AMD is triumphing over Intel after a decade of second-best

[yRaz]

I was reading about the Zen 2 architecture and what improvements can still be made to it. The 4000 series in zen2+ will likely surpass Intel if only by single digits.

There are two MAJOR things holding ryzen back right now.

1) core scheduling with their chiplet design. Often times a multithreaded program will run tasks on both chiptlets instead of 1 and they have to communicate through the infinity fabric. This brings me into 2

2) latency on the infinity fabric is pretty bad when compared to a single chip design. There are many improvements they can make to it but simply because of what it is, it will never have the single core performance of a single, monolithic chip.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

I'm just afraid of those germans if AMD will finally catchup with Intel in terms of all-core boost clocks. Ryzen 4.7-4.8 GHz can make some people go off the rails.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Wake me when AMD surpasses Intel and Nvidia consistently.

And then?

 

[Boshum]

I’m not going to call AMD equal to Intel yet. Intel is far more consistent than AMD. It’s really been about 13 years since AMD were last truly able to beat Intel like they have done now. If AMD can continue to deliver competitive silicon for the next decade I’d call them an equal. Oh it would help if they could beat them at gaming. A lot of people who like to spend a lot of money investing in a fancy PC are gamers, this includes me, we will typically go for the part that performs the best in gaming and I think the last time AMD could sell us that component it was 2005.

Still, it’s great to see an alternative again. I remember 5 years ago your choices was either Intel, whose parts were quite decent if nothing special or AMD FX which was utter garbage. In the 20+ years of building PCs the FX was the worst CPU I have ever owned by some way. AMD have come an awful long way since then, hopefully they can keep it up.

Yerp. Competition is great but I will continue to buy Intel until AMD can actually beat Intel in gaming.

What processor are you using?

 

[Boshum]

Wake me when AMD surpasses Intel and Nvidia consistently.

Consistently where? Which one has the single fastest gaming cpu regardless of price? Fastest for the dollar? Fastest in a specific price range? Fastest at CS:GO? What is consistently? Intel doesn't beat AMD at every game if that is what you mean by consistently.

 

[Boshum]

Techspot has been so AMD biased for such a long time but articles like this just make it more like AMD website. the creativity of the editors ran out long time ago so they pick data at their convenience.
it is no news, neither I do remember such sale stats wow articles praising intel sales
so biased

It's news because it shows AMD winning at something (the German DIY market). Intel has been winning so long it's not news if Intel has higher sales.

 

[Boshum]

Techspot has been so AMD biased for such a long time

It wasn't all that long ago they were accused of being Intel biased. The only bias here is readers opinions.

more shame on techspot then

I think your logic needs some work. Guess you didn't like some results and are still having a temper tantrum.

 

[amstech]

Congratulations to AMD for hanging in there when it was looking grim and bouncing back with a great product. The Ryzen 3600 for $200 is one of the best deals there has been in quite some time, and Intel should truly consider trimming their price tags.
Hopefully Ryzen will force Intel to one day drop the prices so much, I can get a 9900X for $400 .

 

[axiomatic13]

The AMD Ryzen 9 3950x has a purdy mouth.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I replaced an old AMD CPU HP laptop with a new HP X360 yesterday with a Core i5.

 

[EClyde]

More charts please

 

[Adi6293]

You need a gpu with these amd cpu's, right? I never dealt with that before, but I'd like to get a 3700x

You can get the 3700X + nVida gpu that does work ;-)

 

[Evernessince]

I was reading about the Zen 2 architecture and what improvements can still be made to it. The 4000 series in zen2+ will likely surpass Intel if only by single digits.

There are two MAJOR things holding ryzen back right now.

1) core scheduling with their chiplet design. Often times a multithreaded program will run tasks on both chiptlets instead of 1 and they have to communicate through the infinity fabric. This brings me into 2

2) latency on the infinity fabric is pretty bad when compared to a single chip design. There are many improvements they can make to it but simply because of what it is, it will never have the single core performance of a single, monolithic chip.

Actually point 2 is incorrect. The University of Toronto did a white paper on chiplet based designs with different active interposer topologies.

In basic terms, they had cores separated into multiple chiplets much like what AMD has now. The big difference was that they put those chiplets on top of an active interposer, which acted as a routing mesh between the cores. They found that not only could you match monolithic performance, you could exceed it if a decent topology is used. In addition, the more cores they added to their design the larger the advantage the chiplet+active interposer design had over the monolithic design.

