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> If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. > If you love Intel still after all, you should still

> If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. > If you love Intel still after all, you should still buy AMD, teach them a painful lesson to wake them up. But how do I choose which AMD CPU I need ? Back in my youth p4 and athlon were easy to compare (freq., IPS and a modifier because AMD) but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I look at AMD names it's as confusing but with a different lingo. I feel the same regarding GPU so maybe I am too old for that now.

barkingcat 8y ago
On the AMD side, there's only 2 generations of Ryzen. Ryzen 1 - slow, medium, fast, elite Ryzen 2 - slow, medium, fast, elite pick the one you need based on pricing/discounts if any. It's not that hard really.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Thanks but... bear with me https://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/comparatif-cpu-amd-intel-processeurs,2-8-2.html https://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/comparatif-cpu-amd-inte... what are those ryzen 3/5/7 TR ?
  - dr_zoidberg 8y ago
    13xx, 15xx, 17xx, ThreadRipper. For gen 2, that'd be: 23xx, 25xx, 27xx, ThreadRipper. I think they picked the names/numbers to show some kind of equivalence with i3/5/7, but that's not quite it.
    - cestith 8y ago
      Don't forget the 1700X and 1800X. ThreadRipper is interesting. It requires a different socket than the other desktop processors and is targeted more at workstation class machines. In servers there are Epyc and Epyc 2.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      ThreadRipper seems more like a Xeon competitor to me. Something for the server room crowd.
      - saati 8y ago
        Epyc is the server Xeon competitor, Threadripper is a workstation cpu.
      - snvzz 8y ago
        That'd be EPYC, their server offering. Threadripper is their workstation CPU.
  - barkingcat 8y ago
    That's exactly it slow (3), medium (5), fast (7), elite (Threadripper) If you don't want to spend more than USD$800 on the CPU alone, don't look at the elite/threadripper line. What is your budget? That is the first question you need to answer instead of trying to understand the entire line of chips, look at how much you have to spend, and then find the fastest one within the budget. It's useless to try to think about the entire line of CPU's when you will only buy 1 chip (unless you are representing Dell and need to buy thousands of chips)
dom96 8y ago
Compare the benchmarks for those processors?
- mcv 8y ago
  Ah, but now we're not allowed to benchmark Intel anymore, so nobody can prove AMD is faster now.
  - phkahler 8y ago
    AMD was faster depending on the workload. With these patches, I think AMD being faster is just a given regardless of what you're doing.
ksec 8y ago
> but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I look at AMD names it's as confusing but with a different lingo. They way I see it, I could look at AMD's Core count, Threads and Frequency, As they are clearly labelled, and that is it. On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up.
- naasking 8y ago
  > On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up. Seriously, Intel has always been way too confusing with their processor lineup. AMD has always been straightforward: leave in the kitchen sink on nearly every CPU and performance scales with price. Not linearly of course, but it's much simpler to choose an AMD CPU.
  - wruza 8y ago
    I don’t get it. You just look at popular apps&games benchmarks and decide your hw stack. You don’t need to synth-bench AVX differences unless you’re writing bleeding edge specialized software that depends on it.
    - naasking 8y ago
      I write all kinds of different types of software. The feature matrix of Intel CPUs has always been remarkably inconsistent, like you get AVX, but don't get virtualization extensions, or vice versa, etc. Basically, if you don't want the headache you just buy one of the highest end/most expensive CPUs on offer and you're probably fine. With AMD the feature set is pretty consistent, so you have considerably more choice to find a good price point.
    - kllrnohj 8y ago
      I just tried to recycle my old i7-4770k from my gaming CPU to a home server. Only guess what? The 4770k doesn't have VT-d. The cheaper 4770 does have VT-d, so why did the more expensive, "upgraded" 4770k not have VT-d? Because Intel's product line is a disaster. We're not talking minor performance differences in features, we're talking features randomly added and removed for no logical reason from the same generation & tier of CPU model.
lordlimecat 8y ago
Intel no longer just has i3/5/7-- celeron, pentium, i3/5/7/9 and plus variants. Within those are dozens of variants differentiated on things like PCIe bandwidth, SMT, instruction sets, accessible RAM, and so on. In comparison, AMD's offerings are surprisingly easy. There's a handful of SKUs differentiated on core count and frequency. Generally they all have the same PCIe lanes, RAM access, SMT, instruction sets, and so on.
onli 8y ago
The right answer to this is to look into benchmarks. It now works again to compare Intel and AMD clocks, but only of the current generation, and then there is core count and motherboard prices to consider, so on. A project of mine is a hardware recommender, it also includes a meta-benchmark. I collect published benchmarks and build a globally sorted order of processors out of it. https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/games/cpu https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/games/cpu for games, https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/apps/cpu https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/apps/cpu for application workloads (that one still misses a bit of work, the gaming benchmark is better). Legacy processors are greyed out, so this might be a good starting point for you. There is also a benchmark for gpus. For most people this processor choice is also very easy, it is "Get a Ryzen 5 2600 or an Intel Core i5-8400." Feel free to ask if you want some custom recommendations, email is in profile :)
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Pretty cool project. Thanks :).
- newman314 8y ago
  Can you add the ability to sort based on price/perf? Also, the existing bar graph is unclear to me. What does 10/10 mean?
  - onli 8y ago
    10 is just the fastest. Because it is a meta-benchmark, this rating is not necessarily relative performance, it is based on the position in the ordering. The achieved average FPS is just a factor in that, used to make the distance bigger to indicate performance jumps. Example, fictional values: The 8700K is the fastest, because it was most often seen as the benchmark leader. It gets a 10. The 8600K has almost the same FPS, but it was always a bit slower, it gets a 9.9. The i5-8500 comes next, but its average FPS scaled to the 0-10 scale is lower, it gets a 8.7. Then the i5-8400, always seen as slower than the 8500 in benchmarks, would at most be able to get a 8.6, no matter what the average FPS says (with enough benchmarks average FPS become an almost meaningless metric, it's the position in the benchmark that counts). That's why it is not possible to calculate price/performance with this. I could only highlight good deals, processors that have a high position despite being cheaper than the processors below. Which is of course already baked into the logic of the recommender.

