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AMD Ryzen Threadripper Launched: Performance Benchmarks Vs Intel Skylake-X (hothardware.com)

Reader MojoKid writes: AMD continues its attack on the desktop CPU market versus Intel today, with the official launch of the company's Ryzen Threadripper processors. Threadripper is AMD's high-end, many-core desktop processor, that leverages the same Zen microarchitecture that debuted with Ryzen 7. The top-end Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is a multi-chip module featuring 16 processor cores (two discrete die), with support for 32 threads. The base frequency for the 1950X is 3.4GHz, with all-core boost clocks of up to 3.7GHz. Four of the cores will regularly boost up to 4GHz, however, and power and temperature permitting, those four cores will reach 4.2GHz when XFR kicks in. The 12-core Threadripper 1920X has very similar clocks and its boost and XFR frequencies are exactly the same. The Threadripper 1920X's base-clock, however, is 100MHz higher than its big brother, at 3.5GHz. In a litany of benchmarks with multi-threaded workloads, Threadripper 1950X and 1920X high core-counts, in addition to strong SMT scaling, result in the best multi-threaded scores seen from any single CPU to date. Threadripper also offers massive amounts of memory bandwidth and more IO than other Intel processors. Though absolute power consumption is somewhat high, Threadrippers are significantly more efficient than AMD's previous-generation processors. In lightly-threaded workloads, Threadripper trails Intel's latest Skylake-X CPUs, however, which translates to lower performance in applications and games that can't leverage all of Threadripper's additional compute resources. Threadripper 1950X and 1920X processors are available starting today at $999 and $799, respectively. On a per-core basis, they're less expensive than Intel Skylake-X and very competitively priced.

74 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Begun, the CPU wars have by chuckugly · · Score: 1

    This is interesting now but in 4-8 months is when the market will begin to really adjust and the competitors will be more squared off. Expect a very interesting holiday season. Now if we can just get that memory price down.

    1. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Informative

      Those watered down consumer boxes need content, and cpus like this are used to create that content. The people who do this certainly care about performance.

    2. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      True. But those people don't necessarily do their shopping around "the holiday season."

      About the only "consumers" I can see being interested in this would be gamers.

    3. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 2

      About the only "consumers" I can see being interested in this would be gamers.

      Or people who run tasks that benefit from a huge number of cores. I have a i7 3770 and I can get that thing so it pegs all 8 logical cores for an hour with ease. This is doing things like manipulations on large GIS data sets or combining many very high scans of film (a good lens with good film in a good SLR means you can get some phenomenal resolution bested only by the best digitals). For big jobs I will start it before bed or work and then hours later I can go back it to and see the results. There are some things that are so stupidly parallel that chips like these make sense. Granted for some of these tasks a GPU is faster still but then I would need a GPU with at least 24 GB RAM otherwise they just crap themselves and I get a GPU out of memory error.

      Personally when I need to replace my existing machine in a couple of years these huge core count chips will provide a lot of benefit as will being able to shove 128-256GB ram in a box that isn't stupid expensive.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    4. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by grumpy_old_grandpa · · Score: 1

      I do care. It means the continuous build system will finish my merge request compile & test faster. And if the numbers from those benchmarks hold water, I figure I'd have to wait about 2 minutes less for every commit.

      Now, what will I do with two more minutes in my life? You're staring at the answer.

    5. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      Video games are a bigger industry than hollywood at this point. So-called 'consumers' are also producers of content. The distinction between desktop and workstation blurred a long time ago.

    6. Re:Begun, the CPU wars have by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      You say "watered down", I say "liquid cooled".

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. Re:180 watts by rahvin112 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    TDP is calculated differently by both companies, it's essentially a worthless metric when comparing between manufacturers because it doesn't give you any real information. Wait for the power consumption tests.

  3. Re:180 watts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I seem to remember AMD and Intel use a different definition of TDP. For AMD it is the absolute maximum power you can make the chip dissipate, no matter the code you are running. A cooling system that can dissipate this amount of heat guarantees that the performance will not be impacted due to lack of cooling. For Intel it is the power for an above average use case, but not a worst-case one, allowing some throttling to occur.

