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I've been using AMD since 2004. My first AMD processor was the Athlon 64 3000+, I was a kid I wasn't really allowed anything too expensive. We had dominately us

I've been using AMD since 2004. My first AMD processor was the Athlon 64 3000+, I was a kid I wasn't really allowed anything too expensive. We had dominately used Intel upt that point but when 64bit CPUs hit it was a revolutionary thing. The roughest era of AMD CPUs was the FX era. While it was comprable to its mid-range competition it was alos a sure fast way to burn down your house with its power draw. Ryzen was a huge step forward in CPU design and architecture. I see this era as Intel's FX era, if they have the right leadership in place they can turn the boat around and innovate.

SmellTheGlove 2y ago
The funny part is that those FX processors were max 125w TDP. No different than today really.
Rinzler89 2y ago
>The roughest era of AMD CPUs was the FX era. Ahem. Bulldozer? >Ryzen was a huge step forward in CPU design and architecture. First gen Ryzen was kinda mediocre. Second gen(correction: meaning Zen 2 not Ryzen 2000 which was still Zen 1) was where the performance came. Also let's not ignore how they screwed consumers like me by dropping SW support for Vega in 2023 while still selling laptops with Vega powered APUs on the shelves all the way till present day in 2024, or having a naming scheme that's intentionally confusing to mislead consumers where you don't know if that Ryzen 7000 laptop APU has Zen2, Zen3, Zen3+ or Zen4 CPU cores, if it's 4nm, 5nm, 6nm or 7nm or if it's running RDNA2, RDNA3 or the now obsolete Vega in a modern system.[1] Maddening. Despite that I'm a returning AMD customer to avoid Intel, but I'm having my own issues now with their iGPU drivers making me regret not going Intel this time around. The grass isn't always greener across the fence, just different issues. I get it, you're an AMD fan, but let's be objective and not ignore their stinkers and anti-consumer practices which they had plenty of and only played nice for a while to get sympathy because they were the struggling underdog, but didn't hesitate to milk and deceive consumers the moment they got back on top like any other for profit company with a moment of market dominance. My point being, don't get attached or loyal to any large company, since you're just a dollar sign for all of them. Be an informed consumer and make purchasing decisions on objective current factors, not blind brand loyalty from the distant past. [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/1445760/amds-mobile-ryzen-naming-scheme-is-stupidly-complex.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/1445760/amds-mobile-ryzen-na... https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-confusing-naming-scheme-for-mobile-cpus/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-confusing-naming...
- KronisLV 2y ago
  > First gen Ryzen was kinda mediocre. I've used both the Ryzen 3 1200 and 7 1700 and all of them seemed fine for their time and price. Honestly, I had the 1700 in my main PC up until last year, it was still very much okay for most things I might want to actually do, except no ReBAR support pushed me towards a Ryzen 5 4500 (got it for a low price, otherwise slightly better than the 1700 in performance, still good for my needs; runs noticeably hotter though, even without a big OC). I guess things are quite different for enthusiasts and power users, but their needs probably don't affect what would be considered bad/mediocre/good for the general population.
  - rasz 2y ago
    Im sure you will be happy to hear this is purely artificial limitation introduced by AMD for product segmentation purposes. Very first Ryzen Zen generation does fully support ReBAR in hardware, but its locked by AMD bios. https://www.techpowerup.com/276125/asus-enables-resizable-bar-support-on-first-generation-amd-ryzen-cpus https://www.techpowerup.com/276125/asus-enables-resizable-ba...
    - KronisLV 2y ago
      Yeah, there were also efforts like this, too https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI Given that I got an Intel Arc A580 for myself, this was pretty important! Quite bad that it wasn't officially supported if there are no hardware issues and I would have liked to just keep using the 1700 for a few more years, but opted for just buying a new CPU so my old one would be a reasonable backup, path of least resistance in this case. Would also like to try out the recent Intel CPUs (though surely not the variety that seems to have stability issues), but that's not in the cards for now because most of my PCs and homelab all use AM4, on which I'll stay for the foreseeable future.
- gruez 2y ago
  >>The roughest era of AMD CPUs was the FX era. >Ahem. Bulldozer? Bulldozer is the same as FX. >AMD FX is a series of high-end AMD microprocessors for personal computers which debuted in 2011, claimed as AMD's first native 8-core desktop processor.[1] The line was introduced with the Bulldozer microarchitecture at launch (codenamed "Zambezi"), and was then succeeded by its derivative Piledriver in 2012 (codenamed "Vishera").
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
"Evil Inside(tm)" software made sure many of the libraries and compilers had much slower performance on AMD chips for years. We had to use intel cpu/gpu + CUDA gpu simply because of compatibility requirements (heavy media codecs and ML workloads.) Lets be honest, AMD technically has had a better product for decades if you exclude the power consumption metric. ARM64 v8 is also good, if and only if you don't need advanced gpu features. The Ryzen chips definitely are respectable in passmarks benchmark value stats rankings. =)
- smallstepforman 2y ago
  The 3700x and 5700x are 65W parts specifically made for quiet/cool boxes (they’re also 8 core). I have both since I enjoy my sanity and dont care about 10% extra performance. They are the pick of the litter in my mind. Also have a laptop with 5850h. Same with their Navi chips, not blazing hot but good enough, and my boxes and nice and quiet.
  - plasticchris 2y ago
    I have a 3700x I keep around 1.05v and it is completely quiet (and p95 stable) under a massive air cooler which basically never spins up the fans.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    I think we've been in the "good-enough" computing age for awhile, and only the CUDA-gpu/codec-asic primarily feature in most desktop upgrade decisions. Quiet machines are great, especially when you have to sit next to one for 9 hours a day. =3
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  > AMD technically has had a better product for decades if you exclude the power consumption metric And single core performance. And some other stuff which obviously didn’t matter during the period in question but suddenly became very important when AMD surpassed Intel in that regard…
mhitza 2y ago
I remember that I received a ridiculously high RPM fan with my FX-8350 CPU (in the box), which sounded like a vacuum when it ran. Took me less than a week to upgrade to a proper fan that managed to cool that damn thing at 600RPM or so, and life was quiet again!
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago
  I'm still running that fan/CPU combo... I intended to replace it many years ago but have never pulled the trigger yet.

