AMD Ryzen Has Captivated Linux Gamers & Enthusiasts

[juno]

And AMD goes from releasing Deneb in 2011, then Bulldozer in 2011, largely same perf (except with notable regressions), but more cores, very little perf increase with Piledriver in 2012, then nothing except for meh-class APUs until 2017 where they released a pretty good chip that is Haswell class performance with more cores. Intel is already two generations past that in perf though. One if we're not counting Kaby Lake as Intel really should have named that Skylake Refresh.

Why is AMD suddenly getting a free pass here? They did the same nonsense years ago. They just are now reaching performance levels of 2014/2015 CPUs, ignoring core count. Very good CPUs to be fair! Excellent perf/watt.

Is it because we love to cheer for underdogs?

Bulldozer design wasn't that bad though, it just didn't suit the market. Today, Bulldozer chips are way better relative to their counterparts compared to the launch date because code is more parallelised in general. But AMD realised it was broken by design at this time and cut resources. It is not like Intel where you can throw tens of billions of dollars on crap and make it half-decent competitive like Xeon Phi.
Also AMD depends on external foundries. They moved from 32 nm to 28 nm from BD to Excavator while Intel moved from 32 nm to FinFETs, to 22 to the second iteration of their 14 nm process in the same timespan.
It is actually remarkable how Excavator is performing based on that fact as Carrizo was competitive to Haswell ULP processors.

I'm ignoring core count because if we're counting cores, I guess we could say that Mediatek's 10 core nightmares are good mobile CPUs because they score to the heavens on multicore tests. I'm just interested in single core perf here. Stuff more cores in a chip, score higher on multi-core. Surprise surprise.

Yeah surprise surprise. Ignoring the important facts helps very nicely. Of course having more cores is irrelevant because Intel is market leader and have been selling you nothing but quad cores for 10 years on their consumer platform?
Previoulsy: 8 Cores desktop platform: 1100$ CPU + 200+$ board
now: 8 Cores desktop platform: 350$ CPU + 100$ board

[juno]

Pcgh.de found that Nvidia is slowing Down AMD ryzen CPUs :

No, they didn't. AdoredTV did and they just wrote about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tfTZjugDeg

[nomadewolf]

And AMD goes from releasing Deneb in 2011, then Bulldozer in 2011, largely same perf (except with notable regressions), but more cores, very little perf increase with Piledriver in 2012, then nothing except for meh-class APUs until 2017 where they released a pretty good chip that is Haswell class performance with more cores. Intel is already two generations past that in perf though. One if we're not counting Kaby Lake as Intel really should have named that Skylake Refresh.

Why is AMD suddenly getting a free pass here? They did the same nonsense years ago. They just are now reaching performance levels of 2014/2015 CPUs, ignoring core count. Very good CPUs to be fair! Excellent perf/watt.

Is it because we love to cheer for underdogs?

I'm ignoring core count because if we're counting cores, I guess we could say that Mediatek's 10 core nightmares are good mobile CPUs because they score to the heavens on multicore tests. I'm just interested in single core perf here. Stuff more cores in a chip, score higher on multi-core. Surprise surprise.

Intel invests more in R&D than AMD's gross income...
If you factor that AMD always managed to give us better bang for buck, i don't really see the problem.

And when you say that if we ignore processor count, that's a big IF.
Consoles are AMD based systems and are optimized/optimizing for more cores.
Vulkan and DX12 are focused and take advantage of more cores.
Game devs are all jumping into the 'more core' bandwagon, with some already having released Ryzen specific patches.

For todays games, Ryzen is not as fast as Intel, but it's more than enough.
For tomorrow's games Ryzen is a beast!

This is the analisys that matter. If Intel is faster on stuff that brings no real benefits, what's the point?
How is this a free pass?

[starshipeleven]

Why is AMD suddenly getting a free pass here?

Because this isn't yet another incremental change, you tool. So it's justified to cheer for it.

If Intel suddenly decided to pull some magic out of their collective hat and do a similar jump it would also be justified to cheer for it.

They just are now reaching performance levels of 2014/2015 CPUs, ignoring core count.

Please use the right jargon as if you say "ignoring core count" on a 8-core/16-thread processor you risk being called names for this.
They reached IPC that is more or less in line with the IPC of 2015 CPUs, but on multithreaded workloads they do give even 1000$ Intel CPUs with 140w TDP a very serious run for the money.

I'm ignoring core count because

... you are an idiot. Adding cores isn't just printing more of the same stuff on the same die, it's also making sure that they work decently together if added like that and dealing with the heat they generate.

I guess we could say that Mediatek's 10 core nightmares are good mobile CPUs because they score to the heavens on multicore tests.

This is plain bullshit. Please don't post bullshit at this scale.

1. Those 10-core CPUs are actually quadcores or dualcores in practice, they have more cores that are used at different load levels (Big-Little configuration), but it's never more than a quadcore due to basic thermal issues (they can't dissipate heat from all cores active).
10-cores are actually: low-end quad + mid-end quad + high end dualcore.
This design is supposed to maximize IPC, single core performance, not multicore performance, as the high end dualcore have a MASSIVELY higher IPC than the low-end quadcore.

2. A mobile CPU isn't supposed to be doing massively multithreaded jobs on a like 5W power budget anyway (hence you get designs that add multiple different cores to maximize IPC instead, which is admittedly a desperate measure, but it works), a high end x86 CPU... yeah, you bet it.

I'm just interested in single core perf here.

Yeah, because you are myopically fixed on consumer hardware that runs programs that can't use more than 4 cores at all.

Trying to compete with Intel in the relatively high end consumer market is far harder than doing the same in the server market (mostly due to the last huh, decade? of marketing, people now want only i7 in their PC even if they don't know what that is), so you get why these designs focus more on massive multicore.

Also their hope is to get more and more program to go truly multicore, and finally have a way to catch off-guard Intel. Competing on IPC is a war they can't realistically win.

[starshipeleven]

Let me however disagree with your statements on APUs, because they offered better gaming performance than similarly priced Intel CPUs at launch. People on a tight budget really liked those APUs.

Also in the HTPC/miniPC segment. APUs big and small plain destroyed anything similarly priced for HTPCs where you'd rather not have a dedicated GPU and you'd also rather not have the pathetic Intel iGPUs.

Then due to marketing issues people still bought crappy boards with Atoms or Bay Trail processors, when for the same price they could get a AMD-based system that would be far better (and also run better on Linux).

[b15hop]

Yeah, Intel's typical "hey guys, here is a new CPU that has 5% more power but is otherwise the same as the old one, hmm btw, we also changed socket, so go buy a new mobo, sucker." PC hardware launches happened in the last 5 years were boooooring.

I used a 6700K and it felt like my phenom 955 in terms of windows 10 performance... The AMD cpu was not even designed for windows 7 let alone windows 8, 8.1 or 10... Yet I was using it right up until I got a Ryzen. My old crosshair IV motherboard stood the test of time. Brilliant machine.

Ryzen flogs on dx12 tests. I'm getting better performance than any kaby lake wannabe. Intel will have to release an 8 core gaming cpu soon to truly catch up. Single thread speed is a thing of the past. Even phones are 8 core these days. Quad core days are over... I'm glad that AMD finally pulled their weight. I agree that AMD should have released this CPU 2 years ago but oh well. It's here now. Enjoy.

[Joeyboots80]

Bought a Ryzen R7 1700 and I couldn't be happier. Blows away my old FX 8320e.