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AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

657 points by DuskStar 7y ago

burtonator 7y ago
Man.. Loving this. Going to get the Ryzen 9 I think. My current machine is an 8 core i7 At 3.6Ghz and boost to 4. Having 12 cores without the hyperthreading issues with intel and boost to 4.6 is going to rock.
- tracker1 7y ago
  i7-4790K myself, going to hold out a couple months longer to see if they get the 16core r9, or a new Threadripper out.
auvi 7y ago
I really expected a 16C/32T Ryzen 9 though.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised to see that come out as a mid-generation bump, personally. But I imagine they ran hard into thermal/TDP issues adding the extra four cores - especially if the dies used for the 3900X are highly binned.
- klingonopera 7y ago
  Wouldn't that be the domain of ThreadRipper?
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Not if AMD's looking to remove ThreadRipper from their product stack, and segment their server chips a little more.
    - klingonopera 7y ago
      Are they actually planning to? I just recently looked into "modern" hardware (was out of the fold for some years) and it would be a shame to retire the relatively new TR4 platform so soon...
    - liuliu 7y ago
      Unlikely though. TR is AMD's only HEDT presence (qual-channel, high core count). X570 chipset will likely s be dual-channel memory, limiting to 64GiB, seems still positioned for mainstream. Intel currently have very high price HEDT offering, hard to see how AMD is going to give up that market. Probably after Rome?
    - martinpw 7y ago
      ThreadRipper is not going away: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-threadripper-roadmap-removal,39460.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-threadripper-roadmap-r... Quote: You will definitely see more Threadrippers from us
  - wmf 7y ago
    Maybe ThreadRipper 3000 will have 24/32/48 cores.
    - dis-sys 7y ago
      the problem is new TR is not on their 2019 roadmap PPT
      - ericd 7y ago
        That's too bad, it's a really neat chip line. More PCI-E lanes than a Xeon E5 without the ridiculous premium.
        dis-sys 7y ago
        There are rumors that AMD is not happy with TR2's memory performance as the 4 channel memory controller is the bottleneck, they are probably looking at 8 channel memory option for TR3. ;)
        ericd 7y ago
        Ha well I wouldn’t complain if they did that. The higher core count TR2s have a bit of a weird performance profile because of the memory channel setup - two of the chiplets have to hop through another chiplet for memory accesses. Is that what you’re referring to?
        dis-sys 7y ago
        > Is that what you’re referring to? yes, they had to introduce that extra hop to workaround the fact that it has 4 less channel compared to the regular 8 channel EPYC.
        ericd 7y ago
        Ah yeah, I think I remember reading that. That's why I ended up with the 16 core TR2. I briefly considered the EPYC, but for my uses (prepping data for a couple GPUs training models), 16 seemed like (and has been) enough.
  - sq_ 7y ago
    Using PCPartPicker as a reference [0], it looks like ThreadRipper bottomed out at 8c/16t with the 1900X. So I guess there's general overlap between Ryzen and TR in AMDs lineup there? [0] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#s=63 https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#s=63
    - klingonopera 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm guessing the general overlap is because Ryzen and TR run on different sockets (AM4 and TR4, respetively). The 1900X is an economic solution to get your own TR4 platform running and then you can upgrade it to some monster 32C beast of a processor, when you really need the extra CPU power.
      - sq_ 7y ago
        Good point. I'd forgotten about TR4 and its absolute behemoth of a socket.
    - makomk 7y ago
      Somewhat, though bear in mind that even the 1900X ThreadRipper has 4 memory channels and a ridiculous number of PCIe lanes whereas Ryzen is 2 channel and has much less PCIe.
- treeevor 7y ago
  Its going to come after intel has a chance to try and respond to the 12 core. Let intel think they have a chance and finally bury them
- jlawer 7y ago
  Potentially is a yield issue / segmentation issue. Releasing the top SKU as a 12 core instead of 16 core part gives AMD: 1.) Still the highest core count "Mainstream" part. I would expect Intel to fire back with a higher IPC / thread performance part rather then try and ramp core counts. Outside of productivity, content creation and server workloads I really don't see the need for anything past 6-8 cores right now. 2.) Lets AMD keep the flawless chiplets for Ryzen 7 where there will be high demand. While providing a way to move more 6 core chiplets. They can change the product mix once yields improve. I would imagine that there is likely better margin on Ryzen 7 (1x chiplet) rather then the R9 (2x chiplet). 3.) Keeps more of the Threadripper line viable for those that need high cores (especially if you don't require the extra memory bandwidth). 4.) Sells a bunch of CPUs now, while keeping the ability to quickly respond to Intel if needed (or as a spoiler around the Intel 10nm release)
  - kristianp 7y ago
    Thanks for this analysis, although I wouldn't agree that R9 profit margin is lower than Ryzen 7. It would depend on the yield though, so if yields are low for 8 core chiplets, the R7 would cost more to make than if yields are higher.
  - tmd83 7y ago
    It's interesting though that Ryzen 9 is almost the highest clocked part of the bunch.
    - effie 7y ago
      AMD did not want to release the expected 16 core yet, but had to release some "monster" to get at those hype-affected buyers. So they clocked/binned those 6-core chips accordingly, to make this core-lacking monster more attractive. It also makes sense to sell as many silicon chips in Ryzen 9 package as possible, instead of selling them in Ryzen 5 package - more luxurious, better margin. Of course, anybody who cares about value and does some research before buying expensive high-end parts will wait for the Intel-AMD exchange to play out, or for the 16-core to be announced, and only then buy the best option.
  - 7y ago
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  16C is probably coming later once Intel responds.
  - PixyMisa 7y ago
    Intel are planning a 10 core desktop part, so the moment it pops its head up AMD will drop their 16 core chip on it.
    - topspin 7y ago
      Yeah, that's almost a given isn't it? If AMD has really closed the single-thread performance gap then Intel is in for a hard few years in this market. Looking forward to independent benchmarks.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  My guess is that bandwidth and cooling limitations meant that 16C/32T Ryzen wouldn't have been much faster than 12C/24T. It sounds like the 12C/24T outperforms the 12C/24T Intel; if they had released the 16C/32T reviewers would compare it against an 18C/36T Intel chip, which it may not do as well against.
- dethac 7y ago
  Probably saving golden 8 core dies for Epyc. It'll come whenever the market needs it, but right now they're doing fine without it.
gratilup 7y ago
Now imagine a Threadripper with the Zen2 cores, higher IPC and frequency would be certainly welcome. Have the 32 core 2990WX and it's an incredible CPU for compiling large C++ programs, running big test suites and never having to worry about running too many tasks at the same time.
- danbolt 7y ago
  A lot of AAA game studios with larger C++ codebases use Incredibuild a lot. I can imagine having something with this level of parallelism would be incredibly useful.
  - gratilup 7y ago
    Don't even need Incredibuild, even MSBuild or just plain /MP option in VC++ can take advantage of it. A build from VS of the Unreal Engine 4 client takes around 2 min, for example.
    - danbolt 7y ago
      Agreed, utilizing multiple processes helps a lot, although a larger number of cores across the entire network helps a lot with compiling the mass of translation units. Most workplaces I’ve done C++ at have had extra IncrediBuild agents with Intel Xeons to help with that
    - gambiting 7y ago
      I mean, yes, but even that is not enough once the project is big enough. I work on a huge AAA game in C++ and on my 8-core 16-threaded Xeon the whole thing compiles in 40 minutes. Incredibuild is a must to keep the compilation times even remotely acceptable.
  - ahartmetz 7y ago
    Icecream is the distributed compiler to use on Linux. Add ccache as needed.
- empyrical 7y ago
sandworm101 7y ago
Looks like that 499 will include a cooler too. Id probably not use it (liquid cooling is better imho) but an included cooler is a perk.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  I'd say it's more relevant for something like the 3700X - air cooling is very reasonable for a 65W TDP chip.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    You can get practically silent air coolers for ~$40 now too. The only reason I would do liquid cooling now is for the fun of putting one together.
    - sq_ 7y ago
