New Processor Choice

[0db]

Actually, can you buy any AMD-based workstation?

not sure if has already got it (or if he ever will get it), but before the covid lockdown, a friend in the UK bought and AMD Ryzen Threadripper Viz Workstations from these guys.

[bd139]

Lenovo P620.

[KaneTW]

I don't think he has much love for Intel, either. Not at 4 cores for a workstation, that is.
That chip can take up to 512 Gb (apparently) of memory, maybe that is why. Some applications need huge amounts of memory.

Yes, probably that's the reason. He said there is 64Gbyte of ram on each workstation.

My colleagues are going to have a brand new workstation with Xeon and a lot of ram, lot of whistles and bells, but IT guy seems to have no upgrade for me, thus it looks I will likely stay with 4Gbyte of ram on a Wolfdale Pentium Dual Core E6600 for still a long while.

That means they don't waste a penny if they haven't already planned to exploit the hardware to the bones.

So, I am not competent, but it looks weird to me that they don't consider Amd.

AMD supports up to 128GB (limited by unregistered RAM) on their Ryzen workstations, 256GB on regular Threadripper (again unregistered), and 2TB on Threadripper Pro/EPYC (registered). All ECC.

[0db]

HPE only sell you rancid old shit.

Well, unbelievable but yesterday I saw two boxed HP XW8600 workstations.
How old are they? There is written "Windows Seven" on the box 

The best explanation is they were laying somewhere in some warehouse, and at some point for some unintelligible reason some manager thought to make them a better use, so they got sold for a ridiculous price, for sure a something like a tenth of the price for a HP Z4 Workstation.

... I don't understand the IT-world 

[bd139]

Want to check out the NHS here. They buy a 2000 desktop machines for a local health trust then leave them in storage because HP says windows 10 isn’t officially supported on them. Three years later they pay someone to dispose of them. Immediately they end up at a stock auction and then on eBay where they sell them with windows 10 installed. 

The orchestrator of this fuck up gets promoted.

Don’t get me started on the IT industry. Software is the day job. I’m only here to keep me sane 

[olkipukki]

Yes, there's even certified ones by now: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/thinkstation-p620

Lenovo P620.

Not so quick, "Available this fall" 

Looks like took three generations until they have started to manufacture these...

[olkipukki]

AMD supports up to 128GB (limited by unregistered RAM) on their Ryzen workstations, 256GB on regular Threadripper (again unregistered), and 2TB on Threadripper Pro/EPYC (registered). All ECC.

EPYC - 4TB per CPU 

[Halcyon]

Pretty much 0 reason to go with Intel nowadays, for almost any use case.

Depends what you are running. There are still some compatibility issues with some Linux or FreeBSD versions.

You also have a much larger selection of motherboards in the Intel-based market, particularly when you're looking at higher-end consumer and enterprise gear.

Having been bitten several times by "general AMD instability and failures" in the past for both CPU and GPU products, I find it hard to trust their products as a whole. As for speed, it has always been a cat and mouse game between Intel and AMD.

I've never seen any compatibility issues on either Windows or Linux with both a Threadripper 1950X and a 3900X. In fact, I chose AMD specifically for the second system due to superior VFIO support for Linux-based virtualization.

Motherboard selection? What feature set were you looking for? I've been pretty happy with the feature set of the offered AMD motherboards, so I can't say I particularly cared about that.

AMD has been rock-stable for 2.5 years on my 1950X machine. And at that time, AMD was the only vendor offering ECC and good performance for a non-insane price. Intel still doesn't.

I don't really care for the brand. I care for features and price/performance, and AMD delivers handily right now.

That doesn't mean issues don't exist just because you haven't come across them. As I said, it depends on your use-case and what you're going to be running. If you're just wanting to run a bog standard Windows 10 machine or mainstream Linux distro with a current kernel version, you'll be fine.

As for motherboard selection, you only need to look at what most brands are offering. If you have a look at my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based. You see a similar trend with consumer-grade gear, for example, Gigabyte have 524 Intel boards in their "Ultra Durable" consumer range or 149 with AMD support. Of course, it depends on what your requirements are, but you do have a wider choice when it comes to Intel-based motherboards. This may or may not impact you.

