5 ms·

All-around winner in what? For $500 you can get a lot more cores. All-around winning, $500, 8 cores makes no sense. This thing has a premium gaming price tag

All-around winner in what? For $500 you can get a lot more cores. All-around winning, $500, 8 cores makes no sense. This thing has a premium gaming price tag because there is nothing close to it other than their own 7800X3D.

bhouston 2y ago
What would you suggest instead? It is pretty competitive on the Multi-Core rating: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8633320 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8633320 compared to other CPUs: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks
jandrese 2y ago
The benchmarks in the article suggest that more cores are largely wasted on real world applications.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
  Yes so buy according to your needs? 8 cores do not cost $500.
  - behringer 2y ago
    They do when those cores are 2 to 4 times faster than the rest.
sliken 2y ago
In theory, yes. But in the real world the bottleneck of the same 128 bit wide memory, interface that's been popular way back since the time of dual core chips. Less cache misses (on popular workloads) helps decrease power and increase performance enough that few things benefit from 12-16 cores. Thus the M3 max (with a 512 bit wide memory system) has a class leading single core and multi-core scores.
- 0xQSL 2y ago
  I'm not so sure about memory actually being the bottleneck for these 8 core parts. If memory bandwidth is the bottleneck this should show up in benchmarks with higher dram clocks. I can't find any good application benchmarks, but computerbase.de did it for gaming with 7800MHz vs 6000MHz and didn't find much of a difference [1] The apple chips are APUs and need a lot of their memory bandwidth for the gpu. Are there any good resources on how much of this bandwidth is actually used in common cpu workloads? Can the CPU even max out half of the 512bit bus? [1] https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d-test.90151/seite-6#abschnitt_ramoc_ddr57800 https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/amd-ryzen-7-...
  - wmf 2y ago
    For AMD I think Infinity Fabric is the bottleneck so increasing memory clock without increasing IF clock does nothing. And it's also possible that 8 cores with massive cache simply don't need more bandwidth.
    - sliken 2y ago
      My understanding is the single CCD chips (like the 9800x3d) have 2 IF links, while the dual CCD chips (like the 9950x) have 1. Keep in mind these CCDs are shared with turin (12 channel), threadripper pro (8 channel), siena (6 channel), threadripper (4 channel). The higher CCD configurations have 1 IF link per chip, the lower have 2 IF links per chip. Presumably AMD would bother with the 2 IF link chips unless it helped.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        I can't find anything to back that up. That said, each link gives a CCD 64GB/s of read speed and 32GB/s of write speed. 8000MHz memory at 128 bits would get up to 128GB/s. So being stuck with one link would bottleneck badly enough to hide the effects of memory speed.
        2y ago
Hikikomori 2y ago
Cores or "cores"?

bhouston 2y ago

What would you suggest instead? It is pretty competitive on the Multi-Core rating: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8633320 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8633320 compared to other CPUs: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

jandrese 2y ago

The benchmarks in the article suggest that more cores are largely wasted on real world applications.

ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
Yes so buy according to your needs? 8 cores do not cost $500.
- behringer 2y ago
  They do when those cores are 2 to 4 times faster than the rest.

sliken 2y ago

In theory, yes. But in the real world the bottleneck of the same 128 bit wide memory, interface that's been popular way back since the time of dual core chips. Less cache misses (on popular workloads) helps decrease power and increase performance enough that few things benefit from 12-16 cores. Thus the M3 max (with a 512 bit wide memory system) has a class leading single core and multi-core scores.

0xQSL 2y ago
I'm not so sure about memory actually being the bottleneck for these 8 core parts. If memory bandwidth is the bottleneck this should show up in benchmarks with higher dram clocks. I can't find any good application benchmarks, but computerbase.de did it for gaming with 7800MHz vs 6000MHz and didn't find much of a difference [1] The apple chips are APUs and need a lot of their memory bandwidth for the gpu. Are there any good resources on how much of this bandwidth is actually used in common cpu workloads? Can the CPU even max out half of the 512bit bus? [1] https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d-test.90151/seite-6#abschnitt_ramoc_ddr57800 https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/amd-ryzen-7-...
- wmf 2y ago
  For AMD I think Infinity Fabric is the bottleneck so increasing memory clock without increasing IF clock does nothing. And it's also possible that 8 cores with massive cache simply don't need more bandwidth.
  - sliken 2y ago
    My understanding is the single CCD chips (like the 9800x3d) have 2 IF links, while the dual CCD chips (like the 9950x) have 1. Keep in mind these CCDs are shared with turin (12 channel), threadripper pro (8 channel), siena (6 channel), threadripper (4 channel). The higher CCD configurations have 1 IF link per chip, the lower have 2 IF links per chip. Presumably AMD would bother with the 2 IF link chips unless it helped.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      I can't find anything to back that up. That said, each link gives a CCD 64GB/s of read speed and 32GB/s of write speed. 8000MHz memory at 128 bits would get up to 128GB/s. So being stuck with one link would bottleneck badly enough to hide the effects of memory speed.
      - 2y ago

Hikikomori 2y ago

Cores or "cores"?