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

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.

Comments

AMD DECLARED WINNER!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:AMD DECLARED WINNER!

[tlhIngan]

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.

Re:Still a power hog

[klingens]

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.

Re:yea um

[Aighearach]

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

Re:Still a power hog

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Still a power hog

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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

Talk about "having a perpetual favorite" :)

3D Applications Have Use GPU For Long Time

[HannethCom]

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.

Re: Still a power hog

[Brockmire]

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.