Do You Really Need 32 Cores?

[PaulAlcorn]

Do you want 32 cores? Yes. But do you really need them? Well, that depends.

Do You Really Need 32 Cores? : Read more

 

[mhtsgr999]

For gaming=NO
For Content creation= Yes

 

[zebarjadi.raouf]

Do you want 32 cores?

No, each core would be weaker compared to a consumer grade CPU like i7. But it would wipe the floor with i7 when doing multitasking. So it's a no when using it for core limited things like gaming.

But do you really need them? Well, that depends.

For games, more than 6 cores are not needed. 4 for the game, 2 for windows + streaming + etc. The 4 might change to 6 with new game engines optimization and better DX12/Vulkan support.

For a workstation, Yes. Time is money. The 32 core 2990WX is 266% (5.2x) better at multitasking than an 8700k and is 4.5x more expensive. I'm rounding the numbers here.
8700K > 400$ > 365 days to calculate
2990WX> 1800$ > 70 days to calculate
That means you would save 295 days for spending 1400$ more. Companies would spend more if it would make it faster even faster. They are competing for time with each other.

As I said before, it's also 30% weaker at just 4 core usage. For home use, a consumer version is enough.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-TR-2990WX/3937vsm560423

 

[Fait]

What we need are game developers to start taking advantage of multi-threading...

 

[zebarjadi.raouf]

What we need are game developers to start taking advantage of multi-threading...

It's not that simple, you would have known if you were a game developer.
I dabbled in Unity, Unreal, C++ and other programming/gaming related stuff before. It's very time consuming to implement and optimize multi-threading. They are not working for free, they are on a time and money budget.

The newer games had performance drop or crashed when they were used with DX12/vulkan API due to the optimization and updates needed. But now they offer improvements over older API.

Ashes of the Singularity and Rise of the Tomb Raider is popular for DX12 with DOOM for Vulkan.

 

[bigdragon]

The real question is "Do you really need more than 4 cores?" The obvious answer is yes. 8 should be the absolute minimum these days. It's time to stop letting Intel hold everyone back on 4 cores for desktop and 2 cores for mobile.

 

[BulkZerker]

"The extra cores from AMD and Intel could come in handy for streamers and heavy multitaskers during gaming sessions, but we don't recommend high-end desktop (HEDT) processors for most gamers."

The only current need for a gamer to use a chip with that high of a core count is they are using the system as a decoding box for their stream (at 2k or 4k, bleeding edge stuff.) Recording the footage for an upload to YouTube, And also hosting a local server at the same time.

L1techs outputs their stream at 4k to twitch and it takes every last bit of an overclocked i7 5960 using an elgato capture card to encode the stream. They have made mention of switching to something with a higher core count

@bigdragon 8 threads, not 8 cores. Intel and AMD middy the waters by not having all chips support multithreading. If 8tureada offer 80% of the performance at half the price I'll push someone towards the cheaper chip every time because that are on a budget

 

[TerryLaze]

The real question is "Do you really need more than 4 cores?" The obvious answer is yes. 8 should be the absolute minimum these days. It's time to stop letting Intel hold everyone back on 4 cores for desktop and 2 cores for mobile.

The i3-8350k at stock is barely 10% behind the 6c/12t 1600 when looking at a wide variety of different workloads,including all kinds from heavily multithreaded to medium and lightly ones.
That's not really what someone would call being held back.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_2700/19.html

 

[anthony.preston]

I like the idea of being able to turn the 32 cores into a 8 core 4 thread machine. Core licensing is starting to become a major problem. Being able to run a single core with 4 threads would help reduce licensing costs!

 

[zebarjadi.raouf]

The i3-8350k at stock is barely 10% behind the 6c/12t 1600 when looking at a wide variety of different workloads,including all kinds from heavily multithreaded to medium and lightly ones.

You sure you did your calculations correctly? Blender doesn't agree. R5 1600 is 1.65x (40%) faster than 8350k.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_2700/9.html
Nor does user bench agree. 72% faster at overall multi-core usage.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-8350K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3935vs3919

 

[Martell1977]

I wonder how long until they make a dual socket for these...64 cores/128 threads would truly be epic.

But for my purposes...My i7-950 is plenty even today.

 

[hagbard]

No one needs more than two cores.

 

[USAFRet]

No one needs more than two cores.

4x VM's plus the host OS disagrees with you.

 

[gilcarrick]

If you are a professional user of any serious application then you can derive serious benefit from multiple cores. Don't believe me? Start up Windows and open MS Word. Look at task manager and see how many threads are running. What are they all doing? Obviously 1 is processing the keystrokes and another the video updating. But others are doing spell checking, grammar checking, hyphenation checking at line endings, repagination if required, redrawing any images in the page, etc. If you are a pro, fractions of a second will make a big difference to you.

 

[khross30]

?Just “stop kvetching about prices and pay the premium for” a 32 core processor!?
-Tom’s Hardware Editor in Chief

 

[Phaaze88]

"I need 32 cores... to satisfy e-peen, and for bragging rights."

I'm sure someone out there thinks like this... not me, though!