AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Linux Performance

[ms178]

Xeon is a workstation/server CPU. They are designed for stability, typically use ECC memory, and don't boost very high. Sure you can use it but it won't keep up (at all) in lightly threaded consumer workloads. Also, there is a platform cost for these CPUs (motheboard, usually memory) that even if the CPU is free you'd likely end up paying more.
We run these at work but certainly not because of performance for consumer workloads...

Frankly, if you start recommending (old) Xeon CPUs to people, you are doing them a disservice (unless they run heavily parallel scientific/audio/video/cad workloads and then you are looking at the wrong price bracket).

It doesn't matter which market these CPUs were made for as long as they meet your needs. You need to know your workloads though, but I do game a lot on Windows (mainly Battlefield series but also strategy games) and also enjoy to tinker around with compiling code on Linux - that Xeon serves this purpose very well. I even sold my former Ryzen 2600/MSI B450 Tomahawk combination as in my testing I got equal/slightly better gaming performance and much better compile performance out of the Xeon. Watch the video, the Haswell-Xeons can be unlocked to run at Turbo speed at all-cores, this particular 2678V3 can run at 3.3 Ghz on 12 Cores (I use a -70mV/-20mV undervolt to stay in the TDP limit and can sustain the high clocks even in AVX2 workloads). That is enough to get at least decent performance in every present game I own, sure it is not the best choice for some games which need high single-thread performance but with more DX12/Vulkan games and better multi-thread optimizations, this is more likely to improve in the future. As I've only a Vega 56 @ 64 BIOS to work with right now, the differences in CPU power are less important anyway (the numbers in the linked video are drawn with a 2080 Ti, and 15/16% on average is in my eyes not very much of a difference even with such a high end card). People can draw their own conclusions though, I just throw this video into the discussion here because a lot of people don't even know all of their options and would be better off with these Xeons if they fit their needs.

It is an added bonus that I can run this particular SKU with cheap DDR3-ECC-RAM and enjoy the added benefit of its improved stability. Also there are some decent quality Chinese X99 motherboards nowadays, I've tested two of them myself intensively during the last couple of months. If you know what you are doing and not afraid of BIOS modding (flashing from a UEFI-USB stick is enough, there are pre-modded BIOSes out there already), this is a tinkerer's dream.

[mppix]

Grasping at straws? Lying? Trump has been voted out, it's time to get back to facts and honesty. Straight from the horse's mouth https://www.amd.com/en/press-release...ailability-amd : Ryzen 3600, 3600X, 3700X, 3800X, 3900X, 3950X were available on release last time. The press destroyed both the 3600X and 3800X by calling them overpriced junk, so AMD has learned their lesson and this time around they have released the exact CPUs to get as fattest margins as humanly possible. And again TSMC yields are now much better than a 1.5 year ago and wafers must cost a lot less but that shouldn't distract you from AMD's greatness.

Agree, do want to give 'reasonable' or 'objective assessment' a try?
Try have a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzen
Not all 3000 series processors were launched at the same time and that launch was before covid (when corporations didn't need to review schedules every week to factor in new delays). You can safely expect more SKUs from AMD 5000.

The press destroyed both the 3600X and 3800X by calling them overpriced junk, so AMD has learned their lesson and this time around they have released the exact CPUs to get as fattest margins as humanly possible. And again TSMC yields are now much better than a 1.5 year ago and wafers must cost a lot less but that shouldn't distract you from AMD's greatness.

What press? Certainly not the anandtech, tomshardware, or phoronix. Also, "fat" margins rarely applies in consumer tec products (server stuff has decent margins). How do you know that their process is cheaper and by how much? Are they using the enhanced 7nm node not?
Last, it is very likely that AMD (and Nvidia, Intel) can produce and move only lower quantities due to COVID for foreseeable future. This drives prices up and you can either wait or pay up.

[mppix]

Totally understandable points, but I don't see any value in comparing launch prices or why these points should matter to consumers, it is the current street price and the performance which you are getting for that price what should matter potential buyers the most. I am personally already well served with a used Xeon E5-2678V3 which I could get for around 75 EUR for 84 to 85% of the performance of the 5600X. This is what I call value and a more cost-conscious buying decision. And I wonder how many of the people who went out and bought these 5600X for 349 EUR would be just as happy with that alternative and could invest the saved money into a better GPU or monitor instead (sure, if all they are playing is Far Cry New Dawn or a similar single-thread heavy title, that would be a good reason to spend more money on such a CPU - more multi-threaded games are the future though).

Xeon is a workstation/server CPU. They are designed for stability, typically use ECC memory, and don't boost very high. Sure you can use it but it won't keep up (at all) in lightly threaded consumer workloads. Also, there is a platform cost for these CPUs (motheboard, usually memory) that even if the CPU is free you'd likely end up paying more.
We run these at work but certainly not because of performance for consumer workloads...