barkingcat 8y ago

On the AMD side, there's only 2 generations of Ryzen. Ryzen 1 - slow, medium, fast, elite Ryzen 2 - slow, medium, fast, elite pick the one you need based on pricing/discounts if any. It's not that hard really.

johnchristopher 8y ago
Thanks but... bear with me https://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/comparatif-cpu-amd-intel-processeurs,2-8-2.html https://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/comparatif-cpu-amd-inte... what are those ryzen 3/5/7 TR ?
- dr_zoidberg 8y ago
  13xx, 15xx, 17xx, ThreadRipper. For gen 2, that'd be: 23xx, 25xx, 27xx, ThreadRipper. I think they picked the names/numbers to show some kind of equivalence with i3/5/7, but that's not quite it.
  - cestith 8y ago
    Don't forget the 1700X and 1800X. ThreadRipper is interesting. It requires a different socket than the other desktop processors and is targeted more at workstation class machines. In servers there are Epyc and Epyc 2.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    ThreadRipper seems more like a Xeon competitor to me. Something for the server room crowd.
    - saati 8y ago
      Epyc is the server Xeon competitor, Threadripper is a workstation cpu.
    - snvzz 8y ago
      That'd be EPYC, their server offering. Threadripper is their workstation CPU.
- barkingcat 8y ago
  That's exactly it slow (3), medium (5), fast (7), elite (Threadripper) If you don't want to spend more than USD$800 on the CPU alone, don't look at the elite/threadripper line. What is your budget? That is the first question you need to answer instead of trying to understand the entire line of chips, look at how much you have to spend, and then find the fastest one within the budget. It's useless to try to think about the entire line of CPU's when you will only buy 1 chip (unless you are representing Dell and need to buy thousands of chips)

dom96 8y ago

Compare the benchmarks for those processors?

