AMD Zen Discussion Thread

BloodBath · 02-03-2017 7:37pm

Venom wrote: »

The 4k results tying with Intel chips are down to GPU bottlenecking so will be interesting to see how Ryzen does with 1080Ti's in crossfire.

The memory issue fix is weeks away as far as I heard. The overclocking headroom range on Ryzen could just be low. What worries me the most, is that so many reviews are saying serious top tier cooling is needed for these new chips which offsets there cheaper prices.

In fairness any 8/16 is gonna need top tier cooling atm until we go down to 7nm. The cpu is not using much power though so it shouldn't need it. It seems to be more of an issue of extracting that heat from such a small area.

You can get top tier cooling for around €70-80 in the Noctuas high end air so it's not that expensive.

Was there any tests using the stock wraith max cooler? I wonder if it's down clocking at high loads using this.

We can only hope there are some bugs that will be fixed and improve performance here but the 1800x is not looking to be the all workload wonder we were hoping for.

Venom · 02-03-2017 7:44pm

BloodBath wrote: »

In fairness any 8/16 is gonna need top tier cooling atm until we go down to 7nm.

You can get top tier cooling for around €70-80 in the Noctuas high end air so it's not that expensive.

Was there any tests using the stock wraith max cooler? I wonder if it's down clocking at high loads using this.

We can only hope there are some bugs that will be fixed and improve performance here but the 1800x is not looking to be the all workload wonder we were hoping for.

The review samples given to most sites and Youtubers came with Noctua coolers which a couple of reviewers ditched in favor of top tier AIO setups because they couldn't deal with the high temps the chips were putting out.

BloodBath · 02-03-2017 7:57pm

The 1700 looks to be an amazing workstation cpu all the same. Even if you have to go high end AIO to cool it at an all core 4Ghz overclock it's coming out a hell of a lot cheaper than the 6900k for similar workstation results.

The most disappointing thing about the R3 and R5 is the lower clocks speeds. Intel's clock speeds ramp up at lower core counts. AMD's are going down for some reason at least at stock. Here's hoping they overclock better.

The clock speeds on these are the main thing that's gonna stop them competing with the 7600k and 7700k for high end gaming PC's

Slutmonkey57b · 02-03-2017 8:00pm

I think blaming Ryzen for poor gaming benchmarks is a mistake, because it makes one fatal assumption: Games are well engineered, and the cpu isn't.

The truth is that it's now totally normal for AAA game titles to have massive levels of ****box bugs on launch day, many of which never get fixed at all. "Launch day/pre-order suckers" is practically a law at this stage.

The fact that Zen performs well in workstation apps and benchmarks shows that *properly written code* screams along. Half-baked partially tested code slapped together in unrealistic timeframes by devs who only half understand multithreaded code concepts doesn't.

It's like blaming your pc for being slow to load websites when the blame really lies with moron web designers prioritising stupid flashiness over function.

Inviere · 02-03-2017 8:03pm

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

I think blaming Ryzen for poor gaming benchmarks is a mistake, because it makes one fatal assumption: Games are well engineered, and the cpu isn't.

The truth is that it's now totally normal for AAA game titles to have massive levels of ****box bugs on launch day, many of which never get fixed at all. "Launch day/pre-order suckers" is practically a law at this stage.

The fact that Zen performs well in workstation apps and benchmarks shows that *properly written code* screams along. Half-baked partially tested code slapped together in unrealistic timeframes by devs who only half understand multithreaded code concepts doesn't.

It's like blaming your pc for being slow to load websites when the blame really lies with moron web designers prioritising stupid flashiness over function.

Perhaps true, but at the end of the day it doesn't change the fact that it appears to be Intel > AMD for gaming, once again. If an i5 or i7 can process poorly written code better than the R7 can, all it means is Intel will remain the defacto choice for gaming pcs

BloodBath · 02-03-2017 8:06pm

Good point but that's the reality. Most games and software are hobbled together from a lot of middleware. Not masterpieces of coding built from the ground up.

I don't see the point in testing anything older than 5 years though. Why is Crysis 1 still being used as a benchmark?

Slutmonkey57b · 02-03-2017 8:13pm

BloodBath wrote: »

Good point but that's the reality. Most games and software are hobbled together from a lot of middleware. Not masterpieces of coding built from the ground up.

I don't see the point in testing anything older than 5 years though. Why is Crysis 1 still being used as a benchmark?