Frankly, if you start recommending (old) Xeon CPUs to people, you are doing them a disservice (unless they run heavily parallel scientific/audio/video/cad workloads and then you are looking at the wrong price bracket).

[Marco-GG]

The problem is that we have a duopoly and when two companies start to ripp off their target audience, some people don't know how to react properly to this markt situation, either use your old hardware longer or look at the used market to get more value.

I completely agree with this. And I can add something: when the RTX 3080 was released a lot of people felt that Nvidia "reduced" their prices while they just take care of keeping the 2080 MSRP tiers.

By the way, my criticism is mainly due to the 5600X pricing, which is 100 EUR over the 3600X (if you can get the 5600X for MSRP, good luck with that, I've seen prices of 349 EUR and higher these days), which translates into at least a 50% price increase for just 22% more performance.

For the sake of making valid comparisons, we must take MSRP at launch. Using prices out of what each company states as "standard" is just get in to a region by region comparison as first world countries tends to have lower prices for old hardware (vendors want to clear stock) and new hardware with a lot of hype is victim of the speculation of "scalpers".

[birdie]

Do you like making a fool out of yourself?

No company -ever- launches the full lineup. New models always come later to fill in gaps. This is true for AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.
This time AMD led with the X models that show that they are now more than competitive in single-threaded and gaming and Intel has no performance edge left.

Yes, AMD can charge more until Intel decides to show up again. I really hope they do (for the consumers sake) but I am no too optimistic. Next gen desktop Intel CPU will again use the 14nm process (but new architecture) and AMD is very possibly on 5nm around the time that Intel gets their 10nm node stable for desktop.

Grasping at straws? Lying? Trump has been voted out, it's time to get back to facts and honesty. Straight from the horse's mouth https://www.amd.com/en/press-release...ailability-amd : Ryzen 3600, 3600X, 3700X, 3800X, 3900X, 3950X were available on release last time. The press destroyed both the 3600X and 3800X by calling them overpriced junk, so AMD has learned their lesson and this time around they have released the exact CPUs to get as fattest margins as humanly possible. And again TSMC yields are now much better than a 1.5 year ago and wafers must cost a lot less but that shouldn't distract you from AMD's greatness.

Please try to spend at least 10 minutes of your time before trying to provide counterarguments. I could maybe understand the fever with which you're trying to defend their fat margins if you were their investor, but I guess you're don't own a single share which makes you just a fool or/and a very biased person.

[ms178]

Your criticism is heard. Nobody here is happy about increased prices (ever). However, you need to be fair
- Compare launch prices of the same model; tech prices always drop over time as investments are paid off and availability increases
- In the 2020 COVID year, demand seems more difficult to meet than usual (see Nvidia, this launch, and expect the same for AMD GPU).
- AMD can increase the price because gamers will now buy their products in increased quantities (price is where demand meets offer...)

If you cannot afford the pricepoint, you have essentially three options
- Get a 3600X, it is a formidable CPU, just not the 'best of the best'
- Wait for a few months; the 5600X will come down in price somewhat
- Don't go out on Saturday and invest the savings in the cpu

Totally understandable points, but I don't see any value in comparing launch prices or why these points should matter to consumers, it is the current street price and the performance which you are getting for that price what should matter potential buyers the most. I am personally already well served with a used Xeon E5-2678V3 which I could get for around 75 EUR for 84 to 85% of the performance of the 5600X. This is what I call value and a more cost-conscious buying decision. And I wonder how many of the people who went out and bought these 5600X for 349 EUR would be just as happy with that alternative and could invest the saved money into a better GPU or monitor instead (sure, if all they are playing is Far Cry New Dawn or a similar single-thread heavy title, that would be a good reason to spend more money on such a CPU - more multi-threaded games are the future though).

[mppix]

I made it clear that I distinguish between the technical merits and the pricing of the new AMD CPUs. What other people cannot accept is criticism of any sort, but there are valid reasons to be more critical here.
..............
By the way, my criticism is mainly due to the 5600X pricing, which is 100 EUR over the 3600X (if you can get the 5600X for MSRP, good luck with that, I've seen prices of 349 EUR and higher these days), which translates into at least a 50% price increase for just 22% more performance.

Your criticism is heard. Nobody here is happy about increased prices (ever). However, you need to be fair
- Compare launch prices of the same model; tech prices always drop over time as investments are paid off and availability increases
- In the 2020 COVID year, demand seems more difficult to meet than usual (see Nvidia, this launch, and expect the same for AMD GPU).
- AMD can increase the price because gamers will now buy their products in increased quantities (price is where demand meets offer...)

