Immediately before Athlon destroyed the Intel Prescott Pentium architecture (Intel cancelled it and started over with Core/2 and licensed x86-64 from AMD, etc.), Athlon had teething pains centered around Athlon compiler optimization and developer support. Soon as those items were taken care of--just a couple-three months of time--the Athlon decimated the Pentium architecture. During the next year or more, you could not find a gaming web site that was still using Intel cpus, believe it or not. There was that much difference. Anyway, Ryzen is a brand-new architecture, just like Athlon was, and some time for compiler optimization and developer support will of course make a difference in gaming performance. Support for Intel's i-series in those terms is as mature now as it will ever be, while Ryzen is still washing off the amniotic sac... How much of a difference? I don't know--time will tell.
Back then we had to load drivers from a floppy, just to install the OS. We even had to manually insert the hard disk parameters to get correctly recognised You could boot into windows(or linux), install drivers supplied with the hardware and suddenly you get bsod during boot and have to reinstall the os. There was a time where you could even burn your motherboard or graphics card because the older AGP slot ran at 3.3V instead of 1.5V Google the problem? what is a google? People these days got used to a total plug 'n play experience with their PC(i blame apple and their appstore/iphone), tell someone to change a value from 0 to 1 to fix a problem these days and they think you're a hacker or something.
It's ok that none of this is no longer happening. The issue is more that a really new high performance platform hasn't been introduced since the Core 2, and a lot of things were much simpler back then.
There is some interesting findings over Anandtech forums. [QUOTE="Agent-47]each zen thread is being registered as an individual core with its own L2 and L3 cache. i.e. totaling 136 MB cache!!. this is using Windows Sysinternals. This explains the SMT troubles in the event that a thread bounced to a HT thinking its the real deal.[/quote] https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...and-discussion.2499879/page-128#post-38774366
If this is indeed true, I hope the Creator's update at least is ready. I know for a fact that Linux will be more or less ok post 4.10.
Just for comparison ryzen with gtx 1080 at 1080p that was posted in the review: My trustee old 2600k @ 4.2ghz + GTX 1070 at 1080p:
Doesn't surprise me. Like I said before, current Windows 10 (and 8.1 and 7 of course) doesn't have internal support for Zen. There really wasn't a need to add it, since Creators Update coming out shortly does have the optimisations and support in place, and this is what most people will actually be using. Even from day 1 of their build considering the update is due next month. That's why we really need a test on Insider preview 15048, seeing as these changes should be in place in that preview build. Also testing a RX 480 with the latest drivers on this build since the drivers are likely to have some optimisations for Zen as others have already shown. Nvidia drivers don't have Zen optimisations. Might be a while too, if ever, seeing as they seemingly only just got around to doing DirectX 12! Ideal comparison would be: Windows 10 Insider Preview 15048 (supposedly full Zen support) absolute latest drivers AMD RX 480 + Nvidia 1080 (with new DX12 beta driver for comparison) --> AMD Ryzen 1700x/1800x --> Intel i7-7700K This would be more representative of what people should expect next month. If there is a disparity with the results on the above setups versus current tests, then all current tests are basically invalidated. Testing just a GTX 1080 on build 15048 won't be ideal either, due to the optimisations that aren't in place that might be later. This is why the RX 480 with latest driver is more important, despite being a potential bottleneck. Actually having a situation where the GPU is a potential bottleneck would be interesting, as it will show how each platform copes with the bottleneck. Remember even if people do get a 1700X they may only have a mainstream video card, not everyone will be baring a 1700 or 1700X with a GTX 1080 Ti or full Vega.
Indeed , looks like gcc has got a ways to go http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-ryzen-znver1&num=1 using the zenspecifc optimizations cause regressions in many cases atm
I wish Zen all the best, but my 5930 runs at 4.6 GHz without breathing hard (1.359v). Until people figure out how to clock Zens for gaming AMD will be at a disadvantage vs. Intel. Even with, in this case, a 16 vs. 12 thread advantage in AMD's favor. I'd love to see game benchmarks with a 5 GHz 1800x. As a programmer from the 1960's through 2006, I don't trust compilers for optimization.
hopefully the next wave gets rid of dual cores for good, intel just seems to love the situation, well time is up, it is mind boggling that they manage to sell a 180$ dual core chip a decade later after I bought an E8400 for that same price, just insane
Nice Review.. But I still dont know which cpu to buy. I want 6+ Cores. Im playing games 90% of the time. WoW, Battlefield, Watch Dogs2, Forza Horizon 3, maybe Ghost Recon Wildlands. Right now I have big fps drops in FH3 and had many of those in wildlands beta. WD2 could also approve a lil bit with a new cpu. My question is.. 6800k + asus x99-a II or 1700x + asus crosshair Both with noctua n dh15 and 3200mhz dual channel 16gb ddr4. (as soon as the prices for ram will decrease I will ad another 2 8gb sticks if I chose x99) What would you take Hilbert? I would save 80eur with the 6800k setup. I use my platforms for ~5 years. thanks buddy
Great review, cant wait for you to get the 1700, i might get that one (price seems ok) and judging by the few other sites that already tested it, the OC is not much different between the 1700/1700x/1800x, which is rather expected knowing the fact that AMD actually uses a low power optimized 14nm process, that was developed with smartphone SoCs in mind (Samsung Exynos anyone?). If you get the time, can you test gfx performance with, lets say a gtx 1080 (id assume that 1060 wouldnt be limited) on either of the new ryzen CPUs but on 8x PCIE mode (i might replace my 4770s, which has vtx/d, where im running linux and in KVM windows 10 and since Zen has no integrated gpu, id need 2 dedicated gfx cards, hence only 8xPcie possible...). Thats kind of a let down as you nicely wrote in your 1800x article. Thanks
About those Gaming Benchmark Videos: It looks like the scheduler isn't letting the Physical cores reach 100% before it sends instructions to the virtual ones so the games are taking a performance hit since the virtual cores only have about 20% of the power of the actual ones. They need to fix that in windows scheduler.
I'm getting 3 of these Ryzen babies. 1800x for me and two 1700 for parents and sister. The only gamer is me, but gaming at higher res than 1080 is problem for GPU not CPU. Finally I am getting serious power horse in the house and I do not feel like someone is stealing from me.
Just a quick heads up, I wouldn't draw conclusions from youtube videos when it comes to smoothness. Not saying Ryzen isn't smoother, but obviously those videos go through a hell of a compression and are reduced to 30fps or less for youtube so keep that in mind.
For those of you interested in Ryzen or doing a Ryzen build , now we have our own dedicated unified Ryzen tread Guru3D sticky on the Hardware section under Processors and Motherboards AMD of the forum where everything Ryzen related will be posted and updated on a daily basis. You can find that tread here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=412876 Enjoy it ! Kind Regards: Chispy
Dual cores are still usefull for a lot of people, the problem is the price Intel asks for them... The same with their quad cores. Also if Ryzen really need an W10 update to improve performance, then i gonna have to give it a pass because i want to stick with W7 for the near future. By the way Hilbert, do you think it would be possible to do a small article, a couple of benchmarks and 2 or 3 games tested, comparing Ryzen using W7, 8.1 and 10??? I know it´s a lot to ask but it would be interesting, at least for me. If any Gurus knows or finds reviews or articles like this, let me now please! Thanks in advance!
