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AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

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Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#41
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be interested to see how long it will be before this devastates Intel's business. At the moment, there's literally no reason to buy an Intel desktop or server processor, so how many of the Intel purchases coming from OEMs and big cloud companies are just because of contracts that might let up in a few years?

Well, other than the unbroken history of AMD managing to fail when ahead. Intel is a juggernaut because even if it's not shipping the best, it's always shipping something on time, every time.

What? Intel have been slipping the ship date on their 10 nm process node for years. It's slipped so much that it's likely to not to even be fully released before it is discarded for its successor.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be interested to see how long it will be before this devastates Intel's business. At the moment, there's literally no reason to buy an Intel desktop or server processor, so how many of the Intel purchases coming from OEMs and big cloud companies are just because of contracts that might let up in a few years?

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

What? Intel are currently in the midst of a massive ongoing supply shortage. Lack of ability to keep up with demand is at least as much an Intel problem as it is an AMD one at this point.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

> I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices. I'm experiencing the opposite. There has been so many deals on 3900X that I have to constantly tell myself I don't need an upgrade.

I am genuinely intrigued. I've been going to my local Microcenters in the DC VA area for weeks now and they said they have gotten ZERO shipments in since release day of the 3900X and have a couple 3700X maybe on shelves.

This doesn't necessarily completely invalidate my point though - distribution by AMD is clearly needing some work when one region is drowning in 3900X processors and a very wealthy metro area has none in retail channels.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

What? Intel are currently in the midst of a massive ongoing supply shortage. Lack of ability to keep up with demand is at least as much an Intel problem as it is an AMD one at this point.

Intel also has lower yields than amd which doesn’t exactly help intel our much.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#45
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be interested to see how long it will be before this devastates Intel's business. At the moment, there's literally no reason to buy an Intel desktop or server processor, so how many of the Intel purchases coming from OEMs and big cloud companies are just because of contracts that might let up in a few years?

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

you dont have a cpu yet but the bios issue is super annoying?

i have one and there is no bios issue. i got the cheapest x570 mobo and everything is great

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

> I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices. I'm experiencing the opposite. There has been so many deals on 3900X that I have to constantly tell myself I don't need an upgrade.

Where have you been able to find them? PCPartPicker hasn't exactly shown great availability on the 3900X so far [0], Amazon is full of scalping [1] and Ebay... Well, $700+ is what I'm seeing there. This is the CPU that'll probably be powering my next build, so if you've got a source close to MSRP I'd love to hear it!

0: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tLCD4D/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-36...

1: https://smile.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-3900X-24-Thread-Processor...

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#47
post #34
post #33

> "We designed this part to compete with Ice Lake, expecting to make some headway on single threaded performance. We did not expect to be facing re-warmed Skylake instead. This is going to be one of the highlights of our careers" Looks like AMD expected Intel would actually start to fight back a few years ago when AMD started the Zen and Rome cores, and AMD has been running full steam ahead since then. Meanwhile, in…

In the “what a time to be alive” category, this is essentially a repeat of Opteron.

And it was a hell of a time to be alive. AMD was first to 1GHz, and the Athlon/Operton opening up the x64 (amd64) architecture was awesome. I didn't go back to Intel until the Core2 duo, which was also an amazing cpu.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#48
post #40
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very slight advantage of Intel CPUs in non-GPU constrained games (which means more or less 1080p only...). Very slight. Price/performance falls on Ryzen 3 so hard it's foolish to get an Intel for sure. There's no business reason on desktop or server for Intel for sure but there's so much inertia here which AMD needs to counter, it'll take years. Intel is down on the floor until 2021-2022 when their 7nm (whi…

Disagree. Why would it take years to counter this "inertia?" It's not like you're asking someone to give up a religion they've had from birth. They are being asked to make economic purchasing decisions, and the economics are crystal clear.

There are many small and large companies with relatively small compute needs (small meaning the own a small datacenter or two). Lots of the code they are running is _extremely_ legacy, and it may or may not be in their risk tolerance to switch vendors to save a hundred grand a year on CPU costs. Especially if they think like OP and believe Intel will match them again in just a few more years. Why rock the boat?

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#49
post #34
post #33

> "We designed this part to compete with Ice Lake, expecting to make some headway on single threaded performance. We did not expect to be facing re-warmed Skylake instead. This is going to be one of the highlights of our careers" Looks like AMD expected Intel would actually start to fight back a few years ago when AMD started the Zen and Rome cores, and AMD has been running full steam ahead since then. Meanwhile, in…

In the “what a time to be alive” category, this is essentially a repeat of Opteron.

Opteron also (eventually) killed off all the 64 bit RISC players. Quite a juggernaut.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#50
post #31
post #3

This should be interesting to watch. The new Ryzen CPUs are good, but the desktop market is a rather small portion of the overall CPU market which is dominated by server and laptop. AMD making inroads in the server space is where they _may_ actually be able to eat up some meaningful market share. That said, I wouldn't count the chickens before they've hatched here. AMD did this once before with opteron in ~2006. For…

This is different than the Opteron days. Today, AMD's offering is substantially cheaper than Intel, both on an absolute and performance-adjusted basis. AMD is now ascending at a time when Intel is plagued by a never-ending stream of embarrassing security flaws, and the market has grown sick of its monopolistic exploitation of its customers. Furthermore, AMD has already designed the next generation chip! AMD could hav…

I think you're making the mistake of assuming a static market. Pricing is often assumed to be based on cost, it's not, at least not only. Intel's prices are high because they can be, not because their costs are inherently higher. In fact they should be lower given they operate their own fabs and thus don't require a built in margin for the outsourced fab. If perf/$ is deemed by the market to be important, Intel will just cut their prices. Also keep in mind no one that matters at a market scale, e.g. Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc are paying these list prices. It's entirely possible Intel is still winning the perf/$ fight in these contracts.
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