As much as I like the new generation I'm not quite sure about those prices.

Right now I can buy:

  - Ryzen 9 3900X (12C / 24T) 3.8GHz - 4.6GHz => 389€ 
  - Ryzen 7 3700X (8C / 16T) 3.9GHZ - 4.5GHz => 299€.

It seems to me that the current Ryzen 9 3900X has an insane value compared to the new generation. Sure, it's single core performance is lower by a meaningful amount. But I'd assume that the multi core performance is WAY better with its 12 cores compared to the 6/8 cores of the 5600X/5800X.

If you compare MSRP at launch to retail a year later, you're going to notice a big difference.

In the US, the Ryzen 9 3900X MSRP was $499 but is $70 less now. (Initially, supply was low, and it was selling over MSRP as high as ~$570.)

But they came with coolers... I have a Ryzen 2700X that I got for $230, and I still use the stock cooler. To jump to a Ryzen 5800X plus a cooler would be a huge expense. I will definitely be on the sidelines for the next six months, but then I'll revisit the pricing situation (once motherboard manufacturers release updated 400-series firmware.)

Sure, the prices of the new generation will fall over time.

But I still don't quite see how the multi core performance per $ of the new generation will be competitive compared to their previous generation. At least at the lower end, simply because you can buy more cores/threads for roughly the same money - although with a lower clock speed and single core performance.

However, I guess we will know more when meaningful benchmarks are released and this ends anyways when the remaining supply of 3900X is sold out.

>But I still don't quite see how the multi core performance per $ of the new generation will be competitive compared to their previous generation

AFAIK that was the case during the 3000 series launch. The newest generation always has worse bang/buck.

The difference is that the 3000 series introduced 12 Core CPUs that weren't available before AND provided increased gaming performance.

This time around the major reason seems for upgrades to be single core performance - which I guess as they didn't really go into multi core performance. But we'll know more when the benchmarks come out, and discussion beforehand is pretty pointless.

The stock cooler on the 3900x is basically the same as the one on the 2700x. It reviewed well on the 2700x but the 3900x was too much for it if you cared about noise levels. So I wouldn't count the box cooler as a huge plus for the 3900x though a revised more capable version could have been for the 5900x

They don't ship with coolers?

Man the lack of a 5700x is really making it hard for me to not justify getting a 3700x on sale

> Man the lack of a 5700x is really making it hard for me to not justify getting a 3700x on sale

Sounds like a win-win for AMD. Either they sell to customers that demand the best absolute performance, or they sell to customers that demand the best value. Since they offer products to meet both demands, they don't really care which type of customer you are.

Zen 2 is still a fantastic processor, and it will certainly be more affordable than Zen 3 for the immediate future.

I got a 2700 for slightly less than $170. It is amazingly cheap.

Anecdotally, all of the PC gamers I know put aftermarket coolers on their CPUs. The box cooler is still in the box taking up space in their closet. The AMD parts especially benefit from additional cooling (higher turbo clocks). I think it makes sense to not include box coolers on parts so high up the performance chart that using a box cooler would just hamstring it.

FWIW I just upgraded from an Intel 4790K to an AMD 3900X and while I had a big Hyper212 cooler on the Intel at the moment I'm running the bundled stock cooler on the AMD.

I understand why they're doing it and I don't disagree with the logic that most of the DIY market at that level is going to use an aftermarket cooler one way or another, but it was nice to not have to worry about it off the bat.

Seems to be a mix. My two friends that game built systems with Zen+/Zen 2 systems and stuck with the stock cooler, as have I (though I do not game as much... I do hear it ramp up a bit during compilation.) My clocks are typically 4.2-4.3 Ghz on a Ryzen 7 2700X, so I don't think I'd benefit much from additional cooling.

My main problem with the AMD stock cooler isn't that they don't perform well, but that they are really noisy compared to most decent aftermarket coolers.

The rumor is that any cpus with TDPs of 65W or below will ship with coolers, and ones with above that will ship without.

The thing to watch is then going to be the "5700X", i.e. the Zen3 version of the 3700X, which, if the analogy matches, should have 8 cores and a 65W TDP. It isn't in the initial slate but they left room for it in the numbering.

