
AMD Threadripper prices undercut Intel's Core i9 by as much as $1,000 - doener
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3207747/components/amd-threadripper-prices-and-release-date.html
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redtuesday
Like I have written in the other thread already: add to that the ECC support
of Threadripper [0], 20 more PCIe lanes and no raid key shenanigans (on Intels
x299 you have to pay 100$ extra for RAID 1 and 300$ for RAID 5 support with
their VROC feature [1]). Unless you really need AVX 512 and better single
thread performance (and 2 more cores in case of the not available 18 core
part), why would you buy Intels new offering? Because you can reuse the cooler
since it's compatible with x99?

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6icdyo/amd_threadrippe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6icdyo/amd_threadripper_supports_up_to_256gb_of_ram_942/dj5lhs7/)

[1]
[https://youtu.be/TWFzWRoVNnE?t=11m38s](https://youtu.be/TWFzWRoVNnE?t=11m38s)

~~~
aphextron
>on Intels x299 you have to pay 100$ extra for RAID 1 and 300$ for RAID 5
support with their VROC feature [1]

This really bothers me about Intel. It's not like they have a separate die for
these chips. They are literally charging you to flip a switch on something you
already paid for.

~~~
kajecounterhack
If it makes you feel any worse both AMD and Intel provide cheaper chips by
disabling cores on more expensive chips.

To me it's fine -- it's just a method of manufacture. No different than buying
different versions of software.

"They are literally charging you to flip a switch on something you already
paid for." << To be clear, physically you have the thing in your possession,
and you could physically figure out how to flip the bit or re-enable disabled
cores (people do try this). I'm 100% for that being legal since it's a
physical device -- no DRM for me. But I'm also 100% OK with them doing this to
begin with if it makes it cheaper for them to give me their base product.

~~~
Veratyr
Don't they generally disable those cores because they have more flawed
silicon?

~~~
Grazester
Yes.

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UnoriginalGuy
I'm just glad AMD are still competitive.

Seemed like for a few years there they might almost gone out of business. I
think consoles have helped keep them afloat in the bad years too.

Obviously Intel will respond to this (either via hardware or pricing) but the
fact they even need to respond to something is a good thing. The only thing
that has been eating Intel's lunch in recent years was mobile.

~~~
unethical_ban
AMD cannot go out of business, in my opinion. They are the only other company
licensed to produce x86, and the license is non-transferable. If they die,
Intel faces instant monopoly issues.

AMD will stay around. Next time their stock dips big one day, get some.

~~~
Already__Taken
This was my opinion 5 - 7 years ago. I wish I wasn't afraid to buy stocks.

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tgtweak
The 12 core threadripper (1920) is comparable with the 10 core 7900X in temrs
of milticore performance, while still $200 cheaper. You can't compare only on
the basis of core count as this review did.

More detailed review here:

[http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu-
perform...](http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu-performance-
benchmarks-leak/)

------
Boothroid
I have an FX 8350 which is serving me ok at the moment but would love to
upgrade to ThreadRipper soon. I was tempted to build a dual E5-2670 system but
glad I held off now. I have some fairly weighty OpenStreetMap crunching that
could definitely benefit from loads of cores, and nested VMs might be an
interesting usage.

------
btown
Any reason not to prefer AMD CPUs for VR applications, given the price
difference?

~~~
frozenport
Some applications need 70+ cores. AMD doesn't have that.

~~~
sliken
The Intel top x-series (that competes with Threadripper) only has 36 cores
(not 70+), is limited to a single socket, and it's not shipping yet.

Even with dual sockets 70+ cores is not easy (or cheap) and other things like
memory performance become more important than core count. AMD has a bandwidth
advantage with single and dual sockets having 8 channels per socket instead of
Intel's 6.

Intel doesn't have competition with 4 or more socket systems, but that topic
drifting pretty far from a thread discussing Threadripper.

~~~
frozenport
I scale my CAD-like software to high core counts. Memory performance from the
hardware side isn't a tunable parameter.

If you need the performance, AMD has no product in this space.

~~~
sliken
Memory performance is just as tunable as core count. Ryzen = 2 channels,
Threadripper = 4 channels, and Epyc is 8 channels per socket for 1 or 2
sockets. So there's a factor of 8 to pick from.

I'd be surprised that a CAD program prefers cores over memory bandwidth.
Generally if you have a complicated 3D object doing anything with that object
isn't going to be cache friendly.

