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AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

anandtech.com

91–100 of 290 posts

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#91

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), a…

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2538?vs=2558

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Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#92

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…

I'd expect there are far, far more servers than there are developer machines. There are probably many more servers than hardcore gamers as well, and maybe even more than all gamers put together. It'd be nice to see some hard stats on this, however.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#93

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), a…

> 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.

You don't get that excuse from AnandTech. We do our best to keep a long history of benchmark data for users to peruse: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2224

The main limiting factor on how far back our benchmark database goes is software updates. When we have to update the OS or CPU microcode for Spectre, Meltdown, etc., or update GPU drivers, that invalidates results, and re-testing a large pile of older hardware takes a long time. Historically this has mostly been a problem for GPUs since their drivers are such a moving target, but the past two years of CPU vulnerabilities have been a hassle.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#94

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…

I agree with your overall synopsis of the status quo. We might however see gaming shift more to multi-core workloads as the next gen of consoles are highly likely to contain 8 core (16T) AMD CPUs based on Zen2 (and a lot of games are made for the lowest common denominator). This shouldn't be confused with the 8 core APUs found in current gen. Next gen will have an 8 core CPU and a NAVI 12+ GPU.

LinusTechTips made a video recently where they took an Intel Skulltrail, which is an enthusiast dual-socket Core 2 Quad platform from 2008(!), through a modern OS and game test. They platform was struggling until the enabled the Vulkan API in games. We have consoles to thank for that, without the low speed, high core count CPUs of the PS4 and Xbox One there'd be little justification for optimizing games for Vulkan and DX12

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#95
post #25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more of a memory bottleneck though.

Yeah indeed chromium is a more efficient 2D rendering engine than what's available natively and performance of JS is comparable to Java. Electron apps being slow is mostly a developer laziness problem, not a technology problem. Making a fast electron app is actually easier than making a fast C++ app IMO, when you take into account the libraries and tooling available.

I think the difficulty is in making a lightweight Electron app, not a fast one. Games run fast too, but they can get away with hogging resources because they're typically the only app you're using at the time.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#96
Can anyone comment on the IOMMU-grouping on typical boards? From what I've just googled, the CPU "lanes" seem to support ACS so it could indeed be working to replace my IGP+GPU-for-the-gaming-VN-Haswell system with a dual-GPU-Ryzen one (contrary to what I believed previously).

Have been eyeing TR for that reason, but as I don't really need this amount of I/O (and cores), I might be well served by AM4.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#97

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…

I'd expect there are far, far more servers than there are developer machines. There are probably many more servers than hardcore gamers as well, and maybe even more than all gamers put together. It'd be nice to see some hard stats on this, however.

Which don't use desktop CPUs...

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#98

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.

Try running kubernetes dev environment with all the crap your team has hoarded on it, elastic, Prometheus, 5 different database engines and dashboard, etc. Then watch the system chug.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it is the first 16-core "consumer chip", since every other 16-core chip has either been HEDT-class or server-grade, both requiring expensive motherboards. I would be happy to try plopping this into my B450 motherboard from my 2700X. I'm happy with my current NVMe storage, which is just about the only thing that takes advantage of the extra bandwidth. Graphics cards aren't there yet.

I had 24 core workstation 5 years ago for price of this single chip. Refurbished server...

The problem with this strategy is that they often have much lower clock speeds/ IPC, plus they are often quite power-hungry and lose the ability to overclock (that one's subjective). So you do often get bitten by Amdahl's law. However, if it is purely a rendering machine and single-threaded performance isn't an issue, you can get a lot of processing power for the money.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#100

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…

I LOVE that the gaming market has created a serious desire for quality desktop hardware. I now build my workstations by hand and install Ubuntu. It's really nice to work on quality hardware!

As long as you want unnecessary lighting and gaping, EMI releasing, windowed cases.
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