Active interposers are the next big thing after chiplets. They move all the core to core wiring from the chip onto the active interposer. Done right it should massively increase maximum core to core bandwidth, reduce latency of CCX to CCX travel, and allow AMD to implement more exotic chiplet designs. Right now AMD uses an inactive interposer, it doesn't do any routing, it only has static routes going from die to die.

The downside to an active interposer is that they cost more money and yields are lower.

 

[indiangamer]

It's pretty funny that people still vouch for Intel just because of 5-7% more performance in gaming. This is when Ryzen beats Intel in almost every other areas by a bigger margin. IMO this gaming advantage is only noticeable for high FPS gamers who turns down everything to run the game at 144+ (240 sometimes) fps.
Although I am not but I think this advantage of Intel is gone when streaming. Atleast this was the case with Ryzen 2000 series where they would close the gap to Intel or sometimes even pull ahead ofthem when streaming games.

 

[arrowflash]

Yerp. Competition is great but I will continue to buy Intel until AMD can actually beat Intel in gaming.

I'll keep buying Intel until AMD can at least narrow the huge gap in single-threaded IPC performance...

 

[loki1944]

It's pretty funny that people still vouch for Intel just because of 5-7% more performance in gaming. This is when Ryzen beats Intel in almost every other areas by a bigger margin. IMO this gaming advantage is only noticeable for high FPS gamers who turns down everything to run the game at 144+ (240 sometimes) fps.
Although I am not but I think this advantage of Intel is gone when streaming. Atleast this was the case with Ryzen 2000 series where they would close the gap to Intel or sometimes even pull ahead ofthem when streaming games.

Honestly it's not just single threaded performance; I built a 2200G and encountered issues I have never experienced with intel CPUs due to some pretty sub-par AMD drivers; not completely surprising considering I have consistently run into sloppy drivers for AMD GPUs over the years like uninstalling all usb drivers or unsigned drivers that fail to install, or crossfire disappearing until a driver reinstall. AMD still has a significant distance to go to match intel and Nvidia in terms of quality support for their hardware. If they could do that, then it would make a pretty big difference.

 

[Irata]

is there not a chance of just sleeping right through everything?

I don't expect to be woken anytime soon.

“The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”

 

[Daniele 00]

I’m not going to call AMD equal to Intel yet. Intel is far more consistent than AMD. It’s really been about 13 years since AMD were last truly able to beat Intel like they have done now. If AMD can continue to deliver competitive silicon for the next decade I’d call them an equal. Oh it would help if they could beat them at gaming. A lot of people who like to spend a lot of money investing in a fancy PC are gamers, this includes me, we will typically go for the part that performs the best in gaming and I think the last time AMD could sell us that component it was 2005.

Still, it’s great to see an alternative again. I remember 5 years ago your choices was either Intel, whose parts were quite decent if nothing special or AMD FX which was utter garbage. In the 20+ years of building PCs the FX was the worst CPU I have ever owned by some way. AMD have come an awful long way since then, hopefully they can keep it up.

You said "... A lot of people who like to spend a lot of money investing in a fancy PC are gamers... " , I would say that just a " minority " of people who buy pc is a fanatic PC gamer that would buy Intel over AMD for pure gaming, spending a ****-lot more money to get "close to nothin more gaming performance".

You shall compare CPUs on computational level, not gaming performance. You choose CPU on how much fast it takes to calculate somethin, the power consume and the price, not on how much FPS it perform in the game you love to play.

 

[treetops]

Price vs performance they almost lose at every level of gaming above the 3600 and the 9600k at $240 is just as good or better then the PP of the 3600. But they completely destroy intel in almost every other way.

Navi on the other hand is the best PP at the reference $330 5700 (Newegg) and the 5700 XT reference$400(noisier) or aib 410$+. Nvidia's pricing has nothing below the 2070 Super which is a bad deal in and of itself. Yes the 2080\1080 ti used or the 2080 Super+ have no competition. Nvidia wins at this price point.

It's funny seeing people buy AMD CPU's and Nvidia GPU's for gaming. That said, it's hard not to root for AMD with all the open source\price drops. I'd rather contribute to AMD and new tech just feels warm and fuzzy.

Then again if you like listening to music, streaming, recording, have a random virus scan pop up or anything related to multitasking while gaming. AMD is a clear choice. So yeah

 

[emmzo]

Yep, if we want prices to drop competition is not what we need. Stagnation is needed to drop prices. I find it funny when people complain about prices and cheer for competition. But it is no point in explaining, they will likely never grasp the concept.

