Discussion AMD Ryzen MegaThread! FAQ and Resources

[jaymc]

Gamer Nexus 1700 Ryzen Review:

https://youtu.be/PcbdN7vdCuQ

 

[TechyInAZ]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcbdN7vdCuQ"][/video]

 

[juanrga]

http://www.techspot.com/review/1348-amd-ryzen-gaming-performance/

In addition to including more games, we're also adding results for the 1800X and 1700X with SMT disabled as Anandtech forum-goers have discovered a problem with the Windows 10 scheduler that can cause Ryzen to perform worse in lightly-threaded applications with SMT enabled.

But:

From the 16 games tested we see that disabling SMT on the 1800X resulted in 3% more performance for the average frame rate and just 1% for the minimum.

Disabling SMT didn't change anything because the problem with RyZen is other.

Hmm I read that article and you missed out an important part of the quote- the fact is that disabling SMT improved performance in quite a few titles *however* it reduced performance in titles that weren't effected badly in the first place- so the *average* negated the effect.

I have been for days saying the next:

Ryzen with SMT disabled was faster in some titles, slower in other titles and performed the same in the rest:

People at AT forums pretended that disabling SMT was THE solution for the gaming problem of RyZen and TechSpot tested this hypothesis, demonstrating that average gains are negligible. Aka SMT is not the reason for the gaming issue on RyZen.

 

[juanrga]

And what about this ?
1700 vs i7 7700
https://youtu.be/BXVIPo_qbc4

Looks the same as his last one, crank up the settings until the GPU bottlenecks. Not sure what he thinks he's saying about V-Sync and 144hz monitors. Once the GPU bottlenecks it can't going to go any faster no matter what CPU or monitor you're running it with. Which is the definition of a bottleneck.

I don't follow all what Joker does or says, but in past days, when people noticed that the conclusions of his 'review' were plain wrong because the GPU was running at 99% of load, he replied to the criticism via tweeter pretending that 99% of load on a GPU was not a bottleneck, but a problem with v-sync. Yeah, most people laughed...

 

[jaymc]

In that case it looks like he is appropriately named...

 

[thegentlewoman]

Dejavu ... taken from actually a Tom's Hardware US (.com) post (solved).
Here is 2017 again and again. AMD - ASUS enabling profiles.
I am gonna head from 3600 mhz Rams cl 15 ... 16 gb. The performance of the CPU will be bound to it and the GPU choice of course ...

Anyway this is the example of what is going to happen and today is taking out at least 10% of the performance out of the AMD.
I hope that the Watt issue that leaves even if the machine is at 50% of its usage, sucking like 100% used, will be solved too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0lQjIEeXFE

Here was ASUS pulling out some stuff for its MOBO.
So far MOBOs are on shortage so I guess is a hot time for Mobo companies to work on availability /commercial\production\ and SW .. lot of work.

Do you think G skill is a good brand (all brands including this one are optimized for intel etc) will the same be optimized for ASUS am4 sockets etc or will come new rams brands or models .. so it's better to wait?

TECH IN AZ ... thanks for that Review.. it rocks.

 

[thegentlewoman]

Besides many of us can't understand this language, scottish accent, I can, and this guy is doing exactly what I was suggesting some posts before. (3 days ago)
But I guess many since I am a noob but I have a really intelligent head and an intuivity that can out perform most of writers and readers here nobody got this.

I got to that point by reading most of your good opinions which are very helpful, but really, this is the point I was making out.
Please publish this video that besides its very unique accent voice tells an amazing clear series of facts searching right there in those ARCHIVEs (THAT DO EXIST TO BE CONSULTED).
If you watch this video your head will clear out all the dirt ...

Good bye ... for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50

 

[8350rocks]

Spoiler

Spoiler

AMD asked them to publish 1080, 1440, and 4K reviews together. They did not ask them to *not* do 1080p, they just asked them to show higher resolutions. This was clarified by Lisa Su in the reddit AMA and was characterized as Steve making a gross uncharacterized jab.

Other reviews confirm GN claims. For instance pcgamer claims: "AMD's first suggestion was to test at 1440p or 4K, which is complete bunk. Testing higher resolutions will absolutely put Ryzen's gaming performance closer to on par with Intel, but only in the sense that running higher resolutions shifts the bottleneck to the GPU. Even AMD's FX-series performs relatively close to Intel in many games, provided you're running at 4K. But if you want to know how Ryzen compares to Core i5/i7 when the GPU isn't the bottleneck, you need to test at lower resolutions."

Note that AMD didn't suggest them to test both 1080p and 4K (or 1440p), but to test only at 4K (or 1440p) to hide the problem by generating a GPU bottleneck.

Also, as noted by GN, AMD public demos of gaming on Ryzen were run exclusively at 4K generating a GPU bottleneck and hidding the problem to everyone.

Additionally..Steve from GN published a review stating that GPUs are better for video encoding. Except that they are not used for professional video encoding...at all.

GN is rigth. Funny enouh it is the own AMD which has been saying us for years that GPUs are better for that kind of workloads. I still recall when AMD announced to everyone that tasks as Handbrake would run faster on a GPU than in a CPU. The reason is that GPUs are more optimized for throughput whereas CPUs are more optimized for latency. This is also the basis for HSA (Heterogenenous System Architecture) which identifies CPUs with LCUs (Latency Compute Units) and GPUs with TCUs (Throughput Compute Units).