      Isn't AIO liquid cooling still a good solution for decent overclocks without emptying your wallet for a custom loop? To my knowledge, those $40 silent air coolers perform well but still can't match a big liquid radiator.
      - sbov 7y ago
        I can't find the link but a youtuber tested various AOIs and air coolers and a Noctua air cooler did the best job cooling. Unless you like AOIs for some other reason (e.g. some people don't like all the space air coolers take), if you aren't running a custom loop you're probably wasting your money when water cooling.
        sq_ 7y ago
        Interesting. Do you have any idea as to which Noctua cooler it was? Their highest end ones run really close in price to the lower end AIOs.
        7y ago
loser777 7y ago
Biggest surprise seems to be the 65W 8/16 3700X. Hopefully that means a bit of overclocking headroom.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Considering that the 105W 8/16 3800X only gains 300MHz base and 100MHz turbo for the extra 40W, I'm not sure that's the case. Still almost certainly what I'll be replacing my 4790k with though
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Yeah, I think this might finally be the reason to replace my old Haswell.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Going to wait a couple more months to see if 16c 39xx shows up, or a new Threadripper... also on a 4790k.
- XMPPwocky 7y ago
  This might just be a case of TDPs being essentially arbitrary. The 9900K is allegedly a 95W part, but even a moderate all-core OC means you have powers in the 200W and up range. AMD might have just jumped on the same bandwagon.
  - IanCutress 7y ago
    AMD's TDPs are calculated at all-core turbo. Intel's are only valid for base frequency.
    - XMPPwocky 7y ago
      Ah, so AMD doesn't have cheesy numbers- good to know.
      - 7y ago
jxi 7y ago
The Ryzen 7 3700X looks like it hits a sweet spot. 65W TDP, $330, almost as fast as a 9900k. Was originally planning to go for the Ryzen 5, but with these specs it seems silly not to go for the 3700X.
- TheOperator 7y ago
  Also with CPU performance starting to taper off I think people need to also start think of their computers as longer term investments. I think the 8 core makes sense. Even my phone has 8 cores now...
  - zelon88 7y ago
    I've been hearing this for a long time, but the "taper" isn't really a taper in all markets. In consumer markets, yes the taper is very real. Infact I bet you could take one $500 machine off the shelf of Wal-Mart every year for the past 5 years and benchmark them all within 15% of each other overall. But it isn't really visible when money is no object. If it's not the cores getting faster it's the core-count going up. Moore's Law is really easy to beat if you focus on making your CPU die's larger instead of their transistors smaller.
    - alkonaut 7y ago
      Also for at least one part of high perf computing, gaming, the trend has been that more cores now actually count in modern engines. Couple of years ago you wanted a couple of cores but single thread perf was the big thing. Now some modern game engines scale very well beyond 4 cores. Presumably they have shifted to some sort of work-item based system instead of having fixed threads for subsystems (rendering, AI, ...). So upgrading from a 4 to 8 core a few years back was expensive and mostly not worth it for gaming, whereas now it might actually give the huge speedup the core count would indicate (Obviously for gaming this just means moving the bottleneck, but still)
    - TheOperator 7y ago
      That's just it. The 12 core system years from now will have barely aged. CPUs will just have gotten larger and more expensive. This is changing a past situation where say a CPU would lose half its value in 3 years. This incentivizes spending big and upgrading infrequently.
PaulBGD_ 7y ago
I'll probably still get it since I've been waiting for it to release, but a bit disappointed they couldn't get 5GHz.. I'm curious what overclocking could be done here.
- dralley 7y ago
  Despite being behind on frequency, it seems they've totally caught up (and maybe surpassed, not enough info to know yet) Intel in IPC, and even the 3700X will have more than double the cache of the 9900K So we'll have to see what the benchmarks look like but they might not be as far behind as the frequency gap would suggest.
  - PaulBGD_ 7y ago
    That's true, if more software starts taking advantage of multiple threads it'd probably be better than most of Intel's offerings.
    - mort96 7y ago
      What software which requires a lot of processing power currently doesn't take advantage of multiple threads? Games are increasingly parallel, browsers do most non-JS things in parallel (and obviously run each tab in parallel), compiling code and video rendering eats CPU cores like crazy.
      - gameswithgo 7y ago
        yeah a lot of people will assert that games don't benefit from more threads, but, if you fire up fortnite or battlegrounds and look at your cpu grapsh, you will see at least 8 of them working pretty hard
- snvzz 7y ago
  Since they're beating Intel, lower clock only means faster/clock, which is better. And there's of course potential for higher clocks as yields improve with 7nm process maturity. In fact, they might be even possible today, but AMD chose to release a relatively affordable lineup, which is the opposite of Intel's expensive chips with "golden die" binning. This shows AMD is relaxed, in contrast to Intel's desperation.
p1mrx 7y ago
It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. This would be the first time since the Core2/Athlon64 days.
- sadris 7y ago
  I'm begging for a good single threaded CPU that isn't $600
  - ianai 7y ago
    Read that often here tonight. Is there a killer app for single core performance other than UI/UX?
    - fooey 7y ago
      Games are still bottle necked by single thread performance
      - reiichiroh 7y ago
        Last two Assassin's Creed engine benefit from more than 4 threads
    - PureParadigm 7y ago
      In all seriousness, I've been wanting better single threaded performance for running a Minecraft server.
      - ehnto 7y ago
        What kind of player count are you getting? I have been running 4 players with one of the most taxing modpacks on a mid tier digital ocean VPS with no hitches. Not many players I guess but in case you were curious if you could use a VPS. Even when we had multiple excavators sending thousands of entities through sorting pipelines it was stil doing surprisingly well.
DiabloD3 7y ago
I watched the keynote live. I'm sold, my desktop is most likely going to be a Ryzen (although not the 8/16 monster, come on, it's a desktop, if I need high core count, I have stuff at work for that).
- shmerl 7y ago
  I don't mind 12 cores / 24 threads on my desktop. Makes compiling Mesa, Wine and Linux kernel a lot faster.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I do a bunch of live video stuff (which, for the uninitiated, means "hi, I'm ffmpeg, I want all your processors") and I learned, the hard way, that I couldn't put a 16C/32T Threadripper in the box--it's a 4U case in a Gator transport case--because 180W would blow out my heat budget. 12C/24T at 105W should be doable. I'm excited; right now I'm constrained because stuff like my CG system is built on Chromium and so it gets a little chewy when I run multiple independent overlays. Doubling my cores--I have a Ryzen 1600 in there right now--and probably increasing single-thread performance by 40% should make my life pretty interesting.
    - shmerl 7y ago
      Yeah, video encoding will surely benefit from it as well.
      - eropple 7y ago
        Back of the matchbook, I should be able to encode 1080p60 at something like medium presets. "Medium" is really good.
  - eugene3306 7y ago
    Cool, but we haven't seen compiling benchmarks yet. 12 cores might be bottlenecked by dual-channel memory.
lettergram 7y ago
Finally! I’ve been using a Ryzen 1800x since it’s release. Unfortunately, it has some stability issues and I’ve been waiting to upgrade on the Ryzen 3000, 7nm line. This is going to be a solid 75%+ boost to performance, given I regularly max out my machines threads. Pretty amazing improvement in 2 years.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Could be that it'll still continue to have stability issues. For some reason Ryzens are extremely picky when it comes to memory. There's really no guarantee that 3-rd gen will resolve this issue. It's to the point where e.g. Corsair makes memory specifically designed to work with AMD CPUs. This memory typically contains Samsung B-die chips which work fairly well.
  - coder543 7y ago
    No, the stability issues they're talking about are on a release day 1800X. It's not memory issues, and I've never had memory issues with either of my Ryzen processors. This is the issue they're certainly talking about: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Se... And it is assuredly not a problem with any Ryzen processors manufactured after the very first few months.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      So I must be imagining my problems with Threadripper memory kits as of early this year as well as my coworkers problems with his 1800X. Hmm, OK then. HN knows best.
    - IronBacon 7y ago
