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AMD Threadripper 1950X Trounces Core I9-7900X In Multithreading Benchmark (pcper.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tussle-continues dept.

dryriver writes: The Cinebench R15 benchmark is a popular tool for measuring how well CPUs cope with multithreaded compute loads. AMD's Threadripper 1950X 16 core CPU, priced at $999 according to AMD, benchmarks 41% faster in Cinebench R15 than Intel's also $999 10 core Core i9-7900X CPU. While Intel's Core i9-7900X scores 2186 points on Cinebench, AMD's Threadripper 1950X scores 3046 points. Even the cheaper 12 core $799 Threadripper 1920X is over 200 points faster in Cinebench R15 than Intel's Core i9-7900X. Intel has its own 16 core Core i9-7960X in the works, performance yet unknown, priced at $1,699, but AMD's 16 core part currently appears to be a full $700 cheaper than Intel's MSRP. It remaines to be seen who is faster in single-threaded performance -- Intel may take that crown --and what the power consumption of a fully loaded Threadripper looks like compared to its Core i9 counterpart.

114 comments

  1. Single core / thread & FPU is usually Intel's by haruchai · · Score: 1

    but it looks like my Xmas present to myself will be a new AMD box.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  2. What is the target for these? by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I surely hope it's servers. These processors would be silly in a desktop computer. We're not even fully loading down 2-8 core machines now. Gaming performance has and still is a single core endeavor, and even now, most of my stuff has trouble pegging any cores to 100% for any length of time.

    About the only thing I do that consumes a lot of cpu time is compiling. Not very many computer users compile stuff.

    Again, it's ultimate more of the same lackluster improvements. Throwing more threads/core at stuff, when it's still who's got the FASTER single core that matters at the end of the day. At least in my opinion.

    For servers however, running virtualization stuff, these CPU's should be great, squeeze even more out every physical server unit.

    1. Re:What is the target for these? by corychristison · · Score: 2

      High end workstations, that traditionally are built with server CPUs.

      I suspect the next generation of AMD's CPUs will be based on these.

    2. Re:What is the target for these? by corychristison · · Score: 1

      I meant to say "AMD's Server line of CPUs"

    3. Re:What is the target for these? by willy_me · · Score: 2

      I surely hope it's servers. These processors would be silly in a desktop computer.

      The quad-channel memory could help in a lot of situations. There will be plenty of applications that can benefit. But the 12/24 core model could be the better choice for many.

    4. Re: What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, multicore is getting rather standard in gaming, least in the last 5 years.

    5. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I do 3D rendering which is very CPU heavy and would LOVE to get my hands on one of these.

    6. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some games do indeed use many cores. Some RTS games can use them (usually the types with lots of units) and even Battlefield 1 correctly loads all 12 of my threads - 6 cores 80-90% and 6 threads ~30% - just about the ideal load for a 6/12 CPU to achieve max throughput without starving any threads. (BF1 was maxing out all 8 threads on my old i7-2600 so it does like CPU, current CPU is an i7-6850k @ 4.3Ghz for reference).

      Most of my games are not single threaded and those that are are not CPU bound (often not even GPU bound), granted most of my games also don't need more than 4 cores (most become GPU limited with 4 threads under heavy load - most really just have 1 medium loaded core and a 2-6 lightly loaded threads which is well within the capacity of any 4 core 4 thread CPU). Most game only use multiple cores because it has them not because it needs them - CPU can run at lower clocks if it only needs 20% of 8 core instead 40% of 4 cores.

      I really don't see why people seem to want single threaded performance - single thread has been fast enough for a long time now. Anything that really needs more cycles than a single thread can give has long since been made into multi-threaded apps. All the remaining single threaded apps tend to not be CPU bound anyway (poor implementations excluded - you can always burn cycles if you really want to) so who cares if the app now only needs 20% instead of 25% of one core (unless you are talking about power constrained devices like laptops but then the argument isn't so much about raw speed but efficiency).

      So while I agree, a home server with this would be awesome (actually thinking about it once the tech stabilizes a bit) I also would love a nice gaming rig with this (this is actually what I was waiting for when my 2600 died a while back - I needed a new PC and couldn't wait long enough for this come out so the 6850k it was).

    7. Re: What is the target for these? by koomba · · Score: 4, Informative

      The quad channel memory most definitely will help, even more so than than on Intels new processors.

      There are many reasons, but one crucial one is the very architecture of these new Threadripper CPUs. These higher core count processors are literally multiple lower core Ryzen chips in one die.

      I won't get into any pros or cons of that aspect, but just mention it to explain the significance of the quad channel DDR4. The way AMD has designed these smaller "packages" to work together as one CPU is, to put it very simply, to have them communicate through the DDR4 bus.

      This is significantly different than Intels so-called ring bus, or uncore. So it's a pretty big change for HEDT users who have essentially been exclusively using Intel since around 2007.

      I don't claim to know every technical detail of TR/Ryzen, but I do know the end result of this is that your DDR4 memory speed with TR can have a large impact on performance. In particular, running higher than the official platform speed memory, or just overclocking above standard gives very nice increases in many scenarios.

