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

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141–150 of 170 posts

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

#141

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?

I'm considering Intel for my next workstation because I want to be able to run macOS at least in VirtualBox (or just run Hackintosh, did not decide yet). For some reason macOS does not like AMD CPUs.

It won't work in a virtual machine? Any reason why?

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763855

Also, check out Proxmox, a "distro" of KVM with extra utilities such as a web GUI.

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

#143
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run MacOS through KVM easy on Ryzen. Even GPU passthrough works fine.

iMessage and other features generally break when running amd macintoshes, intel ones are indistinguishable.

Why would they break if macOS itself runs fine on AMD? These softwares run on macOS and don't make any system calls directly by bypassing the OS, right?

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

#144
post #34

I just assembled a new computer: amd 2200g ($90) + MSI B450M MORTAR ($90) + Intel 512GB SSD M.2 ($68) + 4 x 16G 2666 memory (4 x $72). I installed the debian testing system. After the installation, X hung at starting up. But after installing amdgpu driver by following this tutorial: https://wiki.debian.org/How%20to%20install%20official%20AMDG... , it works like a charming now.

Why a B450 board over an older cheaper A320 board if you're using a 2200g? Edit: NM, probably RAM...

Yes, one reason. The other is the board supports two m.2 slots.

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

#145
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage and other features generally break when running amd macintoshes, intel ones are indistinguishable.

Why would they break if macOS itself runs fine on AMD? These softwares run on macOS and don't make any system calls directly by bypassing the OS, right?

They typically check for a network interface from a real Mac. Using a Hackintosh you can't spoof some of the NIC details that are detected and cause iCloud/iMessage to not work.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

like I said, I'm very interested to see the head-to-heads, especially the overclocking results. my use case is c++ compilation and csgo so it looks like it'll be a tough choice.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So? The same script reports 11 lines on my 4 year old Haswell. It should read as "mitigated or not vulnerable" instead of simply "not vulnerable".

Edit: oh wait, it's actually 12 lines, the same as on your system. The reason it reported 11 on the first run is because KPTI has been disabled manually here.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the confusion, I meant "single benchmark" as in "single run of Geekbench." As in comparing one measurement versus an aggregate of measurements isn't particularly meaningful, you need to compare aggregate to aggregate to get something valid. It's still a sample size of 1, even if the sample has 25 dimensions. (I don't know if Geekbench uses an average or what they're weighting is e.g. with memory speeds and…

I'm all for reproducing results, but given the relatively deterministic nature of computers (especially for new hardware) I feel this is an unwarranted criticism. How often do people get significantly different results when running identical tests on identical hardware?

Can you disable frequency scaling reliably? In general clock speed is not deterministic - it depends how hot the CPU is, which is affected by all kinds of things (second run, fifth run, AC on, winter, etc.).

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

#149
post #26
post #5

Any chance Apple will ever consider AMD chips for the MacBook Pro or any of their computers. I have to wonder how much of the $4k+ I just spent on my MacBook Pro went to pay for the Intel 8-core CPU...

The Ryzen mobile CPUs are quite far behind Intel's offerings at the moment - they're manufactured on a 12 nm process and use the Zen+ uarch, instead of 7 nm/Zen 2 the new desktop chips use. They have the advantage in GPU performance, but Ice Lake chips are coming in the next couple of months and they should slightly surpass the performance of the Vega GPUs, plus the CPU itself should perform quite a bit better, at le…

When are Zen 2 laptop CPUs supposed to come out?

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

#150
post #81

Never bought an Intel CPU after learning about their illegal anti-competetive deals with OEMs. It's been probably 15 years with AMD CPUs. Happy to see AMD on top once again.

I bought one in my last laptop, by that was over 5 years ago. There just hasn't a good selection of decent AMD-based laptops out there, though that situation is finally getting better (excited about Lenovo offering AMD-based Thinkpad T-series, though I'll probably buy an A or E series for now).

In fact, I think the only time I've purchased Intel has been for laptops (except renting through VPS providers). If you don't particularly care about power, they've dominated the low end for years, and now with Ryzen, they're dominating pretty much everything including power (provided you need something more than Intel graphics).

I'm excited for real competition vs Intel on power from AMD, and I hope this little boost helps them continue to compete when Intel eventually catches up.

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