Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)

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Josh128

Senior member
Oct 14, 2022
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I added obvious context just to avoid responses like this, and you left that out of the quote.

It's like piracy. The company didn't lose money from someone pirating the game if the person would have never otherwise paid for it.

It doesn't matter to AMD's bottom line what your opinion is of the product or release if you were never going to buy it no matter how well it was received.

Yes, I was 100% set on buying a 9950X until release rolled around and the reality set in. Now I am not buying one. It doesn't make my opinion more valid, but the fact that AMD lost a sale is what matters, not my opinion of the release.
Already decided that without official reviews? Im still on the fence. I had previously said that if Zen 5s perf claims at Computex held up, I was getting one. Either 9700X or 9950X. Reviews of 9700X DID NOT hold up AMDs Computex claims at all, but Im waiting on 9950X reviews. Pricing matters more than ever now, and they are not priced correctly, IMO.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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This "word of mouth" thing about 9700X/9600X not being that much faster than their Zen 4 counterparts is what's killing their sales mojo. Very few people are realizing that the new contenders are doing that while remaining essentially "ice cold". Remaining under 70C while going full tilt with just an air cooler is an amazing accomplishment.

I personally wouldn't engage PBO on these parts because then more power is wasted for extra performance that isn't comparably high. Why bother? It's good for those times when you absolutely need every last bit of performance for a short period of time but for the majority of cases, the stock performance and temps are excellent. Zen 4 stocks will eventually dwindle and the parts replacing them will only make AM5 more attractive in the long run.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
15,223
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Already decided that without official reviews? Im still on the fence. I had previously said that if Zen 5s perf claims at Computex held up, I was getting one. Either 9700X or 9950X. Reviews of 9700X DID NOT hold up AMDs Computex claims at all, but Im waiting on 9950X reviews. Pricing matters more than ever now, and they are not priced correctly, IMO.

Just wait for the X3D parts. It won't be too long of a wait.
 

linkgoron

Platinum Member
Mar 9, 2005
2,409
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Already decided that without official reviews? Im still on the fence. I had previously said that if Zen 5s perf claims at Computex held up, I was getting one. Either 9700X or 9950X. Reviews of 9700X DID NOT hold up AMDs Computex claims at all, but Im waiting on 9950X reviews. Pricing matters more than ever now, and they are not priced correctly, IMO.
9950x won't save Zen5. I think the 7950x3d will look like the best option after the 9950x releases.

This "word of mouth" thing about 9700X/9600X not being that much faster than their Zen 4 counterparts is what's killing their sales mojo.
Consumers won't upgrade to a newer CPU in-order to save a few watts. We're not talking about laptops here. IMO If you can get almost identical performance, and pay less, but at the cost of somewhat more power and more noise, and you already have fan noise and power - it doesn't matter really. If you want to compare with lower power usage, compare the 9700x to the lower TDP 7700... The 9700x is ~10% faster, but also ~10% more power efficient at best.

Remaining under 70C while going full tilt with just an air cooler is an amazing accomplishment.
I really think that nobody cares, as long as Zen4 isn't melting any houses. Let's face it, As a consumer, I want to buy the best value, I don't care about this amazing accomplishment. It reminds me of people saying how RDNA3 is a great accomplishment because it's the first consumer GPU to use chiplets, or buying Fury or Vega because the have HBM. Who cares? I care about performance. Comparing temps with the 7700... I don't see how Zen4 isn't great as well and also an amazing accomplishment.

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Joe NYC

Platinum Member
Jun 26, 2021
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Got ya. Again going simply on memory I think TSMC/AMD said they could go up to 4 layers. I don't think that is realistic for a gaming SKU but there may come a time when we see perhaps 2 layers. There will almost certainly be diminishing results.

As for one layer, SRAM scaling isn't great anymore. Could they put more? Probably, but I don't think it would be much.

TSMC once said they can go up to 12 layers, but that was a while ago, and I have not heard TSMC repeat that.

There was an AMD Zen 3 reference motherboard, which, in BIOS, had options up to 4 layers, but that CPU was apparently never built.

AMD could go to 128 MB just by covering the entire CPU, if they figured some way to conduct the heat through the V-Cache, which seems like it could be worth researching. Something like heat transfer TSVs which would then all connect to a plate on top of the chip, which would attach to IHS...

Hopefully, we will get some leak about V-Cache in Zen 5, because we are starting to sound like broken records on the Zen 5 V-Cache possibilities...
 

Thunder 57

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2007
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Someone cracked 3500 ST in GB6 Windows with a 9700X. 5.7GHz ST perf. Not bad.


But it doesn't do awesome in games so its a complete dumpster fire release like all the techtubers told me. /s
 

Hail The Brain Slug

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2005
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Did you miss the following quote ?

This is not how SMT scheduling have worked in the past, nor how it should work
(for reference, check the numbers for 7700X how it behaves with SMT ON/OFF as a comparison)

Kinda seems more like its someone else that's "coping and grasping at straws" as you put it.. Why is that ?
I have a wild hypothesis for this behavior, hear me out - what if this is a feature?

What other related processor just came out where slamming as many threads of a process onto the first cores would actually be a performance benefit? Strix Point. Due to only having 4 high clocking cores in the primary CCX, if you had say, 8 demanding threads in a process, on Strix Point you would want them to be slapped onto the first 4 cores to get highest clockspeeds, more cache, and avoid cross-CCX penalty. It would most likely be faster than scheduling 4 on the first 4 cores and 4 onto 4 of the Zen 5C cores.

In addition, it may even be desirable to intentionally aggregate threads onto fewer cores for power efficiency reasons.

What if there's a bug somewhere and the scheduling behavior is treating Granite Ridge like Strix Point?
 
