AMD Zen Discussion Thread

Cuddlesworth

This is why I need a 4k screen.

Inviere

BloodBath wrote: »

They are going to struggle to go much lower than 7. Total diminishing returns past that point

Where do things realistically go after that?

Samuel T. Cogley

Inviere wrote: »

Where do things realistically go after that?

Somewhere other than silicon, possibly somewhere other than transistors in the traditional sense. We may also just see gaming machines increasing in size. I can't imagine we'll need much more power than we have now for web browsing and Excel.

Samuel T. Cogley

Completely sums up my opinion, couple with adoredTV

$329, I'll live with a small reduction of frame rates if I need a work station CPU. This CPU is awesome! (Although not for me)

Serephucus

My view currently is pretty similar.

For everything but gaming: Great overall, excellent value.
For gaming: Probably "good enough", will get much better with optimisations and software support.

Might do a 1700 build. Don't really need to with a 4790K, but might just for a change. Almost certainly going to do something with Naples.

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

Almost certainly going to do something with Naples.

Drat

Serephucus

Why drat?

BloodBath

7700k is still the 1 to go with for pure gaming systems.

Maybe Gen 2 or 3 of Ryzen will be better for gaming by then but intel will surely have something up their sleeves as well. When do they go 10nm?

Serephucus

Coffee Lake, I think? Not sure what the launch schedule is though. Probably ~1.5 years, given Cannon Lake has to show up too.

deceit

My 1800x just arrived with ek waterblock. Now to decide on which board. It's hard to figure out which as they are all very unstable atm

K.O.Kiki

The Zen in Ryzen: A Tale of Cache, Compute Complexes & Scheduling

BloodBath

Ryzen performance is supposed to scale with memory speed but at the moment none of the boards have the RAM multiplier unlocked. It's currently locked at 1.2 with only manual overclocking of the bus taking the speeds higher. This is like old school RAM overclocks.

Updated BIOS's should have the multiplier unlocked soon. We should also be getting memory modules with AMP support. AMP is like intels XMP memory profiles.

Some benchmarks testing Ryzen performance with different memory speeds shows improvements in single and multi threaded workloads including games.





http://www.eteknix.com/memory-speed-large-impact-ryzen-performance/

L

BloodBath wrote: »

Ryzen performance is supposed to scale with memory speed but at the moment none of the boards have the RAM multiplier unlocked. It's currently locked at 1.2 with only manual overclocking of the bus taking the speeds higher. This is like old school RAM overclocks.

That's very interesting. It does look like there's enough reason to be cautiously optimistic about Ryzen becoming significantly better for gaming down the road than its current performance suggests.

BloodBath

Some AMD RAM is on the horizon. 3200Mhz and 3466Mhz units with AMP from G.skill.

http://www.pcgamer.com/gskill-flaunts-flare-x-and-fortis-memory-lines-aimed-at-ryzen/

That's very interesting. It does look like there's enough reason to be cautiously optimistic about Ryzen becoming significantly better for gaming down the road than its current performance suggests.

I'd expect at least 15-20% between windows scheduler fixes, BIOS updates and high ram speeds alone before we even get into games being optimized for it.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

Some AMD RAM is on the horizon. 3200Mhz and 3466Mhz units with AMP from G.skill.

http://www.pcgamer.com/gskill-flaunts-flare-x-and-fortis-memory-lines-aimed-at-ryzen/



I'd expect at least 15-20% between windows scheduler fixes, BIOS updates and high ram speeds alone before we even get into games being optimized for it.

Also very interesting given the preponderance of evidence that Intel chips see next to no benefit from higher ram speeds or even ddr3 vs. 4

BloodBath

There could be more to it than just the RAM speed. Hopefully all of this get's ironed out soon so we can see the real performance of these cpu's.

