Help me understand CPUs

[Tech Enthusiast]

I am looking to update two systems in the not so near future. Kinda have a year, possibly two, but I want to understand the new things that happen.

 

Basically everywhere I look, people are all over the new AMD Chips. More Cores, more Threads, less price.

It all sounds so good on paper.

 

Then I saw a topic about an i7-9700k benchmark. German Page, but the benchmarks count anyways

 

I am strictly trying to understand what makes AMD so good and Intel so worried (according to news, forum posts etc.).

So when I saw these benchmarks I started to wonder. I7-9700k is about 50% faster than the first AMD chip (Ryzen 7 2700x) in that long line of CPUs.

That is a pretty beefy performance lead. Leaked prices suggest a price of around 460 for the Intel Chip and 330 for the AMD Chip. A premium over AMD, but also a sizeable performance difference.

 

Looking at the Multicore score had me confused tho. The i7 with 8 cored and no HT at all, almost at the same score than a Threadripper 2950x, with 16(32) cores. And that Chip is 900ish bucks as well.

 

Again, I am trying to understand here. Not likely to buy either of these.

Why is it, that people praise AMD for pushing Intel so hard, claiming Intel can't compete right now? Is there anything those benchmarks don't tell?

 

From my (naive) thinking, I would argue like this:

• 50% more performance in single Core for about 30% more price seems fine. Actually a win for Intel.
• Being on par with a 16 core chip in multi-core, for twice the price is a flat-out victory.
• I don't see many non-professional tools use plenty of cores. So less high performing cores > plenty of weak cores.

 

Are the people overreacting on what AMD is achieving right now? Kinda like the Vega fanboy zealots preaching about the magical driver that never happened?

To be 100% clear here: I don't care AT ALL what color the company has that I buy from. I strictly go for the better deal, which may be higher performance, or better price, depending on the need at the time.

Right now, it all seems to be blue, however.

 

What am I missing? Or is the AMD dominance only a thing in lower price brackets?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Thats a single test, which isn't great at telling you about realworld performance. Geek bench doesn't scale that well with tons of cores aswell, and then you have things like avx that not all programs use and latency.

 

Just wait for the rest of the benchmarks, nosingle test can show all performance.

[PlayStation 2]

It's largely price-based rather than strictly performance-based, and frankly, if RAM research isn't your thing, I'd avoid Ryzen.

The 9700K is bound to beat the 2700X, and to be fair, I'd hope it would as it's in a different price bracket than the 2700X. But that is only one (well two) benchmark, and we'll know whether the 9700K whips ass in price and performance closer towards launch.

[AntiTrust]

3 minutes ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

snip

I think alot of what youre seeing is a result of long years of intel dominance in the market finally coming to an end. Until Ryzen, I would estimate that about 5-10 years previous intel completely dominated the desktop cpu market. So people were really happy when AMD came out with Ryzen chips that could compete with intel once again and inject a bit of competition into the CPU market - which depending on who you ask has already resulted in some pretty great developments for consumers such as six core processors across the 8th gen intel lineup and such. 

 

as far as current cpu benchmarks and stuff I'll let someone else answer that 

[Tech Enthusiast]

So, if the AMD thing is strictly price based, it would not matter (much) for me, since I usually buy at the upper end of the spectrum.

Not like a crazy upper end, but I don't see 500 bucks for a CPU as unreasonable. 

 

AMD having a very positive effect is something I strongly agree with.

Doubt Intel would have moved away from quad cores without Ryzen. So really happy for that.

Was just kinda hoping AMD would also fit my needs, but they have another year or so to get there. 

if they have a high tier offering by then it may happen. :-)

[Morgan MLGman]

5 minutes ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

So, if the AMD thing is strictly price based, it would not matter (much) for me, since I usually buy at the upper end of the spectrum.

Not like a crazy upper end, but I don't see 500 bucks for a CPU as unreasonable. 

 

AMD having a very positive effect is something I strongly agree with.

Doubt Intel would have moved away from quad cores without Ryzen. So really happy for that.

