microSD card
| slot. You have to type "lspci" for it to notice there's an
| SD card inserted. I don't use the slot much so it's not a
| big deal but it's literally the only thing that doesn't
| play nice with Linux.
| russdill wrote:
| I'm really struggling to understand why a monitor would be
| designed this way. It's already receiving a pixel clock and all
| the pixels, horizontal fields, and entire frames at 59.95Hz.
| There's absolutely no need for the monitor to be keeping track
| of a separate 60Hz clock anywhere.
|
| All I can figure is that it might have some motion blur or
| other interpolation feature and it's holding frames back after
| receiving them and displaying them from an internal buffer at
| 60Hz. In this case, you'll get occasional (but rare)
| tearing/stuttering no matter what since the computer's clock
| and the LCDs hypothetical clock are not syncronized.
| gambiting wrote:
| So I'm only guessing, but I think it's because the internal
| display driver was actually working at 60Hz, but the monitor
| was just advertising the refresh speed incorrectly to any
| connected device as 59.95Hz. The error would accumulate and
| after about 20 seconds the monitor had to "stop" and
| resynchronize the clock.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Wow this guy is really selling the AMD+Linux experience. Improved
| from 2 crashes per hour to once per 4 hours? Nobody I know would
| tolerate either of those.
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, Apple could run that post as an ad. It's sad reading that
| and realizing that my 90s Debian desktop was _more_ stable.
| churnedgodotdev wrote:
| Actually, a reason (of many) I switched from Apple to Windows
| was Apple's well-known audio drop-out fiasco caused by
| Apple's T2 security chip essentially hijacking data lanes
| when low-latency audio processing needed them. Here is an
| image of an audio capture of the T2 causing a hiccup:
|
| https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg
|
| This image was linked from this article:
|
| https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-
| fo...
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| In the past, I'd buy Intel + Nvidia to hope to avoid these sorts
| of weird troubleshooting cases. This occurred because I had a
| first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for Thunderbird
| CPUs/mobos was not complete, resulting in random crashes that
| required a mix of BIOS, Windows, and driver updates to completely
| resolve.
|
| Nowadays, I have no idea if that advice (Intel + Nvidia) is still
| sound. There are way more AMD users than before, and computers
| are more complicated than they were 20 years ago.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Hmm. Wouldn't sticking to any Intel CPU with an IGP be enough ?
| Haven't had frustrating problems since I stick to that for
| Linux. But I haven't been really playing on Linux for years
| now, I don't have the time to experiment much. If it doesn't
| work at first try then it's windows or console.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I presume anybody who is already using a dedicated GPU would
| not be happy with the performance of Intel's integrated GPUs.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| My bad, I mixed up thoughts about dev/office usage and
| gaming.
|
| For dev and desktop usage no IGP has let me down. Unless
| work needs a dedicated GPU to be done I think an IGP is
| enough for everything else these days.
|
| I don't think people using dedicated GPU wouldn't see
| differences with an IGP in day to day usage.
| bityard wrote:
| > I had a first-gen AMD Athlon and ran Win2k, where support for
| Thunderbird CPUs/mobos was not complete
|
| Nit: Thunderbird was the third iteration of Athlon and I only
| remember this because I had an Athlon 700, which came on a Slot
| A cartridge (!) and had the L2 cache as separate chips
|
| That same system also had one of the first GeForce cards. The
| term "GPU" was not unknown before GeForce, but it was the first
| time the mainstream computing media started using it regularly.
|
| That was the first computer I built with my own cash and boy it
| was not cheap. (21" CRT monitor and dual 10k RPM SCSI
| drives...)
| ItsTotallyOn wrote:
| This is a known issue with a fix that was reported a while back:
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaro...
