The memory mode selection is certainly weird but my guess is we won't need to worry about that in some months. I think (relevant) software will optimize for Numa sooner or later making the switch irrelevant.
According to the article: The primary temperature reporting sensor of the AMD Ryzen processor is a sensor called “T Control,” or tCTL for short. The tCTL sensor is derived from the junction (Tj) temperature—the interface point between the die and heatspreader—but it may be offset on certain CPU models so that all models on the AM4 Platform have the same maximum tCTL value. This approach ensures that all AMD Ryzen and thus Ryzen Threadripper processors have a consistent fan policy. I'm not sure I'd say that's a good reason, but apparently that's the reason. It will likely be slow to be adopted. Most corporations don't upgrade all that often, so unless they're due for one, I suspect most businesses aren't going to be flocking to this. I'd say it will never be worth worrying about, at least for the 1920X and 1950X. If a game happens to need 12 or more threads, it ought to run fine with UMA. As for the 1900X, that's a different story, where I have a feeling some new high-end games might get bottlenecked on NUMA, but there could be latency issues with UMA.
Something to remember about video encoders (x264/x265), and the software that uses them, like Handbrake: Too few threads? That's a software problem. I can BET that new versions of x26_ will be able to scale up to 32 threads (or more), taking advantage of this massive power under the hood. Other software as well, which so far didn't make much sense to optimize for more threads (as very few people had them), will awake to the new "core wars" reality of 2017. Buy TR today... have more power tomorrow. p.s. - And of course, you could run 2 encodes in parallel and go over the limited threads problem.
Solid results overall, and a solid article. Well done. The performance, temps and OC is encouraging. I didn't bother to overclock my Ryzen 7 much (temps were too high for full-time computing) but it's definitely something to try with TR. The ball's now in Intel's court. Should be interesting to see how their 12+ Core i9s stack up. I'm a little hesitant about the UMA vs NUMA stuff. I'd prefer that AMD stick with just one method (NUMA) so that app developers are encouraged to program for it. Often times, by trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
Considering how quickly they're trying to get the 18-core released, I think they're trying to steal AMD's thunder as quickly as possible. But when you consider the turbo clocks and price point, the 7980XE probably isn't going to impress anyone (relatively speaking - it will still have insanely high numbers). Intel's guaranteed win will be overclocking with LN. To my understanding, it's optional and user-controlled. Devs are not going to depend on people manually toggling something on a relatively niche product (especially for gaming) in order to gain a few extra FPS. That means any potential performance gains will be entirely up to the user's tinkering. In other words, being able to switch between UMA and NUMA is really just a bonus feature, kind of like having more cup holders - you could easily go without them and you may never take advantage of them, but if there's room to have them then why not have them?
They shouldn't do to bad at all really but they have a few problems: 1. Cooling, especially the more cores there are. 2. Speed, due to cooling issue for example the 18 core is maxed at 3.4GHz when using all cores (16 core is 3.6GHz) 3. Price, damn they're expensive!
What i don't like from the review is that sometimes you see @4.0GHz comparison and sometimes you don't, even on the samepage just different benchmark, i don't understand why.
Great CPU for those who can use all the firepower available... For me CPUs like this are kinda of meh because i have no use for them... What i´m interested is on the mobile APUs so show me what you got AMD. I don´t if the price is that important for the potential buyers of those kind of hardware... For some guys 2.000€ is just pocket change...
Interesting the power consumption too, under idle and web browsing the 1950x sucks up a bit more power than the I9 7900X but wprime, games etc and full load Intel is sucking up more power and considering TR is a 180w TDP while Intels is an allegedly 140w TDP but uses more power and has less cores????
AMD uses higher transistor density this lows Power draw but makes OC harder, Intel lv2 cache draws a lot of power over "Kabylake" original design, actually AMD has most efficent process, Intel... Where f*** you investigación these billons? XD
Well my ideas about this being some be all and end all cpu you could invest in heavily now and then skip upgrading cpu for the next 6 years just went out the window. I fell like people are so irrational when it comes to criticising products they like so no need to attack me for saying this but I am as disgusted by intel for holding the market as anyone and any progress intel makes tieard higher thread count/more motherboard features/pci lines will only be because of amds innovation forcing their hand... But I feel like ot woulf be insane for someone like me to buy threadripper when the quad channel memory doesn't seem like it makes a big deal of difference for most people and the game performance in the games I play like deus ex mankind divided is worse when you overclock the biggest threadripper beast available compared to a stock clocks 4790k from like 3 years ago. Kudos to amd for moving the market forward and for making budget alternatives to intel yet again but I could but an 8700k and the highest end motherboard you could buy and use my current ram for less than the cost of a threadripper cpu alone, let alone the $680aus motherboard I would want to get with it and the cost of a new $400aus ram kit. I hope everyone buying a cpu thinks long and hard before buying intel if threadripper ticks the boxes they want but after my excitement died down, as someone who is only interested in regular tasks, like running multiple tasks, who would LOVE to be able to record in 4k while playing games, who plays the latest games, and file copying and decompression, I see a 6 or 8 core intel in my future which is sad to admit. Now everyone call tell I'm a moron and a hater or whatever.
I just browsed through all pages again to see if I missed something. There is one benchmark not having 4.0 GHz tweak results, that is the Vegas PRO video editing software benchmark. I ran out time, it is a totally new benchmark test I created last minute (as I felt we need some professional editing software in the test suite) and simply ran out of time as I needed to move onto something with a V in review wise. I'll try and update that one benchmark chart soon though.
Remember, TDP!=wattage. The annoying thing is we don't know exactly what the TDP is in regards to: base clock or turbo/XFR (I'm betting on base clock). TR's base clock is relatively high for a 12 or 16 core CPU and Intel's is definitely low enough to fit the 140W claim. But since aftermarket coolers have to be used for these CPUs, unless you've got a real crappy heatsink, you're not going to be limited to base clocks. Therefore, Intel reaches its turbo speeds and exceeds the advertised TDP. @Emille I really don't understand why people keep their hopes up for this CPU for gaming. Seriously, there is absolutely no reason to expect TR would outperform an overclocked Ryzen 7. Quad channel is not a good reason - not enough of the CPU cores are under enough stress to demand that kind of bandwidth. You're entitled to your opinion, but the flaw in it is your unrealistic expectations.
Intel and AMD calculates TDP diferent but TDP does'nt mean "Power Draw" is just "Thermal Power Dissipation", Intel has lower área, higher clocks, worse process, -----> Dissaster, higher Power draw and temps
For the crossfire/sli gaming enthusiast I think the 8-core 1900x is the ticket because of all of those PCIe Lanes, especially--as well as quad-channel memory support--you have to buy 2x the amount needed to configure dual-channel Ryzen, but you can partially compensate by buying cheaper, slower ram while still coming out ahead of dual-channel in terms of memory bandwidth and capacity. Pretty much, AMD has all of the bases covered in the consumer market, imo. It all depends on the money you want to spend! Great review HH! Intel's "glue" description is pretty darn funny... Reminds me of nVidia when a competitor introduces a GPU hardware feature they haven't implemented: "Oh, that? Oh, we've always had that feature in our hardware--we just haven't turned it on, yet!"... Fun-ee... They've done that since long before 3dfx wound up in the nVidia stomach. I love to see Intel sent scrambling in a mad dash to its fabs, yelling: "OK, everybody, wake up! We've got work to do!"
No, you are not any of these. But like many others you keep ignoring the fact that this is not a gaming cpu and you keep complaining about gaming performance vs a 4790K.