AMD Threadripper 2950X versus i9 line?

[Apatheist]

Hey,

Upgrading soon and I'm having a hard time evaluating the core count versus clock speed ratio for boxing purposes.

2950X with 16c/32t comfortably boosts to 4GHz.
Something like the i9-7920X 12c/24t will hit 4.4GHz.

4 Fewer cores, 400MHz higher clock speed.

There's also the optimization factor. I've heard a lot of reports that are difficult to quantify about AMD's platform being poorly optimized or even crashing in various games and older software that was developed exclusively with Intel architecture in mind. The RAM compatibility seems to have been fixed with Zen+ at least.

Anybody had any hands on experience with Threadripper/Ryzen?

[MiRai]

How soon is "soon?" The Intel X299 Basin Falls refresh should be available sometime in Q4, so if you can wait that long to see if Intel can actually be competitive, then I'd say wait and see.

Other than that, I don't have any experience with the high-core-count Threadripper chips to really comment on how well they might perform.

[WOWBOX40]

Im thinking if you prefere to have your main game on a 144 hz 1080p panel with settings on 7+ and then run your alts on settings 1, 30 fps background (any lower looks terrible to me), it most likely will be a let down, as the cpu will be clocked at 4 ghz on all cores, if you are lucky. So you wouldnt really be able to maximize your main screen at the same time, wow fps wise experience, if you are used to the newer intel 5 ghz ish cpus.

Though, i would absolutely loved to have tried this cpu as a secondary pc, with all clients at 1080p and settings 1. Wonder how many it would run while looking good.

Hope someone takes the chance and gets it, so we can get a review

All that memory and that op gfx card etc thats needed is going to make a big dent in the wallet though. If i would have bought this i certainly would have aimed for 23 accounts. Also if you plan to overclock it you most likly need proper watercooling. And hopefully you have or will get aircondition. That helps in general and worth every penny. Buy a quality one.

[Apatheist]

Leaning towards AMD. I just can't see how a few hundred MHz is going to be more valuable than extra cores across a large number of clients.

Also kind of disappointing that NVIDIA decided to go with 11GB of VRAM on their new RTX2080Ti instead of the "speculated" 16GB. Oh well!

[MiRai]

Leaning towards AMD. I just can't see how a few hundred MHz is going to be more valuable than extra cores across a large number of clients.

Well, 1 MHz from Intel is not the same as 1 MHz from AMD, but they're somewhat close these days. At a similar core count, Intel is going to do better, but AMD pulls away in the area of multi-tasking when they have a higher core count (which should be expected).

[WOWBOX40]

Leaning towards AMD. I just can't see how a few hundred MHz is going to be more valuable than extra cores across a large number of clients.

Also kind of disappointing that NVIDIA decided to go with 11GB of VRAM on their new RTX2080Ti instead of the "speculated" 16GB. Oh well!

You would want to pair your 32 core with this one


https://www.anandtech.com/show/13004...-v-ceo-edition

[Apatheist]

Definitely not going for the 32core. The 16 cores seems like a good compromise between core count, speed and thermals.

Also, I've been watching a lot of tech shows talking about the new RTX line from NVIDIA. Almost everybody is saying there's a negligible (~10%) speed difference between a 1080 Ti and the new 2080 Ti. Most of the difference in performance comes from the new "ray tracing" technology which only functions in supported titles -- meaning I'll get basically no use out of it since all of the games I play are old and I can't see any MMO being that graphically demanding.

If the benchmarks support the speculation after launch next month I might be better off waiting a short while until the 1080 Ti prices drop and picking up 2 of them for close to the same cost of a single 2080 Ti. AMD still seems nowhere to be found on the GPU front. Vega was a huge flop.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Definitely not going for the 32core. The 16 cores seems like a good compromise between core count, speed and thermals.

Also, I've been watching a lot of tech shows talking about the new RTX line from NVIDIA. Almost everybody is saying there's a negligible (~10%) speed difference between a 1080 Ti and the new 2080 Ti. Most of the difference in performance comes from the new "ray tracing" technology which only functions in supported titles -- meaning I'll get basically no use out of it since all of the games I play are old and I can't see any MMO being that graphically demanding.

If the benchmarks support the speculation after launch next month I might be better off waiting a short while until the 1080 Ti prices drop and picking up 2 of them for close to the same cost of a single 2080 Ti. AMD still seems nowhere to be found on the GPU front. Vega was a huge flop.

So, just like every other new model NVidia or ATI card, then? ~10% real-world speed improvements is about what I see every generation. A few outliers here and there where new optimizations come into play, but we don't see many truly ground-breaking advances that e.g. double performance in current titles.

[Apatheist]

Bright side of a new generation of cards even if you don't plan on buying one, I guess. 1080 Ti prices are already down 15% where I live. The stupid RRP of the 2080 Ti line is pretty much the same cost as two 1080 Ti's.

Still on having a hard time choosing which CPU. I would have thought someone else here would have picked up a Threadripper by now to give some hard numbers.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Still on having a hard time choosing which CPU. I would have thought someone else here would have picked up a Threadripper by now to give some hard numbers.

<anecdote>I think some of us are very leery of AMD processors just from a general compatibility standpoint. Too many experiences with certain hardware items (chipset, memory, GPUs, NVMe drives) not working properly with them. I've had similar issues with their GPUs, too, though I haven't had one since the introduction of the 290 family, so I wouldn't take my position as Gospel.

On a related note, there seem to be a fair number of complaints with various apps (e.g. some Adobe products like Premier) that require a manual edit of some special "flag"[?] file to trigger better usage of the threadripper's cores, whereas the same app on an Intel just works. This may be a failure on the part of that app developer, though it does fall into the bucket of "may be tricky to get the most out of it if you're not tech savvy." My marketing folks here at work have a hard enough time getting a freaking MAC to work properly with Adobe products or VMware/Virtualbox VMs. Getting them to use a PC with the threadrippers would be a net productivity loss to all involved.

Again, just my 2 copper as a third-party observer.