Well I hope they release the 5700X soon. I was excited for Zen 3, but their price bump and lack of a middle ground option left me conflicted whether I should shell out more money for a 5800X or get a last gen CPU.

They, again, use an interesting binning trick:

They sell 2 low bin dies on a single package as a superior product to a 1 die good bin, and delay a 2 good die release:

$ per core:

16C $50

12C $45

8C $56

6C $50

$ per die:

16C $400

12C $275

8C $450

6C $300

This time though, they decided to linearise boost clocks against the place in the lineup: i.e. 8C now has boost below 12C, and 16C.

What would be the 2 good die release? They've already announced the line-topping AM4 part that uses all the cores from the two dies. Isn't the next step up a four die part in a Threadripper packaging on a different socket with some cores disabled?

2 good die is 5950, and I believe they will delay it for a few month like 3950

On sale November 5th, according to the presentation.

They've already announced it. You're assuming the retail availability will take a while?

I do

That 5950X (and its predecessor) seem like voodoo with the core count, clock frequency, and TDP (yes, I know TDP is a flawed, flawed number - it's still impressive).

TDP is about as meaningful on CPUs now as nm is in fab tech.

In practice the 3950x pulled up to ~225w running maxxed out avx2 workloads, ~300w if you overclocked it. The 3900x pulls up to ~190 watts at stock boosts. Both are called "105w TDP" parts.

PPT on the 105W TDP CPUs are ~143W by default, so your numbers are way of and not possible without overclocking by removing the limit.

You'll also go way beyond 300W with heavy overclocking.

This is incorrect, to the best of my knowledge. 3900X and 3950X both have a 142W package power limit (PPT, 35% above TDP) at stock, with a properly working motherboard. As I understand it, not even short boosts are allowed to use more power than the PPT.

The limit can be lifted in the BIOS (or e.g. Ryzen Master) but that would no longer be stock operation. And there was a defect in the initial BIOS of ASRock X570 and maybe other motherboards, which broke PPT but that was running the CPU out of spec, not stock operation.

If you're going to attack the "spec" that is TDP, you may as well do it correctly. None of the scenarios you mentioned align with what TDP is supposed to "measure". Even if TDP weren't the flawed measure it is, you still wouldn't be critiquing it by noting the measures you have.

Here's the critique you should use! https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3525-amd-ryzen-tdp-explai...

Nevertheless, for a given manufacturer, TDP is useful as a coarse grouping of power consumption.

I disagree. If TDP wasn't so flawed as to be completely meaningless, that critique would probably be valid.

The definition AMD uses is absolute nonsense, given how much the θca values differ from model to model. If they fudged any harder the higher end CPUs would start having "TDP" lower than the weak CPUs.

I second this reaction. Historically, clock speeds scaled inversely with the # of cores. Seems like the efficiency is overtaking other constraints at this point.

> Historically, clock speeds scaled inversely with the # of cores.

It's the miracle of chiplets. AMD isn't binning one 16-core CPU, they're binning two 8-core CPUs and then combining them together.

The achievable all-core clock will inevitably scale inversely with # of cores, in practice. The advertised single core and all-core clocks are some combination of binning and pure marketing.

With most modern PC processors, both GPU and CPU, one of the primary limitations is thermal headroom. There are features and technologies with varying names across brands and processors that essentially do the same thing: run at the maximum clock that the current thermal situation will support.

From my personal experience, my Threadripper 3970X will happily maintain ~4.4GHz all-core (rated for 4.5GHz max single-core) so long as I can keep the temperature in or below the 70s, with no overclocking.[0] There are power limits as well, but rated performance numbers are within the power limits. Overclocking can put you past the marked power limits, and certainly needs ample cooling.

[0] Granted, I need to pump cold air into the case to maintain the temperature, but that's a limitation of my current thermal solution. At some point I'll probably upgrade to an excessive water cooling solution (:

That's an interesting piece of data and I'm glad you posted it. I also use a 3970X and can't get it to 4.4GHz even with all but one CCD disabled (much less all-core). I am on air cooling, though, and suspect that switching to water cooling would help a lot. I hit 90C almost instantly under load. (I use the automatic overclocking and can do 4.2GHz all core; much better than the specified 3.7GHz all core.)

