AMD vs. Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs?(tomshardware.com)
tomshardware.com
AMD vs. Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs?
https://www.tomshardware.com/features/amd-vs-intel-cpus
108 comments
Certainly if you think about it in terms of us vs. them, black and white, I don't see value.
If you're making purchasing decisions, you should be looking mostly at your specific needs, and the big picture around what you need and how to get good value for your money. If you can afford it, vote your conscious as well, and for a healthy future.
I've owned Cyrux, Pentium, Athlon, Core Duo, Phenom, Core i# and Ryzen. I'm partial to AMD as an underdog, and having a personality that always rooted for them. I'm unimpressed with Intel lately, but up until this year I still wouldn't buy an AMD laptop (though I've recommended a few for friends and family if the need and budget fit).
This article does try to paint "one answer for all questions" and of course that's silly. For most consumers I think they'll be better off this year with choosing Ryzen. But the Ryzen laptop chips that are impressing everyone seem to be in short supply. So I can't cheer them on just yet. I don't purchase for datacenters or professional rendering so I wouldn't dare weigh in there.
To sum up, focus on your needs, and individual options, not brand names!
If you're making purchasing decisions, you should be looking mostly at your specific needs, and the big picture around what you need and how to get good value for your money. If you can afford it, vote your conscious as well, and for a healthy future.
I've owned Cyrux, Pentium, Athlon, Core Duo, Phenom, Core i# and Ryzen. I'm partial to AMD as an underdog, and having a personality that always rooted for them. I'm unimpressed with Intel lately, but up until this year I still wouldn't buy an AMD laptop (though I've recommended a few for friends and family if the need and budget fit).
This article does try to paint "one answer for all questions" and of course that's silly. For most consumers I think they'll be better off this year with choosing Ryzen. But the Ryzen laptop chips that are impressing everyone seem to be in short supply. So I can't cheer them on just yet. I don't purchase for datacenters or professional rendering so I wouldn't dare weigh in there.
To sum up, focus on your needs, and individual options, not brand names!
You’re a bit out of date here.
AMD has largely taken the performance crown thanks to their Zen CPU platform and move to using TSMC for their process as Intel has lagged behind, with major problems deriving from their inability to get 10nm working.
If it helps to give you some perspective on how such a drastic change could occur, Intel’s 10nm process was originally meant to be ready for release in 2014!, and yet they still haven’t managed to scale out production after six years of debugging and failure.
It’s a combination of AMD simultaneously doing extremely well and Intel severely stagnating that has allowed this to happen.
AMD has largely taken the performance crown thanks to their Zen CPU platform and move to using TSMC for their process as Intel has lagged behind, with major problems deriving from their inability to get 10nm working.
If it helps to give you some perspective on how such a drastic change could occur, Intel’s 10nm process was originally meant to be ready for release in 2014!, and yet they still haven’t managed to scale out production after six years of debugging and failure.
It’s a combination of AMD simultaneously doing extremely well and Intel severely stagnating that has allowed this to happen.
> You’re a bit out of date here.
I have no idea what you're talking about with your vague remark AND I think your attempt at pedantry has only helped to solidify the point I was making.
I have no idea what you're talking about with your vague remark AND I think your attempt at pedantry has only helped to solidify the point I was making.
Did you read the rest of my comment at all? I can appreciate disagreement, but that means taking the time to consider and look at what the other person has to say as well.
I did read your comment in it's entirety. It was unclear what specifically you were referring to because it was poorly written.
You remarked "You’re a bit out of date here" without any clarification. Given that I spoke historically and in generalities, it's unclear what you were referring to.
As far as I could tell you were dismissing everything I said AND then you went on to state technical facts surrounding recent events that in no way conflicted or invalidated anything I said.
Now you're asserting that it was a failure on my part to read your comment in full and comprehend what you said, allowing you to dismiss anything I say in response.
Basically you're trying to say I'm either misinformed or stupid, when in reality you're just not taking the time to write a coherent argument.
You remarked "You’re a bit out of date here" without any clarification. Given that I spoke historically and in generalities, it's unclear what you were referring to.
As far as I could tell you were dismissing everything I said AND then you went on to state technical facts surrounding recent events that in no way conflicted or invalidated anything I said.
Now you're asserting that it was a failure on my part to read your comment in full and comprehend what you said, allowing you to dismiss anything I say in response.
Basically you're trying to say I'm either misinformed or stupid, when in reality you're just not taking the time to write a coherent argument.
The AMD Ryzen platform holds so much promise. There's just one problem: all of their consumer chipset motherboards are terrible. Really, really flakey and bad. If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up, LOL good luck with AMD! Your options for current gen Ryzens are:
x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing. Congrats! Also, the PCIe lane configurations are weird (x8 x8 x8).
x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all.
b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs.
AMD really dropped the ball on these chipset. They're the things that are leading to terrible user experiences and why folks end up going back to Intel after countless dollars wasted on shipping, RMAs, and swapping gear. No motherboard manufacturer actually designs anything. They just bundle chips together and change logos in the BIOS. Some might have a "flashback" button that works on half the boards, but there's little to differentiate one from the other.