Steve also contradicted himself in his review...he ignored the minimum FPS where Ryzen was running neck and neck with all the Intel parts, but the maximum FPS was lower.

I saw him discussing minimum FPS also and they were lower than in an i5 in several titles.

Additionally, they tested in DX12 exclusively, used odd blender settings, and other weird methodology. Joker tested in DX11, and his results are reflected by other DX11 tests.

Not true. GN also tested DX11 titles. Joker tests were unprofessional (large marging of error) and irrelevant because he chose odd settings that generated a GPU bottleneck with the GPU at 99% of load.

This reddit nitpick of GN's review pretty much sums it up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5xgonu/analysis_of_gamersnexus_r7_1800x_review_an_i5_in/

GN conclusions agree with all other reviews that also found that Ryzen is not good at gaming. There are a fair good consensus among reviewers.

PcGamer: "The AMD Ryzen 7: plenty of power, but underwhelming gaming".

Arsctechnica: "an excellent workstation CPU, but it doesn't game as hard as we hoped".

Extremetech: "Zen is an amazing workstation chip with a 1080p gaming Achilles heel"

And of course TomsHardware: "It’s hard to recommend the Ryzen 7 1800X over Intel's lower-cost quad-core chips for gaming, especially given the Core i7-7700K's impressive performance."

I think the best comment on that reddit thread was made by the user that writes: "aka: Joker got the biased results we wanted out of hundreds of other reviewers and that is why we like him and are throwing GN and others under the bus".

All of this leads me to a few conclusions regarding the launch:

The BIOS was very buggy, and this was reflected in numerous Asus reviews, Gigabyte seemed to fare much better overall in that regard, especially in regards to memory timings and higher memory clock support.

Problems have been reproduced on non-Asus mobos.

The CCX cross threading is a major issue, supposedly windows is patching it next month, we will see. Windows 7 posts gaming numbers for Ryzen that are anywhere from 10-16% better according to the Stilt. Performance in other areas sees a significant improvement as well.

The CCX approach with a split LLC is weird. It is AMD fault, not everyone else. In any case, I don't expect large gains from patching Windows. Recall the Bulldozer scheduler, it improved performance by about 2--5%.

Agree 100% nicely said. I actually expected Fans to react this way but i never ever expected Amd to do this stuff i really didn't i thought that type of stuff was in the past(Bulldozer days).

Eitherway if you can watch Jayz latest video he did show that Ryzen is not being reported right in heaven benchmark and heaven benchmark was only using 1 core. If games are doing something like that it could be a reason why. I mean Ryzen does really well in everything but gaming that is why i find the results to be odd.

" No one talks about Cinebench scores anymore since Ryzen is now beating its counterpart there" I do Ryzen is great for everything but gaming where its mediocre.

"IS NOT RYZEN'S GAMING LINE OF PROCESSORS"

Then what will be the 4 and 6 core parts will look worse and i doubt they will be clocked higher then 300Mhz over the 1800X. 6 core part will be aimed at I5 prices where the I5 can be OC to 4.5Ghz easily, the 4 core part will look better being aimed at the I3 and i do think budget gamers will love that part.

From various comments you just made, are you telling me that if someone came to you and said all I do is video game, its all I'm interested in and I want to build the best video gaming system possible then you would hose them and building a system around the i7 6900K??? You wouldn't be in business for very long doing that to customers and then quote a couple outlier games where the i7 6900K beast the i7 7700K. Lets be honest, if someone asked you for gaming system you would recommend the i7 7700K over the i7 6900K for gaming as most of the time it has better gaming performance - and that isn't even taking into account the insane price Intel puts on its i7 6900K. Right now 8 core 16 thread processors are not the gaming line of processors, they are the workstation class of processors.

The gaming processors are the 4 core 8 thread and maybe even 6 core 12 thread processors. The gaming processors for Ryzen will be the R5 4 and 6 core processors, and they should boast better overclocking potential than their massive R7 brothers. As many others have stated as well Ryzen's gaming issue(s) aren't Bulldozer's issue. Bulldozer's low gaming performance was easy to understand from the get go, all one had to do was run any benchmark like Cinebench, look at the very low single core performance and bingo that is why it doesn't game in the enthusiast market. Ryzen is totally different, from all the benchmarks we have, with the powerhouse it is it should be gaming much, much better. Something is currently hobbling it, but it is far from the hardware issues Bulldozer had. Ryzen has very good IPC and very good single core execution, once the issue is found that is crippling its 1080p gaming potential it should hit the same gaming benchmarks as Skylake based on its very impressive workstation performance.

R5 Ryzen processors will bring AMD back into enthusiast gaming, but they won't dominate there, where they have a chance of dominating is with their R7 and Naples line in workstation and server application.

No i'd have them get a 7700K and according to IPC test's and frequency scaling on Ryzen OC i'd still recommend the 7700K as the best gaming processor 300mhz more on ryzen won't change that.

R5 will not bring Amd back in Enthusiast gaming it will make them a option again for people who do more then gaming. R3 will be Amd's major win CPU.

i5s are not even the recommended gaming processor anymore. Seriously...4 core i7s are what people are recommending for high end gaming.

