Does Ryzen potentially "kill" the unofficial consumer Xeon DIY PC builds?

[AMDScooter]

Sure. It might be a few months as I'm collecting parts on the cheap.. ;p

 

[cbn]

Do we know if Ryzen's memory controller will accept OC RAM? (The reason I am asking is because quad channel DDR3 1600 has the same memory bandwidth as dual channel DDR4 3200, but with tighter timings)

With regard to my comment above....

I found out Ryzen boards do allow memory overclocking. However, looking at the ASUS Prime B350-Plus (one of the cheapest boards at Newegg) it does appear there is only two RAMs that allows this:

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb...QVL.pdf?_ga=1.107061186.1377924842.1489219140

(See examples of DDR4 3000+ kits only allowing DDR4 2133 on Ryzen)

Are other budget boards this limited for memory OC?

 

[cbn]

Is there really a significant memory bandwidth difference between quad ddr3 and dual ddr4?

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2015/september/ddr3_vs_ddr4_generational

You are right. Dual channel fast DDR4 can match quad channel DDR3 for read bandwidth:

 

[cbn]

Some gaming results from pcgameshardware comparing Ryzen 1800x vs. i7-3960X @ stock clocks (which is the same as Xeon E5-1660):

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Ryzen-7-1800X-CPU-265804/Tests/Test-Review-1222033/

i7-3960X @ stock clocks wins 4 out of 7 games.

So Sandy Bridge-E (and by extension Xeon E5) did surprisingly well. Also consider the Sandy Bridge-E is only a 6C/12T while the Ryzen 1800X is 8C/16T.

P.S. Xeon E5-1650 is only 100 Mhz slower in base clock and turbo compared to i7-3960X and Xeon E5-1660.

 

[thepaleobiker]

Some gaming results from pcgameshardware comparing Ryzen 1800x vs. i7-3960X @ stock clocks (which is the same as Xeon E5-1660):

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Ryzen-7-1800X-CPU-265804/Tests/Test-Review-1222033/

i7-3960X @ stock clocks wins 4 out of 7 games.

So Sandy Bridge-E (and by extension Xeon E5) did surprisingly well. Also consider the Sandy Bridge-E is only a 6C/12T while the Ryzen 1800X is 8C/16T.

P.S. Xeon E5-1650 is only 100 Mhz slower in base clock and turbo compared to i7-3960X and Xeon E5-1660.

Good article, thanks for the link!

I went ahead and compared numbers for the i7-3960X, new is ~ $1000 (amazon.com) while used CPUs come in around $200 - so there's value savings in the used CPU mkt. (I'm still looking into savings from DDR3/X79 mobo etc)

REgards
Vish

 

[thepaleobiker]

Some gaming results from pcgameshardware comparing Ryzen 1800x vs. i7-3960X @ stock clocks (which is the same as Xeon E5-1660):

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Ryzen-7-1800X-CPU-265804/Tests/Test-Review-1222033/

i7-3960X @ stock clocks wins 4 out of 7 games.

So Sandy Bridge-E (and by extension Xeon E5) did surprisingly well. Also consider the Sandy Bridge-E is only a 6C/12T while the Ryzen 1800X is 8C/16T.

P.S. Xeon E5-1650 is only 100 Mhz slower in base clock and turbo compared to i7-3960X and Xeon E5-1660.

I spent some time looking at Ebay/NewEgg/Amazon and came away with the picture of the 2011/X79 chipset based motherboards being in the $200+ range even used ! I'm open minded and looking for a nice cheap way into more cores/CPU Performance but it looks difficult in a pure play value proposition to compare older Intel HEDT chips. I think my itch will need to wait till April 11 to get more definitive answers... and for now, I am more than happy with my i5-7500 .... it does not hurt to fantasize about a mini-ITX Ryzen 4/6 core machine though!

PS : I really am amazed by the linked article you posted, and the quality of review/detail into the analysis! Wow. I couldnt read German at all, but the charts speak for themselves. Really high tech and modern website structure. Thank you!

 

[cbn]

Would this refub PC be what you are referring to? The E5 1650 along with mobo/case and even Win 10 Pro for less than $400

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAC0F5DU5633

$389.99 free shipping for HP Z420, E5-1650, 8GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Windows 10 Pro and some kind of low end WS Video card is pretty typical.

