5 ms·

I took the liberty of comparing the benchmarks online for the i5-8400 vs the Ryzen 5-1600: https://goo.gl/R4AQZe https://goo.gl/R4AQZe For single-threaded perf

I took the liberty of comparing the benchmarks online for the i5-8400 vs the Ryzen 5-1600: https://goo.gl/R4AQZe https://goo.gl/R4AQZe For single-threaded performance, the i5 wins (no-brainer due to the higher turbo clock), but for multi-threaded performance, the ryzen is still a winner, for less money. Power consumption _is_ higher for the Ryzen though. I'm thinking that the Ryzen is still the best bet for now as far as bang for your buck, considering it has hyperthreading AND can be overclocked, and the i5 does not. Not sure if the i5 can be overclocked. If not, then the Ryzen will probably beat the i5 in single-threaded performance as well if you OC it.

mtgx 9y ago
Disregarding brand loyalty and whatnot, there are very few situations in which AMD's Ryzen chips aren't a "no-brainer" over Intel's. Most rational people should be getting AMD's chips and AMD Ryzen-based devices.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  I took a hard, rational look at Ryzen for my latest workstation purchase. Ultimately I went with Intel due to all the reports of crashes under heavy SMT load on Linux.
  - gcp 9y ago
    You can RMA affected chips (I've done so), which were from early batches (apparently). It's inconvenient but it's not the first and won't be the last piece of hardware that has to be RMA-ed. At least you can RMA them! Intel didn't offer that when TSX turned out to be broken. After compiling things on an 8 thread Haswell Xeon, and now a 16-thread Ryzen, I really want a ThreadRipper...
  - loeg 9y ago
    That's understandable, but it's also worth pointing out that that issue is now understood and affects only processors manufactured before June 2017. Any affected processor should be returned for replacement or RMA.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- pizza234 9y ago
  I don't think the situations are as few as you report. The heat/consumptions and single-core speed aspects are not negligible. In addition (although this is definitely something for a minority of users), I suffered blocking VFIO scheduling issues with AMD (A10) while I didn't with Intel. Even Ryzen seems to be immature for VFIO (but I didn't personally test this).
  - gcp 9y ago
    Doesn't Ryzen have better power efficiency compared to these new Coffee Lake's? The issue is a bit muddled because sites are (for some weird reason?) ignoring the most common Ryzen SKU, which is 65W (R7 1700).
    - bilbo0s 9y ago
      But the Ryzens being compared... consume quite a bit more power than the intel parts they are being compared against. That said, yes, if power consumption is no item, the Ryzens look better. If you are looking for power efficiency, go with the intel parts.
      - gcp 9y ago
        No, no, not at all! That's exactly what I was pointing at: most reviews are using the most power hungry Ryzen SKUs (95W), so of course it looks bad in comparison. Meanwhile, the price/perf leader and most sold Ryzen SKU is only 65W. This one is ahead of Intel in power efficiency.
    - uep 9y ago
      I've noticed this as well. It seems outright bizarre that many benchmarks have been leaving out the 1700, when anecdotally, it seems to be the Ryzen that people are buying. It also seems to be the price/performance/wattage sweet spot for Ryzen, since it has low wattage, and also comes bundled with a cooler.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  I considered ThreadRipper, but I'm going to overclock 8700K. Multiple cores are good to have sometimes (clean rebuild, reindexing), but 99% of time there are 1-2 threads and their performance is most important. If AMD would improve ThreadRipper IPC and frequency at least to 5 GHz, it would be much more interesting choice.