Have you tried your CAD-like software on two platforms with the same core
count but double the memory channels?

~~~
frozenport
Yeah, so a large part of my optimization is to move from memory to compute
bound. But things like matrix inversion, for example, thanks to the hard work
of library authors can scale pretty well. This happens on the CPU because the
data typically exceeds GPU memory. So, you can get out the box scaling for
much of your code.

The 3D rendering is taken care by the GPU.

------
sliken
Sad that the cheapest skylake-x with 4 memory channels (double the bandwidth)
is $390 (i7-7800X) and the cheapest threadripper is $800.

So AMD is competitive with a $2k chip that sells in extremely low volumes, but
not at $400.

~~~
tw04
Why is that sad? Intel didn't even have those chips on the roadmap until AMD
punched them in the face with Ryzen.

Furthermore, how about that ECC memory? What good are 4 memory channels if I
can't actually rely on the memory?

Competition is a good thing... and you can't exactly expect AMD to match every
last SKU Intel has been holding back.

~~~
BoorishBears
I keep hearing this sentiment from, what I suspect are, people rooting for the
underdog that is AMD. And there's nothing wrong with that, competition for
Intel is a good thing, but it's pretty naive (at least in my opinion) to think
Intel doesn't plan product lines out more than a few months.

I can believe Intel might change _prices_ in response to competition, but I
don't get why people are acting like Intel can magic up a chip line because
"AMD finally made some competitive chips"

~~~
sliken
I think you are right and wrong. Yes silicon pipelines take $billions and many
years to go to from a new implementation to a fabricated, tested, and shipped
product. Around a year for a minor revision.

However Intel has significant flexibility on hitting price/performance points
by tweaking enabled features (memory channels, ecc, virtualization support,
accelerated crypto, etc) and of course playing with clockspeed and power.

So the new x-series for instance has all the marks of a rushed product launch
rebranding existing chips (the LGA20XX xeons). So things like overheating
VRMs, poor heat spreader design, minimal clock headroom, and poor
availability. In fact the top x-series isn't expected to ship until the end of
the year.

Also Intel knew Epyc was coming so while quietly shipping skylake based xeons
to large cloud providers while waited for AMD to show their hand with the Epyc
launch. Only after Epyc did Intel announce details on the already shipping
skylake xeons.

Suddenly Intel's talking about desktop chips with more than 4 cores after a
decade of quad cores (Q6600 in 2007). Think that would have happened without
Ryzen?

I also expect sudden changes when AMD ships the the Ryzen based APUs.

------
madengr
Are there Intel specific instructions that may not be implemented on the AMD
processors? I do allot of EM simulation, and my software installs the Intel
MPI Library:

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-mpi-
library](https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-mpi-library)

Will I take a performance hit; maybe that question can only be answered by the
software developers?

I know the VOLK library used by GNU Radio is used to abstract away vector
operation, so your code can take advantage of specific instructions on Intel,
ARM, etc.

~~~
revelation
They support pretty much everything up to AVX2, though that is more of a
compatibility implementation.

Though its dubious Intel MPI and other software will use the correct
accelerated path even if an AMD processor supports it.

~~~
madengr
From that MPI link:

"Optimization Notice: Intel’s compilers may or may not optimize to the same
degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to
Intel microprocessors. These optimizations include SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3
instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the
availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on
microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependent
optimizations in this product are intended for use with Intel microprocessors.
Certain optimizations not specific to Intel microarchitecture are reserved for
Intel microprocessors. Please refer to the applicable product User and
Reference Guides for more information regarding the specific instruction sets
covered by this notice. Notice revision #20110804"

~~~
VHRanger
From my experience, Clang 5 on O2 will beat ICC with its libraries on its most
aggressive optimization setting in real world large applications.

~~~
wfunction
Has this recently changed (e.g. was it different from v4)? Or was it always
the trend?

~~~
VHRanger
For numerically heavy software it's fairly recent.

That said I cross compile a 15k LoC numerically heavy app with ICC 2017 and
Clang 5 (also MSVC which is not really in the running) and clang handily beats
ICC.

Most of the win from clang seems to come from small vector and small string
optimizations along with better inlining and whole program optimization.

ICC has better vectorization, but it's a smaller part of the performance than
it might seem. Moreover, if a core loop is banking on vectorization, you
should probably code it in intrinsics at that point to make sure it's always
correctly optimized

~~~
wfunction
Oh cool, okay thanks!

