Looks like Intel's 8700k 6 core Coffee Lake might be quite a beast.

[Nuckles56]

Even worse than I expected. Great stuff! Thanks!
And Swedes show how things should be done - as usual.
Anyone who thinks that Intel is treating customers worse than AMD should check this review.

My comment is that the old FX chips tend to win when there is a heavy multicore loads where the number of cores is more important than IPC, whilst in games or strongly single threaded workloads, ryzen 3 typically wins or is very close. The other thing is that ryzen 3 wasn't aimed to be an upgrade for someone using a fx 83xx or 9xxx CPU, that's where Ryzen 5 & 7 come in and thrash the old FX CPUs.

The other takeaway from those results are that everyone should be trying to get the i7 5775c (that L4 cache) and overclock the hell out of it as it is a killer gaming CPU (I'd say better than even the i7 7700k)

 

[RealNeil]

They both absolutely monster their way through WCG work units, performance in this workload matches the top end consumer intel chips, only the crazy high core count Xeons really outperform them.

Same with my Ryzen 1700X. Performance in WCG is outstanding, so much so that I have begun to consider a thread-ripper box in the future.
I agreed to buy a 10 core 7900X with an MSI X299 board and a 32GB RAM kit today. But right after that, I'll most likely buy a thread-ripper box.
Both AMD ~and~ Intel are stepping up and that's good for us.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

6300 has 6 cores by the way...

Yeah I know it's 6, but was thinking of 8300 when I typed that, which is more common for gamers. It was a typo, deal with it. Kinda funny you're all about talking core count though when you now insist I'm failing by choosing a 6 over an 8, for reasons I already explained have zero to do with core count, yet here you are on a 6 yourself, and a very badly designed one no less. All that need be said really, totally in denial.

I think we are done on this subject.

LOL, you mad bro? Yeah truth hits hard doesn't it?

Again, you don't preach about CPUs when you have a mere FX-6300. It's where gamers go to fail, not the standard of reference you're making it out to be. If that hurts your feelings, so be it. Maybe it will help you choose better next time.

 

[Vya Domus]

Yeah I know it's 6, but was thinking of 8300 when I typed that, which is more common for gamers. It was a typo, deal with it. Kinda funny you're all about talking core count though when you now insist I'm failing by choosing a 6 over an 8, for reasons I already explained have zero to do with core count, yet here you are on a 6 yourself, and a very badly designed one no less. All that need be said really, totally in denial.

LOL, you mad bro? Yeah truth hits hard doesn't it?

Again, you don't preach about CPUs when you have a mere FX-6300. It's where gamers go to fail, not the standard of reference you're making it out to be.

This has turned into a fanboy shitshow and you're doing your best keep it up and running. I was hoping you're better than that , you're not.

I have said we're done because there is nothing worth discussing with you anymore. You already porved to me how much you know ( I'll let you figure out if that is sarcasm or not ) and how viable are your arguments ( I still don't know against what are you arguing ).

I wont bother you anymore , I'll make sure of that. You can chill.

 

[erocker]

You are both gone from this thread. The rest of you carry on in a civil manner, please.

Thank you.

 

[Melvis]

You'd have to have evidence of a better performing AMD CPU to say that, and no such evidence exists. Intel certainly wouldn't let it happen, especially for an entire 12 months or more.

Erm there is plenty of evidence, the 1600 from AMD in its category has destroyed its Intel counter part. Pretty much every intel CPU apart from the Pentium G4xxx and i7-7700K have been beaten by AMD, why else you think intel is making this "beast" of a CPU in the first place? just for kicks? By the time this "beast" 6 core CPU comes out by intel to shake up AMD's line up it will be damn close to 12months, just saying.

 

[hat]

One thing I find interesting is it's supposedly socket 1151. If it works with existing boards, that's 3 generations on the same socket. Maybe Intel doesn't want people with Skylake or Kaby Lake chips jumping ship to AMD to get affordable chips with a higher core count. Of course, if it's priced really high, that plan may not work too well...

