Live data from Hacker News

AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

anandtech.com

261–270 of 347 posts

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#261
post #105

I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced. I haven't really seen that me…

It's my understanding that Navi is just GCN but tweaked with faster memory.

It's not, it's "RDNA".

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#262
post #105

I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced. I haven't really seen that me…

If you want a discrete GPU with the same featureset as a modern integrated Intel GPU - with basic desktop features such as 1) being able to decode modern video codecs like HEVC 2) prime Windows and (especially) Linux support or 3) modern video outputs such as HDMI 2.0 - you need to buy a Radeon RX550. This will still set you back more than $80 and add another fan to your build.

A Radeon R7 240 from 6 years ago will still set you back $50, but will not give you modern video outputs or video codecs (although it at least still has relatively prime driver support). It's probably even slower than Intel's current integrated graphics too. Might as well go for the upsell then.

The prevalence of internal GPUs unfortunately seems to have killed the market for up-to-date very low end discrete GPUs. The "budget stuff" starts at $80, which is quite steep for something that barely has added value over an integrated GPU.

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are limited to 4 cores. In the new lineup too, when G series comes out later, they'll be limited to 8 cores (one cliplet for CPU and one for GPU).

Not true. 3000 series APUs are based on zen+.

Read 'later' as 'presumably labeled with a misleading 4xxx'.

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#264
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a cheap passive gpu, most don't even need power from the PSU. Something like a nvidia GT 710 or 730.

Is there anything similar but from AMD? As a Linux user I'd rather not buy nVidia.

I've been defining specs for a new NAS/home server and was just waiting for this release to finish it. I have that issue and my conclusion has been that you either get an old Nvidia for ~30-40$ (e.g., GT710) or all the AMD options I've seen are ~100$. That generation of card seems to be well supported[1] by the nouveau open-source drivers at least but I'd much prefer AMD as well. For NAS and server applications it would be nice if someone did a motherboard like the Asus X370Pro with an old GPU soldered on. That way you could have simple boot graphics without this hassle and only add a good GPU if you actually needed it for something. But I guess that's too much of a niche to bother with just like low-end graphics cards.

Edit: Found a few AMD R5 230 for the same 30-40$ range. Assuming the drivers are also good that seems like a good option. Edit2: Researching some more the R7 240 has a similar price and is probably the first that is already supported by the new amdgpu drivers so may be a better bet.

[1] NVE0 here: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ Seems like everything but power-management is fully supported. Need to do some more digging but if the incomplete power-management means it just doesn't throttle up as much that's fine for the application.

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will you be doing that will actually use 24 threads?

A common developer scenario can involve a few things that will eat a lot of threads: 1. playing some background music 2. running a local database 3. running a local webserver 4. running a browser 5. running an ide 6. running all of that stuff concurrently while testing the backend code 7. doing builds which are multi threaded in near linear speedup fashion in many languages/environments. I don't know if 12 cores 24 l…

Yeah, my docker setup alone runs a ton of processes. Aside from docker running a copy of my stuff, I often have tests auto-running, a separate REPL to try stuff out in, my editor, slack, music, browser. It all adds up and a bunch of cores/threads definitely makes everything run more smoothly.

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#267
post #255

No mention of it, but the pressure should still be on AMD to open source or allow firmware disable of their Platform "Security" Processor. I would really like to be more enthusiastic for my next build to use something like this, but all my computers are presently trustable in a way new platforms with proprietary coprocessors that haven't seen me_cleaner support cannot achieve. It really sucks to give Intel money - it…

Does Intel let you disable PSP?

Meanwhile, AMD seemed to in the past[0].

0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-...

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#269
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work on a desktop machine? At home?

Uhm, yes? What else would you do work on at home? On a laptop, with its shitty position for the head, back and the hands? I do have a laptop but that's purely for entertainment - my work is done 100% on a desktop, both at home and in the office.

Pretty much everyone I know uses laptops at home which is why I was curious. I've always wanted to try out a home PC build for work at home w/ linux. But it's just easier to keep using my work Macbook Pro for everything.

Also I always connect it to a large monitor + mechanical keyboard both at work and at home for any serious work... so not sure why you mentioned the neck/hand position.

Re: AMD Ryzen 3000 announced

#270
post #39
post #19

It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. This would be the first time since the Core2/Athlon64 days.

They already came close in a ton of benchmarks and were faster in others. The biggest issue was AVX. They could run AVX2, but at (effectively) 1/2 clockspeed due to their implementation being 128-bits wide instead of 256-bits like Intel's (which downclocked, but was still faster for non-mixed loads). AMD now has 256-bit AVX2 units, but unlike Intel, they don't need to downclock due to 7nm TSMC's lower power requireme…

> It should be possible to reorder and push 2 through the pipeline at the same time in a lot of circumstances.

To be clear, the existing chips had two 128-bit vector units, and the new ones have two 256-bit vector units. So that would get you 4 total.

Also each unit, at least on existing chips, is capable of either a single FMA or a completely independent multiply and add at the same time. I don't think Intel chips can do this?

Post reply on HN