AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX & 2950X CPU Review @ [H]

schmide said:
So brand loyalty renders faster than actual price / performance?
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Not so much brand loyalty but rather the fact that both Epycs and Xeons can do multi-socket configs with huge numbers of threads, PCIe lanes and GBs of ram. But lets face it, production companies are out there to create their CGI. The faster they can do that the faster they can meet their deadlines and collect their contract pay. Don't get me wrong here. You can build a really nice rendering workstation with a TR 2990WX, but you can build a much faster one with a couple Epycs and half a terabyte in memory. At the end of the day is when is the payback point for your equipment? The TR will pay back faster but you are producing slower and pushing out your deadlines.

But then this is what I would do. I would buy the best equipment I can and depreciate it over the length of my contracts.
 
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cyberguyz said:
Not so much brand loyalty but rather the fact that both Epycs and Xeons can do multi-socket configs with huge numbers of threads, PCIe lanes and GBs of ram. But lets face it, production companies are out there to create their CGI. The faster they can do that the faster they can meet their deadlines and collect their contract pay. Don't get me wrong here. You can build a really nice rendering workstation with a TR 2990WX, but you can build a much faster one with a couple Epycs and half a terabyte in memory. At the end of the day is when is the payback point for your equipment? The TR will pay back faster but you are producing slower and pushing out your deadlines.

But then this is what I would do. I would buy the best equipment I can and depreciate it over the length of my contracts.
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I would think, epyc for render farm, TR for workstation (live editing, etc).
 
Meeho said:
Phoronix just ran tests comparing Linux and Windows 10 and Server 2016/2019 and the Server versions were also severely behind in almost all benchmarks, mostly running the same as consumer versions.
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Actually Win 10 made Win Server look crappy in Blender! Lulz.
 
Do we even know if Blender has been recompiled for Windows to account for 32+ core availability? Blender has been a *nix-first program for quite some time. 32+ core workstations aren't exactly rare but until now they haven't been a commodity item.
 
Algrim said:
Do we even know if Blender has been recompiled for Windows to account for 32+ core availability? Blender has been a *nix-first program for quite some time. 32+ core workstations aren't exactly rare but until now they haven't been a commodity item.
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I would suggest that is a problem on Windows. It has never needed to be used in this fashion before....if ever. Chicken and egg.
 
I may move over to Threadripper next year, with Zen 2. Last year, I was lamenting that I might have to buy another quad core. Now I'm wishing I had a 2950X and 16 cores. Times are a'changin.
 
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Factum said:
Wan't that due to AMD's hardware dropping down multiplier and not stepping up again, as this was not needed with Intel CPU's?
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From my experience of using it, the driver utilized the second core vastly better than XP alone. I upgraded from a 3700+ San Diego to a Opty 154 Venus and finally to a 4200+ Toledo on XP. The utilization of the second core was next to zero (15-25%) vs the DC Optimizer (40-65%). Made me regret my purchase of the 4200+ until they released the driver, I could tell almost no difference from my 3700+ going to the 4200+. Going to Vista and 7 later made the DC Optimizer obsolete as it was not needed.

As for the multi's, I never ran into that issue personally, I was not running any Intel procs at that time to compare, and most of my cliental were still on P4's (Northwood/Prescott).
You could be right though, I do remember seeing some threads on that many moons ago.
 
DuronBurgerMan said:
I may move over to Threadripper next year, with Zen 2. Last year, I was lamenting that I might have to buy another quad core. Now I'm wishing I had a 2950X and 16 cores. Times are a'changin.
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Zen 2 (Ryzen3?) will be AMD's moment.

If they show that they can close the clock and IPC gap while keeping efficiency in check, they have a real shot of edging Intel out in not only the majority of the compute cases, but also gaming cases and other applications that are sensitive to single-thread performance!
 
I really don't mean to derail the thread, but does anyone else hate the word compute? It is used so much lately. What is wrong with computing? It sounds SO much better.
 
Nightfire said:
I really don't mean to derail the thread, but does anyone else hate the word compute? It is used so much lately. What is wrong with computing? It sounds SO much better.
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Dan_D said:
That one doesn't bother me. However, "Multimedia" used to infuriate me back in the late 1990's.
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It's "content creators" now. Apparently everyone who knows someone with a smartphone is now a content creator.
 
capt_cope said:
It's "content creators" now. Apparently everyone who knows someone with a smartphone is now a content creator.
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And they are!

