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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review

192 points by jsheard 9y ago

valarauca1 9y ago
As somebody who uses a lot of NVMe storage it is nice to see expanded PCIe lane options. I can really a put one more drive into my current Intel box. NVMe SSD drives feel like the only _large_ performance change this decade.
pella 9y ago
More test: * http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1920x-review,1.html http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-threadripper-... * https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/ https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-... * http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8303/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x-cpu-review/index.html http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8303/amd-ryzen-threadripper... * https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-processor-review https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-proce... * https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r... * http://www.pcworld.com/article/3214635/components-processors/ryzen-threadripper-review-we-test-amds-monster-cpu.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3214635/components-processors... * https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/08/10/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-processor-review-is-this-intels-worst-nightmare/#7904f7ed3b85 https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/08/10/amd-ry... Other Links: * https://videocardz.com/71804/amd-ryzen-threadripper-review-roundup https://videocardz.com/71804/amd-ryzen-threadripper-review-r...
- redtuesday 9y ago
  To add to that: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75827-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1920x-1950x-review.html http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-review... https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/10/amd_ryzen_threadripper_1950x_1920x_cpu_review https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/10/amd_ryzen_threadr... http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3015-amd-threadripper-1950x-1920x-review http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3015-amd-threadripper-1... http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-threadripper-1920x-processor-review_196879 http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-thr... http://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x http://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950... http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/108628-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/ http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/108628-amd-ryzen-threadrip... https://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_threadripper_1950x_review.html https://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_threadripper... google translate of computerbase.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerbase.de%2F2017-08%2Famd-ryzen-threadripper-test-1950x-1920x%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=h... google translate of pgh.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgameshardware.de%2FRyzen-Threadripper-1920X-CPU-266541%2FTests%2FBenchmark-Review-NDA-Preis-1235430%2F&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... google translate of tomshardware.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomshardware.de%2Fthreadripper-gaming-workstation-leistungsaufnahme-temperaturen%2Ctestberichte-242381.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... google translate of hardwareluxx.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hardwareluxx.de%2Findex.php%2Fartikel%2Fhardware%2Fprozessoren%2F43901-threadripper-amds-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-und-1920x-im-test.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...
post_break 9y ago
My next plex server for sure.
- samcat116 9y ago
  I don’t really see the point of using this for a Plex server. Unless you’re doing massive amounts of transcoding 24/7
  - sp332 9y ago
    My Ryzen system can do 2-pass 1080p24 x264 encoding on "slower" preset in real-time. That is, both passes finish in the time it would take to play the movie. It would only make sense for streaming if you had >10 users at a time, and at that point it would probably save a lot of work if you just did the transcoding ahead of time and kept the right format on disk!
    - post_break 9y ago
      I'd do that but the amount of data I have, yeah I couldn't keep extras. Takes up too much space.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      Do you actually gain anything from two-pass encoding for streaming? It helps with file sizes but not with momentary bandwidth requirements, as far as I know.
      - Filligree 9y ago
        A little bit. Configured for constant bit-rates, x264 can still do a bit of jiggling on the assumption that there's a buffer, which helps with quality in general. Two-pass gives it information to do that better. But constant-quality modes are far superior when you're not bandwidth-constrained.
sevensor 9y ago
I haven't been paying tremendously close attention to this line of CPUs, but I'm interested. I've seen indications that it's not particularly stable under Linux. Is that true? Is there a microcode update?
- jsheard 9y ago
  AMD have acknowledged there is an issue with their mainstream Ryzen CPUs that can cause segfaults on Linux, but they claim it doesn't affect their Threadripper or Epyc models. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Seg...
  - sevensor 9y ago
    Thanks for the clarification!
  - redtuesday 9y ago
    It seems to be related to php. A user on reddit which has a Epyc 7551 CPU has no segfaults without the php portion of the test: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6rmq6q/epyc_7551_mining_performance/dl7o8g5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6rmq6q/epyc_7551_minin...
    - sspiff 9y ago
      People have also reported it when performing parallel compilation using GCC, so it's not limited to PHP.
      - sddfd 9y ago
        The segfaults in that particular Reddit thread were caused by a php test suite and are not the high parallel load type of segfault plaguing RyZen. As of now, nobody seems to be able to reproduce the high parallel load segfaults on epic or threadripper. AMD says they can reproduce the problem on RyZen, and that it is not present in epic/threadripper.
samcat116 9y ago
How long until we can get chips with this many cores while still maintaining the clock speed needed for good single threaded performance?
- Symmetry 9y ago
  If the other cores aren't doing useful work they'll be powered down to let the remaining core run faster. Not perfectly but the extra millimeters of surface contact with the cooler the extra cores provide probably makes them a net benefit in that case.
- sp332 9y ago
  These chips go up to 4.2 GHz, if you're using 4 cores or less and they can stay within their power & thermal envelope for your workload.
- morrbo 9y ago
