AMD Markets Ryzen...Honestly...with Spiders!

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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I am not much for putting marketing in the news and agreeing with it. And quite frankly, AMD's marketing is usually not done very well, but today it sent over something that rang true with me. We have spent an incredible about of time reviewing AMD's Ryzen processors in the last couple of months and I feel extremely comfortable when it comes to evaluating what Ryzen is good at and what it is not. And there is not a lot of "not," so that is a good thing. AMD put together this marketing slide titled, "Spider Graph Ryzen 7." A lot of times I might not have even looked at this, but anything named a "spider graph" is at least going to get a peek by me considering I do not remember ever seeing one used in the last 10 years, at least not for selling CPUs.

I like this graphic's hexagonal layout as every tip of the polygon represents a computing application group that is fairly widely used in the enthusiast community and AMD does not even try to sugercoat the fact that the Ryzen gets beat out by Core i7 in low resolution gaming. For all intents and purposes the Ryzen and Core i7 run neck and neck in GPU-limited scenarios as most of you would guess. Of course in applications that can take advantage of more CPU cores and threads, the 4-Core 8-Thread Core i7 is beat down by Ryzen's 8-Core 16-Thread prowess. While we could certainly argue the percentages represented on the graph, I think the general idea is spot-on and a very good representation of Ryzen's abilities.

Since the properties on the PDF file were blank, we do not know who to thank over at AMD for such good work, but we do know that they used a "Macintosh" to make it. Can someone over there buy that person a Ryzen system?
 
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Well I made the right choice for my new rig then.... Kaby Lake all the way, it does what I care about!
 
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1080p gaming is a throw away to show intel does do something better then they move to 4k/VR gaming where the GTX 1070 is the bottleneck, although they don't use the same system as the 4k and VR are internal tests while the 1080p are kitguru who uses a GTX Titan X Pascal. Not really showing that AMD cpu is any better at games but rather gpus currently can't handle that resolution that well.

Then you get into some of the other stuff like using adobe premire cc for encoding. That large gap is only possible if you use cpu only encoding, but no one uses cpu only encoding in premire because it can take like 5 times longer for no visual benefit vs gpu assisted encoding.

For Game streaming it's a measure of dropped frame streams not a measure of FPS in game, which is actually neither here nor there as both are important but they only include the drop frames is presumptuous.

Again 1080p gaming and encryption tests weren't even done by them. While the rest were which is just an odd way to go about things.

The encryption tests come from 1 test done by pcgamer, for veracrypt AES-twofish-serpent
Which to be fair to that test, does do cascading encrption and quite secure although AES is pretty much the encryption standard being good enough and plus instead of veracrypt you can just get yourself a SED to do the job better.

While the 1080p tests come from kitguru using a different gpu.
Both of which are the ryzen 5 reviews that happen to have 7700k and 1700x in the charts, which is the funny part to me.
 
Semantics said:
1080p gaming is a throw away to show intel does do something better then they move to 4k/VR gaming where the GTX 1070 is the bottleneck, although they don't use the same system as the 4k and VR are internal tests while the 1080p are kitguru who uses a GTX Titan X Pascal. Not really showing that AMD cpu is any better at games but rather gpus currently can't handle that resolution that well
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I'd wager that most people still game at 1080p so it definitely isn't a throw away. I actually place greater value on that particular metric than any of the others. You're probably right about the 4k / VR part, but hey, that's what marketing is.

oum8lk.jpg
 
NeoNemesis said:
I'd wager that most people still game at 1080p so it definitely isn't a throw away. I actually place greater value on that particular metric than any of the others. You're probably right about the 4k / VR part, but hey, that's what marketing is.
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That is a pretty terrible graph I can't even tell where anything is, lol like seriously what does any of that mean.

But no, I mean 1080p is a throw away so the marketing doesn't appear completely bias.
 
Semantics said:
That is a pretty terrible graph I can't even tell where anything is, lol like seriously what does any of that mean.

But no, I mean 1080p is a throw away so the marketing doesn't appear completely bias.
Click to expand...

The graph was just making fun of nvidia's marketing campaign last year where they kept showing just the tips of graphs as proof that they were way ahead of AMD.

But for it to be a 'throw away' it would be some worthless or meaningless metric. Conversely, AMD decided to highlight its biggest flaw, which I think is actually quite interesting and isn't something you often see companies do.
 
