AMD Ryzen Discussion Thread.

[purecain]

I own a haswell system and for the past couple of years 4cores and eight threads have been fine. I always stream and in January of this year I started having problems streaming new games. my cpu simply could no longer handle the load.

Ryzen is clock for clock faster than core architecture. only it clocks nearly 1000mhz slower. you would think those extra clock cycles would make up for there being only 8threads on the intel system. unfortunately it does not. I cant wait to get my new 1800x. my order was cancelled so Ive put the build off for a week. but the anticipation of running my os on m.2 with a ryzen cpu is killing me.

for comparative performance an intel build would of set me back £2000+. my budget for this build is £1400 and that's for the cpu,280ml aiocooler , 4000mhz ddr4, motherboard and 500gb m.2 drive.

 

[P4-630]

4000mhz ddr4

Not sure but is it possible to reach those speeds yet with a ryzen build?

 

[HTC]

I own a haswell system and for the past couple of years 4cores and eight threads have been fine. I always stream and in January of this year I started having problems streaming new games. my cpu simply could no longer handle the load.

Ryzen is clock for clock faster than core architecture. only it clocks nearly 1000mhz slower. you would think those extra clock cycles would make up for there being only 8threads on the intel system. unfortunately it does not. I cant wait to get my new 1800x. my order was cancelled so Ive put the build off for a week. but the anticipation of running my os on m.2 with a ryzen cpu is killing me.

for comparative performance an intel build would of set me back £2000+. my budget for this build is £1400 and that's for the cpu,280ml aiocooler , 4000mhz ddr4, motherboard and 500gb m.2 drive.

Just make sure the RAM is in the board's QVL.

 

[infrared]

Not sure but is it possible to reach those speeds yet with a ryzen build?

Should be able to get close with the right memory, I got to 3650mhz, cdawall got slightly further I think.

 

[trparky]

Your logic is wrong @notb, if the Intel CPU is running at 100% then they means that the CPU is running at maximum capacity. If the Ryzen processor is running at less usage it means that it can better handle the load. More cores equals better distribution of the load. You don't ever want a CPU at full load, that means it's struggling; unless you're benchmarking it of course.

 

[notb]

Your logic is wrong @notb, if the Intel CPU is running at 100% then they means that the CPU is running at maximum capacity. If the Ryzen processor is running at less usage it means that it can better handle the load. More cores equals better distribution of the load. You don't ever want a CPU at full load, that means it's struggling; unless you're benchmarking it of course.

By all means, no!
Of course you want it at full load. Why wouldn't you?
Someone must have greatly deceived you.

If a CPU is not working at 100% it just means that some computing power is wasted.
That's exactly why we got HT/SMT: to utilize CPUs even better.

 

[HTC]

By all means, no!
Of course you want it at full load. Why wouldn't you?
Someone must have greatly deceived you.

If a CPU is not working at 100% it just means that some computing power is wasted.
That's exactly why we got HT/SMT: to utilize CPUs even better.

To avoid any other applications from having high interference with what you're playing unless, when you play, you shut down everything else so that the game can have all resources available.

If the CPU cores / threads are maxed, when something is introduced, the game suffers in the form of stutters or worse but, if you have a lower core / thread utilization, then it may not even affect gameplay @ all, depending on what it is, ofc.

 

[notb]

To avoid any other applications from having high interference with what you're playing unless, when you play, you shut down everything else so that the game can have all resources available.

If another application interferes, it should just result in lower fps.
OS scheduler should take care of job management. For a background process to "dominate" a game (played in full screen etc) would be fairly interesting. I haven't seen such behaviour since I got my first dual core CPU. Sometimes a game will halt, but that's usually a result of a larger problem: temp throttling or a part misbehaving (usually disks, PSU or mobo).

 

[trparky]

If the game halts for any reason that's a sign of a resource contention and you don't want that. High CPU usage is bad, it results in higher power usage and more heat.

More cores are better, the more cores you have the less chance of context switching which can rob you of performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_switch

 

[HTC]

If another application interferes, it should just result in lower fps.
OS scheduler should take care of job management. For a background process to "dominate" a game (played in full screen etc) would be fairly interesting. I haven't seen such behaviour since I got my first dual core CPU. Sometimes a game will halt, but that's usually a result of a larger problem: temp throttling or a part misbehaving (usually disks, PSU or mobo).

