AMD Ryzen

[Keyrock]

Maybe the election might make it easier to buy a CPU. While everybody else is busy looting rioting peacefully protesting after the election, I'll be hitting F5 on Newegg. 

[AwesomeOcelot]

I might buy any zen 3 I can actually get to check out. I have a feeling demand is going to be high.

[Keyrock]

Hopefully it's at least better than the Ampere launch. 

[AwesomeOcelot]

*Stroking 3080* What are you talking about?

[ComradeYellow]

I'm probably gonna Chad it out and wait for the TI's and Rocket Lake to launch next spring/summer.

Was contemplating going Zen 3 but it's probably not appropriate unless you're also buying a Radeon.

Oh it's tempting as Hell believe to just go blazing out on AMD components (especially that 6900XT, 'tis a 1440p wet dream) but I only have a Gsync monitor and I'm quite confident next years Nvidia launch will be worth the wait.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I got one and it was fairly easy, although the website did make me go through checkout twice.

[Keyrock]

No luck here, but no sweat. I'm not getting home for a month and a half, so I have plenty of time to get one.

[ComradeYellow]

Glad to see that ammunition and PC components are America's bread and butter, considering that they're the two hardest things to acquire at the moment.

[Zoraptor]

Went on sale at 3am here, sold out by (earlier than) breakfast time. That's with no 5900/50X though as they're coming in next week. ~20USD markup over US prices, which is way less than for most products.

I do have to admit that despite deciding not to get a 5000 due to the pricing and dead socket AMD's marketing has got me reconsidering, so I won't be altogether disappointed if there isn't any Ryzen/ Radeon stock through to beyond Christmas.

[Sarex]

25 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Went on sale at 3am here, sold out by (earlier than) breakfast time. That's with no 5900/50X though as they're coming in next week. ~20USD markup over US prices, which is way less than for most products.

I do have to admit that despite deciding not to get a 5000 due to the pricing and dead socket AMD's marketing has got me reconsidering, so I won't be altogether disappointed if there isn't any Ryzen/ Radeon stock through to beyond Christmas.

How big of a deal is a dead socket really. I have personally never gotten a newer gen cpu without a new gen mb.

[Keyrock]

Reviews are in and they are overwhelmingly positive. About the only gripe is the price hike, but when you are offering the best performing line of desktop chips on the market, by literally any measure, I suppose you have the ability and, quite frankly, the right to charge a premium. 

Rocket Lake better be really good because Intel has some ground to make up.

Edited November 5, 2020 by Keyrock

[ComradeYellow]

14 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Rocket Lake better be really good because Intel has some ground to make up.

It probably won't beat AMD in heavily threaded applications (as usual) but it's sure retake the gaming crown.  Intel fans better have a quadruple digit power supply handy at this rate.  I mean spending a few extra bucks a month on power isn't a huge deal or anything but it can be psychologically exhausting and Intel is (better be) taking that into consideration.

Edited November 5, 2020 by ComradeMaster

[Sarex]

They demolished Intel in CS:GO (probably apex too) and Valorant.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Does it matter whether Rocket Lake can catch up with Zen 3? They're coming in March. The 8 core/6 core probably won't outright beat the 5800x/5600x in gaming. A Radeon card will allow SMT, which will probably tip the scales in favour of Zen 3 anyway.

[Zoraptor]

SMT = SAM? Far too many TLAs, anyway.

In theory rocketlake should have a pretty hefty IPC lift, but it's definitely going to be hotter and hence not overclock as well as 'native' 14nm; that's just physics.

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

How big of a deal is a dead socket really. I have personally never gotten a newer gen cpu without a new gen mb.

It's a decently big deal. Even with only Zen2 support I could get probably a third more performance on the same MB from an upgrade, if Zen3 was supported it would be well over 50%, at least in theory. The price for an equivalent MB to the one I've got is also now ~250USD here, so even acknowledging the limitations like no PCIe 4 reusing the old MB would be most of the price of the processor saved. In practice my gpu is usually the limiting factor- or there isn't a limiting factor- but if I were getting a 6000 series I'd consider upgrading the CPU rather than buying a new MB as the saved money could go towards a tier upgrade there which is more likely to give added practical performance.

[Sarex]

Fair enough, it's just that for me personally that hasn't happened.