      There was also a problem with P-states and Ryzen CPUs crashing/stalling in idle, but only with Linux kernels. I never experienced it myself but in my BIOS there's an option about "power on idle" that's suggested to not turn off for compatibility (I don't recall the correct words but I could check). It usually depends on MB manufacturers and BIOS/AGESA versions.
shmerl 7y ago
12 cores with 105W TDP - good improvement over 8 cores with same TDP for Ryzen 7 2700X.
jdsully 7y ago
I didn’t see any word on whether the vector units are still half width. That’s still a major performance advantage for Intel.
- gratilup 7y ago
  They are full 256 bit wide now, that's how it can claim a 2x float perf. improvement. It also doesn't have an "AVX" offset.
- phonon 7y ago
  They announced they doubled the floating point, so I assume that means full width per clock. Hear it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be&t=5810 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be...
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Ah cool! Hopefully the BMI2 instructions are upgraded too.
fencepost 7y ago
My question is how is their architecture doing regarding the assorted speculative execution baked-in issues and what kind of impact is there on the AMD processors compared to comparable Intel CPUs?
- xvector 7y ago
  Frightening lack of press around this. Basically all of Intel's and AMD's lineups are centered around high thread count right now. Completely useless if I can't reasonably enable SMT.
  - pja 7y ago
    So far, AMD has only been exposed to the Spectre (branch cache) information leaks haven’t they? They aren’t vulnerable to Meltdown or any of the recent MDS information leaks because they don’t speculatively execute if the thread doesn’t have access rights. Intel chose to speculate regardless and fixup the register contents on instruction retirement, which is why they have had so many problems.
  - makomk 7y ago
    AMD's chips apparently don't have the security vulnerabilities that make SMT unsafe to enable on Intel chips - they released a white paper explaining why MDS etc aren't possible and what exactly the boundaries are on their chips: https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security-whitepaper.pdf https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security-whitepap... It just didn't get a huge amount of press coverage.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  Phoronix is the number one site for that sort of article. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-mds-xeon&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-md...
- nolok 7y ago
  Those affect Intel much, much more than AMD and once you include the fixes it always get better for AMD than without because, oversimplifying a lot, when doing branch speculation "Is it branch A or B ? I will guess A and pre compute that" Intel didn't bother with any access check during the prediction and only ran them after once confirmed it was indeed A (so it already had the result and merely did the ACL check), whereas AMD was already doing all the checks even during predition. That's why there is an entire range of such weakness that doesn't affect AMD while it hurts Intel very strongly.
techntoke 7y ago
Nothing mentioned about their "G" series.
- snvzz 7y ago
  They already launched a new generation of that recently, based on Zen+ with Vega. The previous one was pre-zen+. Their gpu+cpu chips are always based on the more mature tech.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Are you referring to the 2400G? Rumors are they will release a 3600G this time around based on Navi.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    The only Zen+ based APUs are mobile/embedded-only though. Desktop APUs are all still pre-Zen+.
    - techntoke 7y ago
      The 2200/2400G is Zen-based.
gigatexal 7y ago
Yup. Just waiting on the benchmarks from independent reviewers and to see how XFR in this generation works but I’ll be getting a Ryzen 9 if everything checks out. 24 threads will be amazing for local development (microk8s, and others) when I’m not gaming and save me from having to build a separate box.
- dmix 7y ago
  Do you work on a desktop machine? At home?
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Why not? Lot's of FOSS development happens this way.
    - dmix 7y ago
      I didn't say anything bad about it. Funny how people project.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    I do a lot of work related experiments at home for my own learning and to help what I do for my employer.
  - sharpneli 7y ago
    Whenever I'm having a remote day yes. Some projects can take literally hours to fully recompile. The more cores, the better. Will also be getting a Ryzen if the singlecore benchmarks show it's reasonable. Bunch of games I play at home tend to absolutely trash single core perf.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Why do you "fully recompile"? Use Google Bazel and never fully recompile anything.
      - 7y ago
deathtrader666 7y ago
We've had 32 cores from AMD, yes.. But what about 64 cores like Intel's Knight Landing Xeon Phi?
- wyldfire 7y ago
  Well the Phi is sold/packaged as an accelerator so it's not quite the same. But I was pretty sure i had seen >= 32 core Xeons (though those were likely with now-nerfed HT so kinda moot).
- muxr 7y ago
  Epyc 2 (Rome) will have up to 64 cores.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  They are way too hard to use and get performance comparable to the dual Xeon servers.
tmd83 7y ago
I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced. I haven't really seen that mentioned much I wonder why is that. I do love the potential for Zen2 + 7nm. The 65w of 3700x and the high frequency of the 3900X both suggest interesting potential for the future. One could end up seeing that the Ryzen 5, six cores might have higher overclocking headroom. Then there's of course Navi, the first new GPU core in a long long time.
- MrGilbert 7y ago
  You could pick a Ryzen with "G", like the Ryzen 5 2400G, though... They have an integrated GPU.
  - deafcalculus 7y ago
    They are limited to 4 cores. In the new lineup too, when G series comes out later, they'll be limited to 8 cores (one cliplet for CPU and one for GPU).
    - zanny 7y ago
      With this CPu chiplet design they couldn't have 2 8 core packages and a GPU on a single die. For the vast majority of professional use cases 8 core / 16 thread running at 4.5+ boost is going to be way enough for a while. AMD sure has spoiled the market in just two years on commoditizing 8 core desktop chips because in 2016 the conversation would be about what flavor of $400+ quadcore or $800+ sextacore from Intel you were going to get.
    - NightlyDev 7y ago
      Not true. 3000 series APUs are based on zen+.
      - 7y ago
Epopeehief54 7y ago
Takes guts to stick with that core count and at least you get to enjoy the full 70MB of cache. Good thing Blender and Cinebench all fits inside that, not sure you can ever say the same for productivity workloads. I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count: Would love to see real and IF switches to give a bit of flexibility and what they plan for a new Threadripper.
- muxr 7y ago
  > I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count The new Ryzen 3000 CPUs support PCIe Gen4.. so while the number of lanes will remain the same, their bandwidth could be doubled. Just announced Navi GPUs also support Gen4.
- velox_io 7y ago
  I am quite surprised that they're launching a consumer CPU with 70MB of cache! When most CPUs have ~8MB, I don't think there's ever been such a huge CPU cache jump in history. Those duel CCXs means the 16 core Ryzen could be ready for release (that's what I have my eye on!). It's funny, going from 12 to 16 cores is basically the i7 6700k in my desktop. Plus, it's great that Intel is being aggressive by releasing the 9900KS (which is a pretty good GPU for gamers). It's been a while since we've seen any real competition between AMD & Intel.
hsivonen 7y ago
What's the outlook for AMD to provide the kind of performance counters and performance counter accuracy that is needed for rr?
- mkl 7y ago
  For those curious like me: https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/ It's a debugger from Mozilla that works by recording and replaying program executions.
jaytaylor 7y ago
It's not clear to me from TFA: Do any existing AM4 mobos / chipsets have support for full PCIe 4.0 bandwith (64Gbps)? Or will the existing mobos be limited to PCIe 3.0 (~5-6Gbps)? All of the five processors will be PCIe 4.0 enabled, and while they are being accompanied by the new X570 chipset launch, they still use the same AM4 socket, meaning some AMD 300 and 400- series motherboards can still be used. I was just reading about PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 yesterday [0], and some quick research indicates only a week ago it was announced some current AMD boards do support PCIe 4.0 [1]. Would be awesome because the rate when transferring terabytes across SSD RAID arrays will see a 3-10x increase from ~500-600MBps to ~1.5-6GBps+. Fantastic! [0] https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-test https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-tes... [1] https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth-bios-support-ryzen-3000 https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth-bi...