  I mean, it's a tradeoff. It will always be a tradeoff, so the answer you're going to get is "never". There will always be less cores vs higher base clock (i'd imagine). However, the clock speeds of ryzen/tr/epyc/whatever are more than enough for a "good" workload. In fact you could argue that unless you're doing something which requires only one single core (and honestly, I can't envisage a workload like this in a professional environment, but i'm surely wrong) the speed is fantastic and not really noticeable. It's incredibly easy these days, at least in .NET, to parallelize workloads locally, so using something like this would outshine any 4ghz base 8 core any day of the week. But to actually answer your question as to when can we see 4ghz+ base clocks on 16/32 core processors...the next 5 years? I guess...
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Yep and the bottleneck moves around as well, Intellij used to take an age to do a full index rebuild on large multi-language projects, on the Ryzen 1700 I have it pegs all the cores at 100% for a few seconds and is done, the bottleneck now seems to be back on the disk access. I pigz'd a 5GB archive in <20s and the bottleneck there was the SSD again, (Samsung evo 850 but it was a lot of small files and ~60,000 PDF's (don't ask...)). The Ryzen 1700 paired with a good SSD is a dream for development workloads.
LeonM 9y ago
I was looking to build myself a new (Dual) Xeon workstation, but looking at these specs and performance, I am going to consider threadripper instead. With this many threads, ECC support and 64 PCIe lanes this CPU looks perfect for my intended workload. It's also gonna be slightly cheaper than a dual xeon. Exciting times!
- curiousgal 9y ago
  What workload is that? If I may ask.
  - old-gregg 9y ago
    I am dying to know as well. I have a Ryzen 1700 and my primary workload is compiling Go code, which should, in theory, be fabulously parallel. But in reality it hits all 16 threads maybe for the first 2-3 seconds and then falls back to utilizing only 3-5 cores. Perhaps our project isn't big enough to load up all cores for long...
    - floatboth 9y ago
      Large C/C++ code bases (Chromium, Firefox, Linux, FreeBSD, whatever) are really good for this, since all C/C++ files can be compiled independently.
  - LeonM 9y ago
    Heavy virtualisation, running complex infrastructures within minikube, loads of data processing for customers. Also occasional hardware synthesis and video editing (but not professionally)
- loeg 9y ago
  Only slightly cheaper than a 2P Xeon system?
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    Comparable Broadwell-EP or new Purley chips cost thousands more. They have better features and more cache but price wise these platforms are in different universes.
dijit 9y ago
I hope they do not suffer the same issues the already released Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 series CPUs are having. I'm also cautiously optimistic for EPYC the server grade CPU that AMD is releasing soon, although in this world of "per-core" licensing costs there is a strong need for less cores and more single-thread performance in the server.
- gcp 9y ago
  AMD specifically claims they do not suffer from the gcc segfault thing. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "issues?"
  - loeg 9y ago
    AMD claims it, but until I understand the issue better I'm a little skeptical. We'll see as these parts make their way into the hands of consumers who will run these tests.
- foepys 9y ago
  Per-core licensing is just ridiculous nowadays and I hope AMD's Epyc is the turning point to revise it.
roel_v 9y ago
So have there been any announcements about whether there will be dual-CPU Threadripper mobo's in the future? Does the CPU even support it?
- jsheard 9y ago
  I don't think they plan to support dual Threadripper, because single Epyc does more or less the same thing without the inter-socket latency or expense of a dual-socket motherboard. It's effectively two Threadrippers on a single package (2x cores, 2x memory channels, 2x PCIe lanes) for only slightly more than double the price ($999 for 16C TR, $2100 for 32C Epyc).
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Cheapest 32 core Epyc is ~USD3200, with 2GHz base clock. I'd much rather have 2 x Threadripper for USD2K with base clock of 3.4. I don't think there are any Epyc features that are relevant for compute loads - like the security stuff or guaranteed x years of support. Either way it'll be an upgrade from my 4 core Xeon :)
    - jsheard 9y ago
      The $3400 model you saw is the dual-socket capable version, the single-socket version (EPYC 7551P) is only $2100. Point taken about the clock speeds though. http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-new-7000-series-cpus-launched-and-epyc-analysis http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-n...
      - roel_v 9y ago
        Oh I see, I didn't realize that difference. Well if they can build 2CPU Epyc CPUs for 150% of the price, I'll stay hoping they'll do the same for Threadrippers :) Although at that point you're right, the price would be the same as a single Epyc (1k * 1.5 * 2).
tiffanyh 9y ago
Is Threadripper the first CPU that can support 2+ NVME (m.2) cards due to all of the PCI lanes it has?
- vetinari 9y ago
  Intel 7900X with an X299 board can do that too, with UEFI-level RAID on top of that (might be important for Windows users, not important at all for Linux users).
- tiffanyh 9y ago
  I'm going to answer my on question. From TFA: "With Threadripper, you can run two graphics cards at X16 PCIe speeds, two at X8, and still have enough lanes left over for three X4 NVMe SSDs connected directly to the CPU." https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r...
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Good god. So you can stick four high end cards in with 3 X4's... That would be an absolute monster for GPU workloads.
    - paulmd 9y ago
      Threadripper is an enthusiast/workstation SKU. If you really want to go nuclear, Epyc gets you 128 lanes. Boom. (Also note that Threadripper is only 60 lanes, the other 4 go to the PCH, so the most you could do is x16x16x16x12. I'm unsure if Epyc gives you a real 128 or whether it's actually 120 or something.)
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        Next up, 512 lanes should be enough for anybody ;).
- caleblloyd 9y ago
  Most PCIE NVME SSDs use 4 lanes right now. So theoretically CPUs could support (total PCIE lanes / 4). It usually boils down to motherboard configuration or add-on card support for how many you can practically get in a system though.
SoloForLife 9y ago
So this is what competition looks like. I recently entered the tech world last year, when there was none. Man you people must've been bored to hell for 5 years?
cuteaussie 9y ago
I feel like there have been unrealistic expectations of Vega compared to the expectations of how Ryzen was going to perform. Most people expected Ryzen to do ok but still loose to Intel by a 2 generation gap and here we are at what 5-10% behind Skylake/Kaby lake refreshes. With Vega everyone wants it to beat the gtx 1080ti but at best we might get something in between a 1080 and 1080ti for less money which isn't a fail in my views. The waiting however has sucked and has forced a lot of people to go team green who otherwise wouldn't of had too.
- revelation 9y ago
  I remember a time where AMD and ATI were not one company and the latter was always head-to-head with NVidia. At which point did mediocrity spread from AMD?
  - geezerjay 9y ago
    > At which point did mediocrity spread from AMD? Based on the benchmarks, the $500 AMD Ryzen 7 matches the performance of the $1723 Intel i7 6950x. Is this what you call mediocre? Getting the same performance for less than 1/3 of the price is being mediocre nowadays?
