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  • 8lec - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Defenitely an interesting CPU... Great review you guys. Keep up the great work
  • Gondalf - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Is It intersting?? This silicon is absolutely leaky, 240W is a madness for a 16 cores a on 7nm.
    The Intel counterpart is only 205W (6246R) on a crap 14nm.
    Definitively not good at all
  • Fataliity - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Thats because, to get that much cache, they are only using 2 cores per chip. So there's alot of redundancy that isn't needed to achieve that level of cache.

    For the workloads this is made for, the power consumption won't matter much. This is more of a part for RTL, silicon design, financial uses, etc. In those businesses, time is money. Much more money than the power consumption.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    i find it interesting that now gondalf is crying about power usage. where was his crying when intel was the power hog ? when intels cpus are listed as being 95 watts, but they use up to 200 watts ? seems he has the : its ok when intel does it, but when amd does it, its outragous. mindset
  • StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    In other words... Just your usual hypocritical fanboy.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    how so ? i kept asking those that were defending intel about its power usage, compared to what amd currently uses. maybe you need to reread what gondalf said, and then what i said
  • ballsystemlord - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I think he was referring to Gondalf as the fanboy @Qasar.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    ahh :-)
  • bananaforscale - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    10900F, TDP 45W, PL2 224W...
  • Gondalf - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    To me this look like a kamikaze strategy. First of all the wattage matters even in this segment, second one this is a waste of 7nm silicon to match Intel on 14nm, last thing this approach is useless because Intel is shipping server SKUs on demand up to 5Ghz turbo for customers that ask for performance. This cpu line is low margin and unable to seriously beat Intel big superiority in raw core performance.
    In fact right now AMD is below the long awaited 5% of global x86 server market share, they hope to reach this in the middle of this year but they are late a lot in their adventure.
    The manufacturing process is not enough to have a winning horse
  • Santoval - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    "This cpu line is low margin and unable to seriously beat Intel big superiority in raw core performance."
    Zen 2 based servers CPUs already beat Intel in "raw core performance". This "F" series AMD introduced is not meant to beat Intel, since they already have. It is meant for certain customers who want fewer but faster cores/threads. Examples might be high-end workstations rather than servers (or workstations disguised as servers), which scale well up up to 16 - 24 cores and do not need CPUs with 32 - 64 cores which provide less performance per core as a trade-off.

    As for the server market share AMD is going to exceed -or rather, *was* going to exceed, before Covid-19 froze everything -a 10% market share in Q2 2020 already (rather than a mere 5%). Source (in the 8th paragraph) :
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2020/0...
  • tyleeds - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    We used to custom order for customers what we called "The Oracle Special". Due to the way Oracle lays out their licensing on the database, you're looking for relatively low core counts, but screaming fast with a lot of cache. The price of Oracle licensing means you can safely say "power be damned" and just get the fastest core you can manage.

    This looks a lot like that...
  • Lord of the Bored - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    "Intel on 14nm"
    "AMD are late a lot"

    You, sir, are a comedy genius!
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Yes the Intel counterpart is on 14nm and has a 205W TDP, but as we all know Intel's TDP is only measured off of base clock. During actual usage its TDP is much higher than 205W. This is why we see the Threadripper 3970X using less power than the 18 core Intel 10980XE even though the 10980 has a much lower TDP. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-ryzen-threadrippe... For here the 7F52 has higher performance than the 6246R and when you have workloads that are frequency sensitive that extra power doesn't matter as much.
  • Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Their server CPUs are a different thing than the desktop - You give people a little bit of info and all of a sudden they are freaking experts on power usage. So 205 is 205. NO ONE overclocks server CPUs
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    It actually has little to do with overclocking on the Intel side. A stock Core i9 9900K will blow through it’s limit (both power and heat) with the vast majority of motherboards out there today.

    Their server CPUs, however, adhere to TDP.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Not exactly true when there is a load. Max draw on dual 8280's is 685.1W for a 205W TDP. Due to the boost nature, the CPU will draw a lot more power. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-cascade...
    Note the Epyc also draws more than its TDP as well and the review doesn't say whether this is total system or just CPU.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link

    Reviewers or someone...

