[HN Gopher] AMD Announces 7950X3D, 7900X3D Upto 128MB L3 Cache
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       AMD Announces 7950X3D, 7900X3D Upto 128MB L3 Cache
        
       Author : nitinreddy88
       Score  : 126 points
       Date   : 2023-01-05 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com)
        
       | Sakos wrote:
       | I was looking forward to hearing about the next x3D CPUs and I'm
       | relieved to hear they're finally coming. I'm excited about the
       | benchmarks after seeing how capable the previous one was.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | castratikron wrote:
       | I'm hoping someday there will be an embedded Linux processor with
       | this much cache. 128MB on-die SRAM means the PCB would no longer
       | need separate DRAM. The complexity of the board routing would
       | also go down. That much RAM ought to be enough for a lot of
       | embedded applications.
        
         | diarmuidc wrote:
         | There are SOCs available with the DRAM on top already. eg
         | https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an...
        
           | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
           | Basically every smartphone ARM SoC for over 10 years now.
           | 
           | Some Raspberry PI SoCs also had the RAM soldered on top.
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | If you just want to reduce board complexity (what a
         | hobbyost/maker/homebuilder dream that would be), there's lots
         | of package-on-package and system-in-package offerings already!
         | 
         | AllWinner V3s, S3. Theres a SAMA5D2 SiP. Bouffalo BL808
         | (featured on the Pine Ox64). There's a lot a lot more. I think
         | there's a couple with even more memory too.
         | 
         | Intel's Lakefield, with Foveros stacking, was an amazing chip
         | with 1+4 cores and on chip ram. High speed too, 4266MHz, back
         | in 2020 when that was pretty fast. This is more for
         | MID/ultrabooks, but wow what a chip, just epic: add power and
         | away you go. Ok not really but not dealing with routing (and
         | procuring!) highspeed ram is very nice.
         | 
         | Intels been doing such a good pushing interesting nice things
         | in embedded, but the adoption has been not great. The Quark
         | chips, powering the awesome Edison module, had nice oomph &
         | Edison was so well integrated, such an easy to use & so
         | featureful small Linux system... wifi & bt well well well
         | before RPi.
         | 
         | It would be fun to see DRAM-less computers but I more imagined
         | them being big systems with a couple GB of sram. There's
         | definitely potential for low end too though!
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | The economics don't work out. Why would you avoid something as
         | trivial as board routing, as cheap as $2 per gigabyte DRAM, and
         | as performance-enhancing as having gigabytes of main memory,
         | just to use a 128 MB on-die (or on-package) SRAM (at a price of
         | ~$500/GB?)?
         | 
         | The main distinction between application processors that can
         | run Linux and microcontrollers that use onboard RAM (and often
         | Flash) is that the former have an MMU. It's attractive to
         | imagine that your SBC might only need something as simple as a
         | DIP-packaged Atmega for an Arduino, and I can imagine a system-
         | on-module - actually, saying that, I think several exist, ex.
         | this i.MX6 device with a 148-pin quad-flat "SOM" with 512 MB of
         | DDR3L and 512 MB of Flash:
         | 
         | https://www.seeedstudio.com/NPi-i-MX6ULL-Dev-Board-Industria...
         | 
         | Whether you consider that Seeed branded metallic QFP (which
         | obviously contains discrete DRAM, Flash, and an iMX6) to be a
         | single package, while a comparably-sized piece of FR4 with a
         | BGA package for each of the application processor, DRAM, and
         | Flash on mezzanine or Compute-module style SODIMM edge
         | connectors would not satisfy your desire for an embedded Linux
         | processor with less routing complexity, I don't know. They
         | build SOMs for people who don't want to pay for 8 layers and
         | BGA fanout all the time.
         | 
         | I don't think there are enough applications for embedded
         | systems that need 128M of onboard SRAM that won't support the
         | power budget, size, complexity, and cost of a few GB of DRAM.
        
           | zymhan wrote:
           | > Why would you avoid something as trivial
           | 
           | L3 cache is orders of magnitude faster than using RAM.
           | 
           | You're talking a maximum of 50GB/s for DDR5, versus 1500GB/s
           | for L3 cache
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interface_bit_rates#Dy.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://meterpreter.org/amd-ryzen-9-7900x-benchmark-
           | zen-4-im...
           | 
           | It's a paradigm-shifting increase in processing speed when
           | you don't need to hit RAM.
        
             | zX41ZdbW wrote:
             | + totally agree with that.
             | 
             | There is a use case when you can improve performance by
             | keeping compressed (LZ4) data in RAM and decompressing by
             | small blocks that fit in cache. This is demonstrated by
             | ClickHouse[1][2] - the whole data processing after
             | decompression fits in cache, and compression saves the RAM
             | bandwidth.
             | 
             | [1] https://presentations.clickhouse.com/meetup53/optimizat
             | ions/ [2] https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse
        
         | sylware wrote:
         | On a "3nm" process, how much die real estate for 8GB/16GB of
         | sram presuming we are in a fantasy world with massive dies?
        
           | sroussey wrote:
           | No change. SRAM got almost no process improvements compared
           | to 5nm. And 5nm had minimal compared to 7nm. So 3nm has
           | "3nm"-class small transistors and 7nm class SRAM.
        