K.O.Kiki

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Also very interesting given the preponderance of evidence that Intel chips see next to no benefit from higher ram speeds or even ddr3 vs. 4

Skylake/Kabylake actually do benefit from faster RAM (DDR4-2800/DDR4-3000)

K.O.Kiki

Delidding Ryzen = not worth it

Serephucus

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Delidding Ryzen = not worth it

This should have never been a thing in the first place. Thanks Intel.

Lukker-

Serephucus wrote: »

This should have never been a thing in the first place. Thanks Intel.

This is why competition is good. Hopefully Intel step up there TIM game and possibly upgrade their stock coolers too which don't seem to have changed since 2005.

Lukker-

Nvidia new driver seems to have given a fair boost to Ryzen. Some of the latest benchmarks to come out:

The text might be too large to read so I'll post the link too so you can zoom, https://i.redd.it/35lx8xfdxfky.png

BloodBath

Seems to be worth waiting a bit anyway. See what BIOS updates brings and wait for memory that has amp profiles. Only certain high speed memory modules work with certain very high end boards atm for manually overclocking it.

Good thread here with some useful technical information. Seems overclocking the memory is also overclocking the northbridge which AMD call the data fabric at a ratio of 1:2 so the DF runs at half the memory speed. This increases the bandwidth of everything that communicates with the DF which on Ryzen are the L3 cache on the cpu, the memory and PCI lanes. The combination of all of this is probably why we're seeing decent gains with memory speeds.

The northbridge of Zeppelin is officially called as the data fabric (DF). The DF frequency is always linked to the operating frequency of the memory controller with a ratio of 1:2 (e.g. DDR4-2667 MEMCLK = 1333MHz DFICLK). This means that the memory speed will directly affect the data fabric performance as well. In some cases, it may appear that the performance of Zeppelin scales extremely well with the increased memory speed, however that is necessarily not the case.

In many of these cases the abnormally good scaling is caused by the higher data fabric clock (DFICLK) resulting from the higher memory speed, rather than the increased performance of the memory itself.

The highest officially supported memory speed for consumer (AM4) Zeppelin parts is 2667MHz (two single rank / sided modules in total) or 2400MHz (two dual rank / sided modules in total), however memory ratios for 2933MHz and 3200MHz speeds are available (not officially supported), at least on some motherboards.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-strictly-technical.2500572/

Solitaire

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Delidding Ryzen = not worth it

Saw a vid of this a few days back. For those not bothered watching videos: Ryzen is a "real" old-skool CPU, i.e. the die is indium-welded to a gold-plated layer on the back of the IHS which is needed to bond properly with the indium "solder". Trying to delid will usually murder the die, and the benefits are minimal as the IHS is a proper job to begin with

Dair76

The 5 series CPUs will be available on April 11th. I found the pic on OcUK, but the original is from Tech Power Up, I think.

wotzgoingon

The 1600X looks good. Hopefully it does ok in games.

Serephucus

BloodBath wrote: »

Ryzen OCing RAM linked to DF

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-strictly-technical.2500572/

Now that's very interesting. Has anyone gauged stability limits with the data fabric yet? Is it like the BCLK with Intel stuff or might we actually be looking at decent gains here I wonder?

god's toy

Going to do a new build this year, stuck between a 1700 and the new (not officially announced) intel 7740 6 core... I the short term suppose the intel would have it (for gaming) but down the road...?

Perhaps a 1700 would be the best bet...

Cant wait to see what comes out around the 11th.

PCper had a good vid of why it's probably not windows fault its not so hot for gaming.

Samuel T. Cogley

Interesting the TDP on the 1600 and X vs. the 1700. I hope we see 4.2/4.3Ghz OC due to the lower core count.

god's toy

This site already has pricing up for Ryzen 5.

: https://www.cclonline.com/category/401/PC-Components/CPU-Processors/AMD-Zen-Powered-CPUs/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=slider-banner&utm_campaign=941

Gehad_JoyRider

I think I'm going to get the 1700X or a 1600X I'm not sure I've got a month to decide.

I'm really not sure what to do.