Ryzen vs Skylake Performance in XR/X4?

[mrbadger]

I talked with some games lecturers on the subject of redirecting some games programming course students into my parallel programming module.

Apparently games programming just isn't at the point of using parallism enough really leverage things like the Ryzen and Intel offerings to their full extent, and won't be for some time. So for me it means at this time there's not much I can offer the gaming students that will be of use to them in the current job market.

In terms of game playing, not writing, at this point the core count matters less than the core speed. Someone has already said this.

I'm not a huge gaming expert, I just know some, I wavered pretty close to buying a Ryzen myself, those cores would have been nice for paralell programming coursework development. But I went with Intel because I've bought Intel since the early 2000's, and I'm honest enough to admit that 99% of the stuff I'll be doing on my Windows PC is gaming.

[Tamina]

@mrbadger
I guess this is true for a high budget PC mainly used for gaming.
If I understand correctly, single-core performance for Intel CPUs increases with their price, while Ryzen has a steady single-core performance but core count increases.

Since Ryzen is a noticeably cheaper, it would be interesting to know at which price point Intel overrules Ryzen regarding gaming performance.
Like a line chart...

However I am not up to date. Did Intel already react to Ryzen, if at all?

[Terre]

It's not just the game running, there are plenty of background tasks going on. I'm not sure those two extra frames are worth the cost penalty of an Intel system.

[mrbadger]

I only built my PC for gaming. I have a freaking massive system (that's a proper scientific term that is) for experiments at work, and a bigger one available for long term simulations, thousands of cores, and hundreds of GPUs. All of our HPCs (High Performance Computers) use Intel chips, but AMD haven't tried to get into HPC that I know of, or if they have no-one we deal with has taken them on.

I'd personally buy RISC over CISC (any intel type chip), as they have lower power usage and are slowly catching up in terms of speed. But they aren't really practical yet for gaming desktops. It won't be long though.

Both Intel and Ryzen are CISC, your phones and tablets have RISC. Those are much more efficient, and are in fact the dominent processor type worldwide.

I was hoping that Apple would switch to RISC chips for their laptops, but they haven't, and I needed to upgrade now, so I have another Intel based Macbook arriving today.

[StormMagi]

For me buying a Ryzen is a no brainer. More power, cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain and more cores. Why buy an Intel?
I have no affiliation with any CPU manufacturer, besides my one and so far only PC and Ultra book both have an Intel CPU.

Although, it would be interesting to know which one is more suitable for the X-series.
@CBJ
Watching the news, some video game developers have increased their Ryzen performance by a whole lot (I think it was 30% or something like that) through code changes suggested by AMD.
Have you looked into this?


I find it very hard to find a suitable power supply unit. Some people tell you to buy 300 W, others 1000 W, in any case there are thousands of different manufacturers to choose from and the price tag goes from 10 € to over a 1000 €.
And when you think you have found one and ask others about their opinion and they tell you this unit does not have a dynamic Relais power link (invented right now) or something like that - or not enough cables or what so ever.
This is the most complicated topic regarding PCs.

Newegg has a wattage calculator that is a good baseline.
https://c1.neweggimages.com/BizIntell/t ... Calculator
After that stick with known brands, personally I have used Seasonic for my last few builds. Enermax is another decent brand I have used. Haven't used them but Corsair and Silverstone are good as well from what I hear. Past that I stick with Gold/Platinum rated ones.

[korio]

For me buying a Ryzen is a no brainer. More power, cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain and more cores. Why buy an Intel?
I have no affiliation with any CPU manufacturer, besides my one and so far only PC and Ultra book both have an Intel CPU.

Although, it would be interesting to know which one is more suitable for the X-series.
@CBJ
Watching the news, some video game developers have increased their Ryzen performance by a whole lot (I think it was 30% or something like that) through code changes suggested by AMD.
Have you looked into this?


I find it very hard to find a suitable power supply unit. Some people tell you to buy 300 W, others 1000 W, in any case there are thousands of different manufacturers to choose from and the price tag goes from 10 € to over a 1000 €.
And when you think you have found one and ask others about their opinion and they tell you this unit does not have a dynamic Relais power link (invented right now) or something like that - or not enough cables or what so ever.
This is the most complicated topic regarding PCs.

Newegg has a wattage calculator that is a good baseline.
https://c1.neweggimages.com/BizIntell/t ... Calculator
After that stick with known brands, personally I have used Seasonic for my last few builds. Enermax is another decent brand I have used. Haven't used them but Corsair and Silverstone are good as well from what I hear. Past that I stick with Gold/Platinum rated ones.

