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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

#51

Post by ben-schaaf »

gameswithgo wrote: post #45
devonkim wrote: post #23

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…

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

To add to this, I've got a B350 Asus board (B350 Prime Plus). Updated the bios and my 3700x works great!

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

#52

Post by leetcrew »

chx wrote: post #17
snazz wrote: 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?

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…

> 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.

it's not a huge advantage, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to call it foolish to buy intel at this point. if your only serious workload is gaming, intel seems like the obvious choice to me. you can actually get a decent all-core overclock on the intel parts, which leads to a significant performance lead in esports titles.

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

#53

Post by jdietrich »

devonkim wrote: post #23
snazz wrote: 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…

>Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs.

You're confusing bandwidth and latency. Ryzen 3000 launched a month ago, the 3900x outperformed expectations, so the initial shipments sold out faster than expected. You can't magic up stock out of thin air, so there's an inevitable lag between retailers reporting unusually high demand and AMD being able to deliver sufficient stock.

The bandwidth question is much more important and bodes very poorly for Intel. TSMC's 7nm process is stable, providing excellent yields and has plenty of available capacity; they're already in risk production for 5nm, which is expected to free up substantial capacity at 7nm/7nm+ into 2020. Intel's 10nm has been a complete debacle and (despite the Ice Lake launch) is still blighted with sub-par yields.

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

#54

Post by crazydoggers »

snazz wrote: post #12
DuskStar wrote: post #2

> For those with little time: at the high end with socketed x86 CPUs, AMD offers you up to 50 to 100% higher performance while offering at a 40% lower price. Unless you go for the low end server CPUs, there is no contest: AMD offers much better performance for a much lower price than Intel, with more memory channels and over 2x the number of PCIe lanes. These are also PCIe 4.0 lanes. What if you want to more than 2 T…

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?

There’s still a slight performance advantage with gaming. On top of the fact that it’s still hit or miss getting any Ryzen 9s and getting an i9 is easy, anyone who is shelling out for the RTX 2080 GPUs will probably go Intel.

On top of which, given the history, those building gaming machines will assume Intel’s next 10nm cpus will still outshine AMDs in gaming for the foreseeable future.

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

#55

Post by ken47 »

positr0n wrote: post #48
ken47 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course such decisions are always political. But now with Google backing EPYC Rome, there is the political risk of not switching, and finding yourself in the Stone Age 5 years from now.

There's a lot more incentive to explore EPYC than there was a day ago.

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

#58

Post by Accujack »

ken47 wrote: post #29
bob1029 wrote: post #11

Absolutely brutal TCO improvements... I feel like this could start a new race to the bottom with the hyper-scalers. The implications could be profound considering how concentrated a huge portion of our global compute capacity is these days. Is there a hypothetical point at which it becomes cheaper to spend additional capital in order to remove a perfectly-good Intel server in favor of a new AMD server (considering po…

The best time to buy an EPYC Rome server was 10 years ago. The next best time is today. Edit: Okay, since some people are downvoting my joke, a more serious answer -- if your server farm is running out of space, and you're currently looking at renting additional space to accommodate your growth, EPYC Rome will take up substantially less space for a given level of performance. This is one case where it may make sense…

Physical space is almost never a constraint in data centers. It's power and cooling that are almost always the limit.

If AMD's chips offer better performance/watt, that would make them attractive. The capital cost of purchasing a server tends to be a smaller number than the cost of the power to run and cool it over its lifetime.

However, what also matters is vendor support. Lots of companies have contracts for pricing and support on servers, and they won't necessarily change to save even a large amount of money on one generation of hardware. So for adoption of Zen2 CPUs in the data center, it will be critical for AMD to get the big names on board.

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

#59

Post by Apotheos »

DuskStar wrote: post #46
chubbyrabbit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-Ry…

Check out the buildapcsales subreddit, that's where I consistently find the biggest discounts.

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

#60

Post by ken47 »

mbell wrote: post #50
ken47 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree. If you do some research, you'll learn that the chiplet architecture employed by EPYC Rome is inherently and substantially cheaper to manufacture than the monolithic design employed for Xeon.

AMD priced these chips so low because they know Intel is going to fight back with deep discounts. AMD also knows they can manufacture more cheaply for any given level of performance.

It shouldn't surprise anyone if AMD is offering prices that Intel would have to counter by selling Xeon's at a loss.

Furthermore, some orgs do not put a price on security. With Intel's poor security track record in the recent past, it's no surprise that Google hopped on the EPYC train.

So at least one of the following two are going to play out over the next year: 1) AMD takes massive server market share. 2) INTC bleeds red to slow the loss of market share.

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