As for enthusiast gaming, that depends, does it not? I intend to go 4K this time around, and I may run CF Vega GPUs to do 3 monitors...(still undecided about multi-monitor...to be honest...)

1440p Ryzen is fine, the differences are not substantial enough to warrant paying more for a 7700k. If you only play at 1080p...then maybe you look at a 7700k. I would only say sure if literally all you did was gaming, not capture software, no streaming, and no additional apps in the background. Simply because the 7700k is very nearly bottlenecking at 1080p in many games, and Ryzen has enough cores it would not impact performance in the same way.

Additionally...the 1% and 0.1% low FPS numbers are typically in favor of Ryzen, meaning a much smoother overall experience in spite of a 15-20% deficit in frames compared to a 5 GHz 7700k.

 

[8350rocks]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5xw4a4/computerbase_1800x_dolphin_benchmark_vs_mine/

Some updated dolphin emulator info. I know some here like that quite a bit.

This one shows he ran dolphin emulator and got much better than computerbase.de. Actually, his results were almost 15% better...

 

[jaymc]

Besides many of us can't understand this language, scottish accent, I can, and this guy is doing exactly what I was suggesting some posts before. (3 days ago)
But I guess many since I am a noob but I have a really intelligent head and an intuivity that can out perform most of writers and readers here nobody got this.

I got to that point by reading most of your good opinions which are very helpful, but really, this is the point I was making out.
Please publish this video that besides its very unique accent voice tells an amazing clear series of facts searching right there in those ARCHIVEs (THAT DO EXIST TO BE CONSULTED).
If you watch this video your head will clear out all the dirt ...

Good bye ... for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50

Interesting video thanks for that !

AMD claim 64% IPC improvement over excavator... No doubt about it the CPU is a beast, it may be getting hindered slightly by slow level 3 cache (among other things that is) but that can be easily fixed. I still believe they are sitting on a golden ticket.

 

[thegentlewoman]

I am trying to understand if this pair of G skills will be ok for the 1700 Ryzen or for the 1600x Ryzen...
Could you tell me if they will be implemented by the MOBO? In this FORUM of G skills is totally not mentioned really... it's crazy!
RAM DDR4 16GB PC 3600 CL15 G.Skill (2x8GB) 16GTZ are they going to run at 2100 mhz or I am actually going to be able to run em at 3000 AT LEAST? Maybe I will need time some bios is developed?
---------------------------------------------------------

--Just wanna tell that WIN 7 will be supported - check here.
https://www.techpowerup.com/230291/amd-readies-ryzen-platform-drivers-for-windows-7

This is important news. Since on AMD FX, GTAV was never actually an investment of DEVS, now AMD seems to be interested in putting people to work on OLDER STUFF, which is not only respectful but is actually understandable since AMD before (we all did ) knew that AMD had a OLDER\OBSOLETE on BIRTH platform and so it was very hard and expensive to bring people to work on it and backward stuff.

If as stated in that video - AMD now was going to work just on GTA VI (let's say) that would be a huge error. (not really learning from "past actions is one").

If AMD is gonna work with this logic... also future (in 1 year or 2) adopters of AMD ryzen (AND THAT HAD NO COMPUTER TODAY) will have a place in this "Saga" opened by Ryzen.
In all the environment today from culture to business the OBJ number one is OPENING NEW MARKETS, reaching new publics that were "handicapped" or had issues to get reached because of a lack of investment of course.
If AMD reaches out for those, like me, that until today (& next months) -before movin to ryzen- had 12 years pentium ***** 4 ,(by working on prices, investments, lettng me play 2012 to 2016 games or use older softwares) well, it means I will love them.
Intel will need to get back ethical or get out from consumer market. It means Intel will need to reshape their quality to a less commercial stance to a more HUMAN approach to the singularity citizens ... because, after all WE DO CARE.

 

[imrazor]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but it appears that I can't search the thread. Has anyone here actually tried virtualization on Ryzen? I'm specifically looking for VMware ESXi reports, but info on other hypervisors would be helpful. This would seem to be a killer app for a chip with 16 threads.

 

[thegentlewoman]

To those who like me don't believe ...

RAM STORY ... solved. [SOLVED][SOLVED][SOLVED][SOLVED][SOLVED][SOLVED]

FLARE X .... BTW I really love that Ryzen is AIMING all its campaign toward the Sky .. I mean toward the space exploration and astronomy of which I am not only fond of but more. This is really good. (consider also Vega Metaphor)... March June will be Fireworks ON...

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/g-skill-launchs-flare-x-series-and-ryzen-optimized-fortis-series-ddr4.html

 

[Redneck5439]

Besides many of us can't understand this language, scottish accent, I can, and this guy is doing exactly what I was suggesting some posts before. (3 days ago)
But I guess many since I am a noob but I have a really intelligent head and an intuivity that can out perform most of writers and readers here nobody got this.

I got to that point by reading most of your good opinions which are very helpful, but really, this is the point I was making out.
Please publish this video that besides its very unique accent voice tells an amazing clear series of facts searching right there in those ARCHIVEs (THAT DO EXIST TO BE CONSULTED).
If you watch this video your head will clear out all the dirt ...