If you want something that just works and is fast, stick with Intel because their chipsets are better. I'm writing this on a 3900x, too...
EDIT: Since many are doubting what I went through, let me list the permutations of boards, DIMMs, and CPUs.
CPUs: 3900x and 220GE DIMMs: Corsair Ballistix, G.Skill FlareX, Samsung ECC (unbuffered) Boards: x470 Taichi and Hero VII
I finally got my third Taichi to boot with a 220GE to the point that I could flash a BIOS to something "stable" for the 3900x.
I've literally built hundreds of servers and PCs in my lifetime (including AMD Romes). I know what I'm doing. This ecosystem just isn't mature yet!
x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing. Congrats! Also, the PCIe lane configurations are weird (x8 x8 x8).
x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all.
b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs.
AMD really dropped the ball on these chipset. They're the things that are leading to terrible user experiences and why folks end up going back to Intel after countless dollars wasted on shipping, RMAs, and swapping gear. No motherboard manufacturer actually designs anything. They just bundle chips together and change logos in the BIOS. Some might have a "flashback" button that works on half the boards, but there's little to differentiate one from the other.
If you want something that just works and is fast, stick with Intel because their chipsets are better. I'm writing this on a 3900x, too...
EDIT: Since many are doubting what I went through, let me list the permutations of boards, DIMMs, and CPUs.
CPUs: 3900x and 220GE DIMMs: Corsair Ballistix, G.Skill FlareX, Samsung ECC (unbuffered) Boards: x470 Taichi and Hero VII
I finally got my third Taichi to boot with a 220GE to the point that I could flash a BIOS to something "stable" for the 3900x.
I've literally built hundreds of servers and PCs in my lifetime (including AMD Romes). I know what I'm doing. This ecosystem just isn't mature yet!
This is all pretty much FUD.
> x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing.
AMD does require fans on the chipsets for X570 boards, but different board makers have treated this differently. My understanding is that some boards don't spin it up unless you're putting some serious PCIE 4.0 bandwidth in. Either way, "The fan will die and needs replacing" may be true someday (as it would be with any fan), but is not a guarantee.
>x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all.
First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box.
> b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs.
3000 series chips use a smaller process and are more power efficient per-core than 2000 and 1000 series chips, so you should have no issue running an 8 core chip in a B450 board. 12-core and 16-core chips might have some issues, but who buys a $79 motherboard and sticks a $500/$900 CPU in it?
> x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing.
AMD does require fans on the chipsets for X570 boards, but different board makers have treated this differently. My understanding is that some boards don't spin it up unless you're putting some serious PCIE 4.0 bandwidth in. Either way, "The fan will die and needs replacing" may be true someday (as it would be with any fan), but is not a guarantee.
>x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all.
First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box.
> b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs.
3000 series chips use a smaller process and are more power efficient per-core than 2000 and 1000 series chips, so you should have no issue running an 8 core chip in a B450 board. 12-core and 16-core chips might have some issues, but who buys a $79 motherboard and sticks a $500/$900 CPU in it?
>> Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July
Happens every day. People are still buying boards like that off Amazon. All sale/clearance stock is likely still on the old bios.
Happens every day. People are still buying boards like that off Amazon. All sale/clearance stock is likely still on the old bios.
>First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box.<
I went through a pair of x470 Taichi's from Amazon last month. Both had non-compatible BIOS that wouldn't work with 3000-series. One so old that Dr Debug wouldn't even do anything. Just blank.
It's not just me. Read the negative product reviews of almost any x470 boards, and you'll see memory and non-POST issues very recently (followed by the response macro from mfg'er saying everything is fine just use 1 DIMM, etc). It's very much a crapshoot with AMD chipsets. You get a good one and everything's great. You get a few bad ones and you're stuck in swap/return/RMA hell.
Also, how can it be FUD when it's exactly what I went through?
Edit: The "Ryzen 3000 compatible" stickers do NOT mean it will work out of the box. It means that it CAN work...after you update the BIOS with an old CPU.
AMD will offer you a CPU "boot kit" to get it going, but you're risking on missing out on many 30 day return windows with shipping, covid19, processing, etc. Avoid it all and just get an Intel until the next refresh.
I went through a pair of x470 Taichi's from Amazon last month. Both had non-compatible BIOS that wouldn't work with 3000-series. One so old that Dr Debug wouldn't even do anything. Just blank.
It's not just me. Read the negative product reviews of almost any x470 boards, and you'll see memory and non-POST issues very recently (followed by the response macro from mfg'er saying everything is fine just use 1 DIMM, etc). It's very much a crapshoot with AMD chipsets. You get a good one and everything's great. You get a few bad ones and you're stuck in swap/return/RMA hell.
Also, how can it be FUD when it's exactly what I went through?
Edit: The "Ryzen 3000 compatible" stickers do NOT mean it will work out of the box. It means that it CAN work...after you update the BIOS with an old CPU.
AMD will offer you a CPU "boot kit" to get it going, but you're risking on missing out on many 30 day return windows with shipping, covid19, processing, etc. Avoid it all and just get an Intel until the next refresh.
