Intel Skylake-X/X299, Kaby Lake X, AMD EPYC review week! Radeon Frontier launch June 27th...
tj_1ca9500b
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OK, I was expecting EPYC reviews today along with Skylake X reviews, but those might not show up until tomorrow (just sauw a mention of the EPYC NDA lifting on June 20th)... Radeon Frontier Vega officially launches on June 27th (next week), although those may be of lesser interest here, seeing that Daz is joined at the hip with Iray...
Nonetheless, for those of you interested int the newly available Skylake X (like the $1000 10 core one), here's a review roundup for you, should you be interested in checking out the revidews on various tech sites:
http://wccftech.com/intel-core-x-skylake-x-kaby-lake-x-cpu-review-roundup-x299-platform/
And here's a blurb about Skylkake X, Kaby Lake, and X299 preorder info:
http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-x-kaby-lake-x-cpus-x299-motherboards-pre-order-prices/
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While surfing the internet, I came across this...
https://www.ataribox.com/
Basically a teaser website. There's speculation is that it's a retro gaming console. Maybe you'll get to play E.T. on it...
Sooo, tomorrow morning the other shoe drops (EPYC). The reviews I read about the new Skylake X processors earlier today noted that the Intel platform is having a few teething problems (not unusual), which seems to impact gaming performance. Otherwise, it seems to provide a nice performance boost in a number of areas. A couple of reviewers also noted that higher memory speeds seems to have a small impact on Skylake-X performance, so spending a lot of money on fast memory modules might be considered wasteful (i.e. it might be a better idea to save the money for a better video card, etc. instead).
By contrast, Ryzen benefits more with faster memory speeds, as the infinity fabric runs syncronously with the memory bus speed, at least that's what I've read in a few places now. As to how that will tie in with EPYC, well we shall see tomorrow.
...read a good review of 7900x on Tom's where they ran a battery of tests.
Seems there is one serious drawback, and that is heat dissipation. Instead of soldering the heat spreader to the CPU chip as they have done with previous CPUs, Intel decided to go with a cheaper thermal paste solution. Now under normal operations this is probably not a major issue but for those who overclock, particularly using the 3.0 Turbo Boost to increase the CPU"s speed to 4.5 GHz and beyond, it apparently is. They mentioned even the best cooler on the market was not sufficient at keeping core temps down, resulting in multiple BSODs and even an emergency shutdown. Now granted the X-299 board used in the tests are for the most part a first production model gaming board (possibly even a prototype) as commercial versions have not been released yet (but can be pre ordered), so no doubt a few kinks to work out. which as mentioned in the OP is not unusual
One of the good things was it appears that the 7900x is more well suited to workstation use rather than gaming and it was nice to see non game software benchmarks where it scored very well.
So far even with the thermal shortcomings and the added cost I am leaning towards Intel as Ryzen supports only dual channel memory and 24 PCIe lanes vs the 7900x's 44. X299 boards will also support twice the memory, 128 GB, in an 8 x 16 GB quad channel configuration. Prices for X299 MBs that I have seen range between 300$ and 400$ and so far look to be gaming oriented. Would be nice to see a workstation based MB.
Still no actual word on if Skylake-X will support older versions of the Windows OS like the Skylake-S generation does. There was mention to use the 3.0 Turbo Boost for the tests required third party drivers but that Intel said it will include native W10 support when the CPUs are rolled out on the market.
Tomorrow we should see what Epyic is made of and how it is priced.
Yeah my take on the reviews was that the Skylake X's are in a good position performance wise vs. Ryzen. And Intel's new pricing structure for the Skylake X makes it much more compelling vs. Ryzen. Yes, still more expensive, but now much closer on price, for measurably higher performance in productivity apps.
I doubt that we'd see the lower prices if Ryzen hadn't been brought to market. Serious competition has been long overdue!
OK, so far no EPYC reviews with benchmarks that I can see, but lots of new info about EPYC at least. The day is still young, though...
One of the articles explained why the 2 socket version still has only 128 PCIe lanes. The other 64 lanes from each CPU are being used for the two CPUs to communicate with each other. This might explain why there hasn't been any mention of plans for a 4 socket configuration (that I've seen anyways).
I'm not really all that interested in a dual socket configuration though, let alone a 4 socket. Still waiting on the reviews!
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11551/epyc_tech_day_first_session_for_press_and_analysts_06_19_2017-page-019.jpg
Note that the performance charts are for GCC. Intel has their own compiler that AMD is claiming is tailored for the SPECint benchmark and is why it's 40% faster and reduced the Intel numbers by that much to compare against Epyc. There's some debate if that's acceptable or not. If you're running GCC, it's fine. If the Intel compiler is actually that much faster, I don't know. I'm not sure how this translates to real world applications.
More info:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-new-7000-series-cpus-launched-and-epyc-analysis
Power consumption:
https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7601-dual-socket-early-power-consumption-observations/
AMD press release:
http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/06/20/1026480/0/en/AMD-EPYC-Datacenter-Processor-Launches-with-Record-Setting-Performance-Optimized-Platforms-and-Global-Server-Ecosystem-Support.html
The datacenter partnerships are impressive. From the press release:
"Datacenter and cloud service providers also welcomed EPYC to the market today. Members of the “Super 7” datacenter services providers, including Baidu and Microsoft Azure, as well as 1&1, Bloomberg, Dropbox and LexisNexis, all voiced their support at launch."
