Will Ryzen make AMD great again?

[EnochLight]

I'll just have to settle for my games to run at 150FPS at 1080P compared to the 170-180 the 7700k can do.

Heheh, yeah - at the end of the day, is the single thread performance really an issue at this point? If lower audio latency (at low sample buffer rates) isn't an issue, Ryzen still may be a possibility in my future. I already planned to go at least 8-core for my next build.

[JiggeryPokery]

I'll just have to settle for my games to run at 150FPS at 1080P compared to the 170-180 the 7700k can do.

Heheh, yeah - at the end of the day, is the single thread performance really an issue at this point? If lower audio latency (at low sample buffer rates) isn't an issue, Ryzen still may be a possibility in my future. I already planned to go at least 8-core for my next build.

Exactly. In terms of single threaded, ok, I'd accept upfront it won't be as nippy as a kaby or even perhaps skylake. But really if i compare it to the current x4 965, was really was AMDs last decent PC chip, it should still be a substantial upgrade.

And 196 samples?! You lucky, lucky bastards!

I don't think I've ever got below 4 figures...

[gak]

Man, people are WAY too detailed about this stuff.

If it's not going to give me better audio performance when I make a project or run one, then I don't care. If it does, I want to know exactly how in terms of REAL-WORLD-USE.

All the other stuff is useless.

[EnochLight]

Man, people are WAY too detailed about this stuff.

If it's not going to give me better audio performance when I make a project or run one, then I don't care. If it does, I want to know exactly how in terms of REAL-WORLD-USE.

All the other stuff is useless.

Well, you can draw some pretty clear and concise conclusions with the information at hand. It's clear that Ryzen excels at multi-threaded apps (meaning, the more cores/threads an app utilizes, the better the performance). Reason is one of those apps. The more cores the better, and the more threads the better - so what that means to you IN REAL-WORLD-USE is that you will be able to run more instruments, more effects, more CPU-hungry 3rd-party RE's, etc.

If that is of use to you, then there is clear value in a Ryzen build for you. If you have no use for any of the above, then it's not for you. Simples.

[gak]

No, it isn't. There is a clear and present danger for low latency settings.

I guess what I should have said is the endless minutia over something that at least for now, isn't the intel killer it was pitted to be, is kinda lame. I'm not interested in spending for ram/mobo/chip/new doze copy unless there is a real-world use increase.

Writing it on a piece of forum doesn't do much. That stress-test should give a good starter (it destroys nearly everything it touches) and then does it frack up a low latencies. Benchmarks do little other than establish that people make some really bad videos to capitalize on the hype train.

[JiggeryPokery]

No, it isn't. There is a clear and present danger for low latency settings.

I guess what I should have said is the endless minutia over something that at least for now, isn't the intel killer it was pitted to be, is kinda lame. I'm not interested in spending for ram/mobo/chip/new doze copy unless there is a real-world use increase.

Writing it on a piece of forum doesn't do much. That stress-test should give a good starter (it destroys nearly everything it touches) and then does it frack up a low latencies. Benchmarks do little other than establish that people make some really bad videos to capitalize on the hype train.

I'm unclear as to where Ryzen was ever pitted to be "the intel killer", at least outside of decent tech journals, and not the hyperbole of forum geeks and fanboys pontificating. Most of the pre-release tech writing was suggesting that Ryzen aimed to put AMD back in contention in terms of comparable performance by producing a serious chip for the first time this decade, in terms of testing benchmarks. You're right one should always be somewhat suspicious about how that translates to real world use, but at the same time, cynicism shouldn't prevent one considering alternatives. I said on this forum nearly a year ago I was holding out for Broadwell-E, and nearly went for it in October - it's just that when it finally appeared, the price was.... wow. Even for Intel, that was pretty egregious pricing. And by that time, enough news was coming out about the possibility of Ryzen being a decent competitor it was worth holding out another few months so I decided to defer the decision until now. If there was a significant benefit to the 6900K for the extra dosh, I'd go with it.

Now the reviews are in, it's pretty clear that's what AMD have done, and the reviews are pretty damn consistent.

It demolishes Broadwell-E in terms of price/performance ratio.

It's clearly not vastly more powerful, but it offers at least a very similar, and sometimes demonstrably better performance. Remember, the Broadwell-E 6900K is Intel's top-of-the-line workstation chip (OK, yes, technically the 6950K is the top-of-the-line, but no-one with any sense and/or a limited budget would have spaff an extra £500 on that over the £1000 6900K). So absolutely, its not an Intel killer, per se, but Ryzen, at £500, is half the price for the same number of cores/threads (8/16) and basically offers similar performance in benchmarks. Unfortunately, benchmarks tend to be all we have to go on when we make these decisions.