> a pair of x470 Taichi's from Amazon last month
So, you bough the same board twice and expected different results, and then are painting all motherboards with that experience.
It's unsurprising that motherboards need microcode updates to work with newer CPUs. Intel CPUs also worked that way, except that 1) they only rarely support a socket for more than two generations anymore, and sometimes not even that, so you physically need a new motherboard to upgrade your CPU anyways, and 2) Intel CPUs haven't had any major architectural changes since 2016.
So, you bough the same board twice and expected different results, and then are painting all motherboards with that experience.
It's unsurprising that motherboards need microcode updates to work with newer CPUs. Intel CPUs also worked that way, except that 1) they only rarely support a socket for more than two generations anymore, and sometimes not even that, so you physically need a new motherboard to upgrade your CPU anyways, and 2) Intel CPUs haven't had any major architectural changes since 2016.
Bought 1 board, returned twice. Third worked. I also bought an Asus which had similar non-POST'ing issues (slightly different).
I tried an Athlon 220GE in each one, too. It's not just a Ryzen 3000 problem being too new and requiring an update. This platform just isn't solid and that's my point.
I tried an Athlon 220GE in each one, too. It's not just a Ryzen 3000 problem being too new and requiring an update. This platform just isn't solid and that's my point.
We’re these all purchased through Amazon? I usually always buy mobos physically from retailers.
3 boards via Amazon, 1 via NewEgg. The NewEgg one works.
What's a physical retailer? San Francisco is the supposed capital of the tech world. It only has a single computer store (Central). It's not even open right now. I guess you could count a big box store like Best Buy, but they're not going to help out much right now other than exchanging like-kind items.
What's a physical retailer? San Francisco is the supposed capital of the tech world. It only has a single computer store (Central). It's not even open right now. I guess you could count a big box store like Best Buy, but they're not going to help out much right now other than exchanging like-kind items.
I’m fortunate to be near a microcenter. I’ve had stuff arrive DOA being shipped and it’s such a downer when you’re excited to get the new system online only to discover an RMA.
See? Maybe Amazon isn't the right platform to source stuff like that from who knows where, which has gathered dust for eons in some fulfilment center.
Nice victim blaming. The problem is the chipsets, not the retailer.
The problem is not the chipsets, the problem is that they had a bunch of boards with old firmware sitting in inventory and never updated them when new hardware was released.
As I've already said, it is totally normal for new CPUs to require motherboard firmware updates to function.
As I've already said, it is totally normal for new CPUs to require motherboard firmware updates to function.
Given that the firmware contains workarounds for otherwise unstable operation, or none at all, who is at fault here?
The OEM who did release an unstable product under pressure of time to market, the retailer for not having upgraded the product while it gathers dust somewhere, or the customer who orders dusty goods from whomever? I know the situation is less than satisfying, but it is how it is.
Three of them were just flat out dead. Old firmware would work with a 220GE that I had. It did work on a 4th. Three of four were straight broken. That's bad product.
Interesting on your x470 experience. I bought a X470 Taichi U from Scan UK in early February, and the 3600 chip worked.
I was wary of the issue you raise, but lucked out, and figured the issues you talk of had washed through. Maybe the warehouse staff who boxed it looked at the order and gave me a recent unit.
What action could AMD take to improve the situation? I wanted to go to AMD because I expect to get strong upgrade options from it - certainly to a 3950x, and possibly further. But - a complication of that is that older motherboards need BIOS updates.
I am surprised at how slap-dash the motherboard is. It supports ECC ram - great. But BIOS configuration is a confused mess.
I was wary of the issue you raise, but lucked out, and figured the issues you talk of had washed through. Maybe the warehouse staff who boxed it looked at the order and gave me a recent unit.
What action could AMD take to improve the situation? I wanted to go to AMD because I expect to get strong upgrade options from it - certainly to a 3950x, and possibly further. But - a complication of that is that older motherboards need BIOS updates.
I am surprised at how slap-dash the motherboard is. It supports ECC ram - great. But BIOS configuration is a confused mess.
Some motherboards supports flashing BIOS through a USB thumbdrive without a CPU, IMO this kinda of problem would be a non-issue if all of them did this.
To some degree, yes. However, that assumes a functioning BIOS release is available and works...many incremental releases are no functioning despite release notes saying otherwise. Many times, you can't downgrade the BIOS either. So you're stuck with a bad board waiting for a beta BIOS...fun times!
The workstation/server platforms ARE better. Having a BMC to flash/recover things is much more reliable.
The workstation/server platforms ARE better. Having a BMC to flash/recover things is much more reliable.
Not familiar with Scan UK but I would bet they don't resend RMA boards endlessly like Amazon sellers might do.
My Vive stopped working on my AMD machine, and it eventually required a bunch of BIOS and firmware updates to get it working again. On the upside, I had already made the updates to support the new Ryzen CPUs and so picked one up when they were on sale.
