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AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

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Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#201

Post by gameswithgo »

lorenzhs wrote: post #180
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We built a Ryzen machine in an old rack-mount workstation chassis at work before EPYC was released. The motherboard has a bunch of RGB contour lights on it, which you can see through the grille at the back of the chassis. Looks really daft in a rack.

you got a couple of options there. you can turn them off or black electrical tape them if there isn't a way (there usually is a way)

or, own it, make them as bright and blinky as possible and then just love it.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#202

Post by lliamander »

ibobev wrote: post #72

As a developer I am keen to see some compilation benchmarks. Unfortunately those kinds of benchmarks are almost never included in such reviews. Instead there are many gaming benchmarks which purpose is not exactly clear for me, after obviously gaming is not the primary target market for R9 3950X.

As a developer, other benchmarks I would like to see:

* compile benchmarks for different mainstream languages (Java, C#, etc.)

* IDE related benchmarks (i.e. how long does it take to index a large solution/workspace)

* source control conversion tests (svn to git). Obviously not something that happens everyday, but I've done it at two different jobs, and generally when it happens you are often converting many repos as an organization shifts its policy.

* maybe some VM/docker related tests

I'm probably asking for too much, but working on a micro-service system even with enough RAM my system becomes less responsive when I'm testing the interactions between services on my local machine. I'm also limited on the number of Java projects I can add into a single workspace in Intellij. I've been forced to open each project as a separate workspace and in a separate window.

Granted, I'm working off of a dual-core i7 laptop (with 32GB of RAM) but I want to know what kind of upgrade it would take for those problems to go away.

> Instead there are many gaming benchmarks which purpose is not exactly clear for me, after obviously gaming is not the primary target market for R9 3950X.

Well, it must be said that the 3950X has the fastest single-core performance of AMD's lineup, so while it is overkill from a core-count perspective, it's still technically their best gaming CPU.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#203

Post by paulmd »

benibela wrote: post #189
NicoJuicy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has been cheating their single core performance against AMD for many years, thanks to predictive and insecure algorithms. Reality is just catching up, AMD is already number one for a long time. Intell's cheating just didn't make it clear. I've waited for a year to express my opinion, before I could see any evidence. The time has come that AMD is even beating Intell's fake single core performance, so slowly we w…

>Ps. Long AMD So you recommend to buy AMD stock now? Or TSMC? Or is it already too late for that? The share price already went up from 28 to 38 since October

AMD has been overbought by brand fanboys/"amateur investors" egging each other on (see: r/AMD_Stock) and is now effectively pricing in a massive amount of expected future growth. Probably decades worth.

For context: Intel currently has a P/E ratio of 13.57, which is 70th percentile of tech stocks. AMD currently has a P/E ratio of 201.89, which is 5th percentile of tech stocks.

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/pettm/intc/PE-Ratiottm

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/pettm/intc/PE-Ratiottm

AMD as a company has great potential in the long term, but still barely makes any money today. Like, AMD is hoping to double their server marketshare (only part of the company) by the end of 2020... which will take them to... almost 10% of the market. It's real easy to make big percentage gains when you have 0% share of the market. The AMD of 2016 had nowhere else to go but up.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#204

Post by Bayart »

mtarnovan wrote: post #199

I'm very curious how this CPU performs for Elixir compilation.

Compilation should profit pretty linearly from more cores thrown at it. Considering the Erlang VM is very concurrency-conscious it should be a pretty natural fit.

But I'm not at all in on the intricacies of it, are there any particular CPU features (instruction set or module) it's known to take advantage of ?

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#205

Post by lliamander »

mtarnovan wrote: post #199

I'm very curious how this CPU performs for Elixir compilation.

Indeed, the only compiler benchmark one typically sees are for C/C++. But Lots of developers use other languages, and it would be nice to have a cross-section because each language is so different.

BTW, how much does elixir benefit from multiple cores for compilation?

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#206

Post by Bayart »

wayneftw wrote: post #87

Any problems with AMD cpus and containers or virtualization? (Really? Wow. Sorry for asking a question!)

No problem on my side of things running Docker at home on an R5 2600. I heard there were a few problems with IOMMU in the beginning but it should be long gone. Considering AMD's getting into the server market pretty convincingly I don't think you'll have issues on the sysadmin side.

If you've got any problem it's gonna be from dodgy BIOSes and half-compatible hardware, the kind of stuff you might get running an older AM4 motherboard.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#207

Post by paulmd »

gameswithgo wrote: post #200
mjevans wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting if we moved back to the final layer of cache being off-core, likely within the IO die or attached as additional chips within the package. That should decrease the core size, improve yields, and allow for differentiation in L3 size as well.

but it would add latency :( but maybe an L4 cache, off core, as additional chips!

Interestingly, Broadwell-S and Broadwell-R did this using the "Crystal Well" L4 cache.

However, DDR4 memory now provides more bandwidth than the L4 could (although probably at a higher latency).

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#208

Post by seminatl »

I don't really get how they reached their conclusion. It seems like on most of the tests this new part gets beat by a cheaper one from Intel. It seems like a kinda unfair approach to use handbrake without AVX-512 support? Also not sure why they include the 3-d particle thing without AVX ... I guess because Intel is just too fast on that?

If you look through the results, the things most people want to do with a computer, like browse the web and start their applications, are noticeably faster with the Intel i9-9900K at half the price. And the only game where the CPU makes a difference in these benchmarks is also a lot faster with the Intel part.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#209

Post by vondur »

paulmd wrote: post #132

GamersNexus really hammering AMD's deceptive marketing around boost clocks. The only time it can hit its advertised boost clocks in when it's in the menu and you have near-zero load, and it barely touches it for an instant. Under even a single-core load it's failing to meet its advertised spec. There was a lot of hubbub around this with the initial release, AMD released a BIOS which they claimed fixed this, looks lik…

As far as I can see most of the reviews have mentioned how the 3950x is able to hit the advertised boost, so it looks like AMD is paying attention.

Re: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

#210

Post by paulmd »

zamubafoo wrote: post #41
intarga wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's generally accurate. Per-thread ("single-thread") performance is the dominant factor in gaming performance. Even in multi-threaded games there is usually a critical thread that is limiting performance. Amdahl's Law: never not applicable.
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