AMD Unveils Ryzen 9000 CPUs for Desktop, Zen 5 (opens in new tab)

> There is no difference between Intel and AMD Zen 4 for most 512-bit AVX-512 instructions.

Except for the fact that Intel hasn't had any AVX-512 for years already in consumer CPUs, so there's nothing to compare against really in this target market

The difference is intel chips that support AVX-512 run $1,300 - $11,000 with MUCH higher total system costs whereas AMD actually DOES support AVX-512 on all it's chips and you can get AVX-512 for dirt cheap. The whole intel instruction support story feels garbage here. Weren't they the ones to introduce this whole 512 thing in the first place?

> The only important differences in throughput between Intel and AMD

Not exactly related, but AMD also has a much better track record when it comes to speculative execution attacks.

I see the discussion of instruction fusion for AVX512 in Intel chips. Can someone explain the clock speed drop?

More importantly for the "2 cycles" question, Zen 4 can get one cycle latency for double-pumped 512-bit ops (for the ops where that's reasonable, i.e. basic integer/bitwise arith).

Having all 512-bit pipes would still be a massive throughput improvement over Zen 4 (as long as pipe count is less than halved), if that is what Zen 5 actually does; things don't stop at 1 op/cycle. Though a rather important question with that would be where that leaves AVX2 code.

I’ve been running some LLMs on my 5600x and 5700g cpus, and the performance is… ok but not great. Token generation is about “reading out loud” pace for the 7&13 B models. I also encounter occasional system crashes that I haven’t diagnosed yet, possibly due to high RAM utilization, but also possibly just power/thermal management issues.

A 50% speed boost would probably make the CPU option a lot more viable for home chatbot, just due to how easy it is to make a system with 128gb RAM vs 128gb VRAM.

I personally am going to experiment with the 48gb modules in the not too distant future.

Almost certainly Zen 5 won't have single-cycle FP latency (I haven't heard of anything doing such even for scalar at modern clock rates (though maybe that does exist somewhere); AMD, Intel, and Apple all currently have 3- or 4-cycle latency). And Zen 4 already has a throughput of 2 FP ops/cycle for up to 256-bit arguments.

The thing discussed is that Zen 4 does 512-bit SIMD ops via splitting them into two 256-bit ones, whereas Zen 5 supposedly will have hardware doing all 512 bits at a time.

Thanks for the description. The article was confusing as to whether the CPU's stated 24x PCIe 5.0 lanes included those required for the chipset. Given that the same AM5 socket is used and X870E is similar to the X670E, this appears to not be the case, and instead the 9950X would have 28x PCIe 5.0 lanes, 4 of which are connected to the daisy-chained chipset and 24 then remain available to the motherboard vendor (nominally as 16 for graphics, 8 for NVMe). I also hadn't realised the CPU would offer 4x USB 4.0 ports directly.

Block diagram for AM5 (X670E/X670): https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-7950x/images/...

Block diagram for AM4 (X570): https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/bus60i/amd_x570_detail...

Cheap small computers with Intel Alder Lake N CPUs, like Intel N100, allocate frequently a single PCIe lane for each SSD slot.

However you are right that such a choice is very unlikely for computers using AMD CPUs or Intel Core CPUs.

AMD's previous socket was usually x16/x4/x4 for GPU/M.2/chipset. For AM5, they added another four lanes, so it's usually x16/x4+x4/x4 for GPU/(2x)M.2/chipset, unless the board is doing something odd with providing lanes for Thunderbolt ports or something like that.

Siena would make a very practical HEDT socket - it's basically half of a bergamo, 6ch DDR5/96x pcie 5.0. It's sort of an unfortunate artifact of the way server platforms have gone that HEDT has fizzled out, they're mostly just too big and it isn't that practical to fit into commodity form-factors anymore, etc. a bigass socket sp3 and 8ch was already quite big, now it's 12ch for SP5 and you have a slightly smaller one at SP6. But still, doing 1DPC in a commodity form factor is difficult, you really need an EEB sort of thing for things like GENOAD8X etc let alone 2 dimms per channel etc, which if you do like a 24-stick board and a socket you don't fit much else.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/20057/amd-releases-epyc-8004-...

