Speculation: Ryzen 4000 series/Zen 3

[Zstream]

To you and @Gideon and anyone else who is wondering on web apps. How about we find some benchmarks to back up what you are all saying. My opinions were based a several sites benchmarks. The word of people that things are slower when "blah, blah, blah" are all opinions. Let back this up with a set of benchmarks that we can argue about. And please try to pick ones from sites that we all here recognize as valid popular sites.

No need to get creative. Just download OSS Nginx and put up a hello world. Stress test. Now use Nginx to call a redis DB variable and stress test. Now use Nginx to pull cache from mariadb and test. I don’t have a threadripper anymore. I sold my 3960x last month.

now put it behind a Nginx LB, and call up 10+ Instances and test. Do the same and install a linux distro per two cores and get a bunch of containers and perform the same test.

 

[Zstream]

I really hope those run on distributed commit logs (e.g. Kafka & co) and microservices rather than some ancient transactional databases (god-forbid, if it's Oracle) and some "enterprise Java" monoliths that only scale vertically. If that's the fromer is the case, then some saner architectural decsision can be made. If the latter ...

Transactional databases are still needed for many things, especially in the financial world.

 

[Thunder 57]

I've been waiting for Zen 3 before starting my new build...the PSU and motherboard shortages over the past few weeks/months has made it easier but I was recently able to obtain the PSU I wanted (Corsair RM750x) as well as a good X570 motherboard (MSI X570 Tomahawk)...so now I have them sitting in my place un-opened and the wait now feels longer for Zen 3

I previously heard rumors about a September launch but now I'm hearing it might not be until November...I really don't think I can wait that long...if it doesn't get released next month I might just get a 3700X

I wouldn't expect anything until November. Probably late November.

 

[Markfw]

No need to get creative. Just download OSS Nginx and put up a hello world. Stress test. Now use Nginx to call a redis DB variable and stress test. Now use Nginx to pull cache from mariadb and test. I don’t have a threadripper anymore. I sold my 3960x last month.

now put it behind a Nginx LB, and call up 10+ Instances and test. Do the same and install a linux distro per two cores and get a bunch of containers and perform the same test.

Beyond my capabilities. I have the hardware, not the knowledge to do this. So are you saying its easy to prove that EPYC is better ?

 

[Gideon]

Transactional databases are still needed for many things, especially in the financial world.

Agreed, I even wanted to add the disclaimer to the post that you'll also gonna need these (they are fine for the majority of tasks).

From some point forward they simply aren't optimal for the "critical path" of your application (where you have billons of "rows" of rapidly changing data). You can scale them pretty far with clever tricks and partitioning but commit logs will still outscale them at least an order of magnitude, offering better performance.

On the other hand they often require multiple times the work (especially if one has no experience with them) and also have an order of magnitude more ways to "do it wrong" and shoot yourself in the foot.

They sure aren't a panacea, you'll need to have a good reason to use them and only use them there.
But my point was, once you do, yo have a lot more ways to scale/cache your relevant data to your needs. This old talk is still suprisingly relevant on this topic.

EDIT: And just as i write this, a really interesting article pops up of the history, future and present problems of streaming systems:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1293718620485361664

 

[Gideon]

DUPLICATE

 

[DrMrLordX]

I wouldn't expect anything until November. Probably late November.

Maybe for the whole stack.

 

[Nereus77]

I'll just put some money on CES 2021....

 

[Zstream]

Beyond my capabilities. I have the hardware, not the knowledge to do this. So are you saying its easy to prove that EPYC is better ?

Yes, definitely. EPYC is much better in some cases, and if you're setting it up properly, you would put all of your die CCX in one kubernetes cluster. Each cluster gets its own CCX. You would not be randomly building them out. You'll find references here: https://developer.amd.com/wp-content/resources/56827-1-0.pdf & https://www.dell.com/support/articl...hitecture-and-initial-hpc-performance?lang=en

 

[WilliamM2]

I've been waiting for Zen 3 before starting my new build...the PSU and motherboard shortages over the past few weeks/months has made it easier but I was recently able to obtain the PSU I wanted (Corsair RM750x) as well as a good X570 motherboard (MSI X570 Tomahawk)...so now I have them sitting in my place un-opened and the wait now feels longer for Zen 3

I previously heard rumors about a September launch but now I'm hearing it might not be until November...I really don't think I can wait that long...if it doesn't get released next month I might just get a 3700X

I'm in the same boat as you. I started collecting parts for a build , planning on the 10600K when it was released. I hadn't been keeping up with CPU news. Now that it turned out to be such a poor CPU, I decided on Ryzen. Got a Define R6, Mugen 5 and new PSU earlier this year, even new fans. It's all sitting there waiting for a new CPU/Motherboard.