Was just kinda hoping AMD would also fit my needs, but they have another year or so to get there. 

if they have a high tier offering by then it may happen. :-)

Depends on what you're using the CPU for. For that budget you can get a 12-core AMD chip (Threadripper 1920X with 24 threads costs 420USD) if you're into heavy workloads.

If you're only gaming though, the 8700K is more than enough.

[Tech Enthusiast]

11 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Depends on what you're using the CPU for. For that budget you can get a 12-core AMD chip (Threadripper 1920X with 24 threads costs 420USD) if you're into heavy workloads.

If you're only gaming though, the 8700K is more than enough.

Well, I do game a lot. But I also do home office work more often than not.

Mostly coding, but also machine learning, some simple deep networks, data mining etc.

 

Those tasks will be outsourced to Tensor Cores for the most part, not sure how hard the CPU is hit after that.

 

But id like to ask about that Threadripper 1920x suggestion: It has 24 threads and still scores lower than the i7-9700k with only 8 cores. So,... why would I want that? Kinda the point of the topic. Suggestions like yours are made all over the place, but on which basis? not having both CPUs to test, I can only go by benchmarks or by trusting people.

 

The first is considered invalid by many people, as they don't show real-world performance.

The second is kinda hard, because who and why would I believe? If every benchmark says product X is better, the people suggesting Y need to have something to base it on. 

[Morgan MLGman]

8 minutes ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

But id like to ask about that Threadripper 1920x suggestion: It has 24 threads and still scores lower than the i7-9700k with only 8 cores. So,... why would I want that? Kinda the point of the topic. Suggestions like yours are made all over the place, but on which basis? not having both CPUs to test, I can only go by benchmarks or by trusting people.

 

The first is considered invalid by many people, as they don't show real-world performance.

The second is kinda hard, because who and why would I believe? If every benchmark says product X is better, the people suggesting Y need to have something to base it on. 

 

If you want a good indication of multithreaded performance, check Cinebench R15 scores. They show quite accurately how relative multithreaded performance stacks up. I can assure you that the 1920X will score higher than the 9700K in this test. It scales with cores well so you can see the full potential of high core count CPUs.

Suggestions like mine are based on the needs of the individual. This is precisely why I said:

Quote

you can get a 12-core AMD chip (Threadripper 1920X with 24 threads costs 420USD) if you're into heavy workloads.

Instead of saying that you should get this CPU because it's awesome. It's awesome for the price if you're doing CPU-heavy work.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

5 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

 

I am strictly trying to understand what makes AMD so good and Intel so worried (according to news, forum posts etc.).

The way the CPUs are designed make AMD CPUs cheaper to manufacture, and the "bigger" (in terms of cores) it gets, the bigger the difference in manufacturing costs.

 

5 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Is there anything those benchmarks don't tell?

If Geekbench is all there is in that link, then yes, there's plenty those benchmarks don't tell. Basically everything  

 

5 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

What am I missing? Or is the AMD dominance only a thing in lower price brackets?

There isn't any AMD dominance really. If anything, there's a reversal of the large Intel dominance as a consequence of both companies having more similar offerings than they did some years ago. The fact that AMD can place its products a little (sometimes quite a bit) below the price-performance curve helps in boosting their sales, but there's still a long way to go before market shares reflect actual performance differences.

[grss1982]

IMHO. Competition. If Ryzen had not come out as it did we'd all be stuck still with 4c/8t i7s till now with minimum improvements per new generation.

 

Instead with Ryzen's release consumers now suddenly see a i7s and i5s with six cores or more and the 2c/4t i3 config is now a Pentium config while the i3 is the new i5 i.e. 4c/4t.

[Tech Enthusiast]

So basically:

We are all happy AMD did it, but we still buy Intel if we want better performance and don't care about a few bucks more. I see.

Kinda in line with what I expected, but sure hoped the hype was more than just that. Oh well, they still have a year to make me go red. if they are on a good way, I can still hope. :-)