    - dmoy 9y ago
      GGP specifically addressed this, no? Broadwell is ~two releases behind (and if you're explicitly looking at an Intel -E chip for cost comparison.... that doesn't make an awful lot of sense given that their E lines are basically always sky high prices compared to other Intel chips).
      - geezerjay 9y ago
        > GGP specifically addressed this, no? Broadwell is ~two releases behind That's entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if those processors were released last year of in the last century. It's Intel's current and best offer, and the facts speak for themselves: AMD's current offering matches Intel's perfomance while trouncing Intel's in price/performance ratio. > that doesn't make an awful lot of sense given that their E lines are basically always sky high prices compared to other Intel chips). That's Intel's problem. It makes no sense to try to downplay AMD's stellar performance just because Intel does some major price gouging.
heycam 9y ago
Unfortunately for me, the fact that rr can't run on Ryzen CPUs is a dealbreaker. :( https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034 https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034
- gcp 9y ago
  Awwww :( That's really sad. rr is important enough for C++ development that I agree it's dealbreaker.
- aleden 9y ago
  I am wondering why this isn't getting more attention. > It appears that the Ryzen PMU just isn't quite accurate enough :-(. rr > might work OK for some kinds of usage but I wouldn't recommend it. > > I'll land the patches I have with a warning for Ryzen users that things > won't be reliable. Can someone with a technical understanding describe what's going on here? Is this a flat-out bug- or does the x86 architecture spec allow for this?
Boothroid 9y ago
Barring a major technical problem being uncovered (hopefully the segfault thing won't be an issue) or nefarious action by Intel I cannot see how this thing can fail. So much power at the price point. As soon as the price drops a bit I'll be replacing my FX-8350 setup with one of these. Go competition! Go AMD!
- renesd 9y ago
  Considering they didn't give samples to any of the linux press... ?
  - arcaster 9y ago
    Haha, I'll be waiting to purchase until Linux reviews surface or MicroCenter offers the same discount on TR and i9 chips.
  - jsheard 9y ago
    AMD changed their mind and are now sending samples to Phoronix (albeit too late for a launch day article). http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Seg... > We will also now be receiving Threadripper and Epyc hardware for testing to confirm their Linux state.
- TheJazi13 9y ago
  Wasn’t the segfault issue determined to be a bug in the php steps?
  - loeg 9y ago
    Some of it was, but not all. There are still issues in some chips and some customers are getting RMAs.
- dmoy 9y ago
  I mean I could guess one way it'd fail - if they market it heavily to the PC gaming market, and their single threaded performance isn't as good at similar price points. There's still lot of workloads out there that can't take advantage of 4 threads, let alone 16/32+. I would assume they don't market it heavily to gaming, but it's like the second thing they mention on their main landing page, so... idk.
YolandaYols 9y ago
The most ridiculous thing is that Intel never planned for 14-18 core models. They were planning on the 7900x to be the 6950x replacement at the same price, with 2 more cores. Funny how even though the MSRP dropped by over $700 its still not competitive in the slightest compared to Zen. That's how much Intel has been screwing people the last 6-7 years.
TheStrongest 9y ago
Intel will most likely have no advantage in usable performance on the The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 chips they use too much power and run way to hot so they will need lower clocks. The Ryzen 1950X will most likely clock around 4 Ghz on air on all cores, The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 core intel chips, will need a custom loop, or really low clocks, intel like's to do fuckery and, the only way i can see them making the The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 chips have good performance is too turbo up 4 or 6 cores for gaming etc.
- arcanus 9y ago
  To say nothing of the AMD $$ advantage
- floatboth 9y ago
  > clock around 4 Ghz on air on all cores That must be a really high end air cooler. My R7 1700 runs 4GHz on a 280mm AIO water cooler. Sure the 1950X dies are better binned so they need less voltage on average, but with literally 2x the core count, that's gonna be quite a lot of heat. Yeah, Skylake-X is a power monster, all the memes about "Core i9 best for burning your house down" are funny, but SIXTEEN Zen cores at 4GHz would not be cool and quiet either :D
  - BlackMonday 9y ago
    > That must be a really high end air cooler. Good that Noctua will release their Threadripper coolers like the NH-14S next week. I wonder why they didn't release their NH-D15 (which beats many AIOs) for Threadripper as well, since it's even better than the NH-14S.
  - paulmd 9y ago
    > That must be a really high end air cooler. My R7 1700 runs 4GHz on a 280mm AIO water cooler. As you note, Threadripper is the best 5% of R7 chips, some of them are going as high as 4.2 GHz. But there appears to be a surprising amount of chip-to-chip variation even still. > Yeah, Skylake-X is a power monster, all the memes about "Core i9 best for burning your house down" are funny, but SIXTEEN Zen cores at 4GHz would not be cool and quiet either :D You don't know the half of it. Check out these power numbers: https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/3 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_...
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
> Given that Threadripper is a consumer focused product – and interestingly, not really a workstation focused product Huh. Will AMD workstations be built around similar Epyc products, then? But those would have worse power consumption, right? (4 dies versus 2)
- foepys 9y ago
  Epyc as lower clock speeds and slightly lower TDP. The fastest 16-core Epyc has 2.4/2.9 GHz (base/boost) while TR has 3.4/4.0 (4.2 GHz with XFR, also 16 cores).
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
The note about this being the first time consumers will see NUMA systems is interesting. I hope reviewers are familiar with it when they're benchmarking.
rbanffy 9y ago
One thing I have with Intel is the virtual certainty the machine will work flawlessly with Linux. Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core, and Xeon E3 have built-in GPUs that are very well supported. Before jumping to AMD gear, I'd like to know if I'd have the same "just works" experience. I'm well past the age I liked to waste time debugging setups.
- onli 9y ago
  Well, it is bleeding edge and you probably know that linux needs some time to support that properly. The integrated graphics is a non-issue here: Neither X299 nor X399 processors have any. You have to combine them with a gpu, and then are free to chose one that is properly supported. For what it's worth, the RX line was the first gpu ever that had proper working free Linux drivers on release (but the stronger versions like the RX 570 or 580 are not in stock or overpriced, thus not a reasonable option right now). I'd expect the RX 550 or any of the older AMD gpus with the mesa driver to be a good choice, but it depends on what you want to do.
