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tl;dr As you'd expect, AMD's chip is a no-brainer on bang/buck. I wish more reviewers would compare chips at various price levels, because I think that's how m

by mtgx 9y ago

tl;dr As you'd expect, AMD's chip is a no-brainer on bang/buck. I wish more reviewers would compare chips at various price levels, because I think that's how most people think about their purchase. If you want to build a $1500 gaming rig, you're going to look at the whole system cost, and you'll designate a certain price for the CPU. You'll want to buy "the best CPU for that money". Similarly, if a medium development company has $10,000 to upgrade some of its systems, does it buy 6 Intel CPUs or 10 Ryzen CPUs with that money? Comparing product brands like "Intel's top of the line" vs "AMD's top of the line" is not very useful, especially if there's a 2x delta price difference between them, while the performance delta is nowhere that big. This should be even more the case for data center purchases, where total cost of ownership is king.

fpoling 9y ago
For data centers the cost is dominated by electricity, not CPU price, so they look for performance per Watt. This was not addressed in the article.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > so they look for performance per Watt. This was not addressed in the article. The did test power consumption though: https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/09/fnw_showdown_power_scaling-100736973-orig.jpg https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/09/fnw_showdow...
  - fpoling 9y ago
    That plot shows the power consumption during one rather synthetic benchmark. What is necessary for meaningful conclusion about price/watt is to have power consumption during a particular benchmark so the results can be scaled. This is not addressed.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  They actually did address it tangentially in the article. The highest the AMD CPU used wattage wise was under 275W. They showed Intel using over 50W more at peak and claimed they’d heard of it pulling over 500W (total, and in a scenario that almost no DC would likely do). So yes, AMD has a significant advantage OpEx and CapEx wise.
- nspattak 9y ago
  to be fair though, these are not server processors, they belong in the office not in a data center.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  ? It's sitting there one page 2.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Threadripper is segmented as a workstation processor - Epyc is the server line. Real-world energy efficiency is extremely complex, because it's hugely dependent on workload. If you're the kind of customer that is highly sensitive to efficiency, you really need to perform your own evaluation.
ethbro 9y ago
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html It's only the Passmark benchmark, and there's some noise from older CPUs, but it's still a useful tool. Tom's also does a decent job of including price as a first-class metric. Absolutely agreed though. I skip over any comparison review site that doesn't index for price: my goal for computer personal hardware is always to get the most (whatever) per dollar, never to get the best regardless of cost.
ckastner 9y ago
The actual TL;DR is that the Core i9 beat the Threadripper ist almost every test. The bang-for-the-buck argument is only briefly mentioned towards the end, and is followed up by: One last thing to consider is that the price of just the CPU isn't everything. When it's watered down by the total cost of the system, it may indeed be worth it for some. For example, the Falcon Northwest Talon systems that we used were both dream configurations with $2,400 in GPUs, maybe $1,800 in RAM and $1,200 in SSDs. That doesn't count the motherboard, hard drive, cooling, case, power supply or custom hand-paint jobs. When you're building a box in this range, the price difference in the CPU isn't that much.
- mda 9y ago
  Not by a margin that warrants the price difference. Tbh most are negligible and power consumption is worse as well.
- ycombinete 9y ago
  I'll take both as TL;DRs.
- gwynD 9y ago
  I'm sort of unsure if that argument makes any sense. Say you're at a restaurant, and they're selling a salad at $600. It's a really good salad, but not $600-salad. But hey, you're at the restaurant with the realtor you're buying a house from. Combined, the salad and house are $865,300. Would that change your choice of meal? More realistically, people often make the mistake to see money in relative terms where it should be treated in absolute terms. Say you're buing a nice ballpoint pen for $20. On the way out the store, you see a sign that the pen was actually on offer for just $10. Chances are, you'll invest the two minutes to get the rebate. Now consider the same situation, but you're buying an iPhone. Again, you see a sign advertising the iPhone for just $675, not the $685 you paid. Most people are less likely to invest the two minutes here, even though the payoffs are equal.

by mtgx 9y ago

fpoling 9y ago

For data centers the cost is dominated by electricity, not CPU price, so they look for performance per Watt. This was not addressed in the article.

jhasse 9y ago
> so they look for performance per Watt. This was not addressed in the article. The did test power consumption though: https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/09/fnw_showdown_power_scaling-100736973-orig.jpg https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/09/fnw_showdow...
- fpoling 9y ago
  That plot shows the power consumption during one rather synthetic benchmark. What is necessary for meaningful conclusion about price/watt is to have power consumption during a particular benchmark so the results can be scaled. This is not addressed.
jsjohnst 9y ago
They actually did address it tangentially in the article. The highest the AMD CPU used wattage wise was under 275W. They showed Intel using over 50W more at peak and claimed they’d heard of it pulling over 500W (total, and in a scenario that almost no DC would likely do). So yes, AMD has a significant advantage OpEx and CapEx wise.
nspattak 9y ago
to be fair though, these are not server processors, they belong in the office not in a data center.
hyperbovine 9y ago
? It's sitting there one page 2.
jdietrich 9y ago
Threadripper is segmented as a workstation processor - Epyc is the server line. Real-world energy efficiency is extremely complex, because it's hugely dependent on workload. If you're the kind of customer that is highly sensitive to efficiency, you really need to perform your own evaluation.

ethbro 9y ago

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html It's only the Passmark benchmark, and there's some noise from older CPUs, but it's still a useful tool. Tom's also does a decent job of including price as a first-class metric. Absolutely agreed though. I skip over any comparison review site that doesn't index for price: my goal for computer personal hardware is always to get the most (whatever) per dollar, never to get the best regardless of cost.

ckastner 9y ago

The actual TL;DR is that the Core i9 beat the Threadripper ist almost every test. The bang-for-the-buck argument is only briefly mentioned towards the end, and is followed up by: One last thing to consider is that the price of just the CPU isn't everything. When it's watered down by the total cost of the system, it may indeed be worth it for some. For example, the Falcon Northwest Talon systems that we used were both dream configurations with $2,400 in GPUs, maybe $1,800 in RAM and $1,200 in SSDs. That doesn't count the motherboard, hard drive, cooling, case, power supply or custom hand-paint jobs. When you're building a box in this range, the price difference in the CPU isn't that much.

mda 9y ago
Not by a margin that warrants the price difference. Tbh most are negligible and power consumption is worse as well.
ycombinete 9y ago
I'll take both as TL;DRs.
gwynD 9y ago
I'm sort of unsure if that argument makes any sense. Say you're at a restaurant, and they're selling a salad at $600. It's a really good salad, but not $600-salad. But hey, you're at the restaurant with the realtor you're buying a house from. Combined, the salad and house are $865,300. Would that change your choice of meal? More realistically, people often make the mistake to see money in relative terms where it should be treated in absolute terms. Say you're buing a nice ballpoint pen for $20. On the way out the store, you see a sign that the pen was actually on offer for just $10. Chances are, you'll invest the two minutes to get the rebate. Now consider the same situation, but you're buying an iPhone. Again, you see a sign advertising the iPhone for just $675, not the $685 you paid. Most people are less likely to invest the two minutes here, even though the payoffs are equal.