P.S. I got my HP Z420 (Mint condition) with E5-1607, 8GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Windows 10 Pro and low end Video card for $209 shipped from a Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher on clearance sale......so a person looking hard might be able to do better.

Here is an identically spec'd machine for $349.99 free shipping:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...rofessional_64_Bit-_-1VK-001E-08G43-_-Product

(Still not the best deal I could imagine , but getting better)

 

[cbn]

it does not hurt to fantasize about a mini-ITX Ryzen 4/6 core machine though!

Yep, I've been waiting to see what those AM4 Small form factor chipsets (eg, X300) bring.

P.S. One case that I think would be interesting is the Silverstone RVZ0B (or ML08). This would enable a very small footprint desktop yet still handle up to a 13" long video card. I've been thinking of such a PC as a "APU replacer desktop". (ie, The type of PC that reduces the need for APUs on LGA desktop and thus would allow AMD to instead focus the small number of APUs they have on BGA mobile.....the place Nvidia is headed with their future APUs.)

 

[Riok]

Ryzen made anything but e5 v3-v4 ES irrelevant. Seriously, they will even make a bank of those moralists that wont touch an ES even if its a 2699 v3 at 50 bucks. Its really a win win for them.

Now if we had 2P am4 boards, THAT would put the final nail in the cheapo e5 build coffin

Sent from my XT1040 using Tapatalk

Ps: even 1x1700 is stronger than 2x 2670s v1 and probably v2 too. Its no contest really. And you can run that 1700 even on a a320 board. The whole value proposition of v1 and v2 2xe5 xeons got demolished. Only those having an agenda and the very owners that dont want the remaining value in their already built 2xE5 v1-v2 builds would advice for these setups anymore.

When all the big names will get rid of their v3s for cheap we can talk again about intel being back in the cheapo workstation builds again.

Thank you, this is what I had in mind as well : the demolition of the "value proposition" of older Xeons and HEDT systems. I think you put it way more succinctly thank I did in my OP

Just bought a xeon platform for 270€:
xeon 1650v3 ES for 150€
x99 MB for 100€
8GB of 2133Mhz ECC REG DDR4 for 25€

According to cpu.userbenchmark.com the Ryzen 5 1600 is 1% faster than this cpu, it has an Insanely higher market share (+10%) and is hugely more popular (+137%).

I could get a similar ryzen platform for 320€:
Ryzen 5 1600 used for 150€
AM4 MB for 90€
8GB of 2666Mhz DDR4 for 80€

So the Xeon v3 can already can already compete for the price. Being hugely less popular will certainly be an advantage in the future to get cheaper xeons and low cost DDR4 coming from the server farms.

There is a very interesting remark from William M George on Pudget's blog:

"It may not be advertised to work, but every X99 board we have tested works with DDR4 Registered ECC memory - when using either Core i7 or Xeon processors. Intel certainly doesn't market either X99 or Core i7s as being compatible with ECC, most motherboards are not listed by manufacturers as supporting it, and the BIOS on X99 boards doesn't usually support ECC error logging like some server boards do - but the fundamental functionality of compensating for single-bit memory errors works great."

I feel like used xeon v3 is a very unofficial consumer market which still have some "value proposition".

 

[Jan Olšan]

8GB of 2133Mhz ECC REG DDR4 for 25€

Registered memory won't run in normal X99 motherboard, you need a server board specifically designed for Reg. DIMMs. That's why they are so cheap...

 

[repoman0]

xeon 1650v3 ES for 150€

You're comparing an illegally sold (and illegally bought, though they will never come after you), potentially buggy and leaky chip that may have been used for accelerated aging testing or similar, to a legitimate stable production platform. There's a reason the ES chips are so cheap and the retail release V3 xeons aren't. I wouldn't use an ES Xeon for anything of any importance.

 

[Rifter]

You're comparing an illegally sold (and illegally bought, though they will never come after you), potentially buggy and leaky chip that may have been used for accelerated aging testing or similar, to a legitimate stable production platform. There's a reason the ES chips are so cheap and the retail release V3 xeons aren't. I wouldn't use an ES Xeon for anything of any importance.

Yeah pretty much this.

 

[Riok]

Registered memory won't run in normal X99 motherboard, you need a server board specifically designed for Reg. DIMMs. That's why they are so cheap...

Did you ever try or do you repeat something you read somewhere ?

