Author Topic: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?  (Read 1062 times)

Offline Krusty

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Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« on: August 25, 2017, 08:56:25 AM »
I heard all the hype leading up to Threadripper. Getting into 1800X+ you get into sTR4 chipset. Motherboards for that on newegg were running $400 or more, vs the AM4 socket type motherboards that start as low as $60-$80.

So that's a pricey chip and a pricey motherboard. Looking at the benchmarks I'm not seeing all the fuss. It's a little faster in some tests but a little slower in others. Considering the benefits of Intel chips right now I'm finding it hard to believe this is really living up to all its hype. I can see the potential for future scaling with cores and whatnot, but it's definitely not there now, and you can add 50 cores but it's still only going to process as much as you can code to be processed at any given time. These to me seem more like they're not practical for PC use or even gaming in general.


So... threadripper, or i9? What's the best choice for the future?

I was window-shopping a parts list and looking at ryzen cores, maybe with an 1800X but because of the absurd prices I had to limit myself to ryzen 7 cores and not threadrippers. Even with a $1000 intel chip vs the lower-end $800 1920X, you still have to add on $400-$500 for a motherboard that can run it.

So... $1000 cpu plus $200 mobo for Intel, vs $800-$1000 cpu plus $400+ for mobo for threadripper. Not sure why all the "ooh, look, the price point is lower than intel but it's still competitive!!"

I just see more of the same pattern I've noticed in AMD in the past. Too pricey. Good hardware, but not good enough to dominate like Intel has in recent generations.

I like it when they think outside the box, break conventional thinking with chip design, and actually pull it off. I love innovation like that. That's how we get to Mars (to throw out an example). That's how we progress.

I'm just not seeing it here. Not yet.

Offline Vulcan

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2017, 03:20:24 PM »
For the CPU and gaming it's all about clock speed. Always choose the highest actual clockspeed.

Offline Skuzzy

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2017, 03:37:00 PM »
Well, that is sort of true.  It is more about how much can be done per clock cycle.  Some CPU's are more efficient than others and get more done at a slower clock than a faster clocked CPU can do.

It is not just CPU either.  You can have a rocking CPU but connect it to slow RAM and your performance can tank.

Games like memory.
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Offline Bizman

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2017, 04:11:53 PM »
Skuzzy, that's interesting. Can you give us some rule of thumb for getting the optimal memory? Or some formula? Values to look for? My knowledge about this issue is based on what I heard almost two decades ago, the great wisdom having been to get as much memory as possible. However, the fact that 4 GB of DDR3 performs critically worse than 1 GB of GDDR5.

I recall you once gave us a formula for calculating the actual speed of RAM. Could you please put that into your stickies?

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Offline Krusty

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2017, 05:37:09 PM »
speed can also be aided by multi chanel RAM. If that CPU and motherboard are set up with quad-channel ram, for example, they can utilize those 4 sticks better than 1 big stick of the same capacity.


I'm assuming you have adequate ram matching your particular setup at the appropriate speeds. I was looking more at the CPU and chipsets by themselves.

Offline BoilerDown

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2017, 01:26:04 AM »
Wait for the next generation of Intels.  They're gunna be out soon and I've read pretty good stuff about them.

If you primarily care about gaming, you should always choose the best single core CPU as long as it has 3 or 4 cores or more in total.  And this still means Intel mainstream CPUs, not the ones with huge core counts.
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Offline Denniss

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Re: Soooo... Threadripper or i9 ?
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2017, 02:36:27 AM »
Neither TR nor I9 are optimal for gaming. They are good if you have multi-threaded applications requiring lots of cores and lots of memory bandwith.
In TR you have lots of PCIe lanes available even in the slowest model, on Intel boards you need the fastest and most expensive CPUs for the same.