Good bye ... for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50

Interesting video thanks for that !

AMD claim 64% IPC improvement over excavator... No doubt about it the CPU is a beast, it may be getting hindered slightly by slow level 3 cache (among other things that is) but that can be easily fixed. I still believe they are sitting on a golden ticket.

Without a doubt its going to be a golden ticket, maybe not for pure gamers but for AMD as a company and for anyone with the intelligence to invest with AMD now while the stock has ticked down a little before it goes way up when Naples releases. Naples will be Zen's server processors and Intel currently controls 98% of the lucrative server market. The gaming market is pocket change when compared to the revenue of the server market. Ask yourself this, look at all the benchmarks out there, look how Ryzen outperforms the i7 6900K in workstation benchmarks - do you think the server market is going to give two craps that Ryzen doesn't run video games at 1080p in DX12 as fast as it should? With all its amazing workstation performance Ryzen is going to take away huge chunks of the server market from Intel and that is going to net them a lot of profit. Once Naples makes it "splash" into the server market AMD stock is going to go up like it never has before.

 

[Redneck5439]

Besides many of us can't understand this language, scottish accent, I can, and this guy is doing exactly what I was suggesting some posts before. (3 days ago)
But I guess many since I am a noob but I have a really intelligent head and an intuivity that can out perform most of writers and readers here nobody got this.

I got to that point by reading most of your good opinions which are very helpful, but really, this is the point I was making out.
Please publish this video that besides its very unique accent voice tells an amazing clear series of facts searching right there in those ARCHIVEs (THAT DO EXIST TO BE CONSULTED).
If you watch this video your head will clear out all the dirt ...

Good bye ... for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50

Personally I loved that guys accent, I which I had that accent instead of my "backwoods" accent

The biggest problem when debating technology like this- especially when it is this new and everything - RAM, motherboard, and processor are all on a new technology- is everyone thinks they know how it should be tested and how it should be running and even though it just released if it can't do this now then it never will points of view. Personally I agree with "Scotty" I think that if you are going to test it on 1080p then you should be testing it using all Ultra settings. I mean to be honest with ourselves are any of us buying a $300+ processor and $500+ GPU going to run it on low settings? I would rather see how it runs at the settings I would be utilizing, and saying I don't have a 4K monitor (yet) I'm very interested in 1080p Ultra settings. I would love to see more "fact checking" to see if testing utilizing lower settings is truly a good indicator of how the same processor will run i the future with better GPUs. If its found that it is mostly groundless then why are we testing that way? I would like to see more proof that testing utilizing low settings at 1080p accurately shows how it will perform in the future.

 

[salgado18]

Personally I loved that guys accent, I which I had that accent instead of my "backwoods" accent

The biggest problem when debating technology like this- especially when it is this new and everything - RAM, motherboard, and processor are all on a new technology- is everyone thinks they know how it should be tested and how it should be running and even though it just released if it can't do this now then it never will points of view. Personally I agree with "Scotty" I think that if you are going to test it on 1080p then you should be testing it using all Ultra settings. I mean to be honest with ourselves are any of us buying a $300+ processor and $500+ GPU going to run it on low settings? I would rather see how it runs at the settings I would be utilizing, and saying I don't have a 4K monitor (yet) I'm very interested in 1080p Ultra settings. I would love to see more "fact checking" to see if testing utilizing lower settings is truly a good indicator of how the same processor will run i the future with better GPUs. If its found that it is mostly groundless then why are we testing that way? I would like to see more proof that testing utilizing low settings at 1080p accurately shows how it will perform in the future.

That's half the point. Ryzen is perfectly fine as a gaming processor today. I'd say it's great, even. But, as juanrga said (and my mind conveniently forgets it all the time), if you purchased an FX 8150 instead of an i7 2600k at the time, even if the FX was playable then, it isn't today, and the i7 is. Someday games will get more demanding, and "playable" will become "unplayable", while "great" will become "good". And then you will want that top-notch CPU from yesterday delivering mainstream performance.

 

[jaymc]

Besides many of us can't understand this language, scottish accent, I can, and this guy is doing exactly what I was suggesting some posts before. (3 days ago)
But I guess many since I am a noob but I have a really intelligent head and an intuivity that can out perform most of writers and readers here nobody got this.

I got to that point by reading most of your good opinions which are very helpful, but really, this is the point I was making out.
Please publish this video that besides its very unique accent voice tells an amazing clear series of facts searching right there in those ARCHIVEs (THAT DO EXIST TO BE CONSULTED).
If you watch this video your head will clear out all the dirt ...

Good bye ... for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50

Interesting video thanks for that !

AMD claim 64% IPC improvement over excavator... No doubt about it the CPU is a beast, it may be getting hindered slightly by slow level 3 cache (among other things that is) but that can be easily fixed. I still believe they are sitting on a golden ticket.

