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AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is the fastest processor on Geekbench

461 points by areejs 7y ago

IloveHN84 7y ago
Wow
tmd83 7y ago
If that's really true, a 16 core AMD having a higher performance than a 18 core intel processor at twice the price, that's a fabulous news for all consumers. Hopefully that will stop both intel from setting absurd price for mid end processor and generally push the industry forward.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  What really matters (for people that do the CAPEX and OPEX math on their assets; not gamers) is the performance/power ratio. Without this I don't see AMD eating much of Intel's lunch (35B vs 208B market cap).
  - Scaevolus 7y ago
    AWS and Azure have had EPYC instances available for a while, so the math (presumably) works out for cloud operators.
    - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
      AWS also has aarch64 instances (we use them for CI and simulations at my day job). It’s starting to look like Intel’s days are numbered.
  - vondur 7y ago
    The Core i9-9980XE pulls from 199W->245W depending on the workload and AVX instructions being used under stock settings. The Ryzen is listed as a 105W part, although when overclocked, I'm sure it will pull more than that. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cpu,5902-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cp...
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      That means that the Ryzen part can pull ninety-four more watts- and basically double its TDP and still go under what the i9-9980XE will draw. There also seem to be some new X570 motherboards that will actually support this level of craziness, too.
  - tmd83 7y ago
    I guess you are not aware that at this point everything suggest that the upcoming AMD 7nm processors are significantly more efficient that similar performance intel processor. The Ryzen processor is 105w vs. the significantly slower intel processor is 165w. Additionally also AMD's TDP numbers are much more accurate in terms of real peak usage than intel. So almost certainly Zen 2 processor will have a much better performance/power ratio than corresponding intel one moving forward. That was definitely not the case for AMD in their last generation.
  - sbov 7y ago
    The Zen 2 16 core chip is 105 watt TDP. The chips its wiping the floor with are 165 TDP. TDP doesn't necessarily correlate with real world usage, but benchmarks show that AMD is much better at their chips running closer to TDP than Intel chips are, so the gap is probably actually wider. The strength of Intel chips is being able to pump a lot of power through them to hit higher clock rates. It sounds like you're saying performance/power is a benefit for Intel, possibly based upon the history of AMD chips, but that line of thought has been wrong since the Ryzen architecture.
    - tmd83 7y ago
      I think even on 1st gen Zen processor intel had performance/watt advantage though the gap was lower. It's Zen 2 that has completely obliterated intel in performance/watt. Which is almost a bigger shock than the AMD taking the performance crown. Taking both the performance and efficiency crown in a single generation specially when it's not even a full new generation is beyond impressive. Of course it was only feasible with the foundation build up by Zen 1 but it's still very encouraging after the major stagnation that was there in desktop processor for a long while.
      - H8crilA 7y ago
        This is good to know. Are there any reputable benchmarks that show those advantages? Something like FLOPS/watt on some LAPACK or Tensorflow test, or amount of joules to compile the Linux kernel, or anything of this sort?
      - kllrnohj 7y ago
        It's going to depend heavily on which specific CPU you're talking about and which specific workload, but at least on Handbrake the Ryzen 2700 was the performance/watt king per legitreviews: https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performance-per-watt.png https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performa... Maybe Intel took that back with their lower clocked 8c/16t chips, dunno, this isn't something that comes up all that much in consumer reviews. But there's at least not a significant gap in either direction, it's pretty much a wash. On the server side of things Anandtech didn't seem to go much into it but at least with this one: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/22 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd... The dual EPYC 7601 used 100w less than the Xeon competition in povray while also being the fastest system by a substantial margin at povray, too. Which would put performance, power, and performance/watt all firmly in the EPYC 7601's domain on that one test. And Intel took it back on MySQL. So 50/50 split.
  - nolok 7y ago
    AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Intel is currently getting absolutely destroyed on that front.
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      > AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Both AMD & Intel list TDP for all cores used at base clock frequencies. The major difference is Intel heavily leverages what they call all-core boost to never actually run at their base clock, allowing them to list rather ridiculously low base clock frequencies. For example the i9-9900K's base frequency is listed at 3.6ghz, but the all-core turbo frequency is a whopping 4.7ghz. That difference is how you end up with a CPU that expects a whopping 210W of sustained power delivery (the 9900K's PL2 spec) even though its TDP is only 95W. AMD doesn't (didn't?) have an all-core boost concept, so their base clocks are just higher, making their TDP number closer to real-world. But still technically base-clock numbers and not boost numbers, and so you will still see power draw in excess of TDP.
  - mtgx 7y ago
    In that case, Intel should be in big trouble, because the advertised TDP seems to be less than half the power required to reach the chips' advertised performance: > In this case, for the new 9th Generation Core processors, Intel has set the PL2 value to 210W. This is essentially the power required to hit the peak turbo on all cores, such as 4.7 GHz on the eight-core Core i9-9900K. So users can completely forget the 95W TDP when it comes to cooling. 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... In other words 1) Intel's advertised "TDP" = true? (they don't use the same original meaning of the "Total Design Power" anymore) 2) Intel's advertised peak performance = true (with caveats such as all the mitigations required for the CPU flaws, which lower performance) 3) Intel's advertised peak performance at advertised TDP = BIG FAT LIE
  - tracker1 7y ago
    The difference in power is not enough to offset the price/performance differences. AMD is actually on par or better than Intel with Zen 2 anyway.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  Until Intel releases their 3D chiplet technology, is it even possible for them to compete on price with Zen 2? The yields for their high-end multicore packages must be abysmal compared to the 7nm TSMC chiplets AMD is packing together.
  - mtgx 7y ago
    If anything the 3D chiplet tech will make their chips even more expensive/lower yield/more likely to overheat. HBM memory for instance is still quite expensive, and even 3D NAND was more expensive initially. Now it's harder to tell because the whole market crashed and they reached a limit for density anyway.
    - TomVDB 7y ago
      Not sure who you're talking about when you write "their chips". Is that AMD or Intel?
      - mtgx 7y ago
        He was talking about Intel's 3D chiplet tech.
    - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
      I agree with you, I don't see how Intel will cool a 3D chip unless the bottom package is extremely simple. Even then, it looks like that design would be more expensive than the multilayer mini-board + ball grid array AMD explained in their presentation. In both this case and their delays in getting to 10nm due to wanting larger dies, it really feels like Intel's management is letting better be the enemy of good whereas AMD is making smarter choices about where to compromise. By the time Intel releases their awesome 10nm 3D chiplet stack, AMD will likely have moved onto 5nm compute chiplets with a 7nm IO chiplet. It's not clear to me how Intel will catch up in the next 5 years or so.
      - ct520 7y ago
        Uh - Intel is releasing Foveros this year. Assume its going to be in a surface type of device. Little big core for x86. AMD will not be on 5nm. You seem confused about the status of the industry.. Point being you were wrong in the statements you have been making. 5nm will not be out by the time Foveros is introduced. I did not state Foveros is a competitor to a 128 thread epyc processor..