 

[Hood]

I would love to build systems with all the new CPUs, they all have a place in someone's PC, regardless of performance, price, ability to heat up a room, marketing, or reviews. The worst CPU in the world has some people feeling all warm and fuzzy, as long as it's just a little better than their last one. Perspectives, knowledge levels, and requirements vary widely. 90% of all users have no need for the new high-end parts like Ryzen 7, i9 and Threadripper, but all levels of performance and price are well represented at this time, with possibly too many choices for the average buyer to sift through without some confusion. A lot of new information to digest, reviews to read, opinions to agree or disagree with, and emotions that defy common sense. I personally don't understand why anyone's upset, this is the most exciting time in years for the enthusiast and system builder. I'm just gonna kick back, read the reviews, and continue to enjoy my Haswell system until AMD or Intel comes up with a compelling reason to upgrade, that's my plan.

 

[notb]

My comment is that the old FX chips tend to win when there is a heavy multicore loads where the number of cores is more important than IPC, whilst in games or strongly single threaded workloads, ryzen 3 typically wins or is very close. The other thing is that ryzen 3 wasn't aimed to be an upgrade for someone using a fx 83xx or 9xxx CPU, that's where Ryzen 5 & 7 come in and thrash the old FX CPUs.

I'm not talking about upgrading, but about product segmentation.
FX-8350 used to cost $200 when released (so like the Ryzen 5), but it dropped to $120. So AMD is replacing this product with something worse (in the price range).

Keep in mind just a margin of PC owners is upgrading their PCs - understood as buying something better each time.
Most people are just updating: replacing their old parts with something at similar price point. And we tend to expect that our new $120 CPU performs better than the $120 CPU we bought 3 years ago.

Also this leaves AMD with no option for the <$100 buyers (they had FX-6300 earlier) other than the Bristol Ridge APU, which aren't very fast. A10-9700 is slower than i3-7100.
What AMD needs is an APU with strong CPU and an IGP that's just there to product the video signal.
What they actually make are APUs with powerful IGP and a CPU that is there just to support the software.
Disaster.

 

[Nuckles56]

I'm not talking about upgrading, but about product segmentation.
FX-8350 used to cost $200 when released (so like the Ryzen 5), but it dropped to $120. So AMD is replacing this product with something worse (in the price range).

Keep in mind just a margin of PC owners is upgrading their PCs - understood as buying something better each time.
Most people are just updating: replacing their old parts with something at similar price point. And we tend to expect that our new $120 CPU performs better than the $120 CPU we bought 3 years ago.

Also this leaves AMD with no option for the <$100 buyers (they had FX-6300 earlier) other than the Bristol Ridge APU, which aren't very fast. A10-9700 is slower than i3-7100.
What AMD needs is an APU with strong CPU and an IGP that's just there to product the video signal.
What they actually make are APUs with powerful IGP and a CPU that is there just to support the software.
Disaster.

1. Ryzen prices will also drop, my guess is that the ryzen 3 1200 will be $80 or less in 6-12 months time and the 1500x will have taken the 1200's price point and that is better than the FX chips all round. For most, the extra single thread performance is more important than the extra multicore performance from the older FX 8 core CPUs. The average price for the fx 83xx series is about $150 currently, whilst $120 is the fx 6300 price territory (I'm ignoring sales here as they are a variable discount and will also apply to the new Ryzen chips too but we haven't seen many sales yet). The average price for the 83xx series is pretty constant over the last 18 months from the PCPP price trend data.

2. The same thing equally applies to intel then seeing as the i7 4790k to i7 7700k has been a minimal performance increase for our money too and I don't see the complaints there. And it also takes me back to one of the points I made in 1, that the single threaded performance is up massively over the fx chips, so they are getting a performance upgrade and also access to things like m.2 SSDs, OC'ing the 1200 to 3.8-3.9GHz also means that the multicore losses are turned into draws or even wins, especially with some nice fast RAM (3000 or 3200MHz)

3. For what you are wanting, we shall see what the ryzen APUs bring to the table. The reason that they made the APUs that way was they didn't have a good CPU core but could build good GPUs, so you use what you have. I suspect there will be a CPU strong and GPU weak option there for people like you. Personally, I'm happy to see a nice strong GPU there as well as good CPU cores, as that will be good for lifting the base level of PC up to decent standards for all. You can still buy the FX 6300 if you wish for roughly the same prices as before Ryzen was released so that is still just as much an option as before.