Without a doubt its going to be a golden ticket, maybe not for pure gamers but for AMD as a company and for anyone with the intelligence to invest with AMD now while the stock has ticked down a little before it goes way up when Naples releases. Naples will be Zen's server processors and Intel currently controls 98% of the lucrative server market. The gaming market is pocket change when compared to the revenue of the server market. Ask yourself this, look at all the benchmarks out there, look how Ryzen outperforms the i7 6900K in workstation benchmarks - do you think the server market is going to give two craps that Ryzen doesn't run video games at 1080p in DX12 as fast as it should? With all its amazing workstation performance Ryzen is going to take away huge chunks of the server market from Intel and that is going to net them a lot of profit. Once Naples makes it "splash" into the server market AMD stock is going to go up like it never has before.

It does run games and it will run games...it's not just the cache latency that is causing problems there are other optimizations that can be done even the game developers agree on this.
An I believe it will run games faster when optimized, an with new BIOS's an scheduling fixed etc... All these things will add up I'm sure..

But you are right.. Naples i'm sure is going to be savage...

Ryzen has really strong integer and floating point, an really good IPC... I think these optimizations might do more than people are willing to let themselves believe at the moment... Fool me once an all that..

I mean they are sending out over 1000 dev kits.. an working with everyone they can on this. It's plain to see the love they have invested in this chip. Their hearts and minds are in it. An they are highly motivated to make it a success.

I can see Ryzen becoming a success in the long run. It is just the first generation let's see what they can do for the CPU... an if that's not enough they will speed it up and replace the level 3 cache not a doubt in my mind..

If needs be they will even produce it on a different node that can run much faster..

Everyone needs to try and remember their is nothing wrong with the design quite the opposite actually...
It's a beast...

It's actually first time in a very long time that AMD has released an architecture with this much potential.

 

[Redneck5439]

Personally I loved that guys accent, I which I had that accent instead of my "backwoods" accent

The biggest problem when debating technology like this- especially when it is this new and everything - RAM, motherboard, and processor are all on a new technology- is everyone thinks they know how it should be tested and how it should be running and even though it just released if it can't do this now then it never will points of view. Personally I agree with "Scotty" I think that if you are going to test it on 1080p then you should be testing it using all Ultra settings. I mean to be honest with ourselves are any of us buying a $300+ processor and $500+ GPU going to run it on low settings? I would rather see how it runs at the settings I would be utilizing, and saying I don't have a 4K monitor (yet) I'm very interested in 1080p Ultra settings. I would love to see more "fact checking" to see if testing utilizing lower settings is truly a good indicator of how the same processor will run i the future with better GPUs. If its found that it is mostly groundless then why are we testing that way? I would like to see more proof that testing utilizing low settings at 1080p accurately shows how it will perform in the future.

That's half the point. Ryzen is perfectly fine as a gaming processor today. I'd say it's great, even. But, as juanrga said (and my mind conveniently forgets it all the time), if you purchased an FX 8150 instead of an i7 2600k at the time, even if the FX was playable then, it isn't today, and the i7 is. Someday games will get more demanding, and "playable" will become "unplayable", while "great" will become "good". And then you will want that top-notch CPU from yesterday delivering mainstream performance.

I never dealt much with Bulldozer, I never had one and actually started building custom PCs very close to the launch of Piledriver so my experience with AMD is based on Athlon (owned), Phenom II (owned), and Piledriver. Of the 3 both the Phenom II and Piledriver (my PC right now is powered by a FX 8370) are still able to play even modern games and in the case of my FX 8370 on high to Ultra settings and is far from "unplayable". Yes you get better gaming out of the i7 2600K but both processors are still playable and which ever one you have both are due for upgrading at this point in time. I know guys still rocking the Phenom II 6 core processors that are saying the same thing- games are still playable, but its time for an upgrade. In your example both processors are still currently playable and both are so dated that they now need to be upgraded. By the time the "weaker" processor isn't playable anymore - 4, 5, 6 years down the road does it even matter any more? You just got a lot of life out of it and even its "better" counterpart is very dated and in need of upgrading as well.

 

[8350rocks]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but it appears that I can't search the thread. Has anyone here actually tried virtualization on Ryzen? I'm specifically looking for VMware ESXi reports, but info on other hypervisors would be helpful. This would seem to be a killer app for a chip with 16 threads.

Ryzen supports virtualization features. Even the consumer grade chips, per the reddit AMA from Robert Hallock.

Also, to anyone curious...Ryzen also supports HDCP 2.2 and PR 3.0 DRM for 4K netflix streaming.

 

[dgothi]

Spoiler

Spoiler

AMD asked them to publish 1080, 1440, and 4K reviews together. They did not ask them to *not* do 1080p, they just asked them to show higher resolutions. This was clarified by Lisa Su in the reddit AMA and was characterized as Steve making a gross uncharacterized jab.

Other reviews confirm GN claims. For instance pcgamer claims: "AMD's first suggestion was to test at 1440p or 4K, which is complete bunk. Testing higher resolutions will absolutely put Ryzen's gaming performance closer to on par with Intel, but only in the sense that running higher resolutions shifts the bottleneck to the GPU. Even AMD's FX-series performs relatively close to Intel in many games, provided you're running at 4K. But if you want to know how Ryzen compares to Core i5/i7 when the GPU isn't the bottleneck, you need to test at lower resolutions."

Note that AMD didn't suggest them to test both 1080p and 4K (or 1440p), but to test only at 4K (or 1440p) to hide the problem by generating a GPU bottleneck.