    There needs to be serious pressure to create a triple metric.

    1. Maximum power the CPU can draw with a synthetic workload that maxes it as completely as possible.

    2. Maximum power the CPU can draw with a real-world program (come up with an industry consensus).

    3. For consumer CPUs: Maximum power the CPU can draw using the world's most demanding real-world gaming title. For prosumer and enterprise CPUs: Maximum power the CPU can draw with a second real-world program that is very different from the other one.

    Stop enabling useless metrics that don't match reality.
  • bug77 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    And this is despite you having power measured on the second page of this review.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    The chip on the 2nd page is the 6226R which will not compete with the 7F52. The competing chip from Intel is the 6246R.
    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc... - 6226R
    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc... -6246R
    The added 500MHz base clock brings the TDP from 150W to 205W.
  • dotjaz - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    The point is Intel and AMD are adhering to TDP
  • Atari2600 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    If I'm paying say $2k per year per thread in license fees, how much do you think I care about a few Wh?
  • RSAUser - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    This, I'm super interested in this part as currently looking to upgrade MS SQL servers, higher clock means lower cost for performance, licensing a couple of cores already matches most of the machine cost, not going to care about a few Wh.
  • tyleeds - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    Yea, we used to go hunting for processors like this for Oracle boxes. Low cores, lots of cache and screaming fast. You don't give a damn about power usage because your TCO after you factor in all the core licensing is still like 1/4 a more efficient multi-core CPU.
  • CKing123 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Except that Intel's definition of TDP is for base clocks, not the boosted clocks.
  • AshlayW - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    You must be so mad that AMD is crushing Intel so badly in all areas right now. Intel is literally irrelevant; client DT computing, server.... mobile. How the giant has fallen.

    I wonder if we'll be able to pick up i7's for 50 bucks in the bargain bucket?
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    according to Deicidium369, intel isnt being crushed in anything, its intel that is doing the crushing, its amd that is still losing in all metrics, not intel.
  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    It's almost like AMD sacrificed power for IPC... almost like that's the exact purpose of this chip... hmmm...
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    That makes no sense at all since it is still a Zen2 core in the CPU. All they have done is increase the TDP such that you have 8 RAM channels, 128 PCIe 4 lane, & 256MB cache in a high, for a server CPU, clock speed. There is a sure market for this chip as we see very similar designs from Intel. This would be great to use with DRS rules for Server 2019 & big DBs.
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  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    F as in "press to pay respects for Intel".
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Am I cynical enough to think AMD deliberately chose "F for fast" knowing that r/AMD would go for the obvious meme? Absolutely.
  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I don't post to any of the hardware manufacturer subreddits because the fanboyism is just too extreme. Call of Duty memes, though, are universal.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Hey everyone, thanks for reading the review. Apologies it's not got the best processors in for comparison, we're working on getting some of them in, and hopefully some more time to test them as it was a quick back-to-back with the Renoir review then this one. We're looking to expanding our testing for these types of processors, so any suggestions (and Cliff Notes-style guides) would be really helpful!
  • hehatemeXX - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Just get rid of the consumer CPU's. Most folks in the category of decision makers will not equate these to consumer side. Also, would it be possible to add VM benchmarks? Like compute focused benchmarks.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    The conventional server market won't; but there are niche segments like high frequency trading that go as crazy with high clocked consumer parts as enthusiasts do because in their world 1ms faster matters more than anything else (remember Intel's no warranty 5ghz all core chip auction last year, HFT was the target market). Those people will be interested in if or how AMDs huge caches on these chip could help them.
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    On the contrary, Zen parts are essentially tweaked server parts. If is entirely plausible to use consumer grade Zen CPUs in server hardware. I should know, a cloud gaming platform I am designing is doing it.
  • ballsystemlord - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    No, keep the consumer CPUs.
  • kobblestown - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Like others, I also think the consumer CPUs should be kept. It's not only about purchasing decisions. Comparing against a wider gamut of CPU helps us to evaluate the impact that different architectural choices have on performance. Many people that frequent this site are not just about the numbers, but about the insights.
  • hehatemeXX - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    No one in their right mind would evaluate a server CPU, designed for datacenters against a consumer CPU that will never see the light of day. WTB a real data center oriented website.. you consumers are just annoying when it comes to this stuff.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link

    " No one in their right mind would evaluate a server CPU, designed for datacenters against a consumer CPU that will never see the light of day. WTB a real data center oriented website.. you consumers are just annoying when it comes to this stuff."

