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Excited to see massive performance improvements in desktop hardware again. 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be quite the system for programming, machin

Excited to see massive performance improvements in desktop hardware again. 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be quite the system for programming, machine learning, video editing, music production, gaming...

photoGrant 4y ago
I'm on a 3970x, 3090 and nvme-pcie-4 x 4 (raid 0), 256gb ram... I haven't found a need to upgrade, or have reached this systems potential by any stretch. especially for video editing, music production and photography and compiling... I dunno the only direction I care for at the moment is TDP
- FloatArtifact 4y ago
  When fully utilizing NVMe storage raid array are you maxing out CPU?
  - photoGrant 4y ago
    Not even close!
- burnte 4y ago
  I'm on a 5800X with a 3080ti and 64GB, also PCIe 4.0 SSDs. I built in in 2019 then upgraded the CPU a year ago from a 3600x to the 5800x and it's so insanely fast for everything I do, including VMs, compiles, transcodes, etc. Nutty performance. The past few years have had amazing performance boosts.
  - kyriakos 4y ago
    AMD sticking to one socket (AM4) for multiple generations was a great move for end users. I am also on 3600x and just yesterday was looking to order a 5800x since the prices have dropped a lot and the performance gain is around 50% just by upgrading one component.
    - dinvlad 4y ago
      That is my main reason to upgrade, even from 5950x (which is still selling very well). "Future-proof" for 4-5 years, with easy upgrades. Only problem is, Intel is also now claiming LGA 1700 will be here for a couple more years. But nothing compared to what AMD offers.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  Individual cores on the 7950x are roughly twice as fast as what you have. If your work isn't massively multithreaded, then a 7950x will likely perform quite a bit better than a Threadripper 3970x. (Though of course you won't be able to get more than 128GB RAM.) This is with clamping down TDP on the 7950x to roughly 110W. It's an absolute beast.
  - ciupicri 4y ago
    Besides more RAM, 3970x also has proper ECC support.
    - flumpcakes 4y ago
      And more PCIe lanes, compared to the consumer platforms with a measly 20/24 (which is basically one GPU and one NVMe full bandwidth).
    - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
      How is the ECC support deficient on later CPUs? I checked the docs, it does seem to be supported on the 7000x series.
      - ciupicri 4y ago
        The CPU is alright, but the motherboards are lacking. You can install ECC memory modules on them and the system will boot, but you don't know for sure if ECC is really working unless the motherboard reports memory status like how many errors were correct. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133995
  - skirmish 4y ago
    Keep in mind that 128 GB barely works on AM5 (basically, EXPO/XMP doesn't, only regular JEDEC speeds, i.e. 4800 MT/s) [1] 2 sticks of RAM up to 64 GB is the fully functional maximum. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xzj69v/is_anyone_running_128gb_with_am5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xzj69v/is_anyone_runni...
- nickjj 4y ago
  I'm on an 8+ year old workstation with an i5-4460 (quad core, no HT) 3.2ghz, 16gb memory, first gen SSD and I also don't feel the need to upgrade. All of the web apps I build inside of Docker with WSL 2 reload in a few dozen milliseconds at most. I can edit 1080p video without any delay and raw rendering speed doesn't matter because for batch jobs I do them overnight. Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things feel super snappy. I've been building computers from parts since about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went without an upgrade.
  - TacticalCoder 4y ago
    > Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things feel super snappy. I've been building computers from parts since about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went without an upgrade. I did like you: rocking a Core i7-6700 from, what, 2015 up until early 2022. 16 GB of RAM, NVMe PCI 3.0 x4 SSD, the first Samsung ones. I basically build that machine around one of the first Asus mobo to offer a NVMe M.2 slot. It was and still is an amazing machine. I gave it to my wife and I'm now using an AMD 3700X since about a year and... I'll be changing it for a 7700X in the coming weeks (hopefully). The 3700X is definitely faster than my trusty old 6th gen core i7 but Zen 4 is too good to be true so I'm upgrading. All this to say: you can stay with the same system for seven years then upgrade twice in less than 12 months!
Arrath 4y ago
> 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be quite the system for programming Agreed, but not for testing, please. Too much stuff out there already seems to be designed for or tested on what might as well be supercomputers like the above, and then get shipped out to run on Grandma's 7 year old <Misc Manufacturer> laptop.
- lopkeny12ko 4y ago
  This is an odd take. Why shouldn't software benchmarks be showcased with the best available hardware? How am I supposed to reason about MySQL performance results taken from a run-of-the-mill dual-core machine from 2015?
  - pawelduda 4y ago
    Replace MySQL with any client-side app
  - Arrath 4y ago
    I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about average end user experience.
  - unregistereddev 4y ago
    I think they intended to refer to software development QA, not benchmarking. I do agree with the sentiment that consumer software should generally be usable on 10 year old hardware. "Generally" carries a lot of weight here, because intensive applications like CAD will always be laggy on old hardware.
  - integricho 4y ago
    it's meant for the multitude of electron crapware that's being shoveled down our throat.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  The same thing happens with displays. Designers and devs are using things like high-end Dell Ultrasharps, LG UltraFines, the integrated screens in MacBook Pros, iMac 27" displays/Studio Displays, Pro Display XDRs, etc but in reality a huge number of the screens in use are things like those terrible 1366x766 TN panels that dominated budget 10"-17" laptops for over a decade. I'm fairly confident the low-contrast flat design trend that's been going for a while now wouldn't have been a thing if it were a requirement for UIs to be usable and reasonably good looking on a crappy $250 Walmart special Dell Inspiron from 2012.
WithinReason 4y ago
I understand the first 2, but where does a PCIe 5 SSD make a difference? Video editing?
- nightski 4y ago
  We are already seeing SSDs with over double the read speed and ~70% more write speed. You don't see how that could make a difference? Even with 128GB of RAM on a workstation there are a lot of data sets that do not fit.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    For training neural networks faster? I doubt SSD->RAM speeds are a bottleneck there. Are you reading training data faster than 6GB/s during training?
    - nightski 4y ago
      You don't even need to get to that complex of a scenario. Just running simple database queries would benefit from this.
      - WithinReason 4y ago
        Sure, I can see it being useful for servers, just not for 99% of home users.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        jerrysievert 4y ago
        moving from spinning rust to SSD was a huge improvement in day to day life. i still see lag (on my very fast machines) opening programs or loading data on my laptop that would be highly improved by doubling the speed of the hard drive. and i’m not even counting compiling or things that we might do that is different than other users.
theLiminator 4y ago
Quite tempted to make that exact upgrade myself, I'm still on a 3770k + 1070 gtx (which was an upgrade from a gtx 670). I've been holding out for a long time. Can't wait for my code to compile 10x faster and game at 10x the fps.
doublepg23 4y ago
I’m on a 5950X and AMD 6600 and getting stutters on Fedora 37 with my two 4K displays. The weirdest thing is this wasn’t an issue with my Intel NUC with measly 6th gen Iris graphics :(
- Queue29 4y ago
  Xorg or Wayland? I've got a RX6400 that runs 2 4k displays just fine - Ubuntu + Wayland
  - doublepg23 4y ago
    Gnome Wayland, unless I made a mistake somewhere. It’s so random it’s difficult to determine more than “the desktop stutters sometimes especially when opening the overview.” I was having issues with my 5700g iGPU with 2x4K monitors as well - that required a kernel patch to fix. Kind of disappointed an Intel NUC from 2015 handled the displays better.
preisschild 4y ago
Yeah, I want to upgrade to this, but the with the RX 7900 XTX as GPU. Nvidia drivers suck on Linux.

