Question Ryzen 5k series for gaming, 1 chiplet or 2?

Nov 26, 2005
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"The single core chiplet has some small benefits over a dual chiplet design where some cross-CPU communication is needed, and that comes across in some of our very CPU-limited gaming benchmarks."

What benefits are gained with 1 chiplet VS 2 chiplets? Is it lower latency?
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
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"The single core chiplet has some small benefits over a dual chiplet design where some cross-CPU communication is needed, and that comes across in some of our very CPU-limited gaming benchmarks."

What benefits are gained with 1 chiplet VS 2 chiplets? Is it lower latency?
The latency when communicating between cores on different chiplets is ~80ns. It is 10-20ns within the chiplet.
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
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So one can assume 1 chiplet would be beneficial over 2, hench the 5800X, 5600X, at the time of this post.
Only for communication between chiplets. Which isn't shown to be an advantage in any benchmark I've seen. Probably because if you need more than 8 cores (needing to communicate over chiplets) it helps actually having more than 8 cores versus not having more than 8 cores.
 

lightmanek

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Feb 19, 2017
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I would always go with two chiplet CPU if money allows as it is quite easy to disable one chiplet via motherboard BIOS or even by masking threads in Windows. On the other hand it is not so easy to solder another chiplet to your CPU, I know of only few companies in the world which could do it, but they are busy manufacturing stuff for AMD :p
 

damian101

Senior member
Aug 11, 2020
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As long as you're using a modern operating system like Windows 10 and the CPU scheduler isn't overridden there should be practically no difference in gaming performance by going with a Ryzen 5000 CPU with two instead of one chiplet.
Many games performed really poorly on Zen and Zen+ before the Windows 1903 update, unless you limited the game's threads to a single CCX manually (easy to do with Process Lasso).
After the Windows 1903 update doing the thread scheduling manually only gave me 0-2% more FPS In CS:GO on my 2700x; that number should be a lot lower on a Zen 2 or Zen 3 CPU, becoming probably immeasurable without collecting lots of samples.
 
Nov 26, 2005
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Is there a penalty hit when a thread bounces between CCXs on either the 3k or 5k series?

I'm making some observations with CBR20 using single thread and depending whether I have AMD Cool and Quiet + C-States, enabled or disabled, enabled keeps the thread in one CCX, while disabled I see the thread bouncing back and forth between CCXs very often.
 

damian101

Senior member
Aug 11, 2020
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Is there a penalty hit when a thread bounces between CCXs on either the 3k or 5k series?

I'm making some observations with CBR20 using single thread and depending whether I have AMD Cool and Quiet + C-States, enabled or disabled, enabled keeps the thread in one CCX, while disabled I see the thread bouncing back and forth between CCXs very often.
I think moving to a different CCX only has a meaningful performance penalty for a thread when it still has to access data from the old CCX's L3 cache. Switching between cores of different CCXs might actually be beneficial to performance when a thread uses L3 cache outside of the CCX it's residing in and it starts to use the content in the other L3 cache more frequently.
 
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lobz

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Feb 10, 2017
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"The single core chiplet has some small benefits over a dual chiplet design where some cross-CPU communication is needed, and that comes across in some of our very CPU-limited gaming benchmarks."

What benefits are gained with 1 chiplet VS 2 chiplets? Is it lower latency?
It will vary.

Single die has less off-die communication, double die has 64 MB L3 instead of 32 MB. So it will depend on a game to game basis, what the engine prefers.
 

KentState

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Oct 19, 2001
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I've been digging through reviews and it seems the 5900X and 5950X trade blows at the top of the Zen 3 line. Once you get above 1080P, the advantages start to diminish and even a 10900K seems fairly competitive. However, I've yet to see comprehensive memory testing so maybe that will change things.
 

Ricky T

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Oct 31, 2020
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I've been digging through reviews and it seems the 5900X and 5950X trade blows at the top of the Zen 3 line. Once you get above 1080P, the advantages start to diminish and even a 10900K seems fairly competitive. However, I've yet to see comprehensive memory testing so maybe that will change things.
What do you mean "above 1080p even the 10900k becomes competitive"? Unless I am looking at different reviews than you, the 10900k and Zen 3 cpus trade blows the whole time and are basically dead even overall. But I know at least one review with better than typical results had manually tuned the memory on Zen 3 which is not something hardly anyone will even do.
 

thesmokingman

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May 6, 2010
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Is there a penalty hit when a thread bounces between CCXs on either the 3k or 5k series?

I'm making some observations with CBR20 using single thread and depending whether I have AMD Cool and Quiet + C-States, enabled or disabled, enabled keeps the thread in one CCX, while disabled I see the thread bouncing back and forth between CCXs very often.

That question means different things on 3k vs 5k. On 3k it incurs a latency penalty for crossing between CCX. On 5k there is no penalty as there is only one CCX per CCD, ie 8 whole cores inside a single CCX.
 

Hitman928

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Apr 15, 2012
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What do you mean "above 1080p even the 10900k becomes competitive"? Unless I am looking at different reviews than you, the 10900k and Zen 3 cpus trade blows the whole time and are basically dead even overall. But I know at least one review with better than typical results had manually tuned the memory on Zen 3 which is not something hardly anyone will even do.

That's the great thing about the situation now, at 1080p high/ultra settings you run into GPU bottlenecks with a 5600X or above on the AMD side, or an overclocked 10600K or above on the Intel side. You really can't go wrong either way if all you want is gaming. If you want to turn down settings to get the highest frame rates possible, AMD has taken the lead there, but just as it was when Intel was winning this market, it is a very niche market and won't apply to the vast majority of users. The AMD CPUs are the better all around CPUs though, if you want to do anything else with the computer besides gaming.