      I'm on mobile so I can't look it up right now, so don't hold be to this, but I remember what I saw being something like maybe 20-30%ish(?) improvement in some gaming benchmarks I believe. And there were a couple others that I only remember the numbers right now, but it was around 30% and 40% even in one case.

      So I think that couple persuade a decent part of the HEDT community who isn't super hardcore, and probably games more or as much anyways as they utilize the massive multithreaded advantages of a HEDT platform. So I think that's pretty exciting, and gives TR at least a decent ranking in parts of the HEDT user base.

    8. Re:What is the target for these? by ckatko · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > We're not even fully loading down 2-8 core machines now. Gaming performance has and still is a single core endeavor, and even now, most of my stuff has trouble pegging any cores to 100% for any length of time.

      1 - I load up my 8 core machine every day.

      2 - Gaming is not single threaded unless you're an idiot or living in 1993. At the very least, physics can run separate from display, and every modern game on the planet runs at least 1 frame lag for that same reason.

      3 - Vulkan is designed from the ground up to utilize ALL cpu cores as well as multiple GPUs.

      Just because YOU can't use your computer while playing Farmville, doesn't mean everyone else on the planet is incapable of doing so. I literally just finished playing a game that uses 100% GPU, 6 cores, and the other 2 I used for encoding the video recording. But nah, fuck it. 640k is enough for everyone, amirite?

    9. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vote parent up. Grandparent _clearly_ hasn't played _any_ major video games since the early 2000's.

    10. Re:What is the target for these? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "These processors would be silly in a desktop computer."

      You must not run multiple GPUs and multiple M.2 drives.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    11. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Either that, or they just love Starcraft 2.

    12. Re:What is the target for these? by somenickname · · Score: 2

      when it's still who's got the FASTER single core that matters at the end of the day.

      I'm not sure how much single core performance even matters at this point. My work machine is a modern i7 clocked at some crazy high speed while my home machines are a ThinkPad X220 and an old school dual Xeon X5690 setup. The work machine is actually worse than my old dual Xeon setup on multi-threaded stuff and, for a single core, is indistinguishable for real life performance. Yes, it compiles a lot faster than my X220 but, if I weren't compiling stuff, I wouldn't know the difference between the machines.

    13. Re:What is the target for these? by Ramze · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're also useful for video encoding, animation, multimedia production, simulation, and AI.

      Have you ever tried to transcode MPEG2 video to x.265 or VP9 on a desktop PC? 2 hrs of VHS-quality video can turn into 10 hours of transcoding easily on a 4core/8thread PC. Transcoding 1080p or 4K from MPEG2 or MPEG4 to HEVC can take even longer. Lots of art school students use animation on their home laptops, plenty of people work with video encoding and online streaming at home, too.

      Gaming is mostly a GPU-bound task, but these also have a lot of PCIe lanes to help with that, and lots of games are being compiled for multi-cpu now.

      That's great if you can do everything you need with what you have. I'd say that's the case for most people. I know some who do everything they need at home on their cell phones and/or tablets, but other people have different use-cases.

    14. Re:What is the target for these? by The+Optimizer · · Score: 1

      We're a tiny shop and one of our products is a compression product. Lots of data is processed, and it's worth it to our clients to have beefy hardware, as they run jobs that take hours to complete.

      Out top test machine is an Ivy Bridge -era 2 socket workstation that we had Puget Systems custom build for us -. 2x Xeon E7-4650v2 CPUs - 20 cores / 40 threads. Spent over $7K on the CPUs alone.

      We're needing a couple more high thread count boxes for our newest product. We're waiting a couple months to see what ThreadRipper systems look like, but almost certainly we're getting one. or two...

    15. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gaming performance has and still is a single core endeavor

      You don't know shit about gaming. Even something as old as the Source Engine has muli-core support. Now shut the fuck up and go back to playing your Nintendo Gamecube.

    16. Re:What is the target for these? by Kokuyo · · Score: 1

      Err... no. Threadripper is actually the workstation version of the server CPU called Epyc (I know... marketing needs to be slapped), not the other way around.

    17. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But is not core limited on any modern >= 4 core CPU. Your impotent anger is not really meaningful.

    18. Re:What is the target for these? by AaronW · · Score: 1

      I tend to do a lot of builds and can definitely benefit from something like this since I can take advantage of all of those cores. There are numerous workloads that can certainly take advantage of more cores. Even at home, they come in handy when batch processing photos.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    19. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You seem very angry.

    20. Re:What is the target for these? by corychristison · · Score: 1

      Same difference. :-)

    21. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gaming performance has and still is a single core endeavor...

      That's an obsolete observation. Current gen games scale well all the way up to 8 cores. Multi-core is a minimum system requirement and hyper-threading the recommended system requirement pretty much across the board.

    22. Re: What is the target for these? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Threadripper has some other nice features. Loads of PCIe lanes, great if you want multiple NVMe SSDs or RAID cards etc.

