Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by paulmd » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 1:58 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #83

cyphar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Intel already makes these high-core-count CPUs for the Xeon market. What's different here is their presence in the HEDT lineup - but that is basically just blowing different feature-fuses in the chip and slapping them in a different box. There is no actual R&D required.

Intel is afraid of these HCC chips cannibalizing their sales of more expensive Xeons, so they're holding back as long as possible and crippling key features. If you want ECC, for example, you have to buy a Xeon - or more realistically for many people, a Threadripper.

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

#102

Post by bluedino » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

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.

What about prosumer video editors?

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

#103

Post by paulmd » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #95

btb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> In an office setting the difference would be unnoticeable If you have a hall full of developers, having lots of noisy PCs can be annoying. Where I work, we optimized for more silent PCs, because all these things do add up, and given the perf/watt-ratio you can get out of modern CPUs, there's no reason for people to need to have noisy PCs. Even at home, optimizing watt-usage, even for a desktop build, is not complet…

> an Rpi 3, which these days are getting good enough to actually do production loads

They really aren't, CPU performance is really irrelevant given the RPi's architectural weaknesses. USB was never meant as a system bus and everything has to loop through the kernel stack. Having every single peripheral hanging off a single USB 2.0 bus is crippling for performance. A Pi can't even serve a share at full 100 mbit speed due to bus contention let alone do anything more intensive.

It's very similar to one of Apple's more famous goofs, the Performa 5200/6200 with its left-hand/right-hand bus split that forces the CPU to handle everything.

http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-and-performa-x200-road-a...

Some of the clone boards have USB 3.0, SATA, gigabit ethernet, etc and are much better performers in practice despite having slower CPUs "on paper". Or there are little mini-PCs using 5-15W laptop processors that are really nice and run x86 distros/binaries.

All of these are at roughly comparable TCOs to a Pi (they include things like AC adapters that must be purchased separately for the Pi). The RPi is a bad choice for server usage.

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

#104

Post by brianwawok » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 2:08 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #102

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.

What about prosumer video editors?

Sure those exist.

1) How many are there?

2) it seems like you are usually not CPU bound. The people I know doing this spend 20 minutes waiting for a video to render than 6 hours uploading it to youtube. In most cases their bandwidth is a limiter 10x over their CPU. (Plus most of those people are on Mac anyway, so they don't even get this choice)

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

#105

Post by tmaly » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

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.

graphic designers are. my friend is moving off a mac and onto a pc just to do 3d rendering at home.

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

#106

Post by josteink » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 2:21 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #103

josteink wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an office setting the difference would be unnoticeable If you have a hall full of developers, having lots of noisy PCs can be annoying. Where I work, we optimized for more silent PCs, because all these things do add up, and given the perf/watt-ratio you can get out of modern CPUs, there's no reason for people to need to have noisy PCs. Even at home, optimizing watt-usage, even for a desktop build, is not complet…

> an Rpi 3, which these days are getting good enough to actually do production loads They really aren't, CPU performance is really irrelevant given the RPi's architectural weaknesses. USB was never meant as a system bus and everything has to loop through the kernel stack. Having every single peripheral hanging off a single USB 2.0 bus is crippling for performance. A Pi can't even serve a share at full 100 mbit speed…

> They really aren't, CPU performance is really irrelevant given the RPi's architectural weaknesses

Obviously "production loads" is an undefined term and as such we can discuss infinitely back and forth exactly how much these cheap ARM machines can actually handle.

I also didn't mean to single out the Rpi3 as a universal performer, optimal for everything out there.

My point was that I'm seeing an increased amount of people who are happy with what these cheap boards can do, who 10 years ago would have been forced to buy a server of sorts to cover the same needs.

So now they don't buy servers. Instead they buy cheap, tiny and fan-less ARM-based machines and they're perfectly happy. They even think running ARM is cooler than running Intel, so it's something they brag about.

I'm absolutely not saying I'm going to replace my company's server-farm or my dev-computer with these anytime soon, but Intel cannot completely ignore the power-efficiency aspect either if they want to keep their dominance in the market.

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

#107

Post by paulmd » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

e12e wrote: post #90

brianwawok wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

27" 144 Hz IPS GSync/FreeSync like the XF270HU or XB271HU is the place to aim for a general-purpose monitor right now ($400-600 depending on model and new/refurb). People inevitably are a bit dubious on them at first given the cost, then they try them and agree it's worth every penny.

Unless you want ultrawide that is - but there are some caveats there with game compatibility due to the aspect ratio.

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

#108

Post by msimpson » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

nirvdrum wrote: post #88

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.

The MSI X299 RAIDER is the cheapest X299 board I can find at NewEgg and costs $219.99.

The GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 is the cheapest Ryzen board I can find at NewEgg and costs only $94.99 by comparsion.

Therefore, there's an obvious savings of $124. Although, you can easily spend $189.99 or more on a higher-end Ryzen board given NewEgg's offerings.

So while there is a discrepancy, it's not massive.

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

#109

Post by rolal » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

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've a 2600K with 32GB DDR3 ram, and its the cost of DDR4 ram that is that stopping me from upgrading. Well that and the fact that that i've no compelling reason to upgrade beyond keeping up with the joneses.

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

#110

Post by nirvdrum » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

msimpson wrote: post #108

nirvdrum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The MSI X299 RAIDER is the cheapest X299 board I can find at NewEgg and costs $219.99. The GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 is the cheapest Ryzen board I can find at NewEgg and costs only $94.99 by comparsion. Therefore, there's an obvious savings of $124. Although, you can easily spend $189.99 or more on a higher-end Ryzen board given NewEgg's offerings. So while there is a discrepancy, it's not massive.

Fair enough. I listed Micro Center because they routinely have the best deals on CPU prices and often have incredible CPU & motherboard combo prices. For a while you basically could get a Ryzen motherboard for free with the CPU and they took $50 off the MSRP of the CPU. I ultimately didn't go for it, but I was looking at an 1800X + motherboard for $500, which is $100 less than the i7-7820X alone.

But I agree that a $200 - $400 difference may not be substantial for a workstation in heavy use. Personally, I do still have concerns about availability over the life of the CPU. I currently have an X79 and was looking to replace the motherboard in its 2nd year of ownership. eBay is really the only option available and with a scarce 2nd-hand market, the boards don't depreciate much. It's gotten better over time, but I was looking at paying $400+ for a used motherboard. I decided to just deal with the quirks of my current one. The X299 is early in its lifecycle, of course, so I'd hope availability for a few years.