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  And it's a consumer cheap, not really from the same league. Can't wait to see what new Threadripper will offer.
  - sbov 7y ago
    Although it's a "consumer" chip, at a pricetag of $750 its kind of a weird hybrid.
    - bityard 7y ago
      Gamers will happily buy it. I remember paying paying something like $800 for an Athlon 700 MHz CPU (the cartridge one) in 1999.
      - daveguy 7y ago
        I doubt gamers will be a big market for that chip. You don't get a whole lot of increased capability / FPS with a high end chip compared to a mid range chip when the GPU is generally the limiter. But I do think they are going to sell a ton of 3600-3800 chips.
        tracker1 7y ago
        Came to say the same... the 3600 (non-X) is extremely competitive in gaming, and is pretty likely to have some good overclocking headroom with a good water cooler. Personally, I'm very much looking forward to the 3950X and will probably be my choice (even though waiting yet another 2 months to upgrade) unless something significant/soon happens in the next ThreadRipper, the 3950X is likely to be a very sweet spot carrying it for 5 years and more. I've said in other comments my 4790K is getting a bit old at this point, not slow for most stuff, but definitely hungry for more cores for a lot of tasks, and looking to break past 32gb of ram. I'd also been considering Epyc or even Xeon, as older/used Xeons can be very well priced. Guess I'm waiting until September.
        dev_dull 7y ago
klodolph 7y ago
Traditionally AMD does NUMA differently from Intel. Would like to see a comparison focusing on NUMA.
- p_l 7y ago
  Ryżem branded cpus have single NUMA zone, threadripper have 2, EPYC have 2 per socket
  - paol 7y ago
    This was true up until now, but the upcoming 3900X and 3950X have 2 separate dies ("chiplets"). I assume this means it will have the same architecture as the current TR 2920X and 2950X. Edit: opencl post above says apparently not, it's a different memory architecture.
    - horyzen 7y ago
      The 2 smaller chiplets are for core complex, the memory controller is on the IO die(the other bigger one) that these 2 CCX share. So there is still one single memory controller, and hence, not NUMA.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      All memory access is through the single I/O die, so neither the new Ryzen nor the new Epyc are technically NUMA. However, because all cores in a single chiplet share a single L3 cache, doing NUMA-like optimizations will still yield significant benefits. AFAICT.
  - lorenzhs 7y ago
    The bigger EPYCs have four NUMA zones per socket (at least the 7551P does).
- opencl 7y ago
  3950X and the single socket versions of new EPYC chips aren't NUMA. Instead of each CPU die having its own memory controller there is a central I/O die with an IF link to each CPU die.
xedarius 7y ago
There’s an increasing groundswell of trust in AMD and their Ryzen chip. It’s great news, I’ve owned one for two years now and it’s fab. The new XBox will feature a custom Ryzen of some form. Who’s next, Apple?
- martin_bech 7y ago
  Playstation 5 will also be based of Ryzen gen2 CPU and Navi GPU, both AMD.
  - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
    AND the new Google Stadia (using AMD GPU's server-side to do the heavy-lifting).
  - masklinn 7y ago
    Pretty sure Intel simply doesn't do bespoke parts (especially relatively low margin ones) so AMD is pretty much the only option. After dropping Gen 7's PPC, both the PS4 and the XB1 were customised AMD APU, and there's no great architectural rival.
    - the8472 7y ago
      Intel does semi-customized parts, but mostly at the other end of the spectrum for cloud vendors.
    - dangus 7y ago
      Never say never. The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel.
      - masklinn 7y ago
        > Never say never. I didn't? > The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel. The original xbox was a PC in a box, the CPU was not a customised part.
fortytw2 7y ago
I think the bigger news here is that it almost _doubles_ the score of the similar AMD Threadripper 2950X (also 16c/32t). 34650 to 61072 in a generation is no joke, while being both a far smaller, much lower power part.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Don't you think it means the number is probably fake? Before the release and subsequent independent testing the trust in any exceptional results should be very low.
  - jsgo 7y ago
    But those independent tests are inevitable and probably right at or right after launch. Does AMD stand to gain anything by falsifying test results that are (relatively) easy to fact check independently? I mean, no one should lose their minds over it right now or anything, but it seems impressive. I certainly don't see an upside to giving bogus stats right now.
    - lostmsu 7y ago
      It's not AMD giving these stats. It is some random website on the Internet. They might simply be seeking attention.
      - cududa 7y ago
        Geekbench has been around for a while and is considered reputable.
        lostmsu 7y ago
        I trust Geekbench, but the article is not theirs either.
        NullPrefix 7y ago
        Geekbench does not do the testing themselves, they only publish your score that you run on your machine.
shmerl 7y ago
How does 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X have the same TDP as 12 core Ryzen 9 3900X (105W)? It even has higher max boost frequency. Is it just because of lower base frequency? * https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x * https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x
- eightysixfour 7y ago
  It may boost to a higher frequency but lower number of cores to have the same TDP.
- fabian2k 7y ago
  TDP doesn't tell you what the actual power consumption in practice will be. It is defined in some weird ways (different between manufacturers), and generally not intuitive. I would recommend to avoid trying to read too much into the TDP, wait for actual measurements of power consumption. My understanding is that typically the TDP is designed to fit to the base clock of the processor, and doesn't necessarily include the amount of power necessary to achieve the boost clocks.
  - paol 7y ago
    Anandtech do a deep dive on how Intel calculate TDP numbers [0]. It's complicated (and completely different from AMD, so never try to compare numbers). [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more-power-than-expected-tdp-turbo https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-dr...
    - shmerl 7y ago
      Interesting, thanks! From that article, Intel's TDP is roughly equal to the power draw during full load on base frequency. How does AMD define it then? Also, what about GPUs TDP?
      - paol 7y ago
Keyframe 7y ago
Does Ry(Zen) now support AVX-512 and thunderbolt? It will be interesting to see if Jim Keller comes up with something for intel too, now that he's there and no longer with AMD.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  From what I remember Thunderbolt is Intel proprietary even though at launch they said it will be open. Does anyone know if that has changed?
  - eigenspace 7y ago
    Yes, thunderbolt 3 is open now. There's a few AMD motherboards out there right now that support it but they're not common.
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    TB is a part of USB 4 spec.
- pella 7y ago
  AVX-512 : not yet ; But has an improved AVX2 "AMD has stated that there is no frequency penalty for AVX2, based on its energy aware frequency platform" https://www.anandtech.com/print/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitecture-analysis-ryzen-3000-and-epyc-rome https://www.anandtech.com/print/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchite... thunderbolt: in some motherboard: "The ASRock X570 Creator is focused towards content creators with a range of high-end features including 10 G LAN, support for DDR4-4600, and dual Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports. " https://www.anandtech.com/show/14461/made-for-creators-asrock-x570-creator-with-ddr44600-two-thunderbolt-10g-lan https://www.anandtech.com/show/14461/made-for-creators-asroc...
  - Keyframe 7y ago
    Oh! Well, motherboards like this one, with TB support, will certainly nudge me towards AMD. Let's see that ThreadRipper then!
postit 7y ago
Wondering if it does makes bazel build faster?
- solomatov 7y ago
  I used bazel on Threadripper and it's much faster there than on a standard lower core machine.
  - postit 7y ago
    I might consider upgrade my workstation. My quadcore i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz isn't up to the task. https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png
    - solomatov 7y ago
      After this post, I am thinking about replacing my TR with this beast :-)
      - tracker1 7y ago