- verall 9y ago
  Really? I'm honestly looking for opinions here. I'm currently looking at the i7-7820X for a gaming/developer/GP machine. The Ryzen 1800X has only 16PCIe lanes, and a dual channel memory controller that is not as fast as Intel's. The Ryzen 1920X has what I need, but costs about $200 more, and I'm a bit concerned about performance consistency due to the NUMA architecture. With this in mind, I'm really leaning towards the 7820x. But I keep seeing these posts saying that beyond brand loyalty, Ryzen is the way to go. Is the balanced ST/MT workstation niche really in Ryzen's court?
dogma1138 9y ago
The i5 is cheaper, and actually outperforms the 1600 in most productivity benchmarks as well. It also has an iGPU and if you are buying a 180$ CPU it actually counts.
- holtalanm 9y ago
  If you care about integrated graphics. Most desktops will probably have a dedicated GPU, as well though. Which makes the integration graphics completely useless. I would like to see the benchmarks that show the i5 outperforming the Ryzen 5 1600X in a multi-core setting.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    In the <200$ CPU range it's not uncommon to see no dedicated GPUs, both form a budget perspective and for practical perspective an iGPU comes quite in handy. As for the productivity benchmarks the Anandtech ones put it ahead or tied with the 1600 with most benchmarks other than CBMC. For more common productivity uses such as office work and video encoding the 8400 is faster, sure it won't beat the 1600 in Cinebench but how many people render in Cinema 4D on a sub 200$ CPU? And even in Cinema4D MC it's not that far behind. At this point it's really not a "no-brainer" it's about price, if you aren't going for a dGPU the 1600/1600X might not be worth the premium unless the initial shortage of CoffeeLake is going to hike the price above the 180$ MSRP. If you are buying a dGPU and will be gaming it's again not a non-brainer since the 8400 is faster, although at that point paying 70$ more for the 8600K and pushing it to 5-5.2ghz would be much better. If you are looking to build an SFF PC or a NUC again the 1600 is not a non-brainer since you will need to account for a dGPU. At best you can say is that the 1600/1600X are still competitive, but they are quite far from being a non-brainer. In fact they are only competitive because of the recent price cuts, if the 1600X was still priced at $250-260 the only non-brainer here would be the 8600K.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Heh, you made me realize that unlike AMD previous gens, Ryzen has no GPU inside. I wonder if they tried to make a Ryzen APU in labs.
gcp 9y ago
Computerbase concluded that the R7 1700 and the R5 1600(X) beat (respectively) the 8700K and 8600K in price/performance for non-gaming uses. Pretty graphs: https://pics.computerbase.de/8/0/0/8/6/diagramme/70-630.1507202908.svg https://pics.computerbase.de/8/0/0/8/6/diagramme/70-630.1507... Somewhat surprising to see AMD in this situation given the console design wins and those being 8 core systems, but for now gaming remains Intel's forte, though.
- c2h5oh 9y ago
  That's because DirectX 11 and older have a single thread draw submission queue which is being a bottleneck. DX11 still dominates - right now there are five (5) DX12-only games and only a handful announced, because it's so completely different you have to re-engineer significant part of game engine to get the benefits.