      For me one of the biggest is encrypted RAM. Ryzen has is too to some extent. RAM is encrypted in real-time with very minimal performance loss. VMs can also have their own private keys for RAM encryption to make them more secure (even the host OS can't spy on them).

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    23. Re:What is the target for these? by Early+Six+Digit+UID · · Score: 1

      I've got a four core, eight thread 4790K, which is one of the fastest stock CPUs around. I routinely use most of the cores while gaming. A lot of games are threaded in some way, and there's always the OS doing stuff in the background to consider. That said, Threadripper isn't for glorified internet appliances. These will be great for workstations and low-cost simulation/computation/VM systems for your office desk or home development environment. Personally I'm going to use these for some POV-Ray stuff unless they benchmark really poorly in it. Epyc is more targeted toward servers. This is pure workstation/gaming gear and I'm (finally) excited about AMD again.

    24. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      2 - Gaming is not single threaded unless you're an idiot or living in 1993. At the very least, physics can run separate from display, and every modern game on the planet runs at least 1 frame lag for that same reason.

      Perhaps you're the idiot living in the early 2000's with cpu driven physics. Meanwhile the rest of us have moved on to GPU accelerated physics.
      Yes, games are multi-threaded, but sound, AI and other tasks only need so much cpu time. Most games are still dominated by a single thread.

    25. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Yes, games are multi-threaded, but sound, AI and other tasks only need so much cpu time. Most games are still dominated by a single thread.

      Multi-threaded rendering has been mainstream for at least a decade. CPUs aren't getting any faster, just more numerous. Game after game after game is using as many CPUs as you can provide it.

    26. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Handbrake encoding is my highest CPU load. I have an old 6 core processor: if I could buy 60 cores to throw at Handbrake I would. I'm sure there are plenty of consumers out there doing video editing or similar workloads, who could use as many cores as Intel and AMD can provide.

    27. Re:What is the target for these? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Gaming performance has and still is a single core endeavor

      lol, absolutely not.

      By now you can expect the games to take advantage being able to run four rather than two threads at-least.

      Sure one of those may be the one with the highest load and hence performance be limited by how fast that thread can be executed but that DEFINITELY NOT mean that games only use one core/threads. There's definitely advantages of having more and being able to just run one thread at the time would completely destroy game performance in lots of games well beyond what having a say 30% lower IPC quad-core processor would do.

      The "old" Pentium Gs (dual-core with no hyper-threading) could result in games more or less locking up relative on an i3 (dual-core with hyper-threading), but sure, processors like the FX-6300 wasn't without trouble either.

      Anyway a 5 GHz "Pentium 4" wouldn't be a stellar performer today.

    28. Re:What is the target for these? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Battlefield 1 is fine using ~10 threads here:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Lots of games would run like complete garbage if you forced them to run on one core without hyper-threading.

    29. Re:What is the target for these? by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      There is always someone that stresses the single-threaded performance, how most software is single-threaded....

      Everything that I run that I have to wait for, is either multi-threaded, or bottlenecked on the ssd speed. All of it. I really don't dont give a crap about single-threaded performance.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    30. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Game development demands all the cores you can sling at it, even clusters.
      Try Unreal Engine.

    31. Re: What is the target for these? by jon3k · · Score: 1

      The way AMD has designed these smaller "packages" to work together as one CPU is, to put it very simply, to have them communicate through the DDR4 bus.

      I thought they communicated via Infinity Fabric?

    32. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Have you ever tried to transcode MPEG2 video to x.265 or VP9 on a desktop PC? 2 hrs of VHS-quality video can turn into 10 hours of transcoding easily on a 4core/8thread PC. Transcoding 1080p or 4K from MPEG2 or MPEG4 to HEVC can take even longer.

      Yes, I have, and no it's not that long of a process. I can encode a 2 hours 1080p x264 video to HEVC in ~20-30 minutes. Ffmpeg + NVENC makes re-encoding to HEVC much faster, you just need an nvidia video card that supports it.

    33. Re: What is the target for these? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      The real game you play is 'uptime' and the leaderboard is 'top', amirite?

      Yer a real operator, son. We are very impressed.

    34. Re:What is the target for these? by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      Some games are just great games. The fact they don't need 32 cores clocked at 5Ghz doesn't matter. Still, there's no such thing as enough RAM, a fast enough CPU or too big a hard drive.

    35. Re:What is the target for these? by dosun88888 · · Score: 1

      These processors would be silly in a desktop computer. We're not even fully loading down 2-8 core machines now.

      I'm not sure what you're saying. A desktop that is anywhere near being "loaded down" is a chore to use and unresponsive. I wish I had more cores for all the crap that my operating systems run against my will these days.

    36. Re:What is the target for these? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

      2 - Gaming is not single threaded unless you're an idiot or living in 1993. At the very least, physics can run separate from display, and every modern game on the planet runs at least 1 frame lag for that same reason.

