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Preview of AMD Ryzen Threadripper Shows Chip Handily Out-Pacing Intel Core i9 (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the performance-review dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD is still days away from the formal launch of their Ryzen Threadripper family of 12 and 16-core processors but OEM system builder Dell and its Alienware gaming PC division had an inside track on first silicon in the channel. The Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition sports a 16-core Ryzen Threadripper 1950X processor that boosts to 4GHz with a base clock of 3.4GHz and an all-core boost at 3.6GHz. From a price standpoint, the 16-core Threadripper chip goes head-to-head with Intel's 10-core Core i9-7900X at a $999 MSRP. In early benchmark runs of the Alienware system, AMD's Ryzen Threadripper is showing as much as a 37% percent performance advantage over the Intel Core i9 Skylake-X chip, in highly threaded general compute workload benchmarks like Cinebench and Blender. In gaming, Threadripper is showing roughly performance parity with the Core i9 chip in some tests, but trailing by as much as 20% in lower resolution 1080p gaming, as is characteristic for many Ryzen CPUs currently, in certain games. Regardless, when you consider the general performance upside with Ryzen Threadripper versus Intel's current fastest desktop chip, along with its more aggressive per-core pricing (12-core Threadripper at $799), AMD's new flagship enthusiast/performance workstation desktop chips are lining up pretty well versus Intel's.

180 comments

  1. yea um by arbiter1 · · Score: 0

    Um if you only look at synthetic benchmarks yes it does win but sadly rest of the results are don't put it so amd chip's way.

    1. Re:yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong - Cinebench and Blender are based on real 3D rendering software, applications and workloads, actually.

    2. Re:yea um by arbiter1 · · Score: 0

      Most 3d rendering software designed to use GPU to do the work so your reply is invalid.

    3. Re:yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most 3d rendering software designed to use GPU to do the work so your reply is invalid.

      You are invalid.

      "You have 24 hours to report to a disintegration station." (Star Trek)

    4. Re:yea um by glitch! · · Score: 2

      Um if you only look at synthetic benchmarks yes it does win but sadly rest of the results are don't put it so amd chip's way.

      Could you revise your post so that we know what "it" refers to with regards to winning? And could you revise your sentence "sadly rest of the results are don't put it so amd chip's way." so that it uses grammar and makes sense? I would like to understand your point.

      --
      A dingo ate my sig...
    5. Re:yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oh wow did you copy paste that from the "lets all beat off to intel" forum

      what real world examples do you actually have, oh none, cause you dont know

    6. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not Cinebench, that one is designed to test CPU.

    7. Re:yea um by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      It's not all that surprising that gaming benchmarks don't scale as well to large numbers of cores. Videogame programming isn't a field in which performance can simply scale nearly linearly based on the number of hardware threads available. That's because the CPU is performing a huge number of very diverse tasks among all it's engine components, and there's a great deal of global coordination that occurs on a central database. It's essentially a heterogeneous workload, and those just don't scale as well.

      Thinks like a 3D renderer or video encoding benchmark, in which you can divide up portions of the screen or encode successive frames on different threads - those sorts of things will scale nearly linearly with the number of threads, because it's a largely homogeneous workload.

      So, it's not necessarily about synthetic vs read world benchmarks. It's really about how well the application in general scales to multiple threads. For some things, it's relatively easy. Others... not so much.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    8. Re:yea um by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Funny

      He said that porn doesn't feel the same on an AMD chipset.

    9. Re:yea um by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1, Funny

      You mean his Ball Grid Array needs better polishing?

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    10. Re: yea um by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      For home use then gaming performance counts, in business TPC-C may be more interesting.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    11. Re:yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yep. What I see is a 16-core AMD CPU losing out to the 10-core Intel CPU in all of the 3DMark tests and Tomb Raider, which is the only real test that was conducted.

      AMD's Ryzen 1950X has 60% more cores and a 100MHz clockspeed advantage and it still can't keep up with Intel.

    12. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong reference.
      IN-VALID: Unauthorized Speciman

    13. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Especially considering the Core i9- 7980XE coming in September with 18 cores...

    14. Re:yea um by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2, Informative

      Software capabilities traditionally lag behind hardware capabilities. Look at how underutilized the multi-core capability of modern hardware is even today. Now consider that GPGPU is even newer than multi-core CPUs. Thus, logically, most 3D rendering software *isn't* designed to use the GPU to do its work. 3D rendering software designed to use the GPU is *just appearing*, and even where it exists, it can't be reasonably used for complex scenes, since those have traditionally been memory-limited. High-end 3D production was using multi-gigabyte assets (around 10 GB per frame) around the year 2000 already. An average graphics card is just getting there, but the industry has moved on already.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    15. Re:yea um by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      That's because the CPU is performing a huge number of very diverse tasks among all it's engine components, and there's a great deal of global coordination that occurs on a central database.

      Which is more likely to be just old architecture. In general, game worlds do exhibit at least some kind of locality or metrics amenable to distributing work. If nothing else, it should at least allow the emergence of new classes of games. For example, virtual worlds with smarter NPCs with actions based on actual reasoning or emulating more complex economies and such.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    16. Re: yea um by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      That particular CPU will most likely beaten by the same 10-core Intel CPU at games. ;) After all, the Skylake-X parts that had already come out have already been found out to be underwhelming compared to other Intel CPU options for games.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    17. Re:yea um by hord · · Score: 1

      For rendering it comes down to how the scene is set up which is based on the viewport of the player as well as the action in the game. There is no way to predict how many points or triangles there will be on-screen at any given time and you can't run these calculations in parallel because there is only one player. It's not an architecture problem. It's a nature-of-the-problem problem that has been well known in gaming since at least Quake 3.

    18. Re:yea um by supremebob · · Score: 0

      Yes, but the headline is misleading. It seems to imply that the AMD chip is "handily outpacing" the Core i9, but it really only does so in select applications.

      But, hey... competition is competition. Intel's CPU improvements haven't progressed this quickly for the past 5 years, and we have AMD to thank for that.

    19. Re:yea um by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Scenes are hierarchically bounded and subject to geometry metrics. I don't see how this is subject to the number of players. The problem until recently was the API limitations of the drivers. And even that is covering just a small part of what a complex modern game ought to be about.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    20. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah by a whopping 2-3 fps. Enjoy your overpriced INTEL chips and your "superiority".

    21. Re: yea um by supremebob · · Score: 1

      That 18 core Intel processor will probably cost $600 more than the 16 core Threadripper processor, though. I'm not sure if the 15% performance boost will be worth the price.

    22. Re:yea um by hord · · Score: 2

      Because of optimization. You don't render all points in a space. You only render points in a viewport. That means part of the job of the game loop is constantly keeping track of which points in space you need to worry about for rendering purposes versus physics purposes. There are tons of algorithms to do this and it is one of the areas that people optimize pretty aggressively.

      Once you have a point list, you can build a scene and render it based on a ton of other factors (z-order, shaders, shadows, light blending, etc.). All of this is completely dynamic and can't be pre-computed. The assets that are pre-computed are basically just hints that tell you how to do all of these real-time calculations faster. Also, a lot of optimization goes into the 3D models themselves to eliminate unnecessary triangles. The more triangles in a viewport, the more calculations you have to do, and the slower the engine will be.

