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Stuff like this is why I plan to never buy Intel ever again. I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, I mu

Stuff like this is why I plan to never buy Intel ever again. I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores. It is really annoying that with Intel you can't run the same program on the server and on your desktop, it makes development and testing a huge pain.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, The efficiency cores don’t have AVX-512 because they’re low power, simplified cores. This mod required disabling the efficiency cores, reducing core count anyway. It wasn’t actually a free upgrade. > I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores I’ve been using ECC RAM with AMD consumer parts, but it’s not all smooth sailing. The ECC support in their consumer parts isn’t officially supported, so it has been extremely difficult to determine if it’s even working at all. There are long forum threads where many people have tried to confirm it with mixed results. AMD may unofficially leave these features in place, but it turns out unofficial support isn’t all that straightforward.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It's not "unofficial" support, it's just the motherboards/OEMs don't bother to implement it or implement it in an opaque way. All the motherboards have to do to support this properly is have the extra RAM traces and an easy setup menu info line that tells you whether ECC is on or not. The CPU supports it fine. If you run Linux, you can use dmidecode and the EDAC driver to confirm if you have ECC enabled.
wmf 5y ago
Just don't investigate AM4 motherboard compatibility and AGESA revisions... Absolutely no artificial segmentation here, no sir.
ineedasername 5y ago
Didn't AMD disable cores on chips that were enabled and the exact same chips branded higher end? [0] I know the explanation in some cases were that they didn't pass QC, but I also never came across stories of widespread problems when these cores were reenabled by end users. If Intel is playing games here, I'm not sure they're unique to Intel. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/how-to-unlock-the-phenom-s-fourth-core-618501 https://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processo... [1] partial list of prior unlockable AMD chips: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ms49ip5PBB7nYnf5urxsySvH-Sdy6liE2EBDaB8b54/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ms49ip5PBB7nYnf5urx...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Shorel 5y ago
Fair enough. I just bought a laptop with an Intel Core i7-1165G7. The reason is I got tired of dealing with Ubuntu being unable to be installed in my AMD Ryzen 2500U. Yes, even with the latest version using the latest kernel, and my last attempt to install it was a few days ago in 2022. Last time I mentioned this issue about AMD in this forum I was downvoted, but I don't care, I am writing now this comment from a nice laptop, and I'm back in Linux again, so I am happy with this decision. My point is: yes, AMD market segmentation is better, and I wish them the best. But for my particular use case: Windows is not enough, and I require the machine to work in Linux, therefore Intel is a must.
Fnoord 5y ago
Nvidia do the same with disabling passthrough on consumer GPUs (gotta upsell Quatro). However I would say avoiding Intel completely is unnecessary. They're a good FOSS citizen when it boils to things like WLAN and GPU. Its just that with AMD, you can hardly go wrong on CPU and GPU side. Especially on Linux.
- tymscar 5y ago
  Not anymore! Nvidia gpus can be passed through just fine with no fixes. I use mine like that daily
  - MikeKusold 5y ago
    Are you doing a full pass through or vGPU?
    - tymscar 5y ago
      Full pass through. Been doing it for years. I have a youtube video on how I did it on my channel. Same username
    - jacobmartin 5y ago
      Not the parent that you replied to, but I use full PCI passthrough for my Nvidia (RTX 3060) and it works just fine. I had no idea Nvidia had done this before or else I would've seriously reconsidered my choices for this build... Nevertheless it seems to work just fine.
- rasz 5y ago
  >Its just that with AMD - forbidding motherboard manufacturers to implement backward compatibility - PCIE 4 and 'PCI Express Resizable BAR' CPU features linked to the price of northbridge
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Yes, but with NVidia at least they get it right and do it prior to benchmarking and selling into the retail channel, rather than the other way around. And they - rightly - get plenty of flak for it.
marcan_42 5y ago
Don't forget it's not just instruction sets; Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Every other high density storage technology has used error correction for a decade or two, but we're still sitting here pretending we can have 512 billion bits of perfect memory sitting around that will never go wrong, because Intel fuse it off on desktop chips. I guess only servers need to be reliable. AMD supports ECC on their consumer chips, but without Intel support it's never taken off and some motherboards don't support it, or if they do it's not clear in the documentation. I do use ECC RAM on my Threadripper machine and it does work, but I had to look for third party info on whether it would and dig around DMI and EDAC info to convince myself it was really on. It also makes it safer to overclock RAM since you get warnings when you're pushing things too far, before outright failures. And it helps with Rowhammer mitigation. Apple M1s don't do ECC in the memory controller as far as I can tell, but at least they have a good excuse: you can't sensibly do ECC with 16-bit LPDDR RAM channels. There's no such excuse for 64/72-bit DIMM modules. I do hope we work out a way to make ECC available on mobile/LPDDR architectures in the future, though. Probably with something like in-RAM-die ECC (which for all I know might already be a thing on M1s; we don't have all the details).
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Intel has offered ECC support in a lot of their low-end i3 parts for a long time. They’re popular for budget server builds for this reason. The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip it. > AMD supports ECC on their consumer chips, but without Intel support it's never taken off You’re blaming Intel’s CPU lineup for people not using ECC RAM on their AMD builds? Let’s be honest: People aren’t interested in ECC RAM for the average build. I use ECC in my servers and workstations, but I also accept that I’m not the norm.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > You’re blaming Intel’s CPU lineup for people not using ECC RAM on their AMD builds? I'm blaming the decade+ of Intel dominance for killing any chance of ECC becoming popular in non-server environments, just as RAM density was reaching the point where it is absolutely essential for reliability. > The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip it. Motherboard traces are ~free and the feature is in the die already, so it requires zero expense to offer it to consumers. Intel chose to artificially cripple their chips to remove that option. Yes, I know there are a few oddball lines where they did offer it. They should have offered it across the board from the get go, seeing as they were selling the same dies with ECC for workstation use.
flyinghamster 5y ago
The Core 2 Quad Q8200 was what did it for me. I had intended to build a system to play with virtual machines, only to find after I built it up that the Q8200 didn't have VT-x - something that was NOT noted in the store display. I put it in an Intel-branded motherboard as well, and that turned out to be one of the few motherboards I've had that failed prematurely. Since then, the only Intels I've bought since then have been used ThinkPads.
- timpattinson 5y ago
  to be fair, that's unavoidable with AVX-512, you can't underestimate how much power it draws compared to non-vectorised instructions. That's why Prime95 is such an effective stress test and draws 150% of the power that Cinebench R20 does for example.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    You can, in fact, underestimate that, and most people who guess do.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Unlocked K CPUs didn't support VT-d until Skylake. That was weird segmentation.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, The efficiency cores don’t have AVX-512 because they’re low power, simplified cores. This mod required disabling the efficiency cores, reducing core count anyway. It wasn’t actually a free upgrade. > I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores I’ve been using ECC RAM with AMD consumer parts, but it’s not all smooth sailing. The ECC support in their consumer parts isn’t officially supported, so it has been extremely difficult to determine if it’s even working at all. There are long forum threads where many people have tried to confirm it with mixed results. AMD may unofficially leave these features in place, but it turns out unofficial support isn’t all that straightforward.