As for performance, this again comes down to use-case and what your workflow looks like. Most users, including power users such as myself don't require the latest and fastest CPU. For the most part it sits mostly idle. GPU capabilities and fast access to storage is far more important (for me).

If you like AMD and it ticks all the boxes, that's perfectly fine. I was just sharing my experiences over the years and as I said, it's a game of cat and mouse. At one point in time, AMD will be ahead of performance until Intel catches up, rinse and repeat. But there are other considerations to buying/building a PC than performance. The old saying: "Performance, Price, Stability/Longevity - Pick two" is very applicable in most cases.

[olkipukki]

As for motherboard selection, you only need to look at what most brands are offering. If you have a look at my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based.

Well.. what happened to H11 series?

Yes, EPYCs only, but can qualify for Workstation 

[rrinker]

 A few months ago I built two new machines using AMD. I uses ASrock X570 Pro4 motherboards - X570 chipset and none of the idiotic flashing RGB crap all over it, and best of all - it's $170.

[MK14]

Back on topic. For most things, most people will do, most of the time, an 8 core 3700X is fast/good enough.
But, the price increase to get a full 12 cores (3900X), has become so relatively small (12 cores, use to cost a huge fortune), that it could well be worth it. Even if it only occasionally helps you, speed wise.
In the UK, it is little more than a £100, to go from an 8 core (3700X), to the 3900X. I would imagine, that equates to around $100 to $135 more, in the US.

I was impatient and picked up the 3900X today for $400 locally. I've got 15 days to return it if something nicer poops up.

You could well have made the best/right choice there. The real-life speed improvement, may well only be a small amount. It is best to NOT buy the latest AMD processor, just/immediately after its release, as problems (not necessarily big ones), can and do crop up.
You may have to wait a while, for suitable motherboards, which have the correct bios updates (if necessary), to support the new cpus, when they arrive.
The new trend of AMD charging a fair bit more, for the XT versions, rather than the X versions (e.g. 3900XT vs 3900X), makes me suspicious that when the new processors first arrive. There will be a price penalty, which may not be worth it, and later (not that much later), the price could settle, to the same price level it is now.
Also, there can be shortages of new processors, when they have just been newly released, which again could have messed you up.

In theory, if/when better AMD cpus come out, they will work (until your socket type eventually gets outdated, perhaps in 12 months time), in your system. So, you could upgrade to the latest/best cpu, and sell your old one.

In reality, the 3900X is so powerful, I don't think you really can go wrong with it. 12 cores, is going to be good for a long time. Most people, are still on 2 or 4 cores. Even 8 cores, is still fairly/somewhat rare. Possibly a modest improvement in single thread performance, is a possibility, with the new cpus, when they arrive.

As time goes on, more and more software, will be able to use all 12 cores, usefully. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much software can use so many cores, because of various factors (Amdahl's law  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law  ), but also how difficult/expensive it is to write software which does a good/best job on all 12 cores.
Because relatively few people, have lots of cores, and all these difficulties with creating software that is that powerful, that it can use lots of cores, well. You are not likely to see that much software, which does use it well.
But games, are a promising source of software that does, because they tend to use game engines. So if the game engines can/do use all the cores, usefully, then that could work out well.
Anyway, games depend a lot on the graphics card, which is a completely different ball game, and not part of this thread topic, so we can leave discussing that for another day.

[Mr. Scram]

For somebody insulting my research, you know little of what you're talking about. B550 was introduced as a budget alternative to the superior X570 boards. If you want to understand the differences, try reading any article comparing the two: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3582-amd-chipset-differences-b550-vs-x570-b450-x470-zen-3

I've had my current system for over 5 years running great, because I wasn't a cheap ass with the motherboard or other options. In less than a few years I'll be running this system off of multiple PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives. The X570 will do that better. The X670 will do any of it better.