2011/2011-3/2066 were actually a reasonable size. Like LGA3678 or whatever as a hobbyist thing doesn't seem practical (the W-3175X stuff) and that was also 6ch, and Epyc/TR are pretty big too etc. There used to exist this size-class of socket that really no longer gets used, there aren't tons of commercial 3-4-6 channel products made anymore, and enthusiast form-factors are stuck in 1980 and don't permit the larger sockets to work that well.

The C266 being able to tap off IOs as SAS3/12gbps or pcie 4.0 slimsas is actually brilliant imo, you can run SAS drives in your homelab without a controller card etc. The Asrock Rack ones look sick, EC266D4U2-2L2Q/E810 lets you basically pull all of the chipset IO off as 4x pcie 4.0x4 slimsas if you want. And actually you can technically use MCIO retimers to pull the pcie slots off, they had a weird topology where you got a physical slot off the m.2 lanes, to allow 4x bifurcated pcie 5.0x4 from the cpu. 8x nvme in a consumer board, half in a fast pcie 5.0 tier and half shared off the chipset.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E...

Wish they'd do something similar with AMD and mcio preferably, like they did with the GENOAD8X. But beyond the adapter "it speaks SAS" part is super useful for homelab stuff imo. AMD also really doesn't make that much use of the chipset, like, where are the x670E boards that use 2 chipsets and just sling it all off as oculink or w/e. Or mining-style board weird shit. Or forced-bifurcation lanes slung off the chipset into a x4x4x4x4 etc.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=G...

All-flash is here, all-nvme is here, you just frustratingly can't address that much of it per system, without stepping up to server class products etc. And that's supposed to be the whole point of the E series chipset, very frustrating. I can't think of many boards that feel like they justify the second chipset, and the ones that "try" feel like they're just there to say they're there. Oh wow you put 14 usb 3.0 10gbps ports on it, ok. How about some thunderbolt instead etc (it's because that's actually expensive). Like tap those ports off in some way that's useful to people in 2024 and not just "16 sata" or "14 usb 3.0" or whatever. M.2 NVMe is "the consumer interface" and it's unfortunately just about the most inconvenient choice for bulk storage etc.

Give me the AMD version of that board where it's just "oops all mcio" with x670e (we don't need usb4 on a server if it drives up cost). Or a miner-style board with infinite x4 slots linked to actual x4s. Or the supercarrier m.2 board with a ton of M.2 sticks standing vertically etc. Nobody does weird shit with what is, on paper, a shit ton of pcie lanes coming off the pair of chipsets. C'mon.

Super glad USB4 is a requirement for X870/X870E, thunderbolt shit is expensive but it'll come down with volume/multisourcing/etc, and it truly is like living in the future. I have done thunderbolt networking and moved data ssd to ssd at 1.5 GB/s. Enclosures are super useful for tinkering too now that bifurcation support on PEG lanes has gotten shitty and gpus keep getting bigger etc. An enclosure is also great for janitoring M.2 cards with a simple $8 adapter off amazon etc (they all work, it's simple physical adapater).

Agreed but it will need to wait for now.

(disclosure I own a 13in one)

Yea closest I see to being better about it is Frame.work laptops, and even then it's not as good a story as desktops, just the best story for upgrading a laptop right now. Other than that buying one and making sure you have at least two thunderbolt (or compatible) ports on separate busses is probably the best you can do since that'd mean two 40Gb/s links for expansion even if it's not portable, but would let you get things like 10GbE adapters or fast external storage and such without compromising too much on capability.

Yes - with more and more users moving to laptops and wanting a longer battery life, raw peak performance hasn't moved much in a decade.

A decade ago, Steam's hardware survey said 8GB was the most popular amount of RAM [1] and today, the latest $1600 Macbook Pro comes with.... 8GB of RAM.