    TDP doesn't really tell you anything about expected average power consumption, certainly not when comparing different manufacturers.

  4. Re:180 watts by fred6666 · · Score: 2

    What matters is the idle power consumption. Desktop CPUs are idle over 99% of the time.

  5. Re:The real question here by TheSunborn · · Score: 2

    It is pretty safe under heavy workload. Ryzen only crashed when creating many many many processes were created each second and the only workload which does that is a c/c++ compiler.

    And that bug have been fixed.
       

  6. Re:The real question here by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

    Actually there is still more work and research being done. And the problem can be triggered under many scenarios involving various loads. There are "attempts" and some "workarounds" that mitigate the problem, but it's still there.

  7. Re:180 watts by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    AMD strongly recommend liquid cooling for this CPU.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:The real question here by t8z5h3 · · Score: 2

    I have a Ryzen 1700x (so basically half of a theadripper) and overall it's good and stable but there are some issues still around -Ram it seems the memory controller is vary sensitive -VMWare ESXi (i think a lot of it is fixed but there is always room for improvement.) things i would like AMD to really work on for the next socket for desktop systems: -4 channel ram - more PCI-E Lanes off the chipset - better public documentation (it was unknown until a AMD Blog post that the X line of cpu's had a 20 degree offset so they read high in the UEFI but also would have a much more aggressive fan response based off that reading.

  9. Re:180 watts by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    AMD recommends liquid cooling for this chip not air cooling

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  10. server / workstation ver in the works? MB with ecc by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    server / workstation ver in the works? MB's that will run them with ecc.

    Or an server / workstation desktop socket system?

    amd needs to have a server system for the users that don't need the full EPYC but still want to have server class hardware. They systems in the $1000-$1200 range (the server case + PSU can be $100-$300 of that price) Or just towers at $800-$1000 with an server board (IPMI) and maybe have the X16 (CPU) slot cut into X8 X8 + X4 or even X4 X4 X4 X4 X4. So storage (HBA / Raid card / pci-e) and networking (10G). And be better then the intel ones at the same class that only have X16 + DMI on the cpu that have less cores.

  11. $13.03 by future+assassin · · Score: 1

    It would cost me $13.03 (CDN) to run it 24/7 for 30 days at full load that's at $.10/kwh. I think at that point whatever I'm doing is either worth the money or its making me some serious money dripping all those threads.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    1. Re: $13.03 by future+assassin · · Score: 1

      Even then if the CPU is pegged to 180W 24/7 that cost is expected as you're either doing something weird no one else is doing or making money with it which the cost of power is chump change.

      --
      by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  12. Re:180 watts by threephaseboy · · Score: 3, Informative
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  13. Re:180 watts by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    Until you wrote "over an Intel CPU", you were being borderline rational.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  14. more PCI-E Lanes off the chipset needs better link by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    more PCI-E Lanes off the chipset needs an better link and not just pci-e 3 x4 to pci-e 4 x4.

    The next socket may be 2019-2020 when pci-e 4 hit's. But can they boost the link speed in the same socket with zen2?

  15. Re:The real question here by theendlessnow · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's worth mentioning the CPU bug doesn't seem to be present in Epyc or TR, just the original Ryzens.

  16. Re:Christ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    More facebook, uber, tesla and gender diversity articles please.

  17. Re:The real question here by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Warning to those who would use Treadripper where life or saftey is involved: DON'T.

    You're not going to be using an Intel in those situations either. You're going to be using an embedded CPU that meets ISO26262/IEC61508

  18. Re:180 watts by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Intel i9 is hotter and the wattage difference is more like 25 watts. No you won't save $1000 in electrical costs.

    Keep in mind these are HUUUGGE 12 core dies. If you care about wattage then the Ryzen series which uses less watts than the i7 maybe more in your budget as these are workstation oriented processors and not desktop.