When somebody asks for opinions/experiences with a thing, they don't have to agree with your OPINION on the thing. I don't agree with you, get over it.

Thanks,
Josh

I don't give a shit whether you agree or not. It does irk me when people ask for advice and work hard to ignore sound advice given based on assumptions or lack of some basic research.

B550 was introduced to be a cheaper alternative to X570. That was the marketing pitch. It's far from a budget chipset as it's reasonably well featured and they didn't cut the parts out you want. What I was getting is that X570 isn't an ideal chipset. Because suppliers couldn't get a PCIe 4 chipset done in time AMD was forced to roll its own. It's much hotter and power hungry than other chipsets. X670 seems slated to improve that situation but the fact is that X570 is so hot it requires active cooling. It's cutting edge, but that edge cuts both ways. The good comes with a fair chunk of bad. Meanwhile, B550 is a newer and much more traditional and arguably mature chipset. Performance isn't worse in the key places and longevity is less questionable. I do not care what you spend your money on and whether it ends up suiting your needs as it has no consequences for me, but understanding the nuances a bit better will likely improve your chances of picking what suits you, whatever you end up with.

[Mr. Scram]

That doesn't mean issues don't exist just because you haven't come across them. As I said, it depends on your use-case and what you're going to be running. If you're just wanting to run a bog standard Windows 10 machine or mainstream Linux distro with a current kernel version, you'll be fine.

As for motherboard selection, you only need to look at what most brands are offering. If you have a look at my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based. You see a similar trend with consumer-grade gear, for example, Gigabyte have 524 Intel boards in their "Ultra Durable" consumer range or 149 with AMD support. Of course, it depends on what your requirements are, but you do have a wider choice when it comes to Intel-based motherboards. This may or may not impact you.

As for performance, this again comes down to use-case and what your workflow looks like. Most users, including power users such as myself don't require the latest and fastest CPU. For the most part it sits mostly idle. GPU capabilities and fast access to storage is far more important (for me).

If you like AMD and it ticks all the boxes, that's perfectly fine. I was just sharing my experiences over the years and as I said, it's a game of cat and mouse. At one point in time, AMD will be ahead of performance until Intel catches up, rinse and repeat. But there are other considerations to buying/building a PC than performance. The old saying: "Performance, Price, Stability/Longevity - Pick two" is very applicable in most cases.

That's a huge pile of FUD but still nothing tangible. Believe me, I'd love something tangible.

[KungFuJosh]

B550 was introduced to be a cheaper alternative to X570. That was the marketing pitch. It's far from a budget chipset as it's reasonably well featured and they didn't cut the parts out you want. What I was getting is that X570 isn't an ideal chipset. Because suppliers couldn't get a PCIe 4 chipset done in time AMD was forced to roll its own. It's much hotter and power hungry than other chipsets. X670 seems slated to improve that situation but the fact is that X570 is so hot it requires active cooling. It's cutting edge, but that edge cuts both ways. The good comes with a fair chunk of bad. Meanwhile, B550 is a newer and much more traditional and arguably mature chipset. Performance isn't worse in the key places and longevity is less questionable. I do not care what you spend your money on and whether it ends up suiting your needs as it has no consequences for me, but understanding the nuances a bit better will likely improve your chances of picking what suits you, whatever you end up with.

Okay, neckbeard. 

That's all fine and dandy. B550 is a perfectly fine chipset, but not what's best for me.

[Doctorandus_P]

 3 weeks ago my 12 year old dualcore died and now I'm typing this on an AMD E-350 with a passmark rating of 750.

I'm not much into the "fastest", or "most expensive". At most I am considering a 3600 (Not the X version). It's probably much more processor then I'll need for the coming 5 years, and it has the best performance to price ratio.

For short time a 3400G would probable be enough for me.

I am confused about the B550 chipset. The mobo's often have 6 sata connectors, while the B450 usually has no more then 4. I like many sata connectors, even though 4 + one (or 2) M.2 for a reasonably fast NVMe will be enough.

The confusion starts that all mobo's I've seen with B550 have monitor connectors on them (HDMI, Displayport, etc) but they apparently do not support the 3000G series processors.

