Review Cascade-X Review and Availability Thread

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Hitman928

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Apr 15, 2012
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Review embargo I believe lifts at 9 am ET so I will update this post as soon as reviews are published. As always, if there is a review you don't see in this post that you would like to have added, please PM me.

Video reviews
Linux Tech Tips

Print reviews
Hothardware
Tweaktown
Anandtech

For Sale
10980xe and 10920x listed on Newegg but both out of stock.
 
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moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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For me it’s because Microsoft and AMD don’t support Windows 10/Server 2016/Server 2019 Hyper-V Nested Virtualization on AMD.
AMD supports nested virtualization. Looks like Microsoft is still limiting itself to Intel's implementation, and just like with the Windows scheduler this may only change once enough customers complain about it to Microsoft.
 

heymrdj

Diamond Member
May 28, 2007
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AMD supports nested virtualization. Looks like Microsoft is still limiting itself to Intel's implementation, and just like with the Windows scheduler this may only change once enough customers complain about it to Microsoft.

Yes, they do support it. It works fine on Xenserver and ESXi and KVM. However, I don't have enough evidence to prove that it's solely in Microsoft's court. I'm not going to accept AMD pointing fingers and saying it's all their fault any more than I am Microsoft saying it's AMD's. This is a platform issue as a whole, and as companies with a lot of money, they can sort it out. Once they do sort it out, I'm ready to go Threadripper. But I doubt I can wait that long to buy my next workstation.
 

moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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Yes, they do support it. It works fine on Xenserver and ESXi and KVM. However, I don't have enough evidence to prove that it's solely in Microsoft's court. I'm not going to accept AMD pointing fingers and saying it's all their fault any more than I am Microsoft saying it's AMD's. This is a platform issue as a whole, and as companies with a lot of money, they can sort it out. Once they do sort it out, I'm ready to go Threadripper. But I doubt I can wait that long to buy my next workstation.
We had all the same blame dance with the Windows scheduler continuously crapping its pants whenever AMD did some "unexpected" platform topology changes that miraculously caused no issues under Linux. Feel free to absolve Microsoft of its blame, but Windows being closed source you make yourself dependent on Microsoft either way.
 

heymrdj

Diamond Member
May 28, 2007
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We had all the same blame dance with the Windows scheduler continuously crapping its pants whenever AMD did some "unexpected" platform topology changes that miraculously caused no issues under Linux. Feel free to absolve Microsoft of its blame, but Windows being closed source you make yourself dependent on Microsoft either way.

Correct, but labbing up systems that don't match your production Hyper-V or S2D environments is kind of a waste of time. Seeing as ESXi's implementation of nested virtualization on AMD has not been perfect as well, I'm not going to write off software's part of it. We all know Windows is the main problem here, but that doesn't mean that others can't also be better. I refuse to bury my head in the sand with "Microsoft isn't free and open" redacted.




No profanity allowed in tech.


esquared
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TheGiant

Senior member
Jun 12, 2017
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The question is whether paying 43% more in order to have the fastest chip for 75% of the time is worth it, and as with everything, it's workload dependent.
to answer this question with this number of cores you need to count the SW licenses in
pure CPU prices comparison is just informative
and ofc current OEE and its improvement+transition price+opex changes
those HEDT chips are industrial machines
 

amrnuke

Golden Member
Apr 24, 2019
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to answer this question with this number of cores you need to count the SW licenses in
pure CPU prices comparison is just informative
and ofc current OEE and its improvement+transition price+opex changes
those HEDT chips are industrial machines
Great points. The per-core licensing is case-dependent. I know that the software I was using in my lab (3+ years ago) was embarrassingly-parallel and did not charge per-core. But I'm sure there are many very important ones that do. In the end, benchmarks are nice to get a chubby over, but if the chip sucks for your use-case, then it doesn't make much sense.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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Where is Intel's ECC support?

Please tell me your joking with sarcasm in this statement.

If you seriously stating AMD has better ECC support, i think you may have started drinking too soon.

First off if your expecting ECC to work on a X299, that isnt workstation class, then your not going to get ECC.
IF your thinking you can find a cheap X299 workstation board then again, your not going to have a nice day.