Lower FPS is always the case in such occasions, but the way this presents itself can vary from simple stutters to a generally worse gameplay experience: whatever the way, is bad for gaming, IMO.

The background process will not "dominate" a game, as you call it, but it can very much interfere, which is the point here. If the CPU cores / threads aren't maxed, then there's a chance it won't interfere @ all, depending ofc on what it is. This is not the case if the CPU cores / threads are maxed already because, to be able to run "whatever application" it needs resources, however small they may be, and that is enough to disturb gameplay.

 

[the54thvoid]

Lower FPS is always the case in such occasions, but the way this presents itself can vary from simple stutters to a generally worse gameplay experience: whatever the way, is bad for gaming, IMO.

The background process will not "dominate" a game, as you call it, but it can very much interfere, which is the point here. If the CPU cores / threads aren't maxed, then there's a chance it won't interfere @ all, depending ofc on what it is. This is not the case if the CPU cores / threads are maxed already because, to be able to run "whatever application" it needs resources, however small they may be, and that is enough to disturb gameplay.

Like i said, butter smooth, no judder. Had that previously on my 3930k. Judder during intense scenes.

 

[HD64G]

Apparently you haven't been paying attention to gaming benches. The 7700k still kicks butt in gaming, period, and given that, it's priced reasonably as well. People don't buy Intel CPUs merely on hype, they buy them because they perform well.

Who isn't paying attention? Check that video 1st...

 

[notb]

If the game halts for any reason that's a sign of a resource contention and you don't want that. High CPU usage is bad, it results in higher power usage and more heat.

Having a CPU in general results in higher power usage and more heat. What's the point of this arguments?
You said:

You don't ever want a CPU at full load, that means it's struggling

So first of all: was this a general rule or just for gaming? I don't want a CPU at full load ever? Also when compressing files or running simulations? Because full load is bad by definition? Seriously?

Even if it was just for gaming, I still don't get what's bothering you.
If Ryzen can hold 80fps with 60% load, it might as well hold 120fps at 90%.
Yes, it would use a bit more power, but at least it would mean that it can be properly utilized when needed. If you're bothered by high power usage of computers, just don't buy an RX580.

You know what I'm afraid of? That this is an optimization issue. That if you run a more demanding game it'll still use a relatively small part of CPU potential - limiting fps to an unpleasant level.

I don't know if this can be checked today, i.e. IMO currently Ryzen is new and too powerful to become a bottleneck.
But if someone knows how to do this, I'd be really glad to see a 90% load on those 12-16 threads created just by the game (no streaming etc ).

More cores are better, the more cores you have the less chance of context switching which can rob you of performance.

I never said more cores are worse. But it can't be done at a cost of worse single-thread performance. Keeping single-thread potential at a decent level should have a priority. That's why I never even considered an AMD Bulldozer.
But now it's Ryzen with a very strange architecture, the Infinity Fabric etc.
Mind you, I'm totally into innovation and interesting solutions, but they have to be deeply tested, not believed in.
And we've already seen some really weird stuff - like gaming performance improving with SMT switched off.

More cores are better, the more cores you have the less chance of context switching which can rob you of performance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_switch

Context switching is a fundamental idea behind a multitasking OS (basically the way we use computers). I don't know if you understand it properly...
Your CPU is doing this all the time - you play a game, but it doesn't take over the whole core. Once in a while a different job is processed.
This is the expected behaviour.
Sure, we don't want another process to take over the CPU for so long that it makes the game unplayable, but honestly... does this happen in the 4-core era? I expect Windows scheduler to take care of such things. I haven't seen that for a long time.
What are you running in the background? Prime95?

 

[HTC]

Who isn't paying attention? Check that video 1st...

Them frame times are interesting: too bad the dude only shows up to 30 ms in those graphs. He should show the whole thing and not just to up to 30 ms.

 

[Aenra]

Should be able to get close with the right memory, I got to 3650mhz, cdawall got slightly further I think.

Careful
Go have a look at cdawall's voltages.. i wouldn't dare leave it that high for 24/7, like ever. And that was for 3600ish mind. 4k frequencies are out of the question, let's be realistic here.

 

[trparky]

Sure, we don't want another process to take over the CPU for so long that it makes the game unplayable, but honestly... does this happen in the 4-core era? I expect Windows scheduler to take care of such things. I haven't seen that for a long time.