    Is there any kind of metric about ECC vs. non-ECC RAM, in terms of cost-benefit ratio? It's not all about CPU speed. It's also about data stability, correct?

    How much value does ECC RAM bring to the table? That information seems to be critical when comparing consumer CPUs to enterprise and prosumer CPUs.
  • twtech - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    Generally that may be the case. However, this CPU may be considered as an option for workstations. For that use case, it's nice to know how it stacks up against consumer CPUs, HEDT, TR, etc.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Can you borrow Johan's server benchmarks as a baseline for building your own out?
  • Ivan Argentinski - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Hi Ian,

    I am big fan of Anandtech. But I have always missed articles, relevant to me. I am a decision maker for database servers for ERP (among other things). We heavily employ frequency-optimized processors and I feel I can shed some light on the subject.
    Unfortunately, I feel like the article (and just about everybody) is partially missing the point of these processors. Frequency optimized processors are a niche product. They have only one use-case - for enterprise software, which is licensed per-core (like Microsoft SQL Server). So, it is irrelevant to discuss them in any other role.
    Per-core performance is not the same as single-threaded performance. Also, it is not lightly threaded performance. It is also not multi-thread performance, e.g. total CPU power. All these are irrelevant. We pay for SQL Server per core, per month. And it is costly. The CPU cost is nothing, compared to this. However, the total number of frequency-optimized cores we can cram in a server matters to some extent. Hence, the new 7F52 totally makes sense and I guess it will be the best-selling 7Fx2 CPU. If I can get 32 high-per-core-performant cores in a 2P server, it would be great.
    For example, our servers are usually 40-70% loaded during peak times of the day (with some 100% bursts). The thing that matters the most is how each core is handling, while all cores are loaded. This can be roughly stated as:

    Per-core Perf = Total Perf / Number of cores

    Hence, it is meaningless for this niche to:
    - Measure single threaded workloads
    The CPU can trick us by leveraging single-thread boost, which never happens in production.
    - Compare total CPU performance
    If the CPUs have different number of cores, this is meaningless. If we need more performance, we can just purchase more CPUs/servers.
    - Compare the CPU to non-frequency optimized CPUs
    These will just plain loose in per-core performance. But, on second thought, it would be fun to know what the actual difference is!
    - Compare to desktop or other kinds of CPUs.
    We just can’t use these in the data center. And if you are not purchasing for a data center and for a per-core software, then frequency optimized CPUs are not for you. Again, maybe just for fun.

    What if meaningful to compare for F-CPUs:
    - Per-core performance
    Throw heavy multi-threaded workload, then divide by the number of cores and see what you get for each CPU.
    - Watts for a unit of per-core perf
    Power is the other thing we are paying for.
    - $ for a unit of per-core perf
    Not of utmost importance, but still relevant.

    Ideas for relevant test scenarios:
    - 1P * 7F52
    - 2P * 7F52
    - 2P * 7F32
    - 2P * Gold 6250
    - 2P * Gold 6244 (our current setup)
    - 2P * Gold 6244, but with less DIMMs than memory channels (if you initially buy with less RAM, how much perf are you loosing?)

    Tests, relevant to databases:
    - OLTP - tpm
    - OLAP - qph

    If I have these figures, it can actually alter my purchasing behavior.

    Good Luck and all the best to you and the team!
  • romrunning - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Agreed - more enterprise-focused tests would be more relevant to this enterprise-focused EPYC.

    I also would have liked to see VM tests and database tests.
  • Icehawk - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Agreed, not quite as relevant for this specific SKU but I’ve been wanting to see VM testing for ages along with a lot of other server related testing like SQL performance. Of course consumer is this site’s focus and that’s OK.
  • Atari2600 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Hey Ivan, you prob need to go look at servethehome.com

    As I'm sure your well aware, Anand is much more consumer focused with a benchmarking philosophy geared toward that.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link

    What is the point of discussing $7000 CPUs, or even $3000 CPUs if you're only going to be "consumer-focused"?