There’s probably a little more dodginess to the overall AMD ecosystem, but I expect that to be shaken out shortly (if it already hasn’t been)
There’s probably a little more dodginess to the overall AMD ecosystem, but I expect that to be shaken out shortly (if it already hasn’t been)
Is this a thing? I know it's anecdotal but three friends and I all built systems with X470 chipsets (some 2700X and one with a 3900X) and none of us had any issues whatsoever. This is the first I've heard of anything beyond the need for cooling for the X570.
> Since many are doubting what I went through
It's not that people are doubting your experience, it's that the Intel boards aren't any better. Many of the Intel boards also need a BIOS update to support later CPUs than they were originally released with, when they support them at all. DDR4 memory is finicky as heck. People end up having to RMA Intel boards all the time.
It's largely caused by the motherboard makers losing the ability to differentiate themselves. Half of what used to be on the motherboard is now integrated into modern CPUs and the other half is in the chipset which is now also made by the CPU manufacturer. Two motherboards with the same chipset are largely fungible so they have to compete on price and the quality suffers. It's a general problem and buying any consumer motherboard these days is kind of a crapshoot.
Here's a motherboard with 5 eggs and 50 reviews:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180
It's a Pentium 4 motherboard from ~15 years ago. See if you can find a current generation Intel motherboard on there with 5 eggs from half that many reviews. I don't see any.
It's not that people are doubting your experience, it's that the Intel boards aren't any better. Many of the Intel boards also need a BIOS update to support later CPUs than they were originally released with, when they support them at all. DDR4 memory is finicky as heck. People end up having to RMA Intel boards all the time.
It's largely caused by the motherboard makers losing the ability to differentiate themselves. Half of what used to be on the motherboard is now integrated into modern CPUs and the other half is in the chipset which is now also made by the CPU manufacturer. Two motherboards with the same chipset are largely fungible so they have to compete on price and the quality suffers. It's a general problem and buying any consumer motherboard these days is kind of a crapshoot.
Here's a motherboard with 5 eggs and 50 reviews:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180
It's a Pentium 4 motherboard from ~15 years ago. See if you can find a current generation Intel motherboard on there with 5 eggs from half that many reviews. I don't see any.
I understand what you're saying about the P4 boards and that largely echos what I'm saying. The vendor chipsets are bad, AMD's are worse than Intel's, and there's not much a mobo vendor can do.
Intel boards do need upgrades to work with newer CPU's. This is true. But their updates actually work when they say they add support. Go back to July 2019 and read all the forum posts and YouTube videos of everyone complaining about Ryzen 3000, "Well Gigabyte said this release works...but it doesn't." And on and on.
It's a sorry state of affairs all around, but Intel is better than AMD. I write this on an AMD rig and after spending way too much money getting it going.
Intel boards do need upgrades to work with newer CPU's. This is true. But their updates actually work when they say they add support. Go back to July 2019 and read all the forum posts and YouTube videos of everyone complaining about Ryzen 3000, "Well Gigabyte said this release works...but it doesn't." And on and on.
It's a sorry state of affairs all around, but Intel is better than AMD. I write this on an AMD rig and after spending way too much money getting it going.
It's not that the chipsets are bad. The chipsets are fine. But that used to be how motherboards differentiated themselves. When the standard was two USB ports, one company would offer six. Not all boards had audio support and of the ones that did, some were better than others.
All that is integrated now so every board with a given chipset is basically the same. Then they have to compete more aggressively on price, and the way they get the price down is by using cheaper heatsinks and spending less time developing firmware and things like that.
The Intel boards have no immunity from that. The ratings there are just as bad. The older Intel boards were better but so were the older AMD boards.
All that is integrated now so every board with a given chipset is basically the same. Then they have to compete more aggressively on price, and the way they get the price down is by using cheaper heatsinks and spending less time developing firmware and things like that.
The Intel boards have no immunity from that. The ratings there are just as bad. The older Intel boards were better but so were the older AMD boards.
Errm no. Onboard voltage regulation is very important and can be implemented very different.
That's what I'm saying. It's important but hard to use to differentiate. Everybody says their voltage regulation is high quality. Customers don't know which one is actually better and choose the one with the best price. Then manufacturers start cutting corners because having the best price sells more boards than having the best voltage regulation.
Conversely, when I built a gaming rig last year I just slapped some Kingston memory, a Vega 64, and a Ryzen onto my x470 and everything Just Worked.
But then I'm not an overclocker and the only time I go into the BIOS is when something breaks and/or I need to change the boot order.
Maybe the quality control is what's at issue?
But then I'm not an overclocker and the only time I go into the BIOS is when something breaks and/or I need to change the boot order.
Maybe the quality control is what's at issue?
QC could definitely be an issue. If you built yours last year, it was probably with a 2000-series Ryzen? Those were easier to work with given the gear at the time. The 3000-series and x470's are definitely a problem. Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0] Honestly come on, that's not right. There's still something with what's in the inventory pipeline.
If you read the negative reviews, you'll see reports of "I RMA'd twice and only the third board worked." Not one or two and more than a few.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g
If you read the negative reviews, you'll see reports of "I RMA'd twice and only the third board worked." Not one or two and more than a few.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g
> Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0]
If you read the comments you'll find a lot of people stating 9 months ago that the problem is fixed with a BIOS update.
