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Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

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Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#161

Post by vbezhenar »

gravypod wrote: post #122
vbezhenar wrote: post #16

Now it's an interesting battle. I want to build new workstation, probably in 2020. I was going to go to Threadripper route, but now I have a choice and that's awesome.

TR4 will likely support PCIe 4.0. It seems to make sense to me to pick Threadripper because of this. Ignoring costs the future-proof of having tomorrow's IO interconnect is probably worth a few bucks for a work machine.

I can't imagine scenario where PCIe 3.0 is not enough for me. Even for storage it only matters for a linear I/O and I don't care about it that much. Random I/O won't saturate PCIe interface, it's not fast enough on any disk.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#162

Post by gravypod »

vbezhenar wrote: post #161
gravypod wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TR4 will likely support PCIe 4.0. It seems to make sense to me to pick Threadripper because of this. Ignoring costs the future-proof of having tomorrow's IO interconnect is probably worth a few bucks for a work machine.

I can't imagine scenario where PCIe 3.0 is not enough for me. Even for storage it only matters for a linear I/O and I don't care about it that much. Random I/O won't saturate PCIe interface, it's not fast enough on any disk.

It might not be useful now but in terms of future proofing a system it might become more of a deciding factor. The ability to make use of drives, graphics cards, network interfaces, or anything that can connect via PCIe for a few years to come might be beneficial.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#163

Post by lunchables »

wbond wrote: post #73
lunchables wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. Huh? AMD "just works". NVIDIA requires a dance of (Fedora) DKMS kernel modules and binary blobs. What am I missing? I buy AMD just because it's been frictionless to get working, I don't mind if theres a small performance penalty I pay for it.

This is repeated frequently, but I was never able to get my AMD 560 to work on Linux at 4k with MST (or turn down the fan speed). With Nvidia I installed the binary blob and 4k over MST “just worked”. I tried the amdgpu and Pro versions of the drivers. Neither company is perfect with Linux support. As with most things, there are pros and cons to both sides. But for anyone else reading here, just because you pick AMD…

I've never tried MST on AMD so I cannot comment. But of course it goes without saying that by picking NVIDIA it won't be magical and trouble free for everyone.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#164

Post by hajile »

jumpingmice wrote: post #96
distances wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which buyers exactly? Enthusiasts seem to be switching overwhelmingly to AMD: e.g. Mindfactory having AMD at 81% now. [0] Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of resentment towards Intel for their shenanigans, I don't personally know anyone who's even considering Intel for their own builds. It's a different matter for laptops where consumers have much less say on the topic, of course. [0] https://m.imgur.com/gallery/…

I think he means relevant buyers, like Google and Apple etc. People who order their CPUs by the cubic meter.

Google's planning on using semi-custom designs for their new gaming platform. AWS is already ordering and using tons of server chips and Google doesn't seem too far behind.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#165

Post by hajile »

OrgNet wrote: post #90
gruez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you need this much computing power. The typical webdev can probably get away with a quad core AMD/Intel cpu for <$200. Very few people actually need 12+ cores.

very few really need more then 1 core...

JS devs usually need quite a few threads/processes. The editor/IDE is 1 or more processes. Compiling is a separate, multi-threaded process. The webserver is another process. Tests are several more processes (which matters because 30+ minutes on a fast desktop isn't unheard of when running a complete test suite). Parsing the newest compile is multi-threaded in the browser. A separate core for the main website thread is especially important because opening the dev tools de-optimizes all the things resulting in significantly slower performance (a big thing with web apps). If service workers or webworkers are used, then there are even more processes involved.

Going from my dual-core Pixelbook to my Ryzen desktop is a huge change in the development experience.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#166

Post by hajile »

vbezhenar wrote: post #160
alimbada wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a choice if you're willing to settle for: - a long list of security vulnerabilities which, when fully patched and recommended features (including HyperThreading) are disabled, results in a huge loss in performance(~25% in some reports) - lower power efficiency due to still using 14nm process - platform uncertainty, i.e. will upgrading mean buying a new motherboard?

AFAIK Intel patches many of those security issues in new CPUs, so performance loss won't be as severe. I don't care about power efficiency, as electricity is cheap enough for me and I'm buying computer for many years, so I'm unlikely to benefit from CPU upgrading in 7 years anyway. Basically for me it's about: * Security issues. They are real for Intel and performance loss is real. * Inter-core communication latency.…

AMD's entire chiplet architecture is aimed squarely at cheaper server chips. All of their biggest wins have been with cloud providers like Google and Amazon. If their target was the consumer market, they would have launched 7nm mobile chips first. Given that the overwhelming majority of servers run Linux, I doubt they neglected to focus on that OS.

Zen 1 didn't have an especially large list of issues for being a ground-up new architecture. Launching to enthusiast desktops so you can revise things for the server market seems like a great strategy for them overall.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#167

Post by alimbada »

vbezhenar wrote: post #160
alimbada wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a choice if you're willing to settle for: - a long list of security vulnerabilities which, when fully patched and recommended features (including HyperThreading) are disabled, results in a huge loss in performance(~25% in some reports) - lower power efficiency due to still using 14nm process - platform uncertainty, i.e. will upgrading mean buying a new motherboard?

AFAIK Intel patches many of those security issues in new CPUs, so performance loss won't be as severe. I don't care about power efficiency, as electricity is cheap enough for me and I'm buying computer for many years, so I'm unlikely to benefit from CPU upgrading in 7 years anyway. Basically for me it's about: * Security issues. They are real for Intel and performance loss is real. * Inter-core communication latency.…

I think a lot of the issues you've brought up regarding AMD CPUs are no longer relevant with Zen 3.

Inter-core communication latency has been much improved with the larger caches and architecture improvements in Zen 3. Single threaded performance has always been within a stone's throw of Intel CPUs with Zen and Zen 2 and now the gap isn't even worth talking about with Zen 3 since you get more cores for less money.

I'm not sure about the Linux story, but this is the first I've heard of issues with Zen on Linux.

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