  - old-gregg 9y ago
    RX 550 won't work without upgrading mesa either from source or from 3rd party repos [1]. I went with RX 460 instead and it worked flawlessly out of the box with Ubuntu 17.04 [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Radeon-RX-550-First-Try http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Radeon-RX...
    - onli 9y ago
      Thanks. Since mesa is developing that fast being on a current version is something I assume, but the RX 460 is a good choice anyway.
- old-gregg 9y ago
  Ryzens do not have an integrated GPU, at least not at the moment. The CPU itself works out of the box, even slightly more exotic features like virtualization is flawless under KVM. If you want a Ryzen-based desktop with "just works experience" similar to i7-based Intels, go with a Radeon RX460 or RX560 GPU. It will get picked up by the open source AMDGPU driver in the latest popular desktop distros.
rocky1138 9y ago
Having to reboot to enable Game Mode really sucks. Usually I game after I finish working or maybe in between while I'm waiting for a download. I don't want to have to re-open all my programs and set up my desktop yet again after I'm done gaming. I wonder if this will be fixed with software later on or we'll have to wait for the next model of Threadripper.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  Any chance of just hibernating the system and then resuming it?
  - Filligree 9y ago
    No way. It changes the number of CPU cores exposed to the kernel.
    - cptskippy 9y ago
      Hmm... I'm sure this is manageable. Windows Server supports Hot Add/Remove CPU and RAM. If it can do it hot, why not cold? Windows UPnP service is continuously polling hardware and reconfiguring the system. I have a feeling Microsoft might have a solution in the works for this.
- paulmd 9y ago
  In theory, using Process Lasso to tie the game to 8 specific cores on a single die should produce equivalent results.
old-gregg 9y ago
Does anyone have a theory for why Ryzens are beaten so badly by Intel in the Chromium compile benchmark?
- ssutch3 9y ago
  Cross-core communication
  - low_battery 9y ago
    Actually its a problem with Visual studio, Ryzen utterly destroys comptetition when it comes to compilation. Unfortunately Anandtech does not test with GCC or Clang. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-kabylake-may&num=6 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-kab...
- low_battery 9y ago
  I think on GCC or Clang Threadripper should be much better (see link on my other reply) And also Arstechnica reported much better numbers, I think Anantech either had a bad config or there is a bug in the compiler they used. https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r...
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    The arstechnica numbers surprise me, given the sheer difference between the Ryzen 7 1800X and the Threadripper 1920X compared with the 1920X and the 1950X; either you've reached more or less peak parallelism by 16 cores, or the larger L3 cache and quad-channel memory makes the difference. Or something's changed in the benchmark setup (be it the compiler or whatever) since the 1800X was done.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  On Twitter, the reviewer blamed it on Ryzen's L3 cache being a victim cache [1] (which I don't really understand; maybe it's related to having ephemeral data structures displace long-lived ones?). I think it's also been stated elsewhere that the Intel chips dominate during linking, which is a large chunk of the overall build time for Chromium. [1] https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/868799386079420416 https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/868799386079420416
moogly 9y ago
Apparently, if you were interested in using these for a DAW, you might want to wait for Tech Report's review[1]. They're late to the party[2] because AMD didn't send them a review kit until TR publicly asked their readers for a CPU to review[3]. Maybe because TR is one of very few publications using DAWBench? [1] https://twitter.com/jkampman_tr/status/895645729972080640 https://twitter.com/jkampman_tr/status/895645729972080640 [2] http://techreport.com/news/32377/here-a-sneak-peek-at-our-ryzen-threadripper-results?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techreport%2Fall+%28The+Tech+Report%29 http://techreport.com/news/32377/here-a-sneak-peek-at-our-ry... [3] http://techreport.com/news/32343/updated-wanted-for-review-amd-ryzen-threadripper-cpus http://techreport.com/news/32343/updated-wanted-for-review-a... Ryzen is also comparatively poor at DAW workloads.
drudru11 9y ago
No question about it - this is cool technology. I will be building an ECC based Threadripper this fall.
Instructor 9y ago
TL;DR: clear winner in multithread productivity, intel better in single-thread productivity, around Ryzen 1800X in gaming (in game mode, which tries to pin threads to one die at a time and disables SMT), great TDP (stays under 180w at full load), has some teething issues with the NUMA nature of two-dies, but is overall a great processor.
vbezhenar 9y ago
Well, for multi core workloads AMD is a clear winner. Other features are nice too: ECC memory; no thermopaste nonsense. I'm really waiting for future Intel offerings, they must do something extraordinary to gain lead.
- paulmd 9y ago
  > Well, for multi core workloads AMD is a clear winner. Actually not really. It's actually slower in x265 encoding than a 7900X, and it doesn't really pull away much in x264 or Blender rendering either (10-25% over a 7900X). Also, it appears to perform pretty badly at some compilation workloads too, like a 1950X barely beats a 6900K at Chromium compiling using MSVS. At most you can say that you really need to look at the specific task. Of course there may still be some tuning, but right now it's certainly not the slam-dunk that everyone assumed it would be. http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/10 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/8 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/11 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/7 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/10 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... Not a particularly great showing overall for a processor with 60% more cores. Despite AMD's attempted pushback it appears Intel's smack-talk was correct and Infinity Fabric is not a magic panacea for NUMA performance problems. It also pulls an absolutely absurd amount of power to do it, literally more than a 7900X. The onboard package-power measurement appears to be drastically undershooting the power as measured at the wall. Even factoring out PSU efficiency losses, measuring inside the case something is eating at least 130W that isn't showing up as package power. https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/3 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/19 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp...
pcunite 9y ago
Do any of the Ryzen or Threadripper skus have on-board graphics?
krsdcbl 9y ago
This could actually be huge news for desktop based rendering, video editing, cgi of any kind. Beeing able to render on 64 threads for just the price of 2 high end graphics cards seriously makes me consider stick with cpu rendering for my next workstation - even at a lower frequency per core the time savings could be substanial.

