I need to upgrade my system so for me either 9900k or 9700k are the must buy, but all depends who performs best on games at 1080p and 1440p.

Curious to see the x390 motherboards too.

$500 HT CPU? How does that work, when hyper threading might have to be disabled. Intel should sell the 9900k at i7 prices ($350), since it can only run 8 threads and remain secure. I suppose users could disconnect from the internet and reset the BIOS whenever they need to use the other 8 threads. The TLBleed exploit could kill SMT on AMD CPUs as well? This is just a mess, and nobody seems concerned (Intel won't be patching?). Depending on how this plays out, my 4790k could end up as 4c4t, and I want a $100 refund from Intel.

RejZoR1800X has literally shaken the whole CPU industry. It may not be perfect, but without it, Intel would still be selling ridiculously expensive 4 and 6 cores even today...

That comment made up for the foolish buffoonery of your first post saying 1800X was released 2 years ago. Won't take long for google to confirm that was off about 8 months. AMD releasing ryzen with great performance at competitive prices definitely moved the industry forward. I don't really see this as a congratulations moment for AMD. All they did was get back in the game and force Intel to move forward. AMD's decade long struggle allowed Intel to fall into meeting market demand instead of pushing the market. The problem is they let Intel amass billions in the process while AMD is just beginning to see returns on investment. Good returns too.

Finally a real 8 core for actual gamers. Bravo Intel.

ssdproThat comment made up for the foolish buffoonery of your first post saying 1800X was released 2 years ago. Won't take long for google to confirm that was off about 8 months. AMD releasing ryzen with great performance at competitive prices definitely moved the industry forward. I don't really see this as a congratulations moment for AMD. All they did was get back in the game and force Intel to move forward. AMD's decade long struggle allowed Intel to fall into meeting market demand instead of pushing the market. The problem is they let Intel amass billions in the process while AMD is just beginning to see returns on investment. Good returns too.

Returns they need to pull their GPU division out of the crapper, too ;)

Liquid CoolI don't follow these releases all that closely anymore. Frankly, because I'm getting older and have problems in life to deal with. Although, I do watch the news releases on this website. I could have swore the 8th gen just came out a few months back? I'm not seeing the advantages to releasing these processors at an accelerated pace....which I imagine makes their current inventory obsolete. Tongue in cheek of course, but it appears as though they're on the same release schedule as Firefox and Chrome.

I'm so far behind what's going on....I still love the 2500k's. I also freely admit...anymore....I(and my wallet) just can't keep up. :)

Best,

Liquid Cool

FWIW, you're not missing that much yet. We got some new DDR, ridiculous price hikes and still swinging the same junk as 8 eight years ago really. It just got scaled up a bit and refined. Nothing groundbreaking. And AMD caught up. /the end

AnimalpakI need to upgrade my system so for me either 9900k or 9700k are the must buy, but all depends who performs best on games at 1080p and 1440p.

Curious to see the x390 motherboards too.

There is a really good chance you will push an 8600K just a tad further than these, if you delid it. Looking at the price, you can have that done for you without any risk too and still come out cheaper.

6 cores is really quite sufficient for gaming and these 9th gen CPUs are still Coffee Lake. So unless you really need those 8 cores, move along...

Vayra86FWIW, you're not missing that much yet. We got some new DDR, ridiculous price hikes and still swinging the same junk as 8 eight years ago really. It just got scaled up a bit and refined. Nothing groundbreaking. And AMD caught up. /the end

We got faster PCIe which goes well with the new SSDs and faster USB. We also got much better power scaling, but that may or may not be of use on the desktop, depending on what you do with it.
And I also got to read that x86 has been done so many times, it's possible we really got nearly all the IPC we can extract from it. If that's true, we'll all be screwed shortly (i.e. within 5 years).

TheLostSwedeIt might not be as good as Intel for gaming, but it's way better for a lot of other things that requires more than a single thread.

Supporting a cup of tea?

Seriously, this is a gaming community. Why don't we stay with that theme and stop talking about the mystical "productivity"? Before Ryzen came along, hardly anyone here knew what SPEC is and how rendering works. :-D

notbSupporting a cup of tea?