What do you think is happening when a game glitches or you see a graphical stutter? That's the game being robbed of the CPU when it needs it the most. You want to have as much CPU time as you can dedicated to the game, with a quad-core you can't do that because you have your OS and background services that still need to run.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

I think its funny that people are almost trying to discredit AMD. I currently have an AMD FX 8350 and guess what? I can run just about anything with my GTX 1070. If I upgraded to a R5 1600X or a R7 1700 and overclocked, I would get frame rates close to an i7-7700k. I have seen all of the new post launch benchmarks and the fact is that Ryzen is not too far behind the i7-7700k in terms of gaming at 1080p. Some people act like it is light years off, but this simply isn't true- it is literally right there in all of the top benchmarks for gaming. Does it need to be more optimized? Of course, but it has barely been out for a month and a half. With BIOS updates, game patches, Windows updates, etc. Ryzen will eventually dethrone the i7-7700k- whether that is next month, or 6 months from now.

I gave into the initial Ryzen hype, but I was letdown when I saw some of the first reviews and 1080p benchmarks, but the fact that AMD has actually been addressing these issues is huge. Yesterday I was convinced that an i7-7700k was the best route, but now I am thinking twice about that. Plus you really need to factor in that the AM4 platform will have support until at the bare minimum 2021 and the entire Ryzen CPU lineup is compatible with that board. That is HUGE! AMD has been saying future-proofing for years, but I actually think it is happening. They are already starting to convince developers to move to multi core so honestly I think it is just a matter of time. Is the i7-7700k the gaming king? Currently, at least as far as a quad core CPU goes. However, that might not be the case in 2 weeks or two months and you can be certain that new games are most likely going to benefit from 6-8 core CPUs.

 

[infrared]

Careful
Go have a look at cdawall's voltages.. i wouldn't dare leave it that high for 24/7, like ever. And that was for 3600ish mind. 4k frequencies are out of the question, let's be realistic here.

I don't know why he needed so much SoC, mine was 1.175v for 3650mhz, wierdly raising soc or vdimm, or timings didn't help at all, it was a brick wall at that point. I guess they're all gonna clock slightly different depending on how good the IMC is.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

Well I just convinced myself- I am going with a Ryzen 7 1700!

 

[Aenra]

I don't know why he needed so much SoC, mine was 1.175v for 3650mhz

Ain't his, lol, it's yours
Looks like you hit the jackpot (or as good as anyway) from what i've seen going around in the usual OC forums.

 

[HD64G]

Them frame times are interesting: too bad the dude only shows up to 30 ms in those graphs. He should show the whole thing and not just to up to 30 ms.

More numbers and especially about smoothness that matters most in gaming with a GTX1070 tested for both blue and red chips. Tbh I didn't expect i5 crushed so hard, especially in witcher 3. A great game engine that takes proper advantage of more than 4 cores.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

More numbers and especially about smoothness that matters most in gaming with a GTX1070 tested for both blue and red chips. Tbh I didn't expect i5 crushed so hard, especially in witcher 3. A great game engine that takes proper advantage of more than 4 cores.

This is why I am upgrading the the Ryzen 7 1700. I am definitely going to get a much needed performance boost.

 

[mcraygsx]

Just watched Joker Productions benchmark for Ryzen and was surprised that his review is way off. If someone can shed some light on this, why does Ryzen 1700 @3.9Ghz performs on par with a highly overclocked 7700K@5.0Ghz? While every other site including powertechup.com tells a different story at least when it comes to gaming. Ofcourse he is benching 1700 unlike most who used 1700x/1800x against 7700K.

Jokerproduction benchmark scores are way different then the rest.

Ryzen 1700 vs i7 7700K REVIEW | Best CPU Under $350?

Ryzen 1700 vs i7 7700K | An Unbiased Look at Benchmarks

 

[Kanan]

I don't measure this by how many there were, but how many of all coolers supported it. That is: not many.
As far as "more than enough" argument - one cooler is enough. You don't need more. So I assume you'll be fine even if just the AMD Wraith fitted.

More than enough supported it, you're basically talking nonsense.

I don't care as long as both apples and bananas can multiply integers.
If I'm buying a CPU right now, I'm looking at it's current status. No points for "being new" or "interesting" or "AMD HQ is closer to the ocean".

Yeah, goes a way to discredit yourself as not being a forward looking/wise/intelligent being. CPU's aren't GPU's and are bought for long term usually nowadays. Being shortsighted there isn't paying off on the long run.

