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AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core and 1920X 12-Core Specs and Pricing (hothardware.com)

Posted by msmash on from the AMD-news dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD first teased its Ryzen Threadripper series of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors back in mid-May, but is now sharing additional details on the first two products in the family. Both processors are based on the 14nm Zen core, make use of AMD's new Socket TR4 interface, support quad-channel DDR memory, and feature a total of 64 PCIe lanes. In addition, both processors will come from the factory unlocked. Ryzen Threadripper 1920X will have 12 Cores, 24 Threads, and 3.5/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost) clock speeds. Ryzen Threadripper 1950X will have 16 Cores, 32 Threads, and 3.4/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost) clock speeds. Pricing is set at $799 and $999, respectively, with availability in early August, though Dell's Alienware gaming PC division will have systems shipping with the new chip starting this month. AMD also put the new chips up against Intel's Core i7-7900X 10-core CPU in a Cinebench benchmark run in a video demo, and the 12-core Threadripper chip beats Intel's currently available Skylake-X chip handily, while the 16-core Threadripper outpaces it even further.

85 comments

  1. Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    These sell at a steep discount to Intel's core i9, and are anywhere from $400 to $1000 cheaper. It's a no-brainer.

    1. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They sell at a steep discount __AND__ they are cheaper !!! Excellent !!!!

    2. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Based on pricing and performance I just decided my next workstation will be a Threadripper platform.

    3. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can they sell at a steep discount "to" an inanimate object? How does that work?

    4. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Me, I'm holding out for the Bobbin, or maybe even the Thimble (late 2019?)

    5. Re:Phenomenal by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Don't forget - AMD motherboards tend to be significantly cheaper than Intel motherboards. Whether that holds true going forward remains to be seen. All the potential platform cost savings could be eaten up by RGB lighting.

    6. Re:Phenomenal by lexman098 · · Score: 1

      For the desktop/gaming user, I'm not actually convinced of their price vs performance. Userbenchmark has the Ryzen series at a pretty big disadvantage given the high prices compared with similarly performing intel CPUs. They seem to only be the clear winner when it comes to massively parallel multi-threaded applications.

    7. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope you understand this is not an English grammar school forum you are responding to. Oops used "to" for an inanimate object again.

    8. Re:Phenomenal by lexman098 · · Score: 1

      Not sure where you're getting that. I loved my Phenom II when it came out, but other than increased competition I'm not sure where all this Ryzen hype is coming from.

    9. Re:Phenomenal by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      These are more aimed at workstations than gaming. For workstations having more PCIe lanes (64, standard Ryzen has 24 and Intel's Skylake-X competition has 44) means plenty of bandwidth for multiple GPUs, RAID cards and NVMe SSDs. They have more cores than Intel's parts too, which while they have slightly lower single core performance and clock speeds will perform better overall in anything that can make use of them like video encoding, CAD/raytracing and simulations. Oh, and code compilation of course. Also handy if you have a lot of VMs.

      AMD hardware tends to last longer than Intel too. By that I mean that it won't suck in 5 years time, not that Intel hardware is less reliable. 5 years down the road AMD will probably still be releasing CPUs for the socket, and supporting the old chipset reasonably well.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hold out for the Intel price cuts. Threadripper is still weeks out at least; you can't actually buy this stuff yet. Once you can and Intel starts to lose market share new Intel price lists will appear.

    11. Re:Phenomenal by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Intel boards got significantly cheaper, matching amd's, only after Intel castrated the number of pcie lines available.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    12. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am on an Intel I7-3770K. I can assume you it is now 5 years (and 1 quarter) -release was 2012Q2, and it doesn't suck at all, I have had no issues. The I am on a Mini-ITX with hydro 50 cooler and 16GB of DDR3 1333, Samsung 840 Pro 250GB. The only thing I have upgraded is my original AMD 7970 video card to a GeForce 1070.

      For 4 years the only problem with the computer was the fucking AMD card the vsync glitches and just overall shit nature was terrible, having now gone back to GeForce (I will NEVER return to AMD for videocards).

      Comp runs like a dream, BF1 works great on maxed out settings on 1600p monitor. My ONLY complaint at this point is that I wanted to upgrade the entire computer with I pulled the trigger on the video card a few months ago, but it was running so well I couldn't justify getting rid of the rest of it.