mtgx 9y ago

Disregarding brand loyalty and whatnot, there are very few situations in which AMD's Ryzen chips aren't a "no-brainer" over Intel's. Most rational people should be getting AMD's chips and AMD Ryzen-based devices.

hyperbovine 9y ago
I took a hard, rational look at Ryzen for my latest workstation purchase. Ultimately I went with Intel due to all the reports of crashes under heavy SMT load on Linux.
- gcp 9y ago
  You can RMA affected chips (I've done so), which were from early batches (apparently). It's inconvenient but it's not the first and won't be the last piece of hardware that has to be RMA-ed. At least you can RMA them! Intel didn't offer that when TSX turned out to be broken. After compiling things on an 8 thread Haswell Xeon, and now a 16-thread Ryzen, I really want a ThreadRipper...
- loeg 9y ago
  That's understandable, but it's also worth pointing out that that issue is now understood and affects only processors manufactured before June 2017. Any affected processor should be returned for replacement or RMA.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pizza234 9y ago
I don't think the situations are as few as you report. The heat/consumptions and single-core speed aspects are not negligible. In addition (although this is definitely something for a minority of users), I suffered blocking VFIO scheduling issues with AMD (A10) while I didn't with Intel. Even Ryzen seems to be immature for VFIO (but I didn't personally test this).
- gcp 9y ago
  Doesn't Ryzen have better power efficiency compared to these new Coffee Lake's? The issue is a bit muddled because sites are (for some weird reason?) ignoring the most common Ryzen SKU, which is 65W (R7 1700).
  - bilbo0s 9y ago
    But the Ryzens being compared... consume quite a bit more power than the intel parts they are being compared against. That said, yes, if power consumption is no item, the Ryzens look better. If you are looking for power efficiency, go with the intel parts.
    - gcp 9y ago
      No, no, not at all! That's exactly what I was pointing at: most reviews are using the most power hungry Ryzen SKUs (95W), so of course it looks bad in comparison. Meanwhile, the price/perf leader and most sold Ryzen SKU is only 65W. This one is ahead of Intel in power efficiency.
  - uep 9y ago
    I've noticed this as well. It seems outright bizarre that many benchmarks have been leaving out the 1700, when anecdotally, it seems to be the Ryzen that people are buying. It also seems to be the price/performance/wattage sweet spot for Ryzen, since it has low wattage, and also comes bundled with a cooler.
vbezhenar 9y ago
I considered ThreadRipper, but I'm going to overclock 8700K. Multiple cores are good to have sometimes (clean rebuild, reindexing), but 99% of time there are 1-2 threads and their performance is most important. If AMD would improve ThreadRipper IPC and frequency at least to 5 GHz, it would be much more interesting choice.
verall 9y ago
Really? I'm honestly looking for opinions here. I'm currently looking at the i7-7820X for a gaming/developer/GP machine. The Ryzen 1800X has only 16PCIe lanes, and a dual channel memory controller that is not as fast as Intel's. The Ryzen 1920X has what I need, but costs about $200 more, and I'm a bit concerned about performance consistency due to the NUMA architecture. With this in mind, I'm really leaning towards the 7820x. But I keep seeing these posts saying that beyond brand loyalty, Ryzen is the way to go. Is the balanced ST/MT workstation niche really in Ryzen's court?

dogma1138 9y ago

The i5 is cheaper, and actually outperforms the 1600 in most productivity benchmarks as well. It also has an iGPU and if you are buying a 180$ CPU it actually counts.

holtalanm 9y ago
If you care about integrated graphics. Most desktops will probably have a dedicated GPU, as well though. Which makes the integration graphics completely useless. I would like to see the benchmarks that show the i5 outperforming the Ryzen 5 1600X in a multi-core setting.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  In the <200$ CPU range it's not uncommon to see no dedicated GPUs, both form a budget perspective and for practical perspective an iGPU comes quite in handy. As for the productivity benchmarks the Anandtech ones put it ahead or tied with the 1600 with most benchmarks other than CBMC. For more common productivity uses such as office work and video encoding the 8400 is faster, sure it won't beat the 1600 in Cinebench but how many people render in Cinema 4D on a sub 200$ CPU? And even in Cinema4D MC it's not that far behind. At this point it's really not a "no-brainer" it's about price, if you aren't going for a dGPU the 1600/1600X might not be worth the premium unless the initial shortage of CoffeeLake is going to hike the price above the 180$ MSRP. If you are buying a dGPU and will be gaming it's again not a non-brainer since the 8400 is faster, although at that point paying 70$ more for the 8600K and pushing it to 5-5.2ghz would be much better. If you are looking to build an SFF PC or a NUC again the 1600 is not a non-brainer since you will need to account for a dGPU. At best you can say is that the 1600/1600X are still competitive, but they are quite far from being a non-brainer. In fact they are only competitive because of the recent price cuts, if the 1600X was still priced at $250-260 the only non-brainer here would be the 8600K.
agumonkey 9y ago
Heh, you made me realize that unlike AMD previous gens, Ryzen has no GPU inside. I wonder if they tried to make a Ryzen APU in labs.

gcp 9y ago

Computerbase concluded that the R7 1700 and the R5 1600(X) beat (respectively) the 8700K and 8600K in price/performance for non-gaming uses. Pretty graphs: https://pics.computerbase.de/8/0/0/8/6/diagramme/70-630.1507202908.svg https://pics.computerbase.de/8/0/0/8/6/diagramme/70-630.1507... Somewhat surprising to see AMD in this situation given the console design wins and those being 8 core systems, but for now gaming remains Intel's forte, though.

c2h5oh 9y ago
That's because DirectX 11 and older have a single thread draw submission queue which is being a bottleneck. DX11 still dominates - right now there are five (5) DX12-only games and only a handful announced, because it's so completely different you have to re-engineer significant part of game engine to get the benefits.