    The i9 sucks too with lots of heat and watts compared to the desktop oriented coutnerparts. Keep in mind these are new generation CPUs and not the crappy bulldozer architecture that proceeded it.

  19. Re:Christ by Kohath · · Score: 1

    It's a tech news site. Alternative offerings to Intel CPUs are big news. I think most of the announcements and releases are done now though.

  20. RAID support and Intel's VROC scam by BenJeremy · · Score: 2

    It looks like AMD will have some sort of RAID support in the X299 chipset, but at launch, they don't have bootable RAID-0 support for NVMe drives.

    Intel promises this on the X299 motherboards, but hobbles it with the DMI interface for motherboard-mounted M.2 slots, and the need for an expensive "VROC Upgrade Key" (i.e. DRM nonsense) just to run non-Intel parts in a bootable RAID-0 array... oh, and the "Key" isn't actually available yet, at any price.

    VROC was the last nail driving me away from their platforms. Sad really, considering their RAID technology promised almost direct multiplying of bandwidth in RAID-0 up to 25+ GB/s. Intel has crippled RAID support moving forward, and there is little point to using their stuff when AMD has managed to catch up and costs much less. I just wish they'd move faster to provide decent RAID support in their X399 chipset... though apparently there is a promise to deliver support in a future update.

  21. X399 is hobbled by cpu's with only 16 or 24 pci-e by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    X399 is hobbled by cpu's with only 16 or 24 pci-e on the cpu so they stack a lot of stuff on the DMI bus.

    AMD has USB on die and at all levels more cpu pci-e and all cups on each socket have full pci-e lanes.

  22. Re:Not today, AMD by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    You fucking capitalist pigdog..

    Goddamn right. Now run to the store and buy me some coconut water and blunt wraps.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  23. Re:Not today, AMD by jimbo · · Score: 1

    That's entirely your own fault. Marketing in any industry will never be trustworthy, that's not their job.

    AMD vs Intel is a good example, the were times when AMD was better performing and Intel had many more errata and visa versa. You have to evaluate for every purchase.

    Do your own research before you spend your money. Never be loyal to any brand. Research, then buy for your use cases and budget.

  24. Re:Christ by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    More CPU diversity articles, please!

  25. Re:Not today, AMD by barc0001 · · Score: 1

    > The money saved is never worth it, to me. I always end up wishing I had Intel.

    Then you're not doing your research properly. I've bought both Intel and AMD chips and been very pleased with what I purchased because I do the research.

    Case in point, here you're looking at Threadripper and then mention games. You don't buy a Threadripper for games, you buy it for workstation tasks. You want games, wait for one of the new 8th Gen i5s in a few weeks or a Ryzen 5 1600X and then take all the money you would have dumped into a $1000 CPU and spend it on a video card instead.

  26. Re:180 watts by Khashishi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    RTFA, the benchmarks provide power consumption tests.

  27. Re:Not today, AMD by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Games? You want the Ryzen 1700 or the upcoming i7 8700k from Intel (we'll get actual info on the 21st).

  28. Re:X399 is hobbled by cpu's with only 16 or 24 pci by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Uh...

    X399 = AMD
    X299 = Intel

    BenJeremy got it wrong on the first mention (he called AMD's chipset X299), but he got it right at the end.

  29. Re:Not today, AMD by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

    If you're buying a Ryzen Threadripper or Skylake-X for gaming, I can say you've already messed up. [car analogy] That's like buying an 18-wheeler to haul your weekly groceries.[/car analogy]

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  30. Re:180 watts by Khyber · · Score: 1

    And what do they recommend for the VRMs if you go liquid cooling, now that the airflow over them has essentially been stripped away? That's been a common problem most mobo makers don't consider.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  31. Re:Not today, AMD by Kjella · · Score: 1

    If you're buying a Ryzen Threadripper or Skylake-X for gaming, I can say you've already messed up. [car analogy] That's like buying an 18-wheeler to haul your weekly groceries.[/car analogy]

    ...and then complain that everybody talked about cargo capacity and didn't mention it would be hard to park, doesn't have seats to take your kids to soccer practice and has terrible MPG for your commute.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  32. Will supermirco make TR and ryzen boards? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Will supermicro make TR and ryzen boards?
    Be nice to have a good non gamer board with IPMI for listed sockets.