      So I have really no idea what your talking about with the Intel chips. I am loving mine.

    13. Re:Phenomenal by sexconker · · Score: 1

      From the last 2 decades.
      You're comparing platforms over 1 year apart in age.
      A fairer comparison (but still biased to Intel due to age) would be to compare X370 boards to Z270 boards.

      Try again and let me know.

    14. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AMD hardware tends to last longer than Intel too. By that I mean that it won't suck in 5 years time, not that Intel hardware is less reliable. 5 years down the road AMD will probably still be releasing CPUs for the socket, and supporting the old chipset reasonably well

      I'm still running an i7-2600k bought 6 years ago. I've upgraded RAM a couple times (at 32gb now ) and replaced the Raptor RAID with a couple of SSDs. Otherwise it's been a great machine and when the time comes to replace it I'm not going to be remotely intersted in keeping the original MSI bother board that only cost like $69 in the first place. I'll sell the RAM also. I'll want a totally new platform with the enchanced chipset features that interest me.

      So I'm afraid I don't see your point at all.

      FWIW barring a total failure, I doubt I'll be upgrading anytime soon. When the day comes I really don't know if it'll be AMD or Intel yet. I'll have to see where we are.

    15. Re: Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I only recently upgraded from my phenom 2 to Ryzen 7. Had amd still been in bulldozer architecture, would have went intel. Only reason I upgraded is I've been using plex and couldn't game and let the wife watch movies. Now it's 90% CPU leftover for games while I'm transcoding 1080p movies. At the times I've Built my last 3 rigs, amd was either the price-perf leader or the performance leader. Sometimes it's all about timing. This time the i9 platform is the performance king, but the thermal and price-performance isn't there. Maybe next time intel. Threadripper is really exciting.

    16. Re:Phenomenal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Brian Krzanich and Intel are too arrogant to even consider lowering their prices in the face of competition from someone other than themselves, after all they're too busy putting glue on top of their potato chips. /s

    17. Re:Phenomenal by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      I think he meant you could update the CPU more easily, but yeah, Intel CPU are unlikely to be the thing that makes you throw out the machine either.

    18. Re:Phenomenal by lexman098 · · Score: 1

      Why does it matter how old it is? I'm comparing boards with AM4 sockets to LGA 1151 sockets. The Z270 is the newest, top of line board. Of course it's more expensive, but you don't need that to run the latest intel chips.

    19. Re:Phenomenal by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Because new products tend to have higher prices because they are new. Prices drop over time.
      The X370 is also the newest, top of the line chipset. (The Z270 is not a board.)

      Compare apples to apples, please.

  2. Jack The by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    RIPPER!

  3. Much better for Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The plethora of undocumented opcodes present in these chips make them perfect for running Linux compilers. Some operations can run in 1/10 the time if properly optimised.

  4. More like Assripper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Rip your ass with the new Goatse-class chip. The more cores the more holes.

  5. Deleet Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Frist

  6. Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by Billly+Gates · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Gamers Nexus did 2 videos comparing a 2008 era i7 and a 2011 era 2600k and the AMD was lacking in many benchmarks and games.

    My citations are here and here where the 2600k beats the newer Ryzen even further?

    I was entertaining the idea of upgrading to an 1800 but my 2014 haswell is just faster unless you do just video editing

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ryzen IPC is better than even Broadwell-E, which is newer than your Haswell. I probably wouldn't upgrade a Haswell i7 for gaming either, at least not until the publishers start taking advantage of the higher core counts.

    2. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by gman003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      How about you use a source that actually knows what they're talking about, and knows how to do reliable, repeatable testing?

      Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 6600K

      Cost difference is negligible - a minor discount on either side will swing it. Nominal TDP is only 4W apart. And it's the high-end "ordinary consumer" part - the default recommendation for PC gaming. This is as close to an even comparison as you can get.

      Across multiple graphics cards, across multiple games at different resolutions, AMD is competitive. Major wins on some games (Civilization 6), major losses on others (Rocket League), plenty of dead ties (GTA V), and a general trend of AMD doing better as resolution increases. No real oddities with uneven framerates - the 99th percentile framerate tracks the mean. AMD gets a small but consistent lead on synthetic benchmarks, and naturally scores overwhelming wins on multithreaded rendering.

