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Here's a different benchmark (video rendering) that still places all the 8th gen Intel chips above Ryzen 2: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/After-Ef

Here's a different benchmark (video rendering) that still places all the 8th gen Intel chips above Ryzen 2: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/After-Effects-CC-2018-CPU-Comparison-AMD-Ryzen-2-vs-Intel-8th-Gen-1137/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/After-Effects-CC-... I assume these tests are unpatched Intels though. Since my use case for CPU is video rendering and not gaming, I still don't have a reason to switch to Ryzen, as much as I want one. Threadrippers are still way out of my price range (~$1K) and are about the same performance as top tier i7 8th gen.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
Isn't 3D rendering a scene like this something everyone would just use a GPU for?
- floatboth 9y ago
  No, you can't always do this (e.g. Blender Cycles does support CUDA and OpenCL, but only if you don't use their shading language thing), and it's not always better (e.g. according to Gamers Nexus, a Threadripper 1950X beats a GTX 1080 Ti significantly on their test scene)
gascan 9y ago
Adobe does a terrible job with multithreaded chips in general, it seems. Instead of investing in faster chips, is there faster software you can get for a couple hundred? Ex-Lightroom user here; got way more performance by changing tools than I ever could have with better hardware.
d1zzy 9y ago
Ultimately if all you need to use the CPU for is After Effects CC then follow the results of that benchmark (or rather, follow the performance/$ for that specific benchmark). Otherwise, in general the AMD CPUs give more multi-core performance/$ than Intel, for example, in any multi-core x264 based test I've seen. And it makes sense why that is so, the AMD CPU has more cores and more cache for the same $. And that's only comparing CPU prices and performance, if we consider the motherboard prices then the needle moves further into AMD's favor. As to why After Effects CC seems to prefer Intel so much would indicate some specific optimizations Adobe performs, optimizations that seem to favor Intel for now, not general raw multi-core performance of the Intel CPU. For single core performance the situation is reversed, the higher clocked (but lower core count) Intel CPUs will obviously have much better single core performance which is important for games as even today they tend to be coded relying on a few threads.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  > As to why After Effects CC seems to prefer Intel so much would indicate some specific optimizations Adobe performs, optimizations that seem to favor Intel for now, not general raw multi-core performance of the Intel CPU. I bet its AVX-512. Which is "Intel Specific" but that's the entire point of AVX-512, a new Intel specific instruction set that has high performance benefits. Overall, AMD is betting on general purpose cores with at most 128-bits per operation. AMD supports the AVX 256-bit instruction set, but its "emulated", as the ALU pipelines are 128-bit (granted: AMD can gang together two ALUs in a 2x128-bit configuration to execute the 256-bit instructions) Intel supports 3x256-bits per operation on their CPUs, with the 512-bit AVX512 instructions using two execution ports at a time. So for any code that's written to be SIMD-heavy, Intel machines will likely be faster. Not only because of AVX512, but also because Intel's AVX-256 bit instructions are better supported compared to AMD (3x256-bit for Intel, vs 2x128-bit for AMD) ------------ With that being said: the benefits of SIMD approach Ahmdal's law just like anything else. In particular, AVX512 uses so much power that Intel cores are forced to downclock. So AMD can run more cores, at higher frequencies. But Intel's cores do more work per clock tick and per unit energy. It seems like AMD's 16-cores (each doing 2x128-bit) are only slightly slower than Intel's 10-cores (each doing 3x256-bits) in those SIMD-heavy tests.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > (3x256-bit for Intel, vs 2x128-bit for AMD) It's not quite that harsh for workloads that aren't entirely FMA. Zen has 2x128-bit adders plus 2x128-bit multipliers.
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      Fair enough. The full AMD pipeline contains 4x 128-bit execution ports. But this is a bit complicated, so I was ignoring that part of the core. IMO, the more important bottleneck is the load/store unit. Intel's system has 2x 256-bit loads + 1x 256-bit writes to the L1 cache. While AMD's system has 2x128-bit load+store units for its L1 cache. Thus my numbers above: 3x256-bit for Intel (2 reads + 1 write), while 2x128-bits for AMD (2x read-or-write).

semi-extrinsic 9y ago

Isn't 3D rendering a scene like this something everyone would just use a GPU for?

floatboth 9y ago
No, you can't always do this (e.g. Blender Cycles does support CUDA and OpenCL, but only if you don't use their shading language thing), and it's not always better (e.g. according to Gamers Nexus, a Threadripper 1950X beats a GTX 1080 Ti significantly on their test scene)

gascan 9y ago

Adobe does a terrible job with multithreaded chips in general, it seems. Instead of investing in faster chips, is there faster software you can get for a couple hundred? Ex-Lightroom user here; got way more performance by changing tools than I ever could have with better hardware.

d1zzy 9y ago

Ultimately if all you need to use the CPU for is After Effects CC then follow the results of that benchmark (or rather, follow the performance/$ for that specific benchmark). Otherwise, in general the AMD CPUs give more multi-core performance/$ than Intel, for example, in any multi-core x264 based test I've seen. And it makes sense why that is so, the AMD CPU has more cores and more cache for the same $. And that's only comparing CPU prices and performance, if we consider the motherboard prices then the needle moves further into AMD's favor. As to why After Effects CC seems to prefer Intel so much would indicate some specific optimizations Adobe performs, optimizations that seem to favor Intel for now, not general raw multi-core performance of the Intel CPU. For single core performance the situation is reversed, the higher clocked (but lower core count) Intel CPUs will obviously have much better single core performance which is important for games as even today they tend to be coded relying on a few threads.

dragontamer 9y ago
> As to why After Effects CC seems to prefer Intel so much would indicate some specific optimizations Adobe performs, optimizations that seem to favor Intel for now, not general raw multi-core performance of the Intel CPU. I bet its AVX-512. Which is "Intel Specific" but that's the entire point of AVX-512, a new Intel specific instruction set that has high performance benefits. Overall, AMD is betting on general purpose cores with at most 128-bits per operation. AMD supports the AVX 256-bit instruction set, but its "emulated", as the ALU pipelines are 128-bit (granted: AMD can gang together two ALUs in a 2x128-bit configuration to execute the 256-bit instructions) Intel supports 3x256-bits per operation on their CPUs, with the 512-bit AVX512 instructions using two execution ports at a time. So for any code that's written to be SIMD-heavy, Intel machines will likely be faster. Not only because of AVX512, but also because Intel's AVX-256 bit instructions are better supported compared to AMD (3x256-bit for Intel, vs 2x128-bit for AMD) ------------ With that being said: the benefits of SIMD approach Ahmdal's law just like anything else. In particular, AVX512 uses so much power that Intel cores are forced to downclock. So AMD can run more cores, at higher frequencies. But Intel's cores do more work per clock tick and per unit energy. It seems like AMD's 16-cores (each doing 2x128-bit) are only slightly slower than Intel's 10-cores (each doing 3x256-bits) in those SIMD-heavy tests.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > (3x256-bit for Intel, vs 2x128-bit for AMD) It's not quite that harsh for workloads that aren't entirely FMA. Zen has 2x128-bit adders plus 2x128-bit multipliers.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    Fair enough. The full AMD pipeline contains 4x 128-bit execution ports. But this is a bit complicated, so I was ignoring that part of the core. IMO, the more important bottleneck is the load/store unit. Intel's system has 2x 256-bit loads + 1x 256-bit writes to the L1 cache. While AMD's system has 2x128-bit load+store units for its L1 cache. Thus my numbers above: 3x256-bit for Intel (2 reads + 1 write), while 2x128-bits for AMD (2x read-or-write).