      Gaming is not single-threaded, but multi-threaded games still only tend to fully load a single core. The other cores tend to only be very lightly used. Having more than 4 cores is simply not helpful for 99% of games, AAA or otherwise.

      I literally just finished playing a game that uses 100% GPU, 6 cores, and the other 2 I used for encoding the video recording.

      I'd love to know which game, because I find this extremely hard to believe.

    37. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A properly designed multithreaded game engine consists of a single "UI" thread performing the render loop as fast as it can/should (vsync'ed perhaps) against an n-buffered game state structure (yes, game state buffering, not video buffering), and a host of worker threads handling input, physics, game logic, AI, and other stuff that changes the game state. What you end up with is a multithreaded processing pipeline feeding massive data changes into the game state, then a single output thread spitting out feedback to the player asynchronously, without having to handle those other processing loops between each frame. It just locks the global game state, grabs a copy as the first step of rendering, then unlocks the global state and lets everything else keep going on separate threads while it turns the state into a frame of video, some buffered audio, and any other feedback stuff (like rumble).

      But that type of engine design wasn't realistic until very recently, so there are basically no major game engines that do things that way yet. I have a feeling that Ryzen and its ilk will finally push things that direction, though.

    38. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Might want to consider an Epyc system in that case; 32 cores / 64 threads and 8-channel ddr4 for a single socket for much cheaper than you've paid each of those E7-4650v2s.

    39. Re: What is the target for these? by red_dragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "I won't get into any pros or cons of that aspect, but just mention it to explain the significance of the quad channel DDR4. The way AMD has designed these smaller "packages" to work together as one CPU is, to put it very simply, to have them communicate through the DDR4 bus." Wait... no, that's not right. The cores talk to each other via Infinity Fabric. To talk to cores on a separate module or to access memory managed by a different memory controller (Threadripper has two, Epyc has four), Infinity Fabric uses PCIe inside the package. Epyc dedicated 64 lanes for this purpose, so I assume that Threadripper uses 32 lanes. The memory buses never come into it.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    40. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some examples: Watch Dogs 2, Battlefield 1, Ark: Survival Evolved.

    41. Re: What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This thing is not for you then. I can definitely use it, I run multiple VMs on my workstation and need as much power as I can get for my data analysis and simulations. Compiling isn't a noteworthy workload at all.
      video editing, data science, rendering and the like are what this thing is good for.
      Btw, games do use threads quite well these days. Even 4 thread i5 stutters in a lot of places in GTA 5.

    42. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "We're needing a couple more high thread count boxes for our newest product."

      Or you could clean up what is obviously shitty code.

    43. Re:What is the target for these? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      People on a budget, especially hobbyists, want to run free software. Much free software, like SPICE and most GIMP plugins, is single-threaded. Waiting 20 minutes for a SPICE run to complete, then changing a component 10% and running again - and again - and again - is no fun. The same goes for a blind deconvolution filter for GIMP, where a single repetition can be several hours.

      That these programs could and should be made parallel or multi-threaded is irrelevant; and paying several thousand dollars for a commercial multi-threaded program is out of the question. For me, a single-thread CPU executing 10 billion instructions per second would be much faster than a 32 core machine with each core capable of executing 5 billion instructions per second.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    44. Re: What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. Impressive that you typed all that out on a mobile device.
      2. I bought 3 Ryzens (myself, my kids, and a work box) and your assessment seems pretty spot-on.

    45. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gaming? No. But it's great for workstations. Scientist here, I usually spend a lot of the day running 4-core test runs of some physical simulation software I'm developing, before taking the time to actually do proper runs on 64 cores using a supercomputer. If I had a single-core processor, my 30-min tests would take a few hours instead, and that's the difference between running two and tens of tests per day.
       
      When I'm not testing the simulations, e.g. keeping Chromium open with different threads for different tabs, with stuff like Dropbox and Spotify running in the background, can already make multiple cores worth it. (Even if you don't use 100% of each core all the time, you get lower latency when using the programs, because you don't have to move their data in and out of cache every millisecond.) But I agree that 16 cores might be a bit overkill just for browsing the internet with some music on...

    46. Re: What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > even the host OS can't spy on them

      Yeah... whatever.

    47. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2 hrs of VHS-quality video can turn into 10 hours of transcoding easily on a 4core/8thread PC.

      Sounds like a massive fucking waste of time. Bear in mind that you're never going to watch any of this shit anyway and that the whole process is futile. What pleasure do you get from transcoding shit from one format to another? Do you just like entropy?

    48. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't really need CPU performance (have given up on games and ugprades) though I would sometimes like more than two threads.
      Sometimes I have to wait on javascript for slashdot comments to load. (but Internet latency is what I'm really waiting on 99.9% of the time)
      I refrain from using Dosbox because it's CPU hungry (single thread) and will have stuttering sound if loaded down and even sucks for doom + midi music let alone 640x480 3D games. I also found out Gamecube/Wii emulators are a thing (interested in GameCube more) but I can run at like 1/5th the speed so it's entirely pointless on my CPU.

