Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance
by Ian Cutress on August 17, 2017 12:01 PM ESTCPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modeling, and so on and so forth.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to compile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
For our test, we compile a version of v56 under MSVC and report the time in 'Compiles per Day', a more scalable metric to represent over time. Other publications might perfom this test differently (Ars Technica uses a clang-cl compiler with VC++ linking, for example).
One of the interesting data points in our test is the Compile. Because this test requires a lot of cross-core communication and DRAM, we get an interesting metric where the 1950X still comes out on top due to the core counts, but because the 1920X has fewer cores per CCX, it actually falls behind the 1950X in Game Mode and the 1800X despite having more cores.
PCMark8: link
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
Strangely, PCMark 8's Creative test seems to be failing across the board. We're trying to narrow down the issue.
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Ian Cutress - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
Visit https://myhacker.net For Latest Hacking & security updates.Glock24 - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
Ha your account bee hacked Ian? This seems like an out of place comment from a spam bot.zodiacfml - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
Useless. Why cripple an expensive chip? It is already mentioend that the value of high core counts is mega tasking, like rendering while gaming. I wouldn't be to tell a increase in of 10% or less in performance but I will do for multi-tasking.Greyscend - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
To summarize, I can pay $1000 for a new and crazy powerful CPU that gives me the option to turn $500 of it off so that I can sporadically gain performance in games at a level that is mostly equal to or below the level of standard testing deviations? Worth.Greyscend - Saturday, August 19, 2017 - link
I want competition in the CPU market so I feel like AMD should consider redistributing funds from what can only be described as the "Gimmicks Department" back to the actual processor R&D department. Although, the Gimmicks Department is getting pretty good at UI development. Look at the software they churned out that turns $500 of your CPU off! It's beautiful! They also seem to be getting bolder since they asked Anandtech to effectively re-write an entire article in order to more succinctly point out how consumers can effectively disable half of the CPU cores they paid for with almost no discernible real world effect. Pretty impressive considering the number of consumers who seem genuinely interested in this type of feature.Oxford Guy - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
"research is paramount"Yeah, like the common knowledge that Zen reviews shouldn't be handicapped by only testing them with slow RAM.
Joel Hruska at ExtremeTech tested Ryzen on day 1 with 3200 speed RAM. Tom's tested the latest batch of consumer Zen (Ryzen 3) with 3200.
And yet... this site has apparently just discovered why it's so important to not kneecap Zen with slow RAM — as if we're using ECC for enterprise stuff all the time.
Gastec - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
Why such abysmal performance in Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTA5 for Sapphire Nitro R9 and RX480 with Thradripper CPU's?Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
I can't say I'm an expert on this subject but it looks like their tested games generally are a list of some of the poorer performers on AMD. Tomb Raider, GTA5, etc.Dirt 4, by contrast, shows Vega 56 beating a 1080 Ti at Tech Report.
dwade123 - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
Threadripper is a mess. There's always a compromise with AMD.mapesdhs - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
Because of course X299 doesn't involve aaany compromise at all. :D