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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

#61

Post by kennydude »

turblety wrote: post #41

But once again they have included a second "processor" on each chip with a bunch of restricted backdoors that can not be removed [1]. There have already been bugs [2] and exploits [3] found and therefore no Intel or AMD chip can be used if you care about security and/or privacy. If I think Microsoft isn't free enough for me, then I can remove Windows and install Linux (or BSD). If I think Chrome is sending my data to…

Thing is they could have implemented that in a half-open manner. Sign and hash releases, and post the code openly.

So you can view the code, verify it's what is installed but for security purposes can't change it.

The way this reads it seems deliberately suspicious. Having a HTTP server so low in the hardware stack feels wrong.

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

#62

Post by Sorreah »

dis-sys wrote: post #53

> fastest chip in the world what a huge load of biased non-sense! I have a machine pretty similar to the one mentioned in the article below, it is using Intel processors released ages ago, in fact they were from decommissioned servers from some random data centres. I'd willing to bet that machine with "the fastest chip in the world" is significantly slower/more expensive than mine when it comes to my long list of day…

The 20+ core Xeons run at 2.1 or 2.2 Ghz, while this runs at 4, with a newer architecture. I don't think it's a big stretch to call this the fastest chip, especially since we're referring to consumer chips and not server chips that cost 9000 eurodollars (as is the case for those 20 core Xeons).

Also, have both of these setups run a mixed workload that isn't absolutely parallelizable and watch the Xeon struggle.

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

#63

Post by lmm »

paulmd wrote: post #20

The real problems with Skylake-X are chipset cost, power consumption, shitty partner boards, and TIM. All of these are forgivable given the performance - except the TIM. Chipset cost will come down in 6-12 months after launch like it always does. This is part for the course, at launch X370 boards for Ryzen were going for well over $250 as well. Power consumption is a consequence of AVX512 and the mesh interconnect al…

Overclockers are vocal but I can't imagine they're more than a tiny portion of the market these days? For most use cases modern CPUs are plenty fast enough stock. Businesses won't do something unsupported. Games will be written to run properly on supported chips. Maybe with a lot of effort you can get your games looking slightly nicer, sure, but for how many people is that worth it?

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

#64

Post by glenndebacker »

paulmd wrote: post #20

The real problems with Skylake-X are chipset cost, power consumption, shitty partner boards, and TIM. All of these are forgivable given the performance - except the TIM. Chipset cost will come down in 6-12 months after launch like it always does. This is part for the course, at launch X370 boards for Ryzen were going for well over $250 as well. Power consumption is a consequence of AVX512 and the mesh interconnect al…

"This thing absolutely smokes Ryzen in gaming at stock clocks let alone OC'd - single-thread performance is still a dominant factor in good gaming performance and this chip delivers in spades."

That if you are limiting yourself to 1080p... At the resolution that I game (3440 x 1440) those performance differences disappear very fast. And even at 1080p 150 vs 180 frames don't matter that much for the majority of people.

The cost of this chip alone is the same as some Ryzen builds. There is a point where it financial doesn't make sense (price/performance) even if it's the fastest chip around.

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

#65

Post by btb »

vosper wrote: post #25
paulmd wrote: post #20

The real problems with Skylake-X are chipset cost, power consumption, shitty partner boards, and TIM. All of these are forgivable given the performance - except the TIM. Chipset cost will come down in 6-12 months after launch like it always does. This is part for the course, at launch X370 boards for Ryzen were going for well over $250 as well. Power consumption is a consequence of AVX512 and the mesh interconnect al…

At the desktop level I don't get why people care that much about power consumption? It means you have to dissipate more heat, okay, that means you can't use a cheap cooler. But it AFAIK even an extra 100w is cheap in the most expensive areas, especially when contrasted against productivity or cigarette breaks, or people sometimes being 20 minutes late to work...

For me its purely a noise issue. Less heat to dissipate means less fan noise(Only speaking about home use here. In an office setting the difference would be unnoticeable).

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

#66

Post by Kenji »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #56
Nition wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try and imagine since 1980. Kind of hard to explain to my boy actually. He has my old computer from about 7 years ago. At least i think it was 7. Intel 2600k? Still works a treat. It's almost as old as he is.

I also got Intel 2600K. Yes, it's still going very strong. No reason to switch until my motherboard breaks. Speed gains would be minimal, yet getting a new processor would be quite expensive.

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

#67

Post by dis-sys »

Sorreah wrote: post #62
dis-sys wrote: post #53

> fastest chip in the world what a huge load of biased non-sense! I have a machine pretty similar to the one mentioned in the article below, it is using Intel processors released ages ago, in fact they were from decommissioned servers from some random data centres. I'd willing to bet that machine with "the fastest chip in the world" is significantly slower/more expensive than mine when it comes to my long list of day…

The 20+ core Xeons run at 2.1 or 2.2 Ghz, while this runs at 4, with a newer architecture. I don't think it's a big stretch to call this the fastest chip, especially since we're referring to consumer chips and not server chips that cost 9000 eurodollars (as is the case for those 20 core Xeons). Also, have both of these setups run a mixed workload that isn't absolutely parallelizable and watch the Xeon struggle.

1. the Xeon I am using can Turbo to 3.1Ghz, sure, it is slower than 4G, but the sheer core count makes it much faster in the day to day development tasks many people face. consumer grade or not, it doesn't matter when there is no special requirements. you just buy components from your favourite vendors and put it together, that is all.

2. you can buy a pair of such 10-core Xeon for almost the same price of a single i9-7900x.

3. i9-7900x faces the exact same problem when the workload can not be paralleled - you can buy a much cheaper quad core intel processor that overclock well, you can push it to say 4.5 or 5G and beat the "fastest chip in the world".

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

#68

Post by nl »

rbanffy wrote: post #51

> fastest chip in the world Impressive for a x86 as this is, some POWER and SPARC users may disagree with this assessment. In fact, some Xeon users will doubtlessly scratch their heads too.

Only reason they'd scratch their head is to try to find the hair they lost explaining why they are on POWER or (especially) SPARC.

Power9 is competitive in performance/Watt, and in some weird benchmarks which no one cares about. I haven't seen anything competitive in any way from SPARC for a long time.

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

#69

Post by qb45 »

turblety wrote: post #41

But once again they have included a second "processor" on each chip with a bunch of restricted backdoors that can not be removed [1]. There have already been bugs [2] and exploits [3] found and therefore no Intel or AMD chip can be used if you care about security and/or privacy. If I think Microsoft isn't free enough for me, then I can remove Windows and install Linux (or BSD). If I think Chrome is sending my data to…

Who is AMT? I thought AMT is just Intel's marketing name for certain remote management features.

Also, I'm under impression that [6] refers not only to firmware blobs running on various auxiliary coprocessors but also the machine's firmware, i.e. BIOS, and in particular the CPU initialization component which had been provided only in binary form by both Intel and AMD for a few years now.

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

#70

Post by ido »

Kenji wrote: post #66
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try and imagine since 1980. Kind of hard to explain to my boy actually. He has my old computer from about 7 years ago. At least i think it was 7. Intel 2600k? Still works a treat. It's almost as old as he is.

I also got Intel 2600K. Yes, it's still going very strong. No reason to switch until my motherboard breaks. Speed gains would be minimal, yet getting a new processor would be quite expensive.

i had an i5-2500k that my nephew got a couple years ago simply cause we moved to a different country and i didn't want to lug a big-ass desktop with me. I suspect most people wouldn't notice the difference between it and a brand new CPU.
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