44 ms·

AMD Responds to Intel's 9th Gen Benchmarks

96 points by jrepinc 8y ago

vbezhenar 8y ago
Benchmarks might be bad, but I don't think that numbers are wrong. Intel frequency is much higher. If your game configuration limits FPS on single or duo core performance, Intel will be better, I have little doubts about that. But Intel has 1.5x price, so if you're thinking about performance/price, it's not that simple. And a lot of games are not limited by CPU anyway, unless you're playing with unusual settings (like very low graphics).
- simion314 8y ago
  Probably nobody is saying that AMD is faster, the issue is that if Intel is 5% faster but it costs double(including the coolers) then it does not look that good, so if Intel could find a way to say in the marketing slides that the Intel CPU is up to 50% faster then they can get a lot more sells. I also read that there are still some controversy about the CPU frequency for multicore and also that reviewers got speical CPUs, you are not guaranteed to get 5GHz on Intel so it is possible that in 1 month the new CPUs will have not as good turbo. My point is not to rush a purchase based on this initial benchmarks, wait a few more weeks.
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    Intel should be around 10-15% faster. It's like 4.3 GHz for AMD, 5 GHz for Intel with comparable IPC. Also 5 GHz boost is in 9900K specs, if you're not getting it, it should be enough reason to replace is as a defective.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - simion314 8y ago
      OK, so I can't be 100%sure what this means: "Max turbo frequency is the maximum single core frequency at which the processor is capable of operating using Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and, if present, Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost. Frequency is measured in gigahertz (GHz), or billion cycles per second." Does this mean that is guarantedd that 1 core will reach 5GHz ? Are there exceptions? Will it work it regular coolers ? Will it turbo without BIOS changes so in default config? Thanks if you can clear this, because I am not sure if thix Max is considering power users that overclock or not
      - berbec 8y ago
        The 8086k was 1-core 5ghz turbo. 9900k will do it with two. And it OCs to 5.1 on all cores.
      - vbezhenar 8y ago
        I'm not an expert, so take my words with a grain of salt. 9900K will reach 5GHz for 2 cores. So if your OS uses only 2 cores at the same time, they'll work at 5 GHz. If your OS uses more cores, CPU will slow down frequency. Also if CPU will be boosted for too long, it'll slow down anyway, because it must keep its 95W TDP. But you can change setting in BIOS, something like MultiCore Enhancement. This will allow CPU to use as much power as possibe, so it should be able to keep working at 5 GHz and 2 cores, if your PSU and cooler are good enough to provide and dissipate that power.
      - dsr_ 8y ago
        All of this is thermally limited. If your cooling system can pull the heat away fast enough, for some period of time the chip will go up to 5GHz on two cores. It's quite likely that a normal air-moving fan + heatpipe radiator will not let you do this for more than a few minutes.
      - dragontamer 8y ago
        The i9-9900k should reach 5GHz as long as: 1. Your power supply can supply the 200W needed. 2. Your motherboard's VRMs (voltage regulator modules) can supply the 200W needed. 3. Your CPU coolers can extract 200W of heat. Its all running outside of Intel's 95W TDP specification, but it seems like Intel is comfortable with claiming 5GHz on 2-cores of the i9-9900k if you have the appropriate PSU / Mobo / Coolers.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    Additionally, that hypothetical 5% is observed only in synthetic benchmarks devised to redline the CPU. Thus the performance difference is rather irrelevant and thus the price/performance ratio tilts rather favourably in favour of AMD.
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      It's not only synthetic benchmarks. Compilation speed improvement is very real, rendering speed, some simulations, etc. If your workloads are very light, you don't need K-class CPU at all. That said, ThreadRipper should be even better for those tasks at similar price and provides additional features like ECC support, more PCI lanes. IMO 9900K is awesome if you need best in class single-thread performance for one task and good multithread performance for another task. It would be good for me, for example. I like to play WoW and this game is pretty much single-core limited to provide even 60 FPS. And I'm using my PC for development, so improvements for compilation time are nice as well. Whether I would want to pay that price is another matter, I definitely won't buy new Intel CPU until they fix those Meltdown issues causing significant slowdown in some tasks. And if AMD will reach 5+ GHz by that time, I'll happily switch without second thought.