SmellTheGlove 2y ago

The funny part is that those FX processors were max 125w TDP. No different than today really.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>The roughest era of AMD CPUs was the FX era. Ahem. Bulldozer? >Ryzen was a huge step forward in CPU design and architecture. First gen Ryzen was kinda mediocre. Second gen(correction: meaning Zen 2 not Ryzen 2000 which was still Zen 1) was where the performance came. Also let's not ignore how they screwed consumers like me by dropping SW support for Vega in 2023 while still selling laptops with Vega powered APUs on the shelves all the way till present day in 2024, or having a naming scheme that's intentionally confusing to mislead consumers where you don't know if that Ryzen 7000 laptop APU has Zen2, Zen3, Zen3+ or Zen4 CPU cores, if it's 4nm, 5nm, 6nm or 7nm or if it's running RDNA2, RDNA3 or the now obsolete Vega in a modern system.[1] Maddening. Despite that I'm a returning AMD customer to avoid Intel, but I'm having my own issues now with their iGPU drivers making me regret not going Intel this time around. The grass isn't always greener across the fence, just different issues. I get it, you're an AMD fan, but let's be objective and not ignore their stinkers and anti-consumer practices which they had plenty of and only played nice for a while to get sympathy because they were the struggling underdog, but didn't hesitate to milk and deceive consumers the moment they got back on top like any other for profit company with a moment of market dominance. My point being, don't get attached or loyal to any large company, since you're just a dollar sign for all of them. Be an informed consumer and make purchasing decisions on objective current factors, not blind brand loyalty from the distant past. [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/1445760/amds-mobile-ryzen-naming-scheme-is-stupidly-complex.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/1445760/amds-mobile-ryzen-na... https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-confusing-naming-scheme-for-mobile-cpus/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-confusing-naming...

