The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTAnalyzing Creator Mode and Game Mode
Way back on page 3, this review explained that AMD was promoting two modes: Creator Mode with all cores enabled and a uniform memory access (UMA) architecture, and Game Mode that disabled one of the dies and adjusted to a non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA). The idea was that in Creator Mode you had all the threads and bandwidth, while Game Mode focused on compatibility with games that freaked out if you had too many cores, but also memory and core-to-core latency by pinning data as close to the core as possible, and keeping related threads all within the same Zeppelin die. Both methods have their positives and negatives, and although they can be enabled through a button press in Ryzen Master and a reboot, most users who care enough about these settings are likely to set it and forget it. (And then notice that if the BIOS resets, so does the settings…)
*This page has been edited on 8/17, due to a misinterpretation in the implementation of Game Mode. This original review has been updated to reflect this. We have written a secondary mini-article with fresh testing on the effects of Game Mode.
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launchcodemexico - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Why did you end all the gaming review sections with something like "Switching it to Game mode would have made better numbers..."? Why didn't you run the benchmarks in Gaming mode in the first place?Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Gaming mode is not default, and we run gaming mode alongside the default - there's two sets of values in each graming test.DanNeely - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
You might want to call that out more clearly in the text. I also missed that you have two sets of 1950X results; and probably wouldn't've figured out what the -G suffix meant without a hint.Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
I mentioned it in the Game vs Creator mode page, but I'll propagate it through.lordken - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
read before you complain, it is stated at beginning of the review that -G is for game mode...DanNeely - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Especially during the work day a lot of people just are doing quick glances at the most interesting parts. I'll end to end read it sometime tonight.mapesdhs - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
If people quick-glance, that's their problem for missing key info. :D When learning about something as new as this, I read everything. Otherwise, it's like the tech equivalent of crossing a road while gawping at a phone. :}Last time I read so much about a new CPU launch was Nehalem/X58.
Ian.
smilingcrow - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
It seemed really clear to me but for people who didn't read the long text on NUMA etc maybe not.The dangers of skimming!
mapesdhs - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Indeed. :D Reminds me of when a long time ebay seller told me that long item decriptions are pointless, because most bidders only read the first paragraph, often only the first sentence.Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
The test suite is a global glove: rather than have 20 tests for each segment, it's a global band of 80 tests for every situation. Johan does different tests as his office is several hundred miles away from where I am (and we're thousands of miles away from any other reviewer).For the gaming benchmarks, there are big differences in 99th percentile frame rates and Time Under analysis. As games become more and more GPU bottlenecked for average frame rates, this is where the differentiation point is. It's a reason why we still test 1080p as well. With regards the AI test, I've asked the Civ team repeatedly to make the AI test accessible from the command line so I can rope it into my testing scripts easily (they already do it with the main GPU test). But like many other game studios, getting them to unlock a flag is a frustrating endeavor when they don't even respond to messages.