      - simion314 8y ago
        I agree, Intel is faster, what we complained here is the misleading benchmarks and tactics to make the huge price more justifiable. In programming community Intel also receives more skepticism because their compiler intentionally cripples AMD users and the disclaimer is put on the web as an image so is not picked up by search engines(last time I checked a few months back was still image).
  - chrisper 8y ago
    Also for Intel you almost always have to get a new motherboard.
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      Not now, you can use old Z370.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        If your existing board can actually provide enough power to run the chip properly, since clamping it to 95 watts really screws up the performance.
      - chrisper 8y ago
        It's probably one of the few cases where you can reuse the chipset / socket though (at least compared to AMD).
  - socceroos 8y ago
    These companies must know how reviewers work. I feel like it is easily gameable. You only have to make sure the first batches on shelves are the real deal. The good reviews flow in and then you can start sending out that high margin stock. What reviewer in their right mind waits until the dust settles and then compares batches?
    - lolc 8y ago
      Has this ever been observed?
      - xorfish 8y ago
        https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kingston-and-pny-caught-bait-and-switching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin... It has with SSDs.
        lolc 8y ago
        Shady indeed.
  - pizza234 8y ago
    The peak TDP is another controversial point. Interesting page from the Anandtech review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/21 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... Fully loading an i9-9900K will consume 170W. Note that this is POV-Ray, a ray tracer, which can be reasonably defined as real-world application. When stress tests are performed, like the following: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test-cpu-pc-guide,5461-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test-cpu-pc-guid... the peak is 205W, which is extremely high (when compared to the touted 95W TDP). AMD is actually transparent on the ThreadRipper power requirements - the reported TDP is 180W, and stress tests confirm that value for several models. In this respect, Intel is arguably cheating. I wonder if AMD could get an advantage (marketing and benchmark-wise), by declaring a low TDP of 95W, while having an effective 200+ one.
    - toast0 8y ago
      Intel has been fudging TDP for years at this point, especially in mobile, but apparently on desktop now, too. If you dissipate the spec sheet TDP, you get spec sheet performance with short turbo boosts, if you can source enough power and dissipate the heat, turbo will stay on. I'm sort of surprised that it peaks at just over twice the spec sheet, though.
cbg0 8y ago
Here's a roundup of all 9900K/9700K/9600K reviews: https://videocardz.com/78652/intel-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-and-z390-motherboard-review-roundup https://videocardz.com/78652/intel-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5...
chodeboy 8y ago
Is there any review which probes the binning of intel's new chips? Since the 7700k was 125mm² and the 9900k was 177mm² I suspect that there are more defects on average per chip. If that's true I'd argue that only some will actually be able to reach 5ghz. Regardless, it's intel and they are well known for using every scummy trick in the book. From using a compressor to cool their 5ghz giga-chip to using videos to show "realtime" demos running on their products. I wouldn't put it past them to specifically tune the system to ever so slightly to starve comparable ryzen chips.
larzang 8y ago
The controversial benchmarks are always at the 1080p level, and I have to wonder: who are these magical consumers who are willing to consider shelling out for an i9 and yet are still playing at 1080p. Of course such marketing benchmarking HAS to be done at 1080p, because anything more challenging and you're entirely gpu bound with cpu differences becoming margin of error fractions of a percent.