If you read the comments you'll find a lot of people stating 9 months ago that the problem is fixed with a BIOS update.
For anyone wondering about anecdotes to the contrary, I slapped random DDR4 DIMMs into my x470 no problem whatsoever. I heard of issues with original Ryzen, but not 3000, and you’re probably best ignoring the FUD and just going for it.
(FWIW: I’ve built 2 Ryzen 2000 and 2 Ryzen 3000 boxes, all on x470 and B450. No RAM issues.)
(FWIW: I’ve built 2 Ryzen 2000 and 2 Ryzen 3000 boxes, all on x470 and B450. No RAM issues.)
Can't speak for anyone else, but I have a 570 board I think (MSI, I think, Phantom Gaming 4) with 2700x CPU. I have 4 sticks of 16GB ECC RAM (can't remember brand either, looked at the PG4's page where it lists compatible RAM) and they worked fine.
I don't know if the fact that I was looking at said recommended list is what negates the issue you're talking about, but I had minimal issues in my build (mine was from also including a PCIe to 8 SATA port card. Moved the main drive off of it, installed the drivers and started working fine). Initially tried to do a Windows VM w/ GeForce 1080 but scrapped it after driver issues with the device in VM (apparently, Nvidia doesn't want non-Quadra GPUs in VMs).
I don't know if the fact that I was looking at said recommended list is what negates the issue you're talking about, but I had minimal issues in my build (mine was from also including a PCIe to 8 SATA port card. Moved the main drive off of it, installed the drivers and started working fine). Initially tried to do a Windows VM w/ GeForce 1080 but scrapped it after driver issues with the device in VM (apparently, Nvidia doesn't want non-Quadra GPUs in VMs).
I have had an X570 with a 3900X for a few months. Everything has worked perfectly so far.
Add in x399, so many problems I had with ASUS Zenith Extreme I didn't see since original Athlon days.
I'm with you in parts. But for someone who built so many systems, the fan thing should be a non-issue. Just get a mechanically fitting replacement from somewhere, be it aliexpress, or some industrial supplier who serves end-users.
The proprietary fans aren't magical pixie dust. Should be 5 to 15$ a piece, depending on the quality. Just don't source them from the usual PC-places. THOSE are ghettos, caring and catering about nothing else but shiny LED bling bling g
(The same applies to laptops, so far i've never came across one which hadn't a label or engraving that told me all i need to know for choosing the right replacement.)
(The same applies to laptops, so far i've never came across one which hadn't a label or engraving that told me all i need to know for choosing the right replacement.)
chipsets arent even electrically connected to memory in modern computers, so umm?
What are you on?
>If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up[...]
Yeah, I am and that's exactly what I did with a new Ryzen CPU. How is this shit the top comment?
>If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up[...]
Yeah, I am and that's exactly what I did with a new Ryzen CPU. How is this shit the top comment?
Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product. "Sorry, we only tested this version of Crucial memory, not that version." Never mind the fact that they use the same in-house Crucial stuff underneath, changes are largely chip packaging, etc. Almost all of the memory on the market comes from one of the last 5 companies actually making DRAM (not counting Shenzen specials). Anything from Crucial, Samsung, Hynix, etc should work. It's JEDEC DDR4 compatible. Period. Hiding a bad product because a DIMM isn't on the QVL is low-class.
I'm not even talking about XMP stuff. I'm talking about booting with basic 2400/2666 stuff. "Yeah that's good RAM but not on our QVL. Get bent."
I'm not even talking about XMP stuff. I'm talking about booting with basic 2400/2666 stuff. "Yeah that's good RAM but not on our QVL. Get bent."
>Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product.
How do you go from, "one particular mobo from one manufacturer is bad" to "all mobo makers are bad" and you attribute some sneaky malicious motive behind this.
That's too much anecdote and emotional spin for me.
How do you go from, "one particular mobo from one manufacturer is bad" to "all mobo makers are bad" and you attribute some sneaky malicious motive behind this.
That's too much anecdote and emotional spin for me.
I'm saying the AMD chipsets are bad, the mobo manufacturers don't really do anything different from each other these days, and they're hiding behind the very few parts that they qualify for their boards. If the RAM comes from a brand name, it should work in the motherboard regardless of QVL.
Don't get these problems on AMD server/workstation platforms. You don't get them anywhere on Intel. But hey, the main article here also gave the nod to Intel in chipset/driver so I must just be all emotional spin.
Don't get these problems on AMD server/workstation platforms. You don't get them anywhere on Intel. But hey, the main article here also gave the nod to Intel in chipset/driver so I must just be all emotional spin.
I am a little out of date on this topic but what effect does Spectre/Meltdown and other mitigations have on newer processors? Is it fundamentally just a software fix going forward? Seems like we are willing to sacrifice in the order of 10% performance at least in the previous generations....
For many workloads the effect was significantly more than 10%.
I had to disable mitigations to complete a filesystem checksum, it was on the order of 1000x slower.
I had to disable mitigations to complete a filesystem checksum, it was on the order of 1000x slower.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Given that amd has the lead in power consumption per performance, is it now the cpu of choice in the datacenter?