             | sylware wrote:
             | Ok, there is no change.
             | 
             | But how much die real estate for 8GB/16GB of sram in such
             | fantasy world?
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | Going based on AMD's first generation V-Cache (TSMC 7nm),
               | you could get 1GB of SRAM onto a die slightly larger than
               | a top of the line NVIDIA GPU. 2GB would be too large to
               | fab as a single die. Or you could spend several million
               | to get a Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine 2 with 40GB of SRAM
               | in aggregate and a ton of AI compute power all on one
               | wafer.
        
               | sylware wrote:
               | ok.
               | 
               | Then 8GB sram with a modern CPU, Zen4 for instance, is a
               | die of ~ 9 top-of-the-line GPUs dies.
               | 
               | And now, with 3D? ... mmmmmh...
               | 
               | What is the size of the apple M2 die already?
        
         | daemin wrote:
         | Might be worth taking a look at the announced Intel Xeon MAX
         | chips then. I watched a video on it last night and these new
         | server CPUs have a boatload of memory on the chip and can
         | actually run without needing external DRAM.
        
         | redox99 wrote:
         | That would be incredibly inefficient. The price difference of
         | such a 128MB L3 + 0GB DRAM, compared to let's say 128MB L3 +
         | 2GB DRAM would be quite small, and in practice the performance
         | would be much much higher because realistically in your 128+0
         | setup you'll be wasting easily half of that on the OS or
         | libraries data that isn't actually needed at the moment,
         | whereas having DRAM you can actually use the whole 128MB of L3
         | for things that need to be fast.
         | 
         | It's also extremely niche to have a workload that requires such
         | high CPU performance, but that it would fit including a linux
         | OS in 128MB. Usually something like that is FPGA or DSP
         | territory.
         | 
         | I think what you want is a cheap ARM CPU with DRAM stacked on
         | top of it on the same package (which exists).
        
         | packetlost wrote:
         | The Pine64 Ox64 has a Bouffalo Labs BL808 with 64MB of pSRAM
         | for $6-8 and an MMU. It's already got sorta-working Linux build
         | for it.
        
           | castratikron wrote:
           | Now that's what I'm talking about. Very cool, thank you.
        
           | sylware wrote:
           | I want to build my DYO usb keyboard, that including 64bits
           | RISC-V assembly coding of the keyboard firmware.
           | 
           | I have been lurking on the Ox64 for while but I need a few
           | more green lights:
           | 
           | - Is the boot rom enough to fully init the SOC? Aka, I don't
           | need to run extra code I would need to include in my keyboard
           | firmware on the sdcard.
           | 
           | - The hardware programming manual misses the USB2 controller
           | with its DMA programming. Even with some SDK example, you
           | would need the hardware programming manual to understand
           | properly how all that works.
           | 
           | - I want to run my keyboard firmware directly from the sdcard
           | slot, and that directly on the 64bits risc-v core, possible?
           | (no 32bits risc-v core).
        
             | packetlost wrote:
             | The SDCard is not listed as a supported boot target, though
             | you could almost certainly build a small bootloader that's
             | stored in the qSPI flash and then load the rest of your
             | code into RAM from there.
             | 
             | I'm not the _most_ familiar with it, but I believe all
             | hardware init (setting clock source, initialing USB, GPIO,
             | etc.) is handled by the flashable firmware of which there
             | are open source SDKs for.
        
               | sylware wrote:
               | Then, it means I would need to flash my keyboard
               | firmware, or a SDcard loader firmware.
               | 
               | I guess this is a "standard" flashing protocol over usb,
               | enabled by the right button pressed at power on (plugging
               | the USB cable). Would I need to including the flashing
               | support code into my keyboard/SDcard loader firmware or
               | is it handled separately by a different piece of
               | hardware?
               | 
               | Any specs on the format of the firmware image, to know
               | which core will run the real boot code?
               | 
               | Erk... soooo many questions in the wrong news :(
        
               | packetlost wrote:
               | I'm not sure you could flash over USB either without
               | significant work. There's no UART <-> USB device on the
               | Ox64, so you need to use an external one connected to
               | some GPIO pins. You could _maybe_ build a DFU mode
               | yourself, but I 'm somewhat skeptical it would work
               | (though it might be possible, there's 3 cores in the
               | thing). Despite there being not one, but TWO USB ports on
               | the Ox64, neither are used for flashing. The micro USB
               | type B connector is only used for power delivery and the
               | USB-c is primarily intended for being a host device, ie.
               | for plugging in a camera module.
               | 
               | Edit: to clarify, there's a bug in the bootrom that
               | prevents the initialization of the USB device. Newer
               | revisions of the Ox64 _may_ fix this.
        
               | sylware wrote:
               | Then:
               | 
               | - how do you run anything with that board if you cannot
               | flash anything, I don't understand?
               | 
               | - I cannot use it as usb keyboard controller because of a
               | bootrom bug? (power/data via usb-c)
               | 
               | Now I am confused.
        
               | packetlost wrote:
               | You can flash it, but you need to use GPIO pins and UART
               | to do so.
               | 
               | The bootrom bug only prevents you from flashing via the
               | on-board USB-c port. You can use a separate USB <-> UART
               | device plugged into GPIO pins to boot/flash.
        
               | sylware wrote:
               | How such a massive bug could slip thru?
               | 
               | This is weird.
               | 
               | If resellers with stocks know that, they will send back
               | the boards and ask for a refund.
        