Also, as noted by GN, AMD public demos of gaming on Ryzen were run exclusively at 4K generating a GPU bottleneck and hidding the problem to everyone.

Additionally..Steve from GN published a review stating that GPUs are better for video encoding. Except that they are not used for professional video encoding...at all.

GN is rigth. Funny enouh it is the own AMD which has been saying us for years that GPUs are better for that kind of workloads. I still recall when AMD announced to everyone that tasks as Handbrake would run faster on a GPU than in a CPU. The reason is that GPUs are more optimized for throughput whereas CPUs are more optimized for latency. This is also the basis for HSA (Heterogenenous System Architecture) which identifies CPUs with LCUs (Latency Compute Units) and GPUs with TCUs (Throughput Compute Units).

Steve also contradicted himself in his review...he ignored the minimum FPS where Ryzen was running neck and neck with all the Intel parts, but the maximum FPS was lower.

I saw him discussing minimum FPS also and they were lower than in an i5 in several titles.

Additionally, they tested in DX12 exclusively, used odd blender settings, and other weird methodology. Joker tested in DX11, and his results are reflected by other DX11 tests.

Not true. GN also tested DX11 titles. Joker tests were unprofessional (large marging of error) and irrelevant because he chose odd settings that generated a GPU bottleneck with the GPU at 99% of load.

This reddit nitpick of GN's review pretty much sums it up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5xgonu/analysis_of_gamersnexus_r7_1800x_review_an_i5_in/

GN conclusions agree with all other reviews that also found that Ryzen is not good at gaming. There are a fair good consensus among reviewers.

PcGamer: "The AMD Ryzen 7: plenty of power, but underwhelming gaming".

Arsctechnica: "an excellent workstation CPU, but it doesn't game as hard as we hoped".

Extremetech: "Zen is an amazing workstation chip with a 1080p gaming Achilles heel"

And of course TomsHardware: "It’s hard to recommend the Ryzen 7 1800X over Intel's lower-cost quad-core chips for gaming, especially given the Core i7-7700K's impressive performance."

I think the best comment on that reddit thread was made by the user that writes: "aka: Joker got the biased results we wanted out of hundreds of other reviewers and that is why we like him and are throwing GN and others under the bus".

All of this leads me to a few conclusions regarding the launch:

The BIOS was very buggy, and this was reflected in numerous Asus reviews, Gigabyte seemed to fare much better overall in that regard, especially in regards to memory timings and higher memory clock support.

Problems have been reproduced on non-Asus mobos.

The CCX cross threading is a major issue, supposedly windows is patching it next month, we will see. Windows 7 posts gaming numbers for Ryzen that are anywhere from 10-16% better according to the Stilt. Performance in other areas sees a significant improvement as well.

The CCX approach with a split LLC is weird. It is AMD fault, not everyone else. In any case, I don't expect large gains from patching Windows. Recall the Bulldozer scheduler, it improved performance by about 2--5%.

Agree 100% nicely said. I actually expected Fans to react this way but i never ever expected Amd to do this stuff i really didn't i thought that type of stuff was in the past(Bulldozer days).

Eitherway if you can watch Jayz latest video he did show that Ryzen is not being reported right in heaven benchmark and heaven benchmark was only using 1 core. If games are doing something like that it could be a reason why. I mean Ryzen does really well in everything but gaming that is why i find the results to be odd.

" No one talks about Cinebench scores anymore since Ryzen is now beating its counterpart there" I do Ryzen is great for everything but gaming where its mediocre.

"IS NOT RYZEN'S GAMING LINE OF PROCESSORS"

Then what will be the 4 and 6 core parts will look worse and i doubt they will be clocked higher then 300Mhz over the 1800X. 6 core part will be aimed at I5 prices where the I5 can be OC to 4.5Ghz easily, the 4 core part will look better being aimed at the I3 and i do think budget gamers will love that part.

From various comments you just made, are you telling me that if someone came to you and said all I do is video game, its all I'm interested in and I want to build the best video gaming system possible then you would hose them and building a system around the i7 6900K??? You wouldn't be in business for very long doing that to customers and then quote a couple outlier games where the i7 6900K beast the i7 7700K. Lets be honest, if someone asked you for gaming system you would recommend the i7 7700K over the i7 6900K for gaming as most of the time it has better gaming performance - and that isn't even taking into account the insane price Intel puts on its i7 6900K. Right now 8 core 16 thread processors are not the gaming line of processors, they are the workstation class of processors.

The gaming processors are the 4 core 8 thread and maybe even 6 core 12 thread processors. The gaming processors for Ryzen will be the R5 4 and 6 core processors, and they should boast better overclocking potential than their massive R7 brothers. As many others have stated as well Ryzen's gaming issue(s) aren't Bulldozer's issue. Bulldozer's low gaming performance was easy to understand from the get go, all one had to do was run any benchmark like Cinebench, look at the very low single core performance and bingo that is why it doesn't game in the enthusiast market. Ryzen is totally different, from all the benchmarks we have, with the powerhouse it is it should be gaming much, much better. Something is currently hobbling it, but it is far from the hardware issues Bulldozer had. Ryzen has very good IPC and very good single core execution, once the issue is found that is crippling its 1080p gaming potential it should hit the same gaming benchmarks as Skylake based on its very impressive workstation performance.