marcan_42 5y ago
It's not "unofficial" support, it's just the motherboards/OEMs don't bother to implement it or implement it in an opaque way. All the motherboards have to do to support this properly is have the extra RAM traces and an easy setup menu info line that tells you whether ECC is on or not. The CPU supports it fine. If you run Linux, you can use dmidecode and the EDAC driver to confirm if you have ECC enabled.

wmf 5y ago

Just don't investigate AM4 motherboard compatibility and AGESA revisions... Absolutely no artificial segmentation here, no sir.

ineedasername 5y ago

Didn't AMD disable cores on chips that were enabled and the exact same chips branded higher end? [0] I know the explanation in some cases were that they didn't pass QC, but I also never came across stories of widespread problems when these cores were reenabled by end users. If Intel is playing games here, I'm not sure they're unique to Intel. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/how-to-unlock-the-phenom-s-fourth-core-618501 https://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processo... [1] partial list of prior unlockable AMD chips: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ms49ip5PBB7nYnf5urxsySvH-Sdy6liE2EBDaB8b54/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ms49ip5PBB7nYnf5urx...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Shorel 5y ago

Fair enough. I just bought a laptop with an Intel Core i7-1165G7. The reason is I got tired of dealing with Ubuntu being unable to be installed in my AMD Ryzen 2500U. Yes, even with the latest version using the latest kernel, and my last attempt to install it was a few days ago in 2022. Last time I mentioned this issue about AMD in this forum I was downvoted, but I don't care, I am writing now this comment from a nice laptop, and I'm back in Linux again, so I am happy with this decision. My point is: yes, AMD market segmentation is better, and I wish them the best. But for my particular use case: Windows is not enough, and I require the machine to work in Linux, therefore Intel is a must.