    3. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      My citations are here [youtube.com] and here where the 2600k beats the newer Ryzen even further [youtube.com]?

      Er what? In the 930 video, at 4:45 and 10:00: The lowest AMD was the stock Rzyen CPU R5 1500X which beat out the stock 2600K but slower than the OC 2600K. The OC 1500X beat out the OC 2600K. All other Rzyen chips handily beat out the 2600K both stock and OC versions. So when you say the 2600K beats out the Ryzen, I have to ask what are you smoking?

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Well his source doesn't say what he says they do. First of all the videos don't look at Ryzen performance specifically but do compare Intel CPUs with other ones. They only briefly mention Ryzen; however, in both it clearly shows Ryzen beating out the Intel 2600K he mentions. So he either can't read a graph or is flat out lying.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    5. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      By that logic, the 2600K has better IPC than a 7700K.

      http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2867-intel-i7-2600k-2017-benchmark-vs-7700k-1700-more/page-3

      That's bad logic.

    6. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by sexconker · · Score: 1

      The i7-2600k in that article ( http://www.gamersnexus.net/gui... ) is quite a bit behind the new Ryzen CPUs for most tests, even though they have it running at 4.7 GHz vs. the Ryzen's 4 GHz with 2933 MHz RAM. The 2600k is only really winning for certain games.

      Ryzen overclocking has improved a bit since that article was published, but you'll still be hard-pressed to get a Ryzen CPU much past 4 GHz. What does matter a lot more is running your memory at a higher speed. Since the infinity fabric interconnect is tied to the memory clock, any time a core needs to reach out over that interconnect to talk to another core, you're going to wait on the infinity fabric. Increasing memory speed has a significant effect on Ryzen in synthetic CPU tests and in many games. Additionally, there have been some game updates for Ryzen that have massively improved performance, and some Windows scheduler updates (I think Windows 10 only) that have yielded a moderate improvement.

      I myself have a i7-2600k in my main system. I intend to build a Ryzen (or Threadripper) system later this year.

    7. Re:Too bad its 9 years behind Intel with IPC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You lying shill.
      Change your name to BillyGoatse and then kill yourself

  7. Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know what I want for Christmas.

    Such a shame my wife doesn't read /.

    1. Re:Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      I know what I want for Christmas.

      Such a shame my wife doesn't read /.

      No she's reading Ashley-Madison.com instead.

    2. Re:Christmas by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      So what state allows marriage between man and bot? The times, they're a'changing for sure.

    3. Re: Christmas by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      Are you simple? You understand that the site is intended for SEX between people who are already married? No one goes there to get married. Either really bad attempt at a joke, or you're really stupid.

    4. Re: Christmas by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      Hmmm, Well when you get bored read about the ashley madison hack, and how out of their thousands of users, there were only a handful of actual, real, live women using it -- the rest were bots.

      Hence the joke: The man's wife was supposedly reading ashley madison, therefore there is a very strong chance statistically speaking that the wife in this case, was a bot.

      Please PM me if that explanation doesn't make sense, I know it ruins a joke having it explained to you, but you seem like you needed a helping hand.

      Cheers, and good try though.

  8. Cool by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

    I've always been a fan of AMD's processors and still have used them in my Linux machine, but I had to go Intel for my gaming system for the last few upgrades. Granted I never spend this much on a CPU so I'll need to tech to "trickle down" to their budget line, but seeing a good performance option from AMD will be good again.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  9. Laptops and servers by williamyf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In a dwindling X86/AMD64 PC market, laptops* is where the volume is... Yet AMD has nothing for the Laptop Market in the Zen Class Architecture.

    And in servers, while there may not be as much volume, is where the cream of the profits are.

    While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers, and demand from server purcharsers...

    So, no laptop parts, to early for servers, coupled with so so results for enthusiasts desktop PC (great bang for buck, but performance is more or less even depending on workload) and crap processors for enterprise desktop (corporate parts without IGP? Really? I mean, REALLY?!?!?), is to early to be happy for AMD.

    I hope they do well, I really do, for this will be good for all of us (even those of us using Apple gear, therefore, tied to Intel)...