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gdansk

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2011
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But it doesn't do awesome in games so its a complete dumpster fire release like all the techtubers told me. /s
Personally, I think that's valid for some people. If a part doesn't offer them more gaming performance and that's what they care about then it is fine for them to disregard Zen 5 (for now).

For example, I don't quite care about overclocked results but I do appreciate that other people will like to play around with it.
 
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Thunder 57

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Aug 19, 2007
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Personally, I think that's valid for some people. If a part doesn't offer them more gaming performance and that's what they care about then it is fine for them to disregard Zen 5 (for now).

For example, I don't quite care about overclocked results but I do appreciate that other people will like to play around with it.

It's valid, but I think the techtubers exaggerated some to get views. Clickbait, if you will. That's a better way of saying what I meant.
 
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marees

Senior member
Apr 28, 2024
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I have a wild hypothesis for this behavior, hear me out - what if this is a feature?

What other related processor just came out where slamming as many threads of a process onto the first cores would actually be a performance benefit? Strix Point. Due to only having 4 high clocking cores in the primary CCX, if you had say, 8 demanding threads in a process, on Strix Point you would want them to be slapped onto the first 4 cores to get highest clockspeeds, more cache, and avoid cross-CCX penalty. It would most likely be faster than scheduling 4 on the first 4 cores and 4 onto 4 of the Zen 5C cores.

In addition, it may even be desirable to intentionally aggregate threads onto fewer cores for power efficiency reasons.

What if there's a bug somewhere and the scheduling behavior is treating Granite Ridge like Strix Point?
Its probably more of a feature than a bug.

AMD has probably optimized their resource layout assuming SMT is enabled. Disabling SMT could make the processor inefficient

Intel & AMD seem to be on different trajectories here. AMD is pushing a server first design to client (as AMD's primary market is server), whereas Intel has a large client market to cater to; so probably dedicates features for client
 
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linkgoron

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Mar 9, 2005
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But it doesn't do awesome in games so its a complete dumpster fire release like all the techtubers told me. /s
According to TPU, the 9700x is 10% faster than the 7700 (non x) in non-gaming, while being 10% more power efficient while costing much more. Am I supposed to be amazed by this achievement? You can toss the TDP limit aside, and gain ~5% more performance, at the cost of efficiency. I'm OK with that tradeoff, but even then the 9700x is basically just ~10% faster than the 7700x.

At $360, the 9700x is just priced too high, even ignoring Intel. For gaming, you can get a 7800x3D for $366. For non-gaming you can get a 7900X for $358. It's in a tough spot, and AMD hasn't done enough to make it a winner.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Its probably more of a feature than a bug.

AMD has probably optimized their resource layout assuming SMT is enabled. Disabling SMT could make the processor inefficient
That could be true. But on Personal Computers (mainly doing interactive work), per-thread performance in lightly threaded workloads is still typically of higher importance than performance/Watt (or task energy) when not running on battery and not in a cooling constrained form factor. That is, on generic PCs with Granite Ridge, utilizing only one hardware thread per core if possible should still be the preferred scheduling policy in most use cases.
 
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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Issues like this *might* be caused by a power-saver or bugged power plan/scheduling scheme. "Filling" all physical cores first should be the energy efficient strategy.
The latter may have been true traditionally, but is it still true with Zen 5?

(I have no idea myself; I only ever looked at SMT-on vs. SMT-off power efficiency in rate-N loads, not in "rate-2…8". Apropos, for Strix Point's classic cores, a SPEC Integer rate-N performance-per-package-power graph with and without SMT was posted by David Huang.)
 

PJVol

Senior member
May 25, 2020
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At $360, the 9700x is just priced too high, even ignoring Intel. For gaming, you can get a 7800x3D for $366. For non-gaming you can get a 7900X for $358. It's in a tough spot, and AMD hasn't done enough to make it a winner.
I tend to agree with Coreteks (youtube) on that AMD doesn't care much about DYI consumers or what reviewer's verdicts are. With this in mind, the Zen 5 chips look quite impressive.
 
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Timmah!

Golden Member
Jul 24, 2010
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So what do they care about then?
I watched the video. Servers/HPC pretty much. He shows bunch of benchmark tables, like Apache server performance, where Zen5 performs extremely well compared to older CPUs/intel…. Maybe cause of avx512? I would not know.

I dont exactly think highly of these utubers (this guy especially after he thought couple of years back rtx cards gonna have separate RT coprocessor chip, hence the weird cooler design, which even me as a layman, knew it was ridiculous) but in this case he is likely not far from truth.
 

gdansk

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2011
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Servers on one side and laptops on the other.
But they definitely do care about reviewers - otherwise they wouldn't have had reviewer guides and so on.
And they desire gamer $ enough to try to market them as "gaming leadership" parts. But yes, I don't think AMD were panicking due to Zen 5 performance characteristics. Well, hmm, maybe they were. The short precall and all that.
 

CouncilorIrissa

Senior member
Jul 28, 2023
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Also, what in Zen5 compared to Zen4 that we seen so far makes it a success for server/DC?
It shreds in PHP, Node, Python, databases and Apache (the last one is seeing especially absurd gains).

Well both client and server/DC are up substantially, if that’s what you mean.
Client is mostly laptops running javascript which STX is pretty good at.
DIY desktop is a small niche that's barely relevant to AMD's bottom line.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
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Well both client and server/DC are up substantially, if that’s what you mean.

So they ought to care about client too?

DiY desktop is a small slice of client. Mostly that's laptops or prebuilt desktop.

Also, what in Zen5 compared to Zen4 that we seen so far makes it a success for server/DC? AVX512?
@CouncilorIrissa beat me to it so props there. Though it isn't just "pretty good" at js, it's flipping the script there and blowing everything the competition has out of the water.