 

[Riok]

You're comparing an illegally sold (and illegally bought, though they will never come after you), potentially buggy and leaky chip that may have been used for accelerated aging testing or similar, to a legitimate stable production platform. There's a reason the ES chips are so cheap and the retail release V3 xeons aren't. I wouldn't use an ES Xeon for anything of any importance.

Ok, here are the moralists PPB was talking about Then you have to add 200€ to get a production xeon, making the platform cost 470€. That's really not a good value compared with the ryzen. Let's check that thread in 2020 to see if there is still hope for the xeons

 

[Jan Olšan]

Did you ever try or do you repeat something you read somewhere ?

I didn't have the opportunity but that's basically fact. Registered and unregistered (normal) DIMMs are very different an incompatible. A CPU's memory controller can perfectly support both, but a motherboard can't, it has to be wired for one or the other, and only server boards are made for RDIMM.
I guess do the googling if you don't believe me. I recommend you do before you try to buy them.

 

[Riok]

I didn't have the opportunity but that's basically fact. Registered and unregistered (normal) DIMMs are very different an incompatible. A CPU's memory controller can perfectly support both, but a motherboard can't, it has to be wired for one or the other, and only server boards are made for RDIMM.
I guess do the googling if you don't believe me. I recommend you do before you try to buy them.

Thank you.

 

[zinfamous]

You're comparing an illegally sold (and illegally bought, though they will never come after you), potentially buggy and leaky chip that may have been used for accelerated aging testing or similar, to a legitimate stable production platform. There's a reason the ES chips are so cheap and the retail release V3 xeons aren't. I wouldn't use an ES Xeon for anything of any importance.

also...it comes with that uh, huge security risk and/or performance hit from patching Meltdown. ....so there's that.

 

[eek2121]

Some gaming results from pcgameshardware comparing Ryzen 1800x vs. i7-3960X @ stock clocks (which is the same as Xeon E5-1660):

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Ryzen-7-1800X-CPU-265804/Tests/Test-Review-1222033/

i7-3960X @ stock clocks wins 4 out of 7 games.

So Sandy Bridge-E (and by extension Xeon E5) did surprisingly well. Also consider the Sandy Bridge-E is only a 6C/12T while the Ryzen 1800X is 8C/16T.

P.S. Xeon E5-1650 is only 100 Mhz slower in base clock and turbo compared to i7-3960X and Xeon E5-1660.

I don't consider myself to be a fanboy, but, while I cannot read german, I find those results to be suspect. I own most of the games listed in that article, and I see something completely different with my Threadripper. Also, the 1800x easily overclocks to 4 GHz, while it's a bit trickier to overclock most Xeons.

EDIT #2: That looks like a launch day article. 10 bucks says they were using DDR4 2133 vs the recommended DDR4 3200 for Ryzen.

 

[mattiasnyc]

Ok, here are the moralists PPB was talking about Then you have to add 200€ to get a production xeon, making the platform cost 470€. That's really not a good value compared with the ryzen. Let's check that thread in 2020 to see if there is still hope for the xeons

I think the objection is probably about comparing apples to oranges. If one item is cheaper because it isn't supposed to be sold retail, then you either need to find a similarly not intended to be sold retail item to compare it to, or just stick to the actual ones on sale.

Otherwise the comparison is a bit.... flawed...

 

[Riok]

Otherwise the comparison is a bit.... flawed...

I don't think the "unofficial consumer Xeon DIY PC builds" is about "on sale" deals... but about what is possible to achieve with the retired xeons coming out cheap. Then I see mainly 2 ways to use them that are quite different: as workstations or as gaming pc.

With the low cost retired ECC I am pretty confident the xeons will keep being a good deal for workstation usage if you want lots of ram. But let's look at gaming usage. So let's say we are ok with 16Gb of ram and want to run a 1070/1080. How does Ryzen then compares with retired Xeons ? Does it kill the deals ? Let's take Firestrike as a benchmark to get a rough idea how games would perform.

Firestrike results:
Intel Xeon Processor X5670 (6 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 18000 (cost 40€)
Intel Xeon Processor E5-1650 v2 (6 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 18000 (cost 140€)
Intel Xeon Processor E5-1650 v3 (6 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 18000 (cost 600€)
Intel Core i7-7700 (4 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 18000 (cost 250€ )
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (6 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 19000 (cost 200€ )
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (8 cores) + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 = 20000 (cost 300€ )

So looking at thoose results, one can see all thoose processors won't bottleneck a big video cards. They look all very good at gaming.