photoGrant 4y ago

I'm on a 3970x, 3090 and nvme-pcie-4 x 4 (raid 0), 256gb ram... I haven't found a need to upgrade, or have reached this systems potential by any stretch. especially for video editing, music production and photography and compiling... I dunno the only direction I care for at the moment is TDP

FloatArtifact 4y ago
When fully utilizing NVMe storage raid array are you maxing out CPU?
- photoGrant 4y ago
  Not even close!
burnte 4y ago
I'm on a 5800X with a 3080ti and 64GB, also PCIe 4.0 SSDs. I built in in 2019 then upgraded the CPU a year ago from a 3600x to the 5800x and it's so insanely fast for everything I do, including VMs, compiles, transcodes, etc. Nutty performance. The past few years have had amazing performance boosts.
- kyriakos 4y ago
  AMD sticking to one socket (AM4) for multiple generations was a great move for end users. I am also on 3600x and just yesterday was looking to order a 5800x since the prices have dropped a lot and the performance gain is around 50% just by upgrading one component.
  - dinvlad 4y ago
    That is my main reason to upgrade, even from 5950x (which is still selling very well). "Future-proof" for 4-5 years, with easy upgrades. Only problem is, Intel is also now claiming LGA 1700 will be here for a couple more years. But nothing compared to what AMD offers.
howinteresting 4y ago
Individual cores on the 7950x are roughly twice as fast as what you have. If your work isn't massively multithreaded, then a 7950x will likely perform quite a bit better than a Threadripper 3970x. (Though of course you won't be able to get more than 128GB RAM.) This is with clamping down TDP on the 7950x to roughly 110W. It's an absolute beast.
- ciupicri 4y ago
  Besides more RAM, 3970x also has proper ECC support.
  - flumpcakes 4y ago
    And more PCIe lanes, compared to the consumer platforms with a measly 20/24 (which is basically one GPU and one NVMe full bandwidth).
  - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
    How is the ECC support deficient on later CPUs? I checked the docs, it does seem to be supported on the 7000x series.
    - ciupicri 4y ago
      The CPU is alright, but the motherboards are lacking. You can install ECC memory modules on them and the system will boot, but you don't know for sure if ECC is really working unless the motherboard reports memory status like how many errors were correct. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133995
- skirmish 4y ago
  Keep in mind that 128 GB barely works on AM5 (basically, EXPO/XMP doesn't, only regular JEDEC speeds, i.e. 4800 MT/s) [1] 2 sticks of RAM up to 64 GB is the fully functional maximum. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xzj69v/is_anyone_running_128gb_with_am5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xzj69v/is_anyone_runni...
nickjj 4y ago
I'm on an 8+ year old workstation with an i5-4460 (quad core, no HT) 3.2ghz, 16gb memory, first gen SSD and I also don't feel the need to upgrade. All of the web apps I build inside of Docker with WSL 2 reload in a few dozen milliseconds at most. I can edit 1080p video without any delay and raw rendering speed doesn't matter because for batch jobs I do them overnight. Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things feel super snappy. I've been building computers from parts since about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went without an upgrade.
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things feel super snappy. I've been building computers from parts since about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went without an upgrade. I did like you: rocking a Core i7-6700 from, what, 2015 up until early 2022. 16 GB of RAM, NVMe PCI 3.0 x4 SSD, the first Samsung ones. I basically build that machine around one of the first Asus mobo to offer a NVMe M.2 slot. It was and still is an amazing machine. I gave it to my wife and I'm now using an AMD 3700X since about a year and... I'll be changing it for a 7700X in the coming weeks (hopefully). The 3700X is definitely faster than my trusty old 6th gen core i7 but Zen 4 is too good to be true so I'm upgrading. All this to say: you can stay with the same system for seven years then upgrade twice in less than 12 months!