You need to be careful with brands, because a lot of times they just buy another manufacturer PSU and rebrand it.

Check this Link!

These are the things you need to check when you buy a PSU, the quality of components and manufacturer, for top tier PSU's one of the best manufacturers is seasonic.

Regarding the Wattage, for modern computers without SLI and such, you will be fine most of the time with around 600-850 W, i usually take the processor and graphic card wattage and add around 200+W for other stuff and a little bit of headroom.

[Tamina]

@StormMagi @korio
It begins...

It seems to me there is no real answer to that topic.
There are a lot of different calculators and their results couldn't be more different to one another.

At least you are on par with Seasonic.

[OmegaKnight]

Regarding the Wattage, for modern computers without SLI and such, you will be fine most of the time with around 600-850 W, i usually take the processor and graphic card wattage and add around 200+W for other stuff and a little bit of headroom.

At stock speeds yes
but if you plan to overclock then power consumption can go northward very quickly
extreme example

[StormMagi]

If you aren't going or are going to do very minor OC I would look for one that is ~20% over your max draw, gives some room for upgrade/oc, but doesn't push the PSU full bore constantly.

[Frostnads]

Here are some constantly updated benchmarks I've found useful.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

[Lwerewolf]

Any old overclockable i7 (2nd gen +) should do, provided that you clock it to 4.5ghz and above (relatively easy to achieve, especially if you delid).

As far as AMD being behind - if they can manage to get a hold of a manufacturing process more suited for a high-end desktop chip, they'll most likely easily close the frequency gap. Clock for clock, ryzen and intel are pretty much equal at the moment.

Finally, if you're buying for X4... you're not in a hurry

At stock speeds yes
but if you plan to overclock then power consumption can go northward very quickly
extreme example

Up to 5ghz should be doable with a single GPU and a good ~500w PSU... and that's for synthetic benches - power draw in gaming workloads should be waaay less

[pjknibbs]

As far as AMD being behind - if they can manage to get a hold of a manufacturing process more suited for a high-end desktop chip, they'll most likely easily close the frequency gap.

They're already on the same 14nm process that Intel uses for its fastest chips, though? As far as clock speed gap, fastest Ryzens are clocked at 3.8GHz base, fastest Intels are 4.3GHz, so doesn't seem like there's that much of a gap there, to be honest.

[red assassin]

Clock speeds have been largely static and largely irrelevant when comparing different architectures for years - it's differences in optimisation (instructions per clock, pipelining, critical path detection, etc) that account for most of the speed differences between different architectures.

[Lwerewolf]

As far as AMD being behind - if they can manage to get a hold of a manufacturing process more suited for a high-end desktop chip, they'll most likely easily close the frequency gap.

They're already on the same 14nm process that Intel uses for its fastest chips, though? As far as clock speed gap, fastest Ryzens are clocked at 3.8GHz base, fastest Intels are 4.3GHz, so doesn't seem like there's that much of a gap there, to be honest.

They're on an LPP (low power process) node. Pretty much made for smartphone chips. AFAIK, Intel has the only high performance 14nm node out there. Pretty much the reason why current AMD chips hit a brick wall at around 4GHz - the voltage requirements get insane. Look up the IPC difference - it's practically not there. We'll see how the upcoming 7nm processes will shape things up, given reports of intel's sub-14nm efforts not clocking well.

...still kinda sad that 5 years later I have no incentive to upgrade from the 3770k (4.7ghz daily)...

[Quando]

Any old overclockable i7 (2nd gen +) should do, provided that you clock it to 4.5ghz and above (relatively easy to achieve, especially if you delid).

....

Nope it doesn't. OCd my 3770K to 4.5GHZ and added a 1080Ti last week. This game only uses 55% of my GPU because it's bottlenecked by my CPU way to hard. So it doesnt matter if I play on 1080p or 4K, FPS are always same (~110FPS).

Adding a better CPU would allow me >200 FPS in 1080p. This game is Script heavy = CPU. Elite Dangerous ist GPU heavy, so my CPU doesn't limit my system and that's why I see FPS counters up to 300 FPS in 1080p.

Despite that bottlenecking, new Tech is always faster. Check this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbGT-u4i3EY

Same clocked 3770K vs 7700K. In Tomb Raider and Witcher3 7700K beats 3770K by ~40 FPS. With my 3770K I cant run Witcher 3 with 60 FPS 4K if everything is maxed (10-15 FPS missing). But I could using a 7700K. Thats why I will upgrade to 8700K soon.