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The Phoronix benchmarks show exactly the expected results. However, there are some sites where the interpretation of similar results is ridiculous, for instanc

The Phoronix benchmarks show exactly the expected results. However, there are some sites where the interpretation of similar results is ridiculous, for instance TechSpot. On that site, the author complains that e.g. 9700X is faster than 7700X in the multi-threaded benchmarks by only a few percent. Nevertheless, the author fails to mention that 7700X is configured for an 105 W TDP, while 9700X is configured for a 65 W TDP. For most of the new series, AMD has chosen a default configuration that favors energy efficiency over speed. Therefore, in the default configuration most of the improvements result in a much higher energy efficiency and an only slightly higher speed in multi-threaded benchmarks. The results measured by the reviewer were exactly as expected and the complaints make absolutely no sense. After that, the reviewer notices that the new series show a lower power consumption by a few tens of watts, but then the reviewer complains that when compared to the entire computer system power consumption that means only around 10%, so it is not impressive. However, the reviewer fails to point that this computer system includes an RTX 4090, which alone has a power consumption comparable with a couple of normal desktops. The reviewed computer has a power consumption around 500 W, many times greater than a normal desktop computer. Therefore a power saving that would be huge for a normal desktop appears modest for such a behemoth. Again, the complaints are ridiculous. Moreover, the reviewer fails to notice that in single-threaded benchmarks the new Zen 5 CPUs match or even exceed the fastest Raptor Lake CPUs, despite the latter having much higher clock frequencies. That means that when the faster Zen 5 models will be launched next week, they will beat easily any Intel CPU in single-threaded benchmarks. These results are excellent, and not a failure, like the weird reviewer concludes. Moreover, that bad review has not tested the domains where Zen 5 has up to double performance when compared to any previous desktop CPU, like floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI. These use cases alone are a good enough reason for upgrades for many of those who use such CPUs for professional purposes and not for games.

stracer 2y ago
Steve's reviews are focused on gaming and he probably isn't wrong there. 9700X seems to bring very little for gaming, compared to 7700X. 7700X is almost the same performance, sometimes even better, and cheaper to buy. Most gamers do not care about 10% lower power consumption, especially when they have to pay more upfront for it. Yes, the better energy efficiency allows 9700X to boost higher to get somewhat higher performance in multi-thread, but for some reason, gaming does not benefit noticeably. Zen 5 seems interesting for laptops and low-power client devices, but so does the new Intel Lunar Lake (for now, at least), so we have to wait for reviews and comparisons there. > has not tested... floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI. That is true, but small fraction of people care about these specialized workloads, it's overhyped in marketing. But if you care about those, I think you may be right that Zen 5 may be more interesting there.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  I agree that upgrading from Zen 4 to Zen 5 would make very little sense for a gamer. However this fact was already well known and it has been discussed for some months. It was not a surprise and verifying this fact is certainly a stupid justification for calling Zen 5 a flop. Zen 5 does exactly what it has been announced that it will do. It provides a much greater energy efficiency than any previous x86 CPU. It has a greater single-thread performance at a given clock frequency than any previous x86 CPU, but Arrow Lake S, which is expected in October or November, will have about the same IPC in the big cores, so about the same single-thread performance. For any application that can use AVX-512 instructions, the desktop variant of Zen 5, i.e. Granite Ridge, can have a double throughput in comparison with any previous desktop CPU. For some people this will not matter at all, but for others this will be decisive. The same happened at the previous SIMD throughput doublings that happened while keeping the same number of cores, e.g. Sandy Bridge after Nehalem or Haswell after Sandy Bridge. For some people this did not matter, while for others it was a great improvement.
  - stracer 2y ago
    It's a flop for people who expect that after 20months, they'll get 13%-18% more. Perhaps Steve did not know this "already well known fact" and thus wrote about flop and Intel 11-th gen vibes. How did you know before benchmarks were out? Did AMD say gaming performance will stagnate? (that would be very stupid thing for them to say). In which applications is AVX-512 performance decisive? Video editing / 3D modelling?
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      There have been a lot of comments on many Internet forums, during the last months, based on various benchmarks of engineering samples, that the gaming performance of these new models will be only marginally better than of the existing Zen 4 models and some times even lower than of those with 3D cache. Only when the models of Zen 5 with big 3D cache will be launched it is expected that they will be noticeably faster for gaming. When a 5.5 GHz 9700X matches or exceeds in single thread performance a 6.0 GHz 14900K, that is an almost 10% over the older competition and it certainly is 13%-18% over the corresponding model of the same clock frequency from AMD's previous generation. There are many professional applications where the AVX-512 performance is decisive. There would have been much more, had Intel not prevented this by their market segmentation policies, which force most software developers to support only the weakest and most obsolete CPUs. I am myself interested in certain CAD/EDA engineering applications, where I expect a good speed-up from a 9950X, at a much lower price than for any previous solutions. This is a nice change at a time when most computing solutions increase in price, instead of decreasing, like in the old days.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
In desktop chips I really could not care less if the TDP is 65W or 105W.
edward28 2y ago
He also does a test with pbo enabled which brings the power draw inline with the 7700x and it only is 10% better or less.
paulmd 2y ago
> Moreover, that bad review has not tested the domains where Zen 5 has up to double performance when compared to any previous desktop CPU, like floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI. These use cases alone are a good enough reason for upgrades for many of those who use such CPUs for professional purposes and not for games. I hope AVX512 dies a painful death, and that AMD starts fixing real problems instead of trying to provide magic instructions to then create benchmarks that they can look good on. Because absolutely nobody cares outside of benchmarks. The same is largely true of AVX512 now - and in the future. Yes, you can find things that care. No, those things don't sell machines in the big picture. I hope AMD gets back to basics: gets their design process working again, and concentrate more on regular code that isn't HPC or some other pointless special case. I want my power limits to be reached with regular integer code, not with some AVX512 power virus that takes away top frequency (because people ended up using it for memcpy!) and takes away cores (because those useless garbage units take up space). Stop with the special-case garbage, and make all the core common stuff that everybody cares about run as well as you humanly can. Then do a FPU that is barely good enough on the side, and people will be happy. AVX2 is much more than enough.

