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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

#81

Post by brianwawok »

msimpson wrote: post #78

Between the Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X there is a $540 price difference. But for that extra cost you get four more threads at a higher clock rate, twenty extra PCIE lanes, a 500 MHz higher turbo clock speed, and double the memory bandwidth. Even with the lesser Intel Core i7-7820X you will get the same thread count but with a higher clock rate, four extra PCIE lanes, still a 500 MHz higher turbo clock…

Are there really that many people doing 3d model rendering?

My guess would be PC users by count are

gamers > programmers > 3d renderers

For most gamers, seems like i7 or maybe i9 wins in current benchmarks. For programmers maybe ryzen is a better fit, but I bet it depends on your language.

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

#82

Post by rbanffy »

nl wrote: post #68
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.

The article claims "fastest", not "most efficient" or "best per dollar". It all depends on the workload - I remember SPARC has some interesting tricks integrated into its silicon that make things like HANA and Oracle a good deal faster.

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

#83

Post by brianwawok »

cyphar wrote: post #44
throwaway209402 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reac…

I was not referring to the R&D, rather the way it was announced and is being marketed. I would be surprised if they didn't rush development and went straight to marketing as a reaction to AMD. Intel have been resting on their lorels due to the lack of serious competition, ARM is struggling from what I've seen. I probably should've been clearer, but I assumed it was obvious you can't do R&D on new silicon in 60 days a…

> I would be surprised if they didn't rush development

I thought the development cycle for a new CPU was between 2-3 years (hence the 2 teams, and tick tock thing).

It's like adding new features late in the game for a webapp. Some things would be very easy (we need a new page for X). Some things would be very hard (I want you to rewrite the entire app from angular to react). My guess is something like changing core count is very very hard to do late in the game. Changing price, maybe changing overclock settings, those would be fairly easy.

So I suspect if Intel didn't see threadripper coming (which I doubt) the thread counts were set years ago. However threadripper is making Intel drop the prices a bit.

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

#84

Post by snaily »

brianwawok wrote: post #81
msimpson wrote: post #78

Between the Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X there is a $540 price difference. But for that extra cost you get four more threads at a higher clock rate, twenty extra PCIE lanes, a 500 MHz higher turbo clock speed, and double the memory bandwidth. Even with the lesser Intel Core i7-7820X you will get the same thread count but with a higher clock rate, four extra PCIE lanes, still a 500 MHz higher turbo clock…

Are there really that many people doing 3d model rendering? My guess would be PC users by count are gamers > programmers > 3d renderers For most gamers, seems like i7 or maybe i9 wins in current benchmarks. For programmers maybe ryzen is a better fit, but I bet it depends on your language.

You're forgetting the CGI industry, as seen in movies.

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

#85

Post by brianwawok »

glenndebacker wrote: post #64
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…

Or I guess put another way for gamers, saving $500 on your CPU lets you go from 1 GPU to 2 GPUs. For a lot of games, that is going to be a pretty big performance win.

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

#86

Post by brianwawok »

snaily wrote: post #84
brianwawok wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there really that many people doing 3d model rendering? My guess would be PC users by count are gamers > programmers > 3d renderers For most gamers, seems like i7 or maybe i9 wins in current benchmarks. For programmers maybe ryzen is a better fit, but I bet it depends on your language.

You're forgetting the CGI industry, as seen in movies.

I am not forgetting it.

Google right now, tells me there are:

155 million "gamers" in the US

3.6 million programmers in the US

I cannot guess that the CGI industry is higher than either of these numbers.

Now very much they may pay for bleeding edge, and spend more dollars on hardware than programmers. But I am at least 95% confident there are less people in the US running a 3d program on their desktop compared to running eclipse/visual studio/atom/vim.

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

#87

Post by msimpson »

brianwawok wrote: post #81
msimpson wrote: post #78

Between the Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X there is a $540 price difference. But for that extra cost you get four more threads at a higher clock rate, twenty extra PCIE lanes, a 500 MHz higher turbo clock speed, and double the memory bandwidth. Even with the lesser Intel Core i7-7820X you will get the same thread count but with a higher clock rate, four extra PCIE lanes, still a 500 MHz higher turbo clock…

Are there really that many people doing 3d model rendering? My guess would be PC users by count are gamers > programmers > 3d renderers For most gamers, seems like i7 or maybe i9 wins in current benchmarks. For programmers maybe ryzen is a better fit, but I bet it depends on your language.

If you're a gamer, then yes, the i7-7820X is precisely what you'd be considering in opposition to the 1800X.

I invoked the example of 3D rendering as it's the origin of most of these discussions among my co-workers.

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

#88

Post by nirvdrum »

msimpson wrote: post #78

Between the Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X there is a $540 price difference. But for that extra cost you get four more threads at a higher clock rate, twenty extra PCIE lanes, a 500 MHz higher turbo clock speed, and double the memory bandwidth. Even with the lesser Intel Core i7-7820X you will get the same thread count but with a higher clock rate, four extra PCIE lanes, still a 500 MHz higher turbo clock…

Not to take away from your numbers, but you should consider the cost of the motherboard, too. The HEDT Intel motherboards tend to be more expensive than what the Ryzen ones are going for and much harder to find replacements for down the line. Microcenter seems to only sell one X299 and it's at $310. Depending on your desired feature set, you can get a Ryzen motherboard for < $100.

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

#89

Post by Shivetya »

brianwawok wrote: post #81
msimpson wrote: post #78

Between the Intel Core i9-7900X and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X there is a $540 price difference. But for that extra cost you get four more threads at a higher clock rate, twenty extra PCIE lanes, a 500 MHz higher turbo clock speed, and double the memory bandwidth. Even with the lesser Intel Core i7-7820X you will get the same thread count but with a higher clock rate, four extra PCIE lanes, still a 500 MHz higher turbo clock…

Are there really that many people doing 3d model rendering? My guess would be PC users by count are gamers > programmers > 3d renderers For most gamers, seems like i7 or maybe i9 wins in current benchmarks. For programmers maybe ryzen is a better fit, but I bet it depends on your language.

how does AR impact this need? will it by default make everyone a gamer with regards to hardware needs? that is if someone one can make a compelling case for it becoming widespread.

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

#90

Post by e12e »

brianwawok wrote: post #85
glenndebacker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Or I guess put another way for gamers, saving $500 on your CPU lets you go from 1 GPU to 2 GPUs. For a lot of games, that is going to be a pretty big performance win.

It's silly to even look at 1080p for high-end gaming, beyond having some "rule-of-thumb" number to compare performance historically.

I remember I used to advice people to spend half on monitor, half on the pc system (and out of that, maybe close to half on the gpu). That used to mean a ~1000 USD monitor(s), and a ~500 USD GPU - for a total system price of ~2000 USD.

Today, most people would probably aim for a lower total cost, but it's still silly to sink a lot of cash into getting a great system, only to have a crappy monitor ruin the experience.

(Another caveat, I'd guess a high-end monitor should be able to survive/remain usable for closer to a decade than to 3-5 years -- which would be more typical for a pc. Of course, part of the reason for getting a pc system would be the possibility of ~incremental upgrades)

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