- wtallis 7y ago
  Existing 300 and 400 series boards may be able to operate at PCIe 4 speed for the CPU-provided lanes (as opposed to the ones routed through the chipset that you can't upgrade), however signal integrity issues may limit this to just the slot closest to the CPU. So far, I haven't heard about any particular boards that have been validated for a specific number of slots working at gen4 speeds. Whatever you're using for an SSD RAID array will probably get in the way of using gen4 speeds, since you likely won't be able to get gen4 speeds over any cables or risers without redriver chips.
bashwizard 7y ago
Nice. I guess it's time to upgrade from my old 1700X.
gravelc 7y ago
Is there any clarity on how much RAM the 3900X supports? Presumably can do 4x32GB, which would make for a great little bioinformatics workstation. Am very excited with this chip and Windows bringing the full Linux kernel - can do everything I want at home with just one fairly cheap PC and no dual booting. Good times!
- jaytaylor 7y ago
  Are 32GB sticks of fast registered DDR4 still absurdly expensive?
  - gravelc 7y ago
    Still not cheap - $200 for DDR4-2666 up to $350+ for DDR-3200 from what I can see on Newegg
deleted 7y ago
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psnosignaluk 7y ago
I’ve really been looking forward to these chips. The 2700X was pretty close to Intel in 1440p benchmarks, so I’m looking forward to what the likes of Gamers Nexus have to say about overall performance, specifically in line with performance elements like frame render time. Not that it really matters to me. I’ll have one of the 8 core chips on a micro-ATX X570 and build up a system around that. I’ve purposely held off building a new desktop because of Ryzen 3000. In a Ghost S1 or NCase M1, it should be the ideal CPU for a powerful SFF build.
vbezhenar 7y ago
No 5GHz, I'm disappointed. Was considering switching to AMD, but Intel looks better. I'll wait for Threadripper announce, though, may be they'll release something powerful.
- jaytaylor 7y ago
  This may be an oversimplification. There is more to it than just megahertz or gigahertz. The most important metric in this case is work done per clock, on average.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    I don't believe that AMD made better architecture than Intel in regards to performance. They might be similar, but definitely not 10% better. So in the end it comes to frequency (and core count for niche tasks).
    - abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
      just based on the previous gen benchmark, the perfomance/clock of Zen+ cpu is better htan intel offering. What makes you say it isnt so?
      - vbezhenar 7y ago
        https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... this page compares 9900K and 2700X. 9900K should work at 4700 MHz with all cores loaded. 2700x should work at 4300 MHz. So the difference is roughly 10%. And Intel in most benchmarks scores more than 10%.
        the_why_of_y 7y ago
        Those benchmarks were done 3 or 4 Meltdown microcode mitigations ago... the problem with Intel CPUs is, they become slower the longer they're exposed to security researchers.
zanny 7y ago
No mention of it, but the pressure should still be on AMD to open source or allow firmware disable of their Platform "Security" Processor. I would really like to be more enthusiastic for my next build to use something like this, but all my computers are presently trustable in a way new platforms with proprietary coprocessors that haven't seen me_cleaner support cannot achieve. It really sucks to give Intel money - its not like they support the me cleaner project and are actively antagonistic to third parties disabling their backdoors - but at some point it stops being a matter of principle and becomes one of practicality. I can disable the unwanted parts of the hardware on one platform and not on the other.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  Does Intel let you disable PSP? Meanwhile, AMD seemed to in the past[0]. 0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-Disable-Option https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-...
  - zanny 7y ago
    They don't have the choice on older chipsets that ME Cleaner has been reverse engineered to work with. Hence why its practicality. Neither respects user freedom, but the community has reverse engineered the ability to disable the backdoor of one company and not the other.
    - walterbell 7y ago
      Is there a Xeon E3 mATX motherboard (C236 or C224 chipset) which supports me_cleaner and has 8 SAS ports? Preferably without IPMI.
- profquail 7y ago
  Have you considered using the POWER9-based Raptor Blackbird uATX board for your next build? The firmware is open, and they advertise it as a feature: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html
IlegCowcat 7y ago
My guess: standing by for a last 2019 or 2020 refresh. AMD simply doesn't have to play their full hand right now to be competitive. Going to 16 core on AM4 looks to be trivial on paper since they're already doing 12 core: just a matter of clock speeds and core voltage to make it happen inside of AM4 parameters.
- tracker1 7y ago
  My guess is their chiplets may have defective cores that are being disabled, and they aren't getting high enough yeilds on 8-core chiplets to release a 16c pair CPU yet. I doubt they'd hold back on offering a significant bump over Intel's current offering with a 16c/32t mainstream cpu.
saltminer 7y ago
Did AMD talk about VME instructions? I'd love to be able to run a Win 9x VM again.
- sebazzz 7y ago
  Running a VM is already possible. Graphics acceleration is what the real issue is.
  - saltminer 7y ago
    I'm referring to virtual 8086 mode enhancements. They're broken on Ryzen 1- and 2-series chips, AMD responded to my bug report saying they had no intention of fixing them in microcode updates. You wouldn't notice this unless you tried to run older OSes in a VM, like DOS-based Windows, or some applications in DOSBox.
andy_ppp 7y ago
Any chance I can have a Mac Mini with a 3700X in please?
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  AFAIK Apple has zero macs with AMD cpus. Also I've heard about issues running macOS even in virtual machine on AMD hardware. So I have my doubts about that. You're more likely to have RAM Mac Mini.
joeleisner 7y ago
I'm excited for these CPUs to come out; I've been yearning to get away from Intel after they've continually shot themselves in the foot, and these models price/performance are really selling team red to me.
yatimurrofiq 7y ago
bagaimana cara kerjanya?
ksec 7y ago
At close to 300 comments, I am surprised there is no mention of what I thought was the most important and surprise, 32 to 70MB L3 Cache. A lot of people focus on Core and Thread as well as IPC. We already knew what improvement IPC could do, we already knew what we could do 32 Thread. None of these are really new. But 64MB of L3 Cache? In a consumer CPU at a price that I would hardly call expensive ( I would even go on to call it a bargain ). We used to talk about performance enhancements and cache miss, we now have 64MB to mess with, we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache!
- Manjuuu 7y ago
  This, people tend to forget what huge difference a few mb of cache can make. I'd prefer 1Mb more of cache over half a GHz of frequency.
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    This is a bit pedantic but capitalization matters in units. I think you mean 1MB instead of 1Mb (byte not bit). And "mb" would be a milli-bit or a thousandth of a bit, which is a unit that probably makes sense in some situations (e.g., estimating information content of a message). (There's also the extra complexity around MiB vs MB for base 2 vs base 10 prefixes. In this case it would actually be MiB as RAM and cache is normally base 2 sized. But not everyone uses that, relying on convention from context instead.)
- pedrocr 7y ago
  >we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache When dual-core processors came out someone said you could now have one core run your stuff and another run the anti-virus. That was widely joked about. This feels a little close to that. Having more CPU cache than we recently had RAM ending up being used for programming language overhead.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Agreed. For those of us using VMs, the extra cache in each package is enough for the working set of the systemd we are obligd to run in each VM. Looking back to the 8M total RAM I had on a Mac SE/30, running A/UX Unix and a MacOS GUI comfortably, the sloppiness of modern productions is a disgrace and an embarrassment. What galls is not the wasteful extravagance. It's the failure of imagination that makes such meager, pitiable use of such extravagance. We make, of titanium airframes and turbojet engines, oxcarts.
harry8 7y ago
What is the interthread latency between cores on a ryzen? Something like: https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency I get in the ballpark of 250 cycles on an intel $whatever (it's been pretty stable for a while) for cores on the same package full round trip, (hyperthreading off). mean = 255, 247 (ignoring blowouts) max: 4898276 min: 93 (cyles)