Since I don't run into Threadripper owners very often, I'm wondering if yours also has a pretty high idle power? Mine idles at 80-90W (reported; 200+W from the wall) which is surprising to me coming from the Intel world. So much electricity wasted simply because I am too lazy to turn off my computer.

I have a hunch that I won the silicon lottery with it, though I haven't confirmed with any overclocking. I'm happy to dive deeper if you want. Below is a basic summary.

I have 5x140mm intake fans, with a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 cooler. That runs with push-pull 140mm fans, 2000RPM in/1500RPM out.

This reaches steady state within a few minutes under load. With an open case, it will clock down to ~4.2GHz after 5-10 minutes. With a closed case, that is faster. For fun, I ducted the A/C vent in the room into the case and cranked it. It stayed reliably up around 4.4GHz all core. Technically, I think it would reach a lower steady state clock/higher temp if I left it for days, as it does noticeably warm the room.

I don't recall idle power, but yeah, it's warm.

OK, that's really neat. I have almost the same setup except use 120mm fans on the NH-U14S (to clear the RAM, I populated all 8 slots ;)

I am very tempted to switch to water cooling. Seems like I could make it a little quieter, and get a little bit more performance. $1000 more performance? Probably not. But it would be a fun project.

(In general, I am blown away by the Threadripper's performance. I have C++ builds that took 15 minutes on my 6950X that now take 2!)

My fans are offset ever so slightly to account for RAM clearance, as I, too, have eight sticks. I think we basically built the same computer with a couple different choices (;

I lose millimeters of fan coverage (I have millimeters of fan peeking over the top of the tower), but I opted for this, since I get more airflow over the width of the cooler. The effect is probably measurable in single-digit percentage differences in a highly controlled test.

The big thing for me was the case airflow. That thing throws off so much heat that my case ambient temperature was growing to be 10C or more above the room ambient. Hence the 5x140mm intakes. The back of that machine is a nice heater when I'm crunching anything big.

My goal is to keep those fans, but attached to radiators. I think 5x140mm of radiator should give me much better heat transfer.

I have a 3960X on Gigabyte Aorus Master with an RX480, 1080 Ti, X520 NIC, 3x SSDs, and my total-system idle on Linux is 180–210 W. I do agree that the high idle is frustrating, as it dumps a lot of heat into the room.

That's high! I would expect around 100W without the NIC and the second GPU. But it's high even when accounting for that.

You could undervolt slightly, it usually results in less power consumption and higher performance as a result of lower temperature.

Got a few of these and water absolutely make a huge difference. Open air chassis with a large radiators I intended to cool video cards with... not that one can be found right now. Enclosures were turning mine into an easybake. Surfing at 46C, mid 60s pushing it hard. The dust bunnies can get ugly, however.

https://i.imgur.com/SpMMPXQ.jpg

Yeah, you don't want to hit 90 degrees on Zen. Unlike many other CPUs, max stable frequency on Zen clearly decreases with high temps. Time to build a water loop :)

re: idle, you do have pstates enabled, right? ("Cool'n'Quiet") firmware likes to disable it when you overclock in the setup screen, have to turn it back on

Yup. Hitting 90C is basically what limits the top speed, so I know that better cooling might help.

I do have pstates enabled. Power and frequency scale up as you'd expect, in response to system load.

The thermal wall off 100W/cm² is not much about how much heat you can sink, but how much you produce.

The heat cannot leave the silicon itself quick enough with modern chips.

The difference with watercooling for CPUs seems to mostly come down to lower noise, and only marginally better thermals.

I can get much more surface area of radiator than can reasonably be reached by the heat pipes on an air cooler. There are limits to how many radiators you can effectively leverage in a cooling loop.

Additionally, a loop with a large volume of liquid offers much more thermal buffer before reaching a steady state temperature.

Most air coolers will be heat saturated within a minute or so. A water cooling loop may maintain lower temperature for minutes to tens of minutes. So even with two solutions that otherwise reach the same steady state temperatures (and therefore throttle equally), you may see better real world performance out of the water cooling solution.

