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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
347 Comments
View All Comments
Lolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Adding useless singe thread benchs for people that will pay $600+ for many cores is plain stupidity like that useless open a pdf test.casperes1996 - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
Why do you bother replying to these, Ian? I love your enthusiasm about what you do, and am happy that you reply to comments, but as you state yourself, no matter what you say, you'll be called a shill on more than a weekly basis by either side no matter what you do. Intel shill, AMD shill, Apple shill, Nvidia shill and so on. There's no stopping it, because you just can't please the people who go into something wanting a specific result. Well, you can if you give them that result, but sometimes, facts aren't what you want them to be, and some people don't accept that.Cheers, mate
Diji1 - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
You sound like a crazy person.Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
@ Diji1You are correct.
He is implying just because we want HEDT platforms / chips, that we care nothing for single-threaded performance.
He is a true AMD fan-boi, as you will see over time.
lordken - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
@Johan Steyn: while I agree with you that the Intel piece with PR slide at the top was a little bit lame, I even lolled at "most scalable" part (isn't something like "glued" zen the most scalable design?) I think this review is good and goes also around architecture etc., there were few instances during reading when it seemed odd wording or being unnecessarily polite toward intel's shortcoming/deficit but I cant even remember them now.Though I was surprised about power numbers, as Toms measured much higher W for 7900X , 160-200 and with TTF even up to 250-331 , but here 7800/7900x had only ~150W.
Also this sentence is odd
"All the Threadripper CPUs hit around 177W, just under the 180W TDP, while the Skylake-X CPUs move to their 140W TDP." move to their? They are above the TDP...why not state it clearly?
tamalero - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Im sratching my head on power consumption as well. Almost all reviewers shows that the i9's consume more than threadripper.Could be the motherboard used?
Some used the Zenith and other reviewers used the ASROCK retail one.
smilingcrow - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Power consumption can vary a lot depending on the type of task and the exact nature of that task.So you should expect a lot of variation across reviews.
Johan Steyn - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
The amount of tests on games in this review is unbalanced. Also read my reply to Ian.Extremely well stated: " unnecessarily polite toward Intel's shortcoming" Sometimes I think these guys think all are complete mindless drones.
carewolf - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
It has always been like this here. This was pretty neutral by Anandtech standards, they even admitted it when it was faster.Johan Steyn - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Please read my response to Ian, I think you are not looking close enough to what is happening here.