Now I'm torn between building now, or waiting for Ryzen 3. I'm thinking the 3700X will drop below $200 when Ryzen 3 released, so I hate to build now.

 

[yuri69]

Any news yet on when the desktop Zen 3 processors are coming out ?

Late

* There is only a single source of desktop Zen 3 info - Igor's Lab. So far they provided three OPNs - sample models
* So far there is no benchmark database leak of a Zen 3 desktop CPU
* AFAIK, none of current AM4 board vendors provide beta/test BIOSes supporting the new Zen 3 desktop CPUs

A few days ago, there was a benchmark database leak of a Zen 3-based APU called Cezanne - @_rogame. Zen 3 CPUs are still MiA.

 

[TitusTroy]

I'm in the same boat as you. I started collecting parts for a build , planning on the 10600K when it was released. I hadn't been keeping up with CPU news. Now that it turned out to be such a poor CPU, I decided on Ryzen. Got a Define R6, Mugen 5 and new PSU earlier this year, even new fans. It's all sitting there waiting for a new CPU/Motherboard.

Now I'm torn between building now, or waiting for Ryzen 3. I'm thinking the 3700X will drop below $200 when Ryzen 3 released, so I hate to build now.

I also got a Fractal case- the Fractal Design Meshify 2...I'm not into flashy cases with a ton of RGB etc...the Fractal cases are a bit bigger then the traditional mid-tower plus have an elegant yet simple design...reminds me of my previous favorite case manufacturer- Lian Li

 

[TitusTroy]

I wouldn't expect anything until November. Probably late November.

November??...say it ain't so...I was hoping for mid-September after Intel has their little Tiger Lake event

 

[eek2121]

To you and @Gideon and anyone else who is wondering on web apps. How about we find some benchmarks to back up what you are all saying. My opinions were based a several sites benchmarks. The word of people that things are slower when "blah, blah, blah" are all opinions. Let back this up with a set of benchmarks that we can argue about. And please try to pick ones from sites that we all here recognize as valid popular sites.

I wasn’t referring to web applications in general, I was referring to our specific use case. We have hundreds of terabytes of data in our application layer alone, not including the data warehouse. We have things like Redis, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, a job server, a heavily threaded web application, etc. I can only speculate as to why EPYC was slower. Memory latency maybe? Who knows.

Cost isn’t really a factor for us. Application performance is. I am also not claiming EPYC is slow, just that there are use cases for Intel chips. If Zen 3 weren’t dropping so soon I would love to drop cash on an EPYC chip and play around with different use cases.

 

[eek2121]

November??...say it ain't so...I was hoping for mid-September after Intel has their little Tiger Lake event

We will most certainly hear something about Zen 3 between now and the end of September. Part of AMD’s strategy is to control the news cycle.

 

[jpiniero]

I wasn’t referring to web applications in general, I was referring to our specific use case. We have hundreds of terabytes of data in our application layer alone, not including the data warehouse. We have things like Redis, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, a job server, a heavily threaded web application, etc. I can only speculate as to why EPYC was slower. Memory latency maybe? Who knows.

Cost isn’t really a factor for us. Application performance is. I am also not claiming EPYC is slow, just that there are use cases for Intel chips. If Zen 3 weren’t dropping so soon I would love to drop cash on an EPYC chip and play around with different use cases.

The thing is, most hardware reviewers that review server chips (including AT) use benchmarks that are basically completely worthless for server workloads. So it's hard to say what the performance gap would actually be just from the typical reviews you would see on the web.

Now Xeon being faster would surprise me, unless you are talking about something that was very single threaded.

 

[Markfw]

I wasn’t referring to web applications in general, I was referring to our specific use case. We have hundreds of terabytes of data in our application layer alone, not including the data warehouse. We have things like Redis, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, a job server, a heavily threaded web application, etc. I can only speculate as to why EPYC was slower. Memory latency maybe? Who knows.