657 points by DuskStar 7y ago

Man.. Loving this. Going to get the Ryzen 9 I think. My current machine is an 8 core i7 At 3.6Ghz and boost to 4. Having 12 cores without the hyperthreading issues with intel and boost to 4.6 is going to rock.

tracker1 7y ago
i7-4790K myself, going to hold out a couple months longer to see if they get the 16core r9, or a new Threadripper out.

auvi 7y ago

I really expected a 16C/32T Ryzen 9 though.

DuskStar 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised to see that come out as a mid-generation bump, personally. But I imagine they ran hard into thermal/TDP issues adding the extra four cores - especially if the dies used for the 3900X are highly binned.
klingonopera 7y ago
Wouldn't that be the domain of ThreadRipper?
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Not if AMD's looking to remove ThreadRipper from their product stack, and segment their server chips a little more.
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    Are they actually planning to? I just recently looked into "modern" hardware (was out of the fold for some years) and it would be a shame to retire the relatively new TR4 platform so soon...
  - liuliu 7y ago
    Unlikely though. TR is AMD's only HEDT presence (qual-channel, high core count). X570 chipset will likely s be dual-channel memory, limiting to 64GiB, seems still positioned for mainstream. Intel currently have very high price HEDT offering, hard to see how AMD is going to give up that market. Probably after Rome?
  - martinpw 7y ago
    ThreadRipper is not going away: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-threadripper-roadmap-removal,39460.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-threadripper-roadmap-r... Quote: You will definitely see more Threadrippers from us
- wmf 7y ago
  Maybe ThreadRipper 3000 will have 24/32/48 cores.
  - dis-sys 7y ago
    the problem is new TR is not on their 2019 roadmap PPT
    - ericd 7y ago
      That's too bad, it's a really neat chip line. More PCI-E lanes than a Xeon E5 without the ridiculous premium.
      - dis-sys 7y ago
        There are rumors that AMD is not happy with TR2's memory performance as the 4 channel memory controller is the bottleneck, they are probably looking at 8 channel memory option for TR3. ;)
        ericd 7y ago
        Ha well I wouldn’t complain if they did that. The higher core count TR2s have a bit of a weird performance profile because of the memory channel setup - two of the chiplets have to hop through another chiplet for memory accesses. Is that what you’re referring to?
        dis-sys 7y ago
        > Is that what you’re referring to? yes, they had to introduce that extra hop to workaround the fact that it has 4 less channel compared to the regular 8 channel EPYC.
        ericd 7y ago
        Ah yeah, I think I remember reading that. That's why I ended up with the 16 core TR2. I briefly considered the EPYC, but for my uses (prepping data for a couple GPUs training models), 16 seemed like (and has been) enough.
- sq_ 7y ago
  Using PCPartPicker as a reference [0], it looks like ThreadRipper bottomed out at 8c/16t with the 1900X. So I guess there's general overlap between Ryzen and TR in AMDs lineup there? [0] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#s=63 https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#s=63
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    Yeah, I'm guessing the general overlap is because Ryzen and TR run on different sockets (AM4 and TR4, respetively). The 1900X is an economic solution to get your own TR4 platform running and then you can upgrade it to some monster 32C beast of a processor, when you really need the extra CPU power.
    - sq_ 7y ago
      Good point. I'd forgotten about TR4 and its absolute behemoth of a socket.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Somewhat, though bear in mind that even the 1900X ThreadRipper has 4 memory channels and a ridiculous number of PCIe lanes whereas Ryzen is 2 channel and has much less PCIe.
treeevor 7y ago
Its going to come after intel has a chance to try and respond to the 12 core. Let intel think they have a chance and finally bury them
jlawer 7y ago
Potentially is a yield issue / segmentation issue. Releasing the top SKU as a 12 core instead of 16 core part gives AMD: 1.) Still the highest core count "Mainstream" part. I would expect Intel to fire back with a higher IPC / thread performance part rather then try and ramp core counts. Outside of productivity, content creation and server workloads I really don't see the need for anything past 6-8 cores right now. 2.) Lets AMD keep the flawless chiplets for Ryzen 7 where there will be high demand. While providing a way to move more 6 core chiplets. They can change the product mix once yields improve. I would imagine that there is likely better margin on Ryzen 7 (1x chiplet) rather then the R9 (2x chiplet). 3.) Keeps more of the Threadripper line viable for those that need high cores (especially if you don't require the extra memory bandwidth). 4.) Sells a bunch of CPUs now, while keeping the ability to quickly respond to Intel if needed (or as a spoiler around the Intel 10nm release)
- kristianp 7y ago
  Thanks for this analysis, although I wouldn't agree that R9 profit margin is lower than Ryzen 7. It would depend on the yield though, so if yields are low for 8 core chiplets, the R7 would cost more to make than if yields are higher.
- tmd83 7y ago
  It's interesting though that Ryzen 9 is almost the highest clocked part of the bunch.
  - effie 7y ago
    AMD did not want to release the expected 16 core yet, but had to release some "monster" to get at those hype-affected buyers. So they clocked/binned those 6-core chips accordingly, to make this core-lacking monster more attractive. It also makes sense to sell as many silicon chips in Ryzen 9 package as possible, instead of selling them in Ryzen 5 package - more luxurious, better margin. Of course, anybody who cares about value and does some research before buying expensive high-end parts will wait for the Intel-AMD exchange to play out, or for the 16-core to be announced, and only then buy the best option.
- 7y ago
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
16C is probably coming later once Intel responds.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  Intel are planning a 10 core desktop part, so the moment it pops its head up AMD will drop their 16 core chip on it.
  - topspin 7y ago
    Yeah, that's almost a given isn't it? If AMD has really closed the single-thread performance gap then Intel is in for a hard few years in this market. Looking forward to independent benchmarks.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
My guess is that bandwidth and cooling limitations meant that 16C/32T Ryzen wouldn't have been much faster than 12C/24T. It sounds like the 12C/24T outperforms the 12C/24T Intel; if they had released the 16C/32T reviewers would compare it against an 18C/36T Intel chip, which it may not do as well against.
dethac 7y ago
Probably saving golden 8 core dies for Epyc. It'll come whenever the market needs it, but right now they're doing fine without it.

gratilup 7y ago

Now imagine a Threadripper with the Zen2 cores, higher IPC and frequency would be certainly welcome. Have the 32 core 2990WX and it's an incredible CPU for compiling large C++ programs, running big test suites and never having to worry about running too many tasks at the same time.

danbolt 7y ago
A lot of AAA game studios with larger C++ codebases use Incredibuild a lot. I can imagine having something with this level of parallelism would be incredibly useful.
- gratilup 7y ago
  Don't even need Incredibuild, even MSBuild or just plain /MP option in VC++ can take advantage of it. A build from VS of the Unreal Engine 4 client takes around 2 min, for example.
  - danbolt 7y ago
    Agreed, utilizing multiple processes helps a lot, although a larger number of cores across the entire network helps a lot with compiling the mass of translation units. Most workplaces I’ve done C++ at have had extra IncrediBuild agents with Intel Xeons to help with that
  - gambiting 7y ago
    I mean, yes, but even that is not enough once the project is big enough. I work on a huge AAA game in C++ and on my 8-core 16-threaded Xeon the whole thing compiles in 40 minutes. Incredibuild is a must to keep the compilation times even remotely acceptable.
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Icecream is the distributed compiler to use on Linux. Add ccache as needed.
empyrical 7y ago

sandworm101 7y ago

Looks like that 499 will include a cooler too. Id probably not use it (liquid cooling is better imho) but an included cooler is a perk.