stracer 2y ago

Steve's reviews are focused on gaming and he probably isn't wrong there. 9700X seems to bring very little for gaming, compared to 7700X. 7700X is almost the same performance, sometimes even better, and cheaper to buy. Most gamers do not care about 10% lower power consumption, especially when they have to pay more upfront for it. Yes, the better energy efficiency allows 9700X to boost higher to get somewhat higher performance in multi-thread, but for some reason, gaming does not benefit noticeably. Zen 5 seems interesting for laptops and low-power client devices, but so does the new Intel Lunar Lake (for now, at least), so we have to wait for reviews and comparisons there. > has not tested... floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI. That is true, but small fraction of people care about these specialized workloads, it's overhyped in marketing. But if you care about those, I think you may be right that Zen 5 may be more interesting there.

adrian_b 2y ago
I agree that upgrading from Zen 4 to Zen 5 would make very little sense for a gamer. However this fact was already well known and it has been discussed for some months. It was not a surprise and verifying this fact is certainly a stupid justification for calling Zen 5 a flop. Zen 5 does exactly what it has been announced that it will do. It provides a much greater energy efficiency than any previous x86 CPU. It has a greater single-thread performance at a given clock frequency than any previous x86 CPU, but Arrow Lake S, which is expected in October or November, will have about the same IPC in the big cores, so about the same single-thread performance. For any application that can use AVX-512 instructions, the desktop variant of Zen 5, i.e. Granite Ridge, can have a double throughput in comparison with any previous desktop CPU. For some people this will not matter at all, but for others this will be decisive. The same happened at the previous SIMD throughput doublings that happened while keeping the same number of cores, e.g. Sandy Bridge after Nehalem or Haswell after Sandy Bridge. For some people this did not matter, while for others it was a great improvement.
- stracer 2y ago
  It's a flop for people who expect that after 20months, they'll get 13%-18% more. Perhaps Steve did not know this "already well known fact" and thus wrote about flop and Intel 11-th gen vibes. How did you know before benchmarks were out? Did AMD say gaming performance will stagnate? (that would be very stupid thing for them to say). In which applications is AVX-512 performance decisive? Video editing / 3D modelling?
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    There have been a lot of comments on many Internet forums, during the last months, based on various benchmarks of engineering samples, that the gaming performance of these new models will be only marginally better than of the existing Zen 4 models and some times even lower than of those with 3D cache. Only when the models of Zen 5 with big 3D cache will be launched it is expected that they will be noticeably faster for gaming. When a 5.5 GHz 9700X matches or exceeds in single thread performance a 6.0 GHz 14900K, that is an almost 10% over the older competition and it certainly is 13%-18% over the corresponding model of the same clock frequency from AMD's previous generation. There are many professional applications where the AVX-512 performance is decisive. There would have been much more, had Intel not prevented this by their market segmentation policies, which force most software developers to support only the weakest and most obsolete CPUs. I am myself interested in certain CAD/EDA engineering applications, where I expect a good speed-up from a 9950X, at a much lower price than for any previous solutions. This is a nice change at a time when most computing solutions increase in price, instead of decreasing, like in the old days.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

In desktop chips I really could not care less if the TDP is 65W or 105W.

edward28 2y ago

He also does a test with pbo enabled which brings the power draw inline with the 7700x and it only is 10% better or less.

paulmd 2y ago

> Moreover, that bad review has not tested the domains where Zen 5 has up to double performance when compared to any previous desktop CPU, like floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI. These use cases alone are a good enough reason for upgrades for many of those who use such CPUs for professional purposes and not for games. I hope AVX512 dies a painful death, and that AMD starts fixing real problems instead of trying to provide magic instructions to then create benchmarks that they can look good on. Because absolutely nobody cares outside of benchmarks. The same is largely true of AVX512 now - and in the future. Yes, you can find things that care. No, those things don't sell machines in the big picture. I hope AMD gets back to basics: gets their design process working again, and concentrate more on regular code that isn't HPC or some other pointless special case. I want my power limits to be reached with regular integer code, not with some AVX512 power virus that takes away top frequency (because people ended up using it for memcpy!) and takes away cores (because those useless garbage units take up space). Stop with the special-case garbage, and make all the core common stuff that everybody cares about run as well as you humanly can. Then do a FPU that is barely good enough on the side, and people will be happy. AVX2 is much more than enough.