 

[Vayra86]

Even worse than I expected. Great stuff! Thanks!
And Swedes show how things should be done - as usual.
Anyone who thinks that Intel is treating customers worse than AMD should check this review.
@W1zzard why not include FX-8350 in Ryzen reviews? Cadaveca reviewed it back in 2012 - maybe you still have access to that system?


It'll need a 300-series chipset to work, but LGA1151 socket remains unchanged (although some here tried to convince me this socket can't support 6 cores - I'll find that discussion sooner or later ).
So it isn't ideal, but still allowing an upgrade path other than replacing half of PC.
New 4-core CPUs will be compatible with 200-series chipsets.

This surprised me too - and lets not forget FX 8350 can overclock quite high on top of it, Ryzen cannot. This puts 'bad Ryzen gaming performance in a whole new light And some perspective on the gap with Intel too, which is rather small on the top end.

And on top of that this also highlights why people picked FX over i5 quads at the time, because they were similar in price. Back then it was i5 3570k all over, or you went with FX x3xx. Its funny to see how little has changed over the past five years of CPU releases - Ryzen is a very similar dilemma compared to the i7 K of this day and age.

EDIT: oh great, the active posters have forcibly left the building

TW3 @ 720p

 

[Nuckles56]

This surprised me too - and lets not forget FX 8350 can overclock quite high on top of it, Ryzen cannot. This puts 'bad Ryzen gaming performance in a whole new light And some perspective on the gap with Intel too, which is rather small on the top end.

Well you can use the FX 9590 as a guide for what you can expect to see from a decent to good overclock on the 8350 and it only gets you a 5fps improvement in performance

 

[Vayra86]

Well you can use the FX 9590 as a guide for what you can expect to see from a decent to good overclock on the 8350 and it only gets you a 5fps improvement in performance

Yeah but look at the rest of the playing field and what it is close to at that point, surpassing Haswell @ stock. I wouldn't call that a total failure like many make it out to be. Is it inefficient, oh yes, grossly, but the performance is there.

The irony is that we see Ryzen 3 now recommended for midrange gaming rigs while it performs worse than an FX from five years ago

Anyway, back to Intel. Way off topic sry

 

[trparky]

performs worse than an FX from five years ago

And that's only because of that stupid design decision to clock the speed of the Infinity Fabric at half the speed of the system RAM. Why the hell they made such a boneheaded design mistake I have no idea.

I'm not saying that building CPUs with a modular design is a bad idea, no, that's not at all what I'm saying. I am however saying that the bandwidth between the modules is just not good enough and is causing performance bottlenecks between the modules. Throw in the fact that despite all of the hype behind AMD's "AI-like" Neural Net Predictor AMD's branch predictor still lags behind that of Intel.

Yeah yeah, I know... more cores but the requirements to have those "more cores" is to clock the cores slower and that's a trade-off I would rather not have to deal with. Yes, more cores is "future proof" (at least as much as you can) but what about the old software? Some of us are still using old software or playing older games where raw clock speed matters. More cores doesn't mean shit for those situations, high clock speed is what matters in those situations and that's where both AMD and Intel have failed in this recent crop of chips. I have two games that need high clock speed because they are both un-optimized pieces of garbage and I highly doubt that the game developer (Blizzard) is going to come out with some magical multi-core patch that will magically fix those games so that they run better on lower-clocked multi-core CPUs.

I'm not an Intel fanboy nor am I an AMD fanboy, hell... I've not bought a new CPU in years because everything lately has been been about as exciting as watching paint dry. The only thing that's really been interesting lately is in the GPU and SSD side of things lately. If we started talking about cheaper and higher capacity SSDs then we would have something to really talk about. Where's my $150 Terabyte SSD? I want my cheap SSD!!!

 

[EarthDog]

Its not even old software or old games. Most modern games dont use more than a couple cores. Clockspeed still rules in gaming so long as you have 4 cores.

Other software is utilizing more cores, sure but do a lot use it? Nerp.

 

[Hood]

What AMD needs is an APU with strong CPU and an IGP that's just there to product the video signal

So you mean like an i3 or i5? A Ryzen 5 1500X with "Radeon HD" graphics (like the $50 Richland APUs) would do the trick. It would cost $200, just like the i5, and you'd still need a video card for any real gaming, but at least it would have 8 threads.