               | packetlost wrote:
               | I'm told it's a bug in the chip from the upstream
               | supplier (BL808 by Bouffalo Lab), so there's not much
               | they can do. IMO it's not a huge deal, and like I said,
               | you can both flash with UART over GPIO pins or implement
               | a bootloader yourself
        
       | formerly_proven wrote:
       | The buried lede of these is that they have asymmetric L3 cache.
       | One CCD gets the 3D V-cache stacked on top, the other doesn't.
       | That's almost certainly how AMD managed to solve the thermal and
       | clock issues of the 5800X3D - they didn't. The 3D CCD will run
       | hot (at low power) with lower clocks and the non-3D CCD is
       | responsible for reaching the advertised boost clocks.
       | 
       | Note how the 7800X3D, a single CCD SKU, has an advertised maximum
       | clock of 5 GHz, compared to the 5.6/5.7 of the two dual CCD SKUs
       | (the 7700X below it advertises 5.4 GHz). Don't expect the 3D
       | cached-cores to exceed 5 GHz on those other parts.
       | 
       | This means that the performance profile of the two CCDs is _very_
       | different. Not  "P vs E core" different, but still significant.
       | If you run (most) games, you want to put all their threads on the
       | first CCD. If you run (most other) lightly threaded workloads,
       | you'd often want the other, non-3D CCD.
       | 
       | This seems like a rather significant scheduling nightmare to me.
        
         | ip26 wrote:
         | That doesn't make sense. On the 5000 series, we saw 3D was
         | worth ~20% performance uplift, clock for clock, in the right
         | workloads.
         | 
         | A 5GHz CCD with +20% would then be only barely faster than a
         | 5.7GHz CCD with no 3D, at which point the pairing you suggest
         | makes little sense.
         | 
         | Besides, 5800X3D attained 5.6GHz so there's no big reason to
         | think 7000X3D would be capped at 5GHz.
        
         | doikor wrote:
         | AMD said their drivers/software should handle it. Basically
         | working with Microsoft to get the Windows scheduler make the
         | correct decision. No clue how it would work with Linux though.
         | 
         | Intel did similar work with E/P cores.
        
           | csdvrx wrote:
           | > Intel did similar work with E/P cores.
           | 
           | Indeed, that's Lakefield as seen in the Intel Core i5-L16G7.
           | 
           | The Scheduler changes (in Windows 11 at least) make it
           | extremely pleasant to use on the Lenovo X1 Fold, even if
           | there're some drivers problems (fortunately easy to fix:
           | https://csdvrx.github.io/ )
        
         | irishjohnnie wrote:
         | I believe it is both a scheduling and memory allocation/loading
         | issue. It is interesting that caches are NUMA but main memory
         | is not.
        
           | moonchild wrote:
           | amd cache has been numa for a long time now
        
         | Night_Thastus wrote:
         | Modern schedulers like Window's multilevel feedback queue and
         | Linux's CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) have advanced a lot in
         | the last decade.
         | 
         | It would be annoying for kernal developers to make an exception
         | for individual processors like this, but it's totally doable to
         | make the scheduler handle this case.
        
           | formerly_proven wrote:
           | Unlike P/E cores you can't handle this generically, because
           | the performance delta is workload-dependent. For E cores you
           | can more or less just punt "background tasks" on them and
           | pull tasks that are using a significant amount of CPU to the
           | P cores.
           | 
           | With X3D vs non-X3D cores which one is going to be faster
           | depends on the workload. Most games benefit (sometimes
           | drastically so), a lot of other stuff doesn't / is slower
           | roughly in proportion to the clock reduction - just look at
           | the 5800X and 5800X3D of the prior generation to see how
           | split the benchmarks are; virtually every synthetic benchmark
           | and most intensive things - compiling, encoding, running JS
           | and other interpeters - suffer, games win.
           | 
           | I suppose a good heuristic for desktop users would be to pin
           | processes using the GPU to the X3D cores.
        
             | mlyle wrote:
             | I don't think it's quite as bad as you're saying, because
             | reaching to the other chiplet for L3 isn't terrible in
             | latency compared to hitting "close" L3. So probably the
             | higher boost cores win overall in either case.
        
               | deagle50 wrote:
               | This is a good point. If the cores in the non-stacked CCD
               | miss in local L3, it's still quicker to ask the stacked
               | CCD instead of going to RAM. But GP's question is valid,
               | how do you prefer the non-stacked CCD for certain high-
               | intensity tasks without hardcoding their names/IDs?
        
               | AndrewDavis wrote:
               | I'd love to see a benchmark with the 3d vcache ccd cores
               | disabled and benched against the non 3d part it is based
               | on with one ccd disabled.
               | 
               | Would be interesting to see at comparable clocks what the
               | performance uplift of hitting the huge cache more often
               | on the other ccd vs hitting main memory.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | _Can_ it actually hit the cache on the other chiplet? I
               | thought that Zen 's L3 caches were somewhat private to
               | the local CCX/CCD, such that threads running on one
               | chiplet have no way to cause new data to be prefetched or
               | spilled in to someone else's L3.
        
         | feffe wrote:
         | Can the CPU cores in a CCD access the L3 cache of another CCD
         | with higher latency? If so the CCD without extra cache may
         | still get a performance boost.
         | 
         | I know there has been such designs in the past but I don't know
         | how it works in the Ryzen CPUs.
        
           | hajile wrote:
           | Speed of cache between CCDs has always been much worse than
           | within one CCD.
           | 
           | At the same time, that latency is still peanuts compared to
           | hitting main RAM.
           | 
           | The die with the cache probably has better latency (provided
           | the cache doesn't connect through the IO die), but lower
           | clocks making it better with memory limited workloads.
           | 
           | The other die will be better at non memory bound work, but
           | should still be much better than normal at memory bound tasks
           | too. I suppose it remains to be seen if lower latency and
           | lower clocks beats higher latency and higher clocks, but I
           | suspect 10% higher clocks won't compensate enough for cache
           | hits being several times faster.
        