    But one thing is to hope, and quite another thing is reality, and is to early to know what reality looks like.

    Just my two cents.

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    1. Re:Laptops and servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The latest of the AMD APU's were already providing better performance than Intel's. AMD updated the enthusiast segment this year because they hadn't touched it in 5 years. R3 is coming with IGP, and likely will be the mainstream component of Ryzen.

      You probably don't remember, but Intel did this same thing back in 2008 when they introduced the i7 only with triple channel memory and a northbridge that used 50W power and had no IGP. Subsequent generations used a split model with the majority of the market opting for the nerfed 2 memory channel and IGP.

      Epyc does look promising, because its cost scales linearly to desktop parts based on core count. That's something that Intel hasn't been able to do in the past, and based on their Skylake-SP announcements have no plans of trying.

    2. Re:Laptops and servers by steveha · · Score: 4, Informative

      AMD has nothing for the Laptop Market in the Zen Class Architecture.

      Coming in Q3. In other words, 2-4 months from now.

      Laptops refresh twice a year, and the Ryzen launch wasn't in time for the last laptop refresh. No big deal; they're coming.

      https://semiaccurate.com/2017/05/22/amd-talks-threadripper-ryzen-mobile-ryzen-pro/

      While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers, and demand from server purcharsers...

      Well, sure. But unless the paper is a lie, those chips will do well. They will offer much-improved price/performance compared to Intel's server chips, they offer some tasty new security features (like VMs running with the in-RAM data encrypted so that there's no way for one VM to spy on another's memory), and they are doing it right when Intel is jacking their server customers on price.

      corporate parts without IGP? Really? I mean, REALLY?!?!?

      Does "IGP" mean integrated graphics? AMD is all over integrated graphics, they call such products "APUs" and the mobile lineup will be pretty much all APUs. So my guess is Q3 for corporate products with APUs as well. (I hope AMD supports ECC RAM on APUs, finally.)

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    3. Re:Laptops and servers by Kjella · · Score: 2

      Speaking from the company's perspective and not a user perspective it's more important for AMD to compete successfully in the areas that they do compete than to provide competition in areas where they wouldn't. AMD doesn't have the least power hungry chips, the highest performing server chips or the fastest single threaded gaming chips. Very often it's the extremes that make money, the "sweet spot" processors not so much. Particularly not if you have a 800lb gorilla in the room looking to snuff out your profit so you don't become a real danger.

      So for AMD this is lot about picking battles where they think Intel won't go. Will Intel give you 8 cores for $499 or 16 cores for $999? No. Then that's a great product for AMD. Intel's client computing group sells for 7.4 billion/quarter, AMDs computing and graphics combined $600 million and if you leave dedicated graphics out of it maybe $400 million - that's just my guess. They don't need to sell to everybody to make those sales targets, the important thing is their inventory gets sold and isn't collecting dust on the shelf.

      I agree that in the slightly longer perspective the server market is a place AMD should make money, but it's a long time since the Opterons were competitive and they've been out of the loop. The enterprise market is conservative, they want validation, stability and long term commitments. They won't be rushing out to buy the latest hotshot offering from AMD no matter what you do, it's got to mature a bit and AMD can't wait for those profits to roll in. As for the enterprise desktop the lack of IGP is not a big deal as long has supercheap graphics cards to go with them. The integration is much more important in laptops.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    4. Re: Laptops and servers by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      "Too" Learn it, mmmkay?

    5. Re:Laptops and servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ryzen APUs for desktops and laptops are coming eventually, hopefully making the A320 boards useful. The only problem is they max out at 4C/8T, so I don't know how well they'll fair against Intel without a core count advantage. They might have drastically lower prices or include three-core offerings or both.

      ASUS offers a (huge) laptop using a desktop Ryzen processor, so AMD has to know there's a market there (however, the ASUS also uses a desktop GPU, so maybe it could slimmed-down with a mobile one instead). Maybe they could introduce a larger APU for 8-cores or more?

      (There was a leak of a mobile APU a while back: http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-apu-vega-gpu-leak/)

    6. Re: Laptops and servers by williamyf · · Score: 1

      "Too" Learn it, mmmkay?