      Again, a lot of this can't be done in parallel because it doesn't depend on the number of players. It is a problem with the fact that you are multiplexing an entire universe into a single viewport and trying to optimize it so that it actually runs. Some things can (and are) run in threads. Like I said, they've been working on this for a long while now.

    23. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think $1799 is the price I saw, so even more costly.

    24. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks I'll still take the 64 pcie lanes, raid I don't have to pay extra for and say no to intel fuckery

    25. Re:yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah its not that, AMD went for number of cores at the expense of capabilities per core. Intel went for a small number of larger cores. For simple workloads the AMD approach has an advantage, but the moment you're running big complex chunks of codes with decision trees that require inter-thread communication the Intel design will probably perform better. Each approach has its merits, but I'd imagine Intel still has the edge when it comes to more generic workloads.

    26. Re:yea um by cb88 · · Score: 1

      Probably not actually... AMD has always had excellent branch prediction for instance, and they have a micro op cache just like Intel now.

      The micro op cache probably does have a massive effect on synthetics... which is why it was ignored for bulldozer. Bulldozer was actually competitive when given real workloads in many cases. The fact is a Ryzen CPU is very similar in many ways to an Intel one... just different. The similarities are there mainly in order to remain competitive at ticking check boxes.

      In the end the difference in size is probably due to shorter pipelines on Ryzen 7.... which is also why it doesn't clock as high but is more efficient at the same clock since there is less overhead due to pipelining as much as the Intel processor.

      If you are running code that requires inter thread communication to be fast... it will be slow on all processors anyway, its something you design out of your code no matter what it is running on. The only place Ryzen really loses is when running with slow ram... the inter CXX links run slower, and AVX512 code like is probably in video encoders that is an extremely small portion of code in the wild.

    27. Re:yea um by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Videogame programming isn't a field in which performance can simply scale nearly linearly based on the number of hardware threads available.

      Actually, it is. But there is a limiting factor: videogame management are cheapass bitches who can't stomach the idea of paying more money than they pay themselves to bring in the kind of engineer who can design and develop high performance parallel code.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    28. Re: yea um by cb88 · · Score: 1

      And that is exactly what you are seeing in game benchmarks... "BOOST".

      The ThreadRipper probably still had plenty of cores on tap in those GPU benchmarks. While the Intel CPU was taking advantage of its longer, higher clocking and more wasteful pipelines to boost one core a bit faster to drive the GPU a tiny bit harder.

      Lets not forget that ThreadRipper and EPYC have twice the IO and 50% more memory bandwidth than their competitor chips.

    29. Re: yea um by cb88 · · Score: 1

      128 Lanes on EPYC... I'd laugh manically at this point but it goes without saying.

    30. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most production renderers are primarily CPU bound, though that's changing. Even so, pretty much all professional 3D software, which includes Blender, allow for a choice in renderers. Blender's Cycles renderer for example is a hybrid CPU/GPU engine, but the standard Blender internal engine is CPU based renderer.

    31. Re: yea um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny, because I just watch a video at BitWit comparing the Ryzen 1950 (16-core) vs i9 7900 (10-core) and the i9 won most of the tests. Those two CPUs cost the same, so why would you go with the inferior Ryzen than can't even run Linux with segfaulting all over the place?

  2. AMD is the best! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    AMD is the best!

  3. AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When setting a mug of coffee on the AMD CPU it will heat it faster than the puny Intel CPU for the same amount of processing!

    1. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ryzen actually beats Intel in power efficiency from what I've seen.

    2. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 1

      From what I've read, the TDP of AMD's current chips is very acceptable, perhaps even better than Intel's given they measure it differently. Time will tell, but it seems like you won't eat ten times the cost savings of the AMD chip in terms of electrical waste with this lineup. I just wish the chipset supported nvme raid.

    3. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      HA
      HA
      HA
      HA
      HA
      LETS MAKE A JOKE FROM 8 YEARS AGO

      MICRO$HAFT VISTA

      slashdot tells me

      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

      no fuckin shit, that's cause I am yelling

    4. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      250 watts on amds side. Intel is much cooler (relatively speaking)

    5. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 1

      I read multiple sites saying 180 for AMD's highest end chip. What's your sauce?

    6. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 1

      I admit I should be careful when saying "Highest End", so what I meant was the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X.

    7. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by steveha · · Score: 2

      The reason Intel was eating AMD's lunch for over half a decade was that Intel was two generations ahead on processor fab technology, and as a result Intel had an absolutely huge advantage in power efficiency.

      AMD made the difficult decision to skip one generation completely and they are now fabbing 14 nm chips; they have caught up to Intel. (Someday Intel will move to 10 nm and the race will continue.)

      According to a table released by Intel the top i9 chips will be rated for 165 Watts TDP. AMD's chips are rated for 180 Watts TDP. A 15 Watt difference is not a big deal, and AMD chips are so much less expensive that you will save money even if electricity is expensive where you live.

      The most wasteful AMD chips would be the 220 Watt Vishera-core chips... fabbed on 32 nm, ouch. Newegg still sells them but I'd sooner buy a Threadripper.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    8. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      Generally speaking, AMD get ahead when Intel screw up. Which is what they've been doing for the last few years, getting lazy with only making minor tweaks to the same architecture.

      Once Intel sharpen their pencils and get to work, AMD have a hard time keeping up when Intel's R&D budget is larger than AMD's revenue.

      Then Intel screw up again and the cycle repeats.

    9. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by steveha · · Score: 1

      Then Intel screw up again and the cycle repeats.

      There's something to what you say. But AMD's current lineup looks very strong, and AMD should be able to carve out a niche as the price/performance brand.

      It was very tough for AMD to compete when they were two generations behind. Now they should do very well for a while. And even if Intel goes to 10 nm, AMD should do okay with 14 nm parts... 14 vs. 10 is an easier battle than 32 vs. 14!

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    10. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's your sauce?

      I'd say his sauce is probably whiskey. -PCP

    11. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Generally speaking, AMD get ahead when Intel screw up. Which is what they've been doing for the last few years, getting lazy with only making minor tweaks to the same architecture.

      Once Intel sharpen their pencils and get to work, AMD have a hard time keeping up when Intel's R&D budget is larger than AMD's revenue.

      Then Intel screw up again and the cycle repeats.

      Or Intel screws up and slows down to avoid killing AMD. When AMD is in trouble, Intel is in trouble - you don't want the nice cushy arrangement with patents and market leadership to be upset because your competition dies out do you?

      AMD was in dire straits running out of money. They got a reprieve in the form of Sony and Microsoft, likely because Intel pawned them off to give AMD 10 years of guaranteed cash.

      Intel's letting Ryzen/Epyc/Threadripper play out on purpose - let AMD build up its cash reserves to the point where folding is no longer likely to give them government regulators and competition bureaus off Intel's back. Let AMD get some more marketshare so they appear good competition, and then keep them where they are.

      Killing AMD does no one any good - not us as users, not Intel (they'd lose those nice zero-dollar cross-patent licenses, and likely have to pay others like ARM for the same patents, plus who knows how many years of government oversight, maybe even forced to break up - you can have fab side, you can have the design side, but not both). AMD where they are is good for Intel. AMD looking good is also good for Intel - hopefully AMD puts all the money in the bank for the lean times.