It seems to me that the ONLY compelling reasons to go Broadwell-E 6900K right now is platform maturity, or if one desperately needs masses of PCI-e lines. I was concerned about the latter when I posted on this thread a few days ago, but having considered it actually I've come to the conclusion that I probably don't 40 PCIe-3, and only I want 40 PCIe-3 lanes for the sake of having 40 PCI-e lines for SLI, which I probably don't need these days. The reality is I probably don't need more than 20. The lack of platform maturity however certainly seems to be resulting in a handful of teething troubles being reported, and sadly that's always to be expected with these things, and it's not as if Intel are somehow immune to the chip issues (coughAtomcough). But I'll concede those would be a bit of a gamble.

Of course Intel might easily release a clearly superior chip in six months; they might even price it to screw with the 1800X. That's also a bit of a risk, but ultimately you buy the best you can afford on the day you order, and what happens in the future stays in the future. One can't do anything about it, so why worry about it?

And the reviews are pretty clear elsewhere: if gaming is by far the no.1 user priority, then the 7700K is now the most compelling current option. Personally, I'm not that fussed about that. I've still got the HTPC with a Skylake i5 and a GTX 960 in the living room, which is a far cosier place to be gaming anyway (I had a happy Xmas with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on the projector screen) . For a studio workstation though, saving nearly £400 on similarly performing processors allows some serious upgrades in other areas.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... 3605vs3916

That's a pretty strong argument: spend another £500 on potentially just an extra 3-5%? Sod that! Ryzen: cover me! I'm going in!

[Lizard]

Of course Intel might easily release a clearly superior chip in six months; they might even price it to screw with the 1800X. That's also a bit of a risk, but ultimately you buy the best you can afford on the day you order, and what happens in the future stays in the future. One can't do anything about it, so why worry about it?

This is it in a nutshell isn't it? If you are in the market right now... what do you have? For me I produce and make a lot of things that will use multi-core. Yes I do play some games but I am no "gamer" so dropping a few frames is not a big deal to me. And truthfully it is still a very worthy machine to do that. Is there truly any real benefit to the player at that high of level?

So the cakewalk post could be a concern for people. I can see that but as I felt I have NEVER run Audio at that low of samples and I do not know of any that do. I'd be interested to see who does. That sounds to me like an optimization issue and not exactly what the CPU is capable of.

I've been working off an AMD Phenom chip for a while and have been happy with AMD and more so for the price point they offer to the public. I believe this chip to offer the same value their others have and it's that point for me where I really need a more powerful PC. Timing and the capability of what is offered out there brings me here. Time will tell if my choices have paid off.

[bxbrkrz]

The biggest issue with Ryzen is the motherboard manufacturers got the chip late, so they could not push millions of their products. Getting millions of bad reviews for their unfinished Bios wasn't an option. All the cpus are in stock. None of the motherboards are. I am waiting for an equilibrium cpu/motherboard availability/Ram compatibility/Win 10 update for Ryzen.
I believe Ryzen is not a killer deal at all. Rather the 6900K is worth $500 too, but Intel pushed it to $1K because they simply could.

[EnochLight]

No, it isn't. There is a clear and present danger for low latency settings.

As far as multithreaded/core performance, yes - it is. And sure - using low latency sample buffers could definitely be an issue (I expressed that earlier in this thread), however; I normally operate at 256 samples.

Now the reviews are in, it's pretty clear that's what AMD have done, and the reviews are pretty damn consistent.

It demolishes Broadwell-E in terms of price/performance ratio.

It's clearly not vastly more powerful, but it offers at least a very similar, and sometimes demonstrably better performance. Remember, the Broadwell-E 6900K is Intel's top-of-the-line workstation chip (OK, yes, technically the 6950K is the top-of-the-line, but no-one with any sense and/or a limited budget would have spaff an extra £500 on that over the £1000 6900K). So absolutely, its not an Intel killer, per se, but Ryzen, at £500, is half the price for the same number of cores/threads (8/16) and basically offers similar performance in benchmarks. Unfortunately, benchmarks tend to be all we have to go on when we make these decisions. ...

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... 3605vs3916

That's a pretty strong argument: spend another £500 on potentially just an extra 3-5%? Sod that! Ryzen: cover me! I'm going in!

LOL! I don't think I could have said it any better.