DuskStar 7y ago
I'd say it's more relevant for something like the 3700X - air cooling is very reasonable for a 65W TDP chip.
- ehnto 7y ago
  You can get practically silent air coolers for ~$40 now too. The only reason I would do liquid cooling now is for the fun of putting one together.
  - sq_ 7y ago
    Isn't AIO liquid cooling still a good solution for decent overclocks without emptying your wallet for a custom loop? To my knowledge, those $40 silent air coolers perform well but still can't match a big liquid radiator.
    - sbov 7y ago
      I can't find the link but a youtuber tested various AOIs and air coolers and a Noctua air cooler did the best job cooling. Unless you like AOIs for some other reason (e.g. some people don't like all the space air coolers take), if you aren't running a custom loop you're probably wasting your money when water cooling.
      - sq_ 7y ago
        Interesting. Do you have any idea as to which Noctua cooler it was? Their highest end ones run really close in price to the lower end AIOs.
        7y ago

loser777 7y ago

Biggest surprise seems to be the 65W 8/16 3700X. Hopefully that means a bit of overclocking headroom.

DuskStar 7y ago
Considering that the 105W 8/16 3800X only gains 300MHz base and 100MHz turbo for the extra 40W, I'm not sure that's the case. Still almost certainly what I'll be replacing my 4790k with though
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Yeah, I think this might finally be the reason to replace my old Haswell.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Going to wait a couple more months to see if 16c 39xx shows up, or a new Threadripper... also on a 4790k.
XMPPwocky 7y ago
This might just be a case of TDPs being essentially arbitrary. The 9900K is allegedly a 95W part, but even a moderate all-core OC means you have powers in the 200W and up range. AMD might have just jumped on the same bandwagon.
- IanCutress 7y ago
  AMD's TDPs are calculated at all-core turbo. Intel's are only valid for base frequency.
  - XMPPwocky 7y ago
    Ah, so AMD doesn't have cheesy numbers- good to know.
    - 7y ago

jxi 7y ago

The Ryzen 7 3700X looks like it hits a sweet spot. 65W TDP, $330, almost as fast as a 9900k. Was originally planning to go for the Ryzen 5, but with these specs it seems silly not to go for the 3700X.

TheOperator 7y ago
Also with CPU performance starting to taper off I think people need to also start think of their computers as longer term investments. I think the 8 core makes sense. Even my phone has 8 cores now...
- zelon88 7y ago
  I've been hearing this for a long time, but the "taper" isn't really a taper in all markets. In consumer markets, yes the taper is very real. Infact I bet you could take one $500 machine off the shelf of Wal-Mart every year for the past 5 years and benchmark them all within 15% of each other overall. But it isn't really visible when money is no object. If it's not the cores getting faster it's the core-count going up. Moore's Law is really easy to beat if you focus on making your CPU die's larger instead of their transistors smaller.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    Also for at least one part of high perf computing, gaming, the trend has been that more cores now actually count in modern engines. Couple of years ago you wanted a couple of cores but single thread perf was the big thing. Now some modern game engines scale very well beyond 4 cores. Presumably they have shifted to some sort of work-item based system instead of having fixed threads for subsystems (rendering, AI, ...). So upgrading from a 4 to 8 core a few years back was expensive and mostly not worth it for gaming, whereas now it might actually give the huge speedup the core count would indicate (Obviously for gaming this just means moving the bottleneck, but still)
  - TheOperator 7y ago
    That's just it. The 12 core system years from now will have barely aged. CPUs will just have gotten larger and more expensive. This is changing a past situation where say a CPU would lose half its value in 3 years. This incentivizes spending big and upgrading infrequently.

PaulBGD_ 7y ago

I'll probably still get it since I've been waiting for it to release, but a bit disappointed they couldn't get 5GHz.. I'm curious what overclocking could be done here.

dralley 7y ago
Despite being behind on frequency, it seems they've totally caught up (and maybe surpassed, not enough info to know yet) Intel in IPC, and even the 3700X will have more than double the cache of the 9900K So we'll have to see what the benchmarks look like but they might not be as far behind as the frequency gap would suggest.
- PaulBGD_ 7y ago
  That's true, if more software starts taking advantage of multiple threads it'd probably be better than most of Intel's offerings.
  - mort96 7y ago
    What software which requires a lot of processing power currently doesn't take advantage of multiple threads? Games are increasingly parallel, browsers do most non-JS things in parallel (and obviously run each tab in parallel), compiling code and video rendering eats CPU cores like crazy.
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      yeah a lot of people will assert that games don't benefit from more threads, but, if you fire up fortnite or battlegrounds and look at your cpu grapsh, you will see at least 8 of them working pretty hard
snvzz 7y ago
Since they're beating Intel, lower clock only means faster/clock, which is better. And there's of course potential for higher clocks as yields improve with 7nm process maturity. In fact, they might be even possible today, but AMD chose to release a relatively affordable lineup, which is the opposite of Intel's expensive chips with "golden die" binning. This shows AMD is relaxed, in contrast to Intel's desperation.

p1mrx 7y ago

It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. This would be the first time since the Core2/Athlon64 days.

sadris 7y ago
I'm begging for a good single threaded CPU that isn't $600
- ianai 7y ago
  Read that often here tonight. Is there a killer app for single core performance other than UI/UX?
  - fooey 7y ago
    Games are still bottle necked by single thread performance
    - reiichiroh 7y ago
      Last two Assassin's Creed engine benefit from more than 4 threads
  - PureParadigm 7y ago
    In all seriousness, I've been wanting better single threaded performance for running a Minecraft server.
    - ehnto 7y ago
      What kind of player count are you getting? I have been running 4 players with one of the most taxing modpacks on a mid tier digital ocean VPS with no hitches. Not many players I guess but in case you were curious if you could use a VPS. Even when we had multiple excavators sending thousands of entities through sorting pipelines it was stil doing surprisingly well.

DiabloD3 7y ago

I watched the keynote live. I'm sold, my desktop is most likely going to be a Ryzen (although not the 8/16 monster, come on, it's a desktop, if I need high core count, I have stuff at work for that).

shmerl 7y ago
I don't mind 12 cores / 24 threads on my desktop. Makes compiling Mesa, Wine and Linux kernel a lot faster.
- eropple 7y ago
  I do a bunch of live video stuff (which, for the uninitiated, means "hi, I'm ffmpeg, I want all your processors") and I learned, the hard way, that I couldn't put a 16C/32T Threadripper in the box--it's a 4U case in a Gator transport case--because 180W would blow out my heat budget. 12C/24T at 105W should be doable. I'm excited; right now I'm constrained because stuff like my CG system is built on Chromium and so it gets a little chewy when I run multiple independent overlays. Doubling my cores--I have a Ryzen 1600 in there right now--and probably increasing single-thread performance by 40% should make my life pretty interesting.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Yeah, video encoding will surely benefit from it as well.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Back of the matchbook, I should be able to encode 1080p60 at something like medium presets. "Medium" is really good.
- eugene3306 7y ago
  Cool, but we haven't seen compiling benchmarks yet. 12 cores might be bottlenecked by dual-channel memory.

lettergram 7y ago

Finally! I’ve been using a Ryzen 1800x since it’s release. Unfortunately, it has some stability issues and I’ve been waiting to upgrade on the Ryzen 3000, 7nm line. This is going to be a solid 75%+ boost to performance, given I regularly max out my machines threads. Pretty amazing improvement in 2 years.

m0zg 7y ago
Could be that it'll still continue to have stability issues. For some reason Ryzens are extremely picky when it comes to memory. There's really no guarantee that 3-rd gen will resolve this issue. It's to the point where e.g. Corsair makes memory specifically designed to work with AMD CPUs. This memory typically contains Samsung B-die chips which work fairly well.
- coder543 7y ago
  No, the stability issues they're talking about are on a release day 1800X. It's not memory issues, and I've never had memory issues with either of my Ryzen processors. This is the issue they're certainly talking about: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Se... And it is assuredly not a problem with any Ryzen processors manufactured after the very first few months.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    So I must be imagining my problems with Threadripper memory kits as of early this year as well as my coworkers problems with his 1800X. Hmm, OK then. HN knows best.
  - IronBacon 7y ago
    There was also a problem with P-states and Ryzen CPUs crashing/stalling in idle, but only with Linux kernels. I never experienced it myself but in my BIOS there's an option about "power on idle" that's suggested to not turn off for compatibility (I don't recall the correct words but I could check). It usually depends on MB manufacturers and BIOS/AGESA versions.