Some engineering software I use, uses Intel MPI libraries, and I suspect the math kernel also. The software runs 30% faster on an i7 versus a Ryzen 7, both with equivalent clock rate and number of cores.
Given the forthcoming i9 will hit 5.3 GHz, I’m choosing Intel for my next build. Until AMD comes out with libraries and compilers targeting scientific computing, Intel may still have the lead.
Given the forthcoming i9 will hit 5.3 GHz, I’m choosing Intel for my next build. Until AMD comes out with libraries and compilers targeting scientific computing, Intel may still have the lead.
Do Intel consumer chips support ECC memory now? Without ECC, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing any scientific computing or production serving. (I would consider using them for things like CI, though, because the price sure is good.)
No, and only 64 GB max of non-ECC at that. I typically don’t run simulation of more than 1 hour though, and I’ll know when the results are wrong. My use case is CAD/real-time design for RF and EM; multiple smaller simulations of parametric sweeps, Monte Carlo, and optimization.
Ryzen does support ECC, and > 64 GB, so that is a plus.
Ryzen does support ECC, and > 64 GB, so that is a plus.
I don't care too much about the results of my own programs, but I do worry very much about OS-level data structures. If some bit gets flipped in memory while you're extracting an update, that program will just randomly be weird forever. If some bit gets flipped in your filesystem, your data randomly disappears. Given how frequent both auto-updates and bit flips are in practice, no doubt something on my computer is corrupted somewhere. Or maybe only my backup is corrupted. Maybe it will never cause a problem, or maybe my computer will just one day become unusable. I have spent so much time debugging random failures that I see ECC memory as at least avoiding one set of possibilities, reducing the inevitable system integration time that building your own computer requires.
The unfortunate truth about the Intel-compiled/supplied libraries is that they deliberately only use the SIMD codepaths on Intel chips. AMD chips are forced to fall back to SSE1.
It certainly is in terms of power, performance, and cost, but Intel's reputation for rock-solid reliability and a decade of optimization for its architectures, not to mention the established software/support ecosystem, means AMD has a very long haul ahead of it.
Sorry, but especially on servers amd has a better track record with reliability. You are right with missing optimizations on some software stacks but that’s not a long haul it’s just that nobody saw the need to do it until now. Don’t forget all the loss of performance from spectre mitigation a lot of datacenters lost up too 25% performance overnight. Everyone is going amd. Google/Facebook/Disney/Pixar...
For the record, you're shadowbanned.
How can you tell?
Turn on "showdead" in your profile, then look at their comments. Usually it's easy to tell why it's happened, but if there are comments that don't deserve to be dead, you can "vouch" for them individually to help resurrect them (click on comment timestamp, then click "vouch"). That has happened here.
Thanks for the info!
Every comment is [dead] automatically without being flagged.
AWS and GCP, at least, have started offering them, and at a discount, so I'd say yes.
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud
and
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-proc...
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud
and
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-proc...
Depending on the use case. Some hyper scalers won't buy hardware just because of the CPU has the lower power consumption. It would be also not very wise to bet only on one vendor.
The fact that the Super 7 don't want to rely upon one vendor actually gives AMD a better shot - all other serious contenders use different instruction sets, so AMD's x86 procs are compatible with existing software ecosystems, thus reducing qualification and validation results. A viable x86 alternative to Intel has been sorely needed, and AMD fills that role quite nicely.
Is AMD now a better choice for Linux, especially given the ongoing stability problems with Intel's Linux graphics drivers?
The drivers are quite good on newer kernel versions, it's been mostly pain-free for me
For me the single biggest factor is still single threaded performance. There are still many apps that are not multithreaded so all those extra cores are useless. Single thread performance will benefit any application. Intel still holds the lead in this category.
I don't like this argument for three reasons:
1. The single thread performance gap is very small (5-10% depending on application) or even non-existent in some cases.
2. Your computer runs more than one process at any given moment. The more cores, the more processes you can run without an impact on performance
3. That single core performance comes at the cost of efficiency and general power usage. Intel has had to clock their 14nm process very high to achieve that small lead in single thread performance.
1. The single thread performance gap is very small (5-10% depending on application) or even non-existent in some cases.
2. Your computer runs more than one process at any given moment. The more cores, the more processes you can run without an impact on performance
3. That single core performance comes at the cost of efficiency and general power usage. Intel has had to clock their 14nm process very high to achieve that small lead in single thread performance.
It also assumes that this important single threaded process's dev team isn't actively working on parallelizing it. And that the primary purpose of the computer will be running this process until its end of life. Both pretty bad assumptions given the minimal benefit and high cost.
The key words in the parent post are 'for me'.
Imagine you have a single core compilation process that takes two minutes that you must run 50 times a day. This can happen. Ten percent brings 12 seconds per compile or ten minutes a day. This might not sound great but it means you can get an extra five compiles done. You can also get increased likelihood that you can remember what you were working on. Therefore the marginal gain in single thread performance is well worth having in this use case. The expense of genuine Intel becomes worth it even if you don't have so many cores.
