AMD Zen Discussion Thread

beauf

Homelander wrote: »

I wouldn't advise the 3300X over the 1600AF or 2600, same price but they have more cores and threads.

With games already scaling to hex and octo-core, and particularly with the new console generation looming built on 8 core processors, it'd be madness to build a new gaming machine now with a quad core in my opinion.

Best budget combo is Ryzen 3600 + A320M, can be had for £190 and gives killer performance for the money. Even even a 1600AF and A320M is only £150 or so and an excellent base.

I see the value in that. But when I look at games the kids and I are playing there are often poorly optimized for multi threading. The main limitation is the GPU.

savemejebus

I think with AMD rising again they're becoming more and more common again.

Remember how much fun we got out of socket 939

Cuddlesworth

beauf wrote: »

I see the value in that. But when I look at games the kids and I are playing there are often poorly optimized for multi threading. The main limitation is the GPU.

Very few games scale past 8 threads, but its helpful to have a little extra grunt in the background for other stuff while gaming.

beauf

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Very few games scale past 8 threads, but its helpful to have a little extra grunt in the background for other stuff while gaming.

Oh I agree but I already have one dual Xeon cpu old 12 core 24 thread machine and a newer Xeon with a single 4/8 which is slightly faster in most things but I find rarely do we do any heavy multitasking at home.

beauf

What's the point of the 3300x then. Most reviews love it. Only forums seem to say there's no point..

Homelander

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Very few games scale past 8 threads, but its helpful to have a little extra grunt in the background for other stuff while gaming.

Many games don't, but given that a decent handful of AAA games already do since around 2016/2017, it's reasonable to assume that over the coming years, with new consoles being octo-core, it'll become the norm.

People often say "Ah, they said that last gen" but the difference was that the CPU's in the current console generation were pretty much crap from day zero and that certainly had an impact on game development over the entire cycle.

This gen they're actually quite powerful and game development will take advantage of that.

I mean today, you can run certain CPU heavy games on a 7th gen i5 and a 2nd gen i7, and get better results from the i7 - due to the extra threads.

And by better I mean lower average frames but more stable 0.1% and 1% lows, which people constantly ignore (not here I mean, but often in general)

beauf

It's less glitchy, smoother is the usual comment. Not reflected in benchmarks but is in experience in game.

Homelander

beauf wrote: »

What's the point of the 3300x then. Most reviews love it. Only forums seem to say there's no point..

a) excellent performance for low price
b) It's a 7700K for £120!
c) better per-core performance than 1600AF/2600

But as I said, if you're looking to build a budget PC with a solid base that'll last through upgrade cycles, the 1600AF is a better choice due to more cores/threads, which will make a big difference over the coming years with new consoles being Ryzen based octo-core.

The 3300X in isolation is a marvel. Barely 3 years after the 7700K - which was king of the gaming world - you get the same CPU for a third of the price.

So kudos to AMD. It's hard not to be impressed and sing the praises of the CPU. But, as forums will tell you, it's in a weird place when the 1600AF exists, if you're planning a build that'll last.

beauf

I see the solid base as the motherboard not the CPU. But I can see why if you are always building a new 1000 gaming rig it makes sense to keep changing the motherboard.

god's toy

Still have a 1st gen 1600x on a x370 taichi mobo. Plan on dropping in a 3600 as soon as they bring out the XT and we see more price cuts. That way I'm good to go while they move over to the new CPUs/chip sets later that year (or next..) and the first gen users sort all the bugs and whatnot, by the 2nd gen I'm upgrading the mobo/cpu to the newest thing.

H3llR4iser

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

How common are CPU only upgrades?

Very very rarely indeed - if I look back, I did it in the 486 era (from a DX/33 to a DX2/66, which ran beautifully OC'd at 80Mhz!).

However, I did "partial upgrades" mostly during the Socket A + Athlon XP period - back then competition was EXTREME, not only in the CPU and GPU departments but with chipsets as well - multiple competitors were in the fold (AMD, Intel, Via, nVidia). Not only I did several CPU only upgrades, I did a couple of motherboard only ones - remember nForce?

Nowadays however...a CPU only upgrade is very rare, as there are other paths that yeld objectively more tangible results - GPU and storage being the best examples. We have a "gamng" slack channel at work, and you'd be surprised about how many people are still rocking 3570Ks or even an "ancient" i5-2500K.