shmerl 7y ago

12 cores with 105W TDP - good improvement over 8 cores with same TDP for Ryzen 7 2700X.

jdsully 7y ago

I didn’t see any word on whether the vector units are still half width. That’s still a major performance advantage for Intel.

gratilup 7y ago
They are full 256 bit wide now, that's how it can claim a 2x float perf. improvement. It also doesn't have an "AVX" offset.
phonon 7y ago
They announced they doubled the floating point, so I assume that means full width per clock. Hear it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be&t=5810 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be...
- jdsully 7y ago
  Ah cool! Hopefully the BMI2 instructions are upgraded too.

fencepost 7y ago

My question is how is their architecture doing regarding the assorted speculative execution baked-in issues and what kind of impact is there on the AMD processors compared to comparable Intel CPUs?

xvector 7y ago
Frightening lack of press around this. Basically all of Intel's and AMD's lineups are centered around high thread count right now. Completely useless if I can't reasonably enable SMT.
- pja 7y ago
  So far, AMD has only been exposed to the Spectre (branch cache) information leaks haven’t they? They aren’t vulnerable to Meltdown or any of the recent MDS information leaks because they don’t speculatively execute if the thread doesn’t have access rights. Intel chose to speculate regardless and fixup the register contents on instruction retirement, which is why they have had so many problems.
- makomk 7y ago
  AMD's chips apparently don't have the security vulnerabilities that make SMT unsafe to enable on Intel chips - they released a white paper explaining why MDS etc aren't possible and what exactly the boundaries are on their chips: https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security-whitepaper.pdf https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security-whitepap... It just didn't get a huge amount of press coverage.
PixyMisa 7y ago
Phoronix is the number one site for that sort of article. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-mds-xeon&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-md...
nolok 7y ago
Those affect Intel much, much more than AMD and once you include the fixes it always get better for AMD than without because, oversimplifying a lot, when doing branch speculation "Is it branch A or B ? I will guess A and pre compute that" Intel didn't bother with any access check during the prediction and only ran them after once confirmed it was indeed A (so it already had the result and merely did the ACL check), whereas AMD was already doing all the checks even during predition. That's why there is an entire range of such weakness that doesn't affect AMD while it hurts Intel very strongly.

techntoke 7y ago

Nothing mentioned about their "G" series.

snvzz 7y ago
They already launched a new generation of that recently, based on Zen+ with Vega. The previous one was pre-zen+. Their gpu+cpu chips are always based on the more mature tech.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Are you referring to the 2400G? Rumors are they will release a 3600G this time around based on Navi.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  The only Zen+ based APUs are mobile/embedded-only though. Desktop APUs are all still pre-Zen+.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    The 2200/2400G is Zen-based.

gigatexal 7y ago

Yup. Just waiting on the benchmarks from independent reviewers and to see how XFR in this generation works but I’ll be getting a Ryzen 9 if everything checks out. 24 threads will be amazing for local development (microk8s, and others) when I’m not gaming and save me from having to build a separate box.

dmix 7y ago
Do you work on a desktop machine? At home?
- shmerl 7y ago
  Why not? Lot's of FOSS development happens this way.
  - dmix 7y ago
    I didn't say anything bad about it. Funny how people project.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  I do a lot of work related experiments at home for my own learning and to help what I do for my employer.
- sharpneli 7y ago
  Whenever I'm having a remote day yes. Some projects can take literally hours to fully recompile. The more cores, the better. Will also be getting a Ryzen if the singlecore benchmarks show it's reasonable. Bunch of games I play at home tend to absolutely trash single core perf.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Why do you "fully recompile"? Use Google Bazel and never fully recompile anything.
    - 7y ago

deathtrader666 7y ago

We've had 32 cores from AMD, yes.. But what about 64 cores like Intel's Knight Landing Xeon Phi?

wyldfire 7y ago
Well the Phi is sold/packaged as an accelerator so it's not quite the same. But I was pretty sure i had seen >= 32 core Xeons (though those were likely with now-nerfed HT so kinda moot).
muxr 7y ago
Epyc 2 (Rome) will have up to 64 cores.
marmaduke 7y ago
They are way too hard to use and get performance comparable to the dual Xeon servers.

tmd83 7y ago

I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced. I haven't really seen that mentioned much I wonder why is that. I do love the potential for Zen2 + 7nm. The 65w of 3700x and the high frequency of the 3900X both suggest interesting potential for the future. One could end up seeing that the Ryzen 5, six cores might have higher overclocking headroom. Then there's of course Navi, the first new GPU core in a long long time.

MrGilbert 7y ago
You could pick a Ryzen with "G", like the Ryzen 5 2400G, though... They have an integrated GPU.
- deafcalculus 7y ago
  They are limited to 4 cores. In the new lineup too, when G series comes out later, they'll be limited to 8 cores (one cliplet for CPU and one for GPU).
  - zanny 7y ago
    With this CPu chiplet design they couldn't have 2 8 core packages and a GPU on a single die. For the vast majority of professional use cases 8 core / 16 thread running at 4.5+ boost is going to be way enough for a while. AMD sure has spoiled the market in just two years on commoditizing 8 core desktop chips because in 2016 the conversation would be about what flavor of $400+ quadcore or $800+ sextacore from Intel you were going to get.
  - NightlyDev 7y ago
    Not true. 3000 series APUs are based on zen+.
    - 7y ago

Epopeehief54 7y ago

Takes guts to stick with that core count and at least you get to enjoy the full 70MB of cache. Good thing Blender and Cinebench all fits inside that, not sure you can ever say the same for productivity workloads. I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count: Would love to see real and IF switches to give a bit of flexibility and what they plan for a new Threadripper.

muxr 7y ago
> I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count The new Ryzen 3000 CPUs support PCIe Gen4.. so while the number of lanes will remain the same, their bandwidth could be doubled. Just announced Navi GPUs also support Gen4.
velox_io 7y ago
I am quite surprised that they're launching a consumer CPU with 70MB of cache! When most CPUs have ~8MB, I don't think there's ever been such a huge CPU cache jump in history. Those duel CCXs means the 16 core Ryzen could be ready for release (that's what I have my eye on!). It's funny, going from 12 to 16 cores is basically the i7 6700k in my desktop. Plus, it's great that Intel is being aggressive by releasing the 9900KS (which is a pretty good GPU for gamers). It's been a while since we've seen any real competition between AMD & Intel.

hsivonen 7y ago

What's the outlook for AMD to provide the kind of performance counters and performance counter accuracy that is needed for rr?

mkl 7y ago
For those curious like me: https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/ It's a debugger from Mozilla that works by recording and replaying program executions.

jaytaylor 7y ago

It's not clear to me from TFA: Do any existing AM4 mobos / chipsets have support for full PCIe 4.0 bandwith (64Gbps)? Or will the existing mobos be limited to PCIe 3.0 (~5-6Gbps)? All of the five processors will be PCIe 4.0 enabled, and while they are being accompanied by the new X570 chipset launch, they still use the same AM4 socket, meaning some AMD 300 and 400- series motherboards can still be used. I was just reading about PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 yesterday [0], and some quick research indicates only a week ago it was announced some current AMD boards do support PCIe 4.0 [1]. Would be awesome because the rate when transferring terabytes across SSD RAID arrays will see a 3-10x increase from ~500-600MBps to ~1.5-6GBps+. Fantastic! [0] https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-test https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-tes... [1] https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth-bios-support-ryzen-3000 https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth-bi...