    The only point I can think of is to try to convince people to buy some company's other product via mindshare (i.e. marketing).
  • brucethemoose - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Could you link those 2 benchmarks?
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Hey Ivan,

    Thanks for the input, it means a lot. This was a rush review for sure, I had to pool some data and retest some as well. Unfortunately our stock of enterprise CPUs isn't great - I don't have the 7371 frequency optimized ones from the previous generation, nor any of Intel's. I'll be getting the 7F32 and 7F72 parts in soon though, so perhaps I can work a bit more to that.

    I also need to do some research into developing these benchmarks. Some serious 'explain it like I'm a five-year-old' guides of what to download from where, how to install it, what commands to run, etc. I also want some proper system power monitoring tools. The usual fare that US reviewers use, like Watts Up units, aren't sold outside the US, and I've been after something for a while.

    I'll certainly take heed of the metrics that users like yourself require, and work them into future reviews as I can.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    just get ryan to send you some of those watts up units. i have one as well, very handy :-)
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    US models are probably 110V only, and won't work with UK 220V power.
  • Qasar - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    just checked.. there are only ones for 110v. which is too bad
  • tyleeds - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    Hey Ian. Use the american units and run them off a double-conversion UPS. You can set the output to 110/60hz and nobodies the wiser.
  • duploxxx - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    where is Johan De Gelas? He used to write quite some nice reviews of server benchmarks
  • kobblestown - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    As I noted in a previous comment, many people here are not just about the numbers, but about the insights. How different architectural choices influence performance. So while I wouldn't mind to have the benchmarks that cover the target applications of a CPU line, I will not like it if it sticks to just that. And in this particular case, the people that would read it as an evaluation guide for specific application are a very small minority of Anandtech's reader base. At least I think so.

    Of course, it's a pity that people like you don't have anywhere else to go, servethehome.com notwithstanding - it has its problems too.
  • The Hardcard - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I wonder about the appeal of these for workstation use. Unless AMD allows Threadrippers to reach their memory capacity potential, this might be the most powerful option - price notwithstanding.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    If you are going to be using software that can get the most out of this chip, much like the Intel W-3275 or Threadripper 3970X, then the hardware cost is minimal. The amount of time you save of the content creation or per core licensing, depending on the software, is worth the added money. In enterprise environments the server cost is minimal, especially compared to SAN and software licenses. The company I work for got a SuperMicro 2U4N with dual Epyc 7502s and 1TB RAM per node and the cost was ~$60K. While this isn't officially supported SAP HANA, it does pass their production performance assessment tool. Just to get a SAN that is SAP HANA certified starts at ~$250k. The SAP HANA DB can run over $1 million just for licensing. VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing is $5800/socket for 3 years if your CPU has less than 32 cores, if you have more than that you need to get a second license for that socket. You can quickly see where $3100/CPU is pennies in the grand scheme of things.
  • nft76 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Why is Cascade Lake Xeon so much slower than others, also Intel's consumer parts, in some of the SPEC2006 tests? In libquantum, lbm, and soplex in particular the difference is much greater that I would have expected.
  • anonomouse - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Those are all of heavily memory (latency, bandwidth) bound workloads in SPEC, too, which points to something very strange. CLX-R should not be >5x slower than CLX on lbm.
  • eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Thanks Ian! Two questions: 1. Could you and some of your readers give specific examples of applications for which these high frequency CPUs are of great interest?
    2. Any recent moves by Intel to make software developers use AVX512 even more, basically whenever it would make any sense?
    The reason I am asking the second question is that this seems to be the last bastion Intel holds, almost regardless of CPU class. Except for AVX512, AMD is beating them in price/performance quite badly, now from servers to workstations to desktop to mobile.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    DB servers are one place where you want a fast CPU. SAP HANA for example loves frequency and RAM. I've seen PRD systems with all of 16CPUs but 1.5TB RAM.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    AVX is a compute feature. Rendering and math heavy scientific/engineering workloads are where it'd shine. Databases, typical webservers, and most other 'conventional' business related software don't care.
  • Shorty_ - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    Web serving is another place where frequency really helps. I run threadrippers with ECC UDIMM for php hosting for this express reason
  • Mikewind Dale - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Unfortunately, this breaks AMD's trend of being cheaper than Intel. A 20 core Xeon Xeon Gold 5218R boosts up to 4.0 GHz and costs $1273. This new EPYC is only 16 core, boosts only up to 3.9 GHz, and costs $3100.