192 points by jsheard 9y ago

As somebody who uses a lot of NVMe storage it is nice to see expanded PCIe lane options. I can really a put one more drive into my current Intel box. NVMe SSD drives feel like the only _large_ performance change this decade.

pella 9y ago

More test: * http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1920x-review,1.html http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-threadripper-... * https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/ https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-... * http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8303/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x-cpu-review/index.html http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8303/amd-ryzen-threadripper... * https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-processor-review https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-proce... * https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r... * http://www.pcworld.com/article/3214635/components-processors/ryzen-threadripper-review-we-test-amds-monster-cpu.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3214635/components-processors... * https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/08/10/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-processor-review-is-this-intels-worst-nightmare/#7904f7ed3b85 https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/08/10/amd-ry... Other Links: * https://videocardz.com/71804/amd-ryzen-threadripper-review-roundup https://videocardz.com/71804/amd-ryzen-threadripper-review-r...

redtuesday 9y ago
To add to that: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75827-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1920x-1950x-review.html http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-review... https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/10/amd_ryzen_threadripper_1950x_1920x_cpu_review https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/10/amd_ryzen_threadr... http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3015-amd-threadripper-1950x-1920x-review http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3015-amd-threadripper-1... http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-threadripper-1920x-processor-review_196879 http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-thr... http://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x http://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950... http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/108628-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/ http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/108628-amd-ryzen-threadrip... https://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_threadripper_1950x_review.html https://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_threadripper... google translate of computerbase.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerbase.de%2F2017-08%2Famd-ryzen-threadripper-test-1950x-1920x%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=h... google translate of pgh.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgameshardware.de%2FRyzen-Threadripper-1920X-CPU-266541%2FTests%2FBenchmark-Review-NDA-Preis-1235430%2F&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... google translate of tomshardware.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomshardware.de%2Fthreadripper-gaming-workstation-leistungsaufnahme-temperaturen%2Ctestberichte-242381.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... google translate of hardwareluxx.de: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hardwareluxx.de%2Findex.php%2Fartikel%2Fhardware%2Fprozessoren%2F43901-threadripper-amds-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-und-1920x-im-test.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...

post_break 9y ago

My next plex server for sure.

samcat116 9y ago
I don’t really see the point of using this for a Plex server. Unless you’re doing massive amounts of transcoding 24/7
- sp332 9y ago
  My Ryzen system can do 2-pass 1080p24 x264 encoding on "slower" preset in real-time. That is, both passes finish in the time it would take to play the movie. It would only make sense for streaming if you had >10 users at a time, and at that point it would probably save a lot of work if you just did the transcoding ahead of time and kept the right format on disk!
  - post_break 9y ago
    I'd do that but the amount of data I have, yeah I couldn't keep extras. Takes up too much space.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Do you actually gain anything from two-pass encoding for streaming? It helps with file sizes but not with momentary bandwidth requirements, as far as I know.
    - Filligree 9y ago
      A little bit. Configured for constant bit-rates, x264 can still do a bit of jiggling on the assumption that there's a buffer, which helps with quality in general. Two-pass gives it information to do that better. But constant-quality modes are far superior when you're not bandwidth-constrained.

sevensor 9y ago

I haven't been paying tremendously close attention to this line of CPUs, but I'm interested. I've seen indications that it's not particularly stable under Linux. Is that true? Is there a microcode update?

jsheard 9y ago
AMD have acknowledged there is an issue with their mainstream Ryzen CPUs that can cause segfaults on Linux, but they claim it doesn't affect their Threadripper or Epyc models. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Seg...
- sevensor 9y ago
  Thanks for the clarification!
- redtuesday 9y ago
  It seems to be related to php. A user on reddit which has a Epyc 7551 CPU has no segfaults without the php portion of the test: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6rmq6q/epyc_7551_mining_performance/dl7o8g5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6rmq6q/epyc_7551_minin...
  - sspiff 9y ago
    People have also reported it when performing parallel compilation using GCC, so it's not limited to PHP.
    - sddfd 9y ago
      The segfaults in that particular Reddit thread were caused by a php test suite and are not the high parallel load type of segfault plaguing RyZen. As of now, nobody seems to be able to reproduce the high parallel load segfaults on epic or threadripper. AMD says they can reproduce the problem on RyZen, and that it is not present in epic/threadripper.

samcat116 9y ago

How long until we can get chips with this many cores while still maintaining the clock speed needed for good single threaded performance?

Symmetry 9y ago
If the other cores aren't doing useful work they'll be powered down to let the remaining core run faster. Not perfectly but the extra millimeters of surface contact with the cooler the extra cores provide probably makes them a net benefit in that case.
sp332 9y ago
These chips go up to 4.2 GHz, if you're using 4 cores or less and they can stay within their power & thermal envelope for your workload.
morrbo 9y ago
I mean, it's a tradeoff. It will always be a tradeoff, so the answer you're going to get is "never". There will always be less cores vs higher base clock (i'd imagine). However, the clock speeds of ryzen/tr/epyc/whatever are more than enough for a "good" workload. In fact you could argue that unless you're doing something which requires only one single core (and honestly, I can't envisage a workload like this in a professional environment, but i'm surely wrong) the speed is fantastic and not really noticeable. It's incredibly easy these days, at least in .NET, to parallelize workloads locally, so using something like this would outshine any 4ghz base 8 core any day of the week. But to actually answer your question as to when can we see 4ghz+ base clocks on 16/32 core processors...the next 5 years? I guess...
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Yep and the bottleneck moves around as well, Intellij used to take an age to do a full index rebuild on large multi-language projects, on the Ryzen 1700 I have it pegs all the cores at 100% for a few seconds and is done, the bottleneck now seems to be back on the disk access. I pigz'd a 5GB archive in <20s and the bottleneck there was the SSD again, (Samsung evo 850 but it was a lot of small files and ~60,000 PDF's (don't ask...)). The Ryzen 1700 paired with a good SSD is a dream for development workloads.

