AMD Ryzen

[AwesomeOcelot]

Can the Zen 3 launch really consist of 4 CPUs? Zen was about 9, Zen 2 was 5. Intel had about 5 billion.

[Zoraptor]

IIRC Zen launch was only 1700/X and 1800X so 3 SKUs- 1600 (and 1500X) were a few months later (June? rather than March) and the 1300X/1200 and APUs released even later, and not that much time before the high end Zen+ units. Current gen there's an obvious price gap for a 5700X at least, and of course for lower budget options.

The error/ defective die rate was/ is low enough it took/ takes a decent amount of time to build up stock numbers for the units that 'needed' defective cores unless they're willing to cannibalise good chiplets. For TSMC 7nm it's ~11% average error chance per single chiplet die (15% per 100mm^2 ~74mm^2 die size for a 3700X; chance is less near the centre of the wafer, more near the edge) and it was even less than that for the GloFo nodes used for Zen/+, hence there being a decent number of 8 core 1600s when they didn't have enough defective dies to meet demand but didn't laser off the extra functional cores.

(If the technical limitations aren't too great I'd suspect they'd go for Zen 2 style (or keep Zen2 itself) 4 core ccx for the lower end, they shouldn't be getting many 'natural' Zen3s with 4 dud cores at all)

[AwesomeOcelot]

7 Zen CPUs were released within just over a month of each other. 1400-1600X 11th April, 1700-1800X 2nd March.  I wouldn't bet against at least 1 more CPU being released this year on Zen 3, and a Zen 2 refresh or 2 that fills out the budget market. What are their options for cutting down Zen 2 CPUs?

[Zoraptor]

Not announcing a 5700X certainly seems weird, unless they really are worried about confusion with the 5700/XT graphics card (which should have been predictable). No 5600 makes sense though, it would likely be the most in demand unit yet also be least profitable and they'd inevitably either have little supply which is very bad PR, or have to cut down chips they could sell for more to meet the demand.

They had the near perfect budget king this gen with 3300X, if it were produced in enough numbers, and it would be a good candidate for a refresh. Ideally there would be a 4 core Zen 3 chiplet for a 5300X and lower, but that seems to go against AMD's design philosophy of using the same basic chiplet for everything and unless you had something like a 6 core 5500 (2 x 3 ccx) you'd have potential wastage for minor defects or have to sell super budget 2 core units (which are currently still on super duper cheap 12nm GloFo, iirc).

They must have considered how the more budget orientated segments will work when making the switch to 8 core ccx so presumably they do have a solution.

[ComradeYellow]

I honestly think I'm sold on the 5950X  Just imagine pairing it with this bad boy:

https://www.icegiantcooling.com/

And getting 4.9Ghz across all 16 cores!  I mean yeah some OCD people will be bummed it's not at that 5.0Ghz mark but I mean come on there's always next gen and we're already looking at overkill anyway.

I'll stick with Nvidia because DLSS 2.x is a blessing!  You don't want to be too Devil Red, you gotta curb your evil with a complimentary opposite color, and Green is certainly the complimentary opposite of Red!

[AwesomeOcelot]

I had a Ice Giant ProSiphon on pre order, already paid for, but had to cancel it because they kept delaying it, until it would unlikely come this year. Since I hope to build in at least December, it would have held me back. It wasn't that much more expensive than a good air cooler so I would have been happy with it, but I think the next generation will be even better, with more heat pipes and more copper.

I was thinking about people complaining about the pricing, but it's only really bad on the 3600x, then I saw that it's the only one with a cooler. If the cooler is good enough, and it's worth $25, then I think the pricing is fine. What cooler comes with the 10700?

Edited October 11, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[Zoraptor]

While the 5600X does have a cooler supplied it's apparently going to be the cheap- and pretty nasty- Stealth rather than the more capable Spire or Prism. Still better than the Intel stock cooler (which the 10700 has, albeit it's a model with some copper contact surface instead of just aluminium), but it's not exactly premium.

 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Zoraptor

[Keyrock]

@ComradeMaster We don't know yet how well Zen 3 is going to overclock. I expect it will be better than Zen 2, even the XT refresh, but 4.9 GHz across 16 cores is a big ask. I hope you can pull it off. If I can get 4.8 GHz across 12 cores I'll  be thrilled.

[Sarex]

Euro prices for Zen 3...

[Azdeus]

 

5 hours ago, Keyrock said:

@ComradeMaster We don't know yet how well Zen 3 is going to overclock. I expect it will be better than Zen 2, even the XT refresh, but 4.9 GHz across 16 cores is a big ask. I hope you can pull it off. If I can get 4.8 GHz across 12 cores I'll  be thrilled.