      I'll wager Quarters to Greenbacks that my 296/300 ToEFL beats the living shit out of whatever you got in your DELE ...

      mmmkay? :-P :-P

      --
      *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    7. Re: Laptops and servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wasn't a leak, they showed a Ryzen laptop socket APU at computex. Looked tiny next to threadripper.

    8. Re:Laptops and servers by dbIII · · Score: 1

      While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers

      https://www.supermicro.com/pro...

      But one thing is to hope, and quite another thing is reality

      Hence the provided link via a two word google search that describes some reality.

    9. Re: Laptops and servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody cares, and your score is especially irrelevant when you make careless mistakes because you don't proof-read well or at all.

    10. Re:Laptops and servers by PixetaledPikachu · · Score: 1

      In a dwindling X86/AMD64 PC market, laptops* is where the volume is... Yet AMD has nothing for the Laptop Market in the Zen Class Architecture.

      And in servers, while there may not be as much volume, is where the cream of the profits are.

      While Zen Server parts (Epyc) look good on paper, it reamis to be seen if there will be Adoption from server makers, and demand from server purcharsers...

      So, no laptop parts, to early for servers, coupled with so so results for enthusiasts desktop PC (great bang for buck, but performance is more or less even depending on workload) and crap processors for enterprise desktop (corporate parts without IGP? Really? I mean, REALLY?!?!?), is to early to be happy for AMD.

      I hope they do well, I really do, for this will be good for all of us (even those of us using Apple gear, therefore, tied to Intel)...

      But one thing is to hope, and quite another thing is reality, and is to early to know what reality looks like.

      Just my two cents.

      Don't worry, Opterons has seen plenty of enterprise adoption among cloud providers. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft use a bunch of them on their Data Centers. If you have IAAS cloud account, chances are you are using either a Xeon E3 or an Opterons. With EPYC continues the tradition to provide more cores for the price and with performance improvement over their previous platform, I am quite confident with the outlook. In addition to that, HPE skipped on AMD on their G9 line, but will be introducing some models for their G10 refresh.

    11. Re: Laptops and servers by williamyf · · Score: 1

      The original criticism was about my lack of knowledge, not about my lack of care to proofread a post in a forum.

      Again, english is not my native language, and I can bet my greenbacks to your quarters that my english is far better than your Spanish. And would even match you euro for euro, that my french is better than yours (or original poster's) too, warts and all.

      These grammar nazis...

      --
      *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    12. Re: Laptops and servers by KGIII · · Score: 1

      MÃ Espanol es muy mierda.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  10. not as ripped as creimer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Creimer's big meaty cock is so muscular, he can lift 364 pounds with just his cock. Creimer's big meaty cock gives life, and he lays giant rocky cock eggs with his muscular cock.

    1. Re:not as ripped as creimer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      I got Amazon Dot. Where are my cock eggs?

  11. And Windows remains mostly single threaded. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And with all these advances Windows is still single threaded when it comes to most of the functionality.

    Get blown away in games. Sit for hours updating your OS.

    1. Re: And Windows remains mostly single threaded. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not a problem, who needs windows? posting from android now . . .

  12. Intel is fucked on all levels server / desktop / w by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Intel is fucked on all levels server / desktop and workstation / high end gaming. By cheaper AMD systems with more pci-e lanes at all levels.

    Intel kaby-lake x is an said over priced joke that costs more and does less then the same chips on the desktop.

  13. Non-X chips coming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since the normal Ryzen line has cheaper CPUs closer to 3.0 Ghz, while the X models start around 3.5.

    Maybe the non-X 16-core will actually hit the $850 price point I heard so much about.

  14. Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming rigs by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

    Since gaming is not very well threaded, and in clock-limited situations these won't be any better than Ryzen. Intel still wins out for performance there, and these are expensive processors to be using in applications which won't use all the cores. Oh well, I guess some folks may just want them for bragging rights?

    --
    William George
  15. Threadripper: The instruction mutilator by chispito · · Score: 4, Funny

    Threadripper: It has the electrolytes processes crave

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:Threadripper: The instruction mutilator by turp182 · · Score: 1

      I read it as Threa Dripper. Wasn't sure what to think or expect.

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
    2. Re:Threadripper: The instruction mutilator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yo head looks like a peanut. That shit better be ready when president Camacho comes back..