        If you're already on a 16c Threadripper, it may be worth it... presuming the shared IO/Memory controller carries over, it'll have much better throughput on memory constrained workloads that bottleneck with NUMA.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  In my experience builds love parallelism, and even get singificant improvements at 4T per CPU, so a 16/32 like this should be great.
alfredxing 7y ago
This might be an unfair comparison — the AMD numbers are from a single benchmark, and the article is comparing this against the aggregated scores of the i9-9980XE. A few i9-9980XE multi-core scores on Geekbench reach higher than 60k as well, with the highest being 77554 multi-core.
- dmix 7y ago
  https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-9980XE&sort=multicore_score https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-99... Looks like a couple hit 70k+ at 3.00 GHz base [1]. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502
  - Arie 7y ago
    Geekbench just lists the stock speeds for the chip, not the actual speeds used for the benchmark.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Yep I think that's clear in the Geekbench interface.
dosshell 7y ago
And it looks like it has room for overclocking. Here to 5GHz and 65499 points in Geekbench 4 (record for Core i9-7960X is 60991 points) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ
andy_ppp 7y ago
Does anyone know how these CPUs compare with Spectre/Meltdown protections enabled?
- eigenspace 7y ago
  AMD processors have so far been immune to all but one attack and in the previous gen processor the mitigation caused a 2% performance hit. This gen has specific hardware for mitigating these side channel effects so the numbers you're seeing are with the mitigations.
  - uponcoffee 7y ago
    I think the parent comment is asking if the patches have been applied to both chips in the benchmark. Yes, AMD perf will be largely the same but comparison between patched and unpatched will be different.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      Not sure about this benchmark, but the differences in the AMD presentations have been Intel unpatched comparisons.
- jonathonf 7y ago
  Zen2 has hardware mitigations so "the same".
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    I should have said, compared to Intel with mitigation on...
bluedino 7y ago
Would rather see numbers on Cinebench, Video encoding, 7-zip...
bitL 7y ago
With 1903 update or without?
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
Hopefully AMD will release details on the next ThreadRipper iteration before the 3950X release in September. If the top end ThreadRipper is just two of these glued together then there's not really any other choice for a workstation build. But if the next ThreadRipper goes further and has 4 core complexes on a single MMU then it have insane performance.
- undersuit 7y ago
  I think it all depends on if ThreadRipper gets a new socket. Matisse is 2 channel DDR, Threadripper is currently 4 channel, and Rome, the new server platform, is supposed to be 8 channel. Using the Rome platform unmodified means 8 channel matching DDR4 kits for consumers. Re-using Matisse silicon glued together makes next-gen ThreadRipper into a NUMA device. Maybe AMD has an I/O die just for the low volume ThreadRipper in production. Hopefully, AMD will just harvest Rome I/O dies for ThreadRipper and tease us with 32, 48, and 64 core models that work on the existing TR4 socket.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I'd suspect that TR.next will be somewhere in between. The MMU for TR based closer to Epyc, while having more chiplets than Ryzen, but at close to the same clocks (higher than Epyc, less than top Ryzen, and less but faster cores than Epyc). Probably top binned from Ryzen and Epyc for chiplets, but low binned from Epyc for MMU.
pier25 7y ago
Why do you think Apple hasn't moved to AMD cpus for its Mac products? In the past I thought maybe the rumored move to ARM could be the reason, but now with the new Mac Pro I doubt Apple will move to ARM except for some of its laptops.
- ct520 7y ago
  Because Intel and Apples CPU business is larger than a generation of competitors CPU's that finally provide competition?
  - pier25 7y ago
    So you think AMD cpus weren't competitive until now?
    - babypuncher 7y ago
      Well they weren't. Bulldozer and Excavator were both disasters.
      - coder543 7y ago
        Did you just completely forget about the past two years? Zen was very competitive from day one.
        snuxoll 7y ago
        AMD having one good generation doesn’t mean anything when Apple signs multi-year deals. They aren’t HP/Dell/Lenovo who will just contract Foxconn to make a bunch of different boards with standard chipsets to satisfy consumer demand, instead focusing on a tightly integrated platform that they won’t throw away willy-nilly. If AMD can keep it up this time (or Intel keeps flopping) then it may very well happen down the road. Until then, the age old investor relations statement rings true: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Note: I have a Ryzen 5 1600 in my gaming rig and a Ryzen 5 2600 in the wife’s, I love these chips - but I also see the reality of Apple’s ecosystem is all.
masklinn 7y ago
> So, as AMD’s new 16-core Zen 2 flagship has now been officially launched Does that mean there's no 16c Threadripper planned?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Why? Threadripper is for workstations, Ryzen for consumers. Core count does not have anything with that. There was 8 core Ryzen along with 8 core Threadripper in the past.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > Why? Because the bit I quoted calls the 3950X the Zen 2 flagship. > Threadripper is for workstations Threadripper is HEDT, it's not a strictly workstation part (unlike Xeon W).
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      They promised new Threadrippers. I guess, it's flagship until Threadrippers are revealed.
      - masklinn 7y ago
        Ok, thanks for the info.
kitchenkarma 7y ago
It looks like single core performance is still worse than i9 9900K. I wonder how this could look like when overclocked? Sadly my workflow prioritises fast core over multiple cores - audio production. This workflow cannot be made parallel as one plugin depends on the output of another. If plugins can't keep up with filling the buffer you get stuttering. Single core limits you how much processing you can have on a single audio track and multiple cores how many tracks of that processing you can get. It looks like I wouldn't be able to run my chain in realtime on this new AMD even if it had 100 cores.
- artimaeis 7y ago
  The source mentions that this benchmark was of an early sample unit -- with a base clock of 3.9GHz and a boost clock of 4.29GHz. The final production unit is specified at base 3.5GHz and boost of 4.7GHz. I'd expect if it can sustain that boost clock with any longevity that it might come notably closer to the i9-9900k in performance.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  Single core performance is the only reason I chose Intel this time around. Even though I do a lot of docker and some rendering and Photoshop - most development tasks, docker builds, and even most Photoshop tasks that aren't GPU accelerated are bottlenecked on single core performance. Same goes for the overall zippiness of the OS. The most important thing for me is that whatever I am doing this moment is as fast as possible and single core performance still rules since most software still does not take advantage of multiple cores. For the next home server though, I am definitely planning on a high core count AMD. I would add though, that all the new processors are getting so fast, that the difference in single core performance is probably not noticeable. Your main issue would be long running single core tasks which are generally more likely to be multithreaded.
  - piadodjanho 7y ago
    Are you sure about your Photoshop claim? I'd assume they would have rewritten most of their filters code in Halide by now.
fxprq 7y ago
Single-core performance > Multi-core performance for most workloads. Maybe in 10 years it will be the opposite.
- mfatica 7y ago
  That's not true.
  - fxprq 7y ago
    I wish it wasn't but I'm tired of seeing many processes locked at 12% CPU i.e. one core. Granted I mainly use old software. If you recode video or play modern games I assume it's better. But by now I'll keep judging the worth of a CPU by its single-core performance.
    - unethical_ban 7y ago
      You just said something in general, then replied about "for you". There are millions of PC gamers and video encoders and multi-workload users. If you're running intense, non-multithreaded workload and need the absolute best without caring about security (Spectre/Meltdown) or cost, go Intel.
      - hartator 7y ago