- slezyr 8y ago
  If you want more than 60Hz and not compressed colors then you will have to play at 1080p. Most gamers want more than 60Hz.
  - systemcluster 8y ago
    I run a 1440p IPS screen with 144Hz. DP 1.4 supports up to 4K with 120Hz by default. You really are not limited to 1080p anymore.
    - detaro 8y ago
      Not by the connections, but from the benchmarks I've seen GPUs can't keep up with that for graphics-intensive games. FreeSync/G-Sync do help a bit getting at least more than 60 fps.
      - broknbottle 8y ago
        Which GPU benchmark source are using to back up this statement because there are plenty of cards that can drive more than 60FPS+..
        detaro 8y ago
        E.g. here's benchmark numbers delivered by Nvidia, and even their best card doesn't hit 120 fps in all games at 4k - if you want fps over resolution, you're going to switch down, especially if you aren't on a truly top-of-line card. https://videocardz.com/77983/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-rtx-2080-official-performance-unveiled https://videocardz.com/77983/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-...
deforciant 8y ago
Few months ago I switched from i7 to Ryzen 2700X. Honestly, I don't know what would have to happen so that I would switch back to Intel :) In my developer workflows that include quite a lot of browser tabs, a bunch of Docker containers running, occasional Go or Docker build I don't get any of the CPUs at 100% often. Only when I do cross compilation to a multiple architectures I do use 6-9 CPUs and even then my machine is totally usable and I can't even feel that in the background lots of cores are at full utilisation. What really counts is the amount of CPUs available, I don't really care about their maximum frequency. Comments about gaming are valid but I think instead of buying Intel just go with a better GPU and you will win there as well.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  How hard is it to understand that there are various uses for PC, and yours is only one of those? Plenty of us can't make any use of more than 6-8 cores effectively, will never run any VMs or Docker, and plenty of software still will benefit from single-core performance. I am by no means a fan of the price/value ratio for new i9 CPU and any shady marketing cheap tricks generally, but I don't get this 'Ryzen works for me so it should for everybody' all over the tech net these days. Use whatever you feel is the best tool for your needs and your budget. Respect other's choices, even if it means that for some people, this new i9 will be the best/preferred option. Or any other option for that matter that isn't yours.
  - jacoblambda 8y ago
    I think a lot of it comes down to people just showing what works with their use cases and waiting for someone to show them a use case that the other side works better for.
  - deforciant 8y ago
    Apologies, didn't want it to sound like "you have to use Ryzen for everything now" :) I wouldn't recommend it to most of my friends or my family for the same reason you mentioned, none of them will utilize those cores. It just works really well for me and it wildly surpassed my own expectations as I was quite used to the fact that my machine wasn't really usable while I run Kubernetes locally. My workflow used to be: 1. write some code 2. start Kubernetes, wait for it to boot and test the code that I wrote 3. tear it down 4. write some more code 5. repeat I would be loosing quite a lot of time. Also, while waiting for it to start, I would usually get distracted and start doing something else. Ryzen changed this workflow and boosted my productivity. Now I don't even notice whether k8s is running or not, sometimes I forget it for days :D I can't stress enough how important it is to have a lag free development environment.
zachruss92 8y ago
The real conclusion here is if your use case is purely gaming and cost is not a factor the 9900k is the best processor to buy. AMD cannot compete with 5GHz on 2 cores or 4.7 on all 8. If you have a more mixed workload (multi-core) or are more price conscious AMD is a viable solution. AMD will be unveiling their Ryzen 2 processors/GPUs in January and it is rumored that there will be a 15% IPC increase. If that is the case, AMD will be on-par with Intel. It is also rumored they will be bumping the Ryzen lineup to have 16 cores. I've been running a Ryzen system w/ a 1800x @ 4GHz on all cores for well over a year now and have no complaints whatsoever. As a developer/light gamer it was the perfect balance of price to performance.

