Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

anandtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 208 posts

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#121

Post by Klinky »

ziml77 wrote: post #50

I wonder if Zen 3 will finally let AMD pass Intel in single threaded performance. I thought they had already, but just a few days ago I checked benchmarks and saw that my 8086K still beats a 3800XT. Though maybe I'm stuck in the past a bit thinking that single threaded performance is even still important for games.

Yes single threaded perf is still important, but really only if you have top-end GPUs. 8 - 12 threads is where multi-threaded gaming gains seem to wane at bit, which might make sense given last console cycle's architectural optimizations. Once you're at 8 - 12 threads frequency starts becoming more important. Most recent Intel K CPUs can hit 5GHz+. The 10900K is still the best performing gaming CPU out there, and 8086K is still very competitive. Still seems many game engines are optimized for Intel and even with Zen2 having an IPC advantage, it cannot muster high enough frequencies to beat Intel's top gaming CPUs.

Maybe Zen3 will change that though, more IPC gains and possibly higher frequencies. If AMD can put out at 5GHz chip, it would probably demolish Intel's current offerings.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#122

Post by tmpz22 »

zamalek wrote: post #114
srtjstjsj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter for gaming?

Disclaimer: I'm personally hoping to complete my current build as a "Red Box" (AMD CPU, AMD GPU). However, facts are facts. DLSS 1.9 was impressive, but has its problems and would understandably be avoided by most gamers. DLSS 2 is a whole different story[1], and is highly likely to be something that most gamers enable. 4K/60 or 1440p/240 are the golden standards for PC gamers (depending on whether you prefer high re…

> 4K/60 or 1440p/240 are the golden standards

Those are $1200+ monitors at any decent resolution.

EDIT: by resolution I mean the horizontal dimension of the monitor, where pc enthusiasts typically go for 27+ inches in width which are more expensive as you scale in size, add a curve, etc.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#123

Post by bootloop »

swalsh wrote: post #112
bootloop wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that PCIe is a bottleneck? You can just populate your machine with another GPU if you need more memory or cores (thanks to the PCIe bus system).

While reading about OpenGL programming, one of the first things nearly all books mention, is the cost of moving data from your system to the GPU's memory.... So I assumed that's still true, is it not? Adding more GPU's does not change things as much as reduce the problem by providing more space.

That is true in a sense of: Of all the things in the graphics pipeline moving data between CPU and GPU is the slowest thing you can do. But that doesn't really mean the PCIe bus is slow. The truth is that most machines have a single GPU, connected to the CPU with all 16 PCIe lanes but they usually hit their performance cap utilizing much less then that.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#124

Post by Vvector »

dragontamer wrote: post #55
rrss wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless you have navi, in which case rocm is not supported and doesn't work and I guess AMD expects you to use opencl.

Navi just began to compile a week or two ago. Still 'unsupported', but its slowly gaining features. ROCm is a bit uneven with what cards it supports. Ex: Rx 550 never was supported (even though Polaris, the rest of the 5xx series worked). It seems like the only cards ROCm works for are the ones that share a chip and/or driver with AMD's "Machine Intelligence" line of cards. (MI50, MI60, etc. etc.). Which are Fiji (Rx…

> Navi just began to compile a week or two ago. Still 'unsupported', but its slowly gaining features.

14 months after release, still unsupported. AMD needs to step up to the plate if they want to be seriously considered in the AI world.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#125

Post by SCdF »

swalsh wrote: post #112
bootloop wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that PCIe is a bottleneck? You can just populate your machine with another GPU if you need more memory or cores (thanks to the PCIe bus system).

While reading about OpenGL programming, one of the first things nearly all books mention, is the cost of moving data from your system to the GPU's memory.... So I assumed that's still true, is it not? Adding more GPU's does not change things as much as reduce the problem by providing more space.

This is coming out to PCs nowish: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-is-comi...

Nvidia's 3000 series will support it, the new consoles have it one form or another, and we can safely presume AMD's 6000 series will support it as well.

Under Windows, obviously. Linux will be a completely different bucket of chum.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#126

Post by neogodless »

dzonga wrote: post #92

I'm in the market for an apu ? should I wait for these new processors or just bite the bullet on a 3400G. not a serious gamer, or hardly play games at all. but an alternative to the xbox one s, I have would be nice. games I would like to play e.g strategy | tactics are not available on console.

The AMD naming conventions are a little confusing, so it's not obvious, but the 3400G is based on Zen+. They have announced Zen 2 APUs [0], but they are not available directly - just in pre-built systems. That may change at some point. These are a huge improvement over Zen+, but I wouldn't wait around for retail availability of Zen 3 APUs!

[0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-4700g

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#127

Post by throwaway2048 »

lreeves wrote: post #61
dtx1 wrote: post #20

As a linux-only user (and gamer), nvidia is a plain no-go for me so i just hope that rdna2 is not entirely disappointing like RDNA1 was. For us Linux gamers a working VFIO on a consumer card would be a dream of course since nvidia is locking that to their workstations cards, maybe AMD just throws it in as a goody. Zen3 is propably gonna kick-butt, especially in any non-gaming task perhaps AMD will inch closer to Inte…

I have had perfect working VFIO setups with both the 1070 and 1080ti from nVidia, there are many comprehensive guides and working around the driver error code 43 is quite trivial.

Until NVIDIA decides to "fix" the workarounds, again.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#128

Post by bryanlarsen »

ZekeSulastin wrote: post #96
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had multiple generations of Nvidia GPUs in my PCs, all the way back from a Riva TNT up to a GTX 460 as the last one. I switched to an RX560 and I couldn't be happier. Linux drivers that actually work and aren't a mostly closed source garbage heap. The current Windows drivers are fine too.

Am I the only person on this site who has had no issues with the blob (aside from Wayland), especially on desktop? The last actual thing that I remember being a bit of a pain was an Optimus laptop years ago but from what I understand that’s finally been officially fixed; the desktop cards worked quite well, including the 2060 in my current desktop.

Yup, I've got about a dozen motherboard/video card combinations that I'm adminning. All of them require some sort of hack to get the binary driver to work with our code. Most require a kernel flag, some require sub-optimal bios settngs, some require pinning to an old version, and one requires a monitor attached to boot.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#129

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

ziml77 wrote: post #41
derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In at least datacenter settings, performance-per-watt is just as important as performance-per-dollar, since watts are continuous OpEx.

Even in the home, I like to consider performance-per-watt. More power draw means more heat and more heat means less comfort for much of the year.

I think you're overestimating the thermal pollution. A human is 100W-120W. The Zen 3 is about 180-220W. That pales to comparison to the cost of cooling a home where air conditioning systems have 36,000BTU or 10,000W.

Re: AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October

#130

Post by hyperpl »

StillBored wrote: post #87
ziml77 wrote: post #50

I wonder if Zen 3 will finally let AMD pass Intel in single threaded performance. I thought they had already, but just a few days ago I checked benchmarks and saw that my 8086K still beats a 3800XT. Though maybe I'm stuck in the past a bit thinking that single threaded performance is even still important for games.

Its not just games, firefox with ublock+ and a dark mode plugin are noticeably faster on fast single threaded machines.

Agreed, it's funny how nearly all discussions about reasons for single threaded perf just focus on games.
Post reply on HN