Just none of it is any good :ROFLMAO:

[I say that as a photographer, the best camera you have is the one you have with you- and it doesn't take an awesome camera/camcorder to produce great content, it takes a great photographer/videographer!]
 
cageymaru said:
That write up was so good! That Intel $2000 monster needs a severe price cut or just needs to be phased out.
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Who would buy that when you could spend 1k less and get about the same perforamce?!?

AMD just won a fight against intel imo. Im amazed. The future is looking nuts! Whats in 2020?!? 128 cores on 7nm?!????
 
PhoenixWings said:
Currently, I have two 1950X systems up and running, one with the ASUS X399 Zenith Extreme motherboard and one with the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7. Honestly I didn't expect any IPC improvement from the 2950X, however, I expected better overclocking. The 1950X is a lousy overclocker. I mean, it's goo to see some improvement, but 6~7% over 1950X isn't worth buying the 2950X and replacing my current CPUs with it.

On the other hand, I see the 2990WX a huge missed opportunity for AMD. I am not sure what AMD was thinking, or what the specific use case scenarios are that AMD envisioned for this massive CPU, but to me, it looks like a handicapped product. Single threaded performance, or per cor performance sucks, and for anything that's memory bandwidth intensive it sucks. To make matters worse, the infinity bandwidth is halved even between the cores that have direct access to memory.

I think that AMD will "fix" their 32 core CPU next year when they go to 7nm for Zen 2 by going back to a two die configuration. That will be the 32 core Threadripper CPU to buy. Until then, the 1950X and 2950X are excellent CPUs. The 1950X can be had anywhere between $700 ~ $780, and that's more than 10% less than the 2950X. I would say that the 1950X is a bargain at this point in time for what it is.
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Hos the Fuck did you conclude its handicapped?!?
 
msroadkill612 said:
Newb here, but couldnt u dummy up a test by keeping ram constant & reducing active cores on a multi core cpu? The perf/core may reveal clues re your theory.
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Not if it's a core scaling issue - If AME / Premiere can only utilize X cores regardless of ram then disabling cores until you hit that point won't tell us much about ram requirements per core. The only way I can think of to test the scaling is to add enough ram to remove it from the equation. If you've got 128gb of ram for both the 2950x and 2990wx and their performance is nearly identical it's a scaling issue for the cores.
 
Steve from HW does some Linux tests with the 2990wx. Honestly, going through the ass pain of Linux doesn't help the 2990wx much more than the 7980XE. The core configuration still sucks for encoding and encryption.
 
Nightfire said:
Steve from HW does some Linux tests with the 2990wx. Honestly, going through the ass pain of Linux doesn't help the 2990wx much more than the 7980XE. The core configuration still sucks for encoding and encryption.
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Lots of cores without local memory does seem to be a bit of an edge case; I don't see it being an ongoing issue once schedulers and apps get their core assignments figured, but I also don't see the benefit being that terribly massive on a general use scale, especially for the price.

It'd likely be more worth it to invest the price delta into a second 'thin' system and slave/cluster it for larger jobs if your applications can't extract a reasonable amount of utility out of the 24/32-core parts.
 
Nightfire said:
Steve from HW does some Linux tests with the 2990wx.
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Here is the read if you don't want to watch the full video: https://www.techspot.com/review/1683-linux-vs-windows-threadripper-vs-core-i9/
It is good that they started testing on Linux. Interesting how Windows 7-zip results are all over the place between different websites.
Although I think the test predated the L1TF vulnerability patches, which slightly (when running on bare hardware) or heavily (when running inside a VM) decreases performance on Intel systems.

Here is another (launch day) test which included Linux: https://techgage.com/article/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx-32-core-workstation-processor-review/6/
IdiotInCharge said:
It'd likely be more worth it to invest the price delta into a second 'thin' system and slave/cluster it for larger jobs if your applications can't extract a reasonable amount of utility out of the 24/32-core parts.
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You can just run several instances on a single Threadripper system, instead of running them on different systems.
 
chithanh said:
You can just run several instances on a single Threadripper system, instead of running them on different systems.
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No doubt, however, the reason behind using a second system is to get the second processor directly attached to local memory. I'll add that I feel that running additional instances perhaps with their affinity set to the cores with non-local memory might make good use of the processor; the additional instances will certainly run slower, but will still be getting work done, while the primary instances will be running full speed.
 
capt_cope said:
It's "content creators" now. Apparently everyone who knows someone with a smartphone is now a content creator.
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1. Invent a new buzzword to describe some activity normies don't fully understand but want to talk about.
2. People who do that activity seldom use the buzzword, but people who talk about them use it all the fucking time.
3. Eventually, people who don't do the activity, but want to pretend that they do, use the word to describe themselves.
4. Everybody uses the word (except people who actually do the thing) so word becomes functionally meaningless.
5. This necessitates the creation of a new buzzword to describe only said activity.
6. Go back to step 1.
 