Fnoord 5y ago

Nvidia do the same with disabling passthrough on consumer GPUs (gotta upsell Quatro). However I would say avoiding Intel completely is unnecessary. They're a good FOSS citizen when it boils to things like WLAN and GPU. Its just that with AMD, you can hardly go wrong on CPU and GPU side. Especially on Linux.

tymscar 5y ago
Not anymore! Nvidia gpus can be passed through just fine with no fixes. I use mine like that daily
- MikeKusold 5y ago
  Are you doing a full pass through or vGPU?
  - tymscar 5y ago
    Full pass through. Been doing it for years. I have a youtube video on how I did it on my channel. Same username
  - jacobmartin 5y ago
    Not the parent that you replied to, but I use full PCI passthrough for my Nvidia (RTX 3060) and it works just fine. I had no idea Nvidia had done this before or else I would've seriously reconsidered my choices for this build... Nevertheless it seems to work just fine.
rasz 5y ago
>Its just that with AMD - forbidding motherboard manufacturers to implement backward compatibility - PCIE 4 and 'PCI Express Resizable BAR' CPU features linked to the price of northbridge
jacquesm 5y ago
Yes, but with NVidia at least they get it right and do it prior to benchmarking and selling into the retail channel, rather than the other way around. And they - rightly - get plenty of flak for it.

marcan_42 5y ago

Don't forget it's not just instruction sets; Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Every other high density storage technology has used error correction for a decade or two, but we're still sitting here pretending we can have 512 billion bits of perfect memory sitting around that will never go wrong, because Intel fuse it off on desktop chips. I guess only servers need to be reliable. AMD supports ECC on their consumer chips, but without Intel support it's never taken off and some motherboards don't support it, or if they do it's not clear in the documentation. I do use ECC RAM on my Threadripper machine and it does work, but I had to look for third party info on whether it would and dig around DMI and EDAC info to convince myself it was really on. It also makes it safer to overclock RAM since you get warnings when you're pushing things too far, before outright failures. And it helps with Rowhammer mitigation. Apple M1s don't do ECC in the memory controller as far as I can tell, but at least they have a good excuse: you can't sensibly do ECC with 16-bit LPDDR RAM channels. There's no such excuse for 64/72-bit DIMM modules. I do hope we work out a way to make ECC available on mobile/LPDDR architectures in the future, though. Probably with something like in-RAM-die ECC (which for all I know might already be a thing on M1s; we don't have all the details).

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Intel has offered ECC support in a lot of their low-end i3 parts for a long time. They’re popular for budget server builds for this reason. The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip it. > AMD supports ECC on their consumer chips, but without Intel support it's never taken off You’re blaming Intel’s CPU lineup for people not using ECC RAM on their AMD builds? Let’s be honest: People aren’t interested in ECC RAM for the average build. I use ECC in my servers and workstations, but I also accept that I’m not the norm.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  > You’re blaming Intel’s CPU lineup for people not using ECC RAM on their AMD builds? I'm blaming the decade+ of Intel dominance for killing any chance of ECC becoming popular in non-server environments, just as RAM density was reaching the point where it is absolutely essential for reliability. > The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip it. Motherboard traces are ~free and the feature is in the die already, so it requires zero expense to offer it to consumers. Intel chose to artificially cripple their chips to remove that option. Yes, I know there are a few oddball lines where they did offer it. They should have offered it across the board from the get go, seeing as they were selling the same dies with ECC for workstation use.

flyinghamster 5y ago

The Core 2 Quad Q8200 was what did it for me. I had intended to build a system to play with virtual machines, only to find after I built it up that the Q8200 didn't have VT-x - something that was NOT noted in the store display. I put it in an Intel-branded motherboard as well, and that turned out to be one of the few motherboards I've had that failed prematurely. Since then, the only Intels I've bought since then have been used ThinkPads.

timpattinson 5y ago
to be fair, that's unavoidable with AVX-512, you can't underestimate how much power it draws compared to non-vectorised instructions. That's why Prime95 is such an effective stress test and draws 150% of the power that Cinebench R20 does for example.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  You can, in fact, underestimate that, and most people who guess do.
fomine3 5y ago
Unlocked K CPUs didn't support VT-d until Skylake. That was weird segmentation.