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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ddriver - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Yeah if all you do all day is compile chromium with visual studio... Take that result with a big spoon of salt.Samus - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
This thing can also decompress my HD pr0n RARs in record time!carewolf - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
The jokes is on you. More cores and more memory bandwidth is always faster for compiling. Anandtech must have butched the benchmark here. Other sites show ThreadRipper whipping i9 ass as expected.bongey - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
They did without a doubt screw up the compile test. The 6950x is a 10 core /20 thread intel cpu, but somehow the 7900x has 20% improvement, when no other test even comes close to that much of an improvement. The 7900x is basically just bump in clock speed for a 6950x.Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
'The 7900X is basically just bump in clock speed for a 6950X'L2 cache up to 1MB, L3 cache is a victim cache, mesh interconnect rather than rings.
mlambert890 - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
It's basically as far from 'just a bump in clock speed' as any follow up release short of a full architecture revamp, but yeah ok.rtho782 - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
The whole game mode/creator mode, UMA/NUMA, etc seems a mess. Games not working with more than 20 threads is a joke although not AMDs fault....mapesdhs - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Why is it a mess if peope choose to buy into this level of tech? It's bring formerly Enterprise-level tech to the masses, the very nature of how this stuff works makes it clear there are tradeoffs in design. AMD is forced to start off by dealing with a sw market that for years has focused on the prevalence of moderately low core count Intel CPUs with strong(er) IPC. Offering a simple hw choice to tailor the performance slant is a nice idea. I mean, what's your problem here? Do you not understand UMA vs. NUMA? If not, probably shouldn't be buying this level of tech. :DprisonerX - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
That will change. Why invest masses of expensive brainpower in aggressively multithreading your game or app when no-one has the hardware to use it? No they do.Hurr Durr - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Only in lala-land will HEDT processors occupy any meaningful part of the gaming market. We`re bound by consoles, and that is here to stay for years.