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AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

anandtech.com

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Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#41

Post by zamubafoo »

intarga wrote: post #31
zamubafoo wrote: post #19

I find it interesting how desktop CPUs are essentially coming down to two enthusiast markets, developers/content creators/workstations and gaming. While the gaming market is (usually) seeking the highest top single core clock speed with respect to CPUs, it also relies on other expensive hardware. Meanwhile the dev/content creator/workstation market is much better served by these multi-core behemoths. Intel really has…

>While the gaming market is (usually) seeking the highest top single core clock speed with respect to CPUs, it also relies on other expensive hardware. Meanwhile the dev/content creator/workstation market is much better served by these multi-core behemoths. It's not really that cut and dried, plenty of dev workloads are better served by high top single core, while plenty of gaming workloads are better served by multi…

You are absolutely correct. I might be wrong but I've always heard that the general rule of thumb for gaming CPU purchases is get best single core speed if you aren't buying for a specific game. Also, I based my statement on my workloads which involves a lot of virtualization.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#42

Post by Tepix »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #28
neogodless wrote: post #12

This isn't the most groundbreaking release - it's not the first 16-core chip you can buy (edited), nor the first 7nm. No new clockspeed records were set. Still, $750 for all that power! Any professionals shopping for this, or waiting for 24 or 32-core Threadripper? Anyone trying to upgrade on an older motherboard, or are you getting a matching X570 to ensure maximum boost and PCI-e bandwidth?

The step from Ryzen to Threadripper is quite a big one. I'd benefit from a Threadripper system, but budget only allows a (top tier) Ryzen for now. I suppose spare money could go towards a Threadripper right now and I wouldn't consider it wasted per se.

Even if you can get a good price for the CPU, the mainboards are very pricey compared to the consumer CPU boards.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#43

Post by gruez »

mantap wrote: post #21
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody knows anymore, it’s kind of feature size, but everyone defines feature differently!

It seems like transistor density (N per unit area) would be a more useful measurement.

Isn't that the logic behind the "fake" nanometer measurements? Let's say everyone is on "32nm", but you got a new process[1] that packs twice the number of transistors than everyone else, but with the same feature size. Essentially, your 32nm feature size process is equivalent to everyone else's 22nm feature size process. Are you going to advertise your new process as "32nm" which is the same as everyone else, or "22nm"?

[1] eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multigate_device

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#44

Post by davidy123 »

Slight meta, and part of a larger 'rant,' but when are we going to get away from reviews that might as well have been printed on glossy pages in PC Magazine in 1986? Anandtech has been at it since the 90s and hasn't changed their format at all. This is a serious decades-long stagnation of the web. The graphs should be dynamic (able to choose what scenarios and components to compare, and able to search within them), and user contributed. Instead we get feeble excuses like "it doesn't make sense to compare a two-year-old-generation to this one," well yes it does if I'm considering an upgrade.

Only a few sites support these options. Storage Review was an early leader but hasn't much moved much, Notebookcheck is another, and of course Phoronix.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#45

Post by chaosbutters »

neogodless wrote: post #12

This isn't the most groundbreaking release - it's not the first 16-core chip you can buy (edited), nor the first 7nm. No new clockspeed records were set. Still, $750 for all that power! Any professionals shopping for this, or waiting for 24 or 32-core Threadripper? Anyone trying to upgrade on an older motherboard, or are you getting a matching X570 to ensure maximum boost and PCI-e bandwidth?

I'm waiting for 64 core CPU. 32 is nice but still not enough.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#46

Post by Tepix »

Looking at some benchmarks done by PC Games Hardware it appears that games are still not capable of taking advantage of 16 cores and 32 threads. It's not surprising - why would developers optimize for something that's not yet widely used. But I wonder when we'll get there...

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#47

Post by hkjhreiou »

BubRoss wrote: post #3
LatteLazy wrote: post #2

7nm is about 35 times the diameter of a silicon atom.

That's interesting but to put it in perspective I need to know how it relates to a human hair or how many times it can circle the earth.

I don't know, I find it more relatable if put in terms of how high a stack of CDs would be or how many times we can write the Library of Congress on it.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#48

Post by greatpatton »

IanCutress wrote: post #37
Someone1234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea I didn't consider. edit: Below is wrong, see author of article's reply below for why. Preserving for record. They have been holding back review samples of their latest i9s so reviewers wouldn't do head-to-heads with this new 3950X (but people have anyway, and the 3950X crushes the i9). See Linus Tech Tip's review of the 3950X this morning for citation.

The new 18-core i9-10980XE isn't out yet, and review embargoes haven't been lifted. We know it's a slightly clock bumped version of the i9-9980XE, which was included in the AnandTech review and not the Linus review. Linus tested the 8-core i9-9900KS, which came out a few weeks ago, and those results are also in the link which is the title to this thread.

Yet the main question remain if the benchmark were done with the latest mitigation (and version of the microcode) or without...

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#50

Post by Filligree »

IanCutress wrote: post #40
Nokinside wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7mm is so called 'commercial name' nothing physical. Million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm²) is better comparison metric than the commercial name for the process. Here is handy chart I copied from https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication : Tech Node name (MTr/mm²) Intel 7nm (2??) TSMC 5nm EUV 171.3 TSMC 7nm+ EUV 115.8 Intel 10nm 100.8 TSMC 7nm Mobile 96.5 Samsung 7nm EUV 95.3 TSMC 7nm HPC 6…

It's worth pointing out that the value for Intel's 10nm is on its high-density libraries, not its high-performance libraries, which are less dense.

"Libraries"?
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