And by the looks of it, Threadripper should be at or under $800.
Also, you can buy 1 socket versions of Epyc. They will have 128 PCIe lanes also.
A dual system will have 256 PCIe lanes. I think that's what they're saying.
On the optimized compiler thing for EPYC vs Intel on that benchmark. One of the tech sites mentioned that using an 'Unoptimized' compiler might be considered more fair, becasue there is nothing that prevents the use of an AMD-optimized compiler as well. Not that there is one, but AMD might (or might not) see similar performance gains with a compiler optimized for EPYC. That being said, any 'manufacturer' offered bencharks should always be considered with a grain of salt.
Myself, I'm waiting for the more in depth benchmarks. It looks like we won't see any independent reviews today (darn).
OK, so I just read through Anandtech's live blog of the EPYC event this afternoon.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11562/amd-epyc-launch-event-live-blog-starts-4pm-et-
One interesting takeaway is that the 32 core, single socket part is priced at $2100 (Mentioned in the liveblog at 5:34). Not available until the end of July though...
The single socket EPYC 16 core will reportedly be priced at $750, but (according to info we have so far) will be slower than Threadripper, albiet with double the memory and PCIe channels.
Those are very intriguing price points...
They didn't talk about GPUs much, as far as the liveblog is concerned. I still have the same question as before, i.e. will EPYC play nice with Nvidia GPUs? Looking forward to the independent reviews!
@AlienRenders
Yes, 2 socket systems will have 256 PCIe lanes total (128 per cpu), but half of those (64 per CPU) are being used to interconnect the 2 CPUs, leaving 128 lanes for other devices. However, 2P systems will have double the memory capacity (4TB instead of 2 TB, still 8 channels though). Scroll down about 40% on this Anandtech article, look for the EPYC - 2P System Balance and I/O graphic, and the text below it:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-new-7000-series-cpus-launched-and-epyc-analysis
So, as I mentioned before, it looks like the single socket motherboards for EPYC won't be available for a few weeks.
Via AMD's EPYC 7000 Product Page I followed AMD's links to channel partners (there are 3).
Asus website says 'coming soon'
The Gigabyte site has 4 items/systems. Two of them (the dual sockets) say Q4, other two say coming soon...
And the Tyan site has two listings.
What I am curious about, of course, is something like this for EPYC... but with the option for other things besides GPUs in the PCEe slots...
http://www.cirrascale.com/solutions_GPUscaling.aspx
Wow to think there is a good chance in a few years so many cores with be standard on consumer level PCs for less than $1000. Hey, sell us computers that can do what we need and want to do for work and hobby already.
..hmm, 1,999$ for the 18 core (36 thread) Skylake-X with 44 PCI lanes
100$ more will get the single socket 7501 32 core (64 thread) Epyc with 128 PCI lanes. Ooh would love to see Carrara's render engine running on that.
OK, THIS is along the lines of the EPYC server motherboard I would want:
http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MZ31-AR0-rev-10#ov
4 PCIe x16 slots! Yeah, that's not 7, but 4 is plenty for a render station... I suppose you could use a the 3 x8 slots for GPUs too if you wanted (as long as they had the shorter slot config).
Not sure on the mobo price yet, but $2100 for the 32 core CPU and say $300 for the Mobo would be quite compelling. I"d probably never use all of those DIMM slots though (maybe 8 Dimms just to fill all 8 channels).
Not sure if Cirrascale is going to jump on the EPYC bandwagon, but their 8 GPU solution still looks intriguing.
...oooh 16 DIMM slots. 256 (or more) GB of memory. Carrara and Vue rendering would rip with that kind of horsepower. OK, time to wipe the drool off my phone's screen now.
Sooo, we are already at July 1st, and no EPYC reviews to speak of. There's a couple of benches out there, but not much more than that. I've been keeping an eye out for thet Gigabyte board (for pricing info), but so far haven't stumbled across it in the supply channels/via Google. From what I've seen so far, EPYC's main advantage is going to be in the IO front (all those PCIe and memory channels), the few (non-AMD provided) benchmarks so far aren't showing anything that impressive so far, at least when compared to Intel, with the newer Intel offerings still holding the high ground. But there isn't anything go on reviww wise yet, so we'll see.
Interestingly, AMD just had their best 1 quarter gain in history (According to PassMark's' quarterly market share report), apparently taking 10.4% market share from Intel in Q2 2017... and bumping it from under 18% in Q2 2016 to 31% for the just completed Q2 2017. Hence, it is not surprising that Intel's new lineup is suddenly more affordable...
http://wccftech.com/amd-takes-10-4-cpu-share-intel-q2-2017-largest-single-quarter-share-gain-history/
Based on AMD's releases over the last 2 quarters, yeah, that'd be pretty much entirely Ryzen's doing.
According to the same market share report, the closest AMD ever got to parity with Intel was Q1 2006, not quite hitting 50% market share.
Intel's new releases are rather compelling, mainly beceause Intel's pricing model had been adjusted accordingly, although there are performance gains there too. Thank you Team Red for keeping Team Blue on their toes, and FINALLY bringing compelling products to marktet again that can at least compete on the price vs performance front on the higher end (not just the value market) after such a long drought.
..yeah AMD breaking the dual channel barrier is nice. There are still render engines that do not support GPU rendering (like Carrara and Vue) so improved memory channelling is a good thing. Still would love an Epyc with 8 channel support and 256 GB of system memory.