Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#1

Post by s-p-n » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

I thought the RTX would do better here, but the Ryzen 3750h performs better on training a model in tensorflow. I'm using this guide to get things going, and I'm usng tf-nightly with Ubuntu 20.04.

https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/quickstart/beginner

I'm wondering if using nvidia 440 drivers is the reason? I also have 3 versions of CUDA installed (10.0, 10.1, and 10.2). The tensorflow-js test I did uses CUDA 10.0, and the Ryzen performs roughly 50% faster. The Python test I did uses CUDA 10.1, and the CPU is less than 10% faster.

Even so, shouldn't the GPU perform an order of magnitude better here? I feel like I must be doing something wrong :/

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#2

Post by navjack27 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

I think my calculations are correct here

  Model       Zen+  2060
  Cores       4     1920
  Threads     8     1920
  Cycles      2.3   1.365
  FP64 GFLOPS 2944  163
  FP32 GFLOPS 5888  5242
  FP16 GFLOPS 11776 10483

So it would kind of make sense yeah. 2060 isn't that strong.

But note: I'm not totally sure on the Zen+ theoretical speeds

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#3

Post by s-p-n » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

navjack27 wrote: post #2

I think my calculations are correct here Model Zen+ 2060 Cores 4 1920 Threads 8 1920 Cycles 2.3 1.365 FP64 GFLOPS 2944 163 FP32 GFLOPS 5888 5242 FP16 GFLOPS 11776 10483 So it would kind of make sense yeah. 2060 isn't that strong. But note: I'm not totally sure on the Zen+ theoretical speeds

Yeah, I just finished installing the CUDA/tensorflow/python set on windows 10, and have the exact same results. So, it's not my configuration that's the problem.

Wow, this really brings to light how well Ryzen really performs. My nvidia 950m put shame to whatever intel i7 I had on my last laptop lol. Now I'm not even sure why I got a GPU on this rig

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#4

Post by navjack27 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

s-p-n wrote: post #3

navjack27 wrote: post #2

I think my calculations are correct here Model Zen+ 2060 Cores 4 1920 Threads 8 1920 Cycles 2.3 1.365 FP64 GFLOPS 2944 163 FP32 GFLOPS 5888 5242 FP16 GFLOPS 11776 10483 So it would kind of make sense yeah. 2060 isn't that strong. But note: I'm not totally sure on the Zen+ theoretical speeds

Yeah, I just finished installing the CUDA/tensorflow/python set on windows 10, and have the exact same results. So, it's not my configuration that's the problem. Wow, this really brings to light how well Ryzen really performs. My nvidia 950m put shame to whatever intel i7 I had on my last laptop lol. Now I'm not even sure why I got a GPU on this rig

Kinda shows how gimped gaming GPUs are for doing training really.

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#5

Post by deathtrader666 » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

Didn't know that TensorFlow works on AMD GPUs..

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#6

Post by DogRunner » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 9:02 AM UTC

deathtrader666 wrote: post #5

Didn't know that TensorFlow works on AMD GPUs..

CPUs

Re: Ask HN: How come my Ryzen 3750H is faster than my RTX 2060 in TensorFlow?

#7

Post by Ragib_Zaman » Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

The network that you train in that tutorial is quite small. Your networks have to get quite large before the overhead of transferring the network onto the GPU is negligible to the cost of training it. You'll see the benefit of the GPU with larger models.