I'll note, I would be building an open loop, not using an AIO/closed loop cooler. My case has room for 7x140mm of radiator in a couple of configurations. I would probably use 5x of that in one 420mm radiator and a 280mm radiator. This should offer much more cooling capacity than any tower cooler.

Watercooling has one benefit: The heat capacity* of all those water is amazing.

*Heat capacity = how many joules of energy the whole system takes to raise the system's temperature by 1C.

So, the CPU is generating x Watts of heat = x Joules of heat energy per second. Watercooling can absorb a LOT of Joules before the cooling system's temperature increases, thus helping in keeping the CPU away from its MaxTemp.

Plus when attached to a sizable radiator, watercooling system can release all those energy to the environment faster, thus reducing the effective energy absorbed by the system.

I can only offer anecdata, but I built a Ryzen 3600 based desktop earlier in the year.

Initially I used the stock cooler, but it idled at ~45C, and the moment I did anything approaching a load it immediately shot to 90C. This was in a room with ambient at around 23C.

After getting annoyed for a while I swapped for an AIO Liquid cooler and hey-presto it now idles at 30C and when maxed out - 75C.

That's not really a good air vs water comparison. You'd have gotten similar results if you swapped for a better tower cooler as well. The stock coolers are basically built to cover base clock and a bit of turbo.

Yeah with a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 and a single fan I get idle of 40-45 and a high of 76 and I tend to run with fans set to be mostly silent. With a bit of a noisier experience I seem to recall idle was under 40.

That is all OK, but remember that Zen 2 really tries hard to hit 90C. Especially if you go into Ryzen Master and turn on Automatic Overclocking (very conservative overclocking by enthusiast standards), and your motherboard doesn't have power delivery limitations, the CPU's main goal is to try to hit 90C under load. It will automatically adjust frequency and core voltage up until it hits a thermal limit; by taking more heat away from the CPU with better cooling, you end up with better performance because the CPU will try to automatically give you the best performance that your thermal solution can deliver. AMD didn't document any of this very well (lots of confusion between Precision Boost 2 and Precision Boost Overdrive), but the technology is very impressive.

I guess what I'm saying is that you might be interested in exploring some of these options in Ryzen Master. You have some thermal headroom, so if your motherboard has good power delivery, you can max out the power limits and boost clock limits, and probably squeeze out a little extra performance. Power (and therefore heat) is going to scale quadratically with core voltage, and frequency is going to scale less than linearly with voltage, so you might not see much gain (and might prefer not spinning your fans up to full speed under load). But, it's an option that's available if that sort of thing interests you.

I got about 6% more real-world speed out of my Threadripper 3970X by switching from OC off to Automatic Overclocking; with air cooling. AMD's technology here is pretty impressive.

I didn't see this reply until just now.

I had no idea what Ryzen Master was until you mentioned it - seems it's some AMD utility for Windows.

I'm running a stock hardware configuration, no overclocking, and running Pop! OS 20.04.

Yep. The fewer cores you’ve got, the more heat each can generate (== the more power each can consume), for the same thermal solution.

Maybe not the voodoo you are thinking about but on the GPU side, the 3Dfx Voodoo was indeed a groundbreaking 3D accelerator card.

At the time, 3Dfx main competitors were Nvidia and ATI, Nvidia finally bought 3Dfx and AMD bought ATI. So technically, voodoo is on the side of AMD's competition.

Intel's name for its CPU architecture is "Core." Nevertheless, AMD discusses its CPU cores. "voodoo" and "Voodoo" need not be the same (;

Should have named their CPU Architecture the "Crore" instead ;-)

This actually pave way for 32 Core Threadripper that could simply be double 5950X with 4.9Ghz all within 280W TDP.

For me having 32 Core and high Clock speed is the sweet spot for Workstation type workload. Leaving the 64 Core with lower boost due to TDP limitation are better for Server.

5950X base frequency is 3.4 Ghz according to anandtech.

Thanks. Wasn't shown on the slides.

The TDP is really good. Even by "being conservative about our specs" standards.

That cinebench score is about 6% higher than the highest score on Anandtech, which is an Intel laptop part. Not sure which I will consider more vaporware.

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2020/2758