      Because I'm not doing much anything useful the i3 7350K is the CPU that would be best for me, huge single thread performance ; only two cores/four thread but this keeps the TDP low and still gives ample multi-threaded performance. The price is rather outrageous though (and Z170/Z270 motherboard is artificially needed for RAM speed, mild overclocking)

      Ironically I may convert some audio to mp3 once in a blue moon.. the LAME encoder is single-threaded! Something better than a for loop in a bash file would do but I don't really need it. If I get to wait several/many minutes of CPU bound use for a task, I get a feeling that at last I'm loading the CPU down with some work.

    49. Re:What is the target for these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I don't think you are much of a gamer, or you don't understand current games. almost(all) games these days do in fact use multicore processes. some may not make the "best" use of them, but I don't know any current (as of a few years ago) games that are single threaded any longer.

      Heck, even your graphics cards are limited by your multiple CPU cores these days. If you are CPU limited/bound, your GPU performance suffers as well.

  3. Video Transcoding is one possibility... by CraigCruden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I managed to peg my 8 core Xeon at nearly 100% CPU usage for about 6 months straight - 7 days a week, 24 hours a day doing video transcoding on a library. But yes, any computer with more than 2 cores is really a niche computer these days since 90+ of the people run computers with CPUs idling 90%+. The $100 Ryzen 3 will be more than enough power for the masses. The greatest "performance" boost for personal computers in the last few years -- for the masses -- has been flash based SSDs...

    1. Re: Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet a gpgpu library is out now.

    2. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > ...any computer with more than 2 cores is really a niche computer these days since 90+ of the people run computers with CPUs idling 90%+.

      You could reformulate this statement as:

      "Any computer with a CPU faster than 333MHz is really a niche computer these days since 90+ of the people run computers with CPUs idling 90%+."

      and it would be just as true.

      > The greatest "performance" boost for personal computers in the last few years -- for the masses -- has been flash based SSDs...

      You could replace "for the masses" with "for everyone whose workload isn't 99.9% CPU-bound" and "few" with "five to eight" and it would still be a true statement.

    3. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Four cores might become the standard for video gaming. Some list it for recommended specs, not sure if any (other VR) list it as a requirement. Extra cores like on Ryzen could be useful for background processes or capturing video without a GPU encoder.

      I personally hope their Ryzen APUs come in at a low enough price to compete with the Pentium G4560.

      Word verification: sagittal

    4. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4560 is proving too popular -- Intel is paring back production, because it wants to sell more i3s.

    5. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spot on. I put more ram and an SSD in my mom's 2010 laptop, and she is so happy with how fast it works now.

    6. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Completely irrelevant. None of these CPUs are designed "for the masses." These are "High-End Desktop Processors" (HEDT). In fact, Anandtech is calling them "Super High End" or "SHED" processors. Your post is less than useless and contributes nothing to the discussion. This is like going onto a Ferrari forum and telling us all why your mom doesn't need one.

    7. Re: Video Transcoding is one possibility... by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      It's like going onto a Ferrari form and telling everybody only your kid brother "needs" one.

    8. Re:Video Transcoding is one possibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not true. Stellaris for example can peg a 4 core i5 4670k during normal gameplay. That's just one example. There are more.

  4. so, will Intel finally become affordable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... or will they continue to take us for as much as they can?

    the overly affluent getting even more affluence via monopolistic marketing

    1. Re: so, will Intel finally become affordable? by koomba · · Score: 2

      Definitely still the more expensive option, but AMD has put some pressure on them and forced them to be a little more price competitive.

      This new x299 platform of Intels HEDT gives us an 8-core/16-thread at the $600 mark, with the 7820x. On the previous x99 platform the $600 slot was only 6 core; you had to jump all the way to the $1000 tier for 8 cores in the form of the 5960x and then the 6900k. So I am definitely happy about that.

      Although being Intel, they're incapable of giving us something without us paying for it somehow. In this case, to get the full 44 PCIe lanes you DO have to go to the $1k tier, whereas on x99 only the very cheapest CPUs had the gimped 28 lanes, but they were only $350 processors. The $600 level or above got you the full 28 lanes.
      br I That part really irks me, and is making me not so certain I want that 7820x after all. I was 100% in for a 7820x on the nice new platform until I saw that. So for now I'm still considering my options. I really don't want or need 10 cores, and I'd much rather put the $400 difference towards multiple NVMe storage buys.

    2. Re: so, will Intel finally become affordable? by koomba · · Score: 1

      Oops can't edit, but around 3rd paragraph, I meant on x99 the $600 tier got you the full 44 PCIe lanes, instead of the gimped 28.

    3. Re: so, will Intel finally become affordable? by ChoGGi · · Score: 1

      x299 has 44, x99 has 40 (max)

    4. Re: so, will Intel finally become affordable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This does feel like unnecessary segmentation, but 28 lanes could be well enough as it gives you a 16x card, an 8x card and a 4x card. So at pretty much full bandwith that's the GPU, two M.2 drives on an adapter board, one M.2 drive on adapter board, plus one M.2 drive linked to the chipset. Or have two M.2 drives linked to the chipset (on motherboard), I/O multiplexing is not the end of the world!, and use the 4x PCIe slot - likely 16x@4x slot - for 5Gbe or 10Gbe networking.