Sorry, but I don't have such feelings when it comes to AMD after the Bulldozer fiasco. I don't believe next Ryzen batch will be much better - just like I don't think software will suddenly use 8 cores, because (optimistically) 1% more of PCs have them. Maybe I'm unfair, but this safe approach has never let me down.

Believe what you want, talking to you is largely a waste of time anyway. Talking to a wall is better I guess.

Actually I'm criticizing AMD, not praising Intel. You're implying the latter part.
BTW: does being an AMD fanboy lower creditability discussing AMD?

You're doing both (go and read your own stuff you've written about Intel). And yeah of course it does.

True, I don't like Ryzen (beside the performance). Am I allowed to share my opinion? Where should I do that if not in a "AMD Ryzen discussion thread"? Isn't "discussing" about pointing out pros and cons?
Or is this place only for worshiping? Maybe the title should be changed?

No, but you're annoying, boldly stating things that are exaggerated or simply wrong.

It's a very small part of the whole market. You say all this like if every Intel-based desktop had an i7, while this is just a small group of high-end machines. Even many gamers/enthusiasts on this forum have chosen an i5. And desktops are a minority anyway.

Ryzen is more or less for (semi-)highend users at the moment, so I'm only talking about those users.

Correct. But the issues are similar and so is everything else. It's not about Ryzen's partly weird architecture (although it doesn't help). It's about there is hardly any demand for such high thread count. This hasn't changed since FX.

Demand is there, whether you're seeing it or not. Example: I upgraded from a i7 3820 to a 3960X and those 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads helped a lot in anything (productive, gaming, simple things such as starting windows and internet browser), so it's not a far stretch those 8 cores would help too. Not always, but often enough to buy it now. On top a CPU is now a long term usage item, so going for a 6 or 8 Core is simply smarter now, than going for a 4 Core. The problem is also their pricing is pretty bad.

That's just creating a problem for a solution.
E.g. 7700K is better at gaming, but Ryzen is better at gaming+streaming. So once again: which one is better for gaming? Of course it's Ryzen. And if you're not streaming, you should start doing that.

No it's just a example of what Ryzen can do compared to the 7700K. Another example would be it's increased work capabilities such as in decoding and other stuff. Jayz2cents (youtuber) used a Ryzen 1800X @ 3.9 GHz for over a month now and he says it's pretty good at anything, especially workstation and praises it's nice pricing compared to comparable Intel CPUs (6800 or 6900K). Pretty much every Ryzen user is happy with it.

Now this is just manipulation.
First of all: i7-920 costed $300, not $200. Second, it was a very cheap outlier in a more expensive lineup. i7-940 was already over $500 and the highest i7-965 costed $1000 (all with 4 cores).
You can't criticize current Intel lineup because they used to give us a CPU with great value few years back.

Uh no, it costed 200€ and I nearly bought it - I was just hindered by high mainboard prices and high DDR3 tri-kit prices, because DDR3 was basically just released alongside with it. Instead I went for a Phenom II 940 for the same 200€ but cheaper MB/Ram.
I can critisize it like that, it's a way of explaining why Intel has bad pricing now compared to before. Now if the 7700K would have 6 cores instead of 4, I wouldn't say that. But they are extremely greedy. Good AMD is here to solve that, Intel already pulled the release date months ahead for their new products in reaction to that.

And keep in mind all LGA1151 CPUs have an IGP (4770/4790K also did). Nehalem i7 did not.

Yeah, nobody cares about having a worthless GPU in a highend CPU just for increasing die-space so that it's not too small to manufacture. You can ask people, maybe 1-5% would care about the IGPU.

Generally speaking, PC parts prices went up lately - that's mostly due to shrinking desktop market, but also a few other effects. It's same with RAM, GPUs and so on.
And what about disks? Sure, SSD have many advantages over HDD, but the end result is simple: we're paying few times more per GB than we used to few years ago.
If "a disk" was just a black box that you connect to store files, hardly anyone would accept this price increase. But we're fed with the idea that it's a great new tech and it MUST be more expensive.

The reason why that happened is mainly because of shortages. SSD and Ram prices went downhill for many months or even years before the increase, and it will continue again once the shortages are over.

You're right! I found it very weird when reading the reviews and the Ryzen launch materials. No one - including AMD - is comparing Ryzen to previous AMD CPUs. Why is that?
Check this out:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2992&cmp[]=1780

Why should they - because Ryzen is good enough to compare to Intel. Essentially, comparing it to FX would mean it's not good enough. It was a smart move by AMD.

