Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance
by Ian Cutress on August 17, 2017 12:01 PM ESTCPU Web Tests
One of the issues when running web-based tests is the nature of modern browsers to automatically install updates. This means any sustained period of benchmarking will invariably fall foul of the 'it's updated beyond the state of comparison' rule, especially when browsers will update if you give them half a second to think about it. Despite this, we were able to find a series of commands to create an un-updatable version of Chrome 56 for our 2017 test suite. While this means we might not be on the bleeding edge of the latest browser, it makes the scores between CPUs comparable.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
SunSpider 1.0.2: link
The oldest web-based benchmark in this portion of our test is SunSpider. This is a very basic javascript algorithm tool, and ends up being more a measure of IPC and latency than anything else, with most high-performance CPUs scoring around about the same. The basic test is looped 10 times and the average taken. We run the basic test 4 times.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1: link
Kraken is another Javascript based benchmark, using the same test harness as SunSpider, but focusing on more stringent real-world use cases and libraries, such as audio processing and image filters. Again, the basic test is looped ten times, and we run the basic test four times.
Google Octane 2.0: link
Along with Mozilla, as Google is a major browser developer, having peak JS performance is typically a critical asset when comparing against the other OS developers. In the same way that SunSpider is a very early JS benchmark, and Kraken is a bit newer, Octane aims to be more relevant to real workloads, especially in power constrained devices such as smartphones and tablets.
WebXPRT 2015: link
While the previous three benchmarks do calculations in the background and represent a score, WebXPRT is designed to be a better interpretation of visual workloads that a professional user might have, such as browser based applications, graphing, image editing, sort/analysis, scientific analysis and financial tools.
Overall, all of our web benchmarks show a similar trend. Very few web frameworks offer multi-threading – the browsers themselves are barely multi-threaded at times – so Threadripper's vast thread count is underutilized. What wins the day on the web are a handful of fast cores with high single-threaded performance, and it becomes a balance between cores and cross-core communication.
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Aisalem - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
Ok, I'm a noob then, actually I'm an engineer who's doing designs in AutoCad, Creo and Solidworks but from time to time like to play few games.So yes I'm a NOOB who has some free cash to throw AMD direction and would like to know what are the best settings for it to play a game once or twice a week without spending hours on testing those.
Gigaplex - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
That makes you a workstation user, not a noob who buys Threadripper just for games.pepoluan - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Why do you want to change to Game Mode anyways? Is playing in Creator Mode not Good Enough for you?Ratman6161 - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Actually you sound more like the actual target audience for game mode. But for your purposes I would think you would want reviews with more heavy emphasis on workstation tasks. Gaming with it is just a sidelight.Greyscend - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
If you really are an engineer you shouldn't need hours to figure out if you can disable SMT while "Game Mode" is active. In fact, you shouldn't even need "hours" to turn on game mode and play a few minutes of your current, favorite game, then turn off SMT (if possible in game mode) and play again. I'm no engineer but I would have to be on Peyote and a bottle of wine to make all of this take longer than 30 minutes. Also, you may find that the bleeding edge isn't the best place for people who need to be told exactly how to configure their own machines.Ratman6161 - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Exactly"For the average person reading most of tech sites the more workstation benchmarks doesn't really makes sense."
Counter point: The "more workstation benchmarks" and the tasks they represent are the reason this CPU exists in the first place. If you want a Ryzen and gaming is your primary use, you would be better off with something in the R7 family since when you disable half the cores, you effectively have the equivalent of an 1800x.
The only reason game mode would exist is for someone who really needs to do those "more workstation" tasks for work purposes but also wants to to use the same machine for games when not doing actual work. IMO, the reviews should really stick even more to workstation use cases with gaming being an "oh, by the way, you can play games on it too" sort of deal.
Ian Cutress - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
https://myhacker.net | Hacking Tutorials | Hacking news | hacking tools | hacking ebooksGothmoth - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
waiting for anandtech praising the 8% on average performance boost of the 9000 intel cpu generation.... :-)peevee - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
3%peevee - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Been this way for the last 5 generations. Moore's law is over.