It's obvious the x58 platform is still a great budget option and easily kills the Ryzen.

The x79 platform will save a little on ram so I wouldn't say it's killed by Ryzen, no.

As for the x99 platform, it is simply to early to talk about since it is not yet retired "en masse" but unless you get a very good deal I really doubt it can compete.

One also as to remind the value of the xeons is that their price is dropping much faster than consumer cpu so in 1/2 year from now this could change.

I am waiting for your comments and any links with good benchmarks.

 

[Riok]

Here is an interesting video with real world comparison between a Ryzen 5 1600 and a Xeon e5-1650. Both run games smoothly, being only limited by GPU.

Xeon E5-1650 vs Ryzen 5 1600 in GTA V, PUBG, Resident evil 7,etc... Stock clock and OC

Shopping for the xeon platform today on aliexpress:
xeon 1650 110€
2*4 gb ECC DDR3 25€
Huanan x79 90€ (V2.49 with m2)
Total 225€

Compared to the ryzen platform:
Ryzen 5 1600 150€ (used)
AM4 MB for 90€
8GB of 2666Mhz DDR4 for 80€
Total 320€

That's a 100€ difference with widely available deals. 155€ more for the Ryzen platform if you want 16GB of RAM. As we have yet to see games using 6 cores and singe core performance is increasing so slowly, I feel like Ryzen has not yet killed the retired xeon market

 

[repoman0]

also...it comes with that uh, huge security risk and/or performance hit from patching Meltdown. ....so there's that.

I doubt the x58 and x79 boards under discussion here will ever be patched (Huanan???) ... so no performance hit, but they'll be wide open security holes.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I don't think the "unofficial consumer Xeon DIY PC builds" is about "on sale" deals... but about what is possible to achieve with the retired xeons coming out cheap.

No, you're misunderstanding the objection. The objection is that you shouldn't compare a product that isn't meant for retail, an engineering sample (if I understand nomenclature correctly), with a retail product. If you're buying a used ES then compare that to a used Ryzen 1600. In that thread-necro-post you found a 1600 at far more money than I did googling Ebay for 10 seconds ($80 Ryzen 1600).

That's why comparisons like that are difficult.

To me it makes far more sense to compare current products and their performance relative to price, and then the absolute performance relative to older products, but leave the declaration of absolute value between old and new out. The reason for leaving it out being that prices vary on older and/or used products and it gets even harder when trying to put a value on things like warranty.

I am waiting for your comments and any links with good benchmarks.

Find a comfy place to sit....

 

[repoman0]

Here is an interesting video with real world comparison between a Ryzen 5 1600 and a Xeon e5-1650. Both run games smoothly, being only limited by GPU.

Xeon E5-1650 vs Ryzen 5 1600 in GTA V, PUBG, Resident evil 7,etc... Stock clock and OC

Shopping for the xeon platform today on aliexpress:
xeon 1650 110€
2*4 gb ECC DDR3 25€
Huanan x79 90€ (V2.49 with m2)
Total 225€

Compared to the ryzen platform:
Ryzen 5 1600 150€ (used)
AM4 MB for 90€
8GB of 2666Mhz DDR4 for 80€
Total 320€

That's a 100€ difference with widely available deals. 155€ more for the Ryzen platform if you want 16GB of RAM. As we have yet to see games using 6 cores and singe core performance is increasing so slowly, I feel like Ryzen has not yet killed the retired xeon market

You can get a good AM4 board new for at least 20 euros less from a quick search (the board I use is now $60 in the states). So you're now looking at 75 euros extra, and in return you get a new platform with a motherboard from a reputable brand with no security risks and a much longer useful life that doesn't require an ES chip and ancient used memory to make it cheap enough. AM4 will be around and supported for years, X79 is dead. It's all around a crazy value proposition in favor of AM4.

 

[Riok]

No, you're misunderstanding the objection. The objection is that you shouldn't compare a product that isn't meant for retail, an engineering sample (if I understand nomenclature correctly), with a retail product.

Yes, I misunderstood your objection, sorry for that. I personally would try an ES but I understand it's not proper to compare with. That's why I moved to the Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Xeon E5 1650.

Your 80$ Ryzen is an auction (The last auction on january 5th closed at 160$.)