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| That's mentioned in TFA. It doesn't fix the issue, and might
| have actually introduced it according to OP.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Also, he's using an AMD graphics card. AMD GPUs are infamous
| for stuttering issues and framerate problems on Windows.
|
| I tried a RX580 pre-pandemic and it was both a space heater
| with massive power consumption, framerates were wildly
| inconsistent in several games, and I had game crashes.
|
| Switched to a GTX1060 and boom, problems gone.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I had issues once with my gaming setup (Arch Linux, Ryzen 5 3600,
| rtx 2060 6gb, MSI b350m gaming pro, 16gb ddr4 1600).
|
| The only thing I did was to set the governor from powersave,
| which came by default configured, to ondemand. Graphic stutters
| immediately went away and performance got close to that on
| windows.
|
| I suggest anyone having performance issues under Linux to check
| their governor.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| AMDGPU power profiles were giving me problems in VR in Arch
| Linux as well. I installed corectrl to automatically change
| modes whenever VR is running.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I knew this was going to be due to the AMD fTPM stuttering. I've
| had it on my machine since I switched back to AMD in 2019. The
| BIOS updates haven't helped, and the discrete TPM I tried just
| made the system unbootable. I'm just used to it now.
|
| Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value for
| money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD
| system.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Latest motherboard BIOS might fix it:
|
| https://www.techpowerup.com/295821/amd-releases-agesa-v2-1-2...
|
| "This particular version of AGESA gains importance to those on
| Windows 11, as it corrects a performance-stuttering issue
| caused due to frequent polling of the fTPM by the OS."
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Indeed it's supposed to, but it doesn't fix it for me. Even
| if it did, it's pretty annoying that this problem has been
| around for at least 3 years without a fix.
| gambiting wrote:
| I've had a 5900X+X570 machine since late 2020, with fTPM
| enabled, and never noticed any stuttering. It's a completely
| flawless system, especially compared to the Intel 4790K machine
| it replaced, which had loads of random issues like these,
| unexplainable performance dips and crashes which no tweak could
| ever fix.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It really seems to vary based on motherboard make and model.
|
| My high-end x570 board from ASUS initially exhibited this
| behavior, but it was rectified rather quickly with a BIOS
| update.
|
| I still ended up putting in a real TPM module for convenience
| reasons. It's hard to experiment with bios settings when half
| of them end up wiping the fTPM, necessitating me to punch in
| my BitLocker key on next boot.
|
| Maybe this fiasco combined with Windows 11 will finally push
| motherboard manufacturers to just build a real TPM into their
| products rather than relying on these janky fTPM/PTT
| solutions.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I've had a couple... Two stand out.
|
| One was my glorious AXP1800 + Gigabyte GA-7DXR.
|
| Ok so it -started- glitching eventually, but that was because
| capacitor plague and not the AMD-ness. But that was a workhorse
| machine of mine through most of college. The few crashes that I
| -did- have, were related to other components like
| video/audio(1) that were no better in a 'full intel' setup.
|
| The other was an unsupported config; Tyan Tiger MPX with Dual
| 1.0Ghz Morgan Durons, Running Windows 2000. Fun little box.
|
| (1) - At the start of the century, one of the best things I did
| for system reliability was ditch Creative Labs and their
| drivers for the Glorious Crystal/HTEnvy cards.
| fzfaa wrote:
| >Honestly, as much as AMD's processors are often great value
| for money, I have never had a completely stable glitch-free AMD
| system.
|
| If they are glitchy how can they be great value?
|
| I've had the same experience over the past decades - I will
| never be buying AMD again.
| daneel_w wrote:
| So why do you have f/TPM enabled in the first place? There was
| no Windows 11 back in 2019. Do you have an actual need for it?
| vel0city wrote:
| I have the fTPM enabled on a few AMD Ryzen CPU computers I
| own. I like using Bitlocker even on my personal machines.
| I've got a lot of personal information on my computers, FDE
| helps to keep my data safe in case a drive goes missing.
| whyoh wrote:
| BitLocker can be used without TPM, for example with a
| password or a key file on a USB drive. And those are
| probably safer options if your whole computer gets stolen.
| gambiting wrote:
| They are only safer if you always unplug the USB drive
| and take it with you. Which I know I would never do
| reliably enough to offer protection(and I would probably
| lose the drive eventually which is then actually a
| complete loss of data unless you have a backup, but if
| you have a backup then that's yet another weakness in the
| system). A built in TPM module _might_ have some unknown
| fault that hasn 't been disclosed yet, but I think that's
| about 10000x less likely than the chance of me
| forgetting/losing the USB drive with encryption key.
