
AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 CPU Review - mcone
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-ryzen-3-1200-cpu-review
======
shmerl
I'm still waiting for this nasty hardware bug to be addressed:
[https://community.amd.com/message/2796982](https://community.amd.com/message/2796982)

Or actually, there are 2 bugs. Some random freezes, and heavy multithreading
segfaults.

~~~
powercf
This should get more recognition from the media. Especially as AMD are
launching server and high-end CPUs with high core-counts (where I assume a
large part of the market will be programmers), getting 120fps instead of
140fps in ${SOME_GAME} is irrelevant compared to unpredictable crashes during
`make -j 16`.

Personally I would like to build a Ryzen (possibly ThreadRipper, depending on
pricing) computer this year, but that is definitely on hold until this issue
is fixed.

~~~
cbcoutinho
Are there any performance benchmarks associated with building software?
Similar to your point, gaming benchmarks are totally meaningless to me, but I
would love to learn about the difference in time it takes to build some large
software (e.g. Chrome) on various cpus.

~~~
IanCutress
AnandTech runs a Chrome Compile benchmark in every review under the office
benchmarks section.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-skylakex-
revie...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-skylakex-review-
core-i9-7900x-i7-7820x-and-i7-7800x-tested/14)

[http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1857](http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1857)

~~~
srcmap
Chrome compilation should be heavily parallelized. (It is my core use case. I
only care about system big project compilation speed. )

The report seems to show Intel 4C/8T is doing better than AMD 8C/16T with much
bigger L2/L3 cache config.

Is 7700K really that good? Can anyone from AMD explain this?

Intel (Kaby Lake) Core i7 7700K (91W, $339) 4C/8T, 4.2 GHz, 1MB L2, 8MB L3
17.81

AMD (Zen) Ryzen 7 1800X (95W, $499) 8C/16T, 3.6 GHz, 4MB L2, 16MB L3 16.32

------
throw2016
Just from an year ago the cpu market has changed completely. The sheer amount
of choice at all levels is staggering. For the mid level user the 1600
especially is a formidable offering, and the 1700 with 8 cores just ups the
ante.

As a old Barton user it's really exciting to see AMD climb its way out of
nearly a decade of darkness. A well deserved kudos to Lisa and the team.

When we talk about female CEOs she is rarely mentioned but here she is in
probably one of the most technology intensive industries with a company that
was clearly floundering and she has led AMD confidently out of the woods into
a position of strength. What a performance.

~~~
arcanus
> When we talk about female CEOs she is rarely mentioned but here she is in
> probably one of the most technology intensive industries with a company that
> was clearly floundering and she has led AMD confidently out of the woods
> into a position of strength. What a performance.

This. It seems amazing to have a technical CEO (she has a PhD from MIT) who
also has management and turnaround ability.

~~~
bluGill
She might have a technical degree, but they didn't take she from layout out a
circuit board (or whatever) and make her CEO. She has been working her way up
the management chain for at least 15 years. She has been successful in all
that effort, and so she was rewarded with more responsibility, a task she has
rising to.

When you look at successful CEOs in general, they are mostly promoted from
within, after working their way up the ranks. That she has only been at AMD
for a couple years total and seems to be doing well is more surprising than
that she has a technical degree: technical degrees imply enough intelligence
to figure out how to do management tasks if you want to take that route.

------
tpaschalis
Well, some healthy competition in the budget-friendly CPU market, and a good
alternative to Intel's i3 (slacking) lineup. Great news for customers!

~~~
jhasse
They are missing an iGPU, especially in that price segment.

~~~
bryanlarsen
We're already a month into the promised release period of 2H17 for Raven
Ridge. Let's hope it comes out closer to the beginning of 2H17 than the end.

[http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-apu-vega-gpu-
leak/](http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-apu-vega-gpu-leak/)

~~~
ihsw2
We will likely see Zen-based laptops before we see Zen-based standalone APUs,
with laptops coming for the holiday season (ie: Oct/Nov) and APUs late 1H18.

~~~
tracker1
I wouldn't mind seeing a good Zen based laptop... Something around an R7 1700
would be nice, maybe 10-20% lower clock for thermals. Something capable of
64gb ram and user serviceable nvme and/or ssd would be great.

------
rb808
Are the TDP figures to be trusted? How does the heat produced compare with
Intel offerings? The last time I bought an AMD my PC felt like a hair dryer,
will I regret going AMD again?

~~~
kllrnohj
Just look at the power consumption metrics in the review. If it used less
power, it produced less heat. Nearly all the power that's used is directly
converted to heat.

TDP doesn't mean anything about what the CPU will produce under actual loads,
it's the budget that the OEM should provide to satisfy the performance target
of the CPU.

Simple example of this is the 51W TDP Intel chips consistently used more power
(and thus produced more heat) than the 65W TDP Intel chip. The reason is Intel
is OK with the 51W TDP chips thermal-throttling more than they are the 65W TDP
part, because that's the performance they are selling.

Under full load the Ryzen 3 1200 was power-competitive with the Intel
offerings, whereas the Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 5 1500X used 20w more power.

20W is not going to be that noticeable, though.