KronisLV 2y ago
> First gen Ryzen was kinda mediocre. I've used both the Ryzen 3 1200 and 7 1700 and all of them seemed fine for their time and price. Honestly, I had the 1700 in my main PC up until last year, it was still very much okay for most things I might want to actually do, except no ReBAR support pushed me towards a Ryzen 5 4500 (got it for a low price, otherwise slightly better than the 1700 in performance, still good for my needs; runs noticeably hotter though, even without a big OC). I guess things are quite different for enthusiasts and power users, but their needs probably don't affect what would be considered bad/mediocre/good for the general population.
- rasz 2y ago
  Im sure you will be happy to hear this is purely artificial limitation introduced by AMD for product segmentation purposes. Very first Ryzen Zen generation does fully support ReBAR in hardware, but its locked by AMD bios. https://www.techpowerup.com/276125/asus-enables-resizable-bar-support-on-first-generation-amd-ryzen-cpus https://www.techpowerup.com/276125/asus-enables-resizable-ba...
  - KronisLV 2y ago
    Yeah, there were also efforts like this, too https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI Given that I got an Intel Arc A580 for myself, this was pretty important! Quite bad that it wasn't officially supported if there are no hardware issues and I would have liked to just keep using the 1700 for a few more years, but opted for just buying a new CPU so my old one would be a reasonable backup, path of least resistance in this case. Would also like to try out the recent Intel CPUs (though surely not the variety that seems to have stability issues), but that's not in the cards for now because most of my PCs and homelab all use AM4, on which I'll stay for the foreseeable future.
gruez 2y ago
>>The roughest era of AMD CPUs was the FX era. >Ahem. Bulldozer? Bulldozer is the same as FX. >AMD FX is a series of high-end AMD microprocessors for personal computers which debuted in 2011, claimed as AMD's first native 8-core desktop processor.[1] The line was introduced with the Bulldozer microarchitecture at launch (codenamed "Zambezi"), and was then succeeded by its derivative Piledriver in 2012 (codenamed "Vishera").

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

"Evil Inside(tm)" software made sure many of the libraries and compilers had much slower performance on AMD chips for years. We had to use intel cpu/gpu + CUDA gpu simply because of compatibility requirements (heavy media codecs and ML workloads.) Lets be honest, AMD technically has had a better product for decades if you exclude the power consumption metric. ARM64 v8 is also good, if and only if you don't need advanced gpu features. The Ryzen chips definitely are respectable in passmarks benchmark value stats rankings. =)

smallstepforman 2y ago
The 3700x and 5700x are 65W parts specifically made for quiet/cool boxes (they’re also 8 core). I have both since I enjoy my sanity and dont care about 10% extra performance. They are the pick of the litter in my mind. Also have a laptop with 5850h. Same with their Navi chips, not blazing hot but good enough, and my boxes and nice and quiet.
- plasticchris 2y ago
  I have a 3700x I keep around 1.05v and it is completely quiet (and p95 stable) under a massive air cooler which basically never spins up the fans.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  I think we've been in the "good-enough" computing age for awhile, and only the CUDA-gpu/codec-asic primarily feature in most desktop upgrade decisions. Quiet machines are great, especially when you have to sit next to one for 9 hours a day. =3
ffgjgf1 2y ago
> AMD technically has had a better product for decades if you exclude the power consumption metric And single core performance. And some other stuff which obviously didn’t matter during the period in question but suddenly became very important when AMD surpassed Intel in that regard…

mhitza 2y ago

I remember that I received a ridiculously high RPM fan with my FX-8350 CPU (in the box), which sounded like a vacuum when it ran. Took me less than a week to upgrade to a proper fan that managed to cool that damn thing at 600RPM or so, and life was quiet again!

BenjiWiebe 2y ago
I'm still running that fan/CPU combo... I intended to replace it many years ago but have never pulled the trigger yet.