mcv 8y ago
Ah, but now we're not allowed to benchmark Intel anymore, so nobody can prove AMD is faster now.
- phkahler 8y ago
  AMD was faster depending on the workload. With these patches, I think AMD being faster is just a given regardless of what you're doing.

ksec 8y ago

> but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I look at AMD names it's as confusing but with a different lingo. They way I see it, I could look at AMD's Core count, Threads and Frequency, As they are clearly labelled, and that is it. On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up.

naasking 8y ago
> On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up. Seriously, Intel has always been way too confusing with their processor lineup. AMD has always been straightforward: leave in the kitchen sink on nearly every CPU and performance scales with price. Not linearly of course, but it's much simpler to choose an AMD CPU.
- wruza 8y ago
  I don’t get it. You just look at popular apps&games benchmarks and decide your hw stack. You don’t need to synth-bench AVX differences unless you’re writing bleeding edge specialized software that depends on it.
  - naasking 8y ago
    I write all kinds of different types of software. The feature matrix of Intel CPUs has always been remarkably inconsistent, like you get AVX, but don't get virtualization extensions, or vice versa, etc. Basically, if you don't want the headache you just buy one of the highest end/most expensive CPUs on offer and you're probably fine. With AMD the feature set is pretty consistent, so you have considerably more choice to find a good price point.
  - kllrnohj 8y ago
    I just tried to recycle my old i7-4770k from my gaming CPU to a home server. Only guess what? The 4770k doesn't have VT-d. The cheaper 4770 does have VT-d, so why did the more expensive, "upgraded" 4770k not have VT-d? Because Intel's product line is a disaster. We're not talking minor performance differences in features, we're talking features randomly added and removed for no logical reason from the same generation & tier of CPU model.

lordlimecat 8y ago

Intel no longer just has i3/5/7-- celeron, pentium, i3/5/7/9 and plus variants. Within those are dozens of variants differentiated on things like PCIe bandwidth, SMT, instruction sets, accessible RAM, and so on. In comparison, AMD's offerings are surprisingly easy. There's a handful of SKUs differentiated on core count and frequency. Generally they all have the same PCIe lanes, RAM access, SMT, instruction sets, and so on.

onli 8y ago

The right answer to this is to look into benchmarks. It now works again to compare Intel and AMD clocks, but only of the current generation, and then there is core count and motherboard prices to consider, so on. A project of mine is a hardware recommender, it also includes a meta-benchmark. I collect published benchmarks and build a globally sorted order of processors out of it. https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/games/cpu https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/games/cpu for games, https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/apps/cpu https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/apps/cpu for application workloads (that one still misses a bit of work, the gaming benchmark is better). Legacy processors are greyed out, so this might be a good starting point for you. There is also a benchmark for gpus. For most people this processor choice is also very easy, it is "Get a Ryzen 5 2600 or an Intel Core i5-8400." Feel free to ask if you want some custom recommendations, email is in profile :)

johnchristopher 8y ago
Pretty cool project. Thanks :).
newman314 8y ago
Can you add the ability to sort based on price/perf? Also, the existing bar graph is unclear to me. What does 10/10 mean?
- onli 8y ago
  10 is just the fastest. Because it is a meta-benchmark, this rating is not necessarily relative performance, it is based on the position in the ordering. The achieved average FPS is just a factor in that, used to make the distance bigger to indicate performance jumps. Example, fictional values: The 8700K is the fastest, because it was most often seen as the benchmark leader. It gets a 10. The 8600K has almost the same FPS, but it was always a bit slower, it gets a 9.9. The i5-8500 comes next, but its average FPS scaled to the 0-10 scale is lower, it gets a 8.7. Then the i5-8400, always seen as slower than the 8500 in benchmarks, would at most be able to get a 8.6, no matter what the average FPS says (with enough benchmarks average FPS become an almost meaningless metric, it's the position in the benchmark that counts). That's why it is not possible to calculate price/performance with this. I could only highlight good deals, processors that have a high position despite being cheaper than the processors below. Which is of course already baked into the logic of the recommender.