96 points by jrepinc 8y ago

Benchmarks might be bad, but I don't think that numbers are wrong. Intel frequency is much higher. If your game configuration limits FPS on single or duo core performance, Intel will be better, I have little doubts about that. But Intel has 1.5x price, so if you're thinking about performance/price, it's not that simple. And a lot of games are not limited by CPU anyway, unless you're playing with unusual settings (like very low graphics).

simion314 8y ago
Probably nobody is saying that AMD is faster, the issue is that if Intel is 5% faster but it costs double(including the coolers) then it does not look that good, so if Intel could find a way to say in the marketing slides that the Intel CPU is up to 50% faster then they can get a lot more sells. I also read that there are still some controversy about the CPU frequency for multicore and also that reviewers got speical CPUs, you are not guaranteed to get 5GHz on Intel so it is possible that in 1 month the new CPUs will have not as good turbo. My point is not to rush a purchase based on this initial benchmarks, wait a few more weeks.
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  Intel should be around 10-15% faster. It's like 4.3 GHz for AMD, 5 GHz for Intel with comparable IPC. Also 5 GHz boost is in 9900K specs, if you're not getting it, it should be enough reason to replace is as a defective.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - simion314 8y ago
    OK, so I can't be 100%sure what this means: "Max turbo frequency is the maximum single core frequency at which the processor is capable of operating using Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and, if present, Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost. Frequency is measured in gigahertz (GHz), or billion cycles per second." Does this mean that is guarantedd that 1 core will reach 5GHz ? Are there exceptions? Will it work it regular coolers ? Will it turbo without BIOS changes so in default config? Thanks if you can clear this, because I am not sure if thix Max is considering power users that overclock or not
    - berbec 8y ago
      The 8086k was 1-core 5ghz turbo. 9900k will do it with two. And it OCs to 5.1 on all cores.
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      I'm not an expert, so take my words with a grain of salt. 9900K will reach 5GHz for 2 cores. So if your OS uses only 2 cores at the same time, they'll work at 5 GHz. If your OS uses more cores, CPU will slow down frequency. Also if CPU will be boosted for too long, it'll slow down anyway, because it must keep its 95W TDP. But you can change setting in BIOS, something like MultiCore Enhancement. This will allow CPU to use as much power as possibe, so it should be able to keep working at 5 GHz and 2 cores, if your PSU and cooler are good enough to provide and dissipate that power.
    - dsr_ 8y ago
      All of this is thermally limited. If your cooling system can pull the heat away fast enough, for some period of time the chip will go up to 5GHz on two cores. It's quite likely that a normal air-moving fan + heatpipe radiator will not let you do this for more than a few minutes.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      The i9-9900k should reach 5GHz as long as: 1. Your power supply can supply the 200W needed. 2. Your motherboard's VRMs (voltage regulator modules) can supply the 200W needed. 3. Your CPU coolers can extract 200W of heat. Its all running outside of Intel's 95W TDP specification, but it seems like Intel is comfortable with claiming 5GHz on 2-cores of the i9-9900k if you have the appropriate PSU / Mobo / Coolers.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  Additionally, that hypothetical 5% is observed only in synthetic benchmarks devised to redline the CPU. Thus the performance difference is rather irrelevant and thus the price/performance ratio tilts rather favourably in favour of AMD.
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    It's not only synthetic benchmarks. Compilation speed improvement is very real, rendering speed, some simulations, etc. If your workloads are very light, you don't need K-class CPU at all. That said, ThreadRipper should be even better for those tasks at similar price and provides additional features like ECC support, more PCI lanes. IMO 9900K is awesome if you need best in class single-thread performance for one task and good multithread performance for another task. It would be good for me, for example. I like to play WoW and this game is pretty much single-core limited to provide even 60 FPS. And I'm using my PC for development, so improvements for compilation time are nice as well. Whether I would want to pay that price is another matter, I definitely won't buy new Intel CPU until they fix those Meltdown issues causing significant slowdown in some tasks. And if AMD will reach 5+ GHz by that time, I'll happily switch without second thought.
    - simion314 8y ago
      I agree, Intel is faster, what we complained here is the misleading benchmarks and tactics to make the huge price more justifiable. In programming community Intel also receives more skepticism because their compiler intentionally cripples AMD users and the disclaimer is put on the web as an image so is not picked up by search engines(last time I checked a few months back was still image).
- chrisper 8y ago
  Also for Intel you almost always have to get a new motherboard.
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    Not now, you can use old Z370.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      If your existing board can actually provide enough power to run the chip properly, since clamping it to 95 watts really screws up the performance.
    - chrisper 8y ago
      It's probably one of the few cases where you can reuse the chipset / socket though (at least compared to AMD).
- socceroos 8y ago
  These companies must know how reviewers work. I feel like it is easily gameable. You only have to make sure the first batches on shelves are the real deal. The good reviews flow in and then you can start sending out that high margin stock. What reviewer in their right mind waits until the dust settles and then compares batches?
  - lolc 8y ago
    Has this ever been observed?
    - xorfish 8y ago
      https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kingston-and-pny-caught-bait-and-switching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin... It has with SSDs.
      - lolc 8y ago
        Shady indeed.
- pizza234 8y ago
  The peak TDP is another controversial point. Interesting page from the Anandtech review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/21 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... Fully loading an i9-9900K will consume 170W. Note that this is POV-Ray, a ray tracer, which can be reasonably defined as real-world application. When stress tests are performed, like the following: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test-cpu-pc-guide,5461-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test-cpu-pc-guid... the peak is 205W, which is extremely high (when compared to the touted 95W TDP). AMD is actually transparent on the ThreadRipper power requirements - the reported TDP is 180W, and stress tests confirm that value for several models. In this respect, Intel is arguably cheating. I wonder if AMD could get an advantage (marketing and benchmark-wise), by declaring a low TDP of 95W, while having an effective 200+ one.
  - toast0 8y ago
    Intel has been fudging TDP for years at this point, especially in mobile, but apparently on desktop now, too. If you dissipate the spec sheet TDP, you get spec sheet performance with short turbo boosts, if you can source enough power and dissipate the heat, turbo will stay on. I'm sort of surprised that it peaks at just over twice the spec sheet, though.

cbg0 8y ago

Here's a roundup of all 9900K/9700K/9600K reviews: https://videocardz.com/78652/intel-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-and-z390-motherboard-review-roundup https://videocardz.com/78652/intel-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5...