        I'll agree even for video games, single core performance matters a lot. Most workload that can use multiple cores are on the GPU. Whereas the main event loop will be single core constrained. Maybe AI. But Again AI should be on the GPU or dedicated chip.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      I do software development, and video reencoding mostly... For dev, I've usually got 2+ databases and several background services running. For reencoding, the kids' Ryzen 2600 is faster than my now aging i7-4790K w/ 32GB. Likely going to this 3950X or the next ThreadRipper (will depend on TR news/release timelines in the fall)... been holding out for a while as I knew this gen Ryzen would be a big bump.
xpuente 7y ago
Perhaps we need data from "real" benchmarks, such as SPECCPU2017. Geekbench is merely a toy compared with SpeCPU.
gigatexal 7y ago
That’s a lot of performance for 749 USD. Building a new workstation / gaming rig in about 18 months time so I will be spoiled for choice by then especially given the used market as these will be old hat by then.
dingoegret 7y ago
God I love competition
3JPLW 7y ago
The Ryzens have an absurdly long branch prediction history that make them much better at repetitive tasks than random real-world workflows. I wonder how much this is effectively "gaming" the Geekbench suite. https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks-remember-branch-history/17436/9?u=mbauman https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks-rememb...
- chipguy 7y ago
  That's not the impression I got from that thread. They seem to agree that this is bad for benchmarking, but remain undecided on whether that's good or bad for real-world processing. It depends on the work. So as always benchmark suites are to be taken with a grain of salt. More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific use cases. Until we see more specific data on how these chips perform for certain tasks, this is just FUD.
  - sbov 7y ago
    > More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific use cases. Is there a good place to go for this? I've tried to find software development focused benchmarks before, but I've come up mostly empty.
    - chipguy 7y ago
      there are many different types of benchmarks with many different CPUs/GPUs compared here: https://openbenchmarking.org/tests/pts https://openbenchmarking.org/tests/pts for a more specific example, linux kernel compilation benchmarks: https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel
    - localhost 7y ago
      Phoronix is a good place to go for compilation benchmarks - https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite
truth_seeker 7y ago
Powerful stuff ! In order to see optimum use of those many cores i wish to see. 1. Most used legacy software libraries to incorporate concurrent/parallel algorithms for both CPU and mixed (CPU +IO) load. 2. Some inventive, compact and powerful heat sink design to be implemented in laptop models.
bstar77 7y ago
Bravo, everyone on the PC side has great options now, but I feel for Mac "Professionals". Sad they just got straddled with the horrendous over priced and under performing Xeon platform. It boggles my mind why Apple would release a $6k model that will get trounced by these chips for a fraction of the price. I know the expand-ability is what you are buying into, but I imagine 90% of Mac Pro customers could care less about terrabytes of memory or a video solution that improves current vram limits. Add to all of that the gimped performance you are going to get on the Intel parts with the latest security patches.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  I feel for Mac "Professionals". Sad they just got straddled with the horrendous over priced and under performing ____ platform. Funny, but by making the name of the platform a blank, this applies just as much to 2005 as it does to 2019. http://lowendmac.com/2015/remembering-the-final-powerpc-macs/ http://lowendmac.com/2015/remembering-the-final-powerpc-macs...
- robdachshund 7y ago
  I have a hard time feeling bad for "professionals" that haven't realized that apple products are and have been a scam for about 20 years now. There was a small period in time where power macs were good workstations. Now they sell 6000 dollar cheesgraters and i9 laptops that throttle to a lower speed than their i7 models, with soldered on memory and storage. Steve jobs may have been a bit greedy, but ol Tim has brought things to an extreme. It's pretty bad when your brainwashed userbase starts ditching macbooks for thinkpads.
- thirdsun 7y ago
  Apple must have had an interest in going with AMD - the fact that they didn't makes me think that getting macOS ready as a productive, reliable OS on AMD CPUs isn't as trivial as we might assume. Also, is Thunderbolt even an option with AMD?
  - mbfg 7y ago
    Isn't the iMac a better option then the Mac Pro? It certainly is from a performance per buck option, but perhaps just in general?
Aaronstotle 7y ago
I want one, no real reason other than increasing my SETI@Home score, however I'd probably do a lot more video encoding with that much horsepower.
mrb 7y ago
Surprisingly no one noticed or reported that the memory is heavily overclocked by +29% in this specific benchmark. Here is the direct link to the detailed results: http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867 http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867 Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz) according to the published specs https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x however in this benchmark the memory was overclocked to 2063 MHz: Memory: 32768 MB DDR4 SDRAM 2063MHz Memory overclocking heavily impacts Geekbench multi-core scores. For example the old Threadripper 2950X sees a score boosted by +18% (39580 vs 46908) with a +9% overclock (1466 vs 1600 MHz): http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baseline=12434177 http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baselin... Although to be honest comparing random Geekbench scores in their database is not exact science because too few system details are reported (for example we don't know if the user systems are running dual or quad-channel DDR4) and we don't know what other hardware mods users make.
- mappu 7y ago
  > Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz) No, it supports "4200+ with ease, 5133 demonstrated". From official slides https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitecture-analysis-ryzen-3000-and-epyc-rome/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitec...
  - mrb 7y ago
    While AMD claim it can be overclocked to 4200 or 5133, it doesn't invalidate my claim that officially it is spec'd for DDR4-3200 according to the product page: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x Note I am not playing down the 3950X's performance. It is overall a processor superior to Intel's counterparts in most aspects.
    - shmerl 7y ago
      I wonder if G.Skill will release new RAM targeted for Zen 2. Their 3200 MHz FlareX works pretty well with Zen+.
parentheses 7y ago
Side-channel vulnerabilities routinely attack performance optimizations that reveal information about the data and/or code. How much of the difference is attributed performance lost to recently patched side-channel vulnerabilities?
locusm 7y ago
Whose your fave Youtube reviewer for CPU releases?
Shorel 7y ago
More interesting is how close they are in single core performance. This is a very important battle to watch.
- wyred 7y ago
  I'm out of the loop. Why is single core performance important, since no one (I think) buys a multi-core CPU just to limit themselves to using only 1 core?
  - Shorel 7y ago
    What makes you think anyone limits their computer to run only one core? I'm flabbergasted. Many people choose the CPU that has the highest single core performance, for both gaming or real-time multimedia processing. Games are usually optimized for a single core, or a low number of cores, not to use all 4 or 6 or 8 cores of a system. Therefore, for gaming single core performance is still very important. You can read some opinions about people still choosing Intel because of single core performance in this very discussion. Additionally, modern CPUs move running threads among cores to avoid a single core from overheating. It's a strategy for thermal management.
    - wyred 7y ago
      Like I said, I'm out of the loop. Thanks for the explanation!
jammygit 7y ago
I went with a ryzen for my newest desktop and it’s been great so far, I love it. Not only does it work well, but it fixed the issues I was having. I used to have shutdown took 5-10 minutes due to some systemd nonsense, mysteriously fixed with the new mobo and cpu. Definitely a plus to have it gone now. Tested with Ubuntu and also windows, Keras and games.
imagetic 7y ago
Pretty stoked about what AMD is doing. Even if these benchmarks are inflated, it's an amazing bang for your buck and you can build some really solid budget machines. The next generation with PCI 4.0 looks extremely promising. I wish they'd concentrate on pressuring motherboard companies to make more professional non-server boards for the Ryzen 9 chips.