If you cannot afford the pricepoint, you have essentially three options
- Get a 3600X, it is a formidable CPU, just not the 'best of the best'
- Wait for a few months; the 5600X will come down in price somewhat
- Don't go out on Saturday and invest the savings in the cpu

[mppix]

The starting CPU of the previous lineup was 3600, not 3600X. The 5800X doesn't replace the 3800X because again, the the starting eight-core CPU of the previous lineup was 3700X, not 3800X.

Do you like making a fool out of yourself?

No company -ever- launches the full lineup. New models always come later to fill in gaps. This is true for AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.
This time AMD led with the X models that show that they are now more than competitive in single-threaded and gaming and Intel has no performance edge left.

Yes, AMD can charge more until Intel decides to show up again. I really hope they do (for the consumers sake) but I am no too optimistic. Next gen desktop Intel CPU will again use the 14nm process (but new architecture) and AMD is very possibly on 5nm around the time that Intel gets their 10nm node stable for desktop.

[ms178]

You don't say it but it seems that you and your new friend gets very vocals when some people appreciate the new AMD CPUs (but what it's pretty much the standard rant of the other guy). Either way, there is no fallacy in my comparison of price as the way you set a price in the market is based on the other similar products available and how much is the market willing to pay for this product (sorry, IMO grades are a bad analogy in this case). So, yeah, 3600X have the same performance per dollar value as this CPU, but I'm sure that given the current difference in performance and the lack of competence in that segment a lot of people will pay the extra 50USD (just like people did the last 8 years for Intel products). And by the way, this scenario is exactly the same we had with the RTX 2080, companies can set this prices because people are willing to pay more and more for each release of their products.

Long story short: the CPU is terrific at performance level but will keep back some people from buy it if 50USD are way too much to them or if Intel doesn't do something in order to compete (and I really want to see some movement from blue team). That's all what is required to say... not to mention that anyone that decides to buy it is not in anyway a fanboy of AMD, so maybe we should keep the real fallacies out of the answers.

I made it clear that I distinguish between the technical merits and the pricing of the new AMD CPUs. What other people cannot accept is criticism of any sort, but there are valid reasons to be more critical here. You brought up the RTX series, which was just the same in terms of poor value and ripping off your customers (Nvidia's gross margins over 64% last quarter reflect that), the series had poor sales a year after launch but recovered somewhat after the tech press applauded the SUPER series (promoting them as "good value" - only if you compare it to their bad value parts to begin with!) and which would have been a better lineup Nvidia should have launched with in the first place. And I agree with you on the point that as long as there is an market for overpriced hardware, companies will try to take advantage of this. The answer is simple: These people need to control their impulses and stop buying overpriced hardware. I've posted the monthly sales figures of a german retailer on CPUs on page 1 of the comments, you can see for yourself how many people bought an 10900K or other Intel chips to begin with in that time period, Intel had 10 - 20 % market share and as good as nobody bought the 10900K which really no one should have anyway. The problem is that we have a duopoly and when two companies start to ripp off their target audience, some people don't know how to react properly to this markt situation, either use your old hardware longer or look at the used market to get more value.

By the way, my criticism is mainly due to the 5600X pricing, which is 100 EUR over the 3600X (if you can get the 5600X for MSRP, good luck with that, I've seen prices of 349 EUR and higher these days), which translates into at least a 50% price increase for just 22% more performance.

[birdie]

...

The starting CPU of the previous lineup was 3600, not 3600X. The 5800X doesn't replace the 3800X because again, the the starting eight-core CPU of the previous lineup was 3700X, not 3800X. Neither the 3600X, nor the 5700X have been announced in any shape or form, so it's all about pricing and clever marketing. If we had a 5600 for $250 and a 5700X for $380, I would probably cut AMD some slack but they deliberately chose not to announce them (now or maybe ever - no one knows). I haven't commented on the three released Ampere cards because it's not my price range. And the RTX 3000 cards are sold significantly cheaper than the RTX 2000. Given NVIDIA's history I'm 100% sure an RTX 3600 will follow. AMD on the other hand changes naming schemes so often you never know what's coming and how it's going to be christened.

Your price comparison of the i860 in ... 2015 when we are talking strictly about release prices? I knew AMD fans abandon all logic when defending their company but, sorry, sir, that's just asinine.

Don't get confused people. Price is about Demand and Availability. It does have 300 bucks for now but it will eventually go under 200, not very far from now.

By the same token NVIDIA should have priced their Ampere cards 3 times higher, right? The demand is there, right? NVIDIA is still commanding a massive lead according to the Steam HW survey (over 80% of GPUs are NVIDIA's) - should they price all their products to reflect that, right? You cleverly make up "arguments" to vindicate AMD only they fall apart immediately upon close examination.