    Usually, AMD is cheaper than Intel, but this seems to be an exception. A pity.
  • Fataliity - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    That's because its a specialized processor. If you are buying one of these, you won't be worried about the price.

    To get that much cache, they are using 6-8chiplets. So as many as their top of the line products. So yeah, its going to cost more because theres more silicon.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    The 5218R that you referenced isn't what the 7F52 is competing against. With a base clock of 2.1GHz the 5218R isn't a frequency optimized part. Most of Intel's CPUs have high boost clocks and middle of the road base clocks. The actual competition is the 6246R which has a 3.4GHz base and 4.1GHz boost clock. These high base clocks are for sustained performance in a given scenario.
  • MFinn3333 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    That’s is also because it has about 12x as much L3 cache per CPU core. A combined 256MB vs 30MB cache size speaks for itself.
  • edzieba - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    It's down to two design choices: process choice, and core choice.

    AMDs hands are somewhat tied when it comes to process choice. They get what TSMC has on offer, and what TSMC has on offer is geared towards mobile devices because that's where the volume market is. The high-performance variants are variants, rather than the baseline.
    But even in general, as you shrink your process from 21nm on down, it gets harder and harder to clock up. Gate oxide thickness hit its limit generations ago, which is why gate voltage has remained near constant (~1.1v) for so long. This is only going to get harder as processes shrink further while being stuck with the constant gate oxide thickness but trying to cram closer together without interfering.

    In AMD's hands is the design goal of cramming as many cores as possible in. Great for multi-core workloads, but not so great for single core speed. Getting CPUs to clock higher means using multiple transistors per gate (2-3 or even more as processes shrink), and AMD figured they may as well use these transistors for more cores instead of faster cores. The obvious downside is the difficulty in getting Zen cores to even approach 5GHz (with Zen 2 being notable for getting above 4GHz without overkill cooling), and that any workloads that do not span beyond one thread leave those transistors sitting idle.
  • twtech - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    On the 7H12 - Dell offers it in their EPYC servers, such as the R7525. It's currently about a $375 upgrade over the 7742.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Aha, that's good to know. I'll essentially call it a $375 RRP above the 7742 then.
  • realbabilu - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I wish anandtech has performance / price ratio index for respectable synthetic test. For this behemoth price, I think render basis or database process basis synthetic for per/price ratio will be nice.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I'm looking into it for our next review.
  • casperes1996 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    When I read the title and the way "High" was lifted... I immediately thought this would be Ian Cutress' writing. Just felt like his form of lovely joking about.
  • MenhirMike - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    I'm not sure I get the difference between 7F and 7H - of course, the 7H has more cores, but isn't it the same principle of "More Frequency than regular parts"?

    In any case, and unrelated, the EPYC 7282 is a thing of beauty at 120W TDP.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    7H gets it just by being significantly higher power than a standard chip; it's essentially a factory overclock with a warranty. It's target is applications that are both wide (benefit from lots of cores) and tall (benefit from fast single threads). The F series parts are focussed much more exclusively on tall workloads; and compared to mainstream low core count Epyc's have higher clock rates due to the increased TDP but also huge amounts of L3 cache/core because they're made by turning off most of the cores in each chiplet instead of only using a few mostly/entirely enabled chiplets.
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    AMD: “So much winning from binning!”
  • AshlayW - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Clear indication that Zen2 has higher IPC / is a superior core (and I wouldn't expect any less...) than the 5-year old Skylake. AMD has the single-threaded lead now, too. How times have changed.
  • ksec - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    These sort of pricing just shows AMD is working on profit margin rather than volume. I am a little worry AMD is still not gaining enough market shares in the Server Market. As things stands now they are still sub 10% Server CPU shipment, on a capacity constrained Intel and better Pref / dollar product line.
  • pepoluan - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    It takes time for Enterprise market to switch over. They have to validate, re-validate, and validate some more to ensure that their bread-and-butter applications run without any hiccups. They would rather limp along on much less efficient systems that work properly, than running efficient systems that has stability problems. (Not saying that AMD Rome has stability problems, it's just that Enterprises want *proof* of stability, that's why they validate extensively.)

