OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Might See Micro-Architecture Packages For Better Performance

[ms178]

I wish I could find numbers. I just know that Clear doesn't build with AVX/numbers globally anymore. It's an anecdotal suggestion I've seen in quite a few places over the years, I just don't remember where because I've only had an AVX capable CPU for two weeks so it wasn't really that important to me until now.

Maybe they did that because newer AMD Ryzens were showing better numbers than their own CPUs?! By the way, I still remember that we both used Westmere-Xeons some time ago. I couldn't resist a good offer to sell the motherboard and CPU and went for a Ryzen 2600 at first but I never saw a CPU degrading in quality that fast before like with that particular sample and only kept it for 9 months before going for a used Haswell-EP Xeon which serves me well today.

[skeevy420]

Maybe they did that as newer AMD Ryzens were showing better numbers than their own CPUs?! By the way, I still remember that we both used Westmere-Xeons some time ago. I couldn't resist a good offer to sell the motherboard and CPU and went for a Ryzen 2600 at first but I never saw a CPU degrading in quality that fast before like with that particular sample and only kept it for 9 months before going for a used Haswell-EP Xeon which serves me well today.

Earlier today I actually noticed that Clear enabled Renoir support. Gave me a chuckle. Glad to hear you sold yours. Much better than how I woke up to my Westmere system dead. Tried to fix it to no avail. You'd think replacing the motherboard and power supply and CPUs would do the trick....not for me

I ended up building close to the system I've always wanted since AMD announced their APUs. I "settled" for the 6c12t 4650G instead of the 8c16t 4750G. It was just too far out of my budget. I hope this doesn't go down hill and fast. For the mean time, however, I'm really enjoying it. The level of improvement in games is staggering. Same GPU, different CPU, it's a whole other level. I'm really surprised my 4GB RX 580 can pull off 4K60 with lowered settings.

[bridgman]

Earlier today I actually noticed that Clear enabled Renoir support. Gave me a chuckle.

I don't remember if it was agd5f or airlied, but one of them told me back in 2007 that the most powerful tool for getting good open source driver support was giving a developer a nice laptop that used the hardware you wanted to be supported". Still true, I guess.

[ms178]

Much better than how I woke up to my Westmere system dead. Tried to fix it to no avail. You'd think replacing the motherboard and power supply and CPUs would do the trick....not for me

Sad to hear that your system died but that was a motivating factor for me to sell it as the board was getting old.

I ended up building close to the system I've always wanted since AMD announced their APUs. I "settled" for the 6c12t 4650G instead of the 8c16t 4750G. It was just too far out of my budget. I hope this doesn't go down hill and fast. For the mean time, however, I'm really enjoying it. The level of improvement in games is staggering. Same GPU, different CPU, it's a whole other level. I'm really surprised my 4GB RX 580 can pull off 4K60 with lowered settings.

Great to hear that you are happy with your new setup, I did test with a 3600 as a replacement, too - but as the Haswell-EP has better multi-core performance for significantly less money and as newer games are making better use of more cores, I went the X99 route this generation as it still offers plenty of performance in most single-threaded apps I use (a rare exception is Hearts of Iron IV, but that game would even struggle in late games on super computers).

[skeevy420]

Sad to hear that your system died but that was a motivating factor for me to sell it as the board was getting old.

I really wanted (needed) to get one more year, though. I just started saving when it died. If it wasn't for the 2nd stimulus check I wouldn't have a PC right now (without dipping into credit cards).

Great to hear that you are happy with your new setup, I did test with a 3600 as a replacement, too - but as the Haswell-EP has better multi-core performance for significantly less money and as newer games are making better use of more cores, I went the X99 route this generation as it still offers plenty of performance in most single-threaded apps I use (a rare exception is Hearts of Iron IV, but that game would even struggle in late games on super computers).

And am glad you like yours. I went as all out as I could with a B550 motherboard. I figure in another year or two that'll have enough upgrade room to get a 5000 or better on the cheap somewhere.

You know that "That's quarantine, baby!" meme? Well "That's Paradox, baby!"

bridgman

It's literally for a laptop a Lenovo T14.

[tildearrow]

Interesting thanks.

Typo buid

[ms178]

You know that "That's quarantine, baby!" meme? Well "That's Paradox, baby!"

Haha, I didn't know that one, but it's true. That Clausewitz engine is ancient and doesn't use every core even though it is in dire need of more CPU horse power. I even compiled some of the libraries they use (Intel's TBB and Lua) for my CPU with agressive compiler flags to get it a bit faster, but there is only so much a compiler can do...

[jospoortvliet]

i am not sure about Intel..

https://en.opensuse.org/Sponsors

You greatly over-estimate the impact of sponsors on what developers work on in their 'do what you want/innovation' time. Heck, AMD or Intel sponsoring openSUSE has almost 0 effects on developers during work hours, unless it is specifically a project with the sponsor. Typically, sponsorship means there's a relation - if that is a technical one, engineers might have a bit more affinity for and knowledge of the tech of a sponsor, which might occasionally be motivational. But if the relation is, say, sales or marketing related, the engineers won't give a hoot. Given that's the case even in smaller companies, at the size of SUSE, it's even less likely such relations make a big difference.

I'm not saying it makes NO difference, mind you, but don't over-estimate it either. Thinking Intel CPU's get less love because AMD is an openSUSE sponsor is really over-estimating the sponsorship effects by several orders of magnitute.

[jospoortvliet]

Very cool. Just keep in mind that going beyond level 2 is rather stupid to do globally. All that does is add random lower clocked AVX code all over the place which is usually a net loss.

There's AVX, AVX2 and AVX512. That last two have usually a clockspeed and heavy power usage impact, see this recent Anandtech review, but the first AVX doesn't impact clockspeed that much and, in case of code with just a few or relatively light AVX instructions (including, I'd expect, in auto-vectorized code) probably not at all, plus of course the whole reason AVX is heavy, increases power usage and lowers clockspeed is because it gets more work done. I'd expect it to be more efficient, so AVX code at a 10% lower clockspeed still gets more work done. The main issue with AVX is 'automatic' down clocking but:
1. I think that's only on some (not all) Intel CPU's
2. mostly with AVX2 and esp AVX512
3. given AVX is more efficient in getting work done, this only really hurts if the code has very few AVX instructions so clockspeed goes down but the few AVX instructions with their higher performance don't make up for the lower clock speed.

If that's all true, then at least below level 3 I would only expect performance improvements. Though I admit, the 'automatic downclock when you detect AVX instructions' is pretty dumb, though of course you should clock down if you exceed power limits (I find it absolutely insane that Intel's latest CPU's hit 300 watt on AVX-512 code - it shouldn't use any more power than 'normal' instructions, and if that means clocking down - sure, do it, it'll still be faster.

What I wonder more about is CPU-specific optimizations. Going for level 2 or 3 would still be generic - how much further performance improvement is there to be had going for CPU specific optimizations, say AMD Zen(2/3) vs Intel Skylake-or-newer?