Most users tend to upgrade when either some new features are available, or when they realize something doesn't run on their Carbon-14 dateable system (quite a few threads all arund the web by people finding out stuff doesn't run on their 2008 ThinkPad lately ). And at those intervals - it's a new system, not an upgrade.

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Very few games scale past 8 threads, but its helpful to have a little extra grunt in the background for other stuff while gaming.

Yeah...now the "background stuff" probably won't make a difference noticeable by the user without a synthetic benchmark, but still - I always cringe at the "go Intel if you're only gaming" notion that most reviewers still keep peddling. It quite simply makes no sense - a PC is by definition not an exclusive machine. You WILL want or need to do something else on it other than gaming at some point, even if it's just sorting and resizing photos; And usually the advantage Ryzen CPUs hold in productivity tasks is much more marked and tangible than whatever Core CPUs hold in gaming (you'll notice a 2 minutes difference in zipping a large file, no one will notice the difference between 110 and 120 fps).

The only scenario where the "go Intel for gaming" has any sense is that of a "PC Console" that lives under the TV and there is a different PC in the household for any other task.

Homelander

beauf wrote: »

I see the solid base as the motherboard not the CPU. But I can see why if you are always building a new 1000 gaming rig it makes sense to keep changing the motherboard.

90% of people never change their motherboard or CPU. Probably 90% of people who invest in a good motherboard never use a single feature of it's improved feature set over the cheaper models either.

There's a mindset out there from non-techies that more expensive = better without much thought given to why, even though for the average user, a A320M is perfectly fine.

Often you will see people putting together their first build with a certain budget and they'll have an X570 in there. Why? They don't know. They just know it's 'somehow' better.

The best course for the majority of people is a cheap motherboard and the best CPU with the best longevity prospects that the budget allows for.

An A320M now with a Ryzen 3600 will last years. By the time it's obsolete it will be quite likely time to have been thinking about a new build anyway, rather than just upgrading the CPU.

In the same way that if you bought an i5-4670 in 2013 and wanted an upgrade now - yeah, you could pay €100 for a 2nd hand i7-4790 and it'd be an upgrade, but it'd just be easier, more beneficial and just make more sense in most cases to just shell out for a Ryzen 3600 platform.

Personally my motherboard's a B450M, it would've been an A320M with M2 support except at the time, I wasn't sure the bios would support my 3700X so I just opted for a 450 Max.

That's not saying that people don't use the features of B450M or X570, just speaking generally about most people.

Slutmonkey57b

I'd agree with that. There's a small subset of users that buy some sort of hardware every 6 months and for them sorry term upgrade paths are important but back to those nforce days, compatibility of things like serial/ago/PCI slots was a thing, as was the switch from ide to sata or DDR compatibility. Comparatively speaking, memory, storage and GPU connectors have been pretty stable for a while now.

But I would guess that there's still far more users for whom an upgrade is an "every few years" job because the 6 month tinkerer is actually spending quite a lot in the same time period and they don't have that sort of liquid budget. Or else a partner who's going to look askance if they use it!

beauf

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Very very rarely indeed - if I look back, I did it in the 486 era (from a DX/33 to a DX2/66, which ran beautifully OC'd at 80Mhz!).

However, I did "partial upgrades" mostly during the Socket A + Athlon XP period - back then competition was EXTREME, not only in the CPU and GPU departments but with chipsets as well - multiple competitors were in the fold (AMD, Intel, Via, nVidia). Not only I did several CPU only upgrades, I did a couple of motherboard only ones - remember nForce? ....

That's my era Celeron 300a (remember dual celerons) and T-Bird Athlons.

Before that moving to local bus graphics then Vesa, then PCI

beauf

Homelander wrote: »

90% of people never change their motherboard or CPU. Probably 90% of people who invest in a good motherboard never use a single feature of it's improved feature set over the cheaper models either.

There's a mindset out there from non-techies that more expensive = better without much thought given to why, even though for the average user, a A320M is perfectly fine. .....

That's not saying that people don't use the features of B450M or X570, just speaking generally about most people.

I get what your saying I'm just coming at this from a different perspective...I was going to get a uSFF but was kinda thinking maybe the 3300x would be a more useful machine. But for sure maybe it makes for sense to buy something cheaper thats just as good. I just didn't know much about these Zen platforms and this seemed like a good place to ask.

Cuddlesworth

beauf wrote: »

I get what your saying I'm just coming at this from a different perspective...I was going to get a uSFF but was kinda thinking maybe the 3300x would be a more useful machine. But for sure maybe it makes for sense to buy something cheaper thats just as good. I just didn't know much about these Zen platforms and this seemed like a good place to ask.

