5+ months later, the Beast is finally alive

[RMerlin]

I finally got the CPU to build my new system, after gathering parts since last summer (bought some parts well in advance because of price hikes and shortages related to the human malware), and finally getting ahold of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU.

Compiling all 10 firmware used to take me two hours. Now, it takes... 40 minutes

And I am "only" allocating 20 threads out of 24 to that development VM (so my host can remain very responsive for other stuff while compiling is underway).

The RT-AC68U firmware on its own used to take 19-20 minutes. Now, it takes 15 minutes.

This will save me a LOT of time.

 

[francovilar]

Great!!!! Does this mean that we will have beta 5 faster?

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Yes i seem to remember you talking about this. Glad it's up and running it will benefit the entire Asus Merlin cult. New tech is always a good thing.

 

[RMerlin]

Great!!!! Does this mean that we will have beta 5 faster?

It does mean that I don't need to have an entire evening free for me to build everything then prepare a release.

@themiron merged and updated dnsmasq yesterday (our dnsmasq requires additional work because of his OpenSSL integration versus nettle used upstream). I need to review one dubious change I've made recently to wsdd2 to fix an issue (which might possibly create a different one) before I can wrap things up for beta 5. So, probably a few days before I'm ready.

 

[BreakingDad]

Just do the build for the rt-ax86u and don't worry about those others.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

just do the build for the rt-ax86u and don't worry about those others

LMFAO !!!!!!! No just do the AX58U the rest can wait.

 

[Morris]

What will you do with all the extra coffee?

 

[N/A]

Now get a 3990WX or the updated Zen 3 version then the compiling will finish before you hit enter.

 

[bluzfanmr1]

I finally got the CPU to build my new system, after gathering parts since last summer (bought some parts well in advance because of price hikes and shortages related to the human malware), and finally getting ahold of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU.

Compiling all 10 firmware used to take me two hours. Now, it takes... 40 minutes

View attachment 29815

And I am "only" allocating 20 threads out of 24 to that development VM (so my host can remain very responsive for other stuff while compiling is underway).

The RT-AC68U firmware on its own used to take 19-20 minutes. Now, it takes 15 minutes.

This will save me a LOT of time.

Do you remember how this compares to when you first started doing this? The speed of technological advances blows me away, especially since I’m a little older and remember the days before computers were available to the masses.

 

[shabbs]

Great!!!! Does this mean that we will have beta 5 faster?

LOL! Let the man take a breath... heh heh.

 

[Mutzli]

Wow, that's a huge improvement. Amazing what AMD pulled off with the Zen 3 cores. I'm still on Zen 2 and will hold out for Zen 4 on DDR5, PCIe5.0 and Nvme 2.0.

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

I always buy my MB, CPU and RAM at the same time. I’ve been burnt with bad memory and stupid 7-14 RMA limitations only once. As they say fool me once...

Its these shortages that have kept me on a i5-2500k for so long. I need an upgrade. But it’s all or nothing when I’m ready to pull the trigger.

I did manage to get an NVIDIA 1660s Super for $229 about 5 months ago, but some miracle.

 

[francovilar]

LOL! Let the man take a breath... heh heh.

I was kidding but... all of us were thinking in that. Now he only needs super fast internet.... Haha

 

[RMerlin]

Do you remember how this compares to when you first started doing this? The speed of technological advances blows me away, especially since I’m a little older and remember the days before computers were available to the masses.

Impossible to compare because the firmware has grown far more complex today than back in 2012, where it was Samba 3.0 instead of 3.6, there was no Trend Micro engine, no AiCloud, etc... So even if it were the same CPU, it would have been a good bit faster back then.

A few years ago building an average (RT-AC68U or RT-AC88U) firmware was taking me 22-24 minutes. Building all firmware at once was taking me 2h20m - I managed to drop that to 2h last year as I made a lot of optimizations to the build process.

Wow, that's a huge improvement. Amazing what AMD pulled off with the Zen 3 cores.

A good part of those results is from upgrading from 6 threads to 20 threads in my build VM. But the single thread performance also has a significant impact as seen by the RT-AC68U build time which dropped by roughly 25%.

I always buy my MB, CPU and RAM at the same time. I’ve been burnt with bad memory and stupid 7-14 RMA limitations only once. As they say fool me once...

I needed to upgrade from 16 GB to 32 GB about a year ago, so at the time I made sure to buy RAM that would be suitable for a future AMD build (which is 3200 MHz - 3600 MHz wasn't worth the price difference at the time). GPU and SSD were upgraded along the way because I needed them at the time. Only the PSU, case, motherboard and cooler were purchased ahead of the CPU - and the motherboard was a brand new model that was Zen 3 ready at launch.

 

[isr25]

So do you play games on the beast since you have extra time now? Congrats on the 5900x find! Will skip the last upgrade of the AM4 platform and upgrade my computer in 2 years

 

[Sky1111]

I finally got the CPU to build my new system, after gathering parts since last summer (bought some parts well in advance because of price hikes and shortages related to the human malware), and finally getting ahold of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU.

Compiling all 10 firmware used to take me two hours. Now, it takes... 40 minutes

View attachment 29815

And I am "only" allocating 20 threads out of 24 to that development VM (so my host can remain very responsive for other stuff while compiling is underway).

The RT-AC68U firmware on its own used to take 19-20 minutes. Now, it takes 15 minutes.

This will save me a LOT of time.

Congrats on moving to AMD platform AND scoring 5900x - they are very hard to get! Not sure what is your motherboard, but I do recommend periodically checking for BIOS updates as I see new version popping up.
ASIDE: in order to really unleash the beast, a good NVMe PCIe Gen4 + fast memory are highly recommended.

 

[Hawk]

Congratulations on your new build, time you will save when compiling firmware alone will make purchase worth it.

 

[Makaveli]

I finally got the CPU to build my new system, after gathering parts since last summer (bought some parts well in advance because of price hikes and shortages related to the human malware), and finally getting ahold of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU.

Compiling all 10 firmware used to take me two hours. Now, it takes... 40 minutes

View attachment 29815

And I am "only" allocating 20 threads out of 24 to that development VM (so my host can remain very responsive for other stuff while compiling is underway).

The RT-AC68U firmware on its own used to take 19-20 minutes. Now, it takes 15 minutes.

This will save me a LOT of time.

Very nice.

I'm still on a 3800X on my build because prices are still very high for Zen 3 chips.
Not going to pay $799 CAD for a 5800X...

Glad you will be able to put all those threads to use.

Now get a 3990WX or the updated Zen 3 version then the compiling will finish before you hit enter.

That would require a brand new motherboard you can't put a Threadripper in a AM4 socket.

 

[RMerlin]

Congrats on moving to AMD platform AND scoring 5900x - they are very hard to get! Not sure what is your motherboard, but I do recommend periodically checking for BIOS updates as I see new version popping up.
ASIDE: in order to really unleash the beast, a good NVMe PCIe Gen4 + fast memory are highly recommended.

My current SSD is not a bottleneck. I tested compiling from a RAM drive a few years ago, and it brought zero performance improvement over my NVME SSD.

 

[Mutzli]

So do you play games on the beast since you have extra time now? Congrats on the 5900x find! Will skip the last upgrade of the AM4 platform and upgrade my computer in 2 years

Supply of Zen 3 CPU's is getting better. Our local Micro Center got some in stock as well and a sale on the lower end Ryzen 5 5600X.