      I'm not saying it's especially good but it's sort of workable.

  5. Intel's layoffs, lack of innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Two large rounds of layoffs to bring in cheaper h1b visa labor, along with misteps in leadership and innovation made it incredibly easy for AMD to step in. And everyone thought AMD was switching to ARM. Kudos to AMD

    1. Re: Intel's layoffs, lack of innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget that those idiots bought McAfee, too.

    2. Re: Intel's layoffs, lack of innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One can only assume it was to ease antitrust issues for thier seattle buddy, otherwise they are complete idiots.

  6. Cache out the wazoo! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    The top AMD chip has 40MB of cache which is enough to run an entire Linux distro from cache alone. However, if you use it's virtualization technology then you could have an entire Beowulf cluster on a chip.

    It turns out that AMD has been reading my weekly email demands this whole time! ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Cache out the wazoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be commenting from 20 years ago. Would the kernel even fit in 40Mb of space?

    2. Re:Cache out the wazoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could probably fit a couple of fat kernels in that space.

    3. Re:Cache out the wazoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like my pi is using 35mb after boot, according to "free -m".

    4. Re:Cache out the wazoo! by dbIII · · Score: 1

      The Nintendo DS has 4MB memory, total, and you can run not just linux but some applications as well.

    5. Re:Cache out the wazoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somewhat worth mentioning is this really has separate L3 caches.
      E.g. the 16 core and 12 core chips are really made of four CPU ("CCX"), two on each die (Zeppelin die). So you really have four 8MB L3 caches rather than one 32MB L3 cache, and the rest is sixteen 512K L2 caches to bump the numbers.

      This isn't much that important to know but if you really have a workload that likes huge L3 (like some database) you could look for the Broadwell Xeon with the most L3 for your dollar (there's even some low core high cache parts but that has to do with per-core licensing of software and might be super expensive rare CPUs anyway)

      Years ago I thought the PC or CPU or motherboard ought to let us run an OS in the L2, even just DOS, as you can do something even in 512K. Would have been fun for the PCs with dead RAM or even semi-dead motherboard or chipset that can't take RAM anymore. Or just fooling around : look, I'm playing games and CD audio on a PC without RAM!
      But this would complicate things for little gain (esp. implementing some kind of memory controller in the CPU to use cache as memory instead of cache, while the L2 controller is one of the most critical parts in a CPU)

      Nowadays, I'm not sure but I think dumb phone / feature phone CPUs have many megs of RAM right into the CPU/SoC (no idea if DRAM or SRAM)
      It would be almost trivial to make some toy PC-in-a-chip with 640K in the die. Like some 80186 or NEC V30 clone in a palmtop.

  7. Single threaded?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's no such thing as real life single threaded these days. The OS is always running a lot of threads and every service uses them. So whether Intel wins a thing that doesn't exist in real life is kinda irrelevent.

    I also read a report that Intel is making a single core chip for embedded devices to compete on price. They need a wakeup call.

    The processor market is simple, it's 94% ARM based, and 6% AMD/Intel based and Intel's mobile Core i3s are slower than ARM's 8xA53 and A72's.
    They need to up their game and lower their price, maximizing profits in a diminishing market niche is suicide.

    1. Re:Single threaded?? by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 2

      Those ARM chips only cost a fraction of the AMD and Intel processors, though, and in any sort of real computation are only a fraction of the speed as well (and power consumption, to be fair). Intel and AMD should stick to the big, powerful, and expensive chips.

      Moreover, there are plenty of single-threaded workloads. Most modeling applications, for example. True, you wouldn't really want a single core processor - but you are far better off with a 4 core at high clock speed than an 8, 12, or 16 core. It will both cost less and actually perform faster, thanks to better clock speeds.

      These AMD 12-16 core chips will have their place, no doubt, as do ARM processors... but it really is important to pick the right processor for your workload. There is no single best processor for everything.

      --
      William George
    2. Re:Single threaded?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you really know how computers work. Yes, single thread performance is very important, and no, most software does not take advantage of using multiple threads.

      The threadripper performance "win" over intel isn't really a win when they are comparing 16 cores to 10 cores, the gain is exactly what would be expected from adding 6 more cores. The only win for AMD is price, Intel will always have a premium attached to it for the brand name, but AMD will probably never get the upper hand with performance when it comes to the measure of performance of a single CPU core which is really what counts.

    3. Re: Single threaded?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      price/performance is what counts and AMD is winning there.
      Also, you are wrong that "most software don't take advantage of multiple threads", are you stuck in 1990s or something?

    4. Re: Single threaded?? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Games are. I'm CPU bound at 30% CPU utilization, On my quad core i5 in most of my video games. My newer video games tend to cap out around 70% CPU utilization. A rare few can actually get around 90%.

