I have been a long time Intel user, I have always given the same justification.
Single core performance is king.
Intel may not have had the most cores, but their cores were better. The operative word here was were. This is no longer the case.
Not only is AMD bringing drastically more cores to their CPUS, they also are now a competent challenger in single core performance.
Why does single core performance matter?
A lot of games and applications are single threaded or make very little use of multiple cores. This is due to the complexity of multiple threading development and the fact some things just can't be multi threaded efficiently. A CPU with 4 cores that perform twice as fast as a CPU with 16 cores will generally perform better in a lot of tasks. This is becoming less of a concern as multi threaded applications and games becomes more of the norm.
Introducing Zen 3
AMD just announced their Zen 3 architecture and Intel was just left in the dark.
| Processor | MSRP | Cores/Threads | Base/Boost Freq. | TDP | L3 Cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 5950X | $799 | 16 / 32 | 3.4 / 4.9 GHz | 105W | 64MB (2x32) |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | $549 | 12 / 24 | 3.7 / 4.8 GHz | 105W | 64MB (2x32) |
| Ryzen 7 5800X | $449 | 8 / 16 | 3.8 / 4.7 GHz | 105W | 32MB (2x16) |
| Ryzen 5 5600X | $299 | 6 / 12 | 3.7 / 4.6 GHz | 65W | 32MB (2x16) |
AMD's flagship Ryzen processor the 5950X a 16 core beast with a 4.9 Ghz turbo clock. Intel's flag ship product is their i9 10900K which is a 10 core 5.3 GHz turbo clock CPU. While the Intel i9 10900K has 400 Mhz turbo clock performance, AMD is showing up to 21% performance improvement.
The AMD 5950X is the first desktop processor to break 600 points in Cinebench 1T single threaded benchmark with a score of 631!
AMD is doing it faster and cooler than Intel and now is the single threaded champion.
AMD has not only taken the Gaming crown from Intel, they are also showing massive improvements with Content Creation.
AMD is claiming to have 2.8X more efficiency over Intel's i9 10900K with the 5950X coming in at only 105 TDP.
One big improvement AMD introduced with the Zen 3 architecture is a single L3 cache which can be expected to improve performance over the dual L3 Cache of the Zen 2 by over 20%.
Even before the 5900 series technical specs announced, I was planning on building an AMD machine this time around. I've been wanting more than 4 cores for a while but I didn't want to sacrifice single core performance to do so. With the announcement of the Zen 3 architecture, it is clear I won't have.
I am currently using an Intel i7 7700K overclocked to 5 Ghz. It's a good CPU that served me well for around 3 years or so, but is starting to show it's age, especially when you look at the multiple core beasts released in the last few years.
While the new AMD has raised the price for their Zen 3 CPU line up, the threaded performance per $ still beats Intel's lineup.
The new AMD chips will be available on November 5th. I hope I will be able to get my hands on one without a major delay like the new Nvidia GPUs.
Intel has finally lost its edge. No innovations, just renaming CPU's to ridiculous names like 10900K, with old die size, to give the appearance of a "new line". They barely made it to 10nm, while AMD has been sailing full wind at 7nm for a while now.
It was clear a few years ago Intel changed focus from desktop CPUs to mobile and other areas (they even said it themselves). AMD has been 100% focused on gaining market share.
While the new AMD are impressive by current standards of improvements, CPU improvements are rather stagnant. Most desktop technology these days is just inching along.
I used to upgrade my PC yearly, now I find it difficult to justify even doing it every 3 years but I have little tolerance on waiting for a computer so I upgrade anyway.
How has cost, supply, and demand changed since people started using graphics cards for mining cryptos?
It hasn't really affected CPU prices as they are not good for mining.
As for the NVidia 3000 series, they are not as efficient for mining oddly enough. At least for now.
This was a great summary where even someone like I who is very much just learning about the space. Thank you!
I'm really looking forward to these new chips. For a long time we were exclusively buying Intel systems for our servers, but we started dipping our feet into the water with Zen, then went AMD-exclusive with Zen2, in part because the 2nd gen threadrippers were a great way to get cost-effective 256GB systems (very useful for VM hosts when your VMs are memory-hungry).
With Zen3 beating out Intel on single-threaded performance, it really does kill the last technical reason to buy Intel systems. I had some spare cash in my IRA back in November last year (had sold off a bunch of oil and gas stocks quite a while back, then never bothered to reinvest it since I don't tend to follow the stock market any more), so I ended up putting it all into AMD shares, which has worked out pretty well so far.
hivedreplay benchmark or it didn't happened ;-)I wish I had a chip to try it.
I'm in the same boat, running a 7700k and nvidia 980ti atm, upgrading to a 3900x and 5700xt gpu, new mobo and ram and everything, just gotta finish modding my case first.
I've already had a taste of the 5700xt on pcie gen 3 and its a nice upgrade. More so when it's on pcie gen 4 and with the ryzen cpu.
I'm super hyped for getting my computer finished.
I am at the 3 year mark and just switched to 60mp camera so I may be shopping around as well soon so that my photography work flow doesn't slow down too much.
I better check to see how lightroom clasic handles multiple cores.
I mostly want to see marge ssd prices go down i suppose.
You still use stand alone version of Lightroom? I let my subscription lapse a while ago and was trying to reinstall Lightroom 4 standalone and there are no longer downloads for it.
I pay monthly so i always have the upgraded version of lightroom.
But most photographers don't really use the CC version we use what is called the Classic version of lightroom.
The classic comes with cc?
I thought the classic was basically the last stand alone version I think it was 4
yeah adobe SUCKS at naming stuff. Classic is basically LIGHTROOM then they came out with this simplified version that is much more web centric and a bit watered down and called that one Lightroom CC and renamed the real lightroom to Classic. And as you know stopped selling stand alone a bit before that.
Anyway in reality Classic is the real lightroom that comes with the photography suite... they both come with the photography suite but I don't use the other one... i also don't use photoshop either i guess. haha
But now i need to find a good motherboard and case to build this 5900x system perhaps in november or december... I'll be dealing with a lot more 300mp panoramas now with the new 60mp camera.
I have been through a series of AMD processors in PCs I have built from Duron 650 > Duron 1200 > Athlon 64 X2 4600+ > A8 6500 quad core. Nothing spectacular I know, but I'm not a gamer. They have served me well. I am really not up to date on where processors are now, but I do not have a desperate need for anything quicker. I am just happy to see that there is some competition in the market.
This announcement certainly knocked Intel off their high horse. For years it was quad-core after quad-core with very little performance gain. Someone running an overclocked 2600k had few reasons to upgrade until Zen came around and prompted Intel to start adding more cores.
can i rebloged
Thanks for the breakdown. Nice review and explanation. Really easy to understand. Reblogged, Tweeted, and shared on Facebook for others info.
I can really speak on any of this but my own personal experience with AMD has always been better, seems to crash less....totally anecdotal though
I really doubt AMD/Intel crash more or less. When people used to say Windows crashes more than Mac, I used to tell them to install Windows on a machine and nothing else, it will run 1000 years without a crash. It's third party software and drivers.
Ah, ok....I guess I just watched a lot more porn back when I was using Intel
Though wait, there was that Acer I used that went blue screen straight out of the box!! Pre-installed 3rd party software?
Potentially, bad hardware is another possibility (usually bad ram or something).
But good hardware running core OS should never crash. It's when you start introducing third party software and drivers from 100,000 developers.
yes, Ryzen now is a good choice