Seriously, this is a gaming community. Why don't we stay with that theme and stop talking about the mystical "productivity"? Before Ryzen came along, hardly anyone here knew what SPEC is and how rendering works. :-D

It's not even that good at productivity. For tasks that don't multithread forever (e.g. Word, Excel, web browsing), Ryzen is still behind. Not by much, but the lower frequencies can be felt.
You need as many cores as Zen offers if you do something truly massively parallelizable or, for some reason, you routinely run many things at once.

Yet, the above is not a bad thing per se. It's just that our single cores days, when the fastest core was the fastest CPU for everything are over. From now on, we will only have a best CPU for specific tasks. And we need to come to terms with that.

noel_fsYIKES

gtfo intel you can't keep scaming your customers

I dont see it as a scam. The 9700K is around the same price point as the current 8700K. And ofc you are going to be paying more money for more cores. M

notbSupporting a cup of tea?

Seriously, this is a gaming community. Why don't we stay with that theme and stop talking about the mystical "productivity"? Before Ryzen came along, hardly anyone here knew what SPEC is and how rendering works. :-D

Nah, it's more of a general enthusiast-light community. A bit of everything, gaming just happens to coincide with that.

bugIt's not even that good at productivity. For tasks that don't multithread forever (e.g. Word, Excel, web browsing), Ryzen is still behind. Not by much, but the lower frequencies can be felt.
You need as many cores as Zen offers if you do something truly massively parallelizable or, for some reason, you routinely run many things at once.

Yet, the above is not a bad thing per se. It's just that our single cores days, when the fastest core was the fastest CPU for everything are over. From now on, we will only have a best CPU for specific tasks. And we need to come to terms with that.

Also I really think people should recognize when something is practically fast enough. The practical difference between say Zen and Coffee Lake are entirely marginal and only matters - in most cases - when comparing benchmarks.

FrickAlso I really think people should recognize when something is practically fast enough. The practical difference between say Zen and Coffee Lake are entirely marginal and only matters - in most cases - when comparing benchmarks.

He, he. If Intel, AMD and Nvidia did blind tests when releasing a product, all review sites would go out of business :D
Personally, ever since Zen has been out, I started recommend friends to buy not based on the CPU, but based on the cost of the platform that supports their needs as a whole.

mcraygsxRefresh looks good on paper but what are they doing about Spectre, Meltdown and Foreshadow vulnerabilities at this stage. Hyper Threading is a security risk in its own corner.

That's what I'd like to know... but nobody seems to have an answer. Ice Lake was supposed to have fixes baked in to the silicon, but with all the other vulnerabilities found after that news came, not sure how much that's gonna be worth...

As far as the prices, I guess they can get away with it because they should conclusively beat the AMD offerings, core for core. They're still faster per core. Not by an extreme amount, but it's there. Vote with your wallets...

bugPersonally, ever since Zen has been out, I started recommend friends to buy not based on the CPU, but based on the cost of the platform that supports their needs as a whole.

That has always been the way to do it, even with Bulldozer. "What do you want to do, and how much do you want to spend?" Sometimes the FX6300 came out on top.

champsilvaWth, 1800X isnt a good CPU, a lot of issues and also high memory latency.

This CPU will be better then a 2700X.

You mean for maybe a 1,5X price? Well done. :D

bugAnd I also got to read that x86 has been done so many times, it's possible we really got nearly all the IPC we can extract from it. If that's true, we'll all be screwed shortly (i.e. within 5 years).

Obviously the low-hanging fruit has been picked, but we're not nearly out of potential. Many think x86 is the problem, but it's not, x86 is just the ISA, and current implementations have no resemblance of implementations from the 70s and 80s. All of the proposed successors including RISC derivates, IA-64, etc. will hit the same fundamental scaling issues current x86 CPUs suffer from the same bottlenecks; the memory wall and clock scaling. There is nothing on the horizon for the next 10 years to replace x86.