Imagine you have a single core compilation process that takes two minutes that you must run 50 times a day. This can happen. Ten percent brings 12 seconds per compile or ten minutes a day. This might not sound great but it means you can get an extra five compiles done. You can also get increased likelihood that you can remember what you were working on. Therefore the marginal gain in single thread performance is well worth having in this use case. The expense of genuine Intel becomes worth it even if you don't have so many cores.
I have a dual core dev machine. Using -j 2 builds twice as fast (approx 35 mins -> 17 mins). Are current compiles really obligatory single thread? Because I sure would like to prop up intel with my wallet.
FreePascal is single threaded
But it is also like 10 times faster than other compilers.
But it is also like 10 times faster than other compilers.
Most web development toolchains depend on Node.js, which compiles on a single core.
Node takes advantage of multiple cores.
The code is all async by default and that is easy to load onto green threads.
This used to be implemented with callback hell, now it's Promises which is actually really cosy (and what Rust is adopting).
Random article I found on it: https://medium.com/better-programming/is-node-js-really-sing...
The code is all async by default and that is easy to load onto green threads.
This used to be implemented with callback hell, now it's Promises which is actually really cosy (and what Rust is adopting).
Random article I found on it: https://medium.com/better-programming/is-node-js-really-sing...
Sure, but you're also running a browser at the same time probably with a ton of tabs open as separate processes. Our computers do quite a lot these days, in parallel, and more cores help.
Both AMD and Intel are ridiculously fast! You can't really go wrong with either.
Both AMD and Intel are ridiculously fast! You can't really go wrong with either.
which then shard out to multi processes, still benefitting from more cores being available. I know of at least a few build processes that support that model for node.
> Imagine you have a single core compilation process
Who runs builds with a single core compilation process? Are we back in 1990?
You are hard-pressed to find a CPU with a single core nowadays, even in the cheapest of consumer segments. Why are you fabricating such an unrealistic case?
Who runs builds with a single core compilation process? Are we back in 1990?
You are hard-pressed to find a CPU with a single core nowadays, even in the cheapest of consumer segments. Why are you fabricating such an unrealistic case?
The linking phase for C and C++ software is basically linear. Nobody's figured out how to multi thread that since before 1990. It takes hours to build large software (Chrome/Firefox/Qt).
By the way, one of the biggest improvements in software performance in the past decade comes from link time optimisations during build (LTO), that's all done during linking and it takes FOREVER.
By the way, one of the biggest improvements in software performance in the past decade comes from link time optimisations during build (LTO), that's all done during linking and it takes FOREVER.
gold has had threading support since its release in 2008. Likewise for lld, which is an order of magnitude faster than gold.
From anecdotal experience of the code I am on right now, relinking a few hundred megabytes of .o's takes less than 2 seconds with lld on my 6900k.
From anecdotal experience of the code I am on right now, relinking a few hundred megabytes of .o's takes less than 2 seconds with lld on my 6900k.
> The linking phase for C and C++ software is basically linear.
Linking is also IO-bound, and already a solved problem in the sense that there are already plenty of solutions that render linking to be a non-issue. It's far from a decent CPU benchmark.
Linking is also IO-bound, and already a solved problem in the sense that there are already plenty of solutions that render linking to be a non-issue. It's far from a decent CPU benchmark.
> The linking phase for C and C++ software is basically linear.
Depends how many targets you're building. If you have enough memory, you can link several libraries in parallel.
Depends how many targets you're building. If you have enough memory, you can link several libraries in parallel.
The key phrase was 'for me'. That 'me' could be working on an existing code base that does a bit more than show a web page and can't be written in flavour of the month toolkits.
Build processes that run on more than one job at a time is not a flavour of the month: it's the industry standard of the last 20 or 30 years.
fix your compilation process. there are few long running workloads that don't benefit from parallelism.
Intel holds a minuscule lead here, not enough to be worth thinking about; especially against the Zen 2 architecture (Ryzen 3000 series chips).
Wanting an Intel over a Zen 1 for single threaded performance? Completely understandable.
Wanting an Intel over a Zen 1 for single threaded performance? Completely understandable.
IPC on Zen 2 is arguably slightly ahead of Intel, but they don't overclock or boost to 5Ghz.
Marginally, and not really when perf/$ is taken into account...
Multi core performance is still useful if you are running many single-threaded applications at once.
If you are running many single-threaded applications at once AND if you care about their performance. For example my Windows might run some background processes from time to time, but I don't care about their execution time, all I care is about my foreground application.
I initially felt similar regrets after purchasing my 2950X. Obviously, the advantage with this CPU is being able to go wide on all cores, not necessarily maxing out any particular one. And it does work in a lot of cases. I regularly see 100% CPU when running rebuilds of large .NET Core applications. But, I also recognize that on a single-thread basis, I don't really have any advantage over anyone else (potentially even a small deficit).
But, this is a narrow-minded perspective to have. The future cannot possibly be that we magically invent an x86 core that can clock to 8GHz w/ practical power & cooling. One has to push forward in some incremental way. The answer is adding more parallel execution units. Sure, lots of software and techniques used today are not feasible to directly port over, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
As a software developer, I feel it is my duty to help push the state of the art forward wherever possible. I have already begun working on projects that are designed around the concept of extremely high core counts becoming the norm. Having 32 logical threads sitting in your local workstation makes it possible to practically experiment with the lower bounds of what would be required in a larger production deployment.