R5 Ryzen processors will bring AMD back into enthusiast gaming, but they won't dominate there, where they have a chance of dominating is with their R7 and Naples line in workstation and server application.

No i'd have them get a 7700K and according to IPC test's and frequency scaling on Ryzen OC i'd still recommend the 7700K as the best gaming processor 300mhz more on ryzen won't change that.

R5 will not bring Amd back in Enthusiast gaming it will make them a option again for people who do more then gaming. R3 will be Amd's major win CPU.

i5s are not even the recommended gaming processor anymore. Seriously...4 core i7s are what people are recommending for high end gaming.

As for enthusiast gaming, that depends, does it not? I intend to go 4K this time around, and I may run CF Vega GPUs to do 3 monitors...(still undecided about multi-monitor...to be honest...)

1440p Ryzen is fine, the differences are not substantial enough to warrant paying more for a 7700k. If you only play at 1080p...then maybe you look at a 7700k. I would only say sure if literally all you did was gaming, not capture software, no streaming, and no additional apps in the background. Simply because the 7700k is very nearly bottlenecking at 1080p in many games, and Ryzen has enough cores it would not impact performance in the same way.

Additionally...the 1% and 0.1% low FPS numbers are typically in favor of Ryzen, meaning a much smoother overall experience in spite of a 15-20% deficit in frames compared to a 5 GHz 7700k.

You said,"i5s are not even the recommended gaming processor anymore."

Intel is going to release new Intel 8th generation so i5 will have hyper-threading feature later this year. that is what I read it on Intel's plan on news. I assume i5 will be back with recommendation for gaming. But i5-7600k still strong and long time for 1080/1440p with decent graphic card. Also, I believe Ryzen 5 will challenge i5.

-DG

 

[daerohn]

another issue is Intel will be releasing 8th gen core chips this year, which is said to be %15 faster than previous chips. while AMD has just released a new chip barely on par with intel 6th-7th gen, with the release of the new series AMD will be falling short again.

So AMD has again some rough times ahead. They will be strugling with devolopers, also will be releasing new drivers and BIOS updates and when they finally have a stable product ready for the market, will face a new opponent. This can cause AMD to loose its edge they have today.

Right now they may be selling a lot of product yet a lot more people like myself will be waiting to see the final results to make a purchase. I have been purchasing AMD chips since Athlon and I will again bu a ryzen chip in the next months but not before I see the platform is stabilized by means of operating system, BIOS and software updates.

 

[imrazor]

Ryzen supports virtualization features. Even the consumer grade chips, per the reddit AMA from Robert Hallock.

Perhaps so, but it doesn't like ESXi 6.5. "Pink screen of death." See below:

https://www.servethehome.com/amd-ryzen-with-vmware-esxi-a-pink-screen-of-death/

From reading the article, it seems ESXi will need a kernel update to support Ryzen (much like Linux+KVM.) I hope I don't have to wait for ESXi 7.0.

 

[juanrga]

Without a doubt its going to be a golden ticket, maybe not for pure gamers but for AMD as a company and for anyone with the intelligence to invest with AMD now while the stock has ticked down a little before it goes way up when Naples releases. Naples will be Zen's server processors and Intel currently controls 98% of the lucrative server market. The gaming market is pocket change when compared to the revenue of the server market. Ask yourself this, look at all the benchmarks out there, look how Ryzen outperforms the i7 6900K in workstation benchmarks - do you think the server market is going to give two craps that Ryzen doesn't run video games at 1080p in DX12 as fast as it should? With all its amazing workstation performance Ryzen is going to take away huge chunks of the server market from Intel and that is going to net them a lot of profit. Once Naples makes it "splash" into the server market AMD stock is going to go up like it never has before.

RyZen 1080x doesn't outperforms the 6900k. Overall it is behind the 6900k despite having a clock advantage. This clock advantage is a consequence of AMD pushing the clocks to the limit, which reduced the user overclock. An overclocked Broadwell can reduce the clock gap or even increase the gap because it overclocks better.

Also the 1080x is close to the 6900k when including GPU-like workloads, which favor throughput over latency. Server applications prefer latency over throughput. That is why Blender or Handbrake have GPU ports to accelerate the application, but the immense majority of the server applications aren't accelerated by GPUs.

Server guys care about specific server applications or about standard benches as SPEC. I myself estimated the SPECint_base2006 scores for Ryzen, both in a optimistic scenario and in a realistic scenario

RyZen @ 4.0GHz = 43

Haswell @ 3.9GHz = 44

RyZen (OPT) @ 4.0GHz = 47

But this is for a single die. Naples is a MCM4 approach and it will have extra latency and thermals when compared with single-die Xeons. I am convinced that RyZen will be much more popular among enthusiasts than among server/HPC guys. The more optimistic expectations from market analysts agree with my vision. And they were made before the launch.