    12. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Certainly not Zen vs. Skylake-X. OC's Sk-X pushes like 350-400 watts.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    13. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by pxpt · · Score: 1

      My (normally clocked) Ryzen 1800X processor runs cool on my AMD machine. Each time I check the heat pipes on the processor heat sink they're cold. Never fails to surprise me. Unlike my Intel i7 based machine where I can hardly keep my fingers touching the heat pipes due to the hot temperature. And yes, my heat sink is working fine on the Ryzen.

    14. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's more than just that. Defense industry typically only wants parts for which there are multiple sources. Granted, AMD processors are not pin-compatible with Intel processors, but in terms of function, they serve as a second source (even if the entire order then goes to Intel). AMD's existence probably increases Intel's bottom line (kind of weird, but that's the world of big business).

    15. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      The reason Intel was eating AMD's lunch for over half a decade was that Intel was two generations ahead on processor fab technology, and as a result Intel had an absolutely huge advantage in power efficiency.

      That, and the unfortunate decision to share FPUs between cores, resulting in great integer (compilation) performance but less great gaming, compression and spreadsheeting. But those are secondary effects. The primary cause was Intel cutting off AMD's air supply by illegal trust-making strategems.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    16. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      The reason Intel was eating AMD's lunch for over half a decade was that Intel was two generations ahead on processor fab technology, and as a result Intel had an absolutely huge advantage in power efficiency.

      AMD made the difficult decision to skip one generation completely and they are now fabbing 14 nm chips; they have caught up to Intel. (Someday Intel will move to 10 nm and the race will continue.)

      According to a table released by Intel the top i9 chips will be rated for 165 Watts TDP. AMD's chips are rated for 180 Watts TDP. A 15 Watt difference is not a big deal, and AMD chips are so much less expensive that you will save money even if electricity is expensive where you live.

      The most wasteful AMD chips would be the 220 Watt Vishera-core chips... fabbed on 32 nm, ouch. Newegg still sells them but I'd sooner buy a Threadripper.

      From what I read and what AMD presents, their 1700 series has a tdp of 65 watts. Intel's is twice that amount of wattage, and with less performance.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    17. Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER! by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Generally speaking, AMD get ahead when Intel screw up. Which is what they've been doing for the last few years, getting lazy with only making minor tweaks to the same architecture.

      Once Intel sharpen their pencils and get to work, AMD have a hard time keeping up when Intel's R&D budget is larger than AMD's revenue.

      Then Intel screw up again and the cycle repeats.

      Or Intel screws up and slows down to avoid killing AMD. When AMD is in trouble, Intel is in trouble - you don't want the nice cushy arrangement with patents and market leadership to be upset because your competition dies out do you?

      AMD was in dire straits running out of money. They got a reprieve in the form of Sony and Microsoft, likely because Intel pawned them off to give AMD 10 years of guaranteed cash.

      Intel's letting Ryzen/Epyc/Threadripper play out on purpose - let AMD build up its cash reserves to the point where folding is no longer likely to give them government regulators and competition bureaus off Intel's back. Let AMD get some more marketshare so they appear good competition, and then keep them where they are.

      Killing AMD does no one any good - not us as users, not Intel (they'd lose those nice zero-dollar cross-patent licenses, and likely have to pay others like ARM for the same patents, plus who knows how many years of government oversight, maybe even forced to break up - you can have fab side, you can have the design side, but not both). AMD where they are is good for Intel. AMD looking good is also good for Intel - hopefully AMD puts all the money in the bank for the lean times.

      You must be in La-la land. Business is business, in this quarter, Intel is bleeding. Intel is actually looking to expand outside of chips and hardware. When you can't compete, you flee to alternatives.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    18. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The $300 r7 1700 (non x) is 65w peak for eight cores and sixteen threads. I don't care what intel has for $1200 and 200w if it can't even drive all my pcie slots without throttling.

    19. Re: AMD DECLARED WINNER! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bingo. My r7-1700 isn't really THAT much faster in terms of feel in single thread, but it is half the power for twice the cores. That's 400% the performance/watt of the 8350.

  4. Windows 10 Pro license by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    How can a Windows license be transferred to a new mobo/cpu/ram??

    1. Re:Windows 10 Pro license by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You get five installs of Windows 10 Pro. You won't have any problem activating on a newer PC.

    2. Re:Windows 10 Pro license by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is just total fucking bullshit right there.

      Fuck off with the apologies for the limited number of installs: that model is fundamentally broken.

      The *only* model that is acceptable, is that the license is for one installation to be running at any moment in time. ...not arguing that it's enforceable, just pointing out that it's the only model that I'll accept.

    3. Re: Windows 10 Pro license by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      If you buy a retail license, it's transferable. If you buy oem, it's tied to hardware and cannot be transferred. Been this way for 20 years, AFAIK.

    4. Re:Windows 10 Pro license by terjeber · · Score: 1

      No prob. Just chat with MS, and they will help you.

  5. What about power consumption? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    Gaming is great and all but my real interest is on the computing power per Watt. This is a tech site and I would think people would want to know if datacenters are about to switch their boxen to AMD in the near future. This actually is something that matters.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:What about power consumption? by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      So long as performance is in the ballpark I'll be willing to switch. Rather a small performance hit than buying a chip with a built in backdoor.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:What about power consumption? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      Sorry to break it to you but AMD has backdoor of it's own called PSP. I just hope they make it open for scrutiny but I wouldn't hold my breath.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re: What about power consumption? by Robert+Goatse · · Score: 1

      -1,000 for using the word boxen.

    4. Re:What about power consumption? by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      You can't have a CISC chip, or even a RISC-based chip that has CISC features (like ARM), if you want to be protected from backdoors. You need a real RISC chip where your registers are literally registers, and there is no microcode. Basically, the smallest of the microcontrollers from the 1980s. You'll have to build everything from the ground up with a cluster of those things.

      Or, accept that you don't know what microcode does, you don't really trust it, and just decide which one to use anyway. And then you're able to use it.

      It is just the same as with linux and hurd. It really makes no difference which one you like the best, because only one of them is a real choice.

      Honestly, for most tasks you could just build a device with some op-amps and analog dials to do whatever automation you want. But when it behaves in ways you didn't expect, you'll be able to have confidence that it is some knowable phenomenon, like bad wiring, rats, insects, tree rats, backhoes, or somebody driving by with an excessively amplified CB radio. I mean, you still won't have any idea what is "really going on," but you'll look like you do to average people.

    5. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not great at all in real world. I recently did a comparison of a handbrake encode of blue ray material to x265 with denoise filtering and deinterlacing. It completed in a little over 17 hours on a puny Celeron 2957U using 8w on average (yes, single digit eight) and the same encoding (same settings and source material) and completed in a little less than 15 hours on Ryzen 5 1600 using 89w on average. Both machines have 16gb or ram and no other big processes were running. So you have it - AMD is using 1100% the power to deliver a mere 17% performance increase. Synthetic benchmarks on the ryzen system are inline with what they should be, yet AMD is blatantly lying and failing in real world. The Ryzen 5 1600 is 65 W rated part, yet it consistently runs between 85W and 92W under load when it is doing its stock boost and about 25-30W on idle. The mentioned celeron isles at 1.5W on idle.

