AMD Threadripper 7980X Kernel Benchmarks On Linux 6.5 / 6.6 / 6.7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Threadripper 7980X Kernel Benchmarks On Linux 6.5 / 6.6 / 6.7

A number of Phoronix readers have been inquiring whether using the newer Linux 6.6 stable kernel or Linux 6.7 development kernel deliver any additional gains when running on the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series hardware. Here are some benchmarks looking at that while using a Threadripper 7980X workstation...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Threadripper-7980X-Linux-65-67

[andyprough]

That's a $5,000 processor. I wonder if it's powerful enough to handle my LibreOffice spreadsheets? Maybe I should ask Santa for one for Christmas, for my new "HEDT", LOL.

Wasn't Michael just complaining a couple days ago that some neckbeards were wasting money and wasting electricity by using 12-year-old Librebooted Opterons? This seems like the other side of that coin.

[schmidtbag]

Wasn't Michael just complaining a couple days ago that some neckbeards were wasting money and wasting electricity by using 12-year-old Librebooted Opterons? This seems like the other side of that coin.

How? The performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar (MSRP) is almost incomparable.

[anarki2]

How? The performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar (MSRP) is almost incomparable.

Ignore the old Opterons. The 7980X is 2x as fast as the 7950X, has 2x TDP, and costs 10x the money.

Does this make any sense to you? What's the point of this CPU? I honestly don't understand. Why would you NOT build 2 7950X rigs instead of buying just one 7980X? Even if you factor in the collateral costs of having to buy 2 motherboards, etc., you'll be still WAY better off financially. Especially given the fact that you'll have to buy a more powerful PSU due to twice TDP, TR mobos have astronomical prices ($700+), plus the 7950X comes with an iGPU while the 7980X does not, so you'll even have to throw in some budget dGPU.

This is an incredibly performant CPU - that no one with a brain will buy.

[zexelon]

Ignore the old Opterons. The 7980X is 2x as fast as the 7950X, has 2x TDP, and costs 10x the money.

Does this make any sense to you? What's the point of this CPU? I honestly don't understand. Why would you NOT build 2 7950X rigs instead of buying just one 7980X? Even if you factor in the collateral costs of having to buy 2 motherboards, etc., you'll be still WAY better off financially. Especially given the fact that you'll have to buy a more powerful PSU due to twice TDP, TR mobos have astronomical prices ($700+), plus the 7950X comes with an iGPU while the 7980X does not, so you'll even have to throw in some budget dGPU.

This is an incredibly performant CPU - that no one with a brain will buy.

Actually the ones with brains will buy this CPU because it will make sense to them. There are quite a few edge cases where this CPU makes a lot of sense, especially in the engineering fields. Things like FEA analysis still tend to be CPU dependent as these algorithms have not yet been ported to GPUs. Even a lot of rendering still happens on the CPU, albeit that has made leaps and bounds towards GPUs these days.

[schmidtbag]

Ignore the old Opterons. The 7980X is 2x as fast as the 7950X, has 2x TDP, and costs 10x the money.

Does this make any sense to you? What's the point of this CPU? I honestly don't understand. Why would you NOT build 2 7950X rigs instead of buying just one 7980X? Even if you factor in the collateral costs of having to buy 2 motherboards, etc., you'll be still WAY better off financially. Especially given the fact that you'll have to buy a more powerful PSU due to twice TDP, TR mobos have astronomical prices ($700+), plus the 7950X comes with an iGPU while the 7980X does not, so you'll even have to throw in some budget dGPU.

This is an incredibly performant CPU - that no one with a brain will buy.

Well when you factor in the Epyc equivalents can cost 5x as much, suddenly, the price of the TRs aren't so bad. Like you, I would rather build a pair of 7950Xs, but it really comes down to your application. AMD charges what they do because they're kind of a monopoly in this market, and because there's more to a CPU these days than just how many cores you've got. Memory bandwidth and PCIe can make a big difference. Sometimes people would rather just have one machine to manage than 2 or 3 - for what it's worth, there are AM5 motherboards that are actually more expensive (not that you have to buy one of them), and you'd have to buy another chassis, storage device, peripherals (or a decent KVM), and whatever else. Virtually nobody is going to daily drive a 7950X with it's anemic iGPU, so if you need a dGPU, you now have to buy two. If your hypothetical 2nd 7950X is expected to be headless, then the iGPU is moot.
It really comes down to what you intend to do. While there are ways to make a pair of 7950Xs the more sane option, paying extra for a single system could be preferable.
EDIT:
This reminds me of high-end gaming or workstation laptops - to me, they're stupid. You pay an exorbitant amount for something that counteracts the main purposes of a laptop: something that can sit on your lap on-the-go. These expensive laptops use high-wattage parts, which means you're going to drain your battery fast to the point where it's basically just a UPS. The high wattage also means you're going to be stuck with an unwieldy large heavy brick of a device, or, one that's obnoxiously loud and burns your thighs. In a lot of cases, it might be both, and you don't even get the advertised performance due to thermal throttling. To me, it's stupid why anyone would pay so much for a device that's just simply bad, but, I also know there are niche markets where such a laptop is the only thing that can get the job done.

[sobrus]

This is decent price if you need such CPU to make money.
Even if 7950x is overkill for 99% of us.

Threadripper supports up to 2TiB RAM. You will be lucky to run 7950x with 128GiB.
Sometimes you just need to get the job done.

And compared to 1.5TB RAM Intel based Mac Pro (not available anymore I guess) this is actually very cheap.
For Mac, you had to pay $25K for memory upgrade alone. Rest of this 28 core system wasn't cheap either.

[stormcrow]

Ignore the old Opterons. The 7980X is 2x as fast as the 7950X, has 2x TDP, and costs 10x the money.

Does this make any sense to you? What's the point of this CPU? I honestly don't understand. Why would you NOT build 2 7950X rigs instead of buying just one 7980X? Even if you factor in the collateral costs of having to buy 2 motherboards, etc., you'll be still WAY better off financially. Especially given the fact that you'll have to buy a more powerful PSU due to twice TDP, TR mobos have astronomical prices ($700+), plus the 7950X comes with an iGPU while the 7980X does not, so you'll even have to throw in some budget dGPU.

This is an incredibly performant CPU - that no one with a brain will buy.

The point of the CPU is to accelerate the work loads that are still CPU/core bound rather than GPU or I/O bound (or both). "Anyone with a brain" would figure that out and can do the simple arithmetic whether this CPU makes sense for their workstation. You seem to have the wrong idea of what workstations actually are and why they are still around after the commoditization of computing and the end of the big iron era (hint: despite the perception, 'cheap' isn't the main driver of high end PC sales - compatibility, familiarity of platform, and workload type are).

[andyprough]

"Anyone with a brain" would figure that out and can do the simple arithmetic whether this CPU makes sense for their workstation.

High end engineering workstation? With the invoice being paid by your corporate overlords? It's probably still overkill in most cases, but Ok. When you're spending other people's money, price doesn't really matter in today's economy.

But as a home "HEDT" like Michael and AMD are suggesting? It borders on the completely preposterous, and makes the Librebooted Opterons look pretty sane by comparison.

[andyprough]

How? The performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar (MSRP) is almost incomparable.

LOL, I like that you threw an "almost" in there. It's "almost" incomparable, except that nearly none of us have home desktop workloads that would even come close to using this thing's potential. It's like buying a Lamborghini so you can drive it to church and to Walmart.