It will also be interesting to see tests done with a 6900XT GPU from AMD as they will supposedly be the fastest GPUs for lower resolutions.
 

thesmokingman

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May 6, 2010
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I've been digging through reviews and it seems the 5900X and 5950X trade blows at the top of the Zen 3 line. Once you get above 1080P, the advantages start to diminish and even a 10900K seems fairly competitive. However, I've yet to see comprehensive memory testing so maybe that will change things.

Doh! You are looking at that backwards. At 1080p the CPU IS THE BOTTLENECK. That's why they test at 1080p to be able to distinguish the relative strengths of said cpus. At higher resolutions the GPU BECOMES THE BOTTLENECK and the cpu is less important. It's not that the 10900 seems failry competitive, it's because neither the 10900 or 5950x matter very much at higher resolutions. There's a big difference in the intent of the wording.
 
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Hitman928

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Doh! You are looking at that backwards. At 1080p the CPU IS THE BOTTLENECK. That's why they test at 1080p to be able to distinguish the relative strengths of said cpus. At higher resolutions the GPU BECOMES THE BOTTLENECK and the cpu is less important. It's not that the 10900 seems failry competitive, it's because neither the 10900 or 5950x matter very much at higher resolutions. There's a big difference in the intent of the wording.

Depends on if you are running 1080p low/medium versus ultra. At 1080p ultra in modern(non e-sport type) games, the top end CPUs from both sides hit GPU bottlenecks with the currently used GPUs in reviews.
 

thesmokingman

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May 6, 2010
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Depends on if you are running 1080p low/medium versus ultra. At 1080p ultra in modern(non e-sport type) games, the top end CPUs from both sides hit GPU bottlenecks with the currently used GPUs in reviews.

Depends on what? All that means is they need to adjust the levels of detail to show the seperation between cpus otherwise it's pointless, since that is the whole point yea of testing at 1080.
 

Ricky T

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Oct 31, 2020
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Depends on if you are running 1080p low/medium versus ultra. At 1080p ultra in modern(non e-sport type) games, the top end CPUs from both sides hit GPU bottlenecks with the currently used GPUs in reviews.
What? A 3080 or 3090 is NOT limited by gpu power at a pathetic 1080p res in 95% cases. My gosh even my 2080 Super is held back by even a 9900k at 1080p in many games. I would sometimes only see 75-80% gpu usage in many games even running fully uncapped (no vsync or fps limiter).
 

thesmokingman

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May 6, 2010
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What? A 3080 or 3090 is NOT limited by gpu power at a pathetic 1080p res in 95% cases. My gosh even my 2080 Super was laughably held back by even a 9900k at 1080p in many games. I would sometimes only see 75-80% gpu usage in many games even running fully uncapped (no vsync or fps limiter).

He's suggesting that one could jack up the levels at 1080p to create a gpu bound situation. All told, its a stupid thing to do as a reviewer since it nullifies the whole point of testing at 1080p.
 

Hitman928

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Apr 15, 2012
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He's suggesting that one could jack up the levels at 1080p to create a gpu bound situation. All told, its a stupid thing to do as a reviewer since it nullifies the whole point of testing at 1080p.

Yes, you have to look at the games tested and the settings used. Some reviewers use ultra settings at 1080p. In many modern games a top tier CPU will be more than capable of feeding a top tier GPU to it's limit.
 
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lobz

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Feb 10, 2017
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What do you mean "above 1080p even the 10900k becomes competitive"? Unless I am looking at different reviews than you, the 10900k and Zen 3 cpus trade blows the whole time and are basically dead even overall. But I know at least one review with better than typical results had manually tuned the memory on Zen 3 which is not something hardly anyone will even do.
You're almost surely looking at vastly different reviews. Gamersnexus really has the 10900K head to head... with the 5600X ;p
 
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KentState

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Oct 19, 2001
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Doh! You are looking at that backwards. At 1080p the CPU IS THE BOTTLENECK. That's why they test at 1080p to be able to distinguish the relative strengths of said cpus. At higher resolutions the GPU BECOMES THE BOTTLENECK and the cpu is less important. It's not that the 10900 seems failry competitive, it's because neither the 10900 or 5950x matter very much at higher resolutions. There's a big difference in the intent of the wording.

I don't disagree. I just meant that if you game at 4k or 1440p at high detail, a $540 Intel or $550 AMD chip doesn't make that much of a difference or even other chips in the Zen 3 lineup. Based on availability, if you want peak fidelity and fps then Intel is competitive.

For example, I have a 9900k, 10700k and 3970x along with a RTX 3080 and 3090. I'm looking at what to buy for my main dedicated gaming machine and it's down to a 5900X/5950X or 10900K for 4k > 60fps gaming. From my perspective, both are highly competitive based on performance and availability.
 

lobz

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Feb 10, 2017
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Based on availability, if you want peak fidelity and fps then Intel is competitive.
Aside from the inferior platform and the much higher power consumption, for zero benefit in gaming at best, and and the same time for being worse in literally everything else. Looking at the big picture, I can't see too much competitiveness. Of course, everyone will justify their bias as they please. I also don't necessarily mean bias as a bad thing in your case, everyone is biased towards their likings. I hate bias only when someone tries to convince other people along it :)
 
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Nov 26, 2005
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That question means different things on 3k vs 5k. On 3k it incurs a latency penalty for crossing between CCX. On 5k there is no penalty as there is only one CCX per CCD, ie 8 whole cores inside a single CCX.

That makes things a lot clearer. I could buy the 5950X and just disable one CCD and use the other with the benefit of the better single core IPC over the 5800X