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

[DisEnchantment]

Speculate at will

 

[Abwx]

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D is the fastest 12-core gaming CPU, but here's why you shouldn't buy it

Solid performance meets questionable pricing.

www.tomshardware.com

It ain't as good as 9800x3d or 9950x3d. 9950x3d is as good as 9800x3d but 9900x3d sure performs worse in gaming. And sole purpose of those x3d cpus is gaming so 9900x3d is totally pointless cpu. More so when game engines fully scale to 8-threads.

The 9800X3D is only 5% ahead, calling that worse is a stretch, beside it perform 39% better in heavy MT with only 10% higher TDP, and if you park the non X3D CCD the difference in games is 2%, wich is just negligible, and THG numbes are no diferent than Computerbase.

Overall that s a much better all rounder, personaly if restrained to a choice between those two CPUs i would pick the 9900X3D over the 9800X3D wich is a better choice only for pure gamers who do nothing else with their PCs.

 

[Thunder 57]

I think this is one of those cases where the prdocut isn't bad but the price is.

 

[Schmide]

Though the 12 core part is where microcenter seems to discount the most. Suckered me in a couple times.

 

[Abwx]

I think this is one of those cases where the prdocut isn't bad but the price is.

Fair point, that s why the 7900X3D did sell horribly compared to the 7950X3D at launch, but once its price was reduced by AMD it did catch up to the latter in total sales in quite a short time, and it will be the same for the 99003X3D once its price is adjusted.

Currently there s an inherent early adopter tax that most interested people wont pay, and for a reason looking at past prices evolution of X3D CPUs.

This being said the strength of this CPU is that it retain the full 128MB L3
cache with a massive 96MB L3 for the X3D CCD, that s 33% more L3/core
than the 9950X3D.

 

[jpiniero]

over the 9800X3D wich is a better choice only for pure gamers who do nothing else with their PCs.

Which is pretty much what DIY is.

 

[Abwx]

Which is pretty much what DIY is.

There s not only gamers that DIY PCs, there s lot of productivity motivated builders, check the prices of productivity dedicated PCs sold by OEMs and you ll get an idea
of their relevancy.

 

[jpiniero]

There s not only gamers that DIY PCs, there s lot of productivity motivated builders, check the prices of productivity dedicated PCs sold by OEMs and you ll get an idea
of their relevancy.

Gamers drive DIY sales. Corpos drive OEM sales.

 

[Racan]

Ubuntu 25.04 Boosting AMD EPYC 9005 Performance Even Higher: ~14% Faster Than Ubuntu 24.04 LTS - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

 

[yuri69]

Ubuntu 25.04 Boosting AMD EPYC 9005 Performance Even Higher: ~14% Faster Than Ubuntu 24.04 LTS - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

As stated in the review, new OS got new software versions (e.g. kernel or Python). This means the test shows how Zen 5 fares with newest Ubuntu compared to Zen 5 with older Ubuntu. But it doesn't say anything else about relative performance to other AMD or Intel processors. IMO it would be interesting to include Zen 4 and some Intels to see which processor family benefits the most.

 

[eek2121]

For it's purposed use case -gaming AMD thread director disables 3d-cacheless chiplet. So it's only 6-core and inferior cpu to not only 9950x3d but also 9800x3d which have full 8-core x3d die. 9900x3d should not exists as it's lower grade cpu with higher price than 9800x3d. Only people that doesn't know about their relative performance will buy one - so AMD should stop being ass and just stop selling such a fraudulent product.

It’s not a fraudulent product. I am not sure why you think that. The 9900X3D will outperform the 9900X in every benchmark.

 

[StefanR5R]

Overall that s a much better all rounder, personaly if restrained to a choice between those two CPUs i would pick the 9900X3D over the 9800X3D wich is a better choice only for pure gamers who do nothing else with their PCs.

Gamers drive DIY sales.

*Maybe* this is correct (in terms of number of sales or/and average sales price); I don't know whether or not it is indeed.

But even if so, this doesn't imply that vendors, such as AMD, have an obligation to reduce their DIY-targeted portfolios to 1337-g4m0rz-only products.
Edit, or an obligation to align product pricing with gamers.

 

[Nothingness]

It’s not a fraudulent product. I am not sure why you think that. The 9900X3D will outperform the 9900X in every benchmark.

No: https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-9900x3d/5

 

[jpiniero]

But even if so, this doesn't imply that vendors, such as AMD, have an obligation to reduce their DIY-targeted portfolios to 1337-g4m0rz-only products.
Edit, or an obligation to align product pricing with gamers.

That's really where the volume is. That and the cheap stuff.. AMD said AM4 is still half desktop volume as a whole.

 

[StefanR5R]

But is 9900X3D meant to be a very high volume part?

If not, then maybe it can be allowed to exist and maybe AMD can even be allowed to ask a price for it which does not appeal to masses.

 

[naukkis]

It’s not a fraudulent product. I am not sure why you think that. The 9900X3D will outperform the 9900X in every benchmark.

