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Flying Fox wrote:

Topinio wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

more money than sense.

Not really, but if my i7-960 hadn't gone bang 14 months ago I would've been deciding between Xeon E3-1270 v6, E3-1280 v6, Ryzen 7 1700X, Ryzen 7 1800X, or Ryzen Threadripper 1900X. And chances are that a Ryzen would be chosen.

But do you have a justification for those? If it is "just because I can" or "I want a bigger e-peen", then you would have been squarely in this category. Otherwise, if there is a logical reason(s) behind your choice, then you are in the "prosumer" group.

The only justifications are weak, but hopefully not e-peen weak -- the main box does dual duty as a Linux workstation and VM host at home for when I (occasionally) work from home or get caught up in a project and want to carry on in the evenings, so having enough grunt and ECC RAM is desirable.

On top of that, I tend to buy high so the machine doesn't annoy for a few years, and then keep running through it feeling standard (with a couple of upgrades) until the old thing is a noticable bottleneck at hopefully 7-8 years old. I don't want the hassle of rebuilding, though I do enjoy it. I'm happy to spend £300 on a CPU, and going to £500 doesn't make much difference; £700 is outside the box, though. I don't think I've more money than sense, but maybe I do?

I don't think I'm a "prosumer", which seems to be defined as "a person who consumes and produces media" as I don't do the latter (other than the odd home movie DVD) and don't do much of the former.

Topinio wrote:

I don't think I'm a "prosumer", which seems to be defined as "a person who consumes and produces media" as I don't do the latter (other than the odd home movie DVD) and don't do much of the former.

The word apparently has two definitions. That's one of them. The other one (and the one I'm more familiar with) is "a class of product in that gray area between consumer and professional".

derFunkenstein wrote:

minor nitpick:

Flying Fox wrote:

But do you have a justification for those? If it is "just because I can" or "I want a bigger e-peen", then you would have been squarely in this category. Otherwise, if there is a logical reason(s) behind your choice, then you are in the "prosumer" group.

The more dollars than sense clan goes in the "sumer" part. The logical reason folks go in the "pro".

So in your definition a "prosumer" is a schizophrenic?

Topinio wrote:

On top of that, I tend to buy high so the machine doesn't annoy for a few years, and then keep running through it feeling standard (with a couple of upgrades) until the old thing is a noticable bottleneck at hopefully 7-8 years old. I don't want the hassle of rebuilding, though I do enjoy it. I'm happy to spend £300 on a CPU, and going to £500 doesn't make much difference; £700 is outside the box, though. I don't think I've more money than sense, but maybe I do?

My i7-875K is still humming along at 7+ years. So do I need to get into "Extremely Expensive editions" territory.

Topinio wrote:

I don't think I'm a "prosumer", which seems to be defined as "a person who consumes and produces media" as I don't do the latter (other than the odd home movie DVD) and don't do much of the former.

That's different from my understanding of the term. To me it is in-between professional and consumer. Since you are using it for the occasional work, you fit right in.

just brew it! wrote:

The word apparently has two definitions. That's one of them. The other one (and the one I'm more familiar with) is "a class of product in that gray area between consumer and professional".

I look at "prosumer" as: Consumer with delusions of grandeur/chops and enough money to spend stupidly.

Captain Ned wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

The word apparently has two definitions. That's one of them. The other one (and the one I'm more familiar with) is "a class of product in that gray area between consumer and professional".

I look at "prosumer" as: Consumer with delusions of grandeur/chops and enough money to spend stupidly.

I would say prosumer is someone who spends at the professional level but doesn't have make the income from said expenditures that a professional does.

whm1974 wrote:

OK who's here is going to buy or build a Threadripper system? And what are you going to use 16c/32t and 60 PCIe lanes for?

You don't really need that many lanes, no, but it is nice to have a motherboard with more than one M.2 socket.

Technically it looks like TR boards can have 7 devices from the CPU alone, not counting whatever is connected to the 4-lane chipset.

Flying Fox wrote:

To me it is in-between professional and consumer. Since you are using it for the occasional work, you fit right in.

First time for everything

just brew it! wrote:

The word apparently has two definitions. That's one of them. The other one (and the one I'm more familiar with) is "a class of product in that gray area between consumer and professional".

Isn't that just the higher end of the consumer range, kinda like non-potato cameras a few years back, or a decent music system?

Captain Ned wrote:

I look at "prosumer" as: Consumer with delusions of grandeur/chops and enough money to spend stupidly.

It's impossible to define "stupidly" in a consensus way, though. I look after plenty of £5k workstations at work, spending that much on a box for home seems stupid to me but spending £2k seems fine -- but I know that that for a computer is well within "stupidly" in many people's opinions...

Although I'll probably be buying a purported i7-8700(K) with 6 cores and 12 threads in the end - whether it being a K or not will hinge on if Asus boards still has multi-core enhancement to let me clock a "locked" CPU to the purported 4.6 GHz single-core turbo on the 8700 with all six cores loaded since I don't feel like the last 400 MHz to 5 GHz is worth it - I find the Threadripper to be quite interesting in terms of all the cores and their performance-to-$ ratio.