  16. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by Kokuyo · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu server with KVM virtualization (including a Win10 gaming VM) actually.

    I do admit I was hoping to be a bit further away from 800 bucks on the 12 core, though. Oh well, gotta wait and see the prices in Switzerland first anyway.

  17. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by Dwedit · · Score: 1

    If you stream high quality video encoded with software rather than the dedicated hardware, you need all the cores you can get. Encoding video in software still gives a much higher image quality than the hardware accelerated encoding.

    Someone made a performance testing video showing Ryzen greatly outperforming an i7 when simultaneously encoding video and playing the game.

  18. Hopefully, this will deter Intel from gouging ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the public. Intel's current prices are highway robbery.

    evil greedy executives sure like to cheat and steal

  19. Re:Intel is fucked on all levels server / desktop by Dwedit · · Score: 1

    The i3 7350K CPU can be overclocked to at least 5Ghz, giving fantastic single-threaded performance, comparable to an overclocked i7. Many tasks still care about single-threaded performance more than multiple cores.

  20. A tunable area that helps ALL things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Increase cpu core count @ hardware level (OS can use it for starters ala this in Windows for example):

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Executive]
    "AdditionalCriticalWorkerThreads"=dword:00000008
    "AdditionalDelayedWorkerThreads"=dword:00000008

    * I.E. - How much extra cores will help BEYOND today's CPUs for the OPERATING SYSTEM itself (in Critical Worker Threads) in juggling threads in itself & for other processes (in Delayed Worker Threads) per https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc615012(v=bts.10).aspx/

    Here I use 8 for an Intel Core I7 as shown above (both in 1st a 920 & currently a 4790k, since they're quad core (& hyperthreaded) & it was lesser based on physical core count of earlier systems I had (this setting has been around since, iirc, Win2k (correct me IF I am off/wrong - it's been SO long since then)...

    (Those are settings in WINDOWS you can adjust to take advantage of added cores as you upgrade to CPUs w/ more cores, for example).

    ANYTHING/EVERYTHING, in theory, gains there alone (less "process scheduler thrashing" in other words) - I don't care so much about applications/programs (they are probably written to their practical limits anyhow as to what threadwork will gain them) but again, MORE about how the OS will utilize them (per the 2 TUNABLE PARAMETERS in the .reg file I note above as a way to REALLY use the extra cores, almost guaranteed - Windows allows it, not sure of other OS like *NIX based ones).

    APK

    P.S.=> The rest will be done @ compiler level (already good, only depends on HOW you can leverage it OR if internal-to-program itself datasets allow for it - not all do) & it's always that way, pretty much - hardware 1st, software catches up (& it does, mostly inefficiently @ 1st, sucking up the CPU cycles/efficiencies gained)... apk

  21. Make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...a 20,000 BTU air conditioner, to offset the heat created by AMD product.

    1. Re: Make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why replace the ac? I can use my 40,000btu one from when it had to cool intel chips and just run it on low.

      Oh, you still think and uses more power, like when they introduced the 8120? Guess what, Ryzen has double the threads AND half the power. Also, Triple the PCIe lanes.

      Suck it, fan boy.

  22. Who? Me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let me know when there's quality Android product in this class: Reaper DAW, Steven Slate Drums, thousands of VSTs, Prominy Rock Bass. All running on multiple 4K monitors.

    Feel free to drop me a line when.

  23. the confusing sound of wet rubber boots by epine · · Score: 2

    Intel is fucked on all levels ...

    You really need to recalibrate your "is fucked" dowsing rod.

    After a decade of living on cream and sunshine, summer vacation is over, and Intel will soon have to buckle down and earn good grades, obtained through long hours of hard study.

    Heard on beaches the world over when governments shorten their unemployment insurance entitlement periods: "Shit! We're fucked! Now we'll all have to get real jobs."

    Welcome back to how everyone else lives.

    On the one hand, it will take a while for Intel to recover its former work ethic. On the other hand, they're well rested—and surrounded by three decades worth of motivational trophy cases (lately somewhat dusty) for Best of Breed in the 800-lb gorilla division.

    Yeah, that sure sounds fucked, doesn't it?