In some ways that's been a good thing - it used to be that software got more and more featureful/bloated and you needed a new computer every 3-5 years just to keep up.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140228170316/http://store.stea...

Better efficiency with three external 4K 120Hz monitors?

Yeah, I'm glad they started including built in gpu so there's something there, but beyond booting to a desktop I wouldn't use this graphics for anything else. But if you're just running a screen and compiling rust, that's all you need. Or in my case, running a home server / NAS.

Fixed, thanks :)

These are decent GPUs for anything other than heavy gaming. I'm driving two 4k screens with it, and even for some light gaming (such as factorio) it's completely fine.

Hard disagree on that one. I am daily driving an RDNA2 graphics unit for 1.5 years now and it’s absolutely sufficient. I mostly do office work and occasionally play Minecraft. It’s absolutely sufficient for that and I don’t see any reason why you‘d want to waste money on a dGPU for that kind of load

Another advantage of having an integrated GPU is you can do a GPU pass-through and let a VM directly and fully use your dedicated GPU.

This could be a thing if you're running native Linux but some games only work on Windows which you run in a VM instead of dual booting.

I have to disagree. They work great for video playback and office work. So media server, and workstations are fine without a dedicated gpu

> The GPU on these parts is there mostly for being able to boot into BIOS or OS for debugging.

That's wildly not true. Transcoding, gaming, multiple displays, etc. They are often used as any other GPU would be used.

> The GPU on these parts is there mostly for being able to boot into BIOS or OS for debugging.

Not at all. I drive a 38" monitor with the iGPU of the 7700X. If you don't game and don't run local AI models it's totally fine.

And... No additional GPU fans.

My 7700X build is so quiet it's nearly silent. I can barely hear it's Noctua NH-12S cooler/fan ramping up when under full load and that's how it should be.

They also mean you can drive monitors using the builtin GPU while using dedicated ones for compute.

[If you're a laptop user, scroll down the thread for laptop Rust compile times, M3 Pro looks great]

You're misguided.

Apple has excellent Notebook CPUs. Apple has great IPC. But AMD and Intel have easily faster CPUs.

https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=...

Blender Benchmark

      AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (16 core)         560.8
      Apple M2 Ultra (24 cores)           501.82
      Apple M3 Max (12 cores)             408.27
      Apple M3 Pro                        226.46
      Apple M3                            160.58

It depends on what you're doing.

I'm a software developer using a compiler that 100%s all cores. I like fast multicore.

      Apple Mac Pro, 64gb, M2 Ultra, $7000
      Apple Mac mini, 32gb, M2 Pro, 2TB SSD, $2600

[Edit2] Compare to: 7950x is $500 and a very fast SSD is $400, fast 64gb is $200, very good board is $400 so I get a very fast dev machine for ~$1700 (0,329 p/$ vs. mini 0,077 p/$)

[Edit] Made a c&p mistake, the mini has no ultra.

Until ARM has a proper UEFI support, it's not a practical desktop/server with a few notable exceptions (Mac, Raspberry Pi) and only because there's so much support from the respective vendors.

I know that there's some work happening about UEFI+ARM (https://developer.arm.com/Architectures/Unified%20Extensible...), but its support is very rare. The only example I can recall is Ampere Altra: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/ampere-altra-max-wind...

AMD used to give decently accurate TDP, but Intel started giving unrealistically optimistic TDP ratings, so AMD joined the game. Their TDP is more of an aspiration than a reality (ironically, Intel seems to have gotten more accurate with their new base and turbo power ratings).

9700x runs 100MHz higher on the same process as the 7700x. If they are actually running at full speed, I don't see how 9700x could possibly be using less power with more transistors at a higher frequency. They could get lower power for the same performance level though if they were being more aggressive about ramping down the frequency (but it's a desktop chip, so why would they?).

You're comparing apples and oranges. Ryzen has never had the lead with 1T performance, but emphasises nT and core counts instead. Memory bandwidth is largely meaningless for desktop CPUs but matters a lot for a SoC with a big GPU.

