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Since 2000, AMD has often beaten Intel on multi-threaded workloads, but never single-threaded (at comparable clocks). This bench shows AMD beating Intel on both
by mrb 7y ago
Since 2000, AMD has often beaten Intel on multi-threaded workloads, but never single-threaded (at comparable clocks). This bench shows AMD beating Intel on both! That's what's incredibly notable here. The last time it happened was 20 years ago with the AMD K7.
Now Zen 2 seems to overall beat Intel on every metric: single-threaded perf, multi-threaded perf, perf/dollar, perf/watt. No matter how you look at it, Zen 2 comes out on top.¹ Very impressive.
Man the folks at Intel must feel the heat.
¹ Except perf/socket when competing with the Xeon 9200, but that's just a PR stunt no one cares about: https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1135766935667240960 https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/113576693566724096...
- leetcrew 7y agoiirc, amd was beating intel on single thread in the pentium 4 era with way lower clocks.
- opencl 7y agoThe FX-60 from 2006 I think was the last AMD CPU that held this crown. 2.6Ghz and it beat Intel's top chip at 3.5Ghz. The only thing on the market with higher single threaded performance was their own FX-57 which was single core with a slightly higher clock speed. https://www.anandtech.com/show/1920 https://www.anandtech.com/show/1920
- gothroach 7y agoI still have my old FX-60 in an antistatic clamshell. I just could never bring myself to get rid of it, I loved that processor so much. That and XPx64 held me for a very long time.
- nolok 7y agoThat's when Intel "let's go faster" made them meet the 4Ghz barrier head on for the first time. More than a decade later and we're still pretty much there. One has to wonder how things would have gone if they didn't have the Core-M architecture on the side back then.
- cptskippy 7y agoIntel knew that the Netburst Architecture was power hungry so it had established an Israeli team to develop a mobile architecture in tandem. I believe they started with Tualatin or another late PIII design and optimized the hell out of the microcode. I believe that became Banias and they continued to bring in aspects of Netburst to produce the precursors to the Core line.
- agumonkey 7y agonetburst was rapidly killed, nobody hid that it was a failure
- nizmow 7y agoIts death wasn't rapid. RDRAM, though, that was rapid. But that was only a fraction of Netburst's problems.
- throwaway2048 7y agoNetburst lasted for 6ish years before it was not intel's premier product, and then another 2-3 afterwards in various forms.
- agumonkey 7y agoReally.. my memory is bad then. I thought it was 5 years including a 2 years lingering period.
- lunchables 7y agoYeah that's why they invented the nomenclature such as "AMD Athlon 3200+". It was equivalent to a 3.2Ghz pentium in performance.
- kteofanidis 7y agoChances are I'll be upgrading to a Ryzen 3000 this year. Now that I think about it the last time I ran an AMD CPU was indeed the K7.
- tracker1 7y agoI've gone back and forth a couple times... currently 4790K, before that FX-8150, before that a first gen i7-860, before that and AMD XP/X2 ... Now looking at the r7-3950X. Of course, this is the longest I've held out on upgrading, and getting itchy about it...
- nolok 7y agoYou want notable ? AMD is currently beating Intel on price, single threaded perf, multi threaded perf, TDP/power usage at equivalent performance AND on many of the "little pluses on the side" (more PCI-e lanes, ECC supports, ...). When Zen first came is was a huge deal, but it merely put them as a real competitors, with a decent advantage on many cases, reinforced with Zen+. But Zen 2 put them ahead in almost every category, and in all markets; threadripper and EPYC are just as strong in their areas. Either Intel has something strong about to appear, or they're going to face a truly difficult few years with customers going AMD now that it's not merely "one generation of chip" that was good. It feels like getting their 10nm working will not be enough by itself.
- lunchables 7y agoAnd the motherboards from two years ago (AM4) will support the latest Zen2 / Ryzen 3000 series CPU[0]. Meanwhile intel changes the socket every generation which adds another $100-$300 to the cost of a CPU upgrade. [0] double check your board manufacturer for bios updates to support new CPU, my cheap B350 board does.
- TheCapn 7y agoHelpful link for knowing which motherboards are able to get their bios flashed to support Zen2 without an installed CPU/memory: https://redd.it/bvfo57 https://redd.it/bvfo57
- Iggy173 7y agoThis is unfortunately not helpful to those of us who haven't made the jump to AMD yet :(
- undersuit 7y agoIt's been 24 years since you could use an Intel or AMD processor on the same motherboard and some people just can't get over it.
- lunchables 7y ago
- neogodless 7y agoThere's one thing left that I have both doubts and excitement for: How good are AMD's laptop chips? The improvement in IPC and efficiency in Zen 2 can go a long way in improving this, and then, of course, they must improve perception. Anecdotally: I've owned almost exclusively AMD chips in my desktop builds for the past 15 years. I've never once owned an AMD laptop. When Intel built the Core line of chips, they seemed to nail laptop first, and then apply the efficiency to their desktop line with higher clocks. It worked wonders. In my opinion, AMD really needs to nail laptop CPUs/APUs now more than ever. I hope they do!
- Tuna-Fish 7y agoAMD's current laptop lineup consists of 12nm APUs. They will switch to 7nm next year, in the 4000 series.
- neogodless 7y agoGiven AMD's recent success in engineering and product decisions, I think they'll overcome their previous laptop processor shortcomings. I'm optimistic. I don't think the process node was the primary driver, though. I think they just had some lingering issues with sleep states, etc. that need to be spot on to ensure excellent battery life.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- notacoward 7y ago> Man the folks at Intel must feel the heat. Well, their processors are very effective space heaters, so yeah.
- tracker1 7y agoI'm guessing you missed the comments regarding performance per watt?
- notacoward 7y agoYou mean AMD beating Intel, therefore being less effective space heaters than Intel's own? Yeah, I saw those.
- hurrdurr2 7y agoThis is great news for consumers. I've always wanted to build another pc based on AMD chips and it looks like Zen 2 is going to be it.
- chrisdfrey 7y agoI'd argue AMD and Intel were pretty close in single-threaded performance until the Core 2 Duo (released in 2006).
- undersuit 7y agoYou'd be wrong. Athlon 64 destroyed the Pentium 4 and the Athlon XP model names were originally meant to be an equivalent to how fast the lower-clocked AMD cpu would perform to the speed of a Pentium 4 clocked at the same MHz as the model name. Here's a top of the line Intel Pentium 4 3.46 Extreme Edition being unable to compete with AMD processors running at 66% of the clock speed of the Intel. https://www.anandtech.com/show/1529 https://www.anandtech.com/show/1529 I really don't count Core Duo, even though I had a Macbook equipped with one. The Core 2 Duo was Intel's first real competition to Athlon 64.
- kllrnohj 7y ago> The last time it happened was 20 years ago with the AMD K7. K8, too. AMD's IPC was so far ahead of Intel's at that time it was crazy. 2.2GHZ Athlon 64's were keeping up with or beating the 3-3.2ghz P4's. It was so strong & competitive Intel resorted to straight up bribery to compete, resulting in many anti-trust judgements against it as a result. But they succeeded in preventing K8 from hurting their market share, and kept AMD down despite a vastly superior product. Here's hoping that doesn't happen again this time around, but maybe Intel will decide the wrist slap is worth it.
- abandonliberty 7y agoI think that's unlikely. AMD has to be ready to deal with it somehow.