I expect Zen 3 will be about as good as previous examples on overclocking, AMD keeps them pretty close to the edge. From what I've heard people say, it's suggested that memory OC's still better

[AwesomeOcelot]

Buildzoid talking about prices and overclocking on the 5000 series.

[ComradeYellow]

14 hours ago, Keyrock said:

@ComradeMaster We don't know yet how well Zen 3 is going to overclock. I expect it will be better than Zen 2, even the XT refresh, but 4.9 GHz across 16 cores is a big ask. I hope you can pull it off. If I can get 4.8 GHz across 12 cores I'll  be thrilled.

https://siliconlottery.com/

Check here once they release, it's probably not worth paying extra for a guaranteed good chip but the statistics available on here should be demonstrative about the limits of their OC capabilities.

[ComradeYellow]

Hmmm I reckon the 5800X could in fact be the secret gaming champion.  This about it, it has 8 cores and 16 threads all in one CCX with ease of access to the cache, where's the 5900X has 12 cores and 24 threads in two 6+6 CCX, making overclocking more risky and more of a pain with lower and more unpredictable yields and would require binning (which is risky and doesn't always produce the results you want), whilst the 5800X you just simply crank it up the clock speed on a single CCX and call it good.

I'll seriously consider it if I see that the 5800X can hit the max 4.7Ghz or close to it.

[Keyrock]

The 5800 X is likely the sweet spot as far as purely gaming is concerned. The extra 4 or 8 cores of the 5900 X and 5950X will likely be of benefit in only very few future titles. The extra boost clock will be of benefit, but 100 or 200 MHz won't make THAT big a difference, not nearly enough to justify the price differences.

As far as overclocking goes, we'll see how well these chips overclock in a few weeks. If they overclock anything like Zen 2, then not that well. Buildzoid explained why in his video in detail and that man does know his stuff. On the one hand, a 8 core chip will most certainly do an all core overclock better than a 12 or 16 core chip, all things being equal. On the other hand, the high-end parts always get the best silicon, so your chances of winning the silicon lottery decrease with the 8 core chip and definitely with the 6 core chip. With that said, I would still expect higher all core overclocks on the 5600 X and 5800 X than the higher-end chips.

If I can safely get an all core overclock to within 100 MHz of the single core boost on a 5900 X LA_Noire_doubt.jpg then I will do it, otherwise I'll just leave it stock, though I will still put great cooling on it since it will help the chip boost longer before hitting thermal targets that would cause it to stop boosting.

Overclocking the GPU will be my bigger concern, since that is where I'll get the majority of my gains, given that I'm targeting 4K at high-ish settings.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I was under the impression none of the Zen 3 CPUs had CCX equivalents since they had unified L3. The 5900x will have 2 CCDs, which is technically worse if it was Zen 2, but the new architecture makes it difficult to assume. In a game that's multi-threaded enough to take advantage of 8 cores, but not enough to take advantage of 12, the 5800x would beat the 5900x.

There are games like this, that do poorly with 4 threads, great with 6, and make very little use of 8+, I think MS Flight Sim 2020 and GTA V have this type of behaviour, it's pretty rare. There's also the case that cores can be split into 2 threads, and whether any game actually currently or in the immediate future prefers 8 cores over 6 cores. I don't think there is a game where that would make a large difference.

Also the elephant in the room that at 4K, getting both a game that is CPU bottlenecked and would benefit from 8, but not 6 or 12 cores, is a bit of a unicorn. We'll be lucky if we get a game that sees any appeciable difference between any of the announced Zen 3 processors in the real world. How many frames between the top Zen 2 and a 3600 at 1440p in most benchmarks?

Edited October 15, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[ComradeYellow]

3 hours ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

In a game that's multi-threaded enough to take advantage of 8 cores, but not enough to take advantage of 12, the 5800x would beat the 5900x.

That's the thing though, the number of games that effectively utilize 6 cores currently, is relatively small.  

And yes, it's confirmed that the 5900X and the 5950X will use 2 CCD's as opposed to the 5800X single CCD, so you get 8 very high quality cores concentrated efficiently and if you get a good chip should leave plenty of room for overclocking.

I reckon a high end gamer could get a solid 4 years out of it. 

[Keyrock]

49 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

 

I reckon a high end gamer could get a solid 4 years out of it. 

If not more.

People were generally getting 4.6 GHz all core on the 3800 XT without reaching voltages where they risked degradation, so 4.7 GHz all core on the 5800 X is not inconceivable.  We'll find out pretty soon.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Keyrock

[AwesomeOcelot]

I got 6 years out of my 2500K and 5820K, one was cheap, one had poor per core performance. The CPU was never the bottleneck for my use case. When I was gaming at 1080p my FPS target was 144fps max, which I easily achieved. When I was gaming at 1440p my target was 120fps and the GPU was the bottleneck. Upgrading GPUs more frequently makes more sense, I went through HD6870, GTX970, GTX1080, RTX3080. I can't see a common gaming use case where someone with a 5800x is going to need an upgrade before 6 years.