You know, I was reading the anandtech review and thought to myself "oh great another yearly update of the benchmarking suite, which means we can't compare stuff reviewed in November against stuff reviewed 6 months later. Cheers gits". They've effectively made "bench" useless because they're taking so long to review things (if at all) and changing their test setup every year. Most people don't upgrade on a yearly schedule so it's actually much better if sites run a rolling update ... Ditch the oldest benchmark if you want to add a new one.

BloodBath · 02-03-2017 8:19pm

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

You know, I was reading the anandtech review and thought to myself "oh great another yearly update of the benchmarking suite, which means we can't compare stuff reviewed in November against stuff reviewed 6 months later. Cheers gits". They've effectively made "bench" useless because they're taking so long to review things (if at all) and changing their test setup every year. Most people don't upgrade on a yearly schedule so it's actually much better if sites run a rolling update ... Ditch the oldest benchmark if you want to add a new one.

That's the way they should so it. First in, first out, 2 new titles a year in, 2 oldest out with a 5 year time frame so 10 benchmarks total.

EoinHef · 02-03-2017 9:06pm

Have a friend waiting impatiently for me to grab a few parts to get a build going for him. Was hoping Ryzen would offer a little more out of the gate. Ill be picking up an i5 for him now as he cant wait any longer.

Upgrading myself this year too,bit disappointed in these initial results but i dont think they can be called totally surprising in regards to gaming. You only have to look at kaby lake benches when they came out to see how poorly cores scale in most games and single core performance is still king for the moment. Im going to hang on in there though and see how the R5 range fairs as im still running a 3570K so im not in a major rush to upgrade. Hopefully theres something going on and they can improve performance in games. If not hopefully Intel will have dropped their prices a bit more in the next few months and can pick something up a little cheaper than buying now.

Personally dont see any point in these cpu's currently for gaming. As others have said workstations and professional uses seem to be better suited.

Icyseanfitz · 02-03-2017 9:55pm

just started reading/viewing the info now, confusing and disappointing tbh. in workstation applications the 1800x beats just about everything in mt tasks and is pretty much on par in single threaded tasks as well, switch to gaming and bang! its useless. Makes very little sense to me.

Robert ninja · 02-03-2017 10:09pm

https://twitter.com/BenjusMaximus/status/835575784165244928

Venom · 02-03-2017 10:14pm

Robert ninja wrote: »

https://twitter.com/BenjusMaximus/status/835575784165244928

Meh.

If a respected tech site or Youtube channel brought this up and not some one with just 34 subscribers, it might be news.

Robert ninja · 02-03-2017 10:28pm

Pretty sure there's a link.

Icyseanfitz · 02-03-2017 10:44pm

bad gaming bench's could be down to smt/hyper threading

stolen from overclockers

ED E · 02-03-2017 10:57pm

Havent watched TTLs "long form" vidya yet but going on LTTs experience with mem issues it seems its been rushed out and shot itself in the foot.

Very keen to see what happens when the next microcode revision drops.

wotzgoingon · 02-03-2017 11:02pm

ED E wrote: »

Havent watched TTLs "long form" vidya yet but going on LTTs experience with mem issues it seems its been rushed out and shot itself in the foot.

Very keen to see what happens when the next microcode revision drops.

He had the same issues but just assumed it was because he was using a cheaper motherboard. And he also said it could well be a bios issue.

SickBoy · 02-03-2017 11:13pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

bad gaming bench's could be down to smt/hyper threading

stolen from overclockers

Reminds me of how SMT harmed gaming performance with Intel's first implementation of Hyper-Threading.

Icyseanfitz · 02-03-2017 11:15pm

bit stupid of them to release a product with memory issues, smt issues, windows and game issues into a market so completely dominated by intel, intel have all the ammunition they need now to continue holding onto gamers/non professional consumers

Slutmonkey57b · 02-03-2017 11:41pm

If the 4c/4t parts have higher clocks and no smt (according to leaks) then I think they'll be better gaming cpu's, and they'll be the lower/mid tier parts price wise anyway.

The truth is that Intel are still looking over their shoulder at the 2500k, because 4 gens later they haven't improved ipc that much either.

"2h 2017" represents almost a year miss on the original estimates though.

02-03-2017 11:58pm

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

The truth is that Intel are still looking over their shoulder at the 2500k, because 4 gens later they haven't improved ipc that much either.

Don't I know it - I've had a 2500k sitting in my machine the last 6 years.

