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AMD's core density is a huge deal, and it's not just for gamers anymore. Lots of enterprise software companies are rethinking or have restructured their licensi

AMD's core density is a huge deal, and it's not just for gamers anymore. Lots of enterprise software companies are rethinking or have restructured their licensing agreements to prepare for a future where per-socket licensing (which pretty much implied 2x sockets per server) will be undercut by 2nd and 3rd gen Epyc making single-socket servers at scale relevant again.

TwoNineA 6y ago
Core count is not that important for games.
- Nursie 6y ago
  It's becoming that way, raw single core performance is becoming less of a bottleneck over time.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  I’d be wondering why, though. From my experience, much of what a game engine usually does looks embarrassingly parallel.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    It’s parallelized on the GPU, but I/O isn’t really something you can parallelize that much.
    - willis936 6y ago
      Most of the CPU work in games is in making draw calls, which can be parallelized. Interesting that the meme that games are ST bound persists when that hasn’t been the case for several years (see: DX11+ and Vulkan). The problem is game devs and engine makers don’t spend the effort to parallelize in the main loop everywhere they can. You can get extra fps by having a faster single thread. Even still, if you had a 6 GHz single core CPU with a contemporary architecture then you would have an abysmal frame rate in a contemporary game. Those cores are used.
      - som33 6y ago
        >Interesting that the meme that games are ST bound persists when that hasn’t been the case for several years Except you don't get that it's not a meme, ideally CPU's were expected to scale into the 10-30Ghz range, that never happened because of the end of dennard scaling. So yes ST performance is paramount, the only reason it's not is because CPU scaling hit a brick wall and because of power and leakage issues, when new materials become available that enable higher frequencies, you will see everything dramatically improve. So no DX11 and Vulkan will not magically make all games faster, they are optimizations for graphics pipelines. Most of today's games we're interested in run on 10year old machines just fine. If you think you can't run an i5 2500K /w a modern GPU and run 99% of all games you are clueless. Most games are targeted at console specs and have held PC gaming back for decades.
    - mcv 6y ago
      There's not much to parallelise about I/O maybe, but many games simulate entire worlds filled with monsters, NPCs and tons of game effects. That sounds like stuff that's easy to parallelise.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Core count for gaming is important until it matches to latest console game hard (now 8core, next gen also 8core)
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Current consoles are still using low-power CPU microarchitectures, albeit at higher clock speeds than the original PS4 and Xbox One. So it's still pretty easy to match the console CPU power with a modern desktop processor that has fewer CPU cores each providing much higher per-core performance. When the next generation of consoles arrives at the end of the year, the Xbox and PlayStation families will move to a desktop-class microarchitecture with performance per clock that's competitive with retail desktop processors.
sqldba 6y ago
Unfortunately Microsoft saw this coming in 2012 and changed their database licensing off of per-socket and onto per-core.
twiceaday 6y ago
> it's not just for gamers anymore Gamers never cared about the number of cores. Only recently has this slowly started to change. Intel is still king if you primarily care about gaming.
- kadoban 6y ago
  Really only true if you _only_ care about gaming. If you're split at all, single core perf on AMD these days is real close, and multicore Intel is just getting trashed (especially in any kind of price-per-perf metrics).
  - mcv 6y ago
    Everybody is always looking at performance per dollar. I'm more interested in performance per Watt. All that power generates heat which needs to be blown out of the system, which creates noise. I like my machine silent.
    - atq2119 6y ago
      You'll be happy to learn that AMD is beating Intel in perf-per-watt as well these days. Certainly when it comes to the high-end, but Zen2 is doing well in laptop tests as well.
      - mcv 6y ago
        That's good to know. I got my son a Ryzen Thinkpad for school. When I bought my own almost a year ago, I was sad that Thinkpads didn't come with Ryzens yet.
    - guenthert 6y ago
      Me too, but the heat (energy) is probably the more important discriminator. Data center operators very much care about how much is created (wasted) as they have to pay for it twice. Desktop users might in addition care about heat (-> noise) being created in low load / near idle situations where those machines spend most of their time in.
chaos_a 6y ago
even when it's written the name Epyc seems dumb. Why the hell did they pick that name? Why did they let their gaming division name a server product? Nothing against the product. A product name wouldn't ever stop me considering it as a serious choice, it just seems like a rushed decision that's unfortunately stuck with it.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  Well, intell called their then cutting edge server architecture EPIC...