    6. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even zAParKie admitted he is using a chip with a back door. There is (yet) nothing wrong using a chip with a backdoor on an airgapped system.

    7. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      P.S. And that Celeron runs at 55C (being a mobile part the shutdown temp is 105c) and the Ruzen runs at 75c (stock cooler which is 25 times larger than the one on the intel part)

    8. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're doing it wrong.

    9. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are no more "RISC" chips.

      Todays cpus (incl ARM) have bloated "multimedia/3D" SIMD instruction sets and out-of-order execution with register renaming and dynamic vliw data paths.

      To be competitive, these beasts need small companion cpus to boot and enter/exit low power states quickly/aggressively (can't turn on the big cpu before the voltage regulators stabilize).

    10. Re:What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's only 4 people on this site who know what a Watt is.

    11. Re:What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it is an article from hothardware. If you are interested in that sort of data you need to look at real hardware review sites not that garbage site.

    12. Re: What about power consumption? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Todays cpus (incl ARM) have bloated "multimedia/3D" SIMD instruction sets and out-of-order execution with register renaming and dynamic vliw data paths.

      So for MIPS that would be... R5000? What is it for SPARC, Super? Hyper? Couldn't have been all the way to Ultra. And it should be every POWER chip, right?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re: What about power consumption? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      That sounds like a rather pathological case, considering that Ryzen has shown very good efficiency compared to similarly-powered Intel parts in actual workloads. ULV parts will always be more efficient in terms of performance/watt, that's their very point. Even with Intel parts, you could make a comparison like that.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    14. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that POWER started to include SIMD in POWER5.
      I never programmed SPARCs directly, but I have some vague recollection that its SIMD implementation was rather weak.

    15. Re:What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm happy to accept CISC and the risks that come with it.

      By vPro and IME are just **taking the piss* with regards to security.

    16. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      kek. I bet he hates it when he gets virii in his boxen.

    17. Re:What about power consumption? by lactose99 · · Score: 1

      You lost all credibility with "boxen"

      --
      Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
    18. Re: What about power consumption? by lactose99 · · Score: 1

      POWER did: AltiVec

      --
      Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
    19. Re: What about power consumption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      JJ Watt? From the Houston Texans?

    20. Re:What about power consumption? by iotaborg · · Score: 1

      One, now older benchmark: http://semiaccurate.com/2017/0...

      Scrolling to the bottom on discussion of performance/watt, Intel's Broadwell 6950 is ahead by ~15% compared to Ryzen 1800. Intel's Skylake and upcoming Coffee Lake represent an incremental update in transistor and computer architecture, and may be expected to further improve efficiency. Haven't seen any Threadripper numbers though.

    21. Re:What about power consumption? by cb88 · · Score: 1

      Microcode isn't what you think it is. Microcode is essentially a big look up table for decisions in how the processor interprets an instruction...

      It isn't a firmware in the sense of an operating system it is essentially instruction scheduling and other related things. It makes it easier to resolve large classes of minor bugs that would otherwise be showstoppers without microcode.

      Microcode can in a sense add instructions to the CPU... as that is where they are defined. But the hardware to execute said instructions must already exist for the microcode to use it. Back in the 70's and 80's a microcode would have been a big grid of diodes ... essentially a rom that you could modify by hand if you needed to fix bugs in the CPU instead of using hardwired logic you could modify this rom to accomplish changes to the CPU execution.

      Micro code isn't "what runs on the CPU".... it is the very logic of the CPU period the rest is computational hardware. It is what runs the CPU... and having it be re programmable to some degree is the only way any computer engineer will remain sane.

      The reason bugs like FDIV couldn't be fixed with microcode update is it was a problem with the computational hardware not the logical microcode.

    22. Re: What about power consumption? by cb88 · · Score: 1

      As far as I know a 32bit out of order Sparc core doesn't exist unless you consider that 64bit sparcs do execute 32bit code.

      The SS20 also has an SX SMID engine... used mainly as it's built in graphics processor basically the CPU shoves instructions for it on a hardware queue and it runs them independently. It's good enough to allow a 50Mhz SuperSparc run KDE 3.x for instance which honestly is fairly impressive.

      Bear in mind that RISC never was intended to mean minimal instructions set... merely minimized / optimized or in other words reduced.

      RISC fails because it's encoding is not dense enough, CISC fails because it can't decode it's dense instruction format fast enough. The optimal instruction set is a little of both.

    23. Re:What about power consumption? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      You lost all credibility with "boxen"

      Hand in your geek card.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    24. Re:What about power consumption? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I would think people would want to know if datacenters are about to switch their boxen to AMD in the near future.

      No big operator is going to share their plans with you. Suffice to know that data center operators are the least loyal users on the planet... probably already running QA on threadripper boxes.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    25. Re: What about power consumption? by cb88 · · Score: 1

      Presumably he was transcoding single threaded since the TDP of that celery processor is 15W, ..... the Ryzen system could have transcoded 5 more videos with probably very minor increases in wattage if you didn't let it boost, potentially as many as 11 more videos. If you were batch transcoding like most people do... the Ryzen would stomp that 15w intel any way you slice it.

    26. Re:What about power consumption? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      My point was that if it is cheaper and more efficient that it's clear that datacenters would switch and that's something people on this site would like to know about.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    27. Re:What about power consumption? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      My point was that if it is cheaper and more efficient that it's clear that datacenters would switch and that's something people on this site would like to know about.

      My point was that you don't really need to ask that question because you know they will. Of course, I appreciate a nice leak as much as the next guy. So data center guys hanging on /. as anoncows: tell us all the juicy details of what you're thinking about installing and shy please, thx.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    28. Re:What about power consumption? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      My point was that you don't really need to ask that question because you know they will.

      The question was about the power consumption, expressly, is it higher or lower than what Intel is offering. The rationale for that question is that it dictates what datacenters would do. So, do you know the answer? Because I do not.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    29. Re:What about power consumption? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      The question was about the power consumption, expressly, is it higher or lower than what Intel is offering. The rationale for that question is that it dictates what datacenters would do. So, do you know the answer? Because I do not.

      Not quite right: in case of a tie, datacenters select on cost. So I will settle for a tie (likely) and so will data center operators. And just keep asking for those leaks, they will come.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    30. Re:What about power consumption? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      The point about datacenters was an aside. My question was about the power consumption of the chips. Do you know which is lower?

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    31. Re: What about power consumption? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You can literally still buy the "true" RISC micros from the 1980s, built with modern processes so they consume very little power. None of it went out of production.

      They cost about the same as what you pay for a single discrete transistor.

    32. Re:What about power consumption? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      As a firmware programmer, I don't even read comments that start off with idiocies like telling me what I don't know. I do know that there could be nothing in my comment that would mean I don't know things I really do know, so when I read you say that shit I know you're not even being remotely logical and you're just going to spew. So I spend the time I would have spent reading your words to tell you I'm not reading your words.

      If you assume I *do* know what I was talking about, you could always re-read it with that in mind and then maybe you would comprehend it. The goal is to find a true meaning of what you read, if you make assumptions of ignorance you're choosing to argue only from there.