461 points by areejs 7y ago

Wow

If that's really true, a 16 core AMD having a higher performance than a 18 core intel processor at twice the price, that's a fabulous news for all consumers. Hopefully that will stop both intel from setting absurd price for mid end processor and generally push the industry forward.

H8crilA 7y ago
What really matters (for people that do the CAPEX and OPEX math on their assets; not gamers) is the performance/power ratio. Without this I don't see AMD eating much of Intel's lunch (35B vs 208B market cap).
- Scaevolus 7y ago
  AWS and Azure have had EPYC instances available for a while, so the math (presumably) works out for cloud operators.
  - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    AWS also has aarch64 instances (we use them for CI and simulations at my day job). It’s starting to look like Intel’s days are numbered.
- vondur 7y ago
  The Core i9-9980XE pulls from 199W->245W depending on the workload and AVX instructions being used under stock settings. The Ryzen is listed as a 105W part, although when overclocked, I'm sure it will pull more than that. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cpu,5902-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cp...
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    That means that the Ryzen part can pull ninety-four more watts- and basically double its TDP and still go under what the i9-9980XE will draw. There also seem to be some new X570 motherboards that will actually support this level of craziness, too.
- tmd83 7y ago
  I guess you are not aware that at this point everything suggest that the upcoming AMD 7nm processors are significantly more efficient that similar performance intel processor. The Ryzen processor is 105w vs. the significantly slower intel processor is 165w. Additionally also AMD's TDP numbers are much more accurate in terms of real peak usage than intel. So almost certainly Zen 2 processor will have a much better performance/power ratio than corresponding intel one moving forward. That was definitely not the case for AMD in their last generation.
- sbov 7y ago
  The Zen 2 16 core chip is 105 watt TDP. The chips its wiping the floor with are 165 TDP. TDP doesn't necessarily correlate with real world usage, but benchmarks show that AMD is much better at their chips running closer to TDP than Intel chips are, so the gap is probably actually wider. The strength of Intel chips is being able to pump a lot of power through them to hit higher clock rates. It sounds like you're saying performance/power is a benefit for Intel, possibly based upon the history of AMD chips, but that line of thought has been wrong since the Ryzen architecture.
  - tmd83 7y ago
    I think even on 1st gen Zen processor intel had performance/watt advantage though the gap was lower. It's Zen 2 that has completely obliterated intel in performance/watt. Which is almost a bigger shock than the AMD taking the performance crown. Taking both the performance and efficiency crown in a single generation specially when it's not even a full new generation is beyond impressive. Of course it was only feasible with the foundation build up by Zen 1 but it's still very encouraging after the major stagnation that was there in desktop processor for a long while.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      This is good to know. Are there any reputable benchmarks that show those advantages? Something like FLOPS/watt on some LAPACK or Tensorflow test, or amount of joules to compile the Linux kernel, or anything of this sort?
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      It's going to depend heavily on which specific CPU you're talking about and which specific workload, but at least on Handbrake the Ryzen 2700 was the performance/watt king per legitreviews: https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performance-per-watt.png https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performa... Maybe Intel took that back with their lower clocked 8c/16t chips, dunno, this isn't something that comes up all that much in consumer reviews. But there's at least not a significant gap in either direction, it's pretty much a wash. On the server side of things Anandtech didn't seem to go much into it but at least with this one: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/22 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd... The dual EPYC 7601 used 100w less than the Xeon competition in povray while also being the fastest system by a substantial margin at povray, too. Which would put performance, power, and performance/watt all firmly in the EPYC 7601's domain on that one test. And Intel took it back on MySQL. So 50/50 split.
- nolok 7y ago
  AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Intel is currently getting absolutely destroyed on that front.
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Both AMD & Intel list TDP for all cores used at base clock frequencies. The major difference is Intel heavily leverages what they call all-core boost to never actually run at their base clock, allowing them to list rather ridiculously low base clock frequencies. For example the i9-9900K's base frequency is listed at 3.6ghz, but the all-core turbo frequency is a whopping 4.7ghz. That difference is how you end up with a CPU that expects a whopping 210W of sustained power delivery (the 9900K's PL2 spec) even though its TDP is only 95W. AMD doesn't (didn't?) have an all-core boost concept, so their base clocks are just higher, making their TDP number closer to real-world. But still technically base-clock numbers and not boost numbers, and so you will still see power draw in excess of TDP.
- mtgx 7y ago
  In that case, Intel should be in big trouble, because the advertised TDP seems to be less than half the power required to reach the chips' advertised performance: > In this case, for the new 9th Generation Core processors, Intel has set the PL2 value to 210W. This is essentially the power required to hit the peak turbo on all cores, such as 4.7 GHz on the eight-core Core i9-9900K. So users can completely forget the 95W TDP when it comes to cooling. 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... In other words 1) Intel's advertised "TDP" = true? (they don't use the same original meaning of the "Total Design Power" anymore) 2) Intel's advertised peak performance = true (with caveats such as all the mitigations required for the CPU flaws, which lower performance) 3) Intel's advertised peak performance at advertised TDP = BIG FAT LIE
- tracker1 7y ago
  The difference in power is not enough to offset the price/performance differences. AMD is actually on par or better than Intel with Zen 2 anyway.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
Until Intel releases their 3D chiplet technology, is it even possible for them to compete on price with Zen 2? The yields for their high-end multicore packages must be abysmal compared to the 7nm TSMC chiplets AMD is packing together.
- mtgx 7y ago
  If anything the 3D chiplet tech will make their chips even more expensive/lower yield/more likely to overheat. HBM memory for instance is still quite expensive, and even 3D NAND was more expensive initially. Now it's harder to tell because the whole market crashed and they reached a limit for density anyway.
  - TomVDB 7y ago
    Not sure who you're talking about when you write "their chips". Is that AMD or Intel?
    - mtgx 7y ago
      He was talking about Intel's 3D chiplet tech.
  - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
    I agree with you, I don't see how Intel will cool a 3D chip unless the bottom package is extremely simple. Even then, it looks like that design would be more expensive than the multilayer mini-board + ball grid array AMD explained in their presentation. In both this case and their delays in getting to 10nm due to wanting larger dies, it really feels like Intel's management is letting better be the enemy of good whereas AMD is making smarter choices about where to compromise. By the time Intel releases their awesome 10nm 3D chiplet stack, AMD will likely have moved onto 5nm compute chiplets with a 7nm IO chiplet. It's not clear to me how Intel will catch up in the next 5 years or so.
    - ct520 7y ago
      Uh - Intel is releasing Foveros this year. Assume its going to be in a surface type of device. Little big core for x86. AMD will not be on 5nm. You seem confused about the status of the industry.. Point being you were wrong in the statements you have been making. 5nm will not be out by the time Foveros is introduced. I did not state Foveros is a competitor to a 128 thread epyc processor..
vbezhenar 7y ago
And it's a consumer cheap, not really from the same league. Can't wait to see what new Threadripper will offer.
- sbov 7y ago
  Although it's a "consumer" chip, at a pricetag of $750 its kind of a weird hybrid.
  - bityard 7y ago
    Gamers will happily buy it. I remember paying paying something like $800 for an Athlon 700 MHz CPU (the cartridge one) in 1999.
    - daveguy 7y ago
      I doubt gamers will be a big market for that chip. You don't get a whole lot of increased capability / FPS with a high end chip compared to a mid range chip when the GPU is generally the limiter. But I do think they are going to sell a ton of 3600-3800 chips.
      - tracker1 7y ago
        Came to say the same... the 3600 (non-X) is extremely competitive in gaming, and is pretty likely to have some good overclocking headroom with a good water cooler. Personally, I'm very much looking forward to the 3950X and will probably be my choice (even though waiting yet another 2 months to upgrade) unless something significant/soon happens in the next ThreadRipper, the 3950X is likely to be a very sweet spot carrying it for 5 years and more. I've said in other comments my 4790K is getting a bit old at this point, not slow for most stuff, but definitely hungry for more cores for a lot of tasks, and looking to break past 32gb of ram. I'd also been considering Epyc or even Xeon, as older/used Xeons can be very well priced. Guess I'm waiting until September.
        dev_dull 7y ago