[JiggeryPokery]

The biggest issue with Ryzen is the motherboard manufacturers got the chip late, so they could not push millions of their products. Getting millions of bad reviews for their unfinished Bios wasn't an option. All the cpus are in stock. None of the motherboards are. I am waiting for an equilibrium cpu/motherboard availability/Ram compatibility/Win 10 update for Ryzen.
I believe Ryzen is not a killer deal at all. Rather the 6900K is worth $500 too, but Intel pushed it to $1K because they simply could.

Yes, I was reading about the lack of AM4 mobos over the weekend. Whether it's a killer deal or not I agree is open to levels of opinion. If stuff is available and it works, then I'd suggest it is. But, if one can't actually put together a system, then it's a bit of a clusterfuck and AMD deserve criticism for screwing that aspect up.

You're right in that Intel priced the 6900K simply because there was no reason not to. Halving it would see a big uptake, but I doubt they'd do that. my guess is come the summer, if Ryzen has taken market share, they'll knock a third off both that and the 6950K, so the latter will end up at the 1k mark it should have started at.

[Lizard]

At first I had to wait on a motherboard. I do not and never had gone for bells and whistles on a motherboard and keep it meaty but low key. I've had much success with ASUS and they seemed to offer the most in the way of SATA 3 ports so this is where I went. There are a lot of gaming boards out there and they are pricey and honestly the early adopters are going to lean that direction. First batch sold out before my eyes but was lucky enough to still see another come in within a couple days. It's been in transit from California for a few days now. Launches .... like a few AMD... have been sketchy but things seeme to right themselves in the end.

[EnochLight]

At first I had to wait on a motherboard. I do not and never had gone for bells and whistles on a motherboard and keep it meaty but low key. I've had much success with ASUS and they seemed to offer the most in the way of SATA 3 ports so this is where I went. There are a lot of gaming boards out there and they are pricey and honestly the early adopters are going to lean that direction. First batch sold out before my eyes but was lucky enough to still see another come in within a couple days. It's been in transit from California for a few days now. Launches .... like a few AMD... have been sketchy but things seeme to right themselves in the end.

I'm excited to see your test results (especially how low you can get your audio card's sample rate buffer) after you complete your build. Please remember to share with us!

[gak]

Too confusing for me.

If there are issues for low latency, then all the benchmarks mean nothing for audio users.

Anyways, I give up.

[Lizard]

Too confusing for me.

If there are issues for low latency, then all the benchmarks mean nothing for audio users.

Anyways, I give up.

There are not issues at low latency.... just ultra low latency. But these are just terms and left to the individual to interpret. What do you consider low latency and what latency do you operate at? For me it has been 256 so anything better than that is awesome. 256 is pretty low as it is. If 64 samples is where you intend to run your audio then I would say you should not buy this processor (based of the cakewalk article). I would also be interested to see how many tracks/VST/etc they could run at 64 samples on an Intel. If it is only a handful before it craps out that latency is equally worthless. "Yeah I can run a VST there... but only one." To say all other benchmarks mean noting is not nothing if you want to have a lot of tracks in your project. Ever have the "Your Computer is too slow" message? Less likely with more cores and more threads if not non-existent. If 192 samples and above is something you can live with which I would feel comfortable in saying is well over 97% of users than you will be just fine. If no.... this is not for you.

[friday]

Hi folks

thanks for all your informations. But i still have a question, maybe you wrote about it but i overviewed it.

For years there was the discussion that the FPU (Floating Point Unit) is very important for Reason. On the last AMD CPU's we have seen that they are sharing the FPU for the Cores, and Intel had dedicated FPU for every Core. So that endet in having ok gaming benchmarks for AMD but bad performance for Reason. Has that changed on the Ryzen CPU's ? Do the have 8 FPU on the chip?

Thanks in advance for all your feedback.

Edit: ok i think they changed the architecture to 1 FPU per CPU Core like Intel... here is a interesting article if you are interested: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03 ... en-review/

[EnochLight]

Edit: ok i think they changed the architecture to 1 FPU per CPU Core like Intel... here is a interesting article if you are interested: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03 ... en-review/

That's a great article - Ars Technica is a great source of tech info. Also found this article, which confirms what many have suspected (and gives hope that software optimizations will level the playing field ever more between Ryzen and Intel's chips that cost twice the price):

http://www.techconnect.com/article/3180 ... blame.html

[bxbrkrz]

Edit: ok i think they changed the architecture to 1 FPU per CPU Core like Intel... here is a interesting article if you are interested: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03 ... en-review/

That's a great article - Ars Technica is a great source of tech info. Also found this article, which confirms what many have suspected (and gives hope that software optimizations will level the playing field ever more between Ryzen and Intel's chips that cost twice the price):

http://www.techconnect.com/article/3180 ... blame.html

We are seeing the worse state of Ryzen right now (brand new platform, bugs) compared to the best state of intel's i7, after many years of fine tuning. My bet is on Ryzen for future improvements, and for Intel to realign their prices. Everybody (us, not them) wins. I get more and more relaxed knowing I'll do the right choice in a couple of weeks, after all the cutting edgers do their sweet bug crushing campaign.