| vel0city wrote:
| The experience of doing it with a password is pretty poor
| compared to using a TPM. Every time the computer reboots,
| I need to type in the password. If it is a remote
| machine, I have to physically be at the station to type
| in the password.
|
| Keeping the key file on a USB drive isn't exactly safe
| either, as there's a high likelihood that flash drive is
| probably going to be near my computer when stolen. Also,
| that flash drive may be active and plugged when the
| system is running, exposing it to the machine directly.
| Having that key material easily accessible on a flash
| drive makes it less protected than using the TPM.
|
| Using the TPM gives me a better experience and depending
| on how things are handled a far more secure way of
| handling the key. Its way easier to grab the key file off
| the flash drive than coaxing it out of the TPM without
| booting the trusted boot process.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Bitlocker/FDE is a valid use case. I personally prefer to
| protect sensitive information with software-based solutions
| that are portable between various operating systems.
| maven29 wrote:
| Full disk encryption as in Bitlocker?
| daneel_w wrote:
| Maybe. Only they know. I can't answer your question.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I use Bitlocker FDE.
|
| And frankly, having to disable this bit of hardware that you
| paid for because it doesn't work properly is bullshit.
| daneel_w wrote:
| AMD's fTPM is a gratis bonus as far as I'm concerned.
| Bitlocker's disk encryption can be used without TPM. It's
| less convenient - Windows needs to read the cryptographic
| key from a USB flash drive at boot - but I'm willing to bet
| it's much easier to get used to than 3 years of glitching
| and stuttering.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| It's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a
| device because I require that feature.
|
| Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known to be
| on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a USB
| drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It means
| either the key material is stored in plaintext on the
| USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a PIN. I
| need my computer to be able to boot without intervention,
| so that isn't an option.
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> It 's not a "gratis bonus" when I specifically buy a
| device because I require that feature._
|
| I don't understand, since fTPM specifically isn't a
| requirement. Any TPM will work. If you had bought Intel
| you would have paid more for just the CPU alone,
| regardless of the cost of a discrete TPM.
|
| _> Besides Windows 11 requiring a TPM, which was known
| to be on the cards for a while now, storing the key on a
| USB drive is not functionally the same as the TPM. It
| means either the key material is stored in plaintext on
| the USB, which is pointless, or I still need to use a
| PIN. I need my computer to be able to boot without
| intervention, so that isn 't an option._
|
| With f/TPM and no PIN you're storing the keys in plain-
| text right next to the encrypted content. It's like
| hanging the keys to your door on the knob. This
| effectively cancels the point of full-disk encryption for
| your implied personal use. I cannot believe what I'm
| reading.
| vel0city wrote:
| > With f/TPM and no PIN you're storing the keys in plain-
| text right next to the encrypted content.
|
| Not true. If you change the boot parameters it won't
| release the key. If you were to try and boot a live OS to
| try and extract the data without respecting ACLs or
| something, you wouldn't be able to access the key. You
| also can't actively read the key from the TPM once the
| system has booted.
|
| Sure, there might be some attackers who may be able to
| mess with the OS post-boot to have it give up its info,
| but even the above-average thief off the street isn't
| going to be able to access my data.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Why is this hard to understand? The CPU and platform is
| marketed as having an fTPM, but everyone's experience
| over the last 3 years is that it's faulty. It doesn't
| matter if there's an alternative solution involving
| buying a separate device, and it doesn't matter if you
| think the fTPM isn't necessary. The point is that the
| features they claimed to support were faulty, untested,
| and unfixed for many years. That's not acceptable.
|
| Also, your description of how an fTPM works is wrong. The
| fTPM on AMD is provided by the AMD PSP TEE, which
| measures your execution environment then seals the drive
| encryption key. The platform garauntees that it will not
| unseal the drive encryption key other than to the same
| combination of trusted hardware and cryptographically
| verified software that previously sealed the key. The
| hardware is tamper resistent and has a relatively good
| track record. dTPM vs fTPM is an active debate, but so
| far the most practical sniff attack on the TPM only works
| on dTPMs, though that's partially Microsoft's fault.
|
| If a hard drive is stolen, it is useless without the CPU.