I could have spent half a day explaining the problems and potential for improvements, but here are some major improvements which can be done:
Front-end improvements:
- Instruction window: ~384+ (up from 224)
- Larger scheduler: >97 entries
- Larger µOP Cache
Execution units:
- ALUs: >=8 (up from 4-5)
- FPUs: >=5 (up from 3)
Cache improvements:
- 128b cache line size? (up from 64b)
- L2: More entries

Improvements such as these can yield at least 50% IPC boost, but I'm not talking over a single generation, but in a 10-12 year perspective.

Over the last year or so, increased core count have been the focus. Pushing both the mainstream and HEDT to more cores is necessary, but we will eventually hit a core count with diminishing returns. Increased core count only helps with workloads which can scale with multithreading, and many workloads simply can't. The long term solution to application performance is a balance of everything; multithreading, and single thread performance (through SIMD and superscalar).

notbSeriously, this is a gaming community.

Wait a minute...I thought we were a support group for technology addiction...I just figured we were all really bad at the support part :wtf::ohwell:

dirtyferretWait a minute...I thought we were a support group for technology addiction...I just figured we were all really bad at the support part :wtf::ohwell:

Tough love is the best support. Now eat your dinner and go to bed.

bugIt's not even that good at productivity. For tasks that don't multithread forever (e.g. Word, Excel, web browsing), Ryzen is still behind. Not by much, but the lower frequencies can be felt.

Of course it is. It's all because of Zen, which really is a server architecture. And the CPUs perform well in server-type load.
When you take 1/4 of a decent server CPU, you don't automatically get a decent consumer CPU.
For me Ryzen is and will remain just a lost chance. We had few years of decent evolution of PC market towards mobile solutions. Without AMD and magic "competition is good" we got from 2kg notebooks that worked for 3h to 1kg ultrabooks that work for half a day. It was a perfect example of sustainable development.
Intel decided to play ball and raises core count before their semiconductor process matched the requirements. Result: we're now getting overheating notebooks and higher TDP in desktops. Fantastic. :-)

FrickNah, it's more of a general enthusiast-light community. A bit of everything, gaming just happens to coincide with that.

Enthusiasts of building PCs and overclocking. As far as usage goes, it's 99% gaming.
And I don't see this as a problem. I come here to read about fps and keyboards. There are better places to discuss coding, simulations and IOPS.
But man... when I read another thread about how Ryzen is great for workstation because it rulez in 7-zip, I just start to melt.

At this point I'm expecting a thread about classical music, so that everyone could talk about Bieber playing the piano. :-)

efikkanThe long term solution to application performance is a balance of everything; multithreading, and single thread performance (through SIMD and superscalar).

Just how do you imagine this?
Single-thread algorithms will remain single-thread. Interactive computing (including gaming) will remain interactive. This will NEVER change.
Not so long ago 4 threads seemed like a good compromise for a typical user. But now we're seeing 8 becoming a standard, maybe more. Just what will these threads do?
Yesterday you were a gamer. Now you must be a streamer, because gaming itself is not utilizing your awesome CPU.
It's such a pity AMD decided to ignore business segment - I'd love to see the marketing campaign they do for accountants.

Seriously, I had so much fun reading reviews with theories about thread utilization and how Ryzen has this huge potential, because games only push 16 threads to like 40-60% each.
But I really hoped the fun will be over in a year or so and we'll be back to serious stuff...

notbNot so long ago 4 threads seemed like a good compromise for a typical user. But now we're seeing 8 becoming a standard, maybe more. Just what will these threads do?

The primary reason for that changing is how many cores are you can get without sacrificing single thread performance.
Still, anything beyond 6 cores have no real benefits for dedicated gaming PCs, in >90% of cases 4 cores is still plenty.

the54thvoidTough love is the best support. Now eat your dinner and go to bed.

Sweet!! You will put the kids to bed and get up with them in the morning so I can finally get some sleep! Don't forget to wash the dishes and feed the cat.

FrickThat has always been the way to do it, even with Bulldozer. "What do you want to do, and how much do you want to spend?" Sometimes the FX6300 came out on top.