    33. Re:What about power consumption? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I presume that mips/watt is roughly a tie, because the process is roughly a tie. The big tiebreaker is price.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  6. Still a power hog by macraig · · Score: -1, Troll

    I suppose that is great news for people who are desperate for Intel to suffer some competition, but AMD is doing it at the continued cost of a significantly larger chunk of electricity. The contrast in power consumption is less stark than the Ivy Bridge days - which is when I gave up on AMD - but still significant. It matters less if you're addicted to FPS games that demand cutting edge graphics performance, since GPUs these days can easily consume three time more power than the alleged central processor. I consider myself a gamer, but I WILL NOT burn through the power that a GTX 1080 consumes. Still, even in GPUs AMD/ATI has become and continues to be the loser in terms of work done per Watt. There too, I abandoned AMD because its graphics cards gobble significantly more energy resource than the competition (Nvidia).

    There is lengthening history at AMD of ignoring the power envelope or at least sacrificing it for the sake of barely remaining competitive, across the board. If the focus changed from raw performance to work done per unit of energy, the veil would be lifted and their charade exposed.

    1. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Intel fanbois crying delicious hot tears, I love it.

    2. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What?

      Have you seen the real power consumption on Skylake-X?

    3. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      uh... electricity is cheap dude.

    4. Re:Still a power hog by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

      You are wrong. https://img.purch.com/o/aHR0cD...
      Ryzen 1700 uses 35W less than a 7700k and 1800X uses 25W more. In gaming a Ryzen uses around 15% less which is typically the upper end how much slower it is in games compared to a 7700k. E.g. it is as efficient (games) or tons more efficient (when all cores can be used) than a Intel i7

      Intel however is certainly ignoring their own power envelope with their factory overclocked CPU and from all news, their Skylake-X are worse, even the low end chips, in their mad dash to beat AMD. I doubt this will change with Threadripper which uses the same dies as Ryzen.

      It doesn't matter if it's AMD or Intel: they always ignore your mythical "power envelope", especially when they are behind like Intel now and AMD before or when they have to press out the last bit of performance from an aging architecture like Intel now or AMD with the 9590.

    5. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad Macraig has learned to enjoy Intel's dongle in his rear-facing port. You're someone's BITCH now, stand tall! Don't let those AMD fanbois tease you with their faster processing speeds, so mean!

    6. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny shit.

    7. Re:Still a power hog by Kjella · · Score: 2

      I consider myself a gamer, but I WILL NOT burn through the power that a GTX 1080 consumes.

      So you wouldn't buy a $500 graphics card because it'd cost you $5/year in electricity. Got it.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    8. Re:Still a power hog by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "I WILL NOT burn through the power that a GTX 1080 consumes"

      I bet you had no problem saying that while running a fucking GTX 780, at nearly DOUBLE the TDP of a fucking Threadripper or GTX 1080.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    9. Re:Still a power hog by Aighearach · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I just got done playing a rated game of chess, and I wouldn't buy a $500 graphics card or consume an extra $5/year of electricity just for graphics.

    10. Re: Still a power hog by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Bleeding edge performance always consumes a lot of power. Doesn't matter if it's computers or cars.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    11. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      No, it's not. But you go ahead and keep thinking your reposte is insightful and witty.

    12. Re:Still a power hog by macraig · · Score: 0

      I think it's amusing how you assume that I have a favorite doggie in the contest just because you do. Having a perpetual favorite is the behavior of idiots who can't even protect their own self-interest. Have fun with that.

    13. Re:Still a power hog by macraig · · Score: 0

      I think it's amusing how you assume that I have a favorite doggie in the contest just because you do. Having a perpetual favorite is the behavior of idiots who can't even protect their own self-interest. Have fun with that.

    14. Re:Still a power hog by macraig · · Score: 0

      I use a GTX 960, topping out at less than one third the consumption of a GTX 1080, and a fraction of the price. It would have been worse had I chosen the equivalent AMD Product at the time, which is why I chose Nvidia that occasion; AMD had gotten my vote the time before. Having shredded your desperate little hypocrisy theory, I wonder just what it is that motivated you to post it? What sacred little cow are you hiding in your barn?

    15. Re:Still a power hog by macraig · · Score: 0

      FYI, I've set a personal GPU power consumption limit of 150 Watts. Saving energy is just one of several reasons for setting that limit.

    16. Re:Still a power hog by bongey · · Score: 1, Troll

      Zen/Ryzen has better performance per watt than any Intel chip currently offered and the next 6 months or more. You are either Intel fanboy/shill or you have been living under a rock. Tom's actually measures the wattage draw directly from the CPU, 4-core Intel draws more power than an 8 core AMD chip. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...

    17. Re:Still a power hog by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about? These benchmarks show a 35% performance gap. Other benchmarks (do a quick google) show a 16% power penalty. The Ryzen is more efficient based on the benchmarks we've seen so far.

    18. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      But you have, it's blindingly obvious. Either that, or you're actually retarded.

      Look at the percentage difference in power consumption. Then look at the difference in cost of acquisition. Now, think about how much electricity you can buy for that sum.

      You'll find you'll be burning an awful lot of electricity before the Intel even hypothetically begins to pay for itself.

    19. Re:Still a power hog by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Informative

      "...but AMD is doing it at the continued cost of a significantly larger chunk of electricity..."

      Talk about "having a perpetual favorite" :)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    20. Re:Still a power hog by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      "...but AMD is doing it at the continued cost of a significantly larger chunk of electricity..."

      Talk about "having a perpetual favorite" :)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    21. Re:Still a power hog by hord · · Score: 1

      I know a lot of you don't think small power consumption issues are a big deal but I thought I'd highlight a few points:

      x) We now operate in a space where the physics of chips well into the future is already known, planned, and targetted for production. 7nm and below is atoms-wide production that we have been theorizing about for over a decade and what you are seeing is the culmination of a lot of that work today. This requires high skill and high tech to just be able to prototype, let alone mass produce. There are only a few companies in the world left that have the money to do this and Intel, AMD, and ARM are all on the short list.

      x) As we get smaller, heat exponentially gets to be a larger problem. Making things faster in smaller spaces trades off heat as a waste by-product and this has been ramping up significantly since the Pentium chips. I remember reading about the first ones being water and/or ice cooled (right here on /., iirc).

      x) The current drive for chip production is probably going to data centers (think AWS). Data centers do not care what chip in the box. They need chips that run cool and use the least electricity possible because they have a lot of them working a lot of the time. I have seen several analysts say that Intel is so far ahead here you will never see AMD in data centers at this point. It is simply not affordable based on today's market rates for computation.

      I hope AMD stays around for a long while. I have an FX-8350 right next to me. That being said, the chip industry is run completely on physics at this point and things are going to start getting weird.

    22. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't that prevent you from ever using a flagship product? I'm not going to say there's never a reason for a limit like that, but it does seem somewhat arbitrary. Do you think that refusing to buy top-of-the-line products will encourage vendors to create more competitive better chips, or will it starve them of the funds or motivation to improve?

      I'd also like to point out that the GTX960 has less than half as many transistors as the 1080, but due to the process shrink there's only a 30% difference in die size. It also appears to use over half the power that a 1080 does, making it considerably less efficient.

      tldr; don't drink the low performance = high efficiency kool-aid.

