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$499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

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121–130 of 170 posts

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is comparing an unreleased CPU It comes out in 10 days, does it really matter? > to a two year old one. The 9980XE launched Q4 2018, did you mean 2 quarter old? This also seems to imply Intel has something else better is due for release in the next year, there is nothing on the roadmap. > It's just comparing two random user submissions. Here's another i9-9980XE where Intel scored 7700 in single core. Because t…

The 9980XE is just a really large/fast Skylake CPU. Skylake is years old. If you wanted this level of performance from Intel you could have ordered the Xeon Gold 6154 way back in 2017. It seems fair to call this a 2-year-old part. A more comparable part would be the i9-9980HK.

> A more comparable part would be the i9-9980HK

not really, that's an eight core CPU (and also a mobile part). I'm very interested to see how the lower core count Ryzen 2s compare to their Intel counterparts in single-thread, but part of what's so impressive about the (early) 3900X/3950X results is that they offer this kind of performance with more cores and at a consumer-friendly price point.

you're right that Skylake is an old design at this point, but intel invites this kind of comparison when they can't manage to ship an HCC version of their latest tech. entirely fair, imo.

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires a custom kernel though. I wouldn’t reccomend that route for a Hackintosh system.

You could do it via KVM-based virtualization without a ton of trouble.

This is interesting. Any recommended project links so I can read more?

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#123
post #120
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the TSC for high precision timing, and turning TSC ticks into nanoseconds requires interpreting model specific registers, so my timing code would need AMD specific patches to work properly on those processors. Not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it would definitely be an annoyance for me if I did decide to switch. Probably not super relevant to scientific computing or ML though.

How do you use the TSC for timing when the frequency is changing unpredictably?

Recent processors have invariant TSC.

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#124
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in ZEN2: "The key highlight improvement for floating point performance is full AVX2 support. AMD has increased the execution unit width from 128-bit to 256-bit, allowing for single-cycle AVX2 calculations, rather than cracking the calculation into two instructions and two cycles. This is enhanced by giving 256-bit loads and stores, so the FMA units can be continuously fed. AMD states that due to its energy aware sche…

> Corsair MP600 SSDs will offer up to 4950 MB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 4250 MB/s sequential write speed when used with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface WOW! Looks like they haven't announced pricing yet. I wonder what those drives will cost.

$250 for the 1 TB version and $450 for the 2 TB model, Corsai accidentally put the listings up early on Amazon a few days ago and then took them down

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So from a recent standing start Apple are going to beat Intel and AMD - I could see Apple using their own cpu's for tablets and phones but for work stations I don't think so.

What do you mean you “could see it”? Apple have been using their own cpus for iPad and iPhone, Apple TV, Watch and iPod touch, for a decade. They’ve been calling them “desktop class performance” for a long time now, and they’ve included an Apple processor in their laptops in recent years for driving the touchbar and TouchID. The A12X Bionic gets roughly the same Geekbench score as an Intel i5 8400 in both single and…

Ah true sorry I forgot

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So from a recent standing start Apple are going to beat Intel and AMD - I could see Apple using their own cpu's for tablets and phones but for work stations I don't think so.

You're probably right. But don't underestimate Apple. They have $250 billion in cash reserves.

Supposedly a new 7nm fab in Taiwan is going to cost around 17 billion dollars just for the FAB.

Not sure Apple share holders will think trying to compete with intel and AMD is good use of their money

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 9980XE is just a really large/fast Skylake CPU. Skylake is years old. If you wanted this level of performance from Intel you could have ordered the Xeon Gold 6154 way back in 2017. It seems fair to call this a 2-year-old part. A more comparable part would be the i9-9980HK.

> A more comparable part would be the i9-9980HK not really, that's an eight core CPU (and also a mobile part). I'm very interested to see how the lower core count Ryzen 2s compare to their Intel counterparts in single-thread, but part of what's so impressive about the (early) 3900X/3950X results is that they offer this kind of performance with more cores and at a consumer-friendly price point. you're right that Skyla…

True, Intel's part numbering scheme has passed beyond all reason. Think about the i9-9900K/KF. Existing SKU, in stock at Newegg for $479. You don't get quite as many cores but you get a lower price and higher single-core performance, and it exists right now instead of being unobtainable hypeware.

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#128
post #104
post #87

This was expected because the 3900X is optimized for fewer faster cores (12 at 3.8GHz) while the 9980XE is optimized for more slower cores (18 at 3.0GHz.) A better and far more impressive comparison would be the 3950X vs 9980XE which have comparable number of cores (16 vs 18). And in that instance AMD still beats Intel in both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads! And by wide margins! And with AMD being 62% c…

Also doesn't Intel have a lot more known security flaws?

One more, assuming you mean meltdown. But that's the easy one to fix.

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#129
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also doesn't Intel have a lot more known security flaws?

One more, assuming you mean meltdown. But that's the easy one to fix.

Not true. Copy-pasting from my Ryzen terminal:

   $ spectre-meltdown-checker | grep "NOT VULNERABLE" | wc -l  
   12

Re: $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Almost as Fast as $2000 Intel Core I9-9980XE

#130
post #46

Out of curiosity, has anybody had anything in the AMD Ryzen instruction set missing that required you to purchase an Intel 9xxx instead? Any significant differences in regards to scientific applications or machine learning?

Yes official and guaranteed support for ECC but it was an i3-8100 instead of an AMD equivalent. For a FreeNAS build. I will upgrade it to a Xeon E-21XX or whatever supports my Supermicro C246 motherboard in the future. AMD doesn’t test ECC on Ryzen but doesn’t turn it off. Server grade components are not as common either. Threadrippers are tempting but I like to play with EXSI and Intel’s virtualization is handy. My…

What precludes you from using ESXi and virtualization on AMD's platform? The virtualization extensions to x86 are common to both AMD and Intel. Even direct IO and IOMMU. Is there something missing?
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