 

[trparky]

Other software is utilizing more cores, sure but do a lot use it?

Basically yes. Outside of specific workstation type situations more cores really means nothing.

Yes, games in the future will probably be more multi-core aware but we're really years away from that. Besides... do you really have any idea just how damn difficult it is to program with multiple threads? Multi-threading may seem easy until you start realizing that you need to keep all of those thread synced and that's where things get really really difficult to do. There's thread locks, mutexes, etc. If multi-threaded programming (especially for games) was easy to do, don't you think we would see more of it?

And besides... you don't really need more cores for more threads. Threads really are just a way to have more things going on at the same time inside the program's execution environment. You don't necessarily need more CPU cores to run more threads.

 

[notb]

1. Ryzen prices will also drop, my guess is that the ryzen 3 1200 will be $80 or less in 6-12 months time and the 1500x will have taken the 1200's price point and that is better than the FX chips all round.

Maybe they will. I'm talking about the current situation.

For most, the extra single thread performance is more important than the extra multicore performance from the older FX 8 core CPUs.

I totally agree! But I've been saying this also in April, when the whole AMD crowd was yelling that single-thread performance is not important - that multi-thread is the way to go.

The average price for the fx 83xx series is about $150 currently, whilst $120 is the fx 6300 price territory

I don't know where you're getting these prices from. FX 6300 used to cost $100 for the last 2 years:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/PnxfrH/amd-cpu-fd6300wmhkbox?history_days=730

2. The same thing equally applies to intel then seeing as the i7 4790k to i7 7700k has been a minimal performance increase for our money too and I don't see the complaints there.

On the contrary, this forum is full of complaints about lack of performance increase in the Intel camp.
But you know... keeping performance constant and decreasing it are 2 different things.

And it also takes me back to one of the points I made in 1, that the single threaded performance is up massively over the fx chips, so they are getting a performance upgrade and also access to things like m.2 SSDs, OC'ing the 1200 to 3.8-3.9GHz also means that the multicore losses are turned into draws or even wins, especially with some nice fast RAM (3000 or 3200MHz)

I'm not considering OC at all. It's irrelevant in this case.
As for features: they could have been added to the AM3+ platform as well. And M.2 is just a connector.

So you mean like an i3 or i5? A Ryzen 5 1500X with "Radeon HD" graphics (like the $50 Richland APUs) would do the trick.

Of course it would. But it's not here. I can't build my opinion about a platform based on CPU ideas that COULD be realized in the future.
The reality is that AMD seems to have a big problem with product segmentation. They've just released some $30 GPUs to accompany their IGP-less Ryzens. Guess what will happen to sales of those if they release a 1500X-based APU for a $10 premium.
It's actually even worse, because AMD launched the Ryzen PRO lineup aimed at office desktops and it lacks an IGP as well.

So that a typical business buyer wants is a PRO APU. What he'd get is a choice of non-PRO APUs (lacking security features) and PRO CPUs (lacking IGP). Or is AMD also going to release a Ryzen APU PRO? This will become the most messed up CPU lineup I've seen in the last decade.
But the great thing is that our typical business buyer has one other choice. It's the i5-7500, which covers all his needs and also costs $200.

And now, to make it even worse for AMD, Intel is releasing a 6-core CPU with IGP. And the importance of this is quite obvious: AMD can't do that.

 

[trparky]

the whole AMD crowd was yelling that single-thread performance is not important

It's the only form of defense that the AMD camp has. They know that Ryzen isn't up to snuff but instead of admitting that their almighty "god" AMD is... impotent, they trot out this tired argument.

Oh good God, I'm going to so.... get flamed for this comment. *pulls out the asbestos pants and suit*

 

[EarthDog]

Basically yes. Outside of specific workstation type situations more cores really means nothing.

Yes, games in the future will probably be more multi-core aware but we're really years away from that. Besides... do you really have any idea just how damn difficult it is to program with multiple threads? Multi-threading may seem easy until you start realizing that you need to keep all of those thread synced and that's where things get really really difficult to do. There's thread locks, mutexes, etc. If multi-threaded programming (especially for games) was easy to do, don't you think we would see more of it?