klodolph 7y ago

Traditionally AMD does NUMA differently from Intel. Would like to see a comparison focusing on NUMA.

p_l 7y ago
Ryżem branded cpus have single NUMA zone, threadripper have 2, EPYC have 2 per socket
- paol 7y ago
  This was true up until now, but the upcoming 3900X and 3950X have 2 separate dies ("chiplets"). I assume this means it will have the same architecture as the current TR 2920X and 2950X. Edit: opencl post above says apparently not, it's a different memory architecture.
  - horyzen 7y ago
    The 2 smaller chiplets are for core complex, the memory controller is on the IO die(the other bigger one) that these 2 CCX share. So there is still one single memory controller, and hence, not NUMA.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    All memory access is through the single I/O die, so neither the new Ryzen nor the new Epyc are technically NUMA. However, because all cores in a single chiplet share a single L3 cache, doing NUMA-like optimizations will still yield significant benefits. AFAICT.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  The bigger EPYCs have four NUMA zones per socket (at least the 7551P does).
opencl 7y ago
3950X and the single socket versions of new EPYC chips aren't NUMA. Instead of each CPU die having its own memory controller there is a central I/O die with an IF link to each CPU die.

xedarius 7y ago

There’s an increasing groundswell of trust in AMD and their Ryzen chip. It’s great news, I’ve owned one for two years now and it’s fab. The new XBox will feature a custom Ryzen of some form. Who’s next, Apple?

martin_bech 7y ago
Playstation 5 will also be based of Ryzen gen2 CPU and Navi GPU, both AMD.
- UI_at_80x24 7y ago
  AND the new Google Stadia (using AMD GPU's server-side to do the heavy-lifting).
- masklinn 7y ago
  Pretty sure Intel simply doesn't do bespoke parts (especially relatively low margin ones) so AMD is pretty much the only option. After dropping Gen 7's PPC, both the PS4 and the XB1 were customised AMD APU, and there's no great architectural rival.
  - the8472 7y ago
    Intel does semi-customized parts, but mostly at the other end of the spectrum for cloud vendors.
  - dangus 7y ago
    Never say never. The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      > Never say never. I didn't? > The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel. The original xbox was a PC in a box, the CPU was not a customised part.

fortytw2 7y ago

I think the bigger news here is that it almost _doubles_ the score of the similar AMD Threadripper 2950X (also 16c/32t). 34650 to 61072 in a generation is no joke, while being both a far smaller, much lower power part.

lostmsu 7y ago
Don't you think it means the number is probably fake? Before the release and subsequent independent testing the trust in any exceptional results should be very low.
- jsgo 7y ago
  But those independent tests are inevitable and probably right at or right after launch. Does AMD stand to gain anything by falsifying test results that are (relatively) easy to fact check independently? I mean, no one should lose their minds over it right now or anything, but it seems impressive. I certainly don't see an upside to giving bogus stats right now.
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    It's not AMD giving these stats. It is some random website on the Internet. They might simply be seeking attention.
    - cududa 7y ago
      Geekbench has been around for a while and is considered reputable.
      - lostmsu 7y ago
        I trust Geekbench, but the article is not theirs either.
      - NullPrefix 7y ago
        Geekbench does not do the testing themselves, they only publish your score that you run on your machine.

shmerl 7y ago

How does 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X have the same TDP as 12 core Ryzen 9 3900X (105W)? It even has higher max boost frequency. Is it just because of lower base frequency? * https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x * https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x

eightysixfour 7y ago
It may boost to a higher frequency but lower number of cores to have the same TDP.
fabian2k 7y ago
TDP doesn't tell you what the actual power consumption in practice will be. It is defined in some weird ways (different between manufacturers), and generally not intuitive. I would recommend to avoid trying to read too much into the TDP, wait for actual measurements of power consumption. My understanding is that typically the TDP is designed to fit to the base clock of the processor, and doesn't necessarily include the amount of power necessary to achieve the boost clocks.
- paol 7y ago
  Anandtech do a deep dive on how Intel calculate TDP numbers [0]. It's complicated (and completely different from AMD, so never try to compare numbers). [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more-power-than-expected-tdp-turbo https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-dr...
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Interesting, thanks! From that article, Intel's TDP is roughly equal to the power draw during full load on base frequency. How does AMD define it then? Also, what about GPUs TDP?
    - paol 7y ago

Keyframe 7y ago

Does Ry(Zen) now support AVX-512 and thunderbolt? It will be interesting to see if Jim Keller comes up with something for intel too, now that he's there and no longer with AMD.

Jonnax 7y ago
From what I remember Thunderbolt is Intel proprietary even though at launch they said it will be open. Does anyone know if that has changed?
- eigenspace 7y ago
  Yes, thunderbolt 3 is open now. There's a few AMD motherboards out there right now that support it but they're not common.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  TB is a part of USB 4 spec.
pella 7y ago
AVX-512 : not yet ; But has an improved AVX2 "AMD has stated that there is no frequency penalty for AVX2, based on its energy aware frequency platform" https://www.anandtech.com/print/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitecture-analysis-ryzen-3000-and-epyc-rome https://www.anandtech.com/print/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchite... thunderbolt: in some motherboard: "The ASRock X570 Creator is focused towards content creators with a range of high-end features including 10 G LAN, support for DDR4-4600, and dual Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports. " https://www.anandtech.com/show/14461/made-for-creators-asrock-x570-creator-with-ddr44600-two-thunderbolt-10g-lan https://www.anandtech.com/show/14461/made-for-creators-asroc...
- Keyframe 7y ago
  Oh! Well, motherboards like this one, with TB support, will certainly nudge me towards AMD. Let's see that ThreadRipper then!

postit 7y ago

Wondering if it does makes bazel build faster?

solomatov 7y ago
I used bazel on Threadripper and it's much faster there than on a standard lower core machine.
- postit 7y ago
  I might consider upgrade my workstation. My quadcore i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz isn't up to the task. https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png
  - solomatov 7y ago
    After this post, I am thinking about replacing my TR with this beast :-)
    - tracker1 7y ago
      If you're already on a 16c Threadripper, it may be worth it... presuming the shared IO/Memory controller carries over, it'll have much better throughput on memory constrained workloads that bottleneck with NUMA.
aidenn0 7y ago
In my experience builds love parallelism, and even get singificant improvements at 4T per CPU, so a 16/32 like this should be great.