LeonM 9y ago

I was looking to build myself a new (Dual) Xeon workstation, but looking at these specs and performance, I am going to consider threadripper instead. With this many threads, ECC support and 64 PCIe lanes this CPU looks perfect for my intended workload. It's also gonna be slightly cheaper than a dual xeon. Exciting times!

curiousgal 9y ago
What workload is that? If I may ask.
- old-gregg 9y ago
  I am dying to know as well. I have a Ryzen 1700 and my primary workload is compiling Go code, which should, in theory, be fabulously parallel. But in reality it hits all 16 threads maybe for the first 2-3 seconds and then falls back to utilizing only 3-5 cores. Perhaps our project isn't big enough to load up all cores for long...
  - floatboth 9y ago
    Large C/C++ code bases (Chromium, Firefox, Linux, FreeBSD, whatever) are really good for this, since all C/C++ files can be compiled independently.
- LeonM 9y ago
  Heavy virtualisation, running complex infrastructures within minikube, loads of data processing for customers. Also occasional hardware synthesis and video editing (but not professionally)
loeg 9y ago
Only slightly cheaper than a 2P Xeon system?
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  Comparable Broadwell-EP or new Purley chips cost thousands more. They have better features and more cache but price wise these platforms are in different universes.

dijit 9y ago

I hope they do not suffer the same issues the already released Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 series CPUs are having. I'm also cautiously optimistic for EPYC the server grade CPU that AMD is releasing soon, although in this world of "per-core" licensing costs there is a strong need for less cores and more single-thread performance in the server.

gcp 9y ago
AMD specifically claims they do not suffer from the gcc segfault thing. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "issues?"
- loeg 9y ago
  AMD claims it, but until I understand the issue better I'm a little skeptical. We'll see as these parts make their way into the hands of consumers who will run these tests.
foepys 9y ago
Per-core licensing is just ridiculous nowadays and I hope AMD's Epyc is the turning point to revise it.

roel_v 9y ago

So have there been any announcements about whether there will be dual-CPU Threadripper mobo's in the future? Does the CPU even support it?

jsheard 9y ago
I don't think they plan to support dual Threadripper, because single Epyc does more or less the same thing without the inter-socket latency or expense of a dual-socket motherboard. It's effectively two Threadrippers on a single package (2x cores, 2x memory channels, 2x PCIe lanes) for only slightly more than double the price ($999 for 16C TR, $2100 for 32C Epyc).
- roel_v 9y ago
  Cheapest 32 core Epyc is ~USD3200, with 2GHz base clock. I'd much rather have 2 x Threadripper for USD2K with base clock of 3.4. I don't think there are any Epyc features that are relevant for compute loads - like the security stuff or guaranteed x years of support. Either way it'll be an upgrade from my 4 core Xeon :)
  - jsheard 9y ago
    The $3400 model you saw is the dual-socket capable version, the single-socket version (EPYC 7551P) is only $2100. Point taken about the clock speeds though. http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-new-7000-series-cpus-launched-and-epyc-analysis http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-n...
    - roel_v 9y ago
      Oh I see, I didn't realize that difference. Well if they can build 2CPU Epyc CPUs for 150% of the price, I'll stay hoping they'll do the same for Threadrippers :) Although at that point you're right, the price would be the same as a single Epyc (1k * 1.5 * 2).

tiffanyh 9y ago

Is Threadripper the first CPU that can support 2+ NVME (m.2) cards due to all of the PCI lanes it has?

vetinari 9y ago
Intel 7900X with an X299 board can do that too, with UEFI-level RAID on top of that (might be important for Windows users, not important at all for Linux users).
tiffanyh 9y ago
I'm going to answer my on question. From TFA: "With Threadripper, you can run two graphics cards at X16 PCIe speeds, two at X8, and still have enough lanes left over for three X4 NVMe SSDs connected directly to the CPU." https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r...
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Good god. So you can stick four high end cards in with 3 X4's... That would be an absolute monster for GPU workloads.
  - paulmd 9y ago
    Threadripper is an enthusiast/workstation SKU. If you really want to go nuclear, Epyc gets you 128 lanes. Boom. (Also note that Threadripper is only 60 lanes, the other 4 go to the PCH, so the most you could do is x16x16x16x12. I'm unsure if Epyc gives you a real 128 or whether it's actually 120 or something.)
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      Next up, 512 lanes should be enough for anybody ;).
caleblloyd 9y ago
Most PCIE NVME SSDs use 4 lanes right now. So theoretically CPUs could support (total PCIE lanes / 4). It usually boils down to motherboard configuration or add-on card support for how many you can practically get in a system though.

SoloForLife 9y ago

So this is what competition looks like. I recently entered the tech world last year, when there was none. Man you people must've been bored to hell for 5 years?

cuteaussie 9y ago

I feel like there have been unrealistic expectations of Vega compared to the expectations of how Ryzen was going to perform. Most people expected Ryzen to do ok but still loose to Intel by a 2 generation gap and here we are at what 5-10% behind Skylake/Kaby lake refreshes. With Vega everyone wants it to beat the gtx 1080ti but at best we might get something in between a 1080 and 1080ti for less money which isn't a fail in my views. The waiting however has sucked and has forced a lot of people to go team green who otherwise wouldn't of had too.

revelation 9y ago
I remember a time where AMD and ATI were not one company and the latter was always head-to-head with NVidia. At which point did mediocrity spread from AMD?
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > At which point did mediocrity spread from AMD? Based on the benchmarks, the $500 AMD Ryzen 7 matches the performance of the $1723 Intel i7 6950x. Is this what you call mediocre? Getting the same performance for less than 1/3 of the price is being mediocre nowadays?
  - dmoy 9y ago
    GGP specifically addressed this, no? Broadwell is ~two releases behind (and if you're explicitly looking at an Intel -E chip for cost comparison.... that doesn't make an awful lot of sense given that their E lines are basically always sky high prices compared to other Intel chips).
    - geezerjay 9y ago
      > GGP specifically addressed this, no? Broadwell is ~two releases behind That's entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if those processors were released last year of in the last century. It's Intel's current and best offer, and the facts speak for themselves: AMD's current offering matches Intel's perfomance while trouncing Intel's in price/performance ratio. > that doesn't make an awful lot of sense given that their E lines are basically always sky high prices compared to other Intel chips). That's Intel's problem. It makes no sense to try to downplay AMD's stellar performance just because Intel does some major price gouging.