Arrath 4y ago

> 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be quite the system for programming Agreed, but not for testing, please. Too much stuff out there already seems to be designed for or tested on what might as well be supercomputers like the above, and then get shipped out to run on Grandma's 7 year old <Misc Manufacturer> laptop.

lopkeny12ko 4y ago
This is an odd take. Why shouldn't software benchmarks be showcased with the best available hardware? How am I supposed to reason about MySQL performance results taken from a run-of-the-mill dual-core machine from 2015?
- pawelduda 4y ago
  Replace MySQL with any client-side app
- Arrath 4y ago
  I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about average end user experience.
- unregistereddev 4y ago
  I think they intended to refer to software development QA, not benchmarking. I do agree with the sentiment that consumer software should generally be usable on 10 year old hardware. "Generally" carries a lot of weight here, because intensive applications like CAD will always be laggy on old hardware.
- integricho 4y ago
  it's meant for the multitude of electron crapware that's being shoveled down our throat.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
The same thing happens with displays. Designers and devs are using things like high-end Dell Ultrasharps, LG UltraFines, the integrated screens in MacBook Pros, iMac 27" displays/Studio Displays, Pro Display XDRs, etc but in reality a huge number of the screens in use are things like those terrible 1366x766 TN panels that dominated budget 10"-17" laptops for over a decade. I'm fairly confident the low-contrast flat design trend that's been going for a while now wouldn't have been a thing if it were a requirement for UIs to be usable and reasonably good looking on a crappy $250 Walmart special Dell Inspiron from 2012.

WithinReason 4y ago

I understand the first 2, but where does a PCIe 5 SSD make a difference? Video editing?

nightski 4y ago
We are already seeing SSDs with over double the read speed and ~70% more write speed. You don't see how that could make a difference? Even with 128GB of RAM on a workstation there are a lot of data sets that do not fit.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  For training neural networks faster? I doubt SSD->RAM speeds are a bottleneck there. Are you reading training data faster than 6GB/s during training?
  - nightski 4y ago
    You don't even need to get to that complex of a scenario. Just running simple database queries would benefit from this.
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      Sure, I can see it being useful for servers, just not for 99% of home users.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - jerrysievert 4y ago
        moving from spinning rust to SSD was a huge improvement in day to day life. i still see lag (on my very fast machines) opening programs or loading data on my laptop that would be highly improved by doubling the speed of the hard drive. and i’m not even counting compiling or things that we might do that is different than other users.

theLiminator 4y ago

Quite tempted to make that exact upgrade myself, I'm still on a 3770k + 1070 gtx (which was an upgrade from a gtx 670). I've been holding out for a long time. Can't wait for my code to compile 10x faster and game at 10x the fps.

doublepg23 4y ago

I’m on a 5950X and AMD 6600 and getting stutters on Fedora 37 with my two 4K displays. The weirdest thing is this wasn’t an issue with my Intel NUC with measly 6th gen Iris graphics :(

Queue29 4y ago
Xorg or Wayland? I've got a RX6400 that runs 2 4k displays just fine - Ubuntu + Wayland
- doublepg23 4y ago
  Gnome Wayland, unless I made a mistake somewhere. It’s so random it’s difficult to determine more than “the desktop stutters sometimes especially when opening the overview.” I was having issues with my 5700g iGPU with 2x4K monitors as well - that required a kernel patch to fix. Kind of disappointed an Intel NUC from 2015 handled the displays better.

preisschild 4y ago

Yeah, I want to upgrade to this, but the with the RX 7900 XTX as GPU. Nvidia drivers suck on Linux.