    23. Re: Still a power hog by koomba · · Score: 2

      "Topping out at less than a third the power consumption of a 1080" yeah, except not. Normally I wouldn't even both correcting just another ransom person spouting completely wrong information. But you have been going on and on about it, talking about how you *refuse* to use something so power hungry and inefficient, and how you're so clever cause what you use is *of course* way better perf/watt.

      That would be nice and all if it were true, but it's complete bullshit. TDP of a 960 is 120W, per Nvidias site. See for yourself: https://www.geforce.com/hardwa...

      The 1080 TDP is 180W, Nvidia significantly improved the power usage of the 10 series compared to the previous 900 series cards for equal or greater performance levels, like the 1080 vs 980 ti. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/g...

      If you were actually right, your continued mentioning of it would be kind of annoying, but that's ok. But since you're actually not even close to right, it's just obnoxious to keep reading the same bullshit spewed out over and over again. So you aren't oddly principled about using only the best perf/watt components, you're just ignorant. Sorry.

    24. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking nerd

    25. Re:Still a power hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a lying faggot, Macraig! Enjoy that title, you EARNED IT BITCH.

    26. Re: Still a power hog by Brockmire · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why would you bother to reply, then? No one gives a shit that you don't give a shit. You added nothing of value. To fucking brag about chess? FFS.

  7. 37 percent performance lead, but 60 percent more.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cores?

    It doesn't mention the Intel chips clock speeds there, but based on those two details, it seems like the AMD chip is not performing better than the Intel one on a per-core/per-thread basis, which is important to note. On the other hand the added I/O fabric and the much lower price certainly make it competitive on a selection of consumer focused metrics.

  8. AMD Threadripper Hackintosh? by Proudrooster · · Score: 1

    Is it possible to build an AMD Threadripper Hackintosh? The performance data looks very good, high performance, low power. Time to rip some threads!!!

    1. Re:AMD Threadripper Hackintosh? by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      Nope.

      It's intel or bust.

      --
      READY.
      PRINT ""+-0
    2. Re:AMD Threadripper Hackintosh? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      No, you need to use a processor at least closely related to one which appeared in an actual Mac. Last I checked the had un-open-sourced the components that would allow the community to fix that, but that was a long time ago, maybe that bit of source is available again.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Gumbercules!! · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Seems that if you max out the Ryzen on Linux or BSD, it can (under certain conditions) cause a reset:
    https://hothardware.com/news/freebsd-programmers-report-ryzen-smt-bug-that-hangs-or-resets-machines

    1. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also a pity that you don't know Threadripper and Ryzen aren't the same thing.

    2. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it

      So apparently you don't know about this thing called "microcode". Worst case scenario: they have to write a driver that is tweaked for Ryzen. If we can make Linux run on a Tamagotchi, we can make it run on Ryzen.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Do modern CPUs even have writable microcode? I know IBM systems in the 1970s and 1980s had microcode that loaded from floppies at boot.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    4. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      Are you kidding me?! There has been microcode for every x86 processor made in the last decade!

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    5. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The dumbing down of slashdot continues.

    6. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      Do modern CPUs even have writable microcode?

      Modern CPUs have writable microcode which is updated by the BIOS at boot time, requiring a BIOS update to get the microcode update.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or it can also be reloaded at boot time by the OS

    8. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      You missed the part about writable...

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    9. Re:Pity you can't run BSD or Linux on it by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      They are ALL writable.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  10. Threadipper has more pci-e then intel at X2 costs by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    Threadipper at $550 has more pci-e then Intel at X2 the cost.

    For $599 you still only get 28 lanes with intel

    Even on the desktop not high level you get more as well.

  11. biznAt"ch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Corpse Turned over won't be standing downward spiral. In

  12. And it still sucks at gaming by Robert+Goatse · · Score: 2, Informative

    Are we still waiting for these mystery drivers/patches to make any new AMD CPU decent at games? What processor do you buy if you want raw grunt and be good at games? Hint: it's not AMD.

    1. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are we still waiting for these mystery drivers/patches to make any new AMD CPU decent at games?

      Game designers have been optimizing for Intel for the entirety of the "Core Ix" generation because those are the CPUs getting the most market share. You might have to actually wait a tick or two for Ryzen/Threadripper to show up on market share metrics like the Steam hardware survey before gaming companies give AMD developers a seat at the table to talk about how the software architecture of an upcoming gaming engine can run most efficiently on AMD silicon, and then consider how long it takes for a triple-A gaming title to get from architectural design to retail distribution. Do try to remember that Intel will be shouting from the rooftops about their current advantage for the entirety of this process, trying to prop up the margins they require to operate the worlds most expensive silicon foundries.

    2. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure what definition of "sucks" we're using here. Ryzen produces lower frame rates in some games, equal in others, and beats Intel in others). Hell, some of these tests involve exceeding 100 FPS for every CPU tested. I know there're people out there who have 144 hertz monitors and want to use them, but I'd personally settle for 60 FPS gaming.

      On top of that, I seem to remember that even Intel's own 6-core CPUs have slightly lower frame rates than their quad-core. They still generally beat Ryzen, but the problem exists with Intel as well.

      I'm willing to accept slightly worse gaming performance in exchange for better performance for the multi-threaded tasks I perform.

    3. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      "I'd personally settle for 60 FPS gaming."

      VR needs 90+, and has to render once for each eye.

    4. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by Z80a · · Score: 2

      Gaming on intel vs AMD is a quite bizarre complex case.
      If you check this digitalfoundry video:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      You will see that intel or AMD victory depends a lot on not only the game, but what the game is doing.
      Crysis 3 for example gets the best performance on the intel chips while only displaying some characters on close up, but as soon the camera pans to action with grass, helicopters, explosions etc, the AMD part starts to win and hard.

      Also you only get a significant difference IF you're not getting bottlenecked by the GPU, which is the case even with a geforce 1060.

    5. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In general I agree but as one of those uses with a 144Hz panel...I like my FPS :) Its rare to find a game engine that can actually run that fast though - most tap out in the 100-120 FPS range - and yes it's the game engine not the PC - GTX 1070 60% (hasn't even bothered to OC itself), CPU 40% (no single core over 80%), RAM 25% yet the game won't hit 144 FPS.

      That being said 72Hz isn't bad either - half Vsync works quite well (ya I know 60Hz would be better paired with a 120Hz screen - I would have actually preferred 120Hz over 144Hz but marking sucks so 144Hz sounds better than 120Hz because its bigger despite 120Hz being a better multiple of common frame rates). For some stupid reason the nVidia drivers keep trying to force 144Hz instead of leaving at the lower 120Hz, not that it matters much when vsync is enabled and the FPS exceed the refresh rate (this mostly effects non-full-screen apps as they are subject the desktop's refresh rate instead of specifying their own). Now a nice 240Hz screen...that will be ticket - it's divisible by all of the common frequencies without favoring 24Hz multiples.

      The biggest benefit of a high FPS screen is reduced eye strain. Sure visually its all "smooth" once you hit ~60 but if *feels* much nicer all the way up 120Hz (not sure if I can the difference between 120 and 144 though, the mouse moves slightly faster but even that is very similar at those rates - and yes it does matter, my cheaper second screen is 60Hz and the mouse visually and responsively is a lot slower when moving between the screens, almost to the point of being annoying).