heycam 9y ago

Unfortunately for me, the fact that rr can't run on Ryzen CPUs is a dealbreaker. :( https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034 https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034

gcp 9y ago
Awwww :( That's really sad. rr is important enough for C++ development that I agree it's dealbreaker.
aleden 9y ago
I am wondering why this isn't getting more attention. > It appears that the Ryzen PMU just isn't quite accurate enough :-(. rr > might work OK for some kinds of usage but I wouldn't recommend it. > > I'll land the patches I have with a warning for Ryzen users that things > won't be reliable. Can someone with a technical understanding describe what's going on here? Is this a flat-out bug- or does the x86 architecture spec allow for this?

Boothroid 9y ago

Barring a major technical problem being uncovered (hopefully the segfault thing won't be an issue) or nefarious action by Intel I cannot see how this thing can fail. So much power at the price point. As soon as the price drops a bit I'll be replacing my FX-8350 setup with one of these. Go competition! Go AMD!

renesd 9y ago
Considering they didn't give samples to any of the linux press... ?
- arcaster 9y ago
  Haha, I'll be waiting to purchase until Linux reviews surface or MicroCenter offers the same discount on TR and i9 chips.
- jsheard 9y ago
  AMD changed their mind and are now sending samples to Phoronix (albeit too late for a launch day article). http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Seg... > We will also now be receiving Threadripper and Epyc hardware for testing to confirm their Linux state.
TheJazi13 9y ago
Wasn’t the segfault issue determined to be a bug in the php steps?
- loeg 9y ago
  Some of it was, but not all. There are still issues in some chips and some customers are getting RMAs.
dmoy 9y ago
I mean I could guess one way it'd fail - if they market it heavily to the PC gaming market, and their single threaded performance isn't as good at similar price points. There's still lot of workloads out there that can't take advantage of 4 threads, let alone 16/32+. I would assume they don't market it heavily to gaming, but it's like the second thing they mention on their main landing page, so... idk.

YolandaYols 9y ago

The most ridiculous thing is that Intel never planned for 14-18 core models. They were planning on the 7900x to be the 6950x replacement at the same price, with 2 more cores. Funny how even though the MSRP dropped by over $700 its still not competitive in the slightest compared to Zen. That's how much Intel has been screwing people the last 6-7 years.

TheStrongest 9y ago

Intel will most likely have no advantage in usable performance on the The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 chips they use too much power and run way to hot so they will need lower clocks. The Ryzen 1950X will most likely clock around 4 Ghz on air on all cores, The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 core intel chips, will need a custom loop, or really low clocks, intel like's to do fuckery and, the only way i can see them making the The 12, 14, 16, and, 18 chips have good performance is too turbo up 4 or 6 cores for gaming etc.

arcanus 9y ago
To say nothing of the AMD $$ advantage
floatboth 9y ago
> clock around 4 Ghz on air on all cores That must be a really high end air cooler. My R7 1700 runs 4GHz on a 280mm AIO water cooler. Sure the 1950X dies are better binned so they need less voltage on average, but with literally 2x the core count, that's gonna be quite a lot of heat. Yeah, Skylake-X is a power monster, all the memes about "Core i9 best for burning your house down" are funny, but SIXTEEN Zen cores at 4GHz would not be cool and quiet either :D
- BlackMonday 9y ago
  > That must be a really high end air cooler. Good that Noctua will release their Threadripper coolers like the NH-14S next week. I wonder why they didn't release their NH-D15 (which beats many AIOs) for Threadripper as well, since it's even better than the NH-14S.
- paulmd 9y ago
  > That must be a really high end air cooler. My R7 1700 runs 4GHz on a 280mm AIO water cooler. As you note, Threadripper is the best 5% of R7 chips, some of them are going as high as 4.2 GHz. But there appears to be a surprising amount of chip-to-chip variation even still. > Yeah, Skylake-X is a power monster, all the memes about "Core i9 best for burning your house down" are funny, but SIXTEEN Zen cores at 4GHz would not be cool and quiet either :D You don't know the half of it. Check out these power numbers: https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/3 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_...

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

> Given that Threadripper is a consumer focused product – and interestingly, not really a workstation focused product Huh. Will AMD workstations be built around similar Epyc products, then? But those would have worse power consumption, right? (4 dies versus 2)

foepys 9y ago
Epyc as lower clock speeds and slightly lower TDP. The fastest 16-core Epyc has 2.4/2.9 GHz (base/boost) while TR has 3.4/4.0 (4.2 GHz with XFR, also 16 cores).

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

The note about this being the first time consumers will see NUMA systems is interesting. I hope reviewers are familiar with it when they're benchmarking.

rbanffy 9y ago

One thing I have with Intel is the virtual certainty the machine will work flawlessly with Linux. Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core, and Xeon E3 have built-in GPUs that are very well supported. Before jumping to AMD gear, I'd like to know if I'd have the same "just works" experience. I'm well past the age I liked to waste time debugging setups.

