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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ddriver - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Why not? We've had 16 core CPUs long before W10 was launched, and it has allegedly been heavily updated since then.But it is NOT the "coder"'s responsibility. Programmers don't get any say, they are paid workers, paid to do as they are told. Not that I don't have the impression that a lot of the code that's being written is below the standard, but the actual decision making is not a product of software programmers but that of software architects, and the latter are even more atrocious than the actual programmers.
HollyDOL - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Sadly, the reality is much worse... those architects are ordered by managers, economic persons etc. who, sadly often, don't know more about computer than where's power button. And they want products with minimal cost and 'yesterday was late'.ddriver - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Well, yeah, the higher you go up the latter the grosser the incompetence level.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
Interesting test results. I think they demonstrate pretty clearly why Threadripper isn't really a very good option for pure gaming workloads. The big takeaway is that there are more affordable processors with lower TDPs offer comparable or better performance without adding additional settings that few people will realize exist and even fewer people will fiddle with enough to determine which settings actually improve performance in their particular software library. The Ryzen 7 series is probably a much better overall choice than TR right now if you don't have specific tasks that require all those cores and threads.Gothmoth - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
"I think they demonstrate pretty clearly why Threadripper isn't really a very good option for pure gaming workloads."wow.... what a surprise.
thanks for pointing that out mr. obvious. :-)
Gigaplex - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
These are single GPU tests. Threadripper has enough PCIe lanes to do large multi GPU systems. More GPU usually trumps better CPU in the high end gaming scene, especially with 4k resolution.BrokenCrayons - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
Yes, but multi-GPU setups are generally not used for gaming-centric operations. There's been tacit acknowledgement of this as the state of things by NV since the release of the 10x0 series. Features like Crossfire and SLI support are barely a bullet point in marketing materials these days. With good reason since game support is waning as well and DX12 is positioned to pretty nail the multi-GPU coffin shut entirely except in corner cases where it MIGHT be possible to leverage an iGPU alongside a dGPU if a game engine developer bothers to invest time into banging out code to support it. That places TR's generous PCIe lane count and the potential multi-GPU usage in the domain of professional workloads that need GPU compute power.Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
I agree with ddriverWe should not have to fiddle with the settings and reboot to game mode on these things
Windows should handle the hardware seamlessly in the background for whatever end use we put these systems to
The problem is getting Microsoft to let the end users use the full potential of our hardware
If the framework for the hardware is not fully implemented in the O.S., every "FIX" looks a bit like the one AMD is using here
I think gaming on anything over 4 cores might require a "proper" update from Microsoft working with the hardware manufacturers
Sometimes it might be nice to use the full potential of the systems we have instead of Microsoft deciding that all of our problems can be fixed with another cloud service
Gothmoth - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
but but.. what about linux.i mean linux is the savior, not?
it has not won a 2.2% marketshare on teh desktop for nothing.
sarcasm off....
HomeworldFound - Thursday, August 17, 2017 - link
What can we expect Microsoft to do prior to a product like this launching. If a processor operates in a manner that requires the operating system to be adjusted, the company selling it needs to approach Microsoft and provide an implementation, and it should be ready for launch. If that isn't possible then why manufacture something that doesn't work correctly and requires hacky fixes to run.