    6. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you see that? I can't see any difference above 24Hz (fps). They all look the same to me, and 19 is when it stops feeling choppy

    7. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

      Hmm Iâ(TM)m not into vrcTvall but can you pleace explain to me why wr tequers 90 fps whil normal gaming is fine at 60, unless you mean total framerate (ie nomber fof ftames per second leaving the gpu), but the the question becomes why does VR only require 45 fps/eye. I must read um on vr but wat makes sence ro me is thT if you do traditional gaming at 60fps then you would need VR to be 120fps ie 60/fps/eye. Or are vi hitting the, vidion has some overlap so part of one the frame from one eye can allso be desplayde to the other, thus only needs ro be rebdered once hmm

    8. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Probably head movements. You either need higher FPS to compensate, or render a wider area and continuously reproject. Both are going to require more GPU performance. Plus the extra geometry processing for stereo. Foveated rendering could vastly improve the former in the future, though.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because the mammals that wear the VR headsets treat the experience very differently psychologically. With the greater immersion offered by VR, nausea quickly starts to be a problem with latency and choppiness.

    10. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. You really don't want the world to stutter when you move your head, and 90fps seem to be the minimum frame rate at which no-one notices that the 'world' isn't real.

    11. Re:And it still sucks at gaming by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      "VR needs 90+" - Sure, and my 3D TV needed a new HDMI spec when it was bleeding edge. Of course, I haven't turned on 3D in a few years, because outside of a few fun demos, it just wasn't justifiable.

      I finally pulled the trigger on a Ryzen system, because my Phenom II Black platform was starting to have driver issues finally. I didn't really have any major issues doing whatever I wanted to throw at it in 2K, but I don't spend my nights juicing a few FPS out of benchmarks anymore. The biggest gains for years have still been buying a new GPU whenever a major architecture delta is introduced. I've yet to see significant *practical* gaming 'workflows' that justify Intel significantly more than AMD, it's allllll e-peen. And don't get me wrong, the world of $1k desktop gaming processors is pretty exclusively an e-peen sector to begin with, so yeah, 'AMD SUXORZ FOR GAMING TEH LULZ.'

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    12. Re: And it still sucks at gaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Above 60 I don't see it as much as feel it. Below about 45 or so I can actually see it. It's hard to describe but it looks "choppy" or not "smooth". As for the mouse on 60 vs 144, I can both see and feel it - might be an OS/driver bug that makes the mouse move faster due to the refresh rate. Sort of something like the mouse moves n pixels per frame rather than n pixels per second thus speeding up the mouse at higher frame rates. The effect is like a boost in mouse sensitivity which is what makes it annoying, each screen in effect has a different mouse sensitivity setting.

  13. Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Just a double whammy there. The new Intel CPUs aren't compatible with the old motherboards

    http://www.pcgamer.com/intels-...

    It looks like they are practically driving people AMD's way. Nice to see the shakeup though it's been far too long.

    1. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're buying a new CPU you're also going to want faster memory too. So that would mean... buying a new motherboard!

    2. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Khyber · · Score: 1

      My AM2+/AM3 mobo supported both DDR2 and DDR3.

      Intel ever offer anything like that?

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I seem to remember that some Skylake boards could run DDR3L or DDR4. DDR4 is cheap now, so it doesn't matter.
      (Not an intel fanboy - When the time came to updgrade my Phennom II 965, I, with deep regret, bought an i5-6600k. Next round goes to AMD, I think)

    4. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

      If you're buying a new CPU you're also going to want faster memory too. So that would mean... buying a new motherboard!

      Me absolutely. It's been at least 20 years since I did anything but a full system upgrade. Other people need to ask them. I know people that upgrade their systems component by component. Right now I am 32gig of high end ram so I could see someone not wanting to make the purchase again.

    5. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Agreed, a friend is rebuilding / upgrading his wife's PC and his own and he's going full AMD - something we both used to run but gave in and switched to intel because AMD was just so far behind.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
    6. Re:Too bad for Intel with MB incompatibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Neither AMD nor Intel make boards, but I believe the skylake platform had ddr3 and ddr4 memory controllers. Something to keep in mind if you're considering purchasing a prebuilt on that platform.

  14. e)4. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    BE NIIGER! BE GAY!

  15. Doesn't fuck'n matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Remember back around 2K when AMD was kicking the shit out of Intel performance wise, or in 95 when DEC was?

    The world and stock market is going to continue suck Intel's crank no matter what performance numbers say. And if Intel does start to lose market market to AMD and stock price slips, AMD's stock price is going in the crapper even if their sales & profits are up.

    So enjoy your AMD Bukake party, because that's all it is.

  16. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  17. Amazing number of Intel thickies here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ryzen uses FAR less power than Intel per work load
    Ryzen has far lower temps than Intel
    Ryzen cores scale far better than Intel >4 core cores.
    Ryzen is cooled using vastly cheaper cooling solutions than Intel (when overclocked)
    Ryzen multithreading (AMD gen 1) is significantly better than Intels (Gen 6)
    Ryzen motherboards are, like for like, cheaper than Intel
    Ryzen, like for like, is much cheaper than Intel
    Ryzen boosts performance with faster memory far better than Intel

    Now, for sure, a 20 core Intel will beat a 16 core Ryzen. So What? Once you get as many cores as you want to pay for, what matters is performance per dollar- and Ryzen is HALF (read that again) the cost of Intel. And if at the same cost, AMD is thrashing Intel, it doesn't matter if that happens cos the AMD solution has more cores.

    But, as it so happens, Ryzen has a slightly higher Instruction per clock than even Intel's best- Kaby Lake (if the never used AVX 256/512 is excluded). But Ryzen, in current software, shows equal with Intel's Broadwell and Haswell, and a little lower than Kaby Lake- cos current apps are written and compiled to favour Intel architecture (a consequence of AMD's last CPU architecture, Bulldozer, being such a flop).

    Intel's LAST advantage is reaching 4.8GHz on one core when AMD is stuck at 4 on all cores. For rubbish software this can still make a difference- but given that even Intel is due to make 6-cores 'mainstream', and drop support for cr-ppy 2-core (old i3)- well all important software (including games) is going multi-core very quickly. And for you dumb-dumbs who haven't updated their computer knowledge in the last decade- no this does NOT require highly 'parallel' algorithms- but many work units with low inter-dependencies, as found in most sophisticated computer games.

    In one swoop, AMD has made all current Intel CPUs obsolete- hence the raging in forums like this one. Intel loving fools who've just wasted their money on single-thread monster, the 7700K- have now learnt Intel is releasing a SIX-core part (the 8700K) on a non-compatible motherboard for the same cost- so they're suffering massive amounts of buyer's remorse.

    PS again, AMD's Ryzen runs much cooler and uses less power (stock vs stock or overclock vs overclock) than Intel- but Slashdot is always full of losers who spout their ill-informed dribble to prove to us how 'clever' they are. No, 'clever' is actually bothering to keep up to date in the field you claim speciality in.