         | emn13 wrote:
         | 400Mhz off a 5.4Ghz clock is a little less than a 10% drop.
         | While it'd be a shame if the scheduler used the "wrong" core,
         | if that's the kind of price for a misjudgement, I don't expect
         | it to be all that impactful in practice. IIRC published results
         | from the 5800x3d also showed that quite a few workloads did
         | have a small benefit from the larger l3 - not enough to make it
         | worth it financially, but enough to roughly compensate for the
         | lost frequency. The set of workloads where you'll see the full
         | proportional slowdown due to the clockfrequency, with zero
         | compensation from increased L3 is likely to be fairly small.
         | 
         | All in all, this sounds more like a technically really
         | interesting challenge, rather than a high-stakes bet. Even a
         | "bad" scheduler probably won't do much harm.
         | 
         | Realistic worst case, quite a few workloads that might have
         | benefited from the new cache don't... but probably aren't hurt
         | much either.
        
       | morjom wrote:
       | so the article says 128MB but in the later slides they say 144MB.
       | Is the 16MB difference L2 then?
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | Correct - a lot of the slides show L2 + L3 total cache size.
        
       | throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
       | imagine the UPS
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | These are 120W CPUs. I'm not sure what your comment is supposed
         | to communicate.
        
           | 8jy89hui wrote:
           | I think this person is referencing the game Factorio which is
           | known to benefit from more cache. (UPS = updates per second)
        
             | neogodless wrote:
             | Ah ha! Thanks for the clarification!
             | 
             | Good thing UPS is a unique acronym that isn't used
             | elsewhere when discussing computers :)
             | 
             | AAAAA
             | 
             | (anti-"ambiguous acronym" advocates anonymous)
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Neat. Really struggling to justify any sort of upgrade my side to
       | be honest though. 3700x is still plenty fast. Maybe when 4K
       | gaming is a bit more mainstream...
        
         | CyberDildonics wrote:
         | Why would a different CPU help render a game at a higher
         | resolution?
        
           | Havoc wrote:
           | Above comment of mine was made with a full system upgrade in
           | mind.
           | 
           | But for games cpu can improve game performance, especially
           | when the single core perf is upgraded
        
         | mrtranscendence wrote:
         | I'm running a 5800x and a 3080 Ti, primarily for gaming and a
         | bit of machine learning (for everything else I use a Mac). As I
         | game at 4K there are definitely scenarios where upgrading would
         | be helpful; games like Cyberpunk, A Plague Tale: Requiem, or
         | The Callisto Protocol don't run particularly well on my setup.
         | And ray tracing in general can be a challenge.
         | 
         | Of course, 4/5s of what I play are indies that would run on a
         | potato, so it's probably not worth upgrading. I nevertheless
         | probably will build a new computer later on in the year, and a
         | 4080 / 5800x3D combo is awfully tempting ...
        
           | metadat wrote:
           | Is this workload really CPU bound at all?
        
             | mrtranscendence wrote:
             | Not usually, but it can be, particularly when ray tracing
             | is added to the mix. Of the three games I mentioned The
             | Callisto Protocol is very much CPU limited (though more so
             | with more powerful GPUs).
        
           | Havoc wrote:
           | Does 5800x to 3D make sense? Sounds like a lot of money for a
           | small jump.
        
             | Teever wrote:
             | It depends on how much a used 5800x goes for on
             | marketplace/ebay.
        
             | scns wrote:
             | It is still the cheapest jump you can make in that
             | position. Other jumps need new mobo + CPU + RAM (AMD) or
             | new mobo + CPU (Intel).
        
             | mrtranscendence wrote:
             | Oops. I meant 7800x3D.
        
       | peteri wrote:
       | The 7950X3D looks interesting, but I think the cache is on one
       | CCD so it might only boost to 5GHz and the other CCD boosts to
       | 5.7 as it doesn't have the cache.
       | 
       | Going to need to wait for bench marks.
        
       | britneybitch wrote:
       | "3D" means that components are physically stacked more than one
       | layer thick, right? Is there any public info about how heat
       | dissipation is handled?
        
         | Arrath wrote:
         | > Is there any public info about how heat dissipation is
         | handled?
         | 
         | By pulling the chips back to 120w, it looks like!
        
         | dlivingston wrote:
         | I think primarily it refers to the cache being physically
         | located above the CPU die, yes.
         | 
         | It's worth noting that AMD also uses FinFET transistors, which
         | are physically 3-D [0, 1] (compared to MOSFET transistors,
         | which are planar / 2-D).
         | 
         | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fin_field-effect_transistor
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/amd-
         | demonstrates-2016j...
        
         | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
         | Yeah. They put cache on top of the cores. Heat dissipation is
         | handled by lowering the TDP a little and the fact that the
         | cache doesn't produce much heat.
        
           | britneybitch wrote:
           | That makes sense. I imagined cores stacked on top of cores
           | for some reason. Stacking cache does seem simpler.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | Server chip.
       | 
       | The 7950X3D makes for a phenomenal server chip (perf/cost).
       | 
       | Do any cloud providers beyond OVH/Hetzner offer these "desktop"
       | class chips available for hosting use cases?
        