  8. Misleading... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The ratio of the performance results is 1.3. The ratio of the cores is 1.6. The Intel device is doing more per thread.

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

      The ratio of the performance results is 1.3. The ratio of the cores is 1.6. The Intel device is doing more per thread.

      So? Overall, the AMD chip is faster (and has more PCI-E lanes!), which is important because both chips occupy the same price point. Intel's equivalent 16-core CPU won't be out until later, and it's expected to be 70% more expensive. Undoubtedly, it will be faster, but that should be expected for something costing so much more and coming out later.

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

      It's pretty clear to me. The $999 AMD chip gets 41% more performance than the $999 Intel chip. It doesn't really matter much these days which one is better per-core. These chips aren't for aging grandparents that can barely use a web browser. The people buying these will likely not be relying on single-core performance.

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

      I don't really understand why everyone is cheering on AMD after a loaded benchmark like this.

      Compare this (AMD's highest end workstation processor) to an actual workstation processor from Intel. Hint: it will have the name "Xeon" on it.

      Then get back to me. If AMD still wins in that comparison, then so be it. Comparing a Porsche to a Prius isn't useful other than marketing to simpletons.

  9. Re:Just make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    2011 called. It wants its joke back.

    Wake up! They aren't selling Bulldozer anymore!

  10. Re:Just make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ...a 40,000 BTU air conditioner for all the heat AMD product creates.

    Except if you look at the specs this generation, it's Intel that is using more power and generating more heat.

  11. Big fat wallets get ready by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kickass multiuser 4k Plex servers on the horizon.

  12. Remember recent 24 core CPU bug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Isnt that computer using windows? Isnt there a potential bug: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and-i-cant-move-my-mouse/

    If its effecting everything, then either CPU might be scoring artificially low points.

    Bring on the fix and more benchmarks!

    1. Re:Remember recent 24 core CPU bug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if the benchmark is consisting of hundreds or thousands of exiting processes, sure, it's a potential bug.

      Hint: They usually aren't.

  13. Re:Just make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    X299 would be just fine if they didn't use a shitty cpu paste. 20 degree drop once you de-lid your $2000 cpu.

  14. Re:Just make sure you budget for... by secretsquirel · · Score: 1

    does paste really cost that much for them to skimp on it with these? just dont understand the motivation on why they'd do that. last longer?

  15. Some people won't change by Socguy · · Score: 1

    Going to be comical to see the Intel fanbois spending the next year or so justifying why they bought the slower, more expensive chip. LOL.

    1. Re:Some people won't change by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Intel still has better single core performance, or so it seems.
      What is best depends on your workload.

      Anyways, I don’t think many people would really benefit from these top of the line CPUs and a lot of these will serve mostly as bragging points rather than actual performance considerations.

  16. Dev Boxes by JBMcB · · Score: 1

    The company I work for has a software product that takes roughly 10 minutes to compile. You don't always have to compile everything, but sometimes you do. The developers get the most cores per dollar they possibly can, as every core cuts down on compile time by a couple of minutes, which can save hours over the course of a month.

    12 cores for $800? Yes please.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:Dev Boxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100% this. I have some employees that do photogrammetric processing all day. I didn't realize how hard they tax their equipment until I recently asked them to put together something for a demo. They are using a quad core 3.4Ghz machine with a set of quatro cards and they are still taking 60 hours to render some things. Since employee time is far more expensive than equipment costs, I now have to make some choices. Do I get a bunch of dated machines that can run on their own and they can simply jump from one machine to the next, or less units that are more cutting edge so they can process faster? My goal for now is to get to the point where the time to process is slightly faster than the time it takes them to edit a model. That way it can generate work as fast as they can complete it.

      Side Note: So of course I asked them what they do with their day when all the machines are all tied up. Here is how you know you don't pay your people enough: they went to the university library and got stacks of books on physics, art, math, etc., and have been combing the literature looking for ways to be more efficient. I was so impressed I had to do something for them. So on Prime Day I bought a bunch of Kindles. One kindle for each of the three of them for work, one for their own personal reading, and one for each of their significant others. One of them has a kid so I got them a kindle with the rubber case. I also got Kindle Unlimted subsciptions for all of them. (If you are wondering why I got a personal and a work one, its because I want to be sure they understand that they have lives outside of their office. If they like to read, great, but I don't want them to confuse reading for work with reading for pleasure. Also, if they decide to leave they can keep the personal kindle. If they stay I'll renew the Kindle Unlimited.) Again, the most expensive part of my business is my employess. And before anyone comments, yes, they also get a raise every year. 5% the first year, 8% the second, and 10% the third.

  17. Same CPU here & a tweak... apk 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 AND PROCESSES (imo, a Gannt chart illustrates this well) 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

  18. Compilation flags & vectorization by modrzej · · Score: 2

    The article is silent about vectorization, and Intel invests a lot in that lately. Do we know anything about the compilation flags of that copy of cinebench? If not, the assessment could be extremely unfair. A newer set of vectorization instructions corresponds to a longer vector size for arithmetic operations that can be carried out concurrently. For example, in HPC applications, enabling the highest available level of AVX can lead to 2x gains compared to code compiled for legacy systems.