TwoNineA 6y ago

Core count is not that important for games.

Nursie 6y ago
It's becoming that way, raw single core performance is becoming less of a bottleneck over time.
Koshkin 6y ago
I’d be wondering why, though. From my experience, much of what a game engine usually does looks embarrassingly parallel.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  It’s parallelized on the GPU, but I/O isn’t really something you can parallelize that much.
  - willis936 6y ago
    Most of the CPU work in games is in making draw calls, which can be parallelized. Interesting that the meme that games are ST bound persists when that hasn’t been the case for several years (see: DX11+ and Vulkan). The problem is game devs and engine makers don’t spend the effort to parallelize in the main loop everywhere they can. You can get extra fps by having a faster single thread. Even still, if you had a 6 GHz single core CPU with a contemporary architecture then you would have an abysmal frame rate in a contemporary game. Those cores are used.
    - som33 6y ago
      >Interesting that the meme that games are ST bound persists when that hasn’t been the case for several years Except you don't get that it's not a meme, ideally CPU's were expected to scale into the 10-30Ghz range, that never happened because of the end of dennard scaling. So yes ST performance is paramount, the only reason it's not is because CPU scaling hit a brick wall and because of power and leakage issues, when new materials become available that enable higher frequencies, you will see everything dramatically improve. So no DX11 and Vulkan will not magically make all games faster, they are optimizations for graphics pipelines. Most of today's games we're interested in run on 10year old machines just fine. If you think you can't run an i5 2500K /w a modern GPU and run 99% of all games you are clueless. Most games are targeted at console specs and have held PC gaming back for decades.
  - mcv 6y ago
    There's not much to parallelise about I/O maybe, but many games simulate entire worlds filled with monsters, NPCs and tons of game effects. That sounds like stuff that's easy to parallelise.
fomine3 6y ago
Core count for gaming is important until it matches to latest console game hard (now 8core, next gen also 8core)
- wtallis 6y ago
  Current consoles are still using low-power CPU microarchitectures, albeit at higher clock speeds than the original PS4 and Xbox One. So it's still pretty easy to match the console CPU power with a modern desktop processor that has fewer CPU cores each providing much higher per-core performance. When the next generation of consoles arrives at the end of the year, the Xbox and PlayStation families will move to a desktop-class microarchitecture with performance per clock that's competitive with retail desktop processors.

sqldba 6y ago

Unfortunately Microsoft saw this coming in 2012 and changed their database licensing off of per-socket and onto per-core.

twiceaday 6y ago

> it's not just for gamers anymore Gamers never cared about the number of cores. Only recently has this slowly started to change. Intel is still king if you primarily care about gaming.

kadoban 6y ago
Really only true if you _only_ care about gaming. If you're split at all, single core perf on AMD these days is real close, and multicore Intel is just getting trashed (especially in any kind of price-per-perf metrics).
- mcv 6y ago
  Everybody is always looking at performance per dollar. I'm more interested in performance per Watt. All that power generates heat which needs to be blown out of the system, which creates noise. I like my machine silent.
  - atq2119 6y ago
    You'll be happy to learn that AMD is beating Intel in perf-per-watt as well these days. Certainly when it comes to the high-end, but Zen2 is doing well in laptop tests as well.
    - mcv 6y ago
      That's good to know. I got my son a Ryzen Thinkpad for school. When I bought my own almost a year ago, I was sad that Thinkpads didn't come with Ryzens yet.
  - guenthert 6y ago
    Me too, but the heat (energy) is probably the more important discriminator. Data center operators very much care about how much is created (wasted) as they have to pay for it twice. Desktop users might in addition care about heat (-> noise) being created in low load / near idle situations where those machines spend most of their time in.

chaos_a 6y ago

even when it's written the name Epyc seems dumb. Why the hell did they pick that name? Why did they let their gaming division name a server product? Nothing against the product. A product name wouldn't ever stop me considering it as a serious choice, it just seems like a rushed decision that's unfortunately stuck with it.

gpderetta 6y ago
Well, intell called their then cutting edge server architecture EPIC...