 

[salgado18]

I never dealt much with Bulldozer, I never had one and actually started building custom PCs very close to the launch of Piledriver so my experience with AMD is based on Athlon (owned), Phenom II (owned), and Piledriver. Of the 3 both the Phenom II and Piledriver (my PC right now is powered by a FX 8370) are still able to play even modern games and in the case of my FX 8370 on high to Ultra settings and is far from "unplayable". Yes you get better gaming out of the i7 2600K but both processors are still playable and which ever one you have both are due for upgrading at this point in time. I know guys still rocking the Phenom II 6 core processors that are saying the same thing- games are still playable, but its time for an upgrade. In your example both processors are still currently playable and both are so dated that they now need to be upgraded. By the time the "weaker" processor isn't playable anymore - 4, 5, 6 years down the road does it even matter any more? You just got a lot of life out of it and even its "better" counterpart is very dated and in need of upgrading as well.

The thing will Bulldozer (and offsprings, like Piledriver) is that it wasn't a good CPU for lightly-threaded work from the beginning. Ryzen is a beast in every metric, except games, which have been optimized for Intel for the last many years. Let software catch up and you have a very strong CPU, unlike Piledriver.

You said,"i5s are not even the recommended gaming processor anymore."

Intel is going to release new Intel 8th generation so i5 will have hyper-threading feature later this year. that is what I read it on Intel's plan on news. I assume i5 will be back with recommendation for gaming. But i5-7600k still strong and long time for 1080/1440p with decent graphic card. Also, I believe Ryzen 5 will challenge i5.

-DG

Sooooooooo Intel is actually reducing the price of the i7, and also downgrading the name, to keep the performance tag on the i7 (which, soon enough, will start from 6 cores, I'm sure of that). Also, expect i3 to receive 4 cores without HT. Intel will play the price game in a very clever way, just wait and see.

Im just confused

So let me clear it up for you: Ryzen is very good, buy it.

 

[cdrkf]

http://www.techspot.com/review/1348-amd-ryzen-gaming-performance/

In addition to including more games, we're also adding results for the 1800X and 1700X with SMT disabled as Anandtech forum-goers have discovered a problem with the Windows 10 scheduler that can cause Ryzen to perform worse in lightly-threaded applications with SMT enabled.

But:

From the 16 games tested we see that disabling SMT on the 1800X resulted in 3% more performance for the average frame rate and just 1% for the minimum.

Disabling SMT didn't change anything because the problem with RyZen is other.

Hmm I read that article and you missed out an important part of the quote- the fact is that disabling SMT improved performance in quite a few titles *however* it reduced performance in titles that weren't effected badly in the first place- so the *average* negated the effect.

I have been for days saying the next:

Ryzen with SMT disabled was faster in some titles, slower in other titles and performed the same in the rest:

People at AT forums pretended that disabling SMT was THE solution for the gaming problem of RyZen and TechSpot tested this hypothesis, demonstrating that average gains are negligible. Aka SMT is not the reason for the gaming issue on RyZen.

Again you miss the point- if the SMT issue is *fixed properly* (i.e. not just by disabling it altogether)- then you would get a net gain in performance. That is because you wouldn't need to disable it (tests show that disabling HT on Intel doesn't improve performance in the same titles- so the issue isn't with SMT as a whole but rather how these specific games are dealing with SMT on Ryzen). The only reason it averages out to no gain *right now* is because the method of 'fixing it' is an imperfect workaround that doesn't work in all cases- a proper patch (either to Windows or directly to the games) would net the same gains without the inherent downsides of the current workaround.

Not that I'm saying the uptick that will result from this is going to change the overall standing by a huge amount, but it will improve the average performance of Ryzen across games by a measurable amount. It's one of a number of things that should imrpove performance going forward.

Also reguarding performance of higher core count processors in games is a really interesting thread on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5xx0o7/gamersnexus_game_selection_is_important_but_how/

I think the reddit user there makes a very important point- the methods used to test 'gaming performance' by the review sites is not representative of *multiplayer online gaming*- which is where these higher core count processors shine. It's understandable *why* the review sites use this methodology (to make the test repeatable and fair between parts) but it's also very important to understand the limitations. I've seen this in other titles- when you factor in high bandwidth network connections to multiple users the number of threads required does increase quite a bit- to the point that Core i5 4 thread parts that appear to provide perfect frame rates in most benchmarks seriously choke, and even 8 thread i7 parts start to hit hiccups in minimum frame rates. In those scenarios higher core count parts from both sides suddenly become considerably more consistent. I think there is a real argument for 6 core / 12 thread parts here- it's just the testing scenarios used by most testers don't highlight these situations due to it being almost impossible to easily create a totally repeatable scenario.

Edit: Just to reiterate a point I made earlier- the key thing to understand is exactly what the 'bottleneck' is that the lower resolution tests are showing with Ryzen. That bottleneck being *draw call performance* (as all the tests are taken in single player scenarios). The issue with that is there is more to gaming than just draw calls. The more I'm reading on this the more I'm convinced it's better to take a 6 core / 12 thread (or higher) core count part at moderate clocks over a very high clocked quad / 8 thread part if you play mainly multi player titles. The Battlefield series, modern RTS titles and so on all benefit from more threads when you are playing online. I think game tech reviewers need to find a solution to this as they are consistently showing information which is frankly misleading to consumers- yes an i5 at very high clocks can push more fps out of a high end gpu in a purely single player environment but it's going to choke when you jump into a scenario with lots of players- whereas something like a Ryzen 7 or I7 hex core would be able to maintain the same performance that you get in single player thanks to having the thread capacity to tackle the extra load.