Strix Halo appears to be AMD's competitor to Apple SoCs which will feature a much bigger iGP and much greater memory bandwidth. When we hear more about that, comparisons will be apt.

(Not a gamer)

For me as a developer Geekbench Clang benchmarks:

    M2 Ultra   233.9 Klines/sec
    7950x      230.3 Klines/sec  
    14900K     215.3 Klines/sec  
    M3 Max     196.5 Klines/sec

> which is still 400 points or so behind apple silicon for a much higher clock speed and a multiplier larger power draw

Not a fair comparison. If we're on about Geekbench as per the announcement, it's +35%. The 15% is a geomean. It might not be better but definitely not far off Apple.

In a similar manner, except Geekbench the geomean of M3 vs M4 isn't that great either.

>Intel still fabs their own CPUs

Isn't Lunar Lake made by TSMC? Supposedly they have comparable efficiency to AMD/Apple/Qualcomm at the cost of making their fab business even less profitable

Good thing TSMC is getting billions of dollars of government subsidies to build fabs all around the world including in the US and Japan.

As long as Biden wins the election, they won't.

Because the US will defend Taiwan.

Would it really be smart to build an AM4 desktop at this point though?

The all-core max clock speed costs a lot of watts for that last 10% - close to 50% of total CPU consumption in some cases.

That's why undervolting has become a thing to do (unless you're an Intel CPU marketer) - give up a few percent of your all-core max clock rate and cut your wattage used by a lot.

I wonder then if the 9900X could be undervolted without losing more than a few percentage points of speed?

4 DIMMs does not equal Quad-channel. I see in AMD's presentation Quad-channel is supported by chipsets, but I am not aware of a current AMD consumer/hedt chip with 4 memory channels.

I think for a while there, the only way to be able to use 128gb was to go TR4 or TRX... I kindof stopped looking for a while, but 100+ boards is certainly a nice change.

> I just had a look and the comparison website I use

Which website is that?

Good to know, maybe I should look again... thanks

I think there's a market for a 7950E with a specific binning for lower power rather than highest possible clocks.

I have a 7950X which I run in Eco mode with air cooling and it's amazingly quiet when not under load and rips when it needs to, I don't see a reason to upgrade any time soon.

> people build their own PCs exactly because they want the opposite of everything in a MacBook: they want modularity, upgradeability and repairability to the point that they are willing to sacrifice power efficiency.

While I’m totally one of those people, aren’t we some rather small minority, nowadays? I mean, obviously still big enough for companies to produce parts we want, but I always keep reading how more and more people are using laptops instead of desktops.

Yeah, bitnets already shift those matmuls to integer math.

Exactly this.

I want plot/character driven games like RPGs to be a curated & carefully designed, plotted, and paced experience.

I want speech & narrative to be scripted! It means someone sat down and thought about the experience it produces for the player. It means a real voice actor has performed it, putting the right emotion and pacing into the line.

I don't want AI generated stilted dialogue, uncanny valley speech, etc.

And I also don't want an extra few hundred watts of power draw on gaming PCs - they're already high and in modern games the CPU is under pretty substantial load, the GPU is maxed out, and the GPU's AI/NPU style cores are being used for things like DLSS too.

Bringing in more compute resource for running speech to text, LLMs, text to speech, etc fast enough to not feel horrible is going to come at substantial power and financial cost.

This but unironically

AMD claims +35% IPC improvement in AES subtest of Geekbench 6. It's not the entire Geekbench 6 CPU suite. It's deceptive.

Overall GB6 improvement is likely around 10-15% only because that's how much IPC improved while clock speed remains the same.

Apple themselves have around 10% IPC uplift with M4 too.

The real issue is that most code people run doesn't use very much SIMD and even less uses AVX-512.

It's not year over year. It's 2 years.

It's disappointing because M4 is significantly ahead. I would expect Zen to make a bigger leap to catch up.

Also, this small leap opens up for Intel's Arrow Lake to take the lead.

No.