~~~
thinkmassive
It depends where that 20W is going... on the floor or into your lap and hands?

I'm building a small cluster of i3 NUCs, but I like AMD so this is intriguing.
Power efficiency is important to me, and 20W is less negligible when it's
multiplied.

------
elihu
Is AMD planning to release something with integrated graphics? It's nice that
they're making parts available without it, but it seems like a lot of people
buying cheap CPUs would rather not buy a separate GPU.

~~~
metalliqaz
In the beginning of the article, they state "Zen paired with graphics, coming
in Q3/Q4"

~~~
elihu
Ah, I missed it. Thanks.

------
ksec
While the benchmarks shows AMD is doing well, I wonder How much disadvantage
are AMD Zen getting with the current compiler and software optimizes for
Intel?

I am still eagerly waiting for Zen + Vega APU.

~~~
gcp
Stuff using Intel's compiler or maths libraries is going to suck, somewhat.

Other stuff, that's just using MSVC/gcc/clang/llvm code targeted to
Skylake/Haswell etc will run just fine, as Zen's microarch is similar enough.

AMD's own compiler is like a 3% performance difference for us, compared to
regular clang. No big influence, basically.

------
jhoechtl
What about Zen powered laptops? What is holding them back?

~~~
ihsw2
Zen CPU sales are expected to be brisk for some time, supply yields are likely
an issue as well as laptop OEMs probably feeling skittish about pricing.

AMD announced a refresh of their APUs but it's probably just a half-hearted
stop-gap aimed at those wanting current-gen Vega-based graphics but too
impatient to wait for Zen-based compute. The holy grail of Zen compute/Vega
graphics systems are coming down the pipe but probably just in time for the
2017 back-to-school season, if not Black Friday/holiday season.

------
for0one
I bought a Ryzen desktop with an asrock motherboard a few weeks ago. It was
very unstable. Installed Ubuntu 17.04 with upgraded kernel. Most crash / lock
ups happened when running vmware workstation. I returned the desktop and now
have a very stable Intel I7. It seems like the issue was a combination of the
CPU and the motherboard. I assume Ryzen + asrock will run fine on Windows 10.

~~~
tormeh
>asrock

Well, I would say that ASRock is not the best motherboard brand around. Try
Asus or MSI next time.

~~~
Scramblejams
Can offer an opposing anecdote. I have an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, loaded with
tons of RAM, hard drives and PCIe cards running a bunch of VMs (some with GPU
passthrough) and it's been 100% stable. Plus their support has been awesome --
I had an issue with a bent pin and they did a complete motherboard check for
me for free, then threw a bunch of SATA cables in the box when they sent it
back.

Having said that, they're one of the smaller manufacturers, and it wouldn't
surprise me if they're still in the process of getting on top of some of the
issues that inevitably come up with a new platform.

It also wouldn't surprise me if GP got a lemon. It can happen with any
manufacturer.

As it is, though, I'm a very happy customer of theirs.

~~~
tormeh
True. Some statistics I've seen once showed that Asus is the most reliable,
but I got a lemon from them once. It's all just probabilities.

------
metalliqaz
IMHO, the single-thread performance/dollar graph at the end of the article
says it all. At this price range, I've found that workloads are still mostly
single-threaded. The Intel parts are still the king with their decent clock
rates and their deep pipelines. The Ryzen 3 1200 is a total dog.

~~~
old-gregg
"Total dog" for being 7-13% slower-per-thread but offering twice as many
cores? This is ridiculous. I am typing this on a i5 Mac with 2C/4T and the
difference in using common office applications (browser, Excel, etc) vs 4C/8T
i7 is _insane_. Just using newegg.com is borderline impossible with just a few
tabs open unless you have 4 non-SMT threads.

Desktop computing is actually pretty good at utilizing many cores these days:
the booting process, starting non-trivial applications, using full-disk
encryption, running multiple tabs in a browser (or just having a browser open
with a few tabs + something else), in all of these conditions 4c/4t CPU will
provide tangible, perceivable difference. 2c/4t CPUs are obsolete and I
wouldn't recommend one even for an entry-level computer.

~~~
metalliqaz
My experience has been the opposite. For running a browser, I'll take a faster
dual core over a slower quad core. Simultaneous tabs are of little use to me
if I can't scroll smoothly through Amazon.com.

~~~
rosser
It not being the ideal choice for your specific use-case does not in any way
make it a "total dog".

Just unsuited for you.

~~~
metalliqaz
I suggest you actually read the article and take a look at the ST
performance/price graph that I was referencing. The 1200 is an outlier.