I was looking forward to finally replacing it and my motherboard with something more a little more modern but it's looking more and more like Ryzen isn't going to cut it either.

Hard to justify shelling out a few hundred basically just to be able to connect up my front of case USB 3.0 at last.

TerrorFirmer · 03-03-2017 12:11am

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

The truth is that Intel are still looking over their shoulder at the 2500k, because 4 gens later they haven't improved ipc that much either.

In fairness, while the 2500K still holds up well enough, at the same speed there is a fairly considerable difference between the 2500/K and the i5-7600/k for example.

Going from say a 2500K to an i7-7700k is night and day performance wise in CPU heavy titles assuming you've a high end card setup.

Just depends on what you're aiming for. If you're at 1080/1440p 60fps, it's still perfectly fine with an overclock.

If you have a 120/144hz monitor, upgrading to Skylake i7 would be a major upgrade. i5-7600 would be a considerable upgrade if you wanted benefits of new platform/ddr4/usb3 etc, but if budget allows i7 is ideal.

But yeah on the whole, the 2500K still keeping pace pretty well. 3770K is a cheap upgrade on the 1155 platform which would also give a fine boost for little money.

Tony · 03-03-2017 10:34am

Thats the way I've decided to go since yesterday 6 (non K) 3770 appeared on adverts.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

3770K is a cheap upgrade on the 1155 platform which would also give a fine boost for little money.

K.O.Kiki · 03-03-2017 11:36am

I'm going to go ahead & speculate that there are driver issues with Ryzen.

These frametime graphs make no sense otherwise: Battlefield 1 DX11 / DX12

And in benchmarks like TimeSpy, it's kicking ass: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_ryzen_7_1800x_1700x_1700/9.htm

smacl · 03-03-2017 11:47am

BloodBath wrote: »

Good point but that's the reality. Most games and software are hobbled together from a lot of middleware. Not masterpieces of coding built from the ground up.

True, but the middleware here is the game engine used by the game developers.
Once low cost 8 and 16 threads CPUs become available at a similar price to CPUs with half the thread count, implementing heavily multi-threaded game engines becomes the cheapest way to potentially realise large performance gains. Higher performance at a cheaper price is one area where the console industry can make big money, so it seems like a no-brainer to me that this is where they're going to be making significant investments. By off loading some GPU work back to the CPU, you can have the potential to make some serious savings.

Yakult · 03-03-2017 1:54pm

Gonna wait another month or two and see if they can sort the issues that have been presented to us.

Really disappointing that this chip is lacking in the games department but I hope its just down to optimization or something easily fixed.

EoinHef · 03-03-2017 2:50pm

Whats also a little disturbing is the way AMD went about the reveal,totally tight lipped on gaming and only really showing off the synthetic benchmarks that suited ryzen. That was the first alarm bell for me. If gaming performance was gonna be really good im sure they would have been screaming about it.
Poor form imo and seems also designed to sell to impatient people who will buy into the hype and pre order etc.

K.O.Kiki · 03-03-2017 3:17pm

If you'd been following the leaks though, we all KNEW it wasn't on par with Skylake/Kabylake for every task.
Just happened that we let the hype train go into overdrive.

That it's able to beat Haswell-E, at half the cost, in productivity is the real news IMO.

smacl · 03-03-2017 3:20pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

bit stupid of them to release a product with memory issues, smt issues, windows and game issues into a market so completely dominated by intel, intel have all the ammunition they need now to continue holding onto gamers/non professional consumers

Given the jump in their share price over the last 18 months I'd say cynical maybe in terms of hype but not stupid. From a commercial standpoint, they needed a product in the market, and while it is not everything a high end gamer might want at this point in time, it will certainly be a very competitive product across the broader market. As for the gaming market, a large part of that is still consoles where the consumer is the console manufacturer rather than the gamer. It will be interesting to see what CPUs the next generation of consoles use.

03-03-2017 3:23pm

Might actually be good for gamers anyhow if it puts pressure on Intel to adjust the prices of their lineup to compete.

EoinHef · 03-03-2017 3:34pm

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

If you'd been following the leaks though, we all KNEW it wasn't on par with Skylake/Kabylake for every task.
Just happened that we let the hype train go into overdrive.

That it's able to beat Haswell-E, at half the cost, in productivity is the real news IMO.

I never thought it was on par,i just didnt expect it to be as far behind as it is. Id say thats the same for a lot of people.

Just in gaming of course,as thats the only aspect thats important for me.

AMD Zen Discussion Thread

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