By all means, no!
Of course you want it at full load. Why wouldn't you?
Someone must have greatly deceived you.

If a CPU is not working at 100% it just means that some computing power is wasted.
That's exactly why we got HT/SMT: to utilize CPUs even better.

What he meant is, having a GPU bottleneck is better than having a CPU bottleneck, because that way the GPU is always fully utilized. I think he also meant that having headroom is better than having none. Actually care to understand people before you doubt them and start to discuss simple things to death.
Ryzen will be easily better than 7700K over time. Today people use CPUs for as long as 10 years, so it's easily a better investment. Just a fool would think 4 cores will always be what you need. 8 cores and more are the future, accept it or not, it's a 99% fact anyway.

 

[notb]

Yeah, goes a way to discredit yourself as not being a forward looking/wise/intelligent being. CPU's aren't GPU's and are bought for long term usually nowadays. Being shortsighted there isn't paying off on the long run.

And GPU's aren't bought for long term? That's interesting - even more when you think about the price difference.
In a well balanced gaming rig the GPU is usually twice as expensive as CPU, isn't it?

Talking to a wall is better I guess.

It's fine as long as you're guessing - not deducing from personal experience.

You're doing both (go and read your own stuff you've written about Intel). And yeah of course it does.

Like most, I'm not overly happy with Intel CPU performance. They could have left i7 as a HEDT part and give us a 4C/8T i5 at a lower price point.
But other than that... it's a good, stable and well-tested platform.
And as far as mobile solutions go, I couldn't really expect more from Intel. They're doing it beautifully.

Looking at Ryzen - the performance is great and it's clearly more affordable than Intel (as usual). But everything else is meh, IMO. Putting raw performance aside, there's nothing in Ryzen platform that I'd find more attractive than Intel's counterpart.
And when new generations arrive, your CPU will no longer have the performance advantage. You're left with just the meh stuff.

Actually someone here unwillingly gave me a very good analogy (in the RX580 thread he said that no one buys a Corvette to complain about fuel consumption).
To me Ryzen has an appearance of a muscle-car. It's very striking, it has great power and attractive price. But it's not a car for everyone. Most people end up buying sophisticated german high-end saloons or sensible hatchbacks. And just like I could not own a Corvette, I'm just not attracted at all by the whole Ryzen "encasement".

Pretty much every Ryzen user is happy with it.

Pretty much every Ryzen user is either an enthusiast interested in novelties, someone actually in need for multi-core performance or basically an AMD-fanboy. So I'm not surprised they're all happy with their choice.
Again, this is not a great representation of the whole market. And you are trying to persuade me that Ryzen is better in every way, aren't you?

Yeah, nobody cares about having a worthless GPU in a highend CPU just for increasing die-space so that it's not too small to manufacture. You can ask people, maybe 1-5% would care about the IGPU.

Oh you're so wrong about this. But it shows that you don't really get how powerful CPUs are used in general. Maybe it's because you're looking at it with a gamer's point of view.
But I guess we can forgive you that. AMD does the same mistake and they should've known better.

Why should they - because Ryzen is good enough to compare to Intel. Essentially, comparing it to FX would mean it's not good enough. It was a smart move by AMD.

Well... you're an AMD user, so you tell me. Don't you want to know how Ryzen performs compared to your CPU? How will you decide whether replacing your system is worth it?

Ryzen will be easily better than 7700K over time. Today people use CPUs for as long as 10 years, so it's easily a better investment. Just a fool would think 4 cores will always be what you need. 8 cores and more are the future, accept it or not, it's a 99% fact anyway.

So if 8 cores or more are the future, why is AMD selling 4-6 core CPUs?
As for the 10-year-old lifespan: I have a CPU from 2009 (bought in June, 2010). Honestly, I'd replace it years ago if I didn't have a good notebook provided by my company. And it's not even about performance. It's simply an old platform: old RAM, old interfaces, old drivers. The mobo doesn't work with modern GPU, it uses DDR2, has hardly any support for SSD, no USB 3.0 etc. For some reason I couldn't install W10 (even though it's working well on an even older laptop). It's very hard to upgrade. So when you're telling me that I could use Ryzen for 10 years - you're most likely right. But will I accept all the drawbacks of having a 10-y-o PC? I doubt that. Not in a main PC I use for everyday tasks - maybe in a home server or something (but again... as Ryzen lacks IGP, it's not the ideal choice).