       | salusinarduis wrote:
       | Question for people that read deep into these things. What is the
       | best CPU for the linker stage of compiling? I would assume these
       | high performing single core "gaming" CPUs would do well, but I
       | must admit I care a lot about power efficiency as well. I have a
       | 3900x and love that CPU for nearly everything but waiting on
       | optimized builds.
        
         | redox99 wrote:
         | i9 13900k or r9 7950x. As far as I remember the compile
         | benchmarks were worse on the 5800x3d than the 5800x.
         | 
         | 7950x is more efficient than 13900k, so that's your answer.
         | Idle usage ryzen is often worse than intel though, so pick your
         | poison.
        
       | db48x wrote:
       | /me sighs. I need to come up with an excuse to upgrade...
        
         | didgetmaster wrote:
         | Same here. I just upgraded to a 5950X last year (I try to go at
         | least 3 years between upgrades) but I am salivating already.
         | 
         | I fully expected my data management software to be much faster
         | on the new hardware since it uses multi-threading to make use
         | of all those wonderful cores, but it blew me away just how fast
         | it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE
         | 
         | I might have to bite the bullet later this year if the 7950X3D
         | benchmarks look really good once it releases.
        
           | _zoltan_ wrote:
           | I'm also on a 5950x and I need to find a reason to upgrade
           | :))
        
           | nevi-me wrote:
           | Imagine the 9950x, that can be a good reason to want to
           | upgrade them.
           | 
           | I'm on a 3900x and 2070 Super. I mostly reduced using the
           | desktop when I got the M1 and M1 Pro devices. I now use it
           | remotely from another room in the house. I'll hold out
           | despite the temptations, and only update in 2-3 more years
           | from now.
        
           | daemin wrote:
           | I'm on a 5950x as well but I'll be sticking with it for many
           | years to come as it's still one of the most efficient chips
           | out there - source: Gamer's Nexus benchmark videos.
        
           | yellow_lead wrote:
           | Nice demo. I use my 3950x for compiling our c++ project, and
           | I'm pretty happy with the speeds when using all the threads
           | as well.
        
         | ohgodplsno wrote:
         | Here's an excuse not to upgrade:
         | 
         | holy fuck it's horribly expensive these days.
        
           | yellow_lead wrote:
           | If it's something you use for work, the time saved could be
           | justified if you have to compile or do something CPU-heavy
           | often
        
             | pca006132 wrote:
             | I have a 20 core CPU (13600), it is already much faster in
             | compiling large programs: it took me ~15mins to build linux
             | kernel. Even if some future CPU can speed up the task by
             | say 3X, I still have to wait for 5mins, and will be
             | distracted. Perhaps the difference would be larger for
             | tasks that are much more time consuming than this, say 3
             | days vs 1 day.
        
               | dinvlad wrote:
               | Word is, the current top of the line chips can already
               | compile it in 1 minute (!)
        
               | tkinom wrote:
               | About right, did it two years ago with 2 Sockets,
               | 128Cores (64 core per socket), 256 Threads 2 Epyc
               | Motherboard with 1TB DDR4. Build Kernel < 90 seconds.
               | Should be faster nowadays....
        
             | ohgodplsno wrote:
             | Unfortunately, it is hard, especially at an individual
             | scale to say "I'm going to save up these $4000 over the
             | next year and a half in productivity". Doubly so if you're
             | just salaried and your pay will come, whether you use the
             | shitty company laptop that takes 15 minutes to build or
             | your crazy home rig.
             | 
             | I'd love for me to be able to just run all my builds on
             | full blast on a 24 core beast at home, but if your
             | interests also include games, you're looking at multiple
             | thousands just to upgrade. Needless to say, my apartment,
             | family, vacations and a dozen other things are well above
             | in the priority list.
        
               | wpm wrote:
               | I upgraded to an X670E platform back in October.
               | CPU+Mobo+RAM ran me up to $750 with a bundle from
               | Microcenter (essentially, I got the RAM for free), and I
               | reused my case and power supply. To upgrade to a "24 core
               | beast", as close as you can get with the 7000 series is
               | the 7950X (16C/32T), which I can get on Amazon for $550,
               | minus the aftermarket price for my 7700X (and possibly my
               | old rig, which was a Z170 intel platform). Even if I kept
               | my old processor, a top of the AMD line rig costs about
               | $1250, memory capacity not withstanding. Of course, that
               | says nothing about the additional electricity costs, and
               | I understand that my prices are not obtainable in most of
               | the world unfortunately, but I think $4000 is a stretch
               | unless you needed a load of RAM (it'd be about $600 to
               | max out my motherboard to 128GB).
        
               | ohgodplsno wrote:
               | Assuming you do not get deals:
               | 
               | * $500 for a CPU (7800X starts at $450)
               | 
               | * $60 for a cooler because the Wraith Prism is shit.
               | 
               | * $200 for a motherboard, maybe $100 if you want to try
               | to cheap out and get something that might have unstable
               | voltages, shit PCIe bandwidth or no NVMe slots, etc.
               | 
               | * $200 for 32GB of quality DDR5-4800 (or 5600 if you want
               | to be fancy), and that's easily used up these days.
               | 
               | * $200 for a quality 750W power supply
               | 
               | * $100 for a case with good enough airflow, assuming you
               | don't already have one.
               | 
               | * $200+ for at least 1TB of NVMe storage, easily much
               | more
               | 
               | So, assuming a new build that didn't get incremental
               | upgrades in the past, building a new, powerful PC these
               | days is going to run you $1500. Without even picking any
               | top of the line stuff. Guess what didn't get included in
               | there ? GPUs with their bloody ridiculous prices. If
               | you're going with NVidia, this 4000 generation is a waste
               | if you're buying anything but the 4090. You could
               | absolutely buy a 4080 (or rather a 4070Ti), or a 4070,
               | but they're such a horrible deal in terms of
               | price/performance. And that's going to cost you at the
               | absolute least $800 (for a 4070, which is a dogshit
               | card). Or you can try to find a series 3000, but that's
               | also going to run you $1000+. If you're going with AMD,
               | your problems are similar, for cards that are really
               | subpar. As for Intel, well, let's just say an A770 with
               | your high end CPU might cause a few bottlenecks here and
               | there.
               | 
               | So, yes, if you're lucky enough to find deals _and_ to
               | have stuff that you can still use from an old, recent
               | rig, sure, building a new PC isn't _that_ expensive. If
               | you have to do major upgrades, you're looking at multiple
               | thousands. Pulling that much money out in one go for
               | something that is ultimately not extremely necessary is
               | something that can only be afforded by a very small
               | percentage of people.
        