alfredxing 7y ago

This might be an unfair comparison — the AMD numbers are from a single benchmark, and the article is comparing this against the aggregated scores of the i9-9980XE. A few i9-9980XE multi-core scores on Geekbench reach higher than 60k as well, with the highest being 77554 multi-core.

dmix 7y ago
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-9980XE&sort=multicore_score https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-99... Looks like a couple hit 70k+ at 3.00 GHz base [1]. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502
- Arie 7y ago
  Geekbench just lists the stock speeds for the chip, not the actual speeds used for the benchmark.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Yep I think that's clear in the Geekbench interface.

dosshell 7y ago

And it looks like it has room for overclocking. Here to 5GHz and 65499 points in Geekbench 4 (record for Core i9-7960X is 60991 points) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ

andy_ppp 7y ago

Does anyone know how these CPUs compare with Spectre/Meltdown protections enabled?

eigenspace 7y ago
AMD processors have so far been immune to all but one attack and in the previous gen processor the mitigation caused a 2% performance hit. This gen has specific hardware for mitigating these side channel effects so the numbers you're seeing are with the mitigations.
- uponcoffee 7y ago
  I think the parent comment is asking if the patches have been applied to both chips in the benchmark. Yes, AMD perf will be largely the same but comparison between patched and unpatched will be different.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Not sure about this benchmark, but the differences in the AMD presentations have been Intel unpatched comparisons.
jonathonf 7y ago
Zen2 has hardware mitigations so "the same".
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  I should have said, compared to Intel with mitigation on...

bluedino 7y ago

Would rather see numbers on Cinebench, Video encoding, 7-zip...

bitL 7y ago

With 1903 update or without?

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

Hopefully AMD will release details on the next ThreadRipper iteration before the 3950X release in September. If the top end ThreadRipper is just two of these glued together then there's not really any other choice for a workstation build. But if the next ThreadRipper goes further and has 4 core complexes on a single MMU then it have insane performance.

undersuit 7y ago
I think it all depends on if ThreadRipper gets a new socket. Matisse is 2 channel DDR, Threadripper is currently 4 channel, and Rome, the new server platform, is supposed to be 8 channel. Using the Rome platform unmodified means 8 channel matching DDR4 kits for consumers. Re-using Matisse silicon glued together makes next-gen ThreadRipper into a NUMA device. Maybe AMD has an I/O die just for the low volume ThreadRipper in production. Hopefully, AMD will just harvest Rome I/O dies for ThreadRipper and tease us with 32, 48, and 64 core models that work on the existing TR4 socket.
tracker1 7y ago
I'd suspect that TR.next will be somewhere in between. The MMU for TR based closer to Epyc, while having more chiplets than Ryzen, but at close to the same clocks (higher than Epyc, less than top Ryzen, and less but faster cores than Epyc). Probably top binned from Ryzen and Epyc for chiplets, but low binned from Epyc for MMU.

pier25 7y ago

Why do you think Apple hasn't moved to AMD cpus for its Mac products? In the past I thought maybe the rumored move to ARM could be the reason, but now with the new Mac Pro I doubt Apple will move to ARM except for some of its laptops.

ct520 7y ago
Because Intel and Apples CPU business is larger than a generation of competitors CPU's that finally provide competition?
- pier25 7y ago
  So you think AMD cpus weren't competitive until now?
  - babypuncher 7y ago
    Well they weren't. Bulldozer and Excavator were both disasters.
    - coder543 7y ago
      Did you just completely forget about the past two years? Zen was very competitive from day one.
      - snuxoll 7y ago
        AMD having one good generation doesn’t mean anything when Apple signs multi-year deals. They aren’t HP/Dell/Lenovo who will just contract Foxconn to make a bunch of different boards with standard chipsets to satisfy consumer demand, instead focusing on a tightly integrated platform that they won’t throw away willy-nilly. If AMD can keep it up this time (or Intel keeps flopping) then it may very well happen down the road. Until then, the age old investor relations statement rings true: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Note: I have a Ryzen 5 1600 in my gaming rig and a Ryzen 5 2600 in the wife’s, I love these chips - but I also see the reality of Apple’s ecosystem is all.

masklinn 7y ago

> So, as AMD’s new 16-core Zen 2 flagship has now been officially launched Does that mean there's no 16c Threadripper planned?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vbezhenar 7y ago
Why? Threadripper is for workstations, Ryzen for consumers. Core count does not have anything with that. There was 8 core Ryzen along with 8 core Threadripper in the past.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Why? Because the bit I quoted calls the 3950X the Zen 2 flagship. > Threadripper is for workstations Threadripper is HEDT, it's not a strictly workstation part (unlike Xeon W).
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    They promised new Threadrippers. I guess, it's flagship until Threadrippers are revealed.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      Ok, thanks for the info.

kitchenkarma 7y ago

It looks like single core performance is still worse than i9 9900K. I wonder how this could look like when overclocked? Sadly my workflow prioritises fast core over multiple cores - audio production. This workflow cannot be made parallel as one plugin depends on the output of another. If plugins can't keep up with filling the buffer you get stuttering. Single core limits you how much processing you can have on a single audio track and multiple cores how many tracks of that processing you can get. It looks like I wouldn't be able to run my chain in realtime on this new AMD even if it had 100 cores.

artimaeis 7y ago
The source mentions that this benchmark was of an early sample unit -- with a base clock of 3.9GHz and a boost clock of 4.29GHz. The final production unit is specified at base 3.5GHz and boost of 4.7GHz. I'd expect if it can sustain that boost clock with any longevity that it might come notably closer to the i9-9900k in performance.
jjeaff 7y ago
Single core performance is the only reason I chose Intel this time around. Even though I do a lot of docker and some rendering and Photoshop - most development tasks, docker builds, and even most Photoshop tasks that aren't GPU accelerated are bottlenecked on single core performance. Same goes for the overall zippiness of the OS. The most important thing for me is that whatever I am doing this moment is as fast as possible and single core performance still rules since most software still does not take advantage of multiple cores. For the next home server though, I am definitely planning on a high core count AMD. I would add though, that all the new processors are getting so fast, that the difference in single core performance is probably not noticeable. Your main issue would be long running single core tasks which are generally more likely to be multithreaded.
- piadodjanho 7y ago
  Are you sure about your Photoshop claim? I'd assume they would have rewritten most of their filters code in Halide by now.

fxprq 7y ago

Single-core performance > Multi-core performance for most workloads. Maybe in 10 years it will be the opposite.

mfatica 7y ago
That's not true.
- fxprq 7y ago
  I wish it wasn't but I'm tired of seeing many processes locked at 12% CPU i.e. one core. Granted I mainly use old software. If you recode video or play modern games I assume it's better. But by now I'll keep judging the worth of a CPU by its single-core performance.
  - unethical_ban 7y ago
    You just said something in general, then replied about "for you". There are millions of PC gamers and video encoders and multi-workload users. If you're running intense, non-multithreaded workload and need the absolute best without caring about security (Spectre/Meltdown) or cost, go Intel.
    - hartator 7y ago
      I'll agree even for video games, single core performance matters a lot. Most workload that can use multiple cores are on the GPU. Whereas the main event loop will be single core constrained. Maybe AI. But Again AI should be on the GPU or dedicated chip.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I do software development, and video reencoding mostly... For dev, I've usually got 2+ databases and several background services running. For reencoding, the kids' Ryzen 2600 is faster than my now aging i7-4790K w/ 32GB. Likely going to this 3950X or the next ThreadRipper (will depend on TR news/release timelines in the fall)... been holding out for a while as I knew this gen Ryzen would be a big bump.