    1. Re:the confusing sound of wet rubber boots by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      Intel will see steadily declining margins and sales, but they still have more money to spend on R&D than any other chip manufacturer. It seems likely that more and more of their revenue will come from memory, e.g. 3D XPoint, as Intel transitions back into a memory company instead of a CPU company. In general, ARM has won the performance per watt war... for now.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:the confusing sound of wet rubber boots by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      In general, ARM has won the performance per watt war... for now.

      Intel has been trying to fight in that war for a long time now, and they've never managed it. Even the ARM they bought was power hungry, for ARM anyway. The only guys they've ever been able to beat have been AMD, and only off and on at that.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re: the confusing sound of wet rubber boots by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      They beat Alpha and PPC, at least in the desktop market. And Windows ran on Alpha and PPC. I ran NT 3.51 on both those archs.

    4. Re:the confusing sound of wet rubber boots by ckatko · · Score: 1

      Intel is not stupid. People get paid 200K a year to ensure they don't waste billions a year.

      Intel competes AS MUCH AS the competition requires them to. They're sitting on plenty of new technology (like live-reconfigurable FPGA embedded processors they had for YEARS with the Altera acquisition).

      But they're not gonna just GIVE US that technology. We have to pay for it. So while there was no AMD competition, they were fine giving us a "trickle down" / as-little-as-possible actual innovation for years. And then (I said this would happen years ago) the second Ryzen comes out, strangely, almost magically... the price of all the AMD competitive Intel processors dropped price... hundreds of dollars over night.

      Intel is like Comcast, but they actually make products. They've got tons of genius engineers but marketing decides how much technology actually gets released. There's no point in dumping out all your cards at once, just because you have them. Then they'd have to struggle more to innovate when the competition catches up. It's much smarter (albeit selfish as hell) to only release enough upgrades and cost cuts, as the market requires, to keep your market lead.

      When AMD released the most shocking part of Ryzen--was not the new cores, which Intel is not worried about at all as they have plenty of new unreleased core tricks--the big GASP was the almost double (or more) amount of CORES packaged and given at consumer-level and entry-business level prices. Now Intel had to go "oh shit, we have to actually REACT now." AMD did something they hadn't even thought of. So they churned up their engineers for 6 months, and dumped a bunch of extra cores in, and presto, they're already competitive again.

      AMD has a GREAT role as the only viable desktop/server competitor. Every time they compete, Intel HAS to mark down their prices. Which benefits both AMD and Intel customers. But the only time AMD has ever caught Intel with their pants down, was when they took advantage of Intel's TWO major failures (Itanium and the P4 Netburst) to create the first user-grade 64-bit instruction set and beat Intel to market--swelling AMD's market capture big time. Ever since then, however, with many AMD hiccups and let downs, they've experienced a slow death and barely-any-competition which has left consumers with complete crap for the money they pay compared to what they bought 4 years earlier. Now with Ryzen, AMD is somewhat competitive again, and we're all benefiting again.

      It's good to be a customer.

  24. From my HPC days by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    The bottleneck for most problems isn't CPU cycles/second, it's the bandwidth of getting data to/from those CPUs. Adding CPUs does nothing to improve performance unless you also give it a much wider I/O path to memory. Adding more high speed cache, on the other hand, may help more than adding CPUs.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:From my HPC days by steveha · · Score: 1

      The bottleneck for most problems isn't CPU cycles/second, it's the bandwidth of getting data to/from those CPUs. Adding CPUs does nothing to improve performance unless you also give it a much wider I/O path to memory.

      Threadripper parts have quite a lot of bandwidth. The pro parts ("Epyc") will have even more.

      Threadripper is intended for the PC enthusiast market, not so much for data centers. Frankly I don't think that for even an enthusiast home user memory bandwidth will be a major differentiating point. CPU speed, number of cores, and cache size will likely matter more. (I'm not worried about any of the above. I can't find L1 or L2 cache size numbers but I found that the L3 cache is 32 MB and since AMD was very focused on instructions-per-clock I am confident they didn't skimp on the cache.)