               | kyriakos wrote:
               | 7800x has an integrated GPU. If you are just coding,
               | don't gaming or ML it's more than sufficient for day to
               | day workstation use.
        
               | Nullabillity wrote:
               | You don't need to upgrade everything at once. Yes, modern
               | high-end GPUs are ridiculously expensive. But my
               | $200-5-years-ago RX480 is also still holding up just
               | fine. It's still more expensive than it ought to be, but
               | I can find it used for around $80 these days.
               | 
               | And if you already have an older rig... just bring it
               | over from that.
        
           | RandomTisk wrote:
           | Ugly motherboards with 99% of desired featureset: Somewhat
           | almost reasonable prices.
           | 
           | Pretty motherboards with 110% of desired featureset: Insert
           | Fresh Kidney and/or Lung
        
             | kitsunesoba wrote:
             | My biggest gripe with most lowend-to-midrange motherboards
             | is that they practically always have disappointing rear
             | I/O, which is ridiculous to me particularly on mATX/ATX
             | boards, because part of the point of having a desktop
             | instead of a laptop is to have a ton of ports and little to
             | no need for hubs/docks/etc.
             | 
             | So I tend to end up buying something on the higher end even
             | if I'm not using all the board's features. My current tower
             | uses an ASUS ProArt X570 Creator.
        
             | Semaphor wrote:
             | I feel like nowadays you pay extra for your board not to
             | have Gamer-RGB
        
               | doikor wrote:
               | It is the same for cases. Often the model with a solid
               | side panel (no window) now costs more.
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | IME it's more that the ugly ones with a window or mesh go
               | on sale all the time :/
        
               | helf wrote:
               | That's why I still use a ~15 year old Supermicro server
               | chassis with desktop foot kit on it lol. I've upgraded
               | the innards 2 or 3 times so far. Has 8 hotswap bays, tons
               | of room. no fucking RGB or "windows" or any of that
               | bullshit.
               | 
               | I just built an i9-13900K replaced the LGA1366 2P board
               | in it. It's an astounding performance bump, to mildly put
               | it lol. I plan on using this chassis with this setup for
               | probably another 5-10 years before upgrading again.
        
               | csdvrx wrote:
               | > Has 8 hotswap bays, tons of room
               | 
               | refs?
        
               | cesarb wrote:
               | The board having Gamer-RGB should not be a problem as
               | long as you can disable it on the BIOS. It would be like
               | any other "extra" hardware your board has that you don't
               | use (for instance, extra headers for front panel USB
               | ports you don't have, or more SATA ports than you need).
               | 
               | The case having a transparent side panel, on the other
               | hand...
        
           | bastardoperator wrote:
           | I've trained myself to look at the cost from a different
           | perspective. If I spend 5K on a monster rig once every 3
           | years, the cost is around 1600 dollars per year. I'm spending
           | approx 130 dollars a month or 4.35 dollars a day to drive a
           | Rolls Royce.
           | 
           | 4.35 a day isn't cheap, but I was spending more than that on
           | starbucks everyday. So I stopped spending 10 dollars a day at
           | Starbucks and opted for the rolls royce. I have a nicer rig,
           | I'm healthier not drinking starbucks, and I'm saving a little
           | money even if we factor in electricity costs.
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | The AM5 motherboards are currently pricey, but overall if you
           | don't buy bleeding edge, it's not unreasonable (in my
           | opinion).
           | 
           | My last build: MSI MAG X570 $200, Ryzen 9 5900X $400, G.Skill
           | 2x16GB DDR4 3600Mhz CL16 $165, Samsung 980 Pro 1TB $150 =
           | $915
           | 
           | That's not a budget build by any means, but it's also not
           | crazy when compared to previous builds in that tier over the
           | past 15 years.
        
             | didgetmaster wrote:
             | The younger generation of programmers seem to think that a
             | $1000 computer is crazy expensive these days. How spoiled
             | we have become! When I built my first computer 30 years
             | ago, the components cost just over $2K (and the components
             | you wished you could afford were closer to $3K) and that is
             | not inflation adjusted.
             | 
             | That wasn't the first computer I owned, just the first one
             | I built. I am sure some really old timers remember the ones
             | that cost more that $5K.
        
               | matwood wrote:
               | Exactly. I see $1k for all that as a steal. I remember
               | spending a lot of money on LVD SCSI in one machine I
               | built to do anything to speed up disk access.
        
               | sroussey wrote:
               | Wasn't the original Mac like $2.5k ($7k inflation
               | adjusted)?
               | 
               | For the base model.
        