Lastly, you do not pickup an i9 to run on a X299 workstation.
You would do that on a Xeon platform running Xeon's where you would have a much better ECC / Un/(Reg), and experience even against AMD's EYPC lineup.

Of course tho, that comes with a price in that being, get ready for every possible security loop hole imaginable as everyone seems to love hacking intels.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Does y-cruncher scale linearly with frequency, especially on high core count CPUs?

If a). it's single socket and b). the memory footprint is small enough to fit in RAM only, then generally, yes. Extremely slow RAM may hold back proper frequency scaling (especially over large frequency jumps). I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that a hypothetical 10980XE and 3990X will have fast enough RAM that scaling to 4 GHz and 3 GHz (respectively) will not be inhibited by RAM speed.

the numberworld link also says 2x xeon 28C wins with 15s and 1x 7940x at 3,7GHz AVX512 has 25s
doesnt look like a predictable benchmark

WRT the Xeon and EPYC numbers at the top of the chart, we have no idea what clockspeeds the EPYC is running in the bench. I am skeptical of the results since there's no way a 2x 7742 system should be losing a bench like this against a pair of Xeon Golds. The 7940x is a bit of an outlier (note it's running a newer version though; it may have newer optimizations), though if you choose to use it as a baseline for examining Skylake-X/Cascade Lake-X performance, we can extrapolate 4.0 GHz AVX512 performance of a 10980XE. In that case, a 10980XE @ 4.0 GHz AVX512 would turn in a time of 17.8s - still slower than a hypothetical 3990X @ 3.0 GHz static.

edit: I wanted to add some numbers of my own to provide some clarification:

Running a 3900x @ 4.3 GHz with DDR4-3733 14-16-14-28 1T produced the following result:

ycrunchtemp.png

Increasing core count by 50% over the listed 4.3 GHz 3700x (41.545s) produced a result that wasn't as fast as I expected, indicating that y-cruncher may be having problems scaling with core count in some scenarios (which might explain why the EPYC 7742 x2 lost to Xeon Golds and why the 7940x outran a 7980x with only a 100 MHz increase in clockspeed). Assuming proper scaling with core count, my 3900x should turn in a score of ~27s, rather than the 35s wall time (or 33s computation time) reported above. In this case, core scaling only applied at ~72% efficiency based on wall time.

If I apply the same efficiency when extrapolating the hypothetical performance of a 64c 3990X @ 3 GHz, the 3990X would complete the benchmark in ~10s (give or take) rather than the ~7s I originally predicted. That being said, scaling from 8c->64c in this benchmark may produce even less efficiency than the 72% obtained above.

edit edit: more food for thought. When running this 3900x @ "stock" (no 4.3 GHz OC) using the 250m time from the Anandtech 3950X review:

ycrunchtemp2.png

Note that AT is only using DDR4-3200 for their 3950X. But still. Core-scaling here in the 250m benchmark is basically non-existent. This result sits right in the middle of the 3950x HP and RHP results.
 
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amrnuke

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Apr 24, 2019
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You realize that "25% of the time its better" also means "75% of the time its worse," right?

You know you've just stated that 3960X > 10980XE?
I think his point SHOULD have been that the 3960X costs 43% more but only delivers 21% more performance (ignoring, of course, overall platform cost). That's a far more salient argument for recommending the 10980XE... unless you're actually using HEDT for a specific use case, in which case you find that use-case's benchmark and pick the best chip at the best price. A 3960X does no good if Rust is the best benchmark comparison for your tasks. Similarly, a 10980XE probably makes no sense if you're rendering or doing stuff that Intel engineers haven't optimized for yet.
 

Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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I think his point SHOULD have been that the 3960X costs 43% more but only delivers 21% more performance (ignoring, of course, overall platform cost). That's a far more salient argument for recommending the 10980XE...

At Computerbase they found that the 3960X is 47% faster than the 10980XE, so price between the two is set linearly to price difference, generaly that s not the case, so obviously AMD did take account of the competition offering before setting the price...

 

amrnuke

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Apr 24, 2019
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At Computerbase they found that the 3960X is 47% faster than the 10980XE, so price between the two is set linearly to price difference, generaly that s not the case, so obviously AMD did take account of the competition offering before setting the price...