The problem?

Apparently TR motherboard pricing outside the USA is wacko. Given its similar pricing to equivalent i9 CPUs as well as stricter cooler requirements, I suspect that i9s will still make a lot of sense to many prosumer folks.

The i9 is also more receptive to workloads that aren't purely throughput/multithreaded, too, so there's that side of coin, too.

Noinoi wrote:

Apparently TR motherboard pricing outside the USA is wacko. Given its similar pricing to equivalent i9 CPUs as well as stricter cooler requirements, I suspect that i9s will still make a lot of sense to many prosumer folks.

For the price of a 1920X + X399 mobo here, I can buy no less than four 1700 non-X + B350.

I really also want to give AMD money but the spotty DDR4-3000+ 2x16GB support and lack of ITX options is pushing me to the 8700K.

I went to other sites but I eagerly anticipate some of TR's test suite that you just can't get anywhere else. The DAW comparison is both unique and relevant, for example, though Jeff kind of spoiled it on Twitter - Threadrippa ain't for audio workstations. Which is fine, because Avid only endorses Intel builds anyway.

That said, this platform (and the Intel X299 before it) just aren't super interesting. They're fun to think about, but I'm never going to plop down the cash for one. My Ryzen system is extravagant in most ways, but I do like dedicating four threads to two different VMs with spares for myself.

derFunkenstein wrote:

The DAW comparison is both unique and relevant, for example, though Jeff kind of spoiled it on Twitter - Threadrippa ain't for audio workstations. Which is fine, because Avid only endorses Intel builds anyway.

I like the DAW Bench tests as well. I don't think you can say that Threadripper isn't suitable for audio production though. Unless the DAW or plugin host forces everything to run in a single thread, shouldn't Threadripper be theoretically great? I've seen various videos on YouTube of people running loads of concurrent audio plugins on Ryzen, so Threadripper should just be a better version of that, no?

lem18 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

The DAW comparison is both unique and relevant, for example, though Jeff kind of spoiled it on Twitter - Threadrippa ain't for audio workstations. Which is fine, because Avid only endorses Intel builds anyway.

I like the DAW Bench tests as well. I don't think you can say that Threadripper isn't suitable for audio production though. Unless the DAW or plugin host forces everything to run in a single thread, shouldn't Threadripper be theoretically great? I've seen various videos on YouTube of people running loads of concurrent audio plugins on Ryzen, so Threadripper should just be a better version of that, no?

Everything's relative. I assume the spoiler means it doesn't do as well as expected; info about how much worse than expected will have to wait for the full review. Running in gaming mode might even mitigate or fix the issue, if it is related to memory latency/locality.

So, I pretty much expected that Threadripper wouldn't be something I'd have much use for. I was hoping the quad channel memory would make things a little more competitive, considering to the boost Ryzen often saw from high speed memory in lots of benchmarks. Overall, it looks like a good product though, for those that can make use of it. For the time being, it looks like my 2500K (recently pushed a bit farther to 4.5Ghz) isn't in any threat of being replaced by anything shiny and new.

I have to say though, it'd be cool if AMD had the ability to put out a super high clocked 4c\8t or 6c\12t CPU on this platform utilizing the presumably better thermal performance (due to sheer size and surface area) and higher quality motherboards available. Something that'd more fully compete with the Intel's gaming focused i7 chips. Maybe with Zen 2 we'll see them push up the clocks and hopefully squeeze out a bit more IPC too.

Also, why are Tom's graphics so blurry? Its unpleasant trying to read those charts, and some of them (the line graphs with lots of colors) are so blurry that I actually can't tell the colors apart.

lem18 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

The DAW comparison is both unique and relevant, for example, though Jeff kind of spoiled it on Twitter - Threadrippa ain't for audio workstations. Which is fine, because Avid only endorses Intel builds anyway.

I like the DAW Bench tests as well. I don't think you can say that Threadripper isn't suitable for audio production though. Unless the DAW or plugin host forces everything to run in a single thread, shouldn't Threadripper be theoretically great? I've seen various videos on YouTube of people running loads of concurrent audio plugins on Ryzen, so Threadripper should just be a better version of that, no?

Jeff said it "falls hard" which I'm taking to mean "does worse than two Ryzen 7s duct-taped together" but I guess we'll see.

whm1974 wrote:

OK who's here is going to buy or build a Threadripper system? And what are you going to use 16c/32t and 60 PCIe lanes for?

I'm going to build a gaming rig based on either a 1950X or a 7900X. The manually enabled Legacy Compatibility Mode for games that can't handle more than 20 logical CPU cores now has leaning towards a 7900X based gaming rig.

End User wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

OK who's here is going to buy or build a Threadripper system? And what are you going to use 16c/32t and 60 PCIe lanes for?