| If a whole computer is stolen, the data will only be
| accessible to a very advanced adversary. The list of
| people on earth who can tamper or trace a CPU to
| successfully exfiltrate an fTPM key is probably a short
| list, and nearly all of them will be security
| researchers, state-level adversaries or APTs. In fact,
| many government and other highly secure organisations
| rely on the security of the TPM for disk encryption.
|
| Analogy wise, it's more like having a bouncer guarding
| your door who only lets you in once he's carefully
| checked all your biometrics. And if you try to push past
| him, he blows up the house so you can't get in.
|
| However, would I trust a TPM in isolation if I was likely
| to be physically raided by the CIA? Probably not.
| vel0city wrote:
| > everyone's experience over the last 3 years is that
| it's faulty
|
| Not everyone's. I use the fTPM on a few different Ryzen
| systems and I don't seem to have any issues. Maybe I'm
| just lucky though.
| psyc wrote:
| I've built several AMD systems over the past 20 years, and
| until now all the ones with nvidia GPUs were absolutely rock
| solid wrt hardware. The Radeon builds suffered various mostly
| minor GPU driver problems.
|
| But son of a bitcoin, my current PC has this exact stuttering
| problem! And all this time I just assumed it was Windows being
| stupid about normal I/O. But come to think of it, I did
| recently have a conversation with my even-hardware-geekier
| brother in which I said something like "How in the hell can
| Windows have become so sloppy that the mouse cursor can be
| regularly interrupted during normal use? That should be
| logically impossible by design."
|
| But now I bet it's this motherboard thing preempting everything
| and it all makes sense.
| neogodless wrote:
| For what it's worth, I use my desktop for work and gaming. All
| AMD system for the past 3 years (CPU/GPU). No glitches or
| stuttering. Windows 10 with fTPM _disabled_ since I have no
| interest in Windows 11.
|
| Been AMD only for CPU in my desktop the past 15 years or so and
| haven't had these glitch/stutter issues.
|
| All of this anecdotal, but I just find it odd you've _never_
| had a "stable glitch-free AMD system." But it might vary
| depending on motherboard, motherboard OEM and motherboard
| chipset. (Was on Asus X470, now on MSI X570.)
| daneel_w wrote:
| Installing a TPM module and then failing to get the computer
| to boot suggests that they don't know how to use the TPM in
| concert with an operating system. It's possible they don't
| even know what TPM is for or why they enabled/installed it in
| the first place.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Of course I know how to use a TPM and why one might use it.
| It's rather unfair of you to assume that I don't because
| the hardware I bought doesn't function properly.
|
| The computer failed to POST after I put in the dTPM,
| nothing to do with the OS. It's either an issue with the
| dTPM or the motherboard, but I couldn't figure out what the
| problem was and didn't want to keep spending money. The
| motherboard manufacturers provide very little information
| about how their dTPM interfaces work, and nowadays it can
| be difficult to find genuine OEM dTPMs due to Win11-related
| stock shortages.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| A long time ago, trying to play a Battlefield 1942 star wars
| mod with my Radeon 9700pro would crash my computer after ~10
| minutes. Base game was fine. EoD was fine. Everything else
| was fine. Except this mod. No amount of tweaking helped.
| Later, upgrading to a 9800pro, problems disappeared. I didn't
| want it to be like that but it did.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| My thinking is that it's not the AMD CPUs that are the
| problem, but rather the Intel chipsets and chipset drivers
| generally seem to have fewer issues. It could also be that
| Microsoft and others do more testing on Intel-based systems.
|
| For what it's worth, I also indirectly support quite a lot of
| corporate systems, and we've had a fair amount of flakiness
| with AMD Thinkpads. Not every laptop has issues, and not in
| every situation, but we get issues significantly more often
| for the AMD machines - this is visible clearly in the stats
| we keep. Anything involving docks seems to be particularly
| problematic. It could be that Lenovo are just making terrible
| devices and I'm unfairly blaming AMD - but the Intel ones are
| rock solid.
|
| Also I've used TPM for years, possibly since Windows 7 I
| think, in order to get full disk encryption with Bitlocker.
| More recently I've been playing with remote attestation.
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