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>I wouldn't say AMD is closing the gap in CPUs. They're ahead of Intel and are widening that lead. Intel is still king in high-end gaming performance, albeit n

>I wouldn't say AMD is closing the gap in CPUs. They're ahead of Intel and are widening that lead. Intel is still king in high-end gaming performance, albeit not as much as Nvidia is ahead of AMD in GPUs.

cgag 8y ago
When I built my PC it seemed like Intel had a pretty small single core edge but amd had twice the cores per dollar. Easy choice if you do anything but gaming imo. I really hope they catch up the GPU space soon.
- blackstrips 8y ago
  Interesting enough, a lot of productivity PCs still go for Intel in the form of the 18-core i9-7980XE. AMD isn’t necessarily a shoe-in in productivity either.
  - electrograv 8y ago
    “A lot of productivity PC” builds are going for $1700 Intel CPUs... really? Even if the $1700-CPU PC market was really popular, tell me: why would they choose the slower of the $1700 CPUs, other than corrupt or beurocrafic business practices? And don’t try to argue how Intel’s $1700 18-core CPU is faster than AMD’s similarly priced 32-core CPU because Intel’s has slightly faster per-core performance. Such an argument would be absolutely absurd: the point of an 18-32 core CPU is NOT the single threaded performance :)
    - blackstrips 8y ago
      This guy uses it: https://youtu.be/jweQNDCe218 https://youtu.be/jweQNDCe218 Don’t know about you but his builders actually benchmark the CPUs. Dansgaming uses the 18 core i9 for his streaming box. Not every application a person uses scales to high core counts, in such situations a CPU with good single thread performance (in addition to high core counts) would be beneficial. Cache performance matter too. AMD’s CPUs have a split L3 cache. Some applications might not like that.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > Not every application a person uses scales to high core counts But do you know what really scales to high core counts? Running more than one application at a time.
        blackstrips 8y ago
        > Running more than one application at a time. Depends on how much memory bandwidth and how much CPU cache your applications are using. Wouldn’t what to trash the L3 cache and worsen the situation with a saturated memory bus.
shmerl 8y ago
> Intel is still king in high-end gaming performance Not really if you consider the price per core. Normally designed games utilize all cores, and something like Ryzen 7 2700X provides a major benefit. Comparable Intel CPUs are a lot more expensive. Their only advantage is higher overclock frequency. But if you need to overclock your CPU to play something, that game is already poorly designed and is probably not using all cores properly.
- blackstrips 8y ago
  > Normally designed games utilize all cores, and something like Ryzen 7 2700X provides a major benefit. No they don’t. Most games barely scale to use 4 cores - some struggle to use even 2. Even games with tons of threads tend to have a one thread that is ultra heavy which become the limiting factor - i.e. you need single thread performance. It’s moot regardless since Intel’s i9-9900K has 8 cores and 16 threads too.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    > Most games barely scale to use 4 cores It means they are poorly designed which is exactly my point. It's not really a measure of CPU quality, but rather the measure of those games quality. Normal games today use something like Vulkan to saturate the GPU and should not be CPU bound. So if you need a single thread performance that requires overclocking, it's a poor engine design. > It’s moot regardless since Intel’s i9-9900K has 8 cores and 16 threads too And costs a lot a lot more. That's why I mentioned price per core above. I'd use such price difference to get a better GPU instead.
    - blackstrips 8y ago
      Unfortunately, time is at a premium in game development - the amount of crunch is already absurded. Multithreading hasn’t gotten any easier. Even when games are forced to multithread like on consoles. Said games run on PCs with half the cores (admittedly at nearly twice the clock speed and higher IPC) outpace consoles with 2x the frame rates. > And costs a lot a lot more. That's why I mentioned price per core above. I'd use such price difference to get a better GPU instead. Of course, it’s the best on the market. Intel would be stupid not to charge a premium. It’s how such things are priced.

cgag 8y ago

When I built my PC it seemed like Intel had a pretty small single core edge but amd had twice the cores per dollar. Easy choice if you do anything but gaming imo. I really hope they catch up the GPU space soon.

blackstrips 8y ago
Interesting enough, a lot of productivity PCs still go for Intel in the form of the 18-core i9-7980XE. AMD isn’t necessarily a shoe-in in productivity either.
- electrograv 8y ago
  “A lot of productivity PC” builds are going for $1700 Intel CPUs... really? Even if the $1700-CPU PC market was really popular, tell me: why would they choose the slower of the $1700 CPUs, other than corrupt or beurocrafic business practices? And don’t try to argue how Intel’s $1700 18-core CPU is faster than AMD’s similarly priced 32-core CPU because Intel’s has slightly faster per-core performance. Such an argument would be absolutely absurd: the point of an 18-32 core CPU is NOT the single threaded performance :)
  - blackstrips 8y ago
    This guy uses it: https://youtu.be/jweQNDCe218 https://youtu.be/jweQNDCe218 Don’t know about you but his builders actually benchmark the CPUs. Dansgaming uses the 18 core i9 for his streaming box. Not every application a person uses scales to high core counts, in such situations a CPU with good single thread performance (in addition to high core counts) would be beneficial. Cache performance matter too. AMD’s CPUs have a split L3 cache. Some applications might not like that.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > Not every application a person uses scales to high core counts But do you know what really scales to high core counts? Running more than one application at a time.
      - blackstrips 8y ago
        > Running more than one application at a time. Depends on how much memory bandwidth and how much CPU cache your applications are using. Wouldn’t what to trash the L3 cache and worsen the situation with a saturated memory bus.

shmerl 8y ago

> Intel is still king in high-end gaming performance Not really if you consider the price per core. Normally designed games utilize all cores, and something like Ryzen 7 2700X provides a major benefit. Comparable Intel CPUs are a lot more expensive. Their only advantage is higher overclock frequency. But if you need to overclock your CPU to play something, that game is already poorly designed and is probably not using all cores properly.

blackstrips 8y ago
> Normally designed games utilize all cores, and something like Ryzen 7 2700X provides a major benefit. No they don’t. Most games barely scale to use 4 cores - some struggle to use even 2. Even games with tons of threads tend to have a one thread that is ultra heavy which become the limiting factor - i.e. you need single thread performance. It’s moot regardless since Intel’s i9-9900K has 8 cores and 16 threads too.
- shmerl 8y ago
  > Most games barely scale to use 4 cores It means they are poorly designed which is exactly my point. It's not really a measure of CPU quality, but rather the measure of those games quality. Normal games today use something like Vulkan to saturate the GPU and should not be CPU bound. So if you need a single thread performance that requires overclocking, it's a poor engine design. > It’s moot regardless since Intel’s i9-9900K has 8 cores and 16 threads too And costs a lot a lot more. That's why I mentioned price per core above. I'd use such price difference to get a better GPU instead.
  - blackstrips 8y ago
    Unfortunately, time is at a premium in game development - the amount of crunch is already absurded. Multithreading hasn’t gotten any easier. Even when games are forced to multithread like on consoles. Said games run on PCs with half the cores (admittedly at nearly twice the clock speed and higher IPC) outpace consoles with 2x the frame rates. > And costs a lot a lot more. That's why I mentioned price per core above. I'd use such price difference to get a better GPU instead. Of course, it’s the best on the market. Intel would be stupid not to charge a premium. It’s how such things are priced.