           | mrtranscendence wrote:
           | I feel like CPU prices aren't particularly bad right now.
           | GPUs are awful, though, with prices going up much faster than
           | even our currently high inflation, and price to performance
           | ratios that have barely budged since last generation. I
           | suspect we'll see AIB 4060s for sale at or above the $600
           | mark.
           | 
           | I've seen a bit of apologia for this, claiming that costs
           | have risen so of course prices would increase as well. But
           | prices are going up so much faster than inflation that I'm
           | not sure that passes the sniff test. We should see 4080s for
           | $850-$900, not $1200.
           | 
           | All of this just in time for 30-series supplies to dwindle
           | ... new 3080s are back up to the $1k mark. Sigh.
        
       | fassssst wrote:
       | Excited to see massive performance improvements in desktop
       | hardware again. 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be
       | quite the system for programming, machine learning, video
       | editing, music production, gaming...
        
         | photoGrant wrote:
         | I'm on a 3970x, 3090 and nvme-pcie-4 x 4 (raid 0), 256gb ram...
         | I haven't found a need to upgrade, or have reached this systems
         | potential by any stretch. especially for video editing, music
         | production and photography and compiling...
         | 
         | I dunno the only direction I care for at the moment is TDP
        
           | howinteresting wrote:
           | Individual cores on the 7950x are roughly twice as fast as
           | what you have. If your work isn't massively multithreaded,
           | then a 7950x will likely perform quite a bit better than a
           | Threadripper 3970x. (Though of course you won't be able to
           | get more than 128GB RAM.)
           | 
           | This is with clamping down TDP on the 7950x to roughly 110W.
           | It's an absolute beast.
        
             | skirmish wrote:
             | Keep in mind that 128 GB barely works on AM5 (basically,
             | EXPO/XMP doesn't, only regular JEDEC speeds, i.e. 4800
             | MT/s) [1] 2 sticks of RAM up to 64 GB is the fully
             | functional maximum.
             | 
             | [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xzj69v/is_anyone_
             | runni...
        
               | karamanolev wrote:
               | Are you saying that 2x32GB is the max that allows for
               | EXPO/XMP? I'm thinking about building a system like that
               | and this is critical. Do you have any better resources
               | that explore this more and test out different
               | configurations?
        
             | ciupicri wrote:
             | Besides more RAM, 3970x also has proper ECC support.
        
               | flumpcakes wrote:
               | And more PCIe lanes, compared to the consumer platforms
               | with a measly 20/24 (which is basically one GPU and one
               | NVMe full bandwidth).
        
           | burnte wrote:
           | I'm on a 5800X with a 3080ti and 64GB, also PCIe 4.0 SSDs. I
           | built in in 2019 then upgraded the CPU a year ago from a
           | 3600x to the 5800x and it's so insanely fast for everything I
           | do, including VMs, compiles, transcodes, etc. Nutty
           | performance. The past few years have had amazing performance
           | boosts.
        
             | kyriakos wrote:
             | AMD sticking to one socket (AM4) for multiple generations
             | was a great move for end users. I am also on 3600x and just
             | yesterday was looking to order a 5800x since the prices
             | have dropped a lot and the performance gain is around 50%
             | just by upgrading one component.
        
           | nickjj wrote:
           | I'm on a 7+ year old workstation with an i5-4460 (quad core,
           | no HT) 3.2ghz, 16gb memory, first gen SSD and I also don't
           | feel the need to upgrade.
           | 
           | All of the web apps I build inside of Docker with WSL 2
           | reload in a few dozen milliseconds at most. I can edit 1080p
           | video without any delay and raw rendering speed doesn't
           | matter because for batch jobs I do them overnight.
           | 
           | Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things feel
           | super snappy. I've been building computers from parts since
           | about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went without
           | an upgrade.
        
             | TacticalCoder wrote:
             | > Writing to disk is fast and my internet is fast. Things
             | feel super snappy. I've been building computers from parts
             | since about 1998, I think this is the longest I ever went
             | without an upgrade.
             | 
             | I did like you: rocking a Core i7-6700 from, what, 2015 up
             | until early 2022. 16 GB of RAM, NVMe PCI 3.0 x4 SSD, the
             | first Samsung ones. I basically build that machine around
             | one of the first Asus mobo to offer a NVMe M.2 slot.
             | 
             | It was and still is an amazing machine. I gave it to my
             | wife and I'm now using an AMD 3700X since about a year
             | and... I'll be changing it for a 7700X in the coming weeks
             | (hopefully).
             | 
             | The 3700X is definitely faster than my trusty old 6th gen
             | core i7 but Zen 4 is too good to be true so I'm upgrading.
             | 
             | All this to say: you can stay with the same system for
             | seven years then upgrade twice in less than 12 months!
        
           | FloatArtifact wrote:
           | When fully utilizing NVMe storage raid array are you maxing
           | out CPU?
        
             | photoGrant wrote:
             | Not even close!
        
         | doublepg23 wrote:
         | I'm on a 5950X and AMD 6600 and getting stutters on Fedora 37
         | with my two 4K displays. The weirdest thing is this wasn't an
         | issue with my Intel NUC with measly 6th gen Iris graphics :(
        
           | Queue29 wrote:
           | Xorg or Wayland? I've got a RX6400 that runs 2 4k displays
           | just fine - Ubuntu + Wayland
        
         | theLiminator wrote:
         | Quite tempted to make that exact upgrade myself, I'm still on a
         | 3770k + 1070 gtx (which was an upgrade from a gtx 670).
         | 
         | I've been holding out for a long time.
         | 
         | Can't wait for my code to compile 10x faster and game at 10x
         | the fps.
        