xpuente 7y ago

Perhaps we need data from "real" benchmarks, such as SPECCPU2017. Geekbench is merely a toy compared with SpeCPU.

gigatexal 7y ago

That’s a lot of performance for 749 USD. Building a new workstation / gaming rig in about 18 months time so I will be spoiled for choice by then especially given the used market as these will be old hat by then.

dingoegret 7y ago

God I love competition

3JPLW 7y ago

The Ryzens have an absurdly long branch prediction history that make them much better at repetitive tasks than random real-world workflows. I wonder how much this is effectively "gaming" the Geekbench suite. https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks-remember-branch-history/17436/9?u=mbauman https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks-rememb...

chipguy 7y ago
That's not the impression I got from that thread. They seem to agree that this is bad for benchmarking, but remain undecided on whether that's good or bad for real-world processing. It depends on the work. So as always benchmark suites are to be taken with a grain of salt. More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific use cases. Until we see more specific data on how these chips perform for certain tasks, this is just FUD.
- sbov 7y ago
  > More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific use cases. Is there a good place to go for this? I've tried to find software development focused benchmarks before, but I've come up mostly empty.
  - chipguy 7y ago
    there are many different types of benchmarks with many different CPUs/GPUs compared here: https://openbenchmarking.org/tests/pts https://openbenchmarking.org/tests/pts for a more specific example, linux kernel compilation benchmarks: https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel
  - localhost 7y ago
    Phoronix is a good place to go for compilation benchmarks - https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite

truth_seeker 7y ago

Powerful stuff ! In order to see optimum use of those many cores i wish to see. 1. Most used legacy software libraries to incorporate concurrent/parallel algorithms for both CPU and mixed (CPU +IO) load. 2. Some inventive, compact and powerful heat sink design to be implemented in laptop models.

bstar77 7y ago

Bravo, everyone on the PC side has great options now, but I feel for Mac "Professionals". Sad they just got straddled with the horrendous over priced and under performing Xeon platform. It boggles my mind why Apple would release a $6k model that will get trounced by these chips for a fraction of the price. I know the expand-ability is what you are buying into, but I imagine 90% of Mac Pro customers could care less about terrabytes of memory or a video solution that improves current vram limits. Add to all of that the gimped performance you are going to get on the Intel parts with the latest security patches.

stcredzero 7y ago
I feel for Mac "Professionals". Sad they just got straddled with the horrendous over priced and under performing ____ platform. Funny, but by making the name of the platform a blank, this applies just as much to 2005 as it does to 2019. http://lowendmac.com/2015/remembering-the-final-powerpc-macs/ http://lowendmac.com/2015/remembering-the-final-powerpc-macs...
robdachshund 7y ago
I have a hard time feeling bad for "professionals" that haven't realized that apple products are and have been a scam for about 20 years now. There was a small period in time where power macs were good workstations. Now they sell 6000 dollar cheesgraters and i9 laptops that throttle to a lower speed than their i7 models, with soldered on memory and storage. Steve jobs may have been a bit greedy, but ol Tim has brought things to an extreme. It's pretty bad when your brainwashed userbase starts ditching macbooks for thinkpads.
thirdsun 7y ago
Apple must have had an interest in going with AMD - the fact that they didn't makes me think that getting macOS ready as a productive, reliable OS on AMD CPUs isn't as trivial as we might assume. Also, is Thunderbolt even an option with AMD?
- mbfg 7y ago
  Isn't the iMac a better option then the Mac Pro? It certainly is from a performance per buck option, but perhaps just in general?

Aaronstotle 7y ago

I want one, no real reason other than increasing my SETI@Home score, however I'd probably do a lot more video encoding with that much horsepower.

mrb 7y ago

Surprisingly no one noticed or reported that the memory is heavily overclocked by +29% in this specific benchmark. Here is the direct link to the detailed results: http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867 http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867 Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz) according to the published specs https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x however in this benchmark the memory was overclocked to 2063 MHz: Memory: 32768 MB DDR4 SDRAM 2063MHz Memory overclocking heavily impacts Geekbench multi-core scores. For example the old Threadripper 2950X sees a score boosted by +18% (39580 vs 46908) with a +9% overclock (1466 vs 1600 MHz): http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baseline=12434177 http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baselin... Although to be honest comparing random Geekbench scores in their database is not exact science because too few system details are reported (for example we don't know if the user systems are running dual or quad-channel DDR4) and we don't know what other hardware mods users make.

mappu 7y ago
> Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz) No, it supports "4200+ with ease, 5133 demonstrated". From official slides https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitecture-analysis-ryzen-3000-and-epyc-rome/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd-zen-2-microarchitec...
- mrb 7y ago
  While AMD claim it can be overclocked to 4200 or 5133, it doesn't invalidate my claim that officially it is spec'd for DDR4-3200 according to the product page: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x Note I am not playing down the 3950X's performance. It is overall a processor superior to Intel's counterparts in most aspects.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    I wonder if G.Skill will release new RAM targeted for Zen 2. Their 3200 MHz FlareX works pretty well with Zen+.

parentheses 7y ago

Side-channel vulnerabilities routinely attack performance optimizations that reveal information about the data and/or code. How much of the difference is attributed performance lost to recently patched side-channel vulnerabilities?

locusm 7y ago

Whose your fave Youtube reviewer for CPU releases?

Shorel 7y ago

More interesting is how close they are in single core performance. This is a very important battle to watch.

wyred 7y ago
I'm out of the loop. Why is single core performance important, since no one (I think) buys a multi-core CPU just to limit themselves to using only 1 core?
- Shorel 7y ago
  What makes you think anyone limits their computer to run only one core? I'm flabbergasted. Many people choose the CPU that has the highest single core performance, for both gaming or real-time multimedia processing. Games are usually optimized for a single core, or a low number of cores, not to use all 4 or 6 or 8 cores of a system. Therefore, for gaming single core performance is still very important. You can read some opinions about people still choosing Intel because of single core performance in this very discussion. Additionally, modern CPUs move running threads among cores to avoid a single core from overheating. It's a strategy for thermal management.
  - wyred 7y ago
    Like I said, I'm out of the loop. Thanks for the explanation!

jammygit 7y ago

I went with a ryzen for my newest desktop and it’s been great so far, I love it. Not only does it work well, but it fixed the issues I was having. I used to have shutdown took 5-10 minutes due to some systemd nonsense, mysteriously fixed with the new mobo and cpu. Definitely a plus to have it gone now. Tested with Ubuntu and also windows, Keras and games.

imagetic 7y ago

Pretty stoked about what AMD is doing. Even if these benchmarks are inflated, it's an amazing bang for your buck and you can build some really solid budget machines. The next generation with PCI 4.0 looks extremely promising. I wish they'd concentrate on pressuring motherboard companies to make more professional non-server boards for the Ryzen 9 chips.