This led me to have a peek at the newest 4000 range, but AMD does not sell these processors to consumers, only to OEM's. You can find them in laptops and in barebones with "NUC" form factor.
What I really like about the 4000G series is that they support the latest displayport (5k @ 120Hz video output) combined with decent CPU performance (Upto a passmark rating of 20000).

Without the 4000G series I probably already would have bought a new PC by now, as using a box with a 750 passmark rating really sucks double plus hard.

[MK14]

This led me to have a peek at the newest 4000 range, but AMD does not sell these processors to consumers, only to OEM's.

There does seem to be misunderstandings, as regards how things work. My understanding, is that, when the new process node is first released, of a particular new (generation) type. It is at its most expensive (cost to manufacture the chips).
So, AMD (making apparently sensible business decisions), allocate the first release chips, to be the high value/profit things, such as high core count, (e.g. 3900X 12 core) cpus, with relatively premium prices.
Some time later (e.g. 12 months), that chip manufacturing process, has matured a fair bit, many of the processing problems have been solved and the cost has (usually) come down, to a significantly lower price.
They (NOT AMD, TSMC) are also, more able to have/obtain the bulk machines which allow them to make more of those chips (with that process), faster, cheaper and in larger quantity.
So, their less profitable chips, such as APUs, can then be manufactured, and sold, much more profitably.

tl;dr
I expect they will sell those chips to consumers. It is just that they haven't been released yet. The exact timings, so that big bulk OEM computer manufacturers have already been able to obtain those APUs, is probably some kind of marketing/business decision, made by AMD. Perhaps because they consider such sales to be very important to AMD, and maybe because those sales can support a partly higher price at this time.

At the end of the day, the latest/best (desktop, not threadripper) AMD cpus, when they arrive (in coming weeks, maybe). Will have something like 16+ cores, at around £800+/$800+, when they finally release the new (non-APU) chips. The 16 core versions, may take longer to release, than the lower core count members of the new/upcoming cpus.

Whereas, the new APUs, when (if) they arrive for consumers, will probably be more like £100+/$100+, for the lower end APUs. Which are a lot less money/profit for AMD, so I can understand, why they time things, the way they do. Also, the APU's built in graphics processor, takes up a fair bit of silicon area, which also needs time to develop and increases the raw chip costs.

[Halcyon]

That doesn't mean issues don't exist just because you haven't come across them. As I said, it depends on your use-case and what you're going to be running. If you're just wanting to run a bog standard Windows 10 machine or mainstream Linux distro with a current kernel version, you'll be fine.

As for motherboard selection, you only need to look at what most brands are offering. If you have a look at my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based. You see a similar trend with consumer-grade gear, for example, Gigabyte have 524 Intel boards in their "Ultra Durable" consumer range or 149 with AMD support. Of course, it depends on what your requirements are, but you do have a wider choice when it comes to Intel-based motherboards. This may or may not impact you.

As for performance, this again comes down to use-case and what your workflow looks like. Most users, including power users such as myself don't require the latest and fastest CPU. For the most part it sits mostly idle. GPU capabilities and fast access to storage is far more important (for me).

If you like AMD and it ticks all the boxes, that's perfectly fine. I was just sharing my experiences over the years and as I said, it's a game of cat and mouse. At one point in time, AMD will be ahead of performance until Intel catches up, rinse and repeat. But there are other considerations to buying/building a PC than performance. The old saying: "Performance, Price, Stability/Longevity - Pick two" is very applicable in most cases.

That's a huge pile of FUD but still nothing tangible. Believe me, I'd love something tangible.

I tend not to listen to misinformation spread about by unverified sources, I prefer to research and test things for myself.

Unfortunately this is just like the Apple vs. PC, iOS vs. Android, Sony vs. Nintendo arguments. There is no point in arguing which one is "the best" because such a concept doesn't exist. All that matters is what suits a particular use case. AMD could come out with the fastest, cheapest, lowest power processor on the planet, yet there will still be situations where it may be unsuitable.