The Game Streaming result is stupid, if you read the fine print. They mention "dropped frames" for the benchmark, which is the correct way of measuring it, its far better than trying to measure CPU usage, which is basically impossible to accurately assess (Linus Tech Tips did this all wrong, AMD does it right here).

But they don't mention the game, which x264 preset they were using, what framerate and resolution they were streaming at, how long the stream was (too short and the results are unreproducible and emphasizes startup costs over sustained performance) nor the most important factor of all: what performance they were getting in the actual game! Every streamer that doesn't have a dedicated box sacrifices some framerate to stream, but framerate is still way more important than stream quality. No one wants to watch a streamer get pwnd because their stream settings are too high and their computer can't run the game properly.

So basically the "18%" result for Game Streaming is a completely worthless / arbitrary number and doesn't even measure how well the game plays.
 
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Semantics said:
That is a pretty terrible graph I can't even tell where anything is, lol like seriously what does any of that mean.

But no, I mean 1080p is a throw away so the marketing doesn't appear completely bias.
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i have a feeling that you complain just for the sake of complaining, objectively the graph is good, highlights the strenght of AMD's product, and showcase overall value, and also smart because it's aimed at gamers, the segment that got hammered the most with Ryzen's launch.
you know the MMO character stat like graph, that usualy shows stats relative to specific character you chose, strenght-intelligence-agility , etc...it's very common and often used in e-spot analysis.
one thing i dont agree with though, is the 8% for 1080p gaming, the average is more like 15%
 
SeymourGore said:
The way to Kyle's heart: spider graphs.
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I thought that was a bottle of good bourbon? Time to cancel the order. I wanted a new poof. Oh well.

Ryzen has gotten quite a bit of good marketing by word of mouth. From here, anyway, it looks like it's been well received by enthusiasts.
 
1080p is the new 480p. Everything measuring performance should start there, not end there. So the voices in my head tell me.
 
I have to laugh that some people who put together computers have this much trouble deciphering a simple spider graph - it's kind of pathetic.


Onto the graph itself, I actually applaud AMD for their honesty in this one! Combine this and the fact that they took what the stock market considers a "significant" share away from Intel, and I have to applaud them.


On the whole, Ryzen shows a lot of promise for gaming, and is a killer for content creation, but that also being said, it's fascinating to see some of the growing pains of new computing technology - something I don't think I remember to have seen since the 90s since everything since was all Intel based on similar architecture. Could also be a timing thing - Intel is hitting the limits of that architecture hence the diminishing returns from their chips, and AMD has something new that, while initially marketed as a gaming chip, actually is more of a content creation powerhouse.

All that being said, given Ryzen's growing pains, I really think the true test is the next generation. Jim Keller is no longer with AMD right now, and the real question is if their engineers are up to the challenge of being able to improve on Jim's designs with future revisions to help Ryzen mature as a platform.

I'll be holding off on upgrading just yet, as I want to see what the next generation of Ryzen can do, or if this generation was just a flash in the pan.
 
EODetroit said:
Interestingly the "right" way to measure game streaming performance has a direct analog to how HardOCP benches. Find out the best usable x264 preset while maintaining some amount of FPS in-game and having less than (some number, 1% is the going rule of thumb for good looking video) duplicated frames in OBS (or lagged frames in OBS Studio). But this wouldn't create a nice arbitrary number on a spider chart.
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I wish we got paid for reviews (not really), up to $35,000 per review, for looking at a specific product and showcasing it. And quite frankly, I have not see how those tests were done.

But as I specifically mentioned in the OP, "we could certainly argue the percentages represented on the graph." My take on the marketing slide is that it is "right" in its general representation. Which is something new for any CPU company presenting data. ;)
 
Dragon Warrior 3 had a spider graph to explain the class system and I loved it. The best gaming manual ever, I must of read it 1000x.
 
the next Macintosh will probably be a Ryzen system :) ... that would make sense actually

edit:
or it is already ! you spotted the first public appearance of the new power mac !
 
Where does this "34% Content Creation" number come from? I've been thinking about getting a new machine at work, which would mainly be for Photoshop. Is Ryzen really 34% faster in Photoshop and filters, or is this some other kind of content?
 
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