Linus Torvalds Switches To AMD Ryzen Threadripper After 15 Years Of Intel Systems

[starshipeleven]

Can't say I agree with you here. Old server equipment is real cheap on ebay. I recently upgraded this Opteron 4376 desktop to 32 GB. 32 GB of Registered ECC DDR3 was $69 bucks used, for good Crucial/Micron parts. Sixty Nine dollars for 32 GB! You can't get DDR4 anywhere near that cheap, especially Reg ECC sticks.

For 110 euro/dollars you can get 32GB of DDR4 (what everyone uses), and 140 for ECC modules (what special people like me and you use). Registered is irrelevant, what matter is ECC/non-ECC.
To save 60 euro on RAM you get an old crap CPUs? Not worth it. If you have an old rig it's fine to update it to hell and back, but buying old stuff is really not so hot since Ryzen second and third gen appeared (and prices of first gen dropped to the floor).

I paid more because I wanted 32GB per bank, and that's only slightly more than a 32GB bank of DDR3 registered.
In my case, I pay around 600 euro in RAM (either DDR3 or DDR4) to get 128 GB and then I want to save 50 and use a crappy processor for the next 4 years? And after that I have to sell the RAM because I can't migrate it to the next CPU/System I get? No thanks.

A Ryzen 5 1600 is around four times more powerful than that Opteron and costs nearly as much used. You can get a Ryzen 3 APU that is more than twice as powerful and has integrated graphics.

[_Alex_]

there is no real need to market EPYC, it's flying off the shelves already. On the server side it's been a slaughter since Zen arch arrived (and Intel got marnooned on 14nm process node).

This is threadripper though. A high end desktop part.

[starshipeleven]

Things have value. Therefore, receiving something of value is always beneficial. Ergo, it's always a mutually beneficial exchange when someone prominent is gifted an item in exchange for the marketing exposure. Not sure how getting a free expensive thing cannot be construed as beneficial to the recipient?

Value is relative. If you are rich you can usually buy much better stuff than what you would get "for free", and it would still not be that much, compared to your income.
Also, rich people don't usually sell the stuff they get because again the value of the object is too low for them to care.

To make an example, it's like you getting a lifetime "free eat at Mac Donald" card. What value does that have? You can easily afford to eat better food than that for most of your life.

And have you looked at the annual fee on those credit cards?

Anyone wealthy enough to afford those cards does not give a fuck about a few bonus air miles or a businness lounge. They can literally pay for first class flights (that comes with first class lounge and benefits) at the drop of a hat with their pocket change (or with their businness expenses).

These perks aren't free, the card holders pay for them,

My point is that they are crap for anyone that is rich enough to afford them to begin with. For example, a personal assistant is both cheaper and better than any "concierge" bullshit offered by credit cards.

And yes, I've heard enough such people (clients) lament this to me, that they are forced to pay for bullshit "benefits" just to have higher spending limits on their card. Just because you are rich it does not mean that you like to waste money on bs. That's the second-gen rich, those that were born into money and don't understand value of things.
First gen rich (the ones that busted their asses to get rich) are not usually happy about that.

There is a plateau where credit card benefits stop making any sense and you just want higher spending limits, and a lot of rich people are beyond that.

[starshipeleven]

This is threadripper though. A high end desktop part.

The post you quoted was answering a guy that said Linus is wealthy enough to afford a dual-socket EPYC system

[_Alex_]

The post you quoted was answering a guy that said Linus is wealthy enough to afford a dual-socket EPYC system

It all started with why didn't he go for the 3990x because he certainly can afford it... and then I commented on how even AMD could give it for free as marketing and then somewhere the discussion switched to EPYC

[Noname]

My 2 cents after switching from x299 i9-7900X (10 cores, 4x4.4 6 x 4.0 - bad unit if it comes to OC, anything else will north me 100*C, and this is with delid and replaced to copper IHS) to TR-3960X (with PBO I north 95*C). With TR I added 8 fans, from 4 on i9, so same case be Quiet Dark Base 900, fan placement 2x120 side, 2x140 top, 1x140 rear, 3x140 front, all beQuiet fans. Noise went a little bit up but I can leave with that, most of them spin up to 1k with is not so bad, I'm, look for a way to replace all with 140 @ 1k RPM tops, or better with 200mm but It will definitely not fit into case without mod). Will try/switch to iceGiant in summer when it comes out. All storage SSD, 1x nvme.