To argue about such a thing is stupid. To be brand-loyal is stupid. First-hand experience is invaluable, but still do your own homework and draw your own conclusions. Above all else, if you find yourself being wrong about something, wear it as a badge of honour as you've just improved your knowledge about something.

[BravoV]

AMD could come out with the fastest, cheapest, lowest power processor on the planet, yet there will still be situations where it may be unsuitable.

I'm in the middle of looking for a new laptop, I have no brand loyalty, its interesting to hear a real life example where AMD is unsuitable, just one example please.

[bd139]

I tend not to listen to misinformation spread about by unverified sources, I prefer to research and test things for myself.

Some of us have somewhat vast experience in this space which spans more than a single data point. Today I am debugging what appears to be a bug specific to a certain target node with a certain stepping of Intel Xeon Platinum. We have a deadlock which only occurs on that CPU and stepping. This is a top end HPE box. We don't get those days on the ass end AMD sockets...

[MK14]

To be brand-loyal is stupid.

Ok, let's go with that for a second.

my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based.

Well that seconds used up then 

I tend not to listen to misinformation spread about by unverified sources

Talking of which (where you seemed to say, Supermicro don't sell AMD stuff/motherboards)...
The following link, seems to discuss a range of Supermicro AMD motherboards (as part of those systems, I.e. you said " Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based").

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/aplus/solutions/SP3

and, specifically, this lists some of their AMD motherboards (current ones):
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboards?pro=gen%3DH11

EDIT: On further reflection, I have changed my mind. I had, at least partly mis-understood (mis-read), the original post(s).

[MK14]

To argue about such a thing is stupid. To be brand-loyal is stupid. First-hand experience is invaluable, but still do your own homework and draw your own conclusions.

You're right!

Ideally, I try and do exactly that. Intel is still a powerful force to be reckoned with. Comparing (benchmarks, and other information/deciding factors), between Intel and AMD, is still very interesting, and provides useful information, when deciding what to buy/recommend.

Also, as you said/hinted in an earlier post. In a few years down the line, Intel could well be in the lead again. It is NOT a one-horse race (at least not yet    ).

[bd139]

my favourite board manufacturer, Supermicro, of the 63 desktop/workstation boards they offer, none of them are AMD-based.

Well that seconds used up then 

Didn't see that comment. I know a guy with a couple of thousand Supermicro H11's     

[Halcyon]

Really MK14? You wasted all that time and energy and achieved exactly nothing.

Allow me to retort...

Having a "favourite" of something doesn't equal being loyal to a particular brand. If Supermicro went to shit, I'd drop them in a heartbeat. However, my use case is affordable, reasonably high-end and reliable workstations and servers. Supermicro fits the bill. If I had stupid amounts of money to spend, I'd be looking at IBM or Dell. You might have a favourite chocolate, but what if it changed and you didn't like it anymore? Would you keep buying it or recommending it to others? No, of course not. You're suggesting I'm being a hypocrite, which is the furthest from the truth.

Secondly, I never said that Supermicro don't sell AMD-based boards, they absolutely do and have for a long time. What I said was out of their current range of desktop/workstation boards, none of them were AMD based. If you have a look at their server boards, yes, they absolutely have models which support AMD processors, but I didn't include it since it's not what the OP was asking and is completely irrelevant to the conversation. But since you raised it, of their current range of 219 server motherboards listed on their website, only 33 support AMD CPUs.

I'll accept your apology by way of you amending your post ;-)

[MK14]

I'll accept your apology by way of you amending your post ;-)

I'll amend it, if I agree with what you say.

I DON'T.
I will leave it at that.

My comments were a technical discussion. I'm not getting into an argument with a mod.

[Halcyon]

I'll accept your apology by way of you amending your post ;-)

I'll amend it, if I agree with what you say.

I DON'T.
I will leave it at that.

Brilliant example of independent thinking. For that you should be commended. But in future, it does help if you actually read carefully before posting a reply, particularly when context is important. After all, you may as well have recommended Cyrix processors as an alternative (which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with).