It`s funny when smug people assume what others understand. BTW Lew Zealand cared to explained it thoroughly and I thank him for that.

 

[Capaill]

You need a gpu with these amd cpu's, right? I never dealt with that before, but I'd like to get a 3700x

Yes, you need a separate dedicated graphics card. If you want integrated graphics, go for the 3xxx G line. I don't have any experience with the integrated graphics (APU) but if you want to game on the 3700X, I would suggest you look for a good separate GPU (AMD or Nvidia).

 

[Clynt]

It's pretty funny that people still vouch for Intel just because of 5-7% more performance in gaming. This is when Ryzen beats Intel in almost every other areas by a bigger margin. IMO this gaming advantage is only noticeable for high FPS gamers who turns down everything to run the game at 144+ (240 sometimes) fps.
Although I am not but I think this advantage of Intel is gone when streaming. Atleast this was the case with Ryzen 2000 series where they would close the gap to Intel or sometimes even pull ahead ofthem when streaming games.

Honestly it's not just single threaded performance; I built a 2200G and encountered issues I have never experienced with intel CPUs due to some pretty sub-par AMD drivers; not completely surprising considering I have consistently run into sloppy drivers for AMD GPUs over the years like uninstalling all usb drivers or unsigned drivers that fail to install, or crossfire disappearing until a driver reinstall. AMD still has a significant distance to go to match intel and Nvidia in terms of quality support for their hardware. If they could do that, then it would make a pretty big difference.

Err what? Did you know what you where doing? I just put together 16 2400G machines for an accounting firm and not a single problem at all.. not one nada nill nothing. And trust me they where cheap boards and nothing at fancy with the hardware wise bar the memory 3200 and adata nmve drives. I build lots of Intel and AMD machines and it is so rare that I ever see a problem so I am thinking either you don't know what you are doing or you are just speaking crap.

 

[Shake]

Yes, you need a separate dedicated graphics card. If you want integrated graphics, go for the 3xxx G line. I don't have any experience with the integrated graphics (APU) but if you want to game on the 3700X, I would suggest you look for a good separate GPU (AMD or Nvidia).

let's say the cpu is doa, how would you know it's that instead of the gpu? Or something else?
Can you get into bios without a gpu?
Thank for the reply

 

[loki1944]

Err what? Did you know what you where doing? I just put together 16 2400G machines for an accounting firm and not a single problem at all.. not one nada nill nothing. And trust me they where cheap boards and nothing at fancy with the hardware wise bar the memory 3200 and adata nmve drives. I build lots of Intel and AMD machines and it is so rare that I ever see a problem so I am thinking either you don't know what you are doing or you are just speaking crap.

I have built 17 PCs in the past 6 years, LGA 775, 1366, 1150, 1151, X99, and 2066 aside from that one. The nightmare the ryzen build presented was unprecedented : and all due to drivers.

And it matches my experience with their GPUs quite sensibly. Since I swap GPU s frequently across multiple sockets, I get to see this a lot; including systemic driver issues that AMD has still not fixed, like the unsigned drivers issue for which their fix of allowing unsigned drivers does not always work; though the worst I experienced was an amd gpu driver uninstall removing all motherboard usb drivers on an intel board. Doesn't happen all the time, but the fact it happens at all is unacceptable. On the nvidia side, no issues like this, ever.

AMD 290X, 390, 390X, Fury, Nano, RX 470, Vega 56
Nvidia GTX 660, 690, 770, 780, 780ti, Titan Black, 970, 980ti, 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080ti in the past 6 years and outside of a GPU dying the only issues I've had were driver side on AMD.

 

[Capaill]

let's say the cpu is doa, how would you know it's that instead of the gpu? Or something else?
Can you get into bios without a gpu?
Thank for the reply

You can, but you won't be able to see it The monitor needs to be plugged into a port that is connected to a graphics chip such as your GPU. Plugging into your motherboard IO shield will use the CPU which doesn't have a graphics chip.
Also if the CPU isn't working, it could be an older BIOS version or an incompatibility with the motherboard. So many possibilities - that's what makes building a PC "fun" or at least needs a good bit of investigation to make sure your parts work together.
I won't be able to help with any more troubleshooting as I don't have a Ryzen 3xxx but I do remember I had to overcome lots of problems (mostly with my RAM) when installing the Ryzen 1600 when it was first released. You'll find lots of help on the internet from others who are sufferring the same issues.