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Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

arstechnica.com

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Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#31

Post by cyphar »

... until ThreadRipper.

I'm not a fan of either megacorp (though I prefer Intel because their stuff works much better historically on GNU/Linux), but it should be painfully obvious that "i9" is just a reaction to the threat of ThreadRipper from AMD (which is still going to be more powerful and far more affordable than i9 when it launches).

EDIT: To be fair, they do mention this in TFA:

> That these chips are currently little more than a product name and a price [...] is a strong indication that Intel was taken aback by AMD's Threadripper, a 16-core chip due for release this summer.

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#32

Post by chx »

Careful with these benchmarks. The 6700K and the 6700T shows the same Cinebench R15 on https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-6700T-Processor-... -- click on Show comparison chart below Cinebench R15 - CPU Multi 64Bit. I do not think anyone believes those two CPUs are performing the same -- they are the same Skylake architecture but one is 4-4.2GHz w/ a 91W TDP while the other is 2.8-3.6GHz w/ a 35W TDP. The difference is decidedly not 1%.

It's not that notebookcheck is benchmarking something outlandish: it shows 668 while this Ars article claims 637 for the 6700K, Notebookcheck benchmarked the 6950X to 1859 while Ars has 1786, both are very close.

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#33

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

chx wrote: post #30
NamTaf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU gains for the last few gens have mainly been in perf/watt and, now, core count in lower-class chips thanks to AMD. The biggest benefit of a system upgrade for the last few gens, from a user perspective, has been for the chipset's gains - NVMe, USB3, USB-C, etc. more than raw performance. That's slowly trickled up but the real-world gains in many tasks haven't been enough to really justify it. I know many people s…

> NVMe While NVMe benchmarks are stunning I really am curious whether in an ordinary setting the difference to SATA can be felt at all. Not measured -- felt. When the era of swap ended because CPUs / chipsets finally could handle enough RAM and when we went from HDD to SDD, those could be felt for sure. > This is marginally different for laptops In laptop world, the problem is that with the spread of thin craze most…

I switched from a 2012 15'' MacBook Pro to a 2017 15'' Macbook Pro and the difference is staggering. The older laptop had a regular SSD, while the newer one is using NVMe. Although it also has a considerably newer CPU, which likely plays a huge role in the performance difference.

I sometimes tweak stuff on both laptops at the same time, and doing a side-by-side restart or even waking up from sleep makes the older model's lesser performance painfully obvious

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#34

Post by ido »

Nition wrote: post #28
NamTaf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU gains for the last few gens have mainly been in perf/watt and, now, core count in lower-class chips thanks to AMD. The biggest benefit of a system upgrade for the last few gens, from a user perspective, has been for the chipset's gains - NVMe, USB3, USB-C, etc. more than raw performance. That's slowly trickled up but the real-world gains in many tasks haven't been enough to really justify it. I know many people s…

Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.

This was mostly only true in the 90s tho, when we saw the hockey stick part of the S curve: between 1981 and 1987 your comparable choice would have been upgrading a 5mhz 8088 to a 10mhz 286.

a 386 machine would be ~$10k (in 80s $s!) and more like a high end multichip Xeon system or something today - they actually had a compaq 386 of that vintage in my first job and it was still in active service in 2001.

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#35

Post by throwaway209402 »

cyphar wrote: post #31

... until ThreadRipper. I'm not a fan of either megacorp (though I prefer Intel because their stuff works much better historically on GNU/Linux), but it should be painfully obvious that "i9" is just a reaction to the threat of ThreadRipper from AMD (which is still going to be more powerful and far more affordable than i9 when it launches). EDIT: To be fair, they do mention this in TFA: > That these chips are currentl…

> it should be painfully obvious that "i9" is just a reaction to the threat of ThreadRipper from AMD

This is incorrect. As Ryan Shrout from PcPer notes,[1]

> In some circles of the Internet, the Core i9 release and the parts that were announced last month from Intel seem as obvious a reaction to AMD’s Ryzen processor and Threadripper as could be shown. In truth, it’s hard to see the likes of the Core i9-7900X as reactionary in its current state; Intel has clearly been planning the Skylake-X release for many months. What Ryzen did for the consumer market was bring higher 4-count core processors to prevalence, and the HEDT line from Intel has very little overlap in that regard. Threadripper having just been announced in the last 60 days (even when you take into account the rumors that have circulated), seems unable to have been the progenitor of the Core i9 line, isn't its entirety. That being said, it is absolutely true that Intel has reacted to the Ryzen and Threadripper lines with pricing and timing adjustments.

[1] : https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i9-7900X...

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#36

Post by Nition »

ido wrote: post #34
Nition wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.

This was mostly only true in the 90s tho, when we saw the hockey stick part of the S curve: between 1981 and 1987 your comparable choice would have been upgrading a 5mhz 8088 to a 10mhz 286. a 386 machine would be ~$10k (in 80s $s!) and more like a high end multichip Xeon system or something today - they actually had a compaq 386 of that vintage in my first job and it was still in active service in 2001.

In that case I guess my problem is we bought our first computer in '95, so my kind of baseline experience is that super fast world.

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#37

Post by ido »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #33
chx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NVMe While NVMe benchmarks are stunning I really am curious whether in an ordinary setting the difference to SATA can be felt at all. Not measured -- felt. When the era of swap ended because CPUs / chipsets finally could handle enough RAM and when we went from HDD to SDD, those could be felt for sure. > This is marginally different for laptops In laptop world, the problem is that with the spread of thin craze most…

I switched from a 2012 15'' MacBook Pro to a 2017 15'' Macbook Pro and the difference is staggering. The older laptop had a regular SSD, while the newer one is using NVMe. Although it also has a considerably newer CPU, which likely plays a huge role in the performance difference. I sometimes tweak stuff on both laptops at the same time, and doing a side-by-side restart or even waking up from sleep makes the older mod…

Additionally "thin craze" matters - I remember having an old 15" laptop in the mid/late '00s that would actually give me backache after carrying it in my backpack for a while.

Today I can't even tell if my 13" dell xps is in it or not.

Re: Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

#38

Post by jl6 »

Nition wrote: post #28
NamTaf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU gains for the last few gens have mainly been in perf/watt and, now, core count in lower-class chips thanks to AMD. The biggest benefit of a system upgrade for the last few gens, from a user perspective, has been for the chipset's gains - NVMe, USB3, USB-C, etc. more than raw performance. That's slowly trickled up but the real-world gains in many tasks haven't been enough to really justify it. I know many people s…

Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.

I'm still on my i7 860 with nothing compelling me to upgrade. Intel's biggest competitor in 2017 is Intel from 2010.
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