MSI Addresses AMD STAPM Issues on Ryzen 8000G APUs In Its Latest AM5 BIOS Update

MSI has addressed the AMD Ryzen 8000G APU's STAPM issues which cause severe throttling on the AM5 desktop platform through a new BIOS release.

The AMD Ryzen 8000G APUs are a great processor package for the modern AM5 platform however, they do have some issues that were discovered before their launch when the first reviews hit the web. The most prominent issue is related to the aggressive throttling that stems from the STAPM feature.

The AMD STAPM feature or Skin Temperature-Aware Power Management is a mechanism that is particularly useful for mobility platforms but not of much use for desktop platforms. In fact, on the desktop platforms, this feature can result in degraded performance which is exactly why it had to be addressed in the first place.

On laptops, the issue helps throttle down the APUs to prevent heat accumulation on the laptop chassis but it looks like this feature was kept enabled when porting the Phoenix (Hawk Point) dies from mobility to desktop PCs. Desktops aren't as thermally constrained & can deal with higher temperatures since they feature better cooling, however, temperatures on desktops using the AMD Ryzen 8000G showed CPU throttle kick-in after a few seconds of use which led to adverse performance.

AMD stated that it was working with motherboard partners to address this issue through a future BIOS update release and it looks like MSI has already updated its latest AGESA 1.1.0.2b BIOS with the proper fix. The fix in general will set the STAPM feature to "Disabled" by default which was previously set to "Auto" or enabled in the previous releases. This is the case with all AM5 boards when running the Ryzen 8000G APUs.

MSI releases new BIOS with default "STAPM" disabled for AMD Ryzen 8000G series. pic.twitter.com/Ocb3EJHXmc

— chi11eddog (@g01d3nm4ng0) February 7, 2024

We pushed back our review by a few days to make sure that we re-ran the tests with STAPM disabled entirely on the platform we tested it.

There will be plenty of mainstream and entry-level consumers who won't be opening up the BIOS of their PCs ever so its good to see the latest AM5 motherboards will ship with the proper BIOS fix when running an AMD Ryzen 8000G APU. As for existing users, you can simply grab the new BIOS from MSI's support page and STAPM will never bother you again, plus you will be able to access the full potential of your chip.

News Source: chi11eddog