[Humanoid]

Seems like a well-handled launch from every link in the chain. AMD's official pricing is essentially exactly the same as it is in the US (XE currency conversion plus tax lands pretty much on the dot), and the distributors and retailers stuck to that price, no absurd price-gouging at all. Availability seemed fine in that when I went to bed a couple hours after the launch I could still order one if I wanted to. Hopefully that bodes well for the Big Navi launch, though I do expect much greater variance in mark-ups.

Too early for me to commit though, I really don't want to move my aging 290X to yet another machine and with the absence of any reasonably-priced next-gen GPUs from either team this year, a new PC remains a tough sell.

[Keyrock]

When was the last time AMD was the unequivocal performance leader like this? Was it Athlon 64 X2? Do we have to go back that far?

Edited November 6, 2020 by Keyrock

[AwesomeOcelot]

Scan has sent an update that the ETA on my order is the 20th, suggesting that stock ran out within 1 minute. I expect this tbh, especially with the higher end chips. Hopefully I'm early enough on the pre order list to get it before December.

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

When was the last time AMD was the unequivocal performance leader like this? Was it Athlon 64 X2? Do we have to go back that far?

Probably through the FX brand in 2007, but AMD's product line up and leads are so complicated during that time. Single core Athlon 64 beating early X2 in gaming. FX line beating X2 later on. How many sockets, architectures, and brands did AMD need from 2003-2008? I'm so glad they've simplified their line up with the Ryzen era, they even decided not to mess up the numbering again by skipping to 5000 numbering for Zen 3.

Edited November 6, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[Keyrock]

It seems the advertised clock speeds are absolute minimums. In the reviews I've  seen, the chips are consistently running faster than advertised, by as much as 450 MHz all core and 150 MHz max single core boost. This is stock performance, to be clear, and is contingent on thermal headroom and the silicon lottery. Impressive.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I haven't seen a benchmark where the 5800x performs better because it's 1 ccd, at least one that overcomes the L3 advantage of the R 9s. Even its advantage in base and boost frequency against the 3 5600x doesn't justify the cost. GN said it was priced to upsell, as it's not as good price/performance as the 3 5600 in games, or the 3 5900x in productivity.

Edited November 6, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[ComradeYellow]

33 minutes ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

I haven't seen a benchmark where the 5800x performs better because it's 1 ccd, at least one that overcomes the L3 advantage of the R 9s. Even its advantage in base and boost frequency against the 3600x doesn't justify the cost. GN said it was priced to upsell, as it's not as good price/performance as the 3600 in games, or the 3900x in productivity.

That's because most games don't utilize more than 6 cores.  There's a great deal of future proof in the 5800X as games turtle pace towards utilizing more cores.

Then again, I'm not exactly sure how Smart Access Memory would affect performance yet between a 5900X and a 5800X so it's still difficult to verify at the moment.

[Keyrock]

The 5800X does seem to be the odd man out, at the moment, at least. The 5600X is arguably the best value gaming CPU "available" (good luck finding one right now). The 5900X is arguably the top enthusiast chip, it bests the similarly priced i9-10900K nearly in everything and only loses to the 5950X in very highly-threaded workloads. The 5950X is expensive, but it's flat out unparalleled as a workstation chip, even the i9-10980XE, a more expensive (much more when you consider the pricey mobo) HEDT chip with 2 more cores, can't hang with it. The 5800X is at a weird price point where it's a poor value compared to the 5600X and can't compete with the R9s in productivity. Still, as @ComradeMastermentioned, I do expect games to start taking advantage of more cores in the near future, as devs start to push the shiny new MSony consoles to the limit. At that point, the 5800X may make a bit more sense as compared to the 5600X.

[Zoraptor]

Both 5600X and 5800X are likely to not make much sense in the longer term because their 3000 series equivalents didn't make much sense. The 3600/ 3700X almost always made more sense to buy than their more expensive counterpart, and the 3600X/5800X only made sense when they were priced nearly the same as their cheaper alternatives.

The only real plus for the 5800X is 'future proofing' since this time the consoles do at least have 8 strong cores instead of sub 2 Ghz Jaguars.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Zoraptor

[ComradeYellow]

The 5800X outperforms the 5900X in quite a few gaming benchmarks albeit by a very small, almost insignificant margin.

But again, that is w/o the SAM feature so who knows how 64mb of L3 cache in two ccds would effect that.

I'm guessing AMD extremists should stick with either the 5950x or the 5900x and go with Radeon whilst Geforce users would probably be complimented well with the 5800X or 5600X (depending on your budget of course, you're gambling a bit buying the 5800X in hopes that 6 years from now it'll remain a stellar performer while the 5600X falls behind).