wtallis 7y ago
Existing 300 and 400 series boards may be able to operate at PCIe 4 speed for the CPU-provided lanes (as opposed to the ones routed through the chipset that you can't upgrade), however signal integrity issues may limit this to just the slot closest to the CPU. So far, I haven't heard about any particular boards that have been validated for a specific number of slots working at gen4 speeds. Whatever you're using for an SSD RAID array will probably get in the way of using gen4 speeds, since you likely won't be able to get gen4 speeds over any cables or risers without redriver chips.

bashwizard 7y ago

Nice. I guess it's time to upgrade from my old 1700X.

gravelc 7y ago

Is there any clarity on how much RAM the 3900X supports? Presumably can do 4x32GB, which would make for a great little bioinformatics workstation. Am very excited with this chip and Windows bringing the full Linux kernel - can do everything I want at home with just one fairly cheap PC and no dual booting. Good times!

jaytaylor 7y ago
Are 32GB sticks of fast registered DDR4 still absurdly expensive?
- gravelc 7y ago
  Still not cheap - $200 for DDR4-2666 up to $350+ for DDR-3200 from what I can see on Newegg

deleted 7y ago

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psnosignaluk 7y ago

I’ve really been looking forward to these chips. The 2700X was pretty close to Intel in 1440p benchmarks, so I’m looking forward to what the likes of Gamers Nexus have to say about overall performance, specifically in line with performance elements like frame render time. Not that it really matters to me. I’ll have one of the 8 core chips on a micro-ATX X570 and build up a system around that. I’ve purposely held off building a new desktop because of Ryzen 3000. In a Ghost S1 or NCase M1, it should be the ideal CPU for a powerful SFF build.

vbezhenar 7y ago

No 5GHz, I'm disappointed. Was considering switching to AMD, but Intel looks better. I'll wait for Threadripper announce, though, may be they'll release something powerful.

jaytaylor 7y ago
This may be an oversimplification. There is more to it than just megahertz or gigahertz. The most important metric in this case is work done per clock, on average.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  I don't believe that AMD made better architecture than Intel in regards to performance. They might be similar, but definitely not 10% better. So in the end it comes to frequency (and core count for niche tasks).
  - abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
    just based on the previous gen benchmark, the perfomance/clock of Zen+ cpu is better htan intel offering. What makes you say it isnt so?
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... this page compares 9900K and 2700X. 9900K should work at 4700 MHz with all cores loaded. 2700x should work at 4300 MHz. So the difference is roughly 10%. And Intel in most benchmarks scores more than 10%.
      - the_why_of_y 7y ago
        Those benchmarks were done 3 or 4 Meltdown microcode mitigations ago... the problem with Intel CPUs is, they become slower the longer they're exposed to security researchers.

zanny 7y ago

No mention of it, but the pressure should still be on AMD to open source or allow firmware disable of their Platform "Security" Processor. I would really like to be more enthusiastic for my next build to use something like this, but all my computers are presently trustable in a way new platforms with proprietary coprocessors that haven't seen me_cleaner support cannot achieve. It really sucks to give Intel money - its not like they support the me cleaner project and are actively antagonistic to third parties disabling their backdoors - but at some point it stops being a matter of principle and becomes one of practicality. I can disable the unwanted parts of the hardware on one platform and not on the other.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
Does Intel let you disable PSP? Meanwhile, AMD seemed to in the past[0]. 0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-Disable-Option https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-...
- zanny 7y ago
  They don't have the choice on older chipsets that ME Cleaner has been reverse engineered to work with. Hence why its practicality. Neither respects user freedom, but the community has reverse engineered the ability to disable the backdoor of one company and not the other.
  - walterbell 7y ago
    Is there a Xeon E3 mATX motherboard (C236 or C224 chipset) which supports me_cleaner and has 8 SAS ports? Preferably without IPMI.
profquail 7y ago
Have you considered using the POWER9-based Raptor Blackbird uATX board for your next build? The firmware is open, and they advertise it as a feature: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html

IlegCowcat 7y ago

My guess: standing by for a last 2019 or 2020 refresh. AMD simply doesn't have to play their full hand right now to be competitive. Going to 16 core on AM4 looks to be trivial on paper since they're already doing 12 core: just a matter of clock speeds and core voltage to make it happen inside of AM4 parameters.

tracker1 7y ago
My guess is their chiplets may have defective cores that are being disabled, and they aren't getting high enough yeilds on 8-core chiplets to release a 16c pair CPU yet. I doubt they'd hold back on offering a significant bump over Intel's current offering with a 16c/32t mainstream cpu.

saltminer 7y ago

Did AMD talk about VME instructions? I'd love to be able to run a Win 9x VM again.

sebazzz 7y ago
Running a VM is already possible. Graphics acceleration is what the real issue is.
- saltminer 7y ago
  I'm referring to virtual 8086 mode enhancements. They're broken on Ryzen 1- and 2-series chips, AMD responded to my bug report saying they had no intention of fixing them in microcode updates. You wouldn't notice this unless you tried to run older OSes in a VM, like DOS-based Windows, or some applications in DOSBox.

andy_ppp 7y ago

Any chance I can have a Mac Mini with a 3700X in please?

vbezhenar 7y ago
AFAIK Apple has zero macs with AMD cpus. Also I've heard about issues running macOS even in virtual machine on AMD hardware. So I have my doubts about that. You're more likely to have RAM Mac Mini.

joeleisner 7y ago

I'm excited for these CPUs to come out; I've been yearning to get away from Intel after they've continually shot themselves in the foot, and these models price/performance are really selling team red to me.

yatimurrofiq 7y ago

bagaimana cara kerjanya?

ksec 7y ago

At close to 300 comments, I am surprised there is no mention of what I thought was the most important and surprise, 32 to 70MB L3 Cache. A lot of people focus on Core and Thread as well as IPC. We already knew what improvement IPC could do, we already knew what we could do 32 Thread. None of these are really new. But 64MB of L3 Cache? In a consumer CPU at a price that I would hardly call expensive ( I would even go on to call it a bargain ). We used to talk about performance enhancements and cache miss, we now have 64MB to mess with, we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache!

Manjuuu 7y ago
This, people tend to forget what huge difference a few mb of cache can make. I'd prefer 1Mb more of cache over half a GHz of frequency.
- pedrocr 7y ago
  This is a bit pedantic but capitalization matters in units. I think you mean 1MB instead of 1Mb (byte not bit). And "mb" would be a milli-bit or a thousandth of a bit, which is a unit that probably makes sense in some situations (e.g., estimating information content of a message). (There's also the extra complexity around MiB vs MB for base 2 vs base 10 prefixes. In this case it would actually be MiB as RAM and cache is normally base 2 sized. But not everyone uses that, relying on convention from context instead.)
pedrocr 7y ago
>we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache When dual-core processors came out someone said you could now have one core run your stuff and another run the anti-virus. That was widely joked about. This feels a little close to that. Having more CPU cache than we recently had RAM ending up being used for programming language overhead.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Agreed. For those of us using VMs, the extra cache in each package is enough for the working set of the systemd we are obligd to run in each VM. Looking back to the 8M total RAM I had on a Mac SE/30, running A/UX Unix and a MacOS GUI comfortably, the sloppiness of modern productions is a disgrace and an embarrassment. What galls is not the wasteful extravagance. It's the failure of imagination that makes such meager, pitiable use of such extravagance. We make, of titanium airframes and turbojet engines, oxcarts.

harry8 7y ago

What is the interthread latency between cores on a ryzen? Something like: https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency I get in the ballpark of 250 cycles on an intel $whatever (it's been pretty stable for a while) for cores on the same package full round trip, (hyperthreading off). mean = 255, 247 (ignoring blowouts) max: 4898276 min: 93 (cyles)