    Plus they like to use their systems until its economic lifetime passes (about 3-5 years).

    Nearing the end of 2020, we might see a sudden, major uptick in AMD server market share.
  • beginning - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Thank you for this review! Quite useful. I would like to see performance comparisons on multi-threaded workloads too.
  • anonomouse - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Looking at memory latency chart, it doesn't look like the second half of the LLC is actually any farther - that's just the limit of the range that the L2 TLB (2K entries @4K pages) can cover. The additional latency beyond 8MB is probably because requests are now causing table walks, and that is also clear from Andrei's corresponding chart for the client version in 3700x/3900x. Were these results cross-checked with each other before publication?

    One way to verify this would be to enable huge pages and see if the memory latency profile you're claiming looks different.
  • boozed - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    "AMD is hoping to stag that first second rung of the ladder"
    What does this expression mean?
  • UnknownKnolwdge - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Look up ladder logic on wikipedia, search for rung.

    It's associated with relay logic and old style PLC programming.
  • boozed - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Thanks but I'm not convinced that's it
  • Smell This - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    "AMD is hoping to stag that first second rung of the ladder."
    ________________________________________________

    Two things:
    1) I suspect the meaning is 'the next step up;' and
    2) 'snag' instead of 'stag'

    :-)
  • madwolfchin - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    This processor should be targeted for Single threaded workload, why are all the benchmark multi threaded. Would also like to see the IPC performance since there is a large increase of cache
  • nicamarvin - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Mr. Cutress on this article you have the 3950X and 3990X as "Rome" uArch, but in Fact they are Matisse for 3950X and Castle Peak for the 3990X
  • Machinus - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    I wish there was more than one CPU maker in the market right now. These chips looks great, but there is no competition.
  • Threska - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Not specifically in this niche, but ARM (and equivalent) haven't gone anywhere.
  • bananaforscale - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Expecting EPYC F7U12.
  • efferz - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    the IPC of 9900KS is 1.56/G while the 6226R is 1.05/G?
  • AntonErtl - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    Why buy an EPYC 7F52 rather than some other AMD CPU?

    Compared to a Ryzen 9 3950X? You need more than 128GB RAM, more than 4MB cache/core or more DRAM bandwidth; as for clock, they have the same base clock, and the 3950X has quite a bit more max clock.

    Compared to a Threadripper 3960X (and not use, maybe deactivate 8 cores)? You need more then 256GB RAM, more than 8MB cache per core, or more RAM bandwidth; clockwise, the Threadripper is better in every way.

    Compared to another Rome EPYC? You want 256MB cache, but want to pay less than for a 7642 or a 7702P; or you want a higher clock rate than other 16-core EPYCs offer.

    This all seems quite specialized to me; I guess there are some supercomputing or database applications that benefit from high DRAM capacity and bandwidth and big caches; but if an application is DRAM-limited, it usually does not need high clocks (waiting for memory at a higher clock rate does not make the DRAM access significantly faster).

    As for benchmarks, I guess Stream will show up the RAM bandwidth, but there it will perform like any other Rome EPYC.
  • scineram - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    Ok, so how successful was the 7371?
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    @Ian (Dr. Cutress): Again, appreciate your reviews! Question: Could you do a review of a Ryzen on the exact opposite end of the price scale, namely the Ryzen 3 1200? It is now Zen+, fabbed in GloFo's 12 nm LP process, and around or under $ 50. Not bad for 4 cores, especially if you have a dGPU and a compatible board at hand. Just make sure to update the BIOS as needed before installing the CPU.
  • dwade123 - Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - link

    Overpriced junk

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