  33. Re:X399 is hobbled by cpu's with only 16 or 24 pci by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    oops the numbers are very easy to flip around.

  34. Re:Keep calm and carry on... by Yunzil · · Score: 1

    but for REAL WORLD applications, a TR makes a LOT more sense than the X299 based Intel offerings.

    In the REAL WORLD neither one of them make sense for gaming.

  35. Re:Not today, AMD by Rockoon · · Score: 1

    Research requires knowing what matters.

    Unfortunately many people, even here, can't separate the meaningless from the important.

    For instance some will drone on-and-on about single threaded performance when the reality is that they never sit waiting for any non-i/o-bound single threaded tasks. Others will marvel at video encoding speeds but the only time that they actually encode video is when using the machine as a DVR that only needs to be fast enough for real-time video.

    The ultimate question is: What computing task do you sit waiting on? Those are the things that matter to you.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  36. Re:Christ by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

    Forgot AppleGoogle

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  37. Re:180 watts by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    You can't just measure power consumed. You also need to look at the work done for the amount of power consumed. If the Intel CPU consumes 40W less (we'll assume both companies measurements are spot on accurate for max draw) but takes twice as long to complete some task, then it's probably less efficient over the long run.

    If you're really worried about power consumption, it's probably best to undrevolt and use less aggressive turbo settings. When looking at their Ryzen desktop parts there is considerable efficiency improvements and power savings when running the chips closer to 3 GHz. Look at the Epyc processors which have twice as many cores, but the same 180W TDP.

  38. Re:server / workstation ver in the works? MB with by Kokuyo · · Score: 1

    As far as I can see, the Asrock X399 Taichi supports ECC already and that's a consumer board.

    My main problem is that I want high clocked ECC memory and that seems to be a market that has been pretty much neglected so far.

  39. Re:180 watts by Sperbels · · Score: 1

    But about what you'd expect for two Ryzen 7's.

  40. Re:Christ by Sperbels · · Score: 1

    You would prefer more google internal politics articles?

  41. Re:Not today, AMD by Sperbels · · Score: 1

    Well, all of the benchmarks seem to put Ryzen 7's a little slower than the best i7s on Game FPS/thread performance. But those games and programs that can take advantage of the additional threads will naturally stomp on i7 since there's twice as many threads available. So that's how I rationalized my purchase. No, I'm not getting the best game performance. But it's not that far behind either.

  42. Re:Not today, AMD by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

    Wraps? Original Swisher or gtfo

  43. Re:Not today, AMD by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    I have a question since you seem to have more of a clue about these things than me: Do the number of threads automatically scale? So, if a game (or program) is designed to take advantage of two threads, or three, or four, will it automatically take advantage of a dozen threads?

    I do digital music production on a Xeon, and my DAW (Cockos Reaper) is designed to use multiple threads, as well as remote processors via ethernet. I'm about ready for a new music system, so maybe these new Ryzens would be just the ticket.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  44. Re:server / workstation ver in the works? MB with by eWarz · · Score: 1

    amd needs to have a server system for the users that don't need the full EPYC but still want to have server class hardware. They systems in the $1000-$1200 range (the server case + PSU can be $100-$300 of that price) Or just towers at $800-$1000 with an server board (IPMI) and maybe have the X16 (CPU) slot cut into X8 X8 + X4 or even X4 X4 X4 X4 X4. So storage (HBA / Raid card / pci-e) and networking (10G). And be better then the intel ones at the same class that only have X16 + DMI on the cpu that have less cores.

    Except EPYC CPUs have fairly similar pricing, so why not just go with EPYC?