    1. Re: Amazing number of Intel thickies here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what are you drinking/smoking/inhaling/high on. I haven't used intel desktop parts in over 20 years (EF... I feel old) but their mobile parts (haswell/broadwell) have been superb

    2. Re:Amazing number of Intel thickies here by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Ryzen uses FAR less power than Intel per work load

      Not true.

      Ryzen has far lower temps than Intel
      Ryzen is cooled using vastly cheaper cooling solutions than Intel (when overclocked)

      Intel is continuing their idiotic practice of using poor quality thermal goo between the chip and the package.

      Ryzen cores scale far better than Intel >4 core cores.

      This is not only untrue, it's the opposite of the truth. AMD's choice to group cache around units of 4 cores kills inter-process communication between cores when more than 4 cores are in the same package, Software has already been written to partially get around this problem, but it remains a design deficiency.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  18. They will issue a Microcode update to fix it... by williamyf · · Score: 1

    ... at the cost of 30% of the performance of the chip...

    Deja-vú...

    Buldozer anyone?

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    1. Re:They will issue a Microcode update to fix it... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      More like the Skylake HT problem, perhaps?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  19. What a surprise by Gabest · · Score: 1

    Summary of the video: 16 core threadripper beats 10 core i9 in a highly parallel job. Wow, wow, wow.

    1. Re:What a surprise by andydread · · Score: 2

      and they both cost the same... wow wow wow!

    2. Re:What a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sadly, the shitbag amd fanbois don't care.

    3. Re:What a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sadly, the shitbag Intel fanbois don't care the two costs the same.

      There, FTFY

  20. AMD performance per watt anything Intel has by bongey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Zen/Ryzen has better performance per watt than anything Intel has currently or will offer for at least the next 6 months or longer. Example a 4-core 7700k Intel chip uses more power than a 8 core Ryzen 1700. It is basically impossible for Intel to get wattage down without a new lithography and arch, which isn't happening for more than 6 months or longer, cannonlake got pushed back until second half 2018, 10nm isn't going well.

  21. Re:AMD performance per watt anything Intel has by bongey · · Score: 1

    Dammit forgot link http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...

  22. AMD #1? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD has always been the first to crash.

    I'm shocked at how AMD fanboys/apologists will say "yeah, it only BSODs on me once every week or two."
    Dude, if your PC is crashing from errors introduced by overclocking and you think that's an ok trade-off, then you and I have different ideas of what's acceptable.

    And then last week's announcement that AMD's new chips crater when compiling Linux.
    First to crash, but it's apparently worth it for 2 more frames per second.

  23. Intel needs this by CptLoRes · · Score: 1

    Judging by their reaction and rushed 'counter' release, they where caught with their pants down. And this is a good thing. Intel have been resting comfortable at the top for a while now, so this will be good for all of us. Now while highly unlikely, if only AMD could pull some similar stunt against NVidia also..

    1. Re:Intel needs this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amd graphics cards are already better, dunno about the amateur game crowd, but for professional 3d driver support unrivalled, and their high end cards wipe the floor with nVidia, not to mention the price point on the consumer cards much better $$/value, nvidia just keep optimizing blobs with bullshit

    2. Re:Intel needs this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amd graphics cards are already better, dunno about the amateur game crowd

      Well, dunno about amateur game crowd, but the professional game crowd have better performance with competitors top offerings. AMD is lacking and Vega doesn't seem to change that.

  24. Still open-source friendly. by DrYak · · Score: 1

    On the other hand AMD's GPU are still much more open-source friendly compared to Nvidia, and at the same time are still relevant when compared to Intel (even if not as power-efficient as Nvidia).

    AMD has Linux devs on their payroll, is supporting 2 stack one of which (their long term goal) is opensource (runs a classical DRI/Mesa stack), while the other (eventually targetting for professionnals who need some weird features) leverages the same kernel driver.

    The AMD opensource drivers are decent, offer support for most of the hardware (except the current DC/DAL delay) and is the official stack for older hardware.

    Means that AMD graphic cards "just work" with the latest version of your favorite rolling distro (Opensuse tumbleweed in my case).

    (BTW: Intel is also providing opensource drivers, but completely different than their windows stack)

    Meanwhile, Nvidia only provides a blob which, while mostly decent, has several problems :
    no way to fix it by 3rd parties for newer kernel (so you're stuck with which ever kernel version they decided to support)
    and they only support a small subset of advanced features (optimus used to not work for quite some time),
    also lots of problems on platforms which are not the standard desktop (sleep and mode-setting working badly on some laptops).

    The only alternative is Nouveau which, while having achieved quite some progress, still needs to be done nearly enterily by reverse engineering Nvidia's drivers, all done only by volunteers with very little actual help from Nvidia.
    Meaning often some basic stuff (reclocking) isn't working.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  25. The year of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it weren't for games, it'd be the year of another desktop, er and another gfx chip maker.

  26. 3D Applications Have Use GPU For Long Time by HannethCom · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know where you have been, but graphics processors have been used for 3D rendering for a long time.
    While no where near the power we have now, SGI was making dedicated 3D chips that were utilized not only in the creation of 3D scenes, but also in the final render. This was over 20 years ago. Professional houses have been using PC cards all the way back to the Voodoo 2 in 1999.
    Now it would be almost unheard of, for any final rendering stage not to use the GPU.
    Heck ILM has their own rendering plug-in with customized graphics drivers to try to cope with the rendering load.
    No, a graphics card cannot handle all the textures, polygons and shaders needed to render a final scene, but they don't have to. They load in what is needed at the time, render their part, then load in the next part, only keeping the frame in the card's memory.
    Actually it is very common on blockbuster movies for multiple cards to be working on one scene at the same time with each card rendering a section of the frame.

    --
    Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
  27. Just like History repeats it self.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whom was the first company to produce the 1ghz chip?
    who's proc's kicked the crap out of the other based on Math
    bottom line is
    Intel can maintain
    But AMD can innovate..
    Its very clear..

  28. Why do I keep reading the name as Thread Dripper? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't quit.

  29. Video Editing & Blender by p0larity · · Score: 1
    I am starting to think of an upgrade now that my AMD M5A97 motherboard is starting to show signs of age I'm thinking of an upgrade.

    This summary and article gave me the kind of information I can use. These "synthetic benchmarks" are actually my intended workload. Games don't benefit greatly from multi-cores over about 3 or 4 these days, and in the future I think they'll start to take advantage of the newer platforms.

    My Phenom II 1055T has served me well, but I'm thinking something a bit more high end might be a good upgrade.



    All that said, is there something I'm missing? Can someone suggest an even better upgrade? At home I'm mostly playing around in Unity3D/Blender3D and making videos.

    System specs:
    • AMD Phenom II 1055T
    • 16GB @ 1333Mhz
    • GeForce GTS 650
    • Crucial MX300 750GB
    • Some WD Red NAS drive for junk storage that I don't care about losing.

    (Off-site backups and on-site backups to other machines, of course!)

  30. Competition! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "In gaming, Threadripper is showing roughly performance parity with the Core i9 chip in some tests, but trailing by as much as 20% in lower resolution 1080p gaming, as is characteristic for many Ryzen CPUs currently, in certain games."

    In other words, we now have more choice, a wider array of trade-offs, and lower prices for more performance (as a general statement, not picking and choosing individual processors or workloads).

    This is Good News, all 'round!