Only you really didn't care about TDP/noise. Zen is in a whole other league.
Only once, in the days if Bulldozer I have recommended someone an A10 chip. In all other cases, it has always been Intel.

hatThat's what I'd like to know... but nobody seems to have an answer. Ice Lake was supposed to have fixes baked in to the silicon, but with all the other vulnerabilities found after that news came, not sure how much that's gonna be worth...

As far as the prices, I guess they can get away with it because they should conclusively beat the AMD offerings, core for core. They're still faster per core. Not by an extreme amount, but it's there. Vote with your wallets...

I often wonder if people really understand what mitigating these flaws actually means...

hatThat's what I'd like to know... but nobody seems to have an answer. Ice Lake was supposed to have fixes baked in to the silicon, but with all the other vulnerabilities found after that news came, not sure how much that's gonna be worth...

That depends on how things are mitigated. All the Spectre variants (even undiscovered ones) are just different attack vectors to exploit the same underlying design fault.

Different kinds of vulnerabilities are of course a different story.

notbOf course it is. It's all because of Zen, which really is a server architecture. And the CPUs perform well in server-type load.
When you take 1/4 of a decent server CPU, you don't automatically get a decent consumer CPU.
For me Ryzen is and will remain just a lost chance. We had few years of decent evolution of PC market towards mobile solutions. Without AMD and magic "competition is good" we got from 2kg notebooks that worked for 3h to 1kg ultrabooks that work for half a day. It was a perfect example of sustainable development.
Intel decided to play ball and raises core count before their semiconductor process matched the requirements. Result: we're now getting overheating notebooks and higher TDP in desktops. Fantastic. :)

No, simply taking 1/4 a server CPU doesn't automatically make a consumer CPU... you lose some features that are useful for servers and gain features that are useful for a regular desktop user. You lose a pile of cores, the ability to address obscene amounts of RAM, ECC support (in many cases, not all)... but what you're left with is a smaller number of cores that work faster, which is what a regular desktop user wants. Nobody needs 16 cores to game. And that's what's nice about Zen... it's easily salable. You basically add or remove CCX units to make one chip or the other.

Higher TDP happens all the time, when a manufacturer is losing ground in performance. AMD and Intel have done it, ATi did it, nVidia did it, RTG has done it. It happens when they need to push performance at the cost of efficiency. It happens when people overclock their computers. Whether by design from the factory, or some settings somebody changed in their CMOS, we run things out of their optimal, most efficient ranges to push performance. As a processor manufacturer, you don't want to be slower... but low power solutions have always been available. Even before Intel started shoving out higher performance (at higher heat levels and power draw) you could still stuff an Extreme edition processor in a laptop, which isn't always going to run cool while sipping power.

notbEnthusiasts of building PCs and overclocking. As far as usage goes, it's 99% gaming.
And I don't see this as a problem. I come here to read about fps and keyboards. There are better places to discuss coding, simulations and IOPS.
But man... when I read another thread about how Ryzen is great for workstation because it rulez in 7-zip, I just start to melt.

At this point I'm expecting a thread about classical music, so that everyone could talk about Bieber playing the piano. :)

7-zip may not be the best productivity benchmark... but there are plenty of others that Ryzen rulez at. It may not always beat Intel at everything, but it's usually not far behind, and does so while being cheaper, especially in the HEDT or server space.

notbJust how do you imagine this?
Single-thread algorithms will remain single-thread. Interactive computing (including gaming) will remain interactive. This will NEVER change.
Not so long ago 4 threads seemed like a good compromise for a typical user. But now we're seeing 8 becoming a standard, maybe more. Just what will these threads do?
Yesterday you were a gamer. Now you must be a streamer, because gaming itself is not utilizing your awesome CPU.
It's such a pity AMD decided to ignore business segment - I'd love to see the marketing campaign they do for accountants.

Seriously, I had so much fun reading reviews with theories about thread utilization and how Ryzen has this huge potential, because games only push 16 threads to like 40-60% each.
But I really hoped the fun will be over in a year or so and we'll be back to serious stuff...