  45. Re:180 watts by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Probably not unexpected, you have the quad-channel memory controller, the CCX interconnect, all the PCIe lanes, probably hard to power everything down. Since this is mostly a spin-off of the server chips I doubt they've given it that much care, a server with 32 cores is rarely idle. If you really wanted to bring the idle consumption down I think you'd have to do some kind of heterogeneous computing, but then you'd need a lot of OS/application support. I don't think AMD should bet on that, we saw how their APUs didn't really give much CPU+GPU synergy because nobody was writing special code paths just for a part of one player's processors.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  46. Re:180 watts by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

    Last machine I watercooled had heatsinks put over the VRMs (something like 15 cents a piece), and a big Noctua fan right in front of my Hard drives and SSD. But I agree, some people forget to sink the VRMs when they go water

    --
    I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  47. Re:server / workstation ver in the works? MB with by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    $800-$1200 (Full hardware cost) range server systems are desktop class. For the 1P next level it's like $1300 - $2000.

    and right now there are really no 1P EPYC boards out.

    For lower end needs AMD need to have stuff in the $800-$1200 range.

  48. Re:Not today, AMD by Sperbels · · Score: 1

    No, it's not automatic. Windows can automatically assign different processes (executables) to different threads but that's about the limit to "automatic" cpu load distribution. Beyond that, the individual processes are responsible for their own load distribution. I don't know much about Cockos Reaper or why music production would be especially costly in terms of CPU usage. Typically programs for rendering high resolution graphics or video editing or scientific calculations are designed to take advantage of as many processors as you have. Other applications and games, not so much. But like I said, it depends.

  49. Re:My Boss Used to Have a Word for Designs Like Th by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    He called them "Lab Queens".

    In other words, there were fantastic in the engineering lab, where conditions could be tightly controlled and optimized; but in the real-world, they just didn't work out so well.

    So, what we have with the AMD Ryzen CPUs is something which, when benchmarks are constructed like virtually NO software actually is, they appear to kick ass. But, with software that is written like 99% of developers and their development toolchains do it, they are actually LOWER-performing than their "slower" counterparts.

    TL;DR: LOL!!!

    Actually not true. Where Ryzen helps in the real world is having the system remain responsive when having a million things open that uses threads like Chrome for example. Ryzen is a skylake i5 with several cores basically. An i7 has more performance per core which you are correct.

    Keep in mind phones today have more cores than i7 and Intel has now woken up and redesigned coffeelake to include 6 and 8 cores.

    A ryzen r3/5 is cheaper than an i5 and has SMT (hyperthreading) where you need an i7 with an intel. I think in the real world Ryzen is a great value as even the budget r3 1200 is a true quad core CPU at an i3 price! The speed difference is not that great for single tasking but things are changing and having +30 tabs in Chrome, running a game, virus scan in the background with Office will show some benefits having SMT and +4 cores.

  50. Re:Not today, AMD by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    No. Crysis 3 surprisingly scales well and kicks ass on a Ryzen since it is 8 core 16 threads but most games do not scale super well beyond 3 to 4 cores.

    Is your workflow dependent on an audio card or is it all CPU? But from what I read about Ryzen you are right to be a little cautious as it is very new. In a nutshell AMD hired it's former Alpha CPU architect who designed the AthlonXP back after their disastrous bulldozer failed.The new architecture is 52% faster per core than its predecessor.

    Problem is bugs hit the new CPU which was expected. Motherboard makers have patched their systems to remove a few glitches including ram speeds not working beyond 2600 mhz at first. FYI Intel Skylake got hit with bugs too. NVMe and Intel graphics sucked and needed to be patched to prevent BSOD so you can point to both sides :-)

    Ryzen needs special memory too get beyond stock DDR 4 speeds and patches to the motherboards.

    Basically, AMD is back in the game and while around 10% slower per core than the latest and greatest Intel CPU the r7 Ryzen series has double the cores and threads. Threadripper maybe overkill for your needs but a 1700x you can get for around $399 per CPU has 8 cores/16 threads.

    In a nutshell Intel is more solid, faster per core, and mature while Ryzen is brand new and maturing chip. I hope that helps.