And besides... you don't really need more cores for more threads. Threads really are just a way to have more things going on at the same time inside the program's execution environment. You don't necessarily need more CPU cores to run more threads.

I recall several in were swooping in and commenting about the difficulty of multithreading...turned out it was more lazy proframming than it is difficult. That said, i could have misread.

As far as more threads on cores... there is truth to tbe statement, but, more threads per core would have even less returns than a single hypeethread. Resource sharing etc. I dont imagine that to be worth it... but who knows.

 

[trparky]

It's not so much as being lazy but it's damn difficult to not only do it but do multi-threaded right. Imagine you have three threads; one thread is working and two threads are sleeping because the two threads are waiting for the first thread to finish. Finally the first thread is finished but wait, we're not done yet! The third thread is waiting on the second thread to finish so that thread can't work until the second thread is finished. Let's repeat this a couple of more times like what occurs inside a game engine and suddenly you start to realize just how damn difficult multi-threading is.

In theory you could split the graphics and audio engine into separate threads and have the user input in its own thread but then you have data sharing between the threads and now you need to make sure that data sharing is done in a thread safe manner so that data isn't overwritten when it's not supposed to be and... yeah, you get the idea.

Multi-threading is hard!

Granted I have only done desktop application programming but even in those situations multi-threading is difficult to do in a safe way so that data isn't clobbered by threads that are stepping over each other.

Basically multi-threading is not some magic wand that can be waved at some programming code, no... it needs to be done carefully and even then weird bugs can crop up because some thread started work before it was supposed to do so thus throwing the whole program out of whack.

 

[johnspack]

People who don't know how to use more than 8 threads are irrelevant.... sorry... I do transcoding and run many vms, so I actually run out of threads. And I like to game. And my six core at 4.7ghz does not bad even in single threaded stuff.
Would I like a 22 core that could clock the same? F.... yeah! Does the future hold multicore standard gaming, god I hope so. But even when I run a 4 threaded game, I can watch multiple other threads doing other things for the os. That
means those original 4 game threads are unbothered by anything else. Will new games use more than 4 theads, dam right they will. So hold on to your quads, and clock them very, very high.....
And would I buy a Ryzen, dam right I would! That 1950 is drool worthy.

 

[notb]

People who don't know how to use more than 8 threads are irrelevant.... sorry...

What?!

And if you're doing transcoding and running VMS in background (during e.g. gaming), why not get 2 machines? It'll be much more effective and not necessarily more expensive.

 

[EarthDog]

It's not so much as being lazy but it's damn difficult to not only do it but do multi-threaded right. Imagine you have three threads; one thread is working and two threads are sleeping because the two threads are waiting for the first thread to finish. Finally the first thread is finished but wait, we're not done yet! The third thread is waiting on the second thread to finish so that thread can't work until the second thread is finished. Let's repeat this a couple of more times like what occurs inside a game engine and suddenly you start to realize just how damn difficult multi-threading is.

In theory you could split the graphics and audio engine into separate threads and have the user input in its own thread but then you have data sharing between the threads and now you need to make sure that data sharing is done in a thread safe manner so that data isn't overwritten when it's not supposed to be and... yeah, you get the idea.

Multi-threading is hard!

Granted I have only done desktop application programming but even in those situations multi-threading is difficult to do in a safe way so that data isn't clobbered by threads that are stepping over each other.

Basically multi-threading is not some magic wand that can be waved at some programming code, no... it needs to be done carefully and even then weird bugs can crop up because some thread started work before it was supposed to do so thus throwing the whole program out of whack.

I disagree.. and so did a programmer that chimed in on another thread when this was brought up.

We'll leave it at that. It's swimming out of my lane...but remember distinctly this debate until a programmer came in and said its lazy programming that is most of the issue.

 

[notb]

I disagree.. and so did a programmer that chimed in on another thread when this was brought up.

We'll leave it at that. It's swimming out of my lane...but remember distinctly this debate until a programmer came in and said its lazy programming that is most of the issue.

Can you point to that thread?
"Lazy programming" can create a difference between a program using a single or many cores. But if a program uses 1<n<MAX then it's usually already a result of some optimization. And yes, it's not easy.