    1. Re:Compilation flags & vectorization by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      Do we know anything about the compilation flags of that copy of cinebench? If not, the assessment could be extremely unfair.

      According to Tom's Hardware, Cinebench doesn't use AVX instructions at all. There's no source or discussion of the assertion though.

  19. NewsFlash: 16 and 12 cores CPUs beat 10 core CPU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously? We're reading news that a 16 or 12 core CPU beats a 10 core CPU in benchmarks. This is a sad day for AMD fans.

  20. Do AMD CPUs still contain PSP rootkit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Intel has serious security problems with their FSP and management engine blobs, which for example break verified boot on ChromeOS such that NSA could implant a persistent rootkit that bypasses ChromeOS's key verification, without holding Google's private key and without physical access to the device.

    The way this works is that management engine blobs must exist, or else the CPU reboots a few seconds after startup. While you can check the signature on the blob, you can't check the signature on the blob before it gets control, which is what verified boot requires. It's not just a matter of source code. Although more source code does need to be provided for security, realistically there are some black boxes in the CPU ("microcode", etc.), but this is a writeable black box that can be overwritten with a rootkit on the victim's computer, yet not distributed to all other computers so it can't be studied, and so there isn't a record of their collaboration or incompetence later to hold them accountable. Verified boot resists attacks by at least forcing all computers to be the same: all backdoored or none backdoored, while we know NSA prefers to target individuals (1) because people aware of a leak plug it. unaware targets leak more. (2) for NOBU. known backdoors can be reused by others. (3) because otherwise their relationship with collaborating US companies would be come impossible. IMHO Intel is basically offering up a silver-platter backdoor to them, but the "management engine" and "RAM initialization and stuff" excuses are just plausible enough for credulous neckties to claim deniability and buy Intel.

    AMD has all the same problems with their "PSP". Snowden has suggested this is the time for AMD to offer an alternative to this backdoored-by-design US CPU that's built from the ground up with a welcoming, unremovable module perfectly fitting the way US spy agency likes to implant things.

    AMD, is there any progress on this? You seem to have backslided since Athlon FX, yet now it's more important than ever to get this situation cleaned up.

  21. Nice and everything but... by Gabest · · Score: 1

    I don't think I will ever spend more than $300 on a CPU. It was always enough to buy the fastest for home. What happened?

    1. Re:Nice and everything but... by dook43 · · Score: 1

      There's been $1000 chips at least since the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition came out. You obviously haven't been paying attention. http://www.anandtech.com/show/...

      --
      This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
  22. Re: Just make sure you budget for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A percentage of chips are toast in soldering, so it is more expensive.

  23. Probably runs a lot cooler than the 7900X too by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    On a related note, Tom's Hardware called the 7900X "a factory overclocked chip". It generates so much heat at that it needs water cooling to run without throttling.
      http://www.tomshardware.com/re...

  24. ZOMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    16 core CPU beats 10 core CPU. Well thank you Captain Stupid.

    1. Re:ZOMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe you missed the fact that the 12 core also beat it. maybe you forgot the gap between intel and amd, and the fact that it's close to being closed. this is their first iteration, each new stepping will be faster, more efficient, and higher ipc. you only hear what you want to hear, and neglect the big things, price point, future proof, more bang for your buck. these things matter. also, once everything is compiled to take advantage of the arch, and bugfixes etc... it will only get better for amd, and look worse for intel. you care only about single thread speed, where any newer cpu is fast enough to do anything you need that's single threaded. amd is competitive and beats intel at pricepoints that matter, this is good for consumers, but not for fanboys.

    2. Re:ZOMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wake me up when a 4 or 8 core CPU with less speed can beat a 10 core CPU.

  25. Dupe Story Alert! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This story is a total dupe. Slashdot editors aren't paying attention these days... https://hardware.slashdot.org/... The Cinebench scores are referenced and linked right in there.

  26. For now, you mean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For now. As compute resources become available mainly through extra cores, programmers will invest more time in threading and parallel processing.

    Even now, programmer can depend upon single stream logic and get hardware speedups. Those gains are clearly getting smaller each year but they still appear. Single thread logic is simply easier to write and all programmers have the relevant knowledge and training.

    What I'm saying is, programmers who simply must get faster performance out of their code are facing pressure to move to efficient parallel design practices. Eventually many or most programmers will get the message and it will become Standard Operating Procedure. It isn't yet but it will come.

  27. CPU will have more impact with new game engine fea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nee features coming t games are for animations that likely use the cpu. They all the animation to slip/grab things. I.e. one animation that all characters use but is adjusted on th fly to attach a hand to a gun exactly where it needs to. Or feet/characters to get ouch the terrain and change positioning n relatively to it n a human way. There are other e,xamples but this would likely run on the cpu.