  51. Re:Not today, AMD by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Is your workflow dependent on an audio card or is it all CPU?

    The VST and VSTi plugins I use eat up a lot of processor. The Xeon in my current music system can handle it no problem. The main bottleneck is disk throughput. I stream the recorded tracks from a Linux machine with a RAID array, and I've been throwing SSDs into the system as I go along. Now that I think about it, everything's running just fine and the only reason I would think to build a new DAW system is because I'm used to doing it every 3-4 years.

    I'll just wait a bit and watch the DAW forums to see what people say about the Ryzen. I've learned my lesson about being the early adopter.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  52. Re:The real question here by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Actually there is still more work and research being done. And the problem can be triggered under many scenarios involving various loads.

    Usually, once a reliable way to reproduce the problem is known, identification and correction follow shortly after. Since it is easy to reproduce the problem via gcc, I presume that the cause is already known and fixed in the next stepping. The current silence would cover the period where work is being doing on a microcode-level patch for already-shipped parts, SOP for any processor vendor.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  53. Re:Not today, AMD by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    The 1920 looks like an attractive all-round chip with reasonable thermal profile. It's ready for the next generation of thread-heavy Vulkan (and M$'s Vulkan clone) games and it's also good for heavy lifting, if you want that. I do.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  54. Re:Not today, AMD by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    No, it's not automatic.

    Wrong. It's not automatic unless is it programmed to be automatic. There is no technical obstacle to doing this in Vulkan, it's just a detail that some engine vendors may not yet have covered because four core processors are so common as of today. You can bet that variable thread count will be standard in all major engines in the near future.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  55. Re:180 watts by GoingDown · · Score: 1

    Is that true? I really doubt that, E5-2679v4 CPU is 20-core 200W TDP cpu.

    Also, its in totally different pricepoint - over $2500 USD, so I do not know where this "closest rival" comes from.

  56. Re:Not today, AMD by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    Well there's no price yet for the 1920 so it's hard to gauge whether it reasonable when it comes to pricing. Based on the current know specs, it has only a slight advantage in terms of memory and PCIe lanes over the 1800 but it also requires more power. If it is priced way above the 1800 (which I think it will be), it's not worth it for all purpose chip. It's more like workstation lite at that point.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  57. Re:Not today, AMD by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    If it is priced way above the 1800 (which I think it will be), it's not worth it for all purpose chip. It's more like workstation lite at that point.

    What is not general purpose about a workstation-lite?

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  58. Re:Not today, AMD by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    Pricing and purpose. I'm not encoding videos all day on a general purpose machine if that's my job. I'm going to ask for workstation to do that. Of course the company is going to spend more on my desktop than for the receptionist who doesn't need 8-16 cores.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  59. Re:180 watts by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Of course it can be run fanless...if you blow a stream of cool air over the cooler! You can use bellows if you don't like fans. ;)

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  60. Re:180 watts by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Coincidentally, even at default settings, Threadripper is very very good at performance per watt.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  61. Re:My Boss Used to Have a Word for Designs Like Th by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    He called them "Lab Queens".

    In other words, there were fantastic in the engineering lab, where conditions could be tightly controlled and optimized; but in the real-world, they just didn't work out so well.

    So, what we have with the AMD Ryzen CPUs is something which, when benchmarks are constructed like virtually NO software actually is, they appear to kick ass. But, with software that is written like 99% of developers and their development toolchains do it, they are actually LOWER-performing than their "slower" counterparts.

    TL;DR: LOL!!!

    Actually not true. Where Ryzen helps in the real world is having the system remain responsive when having a million things open that uses threads like Chrome for example. Ryzen is a skylake i5 with several cores basically. An i7 has more performance per core which you are correct.

    Keep in mind phones today have more cores than i7 and Intel has now woken up and redesigned coffeelake to include 6 and 8 cores.