      For data centers AMD will be selling the Epyc chips, and those can support up to 2 TB of RAM per socket (i.e. a dual-socket server would max out at 4 TB of RAM). In contrast, Intel tops out at 1.5 TB, and to get that you now have to buy their special and more-expensive chips with the "M" suffix; the non-M chips top out at 768 GB of RAM.

      https://semiaccurate.com/2017/07/11/intel-launches-purley-aka-metal-xeons/

      Threadripper also has a really large number of PCI-E lanes (64) so in theory you also could set up a really wide-bandwidth SSD or RAMdisk or something.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    2. Re:From my HPC days by steveha · · Score: 2

      And naturally, right after I posted the parent, I found the cache sizes.

      These are for a 16-core Threadripper 1950X:

      L1 instruction cache: 32 KB x 16
      L1 data cache: 64 KB x 16
      L2 cache: 512 KB x 16
      L3: 32 MB x 4

      http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu-performance-benchmarks-leak/

      https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3324737

      I'm not a CPU expert but it seems clear that L1 and L2 cache is per-core (makes sense) but L3 cache is shared... I'm going to guess that a group of 4 cores shares one 32 MB cache, since 4 * 4 is 16.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  25. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by ckatko · · Score: 1

    I agree. I use every one of my 8 cores on my AMD.

    1 - Vulkan API supports ALL CORE utilization. That's the whole point of Vulkan.

    2 - Hosting a VM (for all your work stuff, for example) means I can dedicate 4-6 cores and have both my systems completely independent for all practical purposes. My work SQL instance won't freeze my gaming. Working from home, that's a huge benefit for me to not need to buy two machines or to switch back-and-forth. With RAM being super cheap (32 GB for $100!) I can dedicate half to the machine as well and still have a whopping 16 GB for myself.

    3 - Video encoding for streaming. (Although try 4K video encoding without NVENC / GPU and enjoy your 2 FPS.) Other things. It's ALWAYS better to have "too many" cores than "too few." I can spin up KDENLIVE (a great FOSS non-linear video editor!) to render a video, while I'm still playing a game and recording it, or watching 4K videos.

    It's really nice to be able to have your computer respond as fast as, your ability to think and queue up operations. (SSDs are a night-and-day difference. I would never go without one.) And at least 8 cores really helps that become a reality.

  26. Please... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... don't let their be "processor hang bugs" like FMA3 bug.

    I need this processor to replace my 12 year old system !

  27. Ryzen CPU hardware-crashes a lot, I hope fix soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ryzen CPU hangs/causes kernel panics and MCE errors, most easily reproducible on Linux

    https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=180&tstart=0

    I hope they can finally fix it. Newest posts (as of today) claim people who RMA'd their CPU and got replacement experience improvement.

  28. Malware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does AMD have anything resembling Intel's AMT malware ?

  29. Does it come without a backdoor? by jarle.aase · · Score: 1

    For me, one of the most crucial parameters when choosing my next CPU is to get one without a backdoor in the chipset (after the vulnerabilities discovered in Intel Management Engine). Intel is no longer a player. AMD has had similar "features" in the past. Does anyone know if they have carved that crap out of this new series of CPU's?

  30. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by jon3k · · Score: 1

    There won't be any Alienware setups that are CPU bound in gaming. These will be attached to either high resolution or high frame rate monitors (or both) and will be GPU bound. And you'll also get the benefit of multiple cores for everything else.

  31. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah, using multiple VMs or doing video editing are great cases for higher core count processors! I am under the impression that Alienware's target market is gaming, though, and even though newer APIs like Vulkan are making the move toward multiple cores it is still the case that today's games tend to favor higher clock speed over more cores (once you have 4 or maybe 6 cores). Have a 16 or even 12-core dedicated gaming system is a waste, you'd be better off spending the extra money on a more powerful GPU.

    --
    William George
  32. Re:Odd that Alienware is putting them in gaming ri by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

    Now that is a fair point, if you are using CPU based video recording / streaming while gaming. I personally prefer GPU-based streaming myself, but I have heard some folks say that CPU based can give better looking results with a sufficiently powerful system. I wonder if programs like OBS can really utilize that many cores effectively, though? If you have a 12 or 16 core processor and are playing a modern game that needs 4 cores (a good average) then you have 8-12 cores left over for CPU encoding. I have not seen tests looking at whether OBS and similar applications can really utilize that many cores effectively, but it would be interesting to know.

    --
    William George