chodeboy 8y ago

Is there any review which probes the binning of intel's new chips? Since the 7700k was 125mm² and the 9900k was 177mm² I suspect that there are more defects on average per chip. If that's true I'd argue that only some will actually be able to reach 5ghz. Regardless, it's intel and they are well known for using every scummy trick in the book. From using a compressor to cool their 5ghz giga-chip to using videos to show "realtime" demos running on their products. I wouldn't put it past them to specifically tune the system to ever so slightly to starve comparable ryzen chips.

larzang 8y ago

The controversial benchmarks are always at the 1080p level, and I have to wonder: who are these magical consumers who are willing to consider shelling out for an i9 and yet are still playing at 1080p. Of course such marketing benchmarking HAS to be done at 1080p, because anything more challenging and you're entirely gpu bound with cpu differences becoming margin of error fractions of a percent.

slezyr 8y ago
If you want more than 60Hz and not compressed colors then you will have to play at 1080p. Most gamers want more than 60Hz.
- systemcluster 8y ago
  I run a 1440p IPS screen with 144Hz. DP 1.4 supports up to 4K with 120Hz by default. You really are not limited to 1080p anymore.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Not by the connections, but from the benchmarks I've seen GPUs can't keep up with that for graphics-intensive games. FreeSync/G-Sync do help a bit getting at least more than 60 fps.
    - broknbottle 8y ago
      Which GPU benchmark source are using to back up this statement because there are plenty of cards that can drive more than 60FPS+..
      - detaro 8y ago
        E.g. here's benchmark numbers delivered by Nvidia, and even their best card doesn't hit 120 fps in all games at 4k - if you want fps over resolution, you're going to switch down, especially if you aren't on a truly top-of-line card. https://videocardz.com/77983/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-rtx-2080-official-performance-unveiled https://videocardz.com/77983/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-...

deforciant 8y ago

Few months ago I switched from i7 to Ryzen 2700X. Honestly, I don't know what would have to happen so that I would switch back to Intel :) In my developer workflows that include quite a lot of browser tabs, a bunch of Docker containers running, occasional Go or Docker build I don't get any of the CPUs at 100% often. Only when I do cross compilation to a multiple architectures I do use 6-9 CPUs and even then my machine is totally usable and I can't even feel that in the background lots of cores are at full utilisation. What really counts is the amount of CPUs available, I don't really care about their maximum frequency. Comments about gaming are valid but I think instead of buying Intel just go with a better GPU and you will win there as well.

saiya-jin 8y ago
How hard is it to understand that there are various uses for PC, and yours is only one of those? Plenty of us can't make any use of more than 6-8 cores effectively, will never run any VMs or Docker, and plenty of software still will benefit from single-core performance. I am by no means a fan of the price/value ratio for new i9 CPU and any shady marketing cheap tricks generally, but I don't get this 'Ryzen works for me so it should for everybody' all over the tech net these days. Use whatever you feel is the best tool for your needs and your budget. Respect other's choices, even if it means that for some people, this new i9 will be the best/preferred option. Or any other option for that matter that isn't yours.
- jacoblambda 8y ago
  I think a lot of it comes down to people just showing what works with their use cases and waiting for someone to show them a use case that the other side works better for.
- deforciant 8y ago
  Apologies, didn't want it to sound like "you have to use Ryzen for everything now" :) I wouldn't recommend it to most of my friends or my family for the same reason you mentioned, none of them will utilize those cores. It just works really well for me and it wildly surpassed my own expectations as I was quite used to the fact that my machine wasn't really usable while I run Kubernetes locally. My workflow used to be: 1. write some code 2. start Kubernetes, wait for it to boot and test the code that I wrote 3. tear it down 4. write some more code 5. repeat I would be loosing quite a lot of time. Also, while waiting for it to start, I would usually get distracted and start doing something else. Ryzen changed this workflow and boosted my productivity. Now I don't even notice whether k8s is running or not, sometimes I forget it for days :D I can't stress enough how important it is to have a lag free development environment.

zachruss92 8y ago

The real conclusion here is if your use case is purely gaming and cost is not a factor the 9900k is the best processor to buy. AMD cannot compete with 5GHz on 2 cores or 4.7 on all 8. If you have a more mixed workload (multi-core) or are more price conscious AMD is a viable solution. AMD will be unveiling their Ryzen 2 processors/GPUs in January and it is rumored that there will be a 15% IPC increase. If that is the case, AMD will be on-par with Intel. It is also rumored they will be bumping the Ryzen lineup to have 16 cores. I've been running a Ryzen system w/ a 1800x @ 4GHz on all cores for well over a year now and have no complaints whatsoever. As a developer/light gamer it was the perfect balance of price to performance.