Cost isn’t really a factor for us. Application performance is. I am also not claiming EPYC is slow, just that there are use cases for Intel chips. If Zen 3 weren’t dropping so soon I would love to drop cash on an EPYC chip and play around with different use cases.

I have been unable so far to find sqlserver benchmarks, but is it possible they were comparing Naples ? not Rome EPYC ? Those are quite a bit slower. When did they do this test ? It was only a year ago Rome came out. I own both Naples and Rome EPYC, and Rome is much faster IMO. Also, when were systems with Rome available for general testing by the public ? If you answer on what date they started their test, this could give us the answer.

 

[Thunder 57]

November??...say it ain't so...I was hoping for mid-September after Intel has their little Tiger Lake event

They did just release a largely pointless Zen 2 refresh. I'm thinking November with October being a nice surprise if it happens. We might just hear more about it at Hot Chips in a few days.

 

[Kedas]

They did just release a largely pointless Zen 2 refresh. I'm thinking November with October being a nice surprise if it happens. We might just hear more about it at Hot Chips in a few days.

XT is an mainly 7/7 anniversary version and we all know those celebrating versions are not meant to be important milestones.

But I think it will be October keep in mind that Zen4 is already planned for end 2021, you want Zen3 for at least 1 year before moving on.

 

[Kedas]

I was just thinking because zen4 will be on a more expensive PCI5 DDR5 platform (at least for the first year until prices drop)
The last CPU Zen3 on AM4 may have a much longer life than Zen2.

Hence even a launch of Zen3 only a half year before AM5 zen4 would still be an acceptable situation, hence if they would like to delay zen3 to squeeze an extra 5% out of the last AM4 CPU it may not be such a bad idea as it sounds, Zen3 will have a long life anyway on the AM4 platform.

For Epyc any delay would hurt a bit but it's also the end of a socket so it fits the lower bracket budget for some time to come.

I'm not saying they will delay it it's just from a business point of view not as bad as it would seem.

 

[eek2121]

XT is an mainly 7/7 anniversary version and we all know those celebrating versions are not meant to be important milestones.

But I think it will be October keep in mind that Zen4 is already planned for end 2021, you want Zen3 for at least 1 year before moving on.

The XT chips are hated on so much. It is kind of sad. When I built my wife’s computer I used a 3600XT. It can hit 4.6Ghz on all 6 cores (not at the same time, obviously). All core boost in an air cooled mini-ITX system was 4.3-4.4 Ghz on average. Not bad at all.

 

[eek2121]

I have been unable so far to find sqlserver benchmarks, but is it possible they were comparing Naples ? not Rome EPYC ? Those are quite a bit slower. When did they do this test ? It was only a year ago Rome came out. I own both Naples and Rome EPYC, and Rome is much faster IMO. Also, when were systems with Rome available for general testing by the public ? If you answer on what date they started their test, this could give us the answer.

I am pretty sure it was Rome, though I don’t know the specific model number. The funny thing about development is that code that should run great one platform may run like crap on another platform due to cache sizes, etc. I just hope they re-evaluate in 2021 when Zen 4 rolls out.

 

[Staples]

I've been waiting for Zen 3 before starting my new build...the PSU and motherboard shortages over the past few weeks/months has made it easier but I was recently able to obtain the PSU I wanted (Corsair RM750x) as well as a good X570 motherboard (MSI X570 Tomahawk)...so now I have them sitting in my place un-opened and the wait now feels longer for Zen 3

I previously heard rumors about a September launch but now I'm hearing it might not be until November...I really don't think I can wait that long...if it doesn't get released next month I might just get a 3700X

I was waiting until I cracked. I went with a 10700. It was between this and the 3700x.

 

[TitusTroy]

I was waiting until I cracked. I went with a 10700. It was between this and the 3700x.

if I was going with a new Intel build I would have definitely waited for Rocket Lake-S this Fall...even though it's still using 14nm, it's a new architecture plus has PCIe 4 support

 

[lobz]

if I was going with a new Intel build I would have definitely waited for Rocket Lake-S this Fall...even though it's still using 14nm, it's a new architecture plus has PCIe 4 support

Then you would be very disappointed.

Rocket Lake is not coming this year, let alone this Fall.