The good stuff:
Compile speed went up by 2.4
Windows and msvc no longer I see mouse stutter during compilation
Windows no longer lags when I open > 5 explorer windows (yes, It did lagged on Windows most probably due to issue with boos frequency, OC did solved somewhat this)
Video encoding - blazing fast, now I can enc 3 in parallele and CPU barely sweets

The not so good stuff, aka. bad:
SATA performance is lower, not noticeable in day to day use but benchmarks shows it
SPDIF is a mess - Windows buggy drivers, audio hangs / delays / cracks etc., Linux - no support - analog works fine for both, this apply on Linux side for all TR4 boards. There is already a bug report so maybe someone will add support on Linux.
RAID - rcraid driver from previous TR gen don't work on Linux, at least I can't make it to work, so yeah, 8TB inaccessible data (I know, go proper raid, it's software raid, but that's not the point, this was part of product package and it doesn't work). And apparently I'm only one that is using that damn thing, as no one is reporting or "having problem" with rcraid on Linux @@.

The bad:
Word from AMD that I got in reply to my reported issue is that "AMD don't support Linux"... so yeah HEDT from AMD don't support Linux.
To me personally this is unacceptable on any HEDT platform.

I hope that Linus will point his famous middle finger in right direction and things get better.
To sum thing up:
CPU - great for what it is
Platform - ATM disappointment and IMO regression if it comes to support especially on Linux

PS. I tested 2 boards, Asus String, Asus Zenith II Extreme, all behave same way. Apparently new Alpha have same issue with SDPIF. Othere manufacturer on Windows don't have issue with SPDIF, so it's most like that "Supreme" POS audio solution from Asus.

[coder]

Just write more bloated code, anything for the coffee!

Test cases. You can do fuzz testing or write similar sorts of unit tests that take an arbitrarily long time to execute.

The only downside is that if you write a slow test suite then you're kind of signing up to use it. And if you don't, and commit a bug that it would've caught, because you don't feel like waiting, then it looks that much worse.

The better solution, especially working from home, is to set some kind of reminder or alarm for you to periodically get up and walk around. As nobody can see you getting up (unless you're an unfortunate soul with a mandatory activity monitor of some kind), then you don't really need to justify taking breaks to anyone but yourself.

I'm not saying don't run tests, but just schedule them to run overnight, or on an automated continuous-integration system (which you could actually even host on a massive, 32-core development workstation... hey!).

[coder]

kernel build easily fits in ram

Don't forget the memory pressure exerted by 64 instances of GCC, continually running... is what I'd say if the kernel were written in heavily-templated C++. Being pure C, I'm guessing each instance has far lower peak memory utilization.

My usual rule for provisioning VMs to build C++ code is to allow at least 1 GB per virtual CPU.

[coder]

AM4 can use up to 128 GB (4x banks of 32GB UDIMM), which is already pretty damn high as is.

FWIW, loading up both slots per channel with dual-rank, double-sided DIMMs is going to hurt your memory clock speeds, which are probably a bottleneck on a CPU like 3950X.

If someone were going to spend that much on RAM, it'd be worth considering stepping up to the TR platform and also doubling your bandwidth.

[coder]

The only time the rich get free stuff is when it's mutually beneficial. Endorsement, product placement, etc. has tremendous marketing reach.

Ironically, it's a better endorsement when someone of elite skill spends their limited resources on an accessory critical to their pursuit. That tells you it's a product they believe in so much that they potentially made sacrifices to use it. However, most with this celebrity status can't really be described as having limited resources (or at least aren't perceived as such).

In Linus' case, you get half of that. There's the value in him using it simply because he judged it the best option - not because somebody stuffed it into his hands. However, because he & his foundation are so well-resourced, it fails to communicate anything about the cost-effectiveness of the product.