Re-running 2990WX at 4GHz where we originally had issues with it shutting down. I think our PSU is "bad." That said, the 2990WX seems to be the Devil CPU.....

IMG_20180828_225947.jpg
 
Any further insights on which motherboard you guys prefer for running these beasts? Thinking about getting a 2950x but can't decide which mobo I should pair it with.
 
Nobu said:
Think he meant the power strip under the kill-a-watt, or were you talking about that too? If so, that's an impressive little piece of kit.
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yeah I meant the power bar, strip, whatever you want to call it, not the kill-a-watt. it just looked like a cheapy but as he said its high gauge and looks can be deceiving.
and I just realized I was reading it up-side-down, as 999W. oops. 666W is kinda badass!
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Any recommendations for a 'computing office' window A/C unit?

:ROFLMAO:

[joking and... somewhat serious, need to see if my complex here will allow it!]
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Well in Florida that is virtually required if one want some major toys in their special space. Good for everything enthusiastic plus the participant from melting. In addition, 220v-240v also is well worth the wiring cost so power is never a limiting factor.
 
noko said:
Well in Florida that is virtually required if one want some major toys in their special space. Good for everything enthusiastic plus the participant from melting. In addition, 220v-240v also is well worth the wiring cost so power is never a limiting factor.
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OCing my 2700X and 1080 Ti in my tiny 10x10 office in Florida... yeah, that required a window unit. It would slowly raise the temperature in that room no matter what the central air did. Even stock, it was pretty warm in there.
 
noko said:
Well in Florida that is virtually required if one want some major toys in their special space. Good for everything enthusiastic plus the participant from melting. In addition, 220v-240v also is well worth the wiring cost so power is never a limiting factor.
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Power is power, regardless of voltage.
 
Nobu said:
Nah, same hurtz, mohr shock tho.
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It's not my idea of fun and it's sore.. Like a bruise and a bee sting in one with 60hz nerve fuckery lingering for a while.
 
alxlwson said:
Power is power, regardless of voltage.
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As long as you have the wiring for it. I was limited by house wiring
  • - solution - Run conduit, install 30a 230v breaker in A/C/heating breaker panel outside, install electrical panel in room and hook up multiple computers :D and room A/C. 30a x 230v x .95 (power factor) = 6555w at my disposal on new panel
  • Plus what the house wiring will supply, two separate 15a circuits 15a x 2 x 115v x .95 = 3278w. This is shared by other outlets in other rooms.
  • Total of ~ 10kw
  • = More toys
 
noko said:
As long as you have the wiring for it. I was limited by house wiring
  • - solution - Run conduit, install 30a 230v breaker in A/C/heating breaker panel outside, install electrical panel in room and hook up multiple computers :D and room A/C. 30a x 230v x .95 (power factor) = 6555w at my disposal on new panel
  • Plus what the house wiring will supply, two separate 15a circuits 15a x 2 x 115v x .95 = 3278w. This is shared by other outlets in other rooms.
  • Total of ~ 10kw
  • = More toys
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You did it wrong.
 
alxlwson said:
.8 x 30A = CD rating of breaker.
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Circuit breaker ratings is a 100% design rating, other factors such as heat build up can lower that rating. So yes I can carry the rated load unless heat builds up to point that it lowers the setpoint. I deal with this at where I work, where circuit breakers can trip below rated load and at other times will carry its rated capacity even slightly higher for hours if not all day due to temperature differences. Since I am no where near the rated capacity of the system configuration I am not too worried about that, at least yet. The .8 factor is just a common accepted design margin to size the circuit to allow for other factors, does not mean the circuit cannot handle the full rated load.

https://www.ecmweb.com/basics/sizing-circuit-breaker
 
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