There are types of software that we can consider building today that would have sounded absolutely insane just a few years ago. Cloud gaming is now a thing falling within practical reach. How many more x86 cores per instance would we need before we could start thinking about rendering 100% of client views server-side (i.e. eliminate most HTML/CSS/JS) or deprecating the usefulness of discrete GPUs altogether? Pulling everything into a single memory domain could do wonders for breaking down the ages-old GPU/CPU functionality silos. One way to do it all with one instruction set and a single cache-coherent memory architecture...
But, this is a narrow-minded perspective to have. The future cannot possibly be that we magically invent an x86 core that can clock to 8GHz w/ practical power & cooling. One has to push forward in some incremental way. The answer is adding more parallel execution units. Sure, lots of software and techniques used today are not feasible to directly port over, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
As a software developer, I feel it is my duty to help push the state of the art forward wherever possible. I have already begun working on projects that are designed around the concept of extremely high core counts becoming the norm. Having 32 logical threads sitting in your local workstation makes it possible to practically experiment with the lower bounds of what would be required in a larger production deployment.
There are types of software that we can consider building today that would have sounded absolutely insane just a few years ago. Cloud gaming is now a thing falling within practical reach. How many more x86 cores per instance would we need before we could start thinking about rendering 100% of client views server-side (i.e. eliminate most HTML/CSS/JS) or deprecating the usefulness of discrete GPUs altogether? Pulling everything into a single memory domain could do wonders for breaking down the ages-old GPU/CPU functionality silos. One way to do it all with one instruction set and a single cache-coherent memory architecture...
Barely, if at all. Not all benchmarks have been done with all exploit mitigations we have today. Also AMD is cheaper per performance.
You could still say AMD has an advantage. Given the cost difference, and the fact that Intel usually changes socket types each release, you could purchase a new AMD SKU every year and always have the latest. For the same price you'd probably have to be working with three or four year old Intel technology at some point. By that time the newer AMD SKU would be putting the old Intel processor to shame.
Of course if price is no object then the above doesn't apply.
Of course if price is no object then the above doesn't apply.
> There are still many apps that are not multithreaded
Can you give some examples of CPU intensive apps that are not multi threaded in 2020?
Can you give some examples of CPU intensive apps that are not multi threaded in 2020?
I’m a structural engineer, running nonlinear analyses of buildings. These take about 3-5 days to run on an i9-9900k. The program runs each earthquake simulation on a single core.
Man, this is just begging for parallelization.
I can make multiple instances to run multiple simulations in parallel, but matrix factorisation within the program itself is single-threaded. The stiffness matrix of these structures needs to be reformulated frequently (every time a structural element yields / gets damaged), so this is the largest time-sink, I think.
thats just a shitty program lol
I'm not disagreeing with you... Its horrible but that is the industry standard.
Honestly my biggest problem right now is that I don't even know if there's anything I can buy/upgrade to speed it up. I don't know how to determine what the bottleneck is, so to speak.
Honestly my biggest problem right now is that I don't even know if there's anything I can buy/upgrade to speed it up. I don't know how to determine what the bottleneck is, so to speak.
An audio processing chain is necessarily single-threaded. e.g. if you want to simulate a guitar rack you have to first simulate the distortion pedal before the amp, the amp before the cab, the cab before the delay / reverb / whatever 200 other effects you're chaining. And you have to do all that in tight deadlines, e.g. <= 2 milliseconds.
A single signal path on its own yes that’s true, but DAWs have been multithreaded for years now using threads for other signal paths. Some DAWS can even use threads for FX chains now too.
you're preaching to the choir - my own DAW, https://ossia.io has no issue distributing tasks on their own cores. That does not help me at all when I just want to add that one more effect to a live guitar track.
Stop using Python for time critical applications ;-)
Docker is a thing now, though.
I've been building systems for almost 30 years and in that time Intel has mostly been the performance champion AND has always screwed you over on price. Sometimes they lead by a lot, sometimes by very little or not at all but their platform is always more expensive.
Both Intel and AMD introduce a brand (e.g. Pentium, Ahtlon) as their new flagship and then overtime erode the brand each year with lower spec products. Eventually they stop introducing higher spec products altogether and the brand sinks to the bottom of their product lineup as a new brand takes the top ranks (e.g. i9, Ryzen).
Depending on when you get into building PCs you might have brand loyalty because maybe your first system was a Celeron you unlocked and ran at PIII speeds. Or maybe you picked up a first gen Althon that was the performance king for a few quarters, or the Athlon II when Intel was floundering with Netburst. Maybe you started out with Core and in your view Intel has always dominated AMD. Regardless your perceptions are skewed.
Identify your workload and your budget, buy the best thing that meets your needs regardless of brand. Intel is historically more stable and less problematic. AMD usually offers significantly more performance per $ on the low end. Then again that all takes too much effort, just buy whatever makes you feel good about yourself on the internet according to these click bait articles.