So this is less complex then it seems.

You want a tiny machine like a NUC, then buy intel. While AMD certainly has better products around, they just don't compete in this space right now. And to be blunt, once you take away gaming and "power" users, most Intel processors are more then capable of anything you throw at them. Running webpages and office applications don't need 6 core beasts, dual core with hyperthreading works fine.

If cost is king, tinkering is unwanted and absolute gaming performance is needed in a gaming PC, buy a 3300x and cheap board coupled with the best graphics card you can afford.

mossym

mossym wrote: »

been pc-less for 3 week now. turned off the pc one night, next day flicked it on and nothing. gigabtye x570 auros pro with a 3700x. queue lots of troubleshooting, all the usual tricks, spot the cpu light is flashing, reseated, no good, flash bios, the whole works. guessed it was the mobo, so back to ccl it went, who confirmed it dead. great, but now it goes back to gigabyte and predicted timescale is months, not weeks.

so i bought another identical board, which is in dpd athlone and would be great if it arrived tomorrow, if those b550 boards were available they might have made an interesting choice

here's hoping the 3700x is okay when that new board arrives.

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Months? That sucks big time. Hopefully it's all smooth sailing now.

typical. replacement board i bought arrived. everything up and running, so i'm happy.

then i get a message from CCL to say my order is on it's way. WTF? after telling me months to get a replacement it's arriving 10 days after the first board. i'd have waited that long.

ah well, be an x570 board up for sale shortly

K.O.Kiki

*drools*

TitianGerm

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

*drools*

Wow. That is the nicest looking motherboard I've ever seen.

wotzgoingon

I don't like it.

wotzgoingon

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I don't like it.

+1

Inquitus

I like it, it's a very clean design without all the RGB **** that seems to be designed for 5 yos consigned to the bin.

H3llR4iser

Google feed pushed this on me today - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-burnout-amd-board-power-cheats-may-shorten-cpu-lifespan

It's not an entirely new category of tricks - back in the day, some manufacurers (cough Asus cough...) tricked around with the FSB, running it a tiny amount out of spec (e.g. 101.5 Mhz instead of 100).

Now, electromigration in CPUs is a fact, the hotter the faster it happens, but when talking about the "shorten lifespan" thing, well, where is your current CPU going to be in 10 years anyway? These chips run relatively hot even at stock, so we're not talking about something being pushed massively out of specs.

Which leads to the consideration - what would even be the point of such trick like the one in the article? It's a well known fact that Ryzen CPU don't overclock that well and, more importantly, kinda work like GPUs with their boost being dependent on temperatures. Ryzen 9s especially, with 12/16 cores and a small surface, are nearly impossible to keep below 70c stock (full load, obviously) even with a beefy watercooler. Actually, it's been tested and proven multiple times how many chips can actually gain a tiny bit of performance with a small undervolting - Gamers Nexus did a video about it, and my own 3900X actually runs best with a -0.050v offset.

Now I know Tom's hasn't been stellar lately...

Homelander

Inquitus wrote: »

I like it, it's a very clean design without all the RGB **** that seems to be designed for 5 yos consigned to the bin.

I really like it. Simple, classy, clinically clean.

Would I **** pay €300 for it though.

That white NZXT board that was out a couple of years ago looked much better. That just looks like they took any Aorus board and splapped a few white bits to it.

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

That white NZXT board that was out a couple of years ago looked much better. That just looks like they took any Aorus board and splapped a few white bits to it.

Looks like a grey colour to me not white?

TitianGerm

TitianGerm wrote: »

Looks like a grey colour to me not white?

The NZXT one?

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The NZXT one?

No the one posted above. When you said that one I thought that's the motherboard you were referring to?

wotzgoingon

XT official specs. Much the same as current chips with a slight increase to single core.

https://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/143473-amd-introduces-ryzen-9-3900xt-ryzen-7-3800xt-ryzen-5-3600xt/?fbclid=IwAR2vqMgsnjeDjCMEMtjMkwTg-Yf1Is7l7ppja_yfkL5Z9VIXL8P_VYM6gqA

.G.

Got a brand new 3600 sent to me by OCUK as a replacement for the faulty one. Would have preferred a refunds but didn't get a choice. Now to figure out whether to sell it or keep it. Planning to upgrade my own PC later this year with a Ryzen 4000 series.