[JiggeryPokery]

Too confusing for me.

If there are issues for low latency, then all the benchmarks mean nothing for audio users.

Ignoring AMD or Intel specifically, on a general level, I think low-latency audio can be a bit of a red herring. The kinds of ultra-low latencies you're referring to are important when playing live/recording, and at that point sure, 3ms would be great, but in practice 16ms is quite adequate. Heck, for me, it has to be as that's as low as I ever get here I'd like to get sub 10ms though, just to feel like something in my life has improved!

Once recorded, is there a reason one still needs 3ms latency? Everything being played back is running at the same system latency, it doesn't matter if it's 3ms or 16ms or 92ms.

Now, there is a case against really, really long latency, greater than say, 250ms, as that negatively impacts GUI updates.

There may or may not be issues with Ryzen at 3ms latencies, did I misread something or did the original claimant linked later suggest the issue was with Realtek drivers interferring rather than Ryzen, and that disabled Realtek from bios fixed it?

But it's all moot at this point anyway. Right now it's less "Will Ryzen make AMD great again?", it's rather more "Will anyone put a motherboard on sale into which a Ryzen can actually be slotted and that one can actually order and expect to receive in a timely manner?"

To which the answer right now is clearly

"Get stuffed".

[gak]

But here is what I'm saying, it's too much hyperbole over something that is CLEARLY not the shizzle. Is it good? Sure. Is it better than previous attempts? I'll go with yes.

But currently, it's not all that and bag of chips. It's not free, there are real world problems with hardware that support it and it's been hyped to death.

I gotta have something that works, not something that "may work someday" know what I mean?

[EnochLight]

Well, Lizard will be able to confirm that it works as soon as his build is done. I'm sure he'll report his experience in this thread.

[Lizard]

Well, Lizard will be able to confirm that it works as soon as his build is done. I'm sure he'll report his experience in this thread.

I will in fact. I'm in too deep now. LOL I'll have to live with my choices now. Got back to my house yesterday and all my parts are in. Spent a while last night putting it together. Almost compete but not quite....

case.JPG (176.83 KiB) Viewed 2342 times

The case. A little larger than I was thinking it would be but not upset. It is intended to be a workstation.

motherboard.JPG (147.9 KiB) Viewed 2342 times

cooler.JPG (192.37 KiB) Viewed 2342 times

Motherboard has plenty of room in the case though which actually will be nice ofr this massive cooler. I went with 280mm fans and the case doesn't support it well. I have it poorly rigged at the moment and going to get some assistance in making a plate to better mount it. After that's done I'll drop in the CPU, hook up cooler and place the video card in. Lastly... operating system. Hopefully I can get it loaded tonight (barring any early adopter issues) and start testing tonight/tomorrow.

I have three audio tests to do which I expect varied results. I will test the onboard audio which is Realtek. I will also test my old Line6 UX2 and lastly my Focusrite Saffire 24 Pro DSP. I anticipate this to have the least latency of any.

[bxbrkrz]

Hoping you won't have any issues with your RAM.

[Lizard]

Hoping you won't have any issues with your RAM.

I included. Going to have to see. It supports up to DDR4 2666 with no overclocking. (Fingers Crossed)

[EnochLight]

I have three audio tests to do which I expect varied results. I will test the onboard audio which is Realtek. I will also test my old Line6 UX2 and lastly my Focusrite Saffire 24 Pro DSP. I anticipate this to have the least latency of any.

Curious - why bother with onboard audio? No one uses that for audio production (typically). At least if they can help it! If you do use the onboard audio, are you going to install something like ASIO4ALL? I'm guessing stock drivers are going to offer horrible latency on any platform, no matter how many cores or clock rate, with those Realtek chips.

That said, your case looks like a monster - wow! Also, I forgot that you're going to go liquid cooling... NICE! Planning to overclock at all?

[bxbrkrz]