This is true for ComputerBase's test suite, which is not far different from what you'll see on Anandtech, TechPowerUp, etc. However, for many labs and use cases, Phoronix's test suite is more applicable - it is certainly more massive and the chances your specific software has an analog in Phoronix's suite is far higher.

Again, find your use-case and buy the best chip for that use-case. Don't buy a TR3 if you're using software that is highly optimized for Intel that the 10980XE is benching better in. Similarly, don't buy a 10980XE if your software runs twice as fast on TR3. I'm not trying to anoint a winner, by the way. Overall, the TR3 wins more often than it loses. The point is that the TR3 will not be the best chip for everyone, and instead of blindly buying whatever the reviews say is best, it's much more prudent and wise to buy what is actually best for your purposes.
 

coercitiv

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Jan 24, 2014
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Folks, don't believe these fools, buy the best software for your hardware! Software is immaterial, buy the die that barely fits your palm. Feel it!

What a bunch of pragmatics...
 

Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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Pricing of the CL-X line, there s 19% VAT included :

1-1080.abe80066.png


 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Likely due to the shortage, Intel seems to have mostly abandoned Cascade Lake-X. Probably for the best.

Why do you say that? No availability of parts?

edit: ShopBLT has the 10980XE "on order" with ~100 parts shipping in to their warehouses. B&HPhoto has the 10940X on pre-order.
 

Hitman928

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Apr 15, 2012
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Why do you say that? No availability of parts?

edit: ShopBLT has the 10980XE "on order" with ~100 parts shipping in to their warehouses. B&HPhoto has the 10940X on pre-order.

Despite having launched ~2 weeks ago, none of the online retailers (U.S.) have yet to have it in stock according to nowinstock.net (furthest right column is date last seen in stock). BH has been taking pre-orders but expected availability isn't until mid February, 2020.

1575829802192.png


1575829912437.png

I wouldn't say that qualifies as abandoned, but certainly a paper launch with unknown time frame on availability and volume. If we hit summer of next year with little to no availability still at that point, I'd say abandoned would be appropriate.
 

Kocicak

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Jan 17, 2019
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Despite having launched ~2 weeks ago, none of the online retailers (U.S.) have yet to have it in stock ... . BH has been taking pre-orders but expected availability isn't until mid February, 2020. ... a paper launch with unknown time frame on availability and volume.
I wonder what MB manufacturers which released new X299X boards think about this.
 

lobz

Platinum Member
Feb 10, 2017
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Yes, they do support it. It works fine on Xenserver and ESXi and KVM. However, I don't have enough evidence to prove that it's solely in Microsoft's court. I'm not going to accept AMD pointing fingers and saying it's all their fault any more than I am Microsoft saying it's AMD's. This is a platform issue as a whole, and as companies with a lot of money, they can sort it out. Once they do sort it out, I'm ready to go Threadripper. But I doubt I can wait that long to buy my next workstation.
With this thinking I sure do hope you don't go Threadripper, god forbid something goes wrong and you blame it all on AMD :)
 

heymrdj

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May 28, 2007
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With this thinking I sure do hope you don't go Threadripper, god forbid something goes wrong and you blame it all on AMD :)

God forbid companies sort out their own issues instead of leaving it to the general public. None of the big companies are shameless not deserve any small violins. AMD could have this sorted if they wanted to bad enough. In the enterprise space, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I go with what is supported so the rest of the team isn’t dealing with super glue and nails for an infrastructure. As for what I use, don’t worry your tender self, I don’t seem to have any issues on my end.
 

lobz

Platinum Member
Feb 10, 2017
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God forbid companies sort out their own issues instead of leaving it to the general public. None of the big companies are shameless not deserve any small violins. AMD could have this sorted if they wanted to bad enough. In the enterprise space, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I go with what is supported so the rest of the team isn’t dealing with super glue and nails for an infrastructure. As for what I use, don’t worry your tender self, I don’t seem to have any issues on my end.
I really don't take AMD for a company that doesn't try to solve its own issues instead of leaving it to the general public. Our opinions may differ.
Attaboy! You show 'em good, real good.