I'm going to build a gaming rig based on either a 1950X or a 7900X. The manually enabled Legacy Compatibility Mode for games that can't handle more than 20 logical CPU cores now has leaning towards a 7900X based gaming rig.

Honestly I think both platforms are probably sub-optimal for gaming. However, that doesn't mean gaming should be ignored completely because there are plenty of mixed-use systems that are being used for lots of different tasks where you want strong HEDT but gaming is still one factor (just not the only factor) in evaluating the system.

I'm going to agree with Chuckula. If gaming is your primary use, take a hard look at the 8-core Ryzen R7 CPUs or the soon-to-be-announced 6-core Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K. Threadripper is for folks that know that they need a whole lotta threads.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

I'm going to agree with Chuckula. If gaming is your primary use, take a hard look at the 8-core Ryzen R7 CPUs or the soon-to-be-announced 6-core Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K. Threadripper is for folks that know that they need a whole lotta threads.

To echo that TR's review of the affordable R5 1600X showed that it delivers strong RyZen platform gaming at an even lower price point.

derFunkenstein wrote:

lem18 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

The DAW comparison is both unique and relevant, for example, though Jeff kind of spoiled it on Twitter - Threadrippa ain't for audio workstations. Which is fine, because Avid only endorses Intel builds anyway.

I like the DAW Bench tests as well. I don't think you can say that Threadripper isn't suitable for audio production though. Unless the DAW or plugin host forces everything to run in a single thread, shouldn't Threadripper be theoretically great? I've seen various videos on YouTube of people running loads of concurrent audio plugins on Ryzen, so Threadripper should just be a better version of that, no?

Jeff said it "falls hard" which I'm taking to mean "does worse than two Ryzen 7s duct-taped together" but I guess we'll see.

DAW is probably impacted by NUMA and the latency added between the two dies in Thread Ripper's packaging. According to Anandtech thought here is a more latency sensitive profile for the chip which should perform better in DAW applications than what you get using the defaults out of the box. It'd be worth it to test both as Anandtech's testing can show some rather big differences in various tests.

Jeff followed up to say none of that made a difference:

https://twitter.com/jkampman_tr/status/ ... 5347085314

Well that's just weird then. Maybe it's a SIMD performance issue? But I'd expect that to show up in other benchmarks too.

End User wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

OK who's here is going to buy or build a Threadripper system? And what are you going to use 16c/32t and 60 PCIe lanes for?

I'm going to build a gaming rig based on either a 1950X or a 7900X. The manually enabled Legacy Compatibility Mode for games that can't handle more than 20 logical CPU cores now has leaning towards a 7900X based gaming rig.

Seems to me like that wouldn't be relevant, though - you could simply disable HT for gaming, it would probably help performance in any case to have fewer CPUs dividing the same memory bandwidth.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

I'm going to agree with Chuckula. If gaming is your primary use, take a hard look at the 8-core Ryzen R7 CPUs or the soon-to-be-announced 6-core Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K. Threadripper is for folks that know that they need a whole lotta threads.

I have the benefit of time. I won’t be building the system until October. I’ll see where the reviews take me.

It definitely won’t be a Ryzen build.

ozzuneoj wrote:

I was hoping the quad channel memory would make things a little more competitive, considering to the boost Ryzen often saw from high speed memory in lots of benchmarks.

High frequency is the important factor in those Ryzen improvements, not how many channels.

Is TR actually going to post a ThreadRipper Review or is it going to be like the Fury Nano with bars showing up in a later review?

The Kampman has spoken.

Redocbew wrote:

The Kampman has spoken.

Mr Bill gives an Amy Farrah Fowler Whoooo!
AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 1920X and Ryzen Threadripper 1950X CPUs reviewed

Now that I've seen the performance of Threadripper, I've decided that my next system will be Ivy Bridge-E.

The big thing I care about running is 3DMark physics , and a 4960X performs about the same as Ryzen for a lower overall platform cost since I already have DDR3.

Threadripper and Skylake-E run the physics test extremely well, but the performance/$ is worse then Ryzen.

DrDominodog51 wrote:

Now that I've seen the performance of Threadripper, I've decided that my next system will be Ivy Bridge-E.

The big thing I care about running is 3DMark physics , and a 4960X performs about the same as Ryzen for a lower overall platform cost since I already have DDR3.

Threadripper and Skylake-E run the physics test extremely well, but the performance/$ is worse then Ryzen.

Wouldn't a 6800K be the best price performance right now? It was under $400 last I checked, and if you're only running one video card the PCIe deficit isn't material.

Vhalidictes wrote:

Wouldn't a 6800K be the best price performance right now? It was under $400 last I checked, and if you're only running one video card the PCIe deficit isn't material.

6850K prices are dropping too if you need more than 28 PCIe lanes. I picked one on eBay recently <$350. I needed a few more PCIe lanes on my X99 for running NVMe (x2) drives along with PCIe wifi and SB audio.
If I was to go toward Threadripper I'd use the upcoming 1900 version since I don't need a plethora of cores. I do like the versatility of an HEDT for multiple functions that can span mainstream to professional use.