Not sure what you're going to do with 8 cores or more, as a gamer. At least, not yet. It's been a little bit of time since >4 cores became useful for gaming, so now usually a 6 core chip is recommended, because there are some gains to be seen. There's plenty of 6 core or less chips available if that's what you want. Not sure what this hangup is on needing a jillion cores for streaming is, though... these days both nVidia and AMD have GPU encoding options that can be used for streaming, and there's also quicksync, which comes with your Intel IGP. Give me an i5 8400 (it's not even that great of a chip, but popular/good enough for gaming) and I can stream with it using quicksync. I wouldn't use quicksync to do my own BDrips, but it's fine for streaming.

Not sure what you mean by ignoring the business segment? They've invaded the server space with EPYC, which is a pretty big deal. Spectre/Meltdown didn't help Intel there, nor did their high prices. EPYC appears more attractive to admins in the server space because it's cheaper and (so far) doesn't seem to be plagued as much with the issues Intel is dealing with, and now with Zen, it can finally keep up. If you mean typical office machines, then AMD needs to get in with OEMs, like Dell. If they can manage to do there what they did in the server space, they'd be in good shape. AMD systems are going to be cheaper than similar Intel systems, and that would be attractive to anybody calling the shots when it's time to upgrade 100 computers.

hatNo, simply taking 1/4 a server CPU doesn't automatically make a consumer CPU... you lose some features that are useful for servers and gain features that are useful for a regular desktop user. You lose a pile of cores, the ability to address obscene amounts of RAM, ECC support (in many cases, not all)... but what you're left with is a smaller number of cores that work faster, which is what a regular desktop user wants.

But you're also left with some architecture choices that were made to deliver the server product. Infinity Matrix is a technology that really never should have happened in the consumer segment. It ruins performance in huge class of tasks. And why? To make cheap 32C server CPUs possible. Great! :-D
Even you're praising this idea, which find fairly disappointing...

Nobody needs 16 cores to game.

You missed what I'm trying to say. Apart from servers and workstations designed for particularly parallel tasks, nobody needs 16 cores for anything. Ever.

Computation is like cooking. It's about transforming what you have available into what you need - in the right order and quantity.
So how many pans do you have? And do you think owning 16 will make you a better or faster cook? :)
I kid you not: a well organized cook can make 16 omelettes at once on 16 pans.
But good scrambled eggs are single-panned and this will never change. If you need to prepare more eggs, you need a bigger pan, not more of them.

I just have this feeling that we're wasting time and potential on this pointless core war - betting that suddenly everyone will rewrite every mathematical recipe created in the last 300 years, because we're just too lame to make faster cores based on GaN or concentrate on quantum computing.

7-zip may not be the best productivity benchmark...

So why is it used so much on gaming websites? Why not just scrap it and learn a better way to test workstations?

but there are plenty of others that Ryzen rulez at. It may not always beat Intel at everything, but it's usually not far behind, and does so while being cheaper, especially in the HEDT or server space.

No one cares about HEDT. Just forget about it.
As for servers: Zen is seriously rubbish for databases and so-so for virtualization. It is good for some computation tasks simply because of core count advantage.
On the other hand, it's still an exotic technology that hardly anyone buys. You may think it's cheaper, but that's true only when the effect of scale kicks in (datacenters and stuff). For small and medium companies - operating up to a few servers - it might turn out to be more expensive and they won't take that risk.

Not sure what you mean by ignoring the business segment? They've invaded the server space with EPYC, which is a pretty big deal.

LOL on "invaded". Ask around.

If you mean typical office machines, then AMD needs to get in with OEMs, like Dell. If they can manage to do there what they did in the server space, they'd be in good shape.

Top3 already make desktops with AMD Ryzen CPUs. No one buys them.
Actually isn't Dell dropping these from the lineup??? I'm pretty sure they had more variants just few months ago...

AMD systems are going to be cheaper than similar Intel systems

No, they won't. Seriously, not happening. :-D

Yeah... as much as it was entertaining, I think it's not getting anywhere.
If you can spare some time, I once again strongly suggest asking around about EPYC sales. :)