Is Intel still better than AMD at programming

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

A while ago Intel was the go to for most programming due to better IPC and some other technical reasons. For example until recently AMD processors were a little tricky sometimes to work with android studio (particularly emulation). I know that AMD has stepped up their IPC game. Is Ryzen good for programming these days, are there any downsides going red vs blue for programming or even game development? If I am not mistaken Intel has some instruction sets that AMD doesn't but I doubt I will have to use them anytime soon. I tried doing research but only came up with "MORE CORES = GOOD PROGRAMMING HAAHHa". There are still many cases where you want the best single core performance. I am looking at the 5800x as an upgrade in particular. 

 

[Ankh Tech]

Since I am too a programmer (soon to be indie game developer), i did a bit of reasearch myself, and the improvements in ryzen 5000 are so significant, amd has become the better option now. It has better single core and multicore, I'd get a 5600x or 5800x based on your multicore needs.

[trag1c]

There are no downsides to having a ryzen based system for development. The single core performance is spicy and the multicore performance is fantastic.

 

My current dev machine is a 5900x and it crushes through everything I throw at it.

[Srijan Verma]

It really depends on what type of are you doing, for example:

Android Dev: There are many technologies like Intel HAXM which give it a slight edge in running android vms for test,  and possibly with the future hybrid architecture it would only get better. But there are already existing AMD implementations for the same stuff so there isint gonna be a huge difference.
Web Dev: Those guys can use potatoes and will be just fine doesn't matter (don't @ me).
AI/data : Many cores may come in use depending on time the type of framework you are using but you would be dumb to not run the load on a GPU(unless you don't have 1).

Game dev: Very difficult to be exact in this case since its really gonna come down to the engine/language/tools etc you are using, you may use blender for assets and models etc so may want a higher core count cpu to boost render times (then again it can also be done on the GPU).

Programming might be considered a heavy task but it really isn't till you are compiling kernels every other day(which u probably wont be doing anytime soon).

I would rather consider other aspects like price or performance in specific scenarios or certain framework support.

[Eigenvektor]

AMD has had better IPC than Intel for some time already, but they lacked in clock speed, which negated this advantage somewhat. With the latest AMD CPUs this is basically a non-issue.

 

I have a 5900x and it performs very well for both server development (Java) and Android development. I'm on Linux so emulator hardware support isn't an issue, but afaik there is also working support on Windows these days: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/07/android-emulator-amd-processor-hyper-v.html

 

1 hour ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

If I am not mistaken Intel has some instruction sets that AMD doesn't but I doubt I will have to use them anytime soon.

I think about the only thing missing would be AVX-512. If you don't know what that is, then you probably don't need it. From what I could find, AMD is going to add support with Zen 4.

 

I would say it doesn't really matter whether you use AMD or Intel for software development, unless you have a very particular use case. From a performance standpoint it shouldn't matter, unless you spend hours compiling each day and every second you can shave off is money saved. But in that case you'd be benchmarking CPUs before making a purchase anyway.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

9 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

AMD has had better IPC than Intel for some time already, but they lacked in clock speed, which negated this advantage somewhat. With the latest AMD CPUs this is basically a non-issue.

 

I have a 5900x and it performs very well for both server development (Java) and Android development. I'm on Linux so emulator hardware support isn't an issue, but afaik there is also working support on Windows these days: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/07/android-emulator-amd-processor-hyper-v.html

 

I think about the only thing missing would be AVX-512. If you don't know what that is, then you probably don't need it. From what I could find, AMD is going to add support with Zen 4.

 

I would say it doesn't really matter whether you use AMD or Intel for software development, unless you have a very particular use case. From a performance standpoint it shouldn't matter, unless you spend hours compiling each day and every second you can shave off is money saved. But in that case you'd be benchmarking CPUs before making a purchase anyway.

Cool to hear that you have experience using AMD for android dev.

 

I just got an associates in software engineering and will probably be going for a bachelors but I am sort of locked out from doing that until I take like 3 more math classes. Most of my classes were in java but I think most universities near me focus on C++. Game dev in maybe unity and android apps will probably be my main focus aside from general compiling which at that point as you and others said doesn't really matter. 

 

Either way it is good to hear that AMD is a good choice now for programming. I am also kind of looking at the 10850k it is in the same price bracket as the 11700k at my local microcenter 2 more cores for slightly less ipc seems worth it. The 5900x seems to have supply shortages atm. I Need something kind of quick as my Haswell motherboard is dying and would rather just do a new build. The thought of owning a 10 core CPU gets me excited.. always owned mid range i5s and i7s.

[Eigenvektor]

16 minutes ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Either way it is good to hear that AMD is a good choice now for programming. I am also kind of looking at the 10850k it is in the same price bracket as the 11700k at my local microcenter 2 more cores for slightly less ipc seems worth it. The 5900x seems to have supply shortages atm. I Need something kind of quick as my Haswell motherboard is dying and would rather just do a new build. The thought of owning a 10 core CPU gets me excited.. always owned mid range i5s and i7s.

Yeah, I got lucky and got mine when prices returned to normal for a short period. The 10850k should be more than fine though. Coming from an i5 3570K myself, the new CPU makes a huge difference.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

Yeah, I got lucky and got mine when prices returned to normal for a short period. The 10850k should be more than fine though. Coming from an i5 3570K myself, the new CPU makes a huge difference.