onli 9y ago
Well, it is bleeding edge and you probably know that linux needs some time to support that properly. The integrated graphics is a non-issue here: Neither X299 nor X399 processors have any. You have to combine them with a gpu, and then are free to chose one that is properly supported. For what it's worth, the RX line was the first gpu ever that had proper working free Linux drivers on release (but the stronger versions like the RX 570 or 580 are not in stock or overpriced, thus not a reasonable option right now). I'd expect the RX 550 or any of the older AMD gpus with the mesa driver to be a good choice, but it depends on what you want to do.
- old-gregg 9y ago
  RX 550 won't work without upgrading mesa either from source or from 3rd party repos [1]. I went with RX 460 instead and it worked flawlessly out of the box with Ubuntu 17.04 [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Radeon-RX-550-First-Try http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Radeon-RX...
  - onli 9y ago
    Thanks. Since mesa is developing that fast being on a current version is something I assume, but the RX 460 is a good choice anyway.
old-gregg 9y ago
Ryzens do not have an integrated GPU, at least not at the moment. The CPU itself works out of the box, even slightly more exotic features like virtualization is flawless under KVM. If you want a Ryzen-based desktop with "just works experience" similar to i7-based Intels, go with a Radeon RX460 or RX560 GPU. It will get picked up by the open source AMDGPU driver in the latest popular desktop distros.

rocky1138 9y ago

Having to reboot to enable Game Mode really sucks. Usually I game after I finish working or maybe in between while I'm waiting for a download. I don't want to have to re-open all my programs and set up my desktop yet again after I'm done gaming. I wonder if this will be fixed with software later on or we'll have to wait for the next model of Threadripper.

cptskippy 9y ago
Any chance of just hibernating the system and then resuming it?
- Filligree 9y ago
  No way. It changes the number of CPU cores exposed to the kernel.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    Hmm... I'm sure this is manageable. Windows Server supports Hot Add/Remove CPU and RAM. If it can do it hot, why not cold? Windows UPnP service is continuously polling hardware and reconfiguring the system. I have a feeling Microsoft might have a solution in the works for this.
paulmd 9y ago
In theory, using Process Lasso to tie the game to 8 specific cores on a single die should produce equivalent results.

old-gregg 9y ago

Does anyone have a theory for why Ryzens are beaten so badly by Intel in the Chromium compile benchmark?

ssutch3 9y ago
Cross-core communication
- low_battery 9y ago
  Actually its a problem with Visual studio, Ryzen utterly destroys comptetition when it comes to compilation. Unfortunately Anandtech does not test with GCC or Clang. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-kabylake-may&num=6 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-kab...
low_battery 9y ago
I think on GCC or Clang Threadripper should be much better (see link on my other reply) And also Arstechnica reported much better numbers, I think Anantech either had a bad config or there is a bug in the compiler they used. https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-r...
- gsnedders 9y ago
  The arstechnica numbers surprise me, given the sheer difference between the Ryzen 7 1800X and the Threadripper 1920X compared with the 1920X and the 1950X; either you've reached more or less peak parallelism by 16 cores, or the larger L3 cache and quad-channel memory makes the difference. Or something's changed in the benchmark setup (be it the compiler or whatever) since the 1800X was done.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
On Twitter, the reviewer blamed it on Ryzen's L3 cache being a victim cache [1] (which I don't really understand; maybe it's related to having ephemeral data structures displace long-lived ones?). I think it's also been stated elsewhere that the Intel chips dominate during linking, which is a large chunk of the overall build time for Chromium. [1] https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/868799386079420416 https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/868799386079420416

moogly 9y ago

Apparently, if you were interested in using these for a DAW, you might want to wait for Tech Report's review[1]. They're late to the party[2] because AMD didn't send them a review kit until TR publicly asked their readers for a CPU to review[3]. Maybe because TR is one of very few publications using DAWBench? [1] https://twitter.com/jkampman_tr/status/895645729972080640 https://twitter.com/jkampman_tr/status/895645729972080640 [2] http://techreport.com/news/32377/here-a-sneak-peek-at-our-ryzen-threadripper-results?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techreport%2Fall+%28The+Tech+Report%29 http://techreport.com/news/32377/here-a-sneak-peek-at-our-ry... [3] http://techreport.com/news/32343/updated-wanted-for-review-amd-ryzen-threadripper-cpus http://techreport.com/news/32343/updated-wanted-for-review-a... Ryzen is also comparatively poor at DAW workloads.

drudru11 9y ago

No question about it - this is cool technology. I will be building an ECC based Threadripper this fall.

Instructor 9y ago

TL;DR: clear winner in multithread productivity, intel better in single-thread productivity, around Ryzen 1800X in gaming (in game mode, which tries to pin threads to one die at a time and disables SMT), great TDP (stays under 180w at full load), has some teething issues with the NUMA nature of two-dies, but is overall a great processor.

vbezhenar 9y ago

Well, for multi core workloads AMD is a clear winner. Other features are nice too: ECC memory; no thermopaste nonsense. I'm really waiting for future Intel offerings, they must do something extraordinary to gain lead.

paulmd 9y ago
> Well, for multi core workloads AMD is a clear winner. Actually not really. It's actually slower in x265 encoding than a 7900X, and it doesn't really pull away much in x264 or Blender rendering either (10-25% over a 7900X). Also, it appears to perform pretty badly at some compilation workloads too, like a 1950X barely beats a 6900K at Chromium compiling using MSVS. At most you can say that you really need to look at the specific task. Of course there may still be some tuning, but right now it's certainly not the slam-dunk that everyone assumed it would be. http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/10 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/8 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/11 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp... https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/7 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/10 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... Not a particularly great showing overall for a processor with 60% more cores. Despite AMD's attempted pushback it appears Intel's smack-talk was correct and Infinity Fabric is not a magic panacea for NUMA performance problems. It also pulls an absolutely absurd amount of power to do it, literally more than a 7900X. The onboard package-power measurement appears to be drastically undershooting the power as measured at the wall. Even factoring out PSU efficiency losses, measuring inside the case something is eating at least 130W that isn't showing up as package power. https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_rog_zenith_extreme_and_ryzen_1950x_threadripper_review/3 https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_x399_... http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/19 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadripp...

pcunite 9y ago

Do any of the Ryzen or Threadripper skus have on-board graphics?

krsdcbl 9y ago

This could actually be huge news for desktop based rendering, video editing, cgi of any kind. Beeing able to render on 64 threads for just the price of 2 high end graphics cards seriously makes me consider stick with cpu rendering for my next workstation - even at a lower frequency per core the time savings could be substanial.