Whole AMD 12-core series is fraudulent. They sell mostly useless dual binned CCD at higher price than one full CCD. Their sole market segment is those people that just though that 12 cores are way better than 8 -many will buy them for gaming and pay more for less performance. They should do right thing and use those binned parts only in very bottom of their product range.

 

[GTracing]

Whole AMD 12-core series is fraudulent. They sell mostly useless dual binned CCD at higher price than one full CCD. Their sole market segment is those people that just though that 12 cores are way better than 8 -many will buy them for gaming and pay more for less performance. They should do right thing and use those binned parts only in very bottom of their product range.

That's ridiculous. It's not fraud to sell a product that's not intended for gaming. By that logic Threadripper is fraudulent too.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It all began with the 3900X, I think. People bought it so AMD continues to make this SKU, gen after gen. There definitely are people who want it or prefer it over paying extra for x950X SKU. Now as far as its fitness for gaming is concerned, I would argue that it is the job of the games studios to ensure that they make scalable game engines that are able to utilize all available cores as much as possible, even if there's a CCD latency involved. If they prefer not to, well, then they lose those x900X owners as customers. Or those customers may buy a different CPU for a separate gaming machine. Either way, I don't see the X900 series going away. The economics of it work so it will stay unless AMD loses a lot of money on it which doesn't seem likely.

 

[fastandfurious6]

CPUs with disabled cores = didn't pass quality control

unavoidable due to how the chips are made, yield % never perfect

so they just disable the more unstable cores and sell half-CCD versions, 12c, 6c etc and/or lower frequencies

nothing wrong with that, always been happening

 

[inquiss]

Your logic here is impeccable.

You have this backwards. The scenario they laid out is the unrealistic, "no water for plants" scenario and I am advocating for giving the plants normal amounts of water.

Edit: actually, it's more like they advocated for overwatering plants to ensure lack of water wasn't a limiting variable so they were only testing soil quality. Except the effect of soil quality when overwatering may not be applicable to when the plants receive a normal amount of water.

Overwatering the plants... Exactly what I expect a slug would say. Can't fool me

 

[Thunder 57]

Whole AMD 12-core series is fraudulent. They sell mostly useless dual binned CCD at higher price than one full CCD. Their sole market segment is those people that just though that 12 cores are way better than 8 -many will buy them for gaming and pay more for less performance. They should do right thing and use those binned parts only in very bottom of their product range.

Would you stop crapping on AMD for making a 12 core? You sound like someone who used to beg for a "3600 x2". Shut up and deal with it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Would you stop crapping on AMD for making a 12 core?

Yeah. What he really should be concentrating on is complaining about the lack of dual V-cache CCDs

And shutting me up about that is really easy. Give me a working 9184X CPU/mobo combo for $1500 or less

 

[LightningZ71]

Personally, I enjoy the 12 core products because I do a lot of VM work. I can spin up several VMs, all with 4 vcores assigned, and not run out of threads. If I want to game, it's still a competent gaming machine. It's a highly usable jack of all trades. I currently have a 5900x, as does my son.

If I were to upgrade, the 9900x3d would be on my short list for the flexibility and value it offers.

 

[inquiss]

Yeah. What he really should be concentrating on is complaining about the lack of dual V-cache CCDs

And shutting me up about that is really easy. Give me a working 9184X CPU/mobo combo for $1500 or less

I see you're also a connoisseur of pointless things

A dual vache CCD still has the inherent cross CCD penalty. It doesn't really help.

Instead what you should be asking for, is an overall larger CCD with vcache on it that doesn't have cross CCD penalty. Maybe with 12 cores.. that's actually what you want. Lucky, that. It's the quickest way to a performance improvement. It's the thing you should be asking for when you ask for the wrong thing

 

[igor_kavinski]

Instead what you should be asking for, is an overall larger CCD with vcache on it that doesn't have cross CCD penalty. Maybe with 12 cores.. that's actually what you want. Lucky, that. It's the quickest way to a performance improvement. It's the thing you should be asking for when you ask for the wrong thing

12 cores on a single CCD isn't enough for me so the next best thing seems to be dual V-cache CCD. Now if I could get 32 Zen 5c/6c cores on a single CCD with the primary CCD having 12 Zen 5 or Zen 6 cores, then yes, I'm in heaven.

 

[inquiss]

12 cores on a single CCD isn't enough for me so the next best thing seems to be dual V-cache CCD. Now if I could get 32 Zen 5c/6c cores on a single CCD with the primary CCD having 12 Zen 5 or Zen 6 cores, then yes, I'm in heaven.

I mean this with no malice, but you're always going to be disappointed because you're not a market that makes any sense. From what I can see, you want high core counts and high vcache. But you won't pay for the products that have those, because you don't make enough money from them to justify the price, so what you really want is products designed for people that make money with them and you want them sold as if they don't make money for people.

To service you, and the tiny amount of people that want to play around with these, AMD has to forego charging a much higher price to customers that actually use them in the way intended. Cycle of disappointment and longing awaits!