         | Arrath wrote:
         | > 7950X3D + an RTX 4090 + a PCIe 5 SSD will be quite the system
         | for programming
         | 
         | Agreed, but not for testing, please. Too much stuff out there
         | already seems to be designed for or tested on what might as
         | well be supercomputers like the above, and then get shipped out
         | to run on Grandma's 7 year old <Misc Manufacturer> laptop.
        
           | lopkeny12ko wrote:
           | This is an odd take. Why _shouldn 't_ software benchmarks be
           | showcased with the best available hardware? How am I supposed
           | to reason about MySQL performance results taken from a run-
           | of-the-mill dual-core machine from 2015?
        
             | Arrath wrote:
             | I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about average
             | end user experience.
        
             | unregistereddev wrote:
             | I think they intended to refer to software development QA,
             | not benchmarking. I do agree with the sentiment that
             | consumer software should generally be usable on 10 year old
             | hardware. "Generally" carries a lot of weight here, because
             | intensive applications like CAD will always be laggy on old
             | hardware.
        
             | integricho wrote:
             | it's meant for the multitude of electron crapware that's
             | being shoveled down our throat.
        
             | pawelduda wrote:
             | Replace MySQL with any client-side app
        
           | kitsunesoba wrote:
           | The same thing happens with displays. Designers and devs are
           | using things like high-end Dell Ultrasharps, LG UltraFines,
           | the integrated screens in MacBook Pros, iMac 27"
           | displays/Studio Displays, Pro Display XDRs, etc but in
           | reality a huge number of the screens in use are things like
           | those terrible 1366x766 TN panels that dominated budget
           | 10"-17" laptops for over a decade. I'm fairly confident the
           | low-contrast flat design trend that's been going for a while
           | now wouldn't have been a thing if it were a requirement for
           | UIs to be usable and reasonably good looking on a crappy $250
           | Walmart special Dell Inspiron from 2012.
        
         | WithinReason wrote:
         | I understand the first 2, but where does a PCIe 5 SSD make a
         | difference? Video editing?
        
           | nightski wrote:
           | We are already seeing SSDs with _over_ double the read speed
           | and ~70% more write speed. You don 't see how that could make
           | a difference? Even with 128GB of RAM on a workstation there
           | are a lot of data sets that do not fit.
        
             | WithinReason wrote:
             | For training neural networks faster? I doubt SSD->RAM
             | speeds are a bottleneck there. Are you reading training
             | data faster than 6GB/s during training?
        
               | nightski wrote:
               | You don't even need to get to that complex of a scenario.
               | Just running simple database queries would benefit from
               | this.
        
               | WithinReason wrote:
               | Sure, I can see it being useful for servers, just not for
               | 99% of home users.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | jerrysievert wrote:
               | moving from spinning rust to SSD was a huge improvement
               | in day to day life. i still see lag (on my very fast
               | machines) opening programs or loading data on my laptop
               | that would be highly improved by doubling the speed of
               | the hard drive. and i'm not even counting compiling or
               | things that we might do that is different than other
               | users.
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | That's because SSDs had way lower latency. Upping the
               | pcie gen will speed up sequential reads which were
               | already really fast, but won't speed up random reads (or
               | reduce latency) at all.
        
               | Tostino wrote:
               | It could allow for more parallelism (deeper queue depth)
               | with those reads though
        
               | jeffbee wrote:
               | Full-access database queries? Indexed queries are going
               | to randomly read blocks and PCIe 5 doesn't help. The only
               | way I've perceived improvements from SSD linear access >
               | 4GB/s is when doing gigantic ETL jobs that were not CPU-
               | limited. Unfortunately a lot of ETL jobs _are_ CPU
               | limited and some of the formats I work with are too
               | intensive on the compute side to benefit from faster
               | storage (like GeoJSON, ugh). Formats that are more CPU-
               | friendly also tend to be smaller, making the storage less
               | relevant.
               | 
               | I think for general use most desktop and workstation
               | users are going to get more benefits from faster random
               | access and won't notice very high linear access speeds. I
               | have two recent SSDs and one of them has a median access
               | time of 12us and the other has a median of 30us. Even
               | though the latter has gaudy benchmark numbers, can stream
               | at many GB/s and can ultimately hit almost a million
               | IOPS, higher-level application benchmarks lead me to
               | prefer the former because random access waiting time is
               | more important.
        
               | nightski wrote:
               | I was mainly talking about my usage patterns, not every
               | desktop or workstation user. I work with a lot of data
               | daily.
               | 
               | Something more general might be game asset load speed.
               | Those are often sequential reads. They put a ton of
               | engineering effort into the latest consoles simply to
               | improve that one thing.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | > They put a ton of engineering effort into the latest
               | consoles simply to improve that one thing.
               | 
               | Most of that effort was to ensure the processors could
               | actually ingest data at the speeds that off the shelf
               | SSDs could deliver it. The Xbox Series X shipped with
               | what was a _low-end_ NVMe SSD at the time, and the PS5
               | used a custom SSD controller primarily so they could hit
               | their performance targets using older, slower flash
               | memory rather than being constrained by the supply of the
               | faster flash that was just reaching the market at that
               | time.
               | 
               | And there are still hardly any games that even make a
               | serious attempt to use the available storage performance.
        
               | [deleted]
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-01-05 23:00 UTC)