    A ryzen r3/5 is cheaper than an i5 and has SMT (hyperthreading) where you need an i7 with an intel. I think in the real world Ryzen is a great value as even the budget r3 1200 is a true quad core CPU at an i3 price! The speed difference is not that great for single tasking but things are changing and having +30 tabs in Chrome, running a game, virus scan in the background with Office will show some benefits having SMT and +4 cores.

    You could be right, actually; especially with OSes like macOS and iOS, which uses Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) to dole out threads to various cores basically automatically and transparently to the Application Developer.

    https://developer.apple.com/li...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    BTW, Apple Open Sourced GCD under the Apache License model; so there's really no excuse for any OS not to use it! But apparently, gcc doesn't support "blocks"; so neither Linux nor Android use it (or at least not generally). But then, there's always LLVM/clang, which again, Apple contributes to (and uses) as Open Source.

    Unfortunately (perhaps), Apple has not yet put anything but Intel in their desktops/laptops. But things can change, and it has been quite awhile since AMD was competitive in the CPU department; so we shall see...

  62. Re:180 watts by GoingDown · · Score: 1

    Well, I don't actually doubt the fanless part - I suppose most of the modern cpu's can run fanless - they just throttle quite a lot.... I just doubt that you can run it without heatsink.

  63. Re:Not today, AMD by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    I'm not encoding videos all day on a general purpose machine if that's my job. I'm going to ask for workstation to do that. Of course the company is going to spend more on my desktop than for the receptionist who doesn't need 8-16 cores.

    OK, well I'm glad your receptionist is ok with that, but anybody who tries to foist off a budget piece of crap on me as a "general purpose" machine can sit on my nether thumb.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  64. Re:180 watts by Khyber · · Score: 1

    VRM Heatsinks haven't stopped my fiance's FX-9370 from overheating and those came stock on the mobo. That thing's got a 240mm radiator with huge airflow venting upwards out of the case. Two intakes fans on the front going over the hard drives, one intake fan on the back blowing over the heat-sinked VRMs, and one side panel fan that blows directly atop the VRMs. GPU is shrouded and blows out the back, as does the bottom-mounted PSU. There's tons of airflow over those VRMs.

    The bitch still overheats. Primarily when Chrome is running (only had one overheat/crash since switching back to FireFox. Chrome would cause crashes roughly every 20-60 minutes once it managed to peg 100% CPU usage across all cores for some stupid reason or another.)

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  65. Re:Not today, AMD by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    Is your workflow dependent on an audio card or is it all CPU?

    The VST and VSTi plugins I use eat up a lot of processor. The Xeon in my current music system can handle it no problem. The main bottleneck is disk throughput. I stream the recorded tracks from a Linux machine with a RAID array, and I've been throwing SSDs into the system as I go along. Now that I think about it, everything's running just fine and the only reason I would think to build a new DAW system is because I'm used to doing it every 3-4 years.

    I'll just wait a bit and watch the DAW forums to see what people say about the Ryzen. I've learned my lesson about being the early adopter.

    Hey were nerds. That is why we are here!

    I would love to have something like this (click to 5 minutes) and impress all the ladies with my build (in my dreams). But I too own a i7 4770K from 2014 and have no reason to change besides specs. I just want it :-)

    I think an NVME would be nicer to boot virtual machines but they already load in a few seconds on my raid 0 ssds so no need to change. What I have 3 years old or not works fine and has never been a moment where I cursed that it was too slow.

  66. Re:180 watts by tigersha · · Score: 1

    I have a 2683v3 14 Core and cocked up the Fan mounting. I can report that it can run fanless, for about a second before the machine switches off. If you are lucky you can see the BIOS.

    --
    The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  67. Re:Not today, AMD by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    I don't know about your receptionist but our receptionist does these things with her/his computer: look up phone numbers and office locations, email, issuing visitor badges, and sometimes Facebook when no one is looking. But most of their job is sit there when they are not talking on the phone and checking people in the front desk. She/he doesn't spend a lot of time on the computer at all. So a budget piece of crap like a Core i3 is more than enough power for them. Again, they are not compiling code or encoding video.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.