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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blublub - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
From what I have read is that all TR do 3.9hhz and some even 4-4.1ghz on all cores .What are your temp when running all 10c @4.6ghz prime for 1-2hrs
Zingam - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Ian, how about testing mobile CPUs - for games and for office work. Aren't mobile CPUs selling much larger numbers thatn desktop ones these days?I can't find a single benchmark comparing i5-7300hq vs i7-7700hq vs i7-7700K showing the difference in productivity workloads and not just for rendering pretty pictures but also for more specific tasks as compiling software etc.
I also would like to see some sort of comparison of new generation to all generations upto 10 years back in time. I'd like to know how much did performance increase since the age of Nehelem. At least from now on there should be a single test to display the relative performance increase over the last few generations. The average user doesn't upgrade their PC every year. The average user maybe upgrades every 5 years and it is really difficult to find out how much peformance increase would one get with an upgrade.
SanX - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
I agree, there must be 5-7 years old processors in the chartsSanX - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Why one core of Apple A10 costs $10 but one core of Intel 7900x costs 10x more?oranos - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
so its complete dogsh*t for the segment which is driving the PC market right now: gaming. got it.ballsystemlord - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Hey Ian, you've been talking about anandtech's great database where we can see all the cool info. Well, according to your database the Phenom II 6 core 1090T is equally powerful when compared to the 16 core threadripper!!!!!!! http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1932?vs=146With those sorts of numbers why would anyone plan an upgrade?
(And there is also only one metric displayed, strange!)
Not to play the Intel card on you as others do, but this is a serious problem for at least the AMD lineup of processors.
jmelgaard - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
o.O... I don't know how you derived that conclusion? you need a guide on how to read the database?...BurntMyBacon - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
For anyone looking for an overall fps for two pass encoding here is your equation (hope my math is correct):FPS = 2*FPS1*FPS2/(FPS2+FPS1)
No, you can't just average the FPS scores from each pass as the processor will spend more time in the slower pass.
For the x264 encoding test, for example, a few relevant FPS scores end up being:
i9-7900X: 122.56
i7-7820X: 114.37
i7-6900K: 95.26
i7-7740X: 82.74
TR-1950X: 118.13
TR-1950X(g): 117.00
TR-1920X: 111.74
R7-1800X: 100.19
Since two pass encoding requires both passes to be usable, getting an overall FPS score seems somewhat relevant. Alternately, using time to completion is would present the same information in a different manner. Though, it would be difficult to extrapolate performance results to estimate performance in other encodes without also posting the number of frames encoded.
goldgrenade - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
Take all those Intel FPS performance counters and multiply them by .7 and you have what their chips actually run at without a major security flaw in them.Let's see that would be...
i9-7900X: 85.792
i7-7820X: 80.059
i7-6900K: 66.682
i7-7740X: 57.918
And that's at best. It can be up to 50% degradation when rendering or having to do many small file accesses or repeated operations with KAISER.
Gastec - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
I've having a hard time trying to swallow "Threadripper is a consumer focused product" line considering the prices to "consume" it: $550 for the MB, $550 for the TR1900X ($800 or $1000 for the others is just dreaming) then the RAM. The MB(at least the Asus one) should be $200 less, but I get it, they are trying to squeeze as much as possible from the...consumers. Now don't get me wrong and I mean no offence for the rich ones among you, but those CPU are for Workstations. WORK, not gamestations. Meaning you would need them to help you make your money, faster.