Only thing that is a bummer is that I am right on the end of support for either company. Intel is about to announce 12 gen and AM4 is at its end of cpu support to. If I could hold out somehow I would have years of CPU upgrades. Oh well I am not going to spend $150+ on a used z97 motherboard replacement from ebay.  

[Eigenvektor]

45 minutes ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Only thing that is a bummer is that I am right on the end of support for either company. Intel is about to announce 12 gen and AM4 is at its end of cpu support to. If I could hold out somehow I would have years of CPU upgrades. Oh well I am not going to spend $150+ on a used z97 motherboard replacement from ebay.  

I went with AM4 mainly because it's a mature platform at this point. I figured I'd rather not get first gen DDR5. Based on how long my previous CPU lasted me, being able to upgrade CPUs on the same board wasn't a major concern. It's also questionable whether AMD is going to have such a long lived socket again.

[krakek]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

I went with AM4 mainly because it's a mature platform at this point. I figured I'd rather not get first gen DDR5. Based on how long my previous CPU lasted me, being able to upgrade CPUs on the same board wasn't a major concern. It's also questionable whether AMD is going to have such a long lived socket again.

Personally I plan to give them ~18 months, we should see by then maturity of those new technologies, as well as any credible plans to do another long supported socket.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

On 9/23/2021 at 3:24 PM, Eigenvektor said:

I went with AM4 mainly because it's a mature platform at this point. I figured I'd rather not get first gen DDR5. Based on how long my previous CPU lasted me, being able to upgrade CPUs on the same board wasn't a major concern. It's also questionable whether AMD is going to have such a long lived socket again.

I looked at prices again Intel motherboards just seem too overpriced right now and kind of ruins the price discount of all 10th gens not to mention 11th gen I would seriously have to buy a very low tier board. So I am debating between a 5600x and a 5800x both with a midrange b550. The 2 extra cores of the 5800x would cost $90. Spending a little extra on a setup will have for two years or so doesn't seem like a bad investment even though I will probably struggle to use all 6 for now. 

[ComputerFido]

Compiling native applications (C, C++, etc.) is ridiculously parallel, having more cores is almost always better in that case. Having said that unless you are compiling large projects such as Linux kernel, Firefox or LLVM this shouldn't be a massive issue. Obviously for testing it will depend on what software as to whether you'll need the cores. Interpreted/JIT languages (Python, JS, java, C# which you may be using for game development) I believe single-core speeds may be more ideal.

[Franck]

It all depend what you are doing. I work 99% of the time on single threaded workloads and Intel beat down all our AMD systems in performance by ALOT. Without instability it's easy to get our Intel over 5ghz mark but AMD struggle pass 4.5 ghz. In our case 15% difference it's a matters of 3-4 hours saved per day on each computer that run these workload 24/7. At home I run AMD without any hiccups as I don't develop such heavy applications.

[Ankh Tech]

10 minutes ago, Franck said:

It all depend what you are doing. I work 99% of the time on single threaded workloads and Intel beat down all our AMD systems in performance by ALOT. Without instability it's easy to get our Intel over 5ghz mark but AMD struggle pass 4.5 ghz. In our case 15% difference it's a matters of 3-4 hours saved per day on each computer that run these workload 24/7. At home I run AMD without any hiccups as I don't develop such heavy applications.

You kniw GHz isnt the only measurment right? Currently AMD 5000 beats intel in single and multicore fyi.

[Guest]

On 9/23/2021 at 12:24 PM, Ankh Tech said:

Since I am too a programmer (soon to be indie game developer), i did a bit of reasearch myself, and the improvements in ryzen 5000 are so significant, amd has become the better option now. It has better single core and multicore, I'd get a 5600x or 5800x based on your multicore needs.

actually it does have slightly worse single core

 

 

but the difference isn't worth noting, not compared to the difference between Intel and AMD's multi core (until 12th gen, that is)

[Franck]

4 hours ago, Ankh Tech said:

You kniw GHz isnt the only measurment right? Currently AMD 5000 beats intel in single and multicore fyi.

no GHZ is not the only measurement but AMD beating Intel on single instruction is not 100% true. It all depend on the type of instruction you use. When working to get best performance you need to check how many cycle your instruction take on the CPU (usually it range between 0.2 and 17) then you factor your ghz to get your timings and compare that. For example I have 8000 series Intel taking less cycle to perform a specific set of instruction I do than a Ryzen 3000 series. All my Intel 8000 are clocked at 5 to 5.2 ghz and my Ryzen 3000 are pretty much at 4.2-4.4 ghz. Single core performance are about 23% lower on AMD in my case. My intels 9000 series have about 8-9% improvement over the 8000 for around 32% more than Ryzen 3000. I unfortunately don't have Ryzen 5000 series PCs around yet but right now so it IS possible that the specifc case I have the 5000 series are 32% faster than 3000 series but I cannot tell. That is assuming Intel 10000 and 11000 have zero improvement.

 

Again like I started my point with :

5 hours ago, Franck said:

It all depend what you are doing

 

[RayLeech]

If you care about IPC, there is a great reference here, includes up to Zen3 and Intel 10th gen. You can compare particular instructions across models.

https://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf

 

[Franck]

On 10/5/2021 at 11:07 AM, RayLeech said:

If you care about IPC, there is a great reference here, includes up to Zen3 and Intel 10th gen. You can compare particular instructions across models.

https://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf

 

omg I am not the only one using this lol.

[RayLeech]

3 hours ago, Franck said:

omg I am not the only one using this lol.

A little "light reading"