[Sarex]

17 minutes ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

I got 6 years out of my 2500K and 5820K, one was cheap, one had poor per core performance. The CPU was never the bottleneck for my use case. When I was gaming at 1080p my FPS target was 144fps max, which I easily achieved. When I was gaming at 1440p my target was 120fps and the GPU was the bottleneck. Upgrading GPUs more frequently makes more sense, I went through HD6870, GTX970, GTX1080, RTX3080. I can't see a common gaming use case where someone with a 5800x is going to need an upgrade before 6 years.

That was the era of Intel dominance (when the improvements from gen to gen were minor), AMD is now pushing the core count every year, so I think more apps are going to start optimizing for higher core count.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Sarex

[AwesomeOcelot]

I can't see games requiring more than 8 cores 16 threads in 6 years. 5800x is a beast per core as well. It's also quite a bit more expensive than what I paid for my 5820K, and more than double what I paid for my 2500K. AMD didn't push the core count in 2020. There's also laptops to consider, which are technically the larger segment.

There's also a fundamental limit to the benefit of more threads in work loads like games. Single thread work loads will always exist. Yes, games can and should be more multi-threaded, but there's always going to be diminishing returns.

Edited October 15, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[Zoraptor]

Games probably won't require more than an 8/16 processor in any reasonable timeframe, but that isn't to say that more cores won't perform better. Even now most high demand games don't literally require more than 4 cores- stutter fest as they may be on that config- and you can still get by with a 4/8 configuration. But most of the new high end games do benefit from more cores than that; if nothing else a full core will be a lot less likely to be saturated by a workload than a SMT/HT virtual core with 2/3 to 3/4 less performance.

AMD has hit the practicality limit of core counts on AM4. Either or both faster RAM or more channels is needed now.

 

[AwesomeOcelot]

In 6 years time 12 cores will be to 8 cores, as 6 cores is to 4 cores today in gaming. In 6 years time, a 5900x is not going to beast a 5800x with a new GPU at 8K, like a 8700K doesn't beast a 7700K today with a 3080 at 4K. Unless something fundamentally shifts with game development, and my expectation for the mid-range and laptop CPU markets, suggests that won't happen. The 5600X is a top-range chip at $300, and that's 6 cores going into 2021, a lot more people are going to own that CPU than the 5900x.

[Keyrock]

The 5 GHz dream lives?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5ghz-benchmarks

AMD advertises its Ryzen 5000 (codename Vermeer) processors with their maximum boost clock speeds. However, the value doesn't take into the chipmaker's own Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) technology. Under the right conditions, PBO allows the processor to boost beyond AMD's specifications. That feature is probably why the Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X are ticking faster than their advertised values in the newly uncovered Geekbench 5 submissions.

Officially, the Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 4.9 GHz boost clock, however, the 16-core chip peaked as high as 5.04 GHz. It's impressive given that, despite having many chips on our list of best CPUs, AMD has never hit 5 GHz on a Ryzen before, let alone a chip with 16 cores.

The Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X seem to benefit from PBO as well. The 12-core and octa-core chips are rated with a 4.8 GHz and 4.7 GHz boost clocks, respectively. Nonetheless, the Ryzen 9 5900X got as high as 4.94 GHz, while the Ryzen 7 5800X maxed out at 4.84 GHz.

[Keyrock]

The 5 GHz dream lives?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5ghz-benchmarks

AMD advertises its Ryzen 5000 (codename Vermeer) processors with their maximum boost clock speeds. However, the value doesn't take into the chipmaker's own Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) technology. Under the right conditions, PBO allows the processor to boost beyond AMD's specifications. That feature is probably why the Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X are ticking faster than their advertised values in the newly uncovered Geekbench 5 submissions.

Officially, the Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 4.9 GHz boost clock, however, the 16-core chip peaked as high as 5.04 GHz. It's impressive given that, despite having many chips on our list of best CPUs, AMD has never hit 5 GHz on a Ryzen before, let alone a chip with 16 cores.

The Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X seem to benefit from PBO as well. The 12-core and octa-core chips are rated with a 4.8 GHz and 4.7 GHz boost clocks, respectively. Nonetheless, the Ryzen 9 5900X got as high as 4.94 GHz, while the Ryzen 7 5800X maxed out at 4.84 GHz.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same...

Only $500 for 7%. Intel isn't even in the top 13 of the multi-threaded.