It's awesome that TR2 will be a drop in replacement on existing motherboards! Props to AMD for delivering real value to consumers.
Meanwhile the new Intel chips use the same LG1151 socket, but still need a new motherboard because, erm, well they do.
Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
81–90 of 134 posts
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#82For a long time I saved a copy of a publication by Motorola about how Intel played fast and loose with benchmarks in comparisons of the 80386 with the 68020. (I lost it in a move, alas.) Can't say I was surprised to read about the 28-core fiasco.
This is a game all CPU manufacturers play. I still remember the days of Apple claiming their G4 processors were faster than Intel ones. Then they swapped platforms, and all of those claims evaporated without a trace.
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#83I think of AMD's current approach - a microarchitecture with slower cores, but more cores, than Intel - as very similar to what Sun/Oracle tried to do from 2005 to 2010 with the Niagara family (UltraSPARC T1-T3). Each core in those chips was seriously underclocked compared to a Xeon of similar vintage and price point (1-1.67 GHz; compared to 1.6 GHz to 3 or more), and lacked features like out-of-order execution and b…
https://i.imgur.com/dpfu5K3.png
Intel is mainly faster because of a significant clock advantage. Clock for clock the advantage is small.
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not similar at all. AMD's cores are 10-20% slower while Niagara was 80-90% slower. And AMD isn't intentionally slower; they designed the Zen core for maximum single-thread performance but they just didn't do as good a job as Intel because their budget is vastly smaller.
Zen does a decent job in clock-for-clock performance, huge killer on the desktop is raw clock speed. When you pit a Ryzen chip maxing out around 3.8-4.2GHz (depending on generation and silicon lottery) to an i7-8700K that has a base frequency of 4.7GHz it's pretty obvious which is going to come out on top. Most of that clock hit comes from the 12nm LPP process that AMD is currently using too from what I can tell, low…
i7-8700K base frequency is 3.7 GHz, not 4.7
https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-Pr...
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#85AMD did a great job with Threadripper, making high end CPUs much more affordable. It's interesting that Intel doesn't lower their prices. What's the logic behind it?
Is there some maintained "bang for buck" chart available that would show how many units of certain performance metric one $ buys with different CPUs?
Yes, you're looking for the Passmark "Best Value" ranking: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html It's also helpfully represented as a scatter plot: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html#multic....
Unsurprisingly, older generation models tend to dominate that list. Keep in mind that the thermal efficiency for Xeon v2 and v3 models is lower than v4; Passmark does not include power draw in this ranking. If you can afford the extra power usage and don't mind DDR3 RAM, high clockspeed + high core CPUs can be had relatively cheaply by going with V2.
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has to do with memory. In server grade computers, each socket has memory local slots that it can read and write to very fast. Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_memory_access
It is already the case with Thread Ripper processors. They have multiple NUMA nodes inside one socket.
It actually presents itself to the system as a single node:
On a TR 1920x system:
$ numactl --hardware
available: 1 nodes (0)
node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
node 0 size: 32107 MB
node 0 free: 20738 MB
node distances:
node 0
0: 10Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#87I get that Intel feels threatened by AMD. They are trying to impress the consumers... but bullshitting a demo is a very bad move! When a consumer decides to build a new PC, the characteristics of the product matter, but so does the reputation of the company that manufactures it. Right now Intel is putting too much effort into sketchy marketing practices: it undermines the actual work being done on their processors by some very talented people.
Presenting it as an extreme overclocking demo would have been a much wiser option.
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Threadripper is lga ;-)
Putting a Threadripper in a homeserver is overkill. Besides I wanted to replace the i7 920, so that it won't be that hot anymore in that room (130W TDP vs 65W). I think a threadripper would achieve the opposite. Maybe I should just do seasonal CPUs... Threadripper in Winter and Ryzen in Summer.
If you still have the old motherboard you can buy an old Xeon X56xx and use it as a drop in replacement in the LGA1366 socket. An X5650 for instance cost about $25 on ebay, is clocked at 2.66 GHz like the i7 920, has six cores, a TDP of 95W, and overclocks really well. I don't know if most i7 motherboards support ECC, but the CPU supports it.
The LGA1366 motherboards still fetch some money too, if you'd rather sell it.
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#89It's awesome that TR2 will be a drop in replacement on existing motherboards! Props to AMD for delivering real value to consumers.
It was always going to be that way. Threadripper 2 is just Threadripper with the two blank spacers in the IHS replaced with two more Zen dies, and a fab process change from 14nm to 12nm (but not architectural changes). It's very much what would be a "tick" in Intel CPU terminology.
Edit: Plus, the TR4 socket is guaranteed to be supported for 4 years, per AMD's roadmap at https://community.amd.com/thread/226363
Re: Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is already the case with Thread Ripper processors. They have multiple NUMA nodes inside one socket.
It actually presents itself to the system as a single node: On a TR 1920x system: $ numactl --hardware available: 1 nodes (0) node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 node 0 size: 32107 MB node 0 free: 20738 MB node distances: node 0 0: 10
I'm pretty sure you can change that, it should be a BIOS option [1].
[1] - https://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen-threadrip...