AMD makes improved efficiency a core part of the pitch for its Ryzen 9000 CPUs
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Really hope AMD will also release the Zen 5 APUs soon. Planning to upgrade my NAS after ~7 years that will double as a Minecraft server for my kids. If I'm buying today it would be an A620 ITX board with 8500G and a pcie-to-sata card. Here's to hope Zen 5 options will come out later this year.
Upvote
31
(32
/
-1)
Maybe it's time to build a new PC. I haven't built one since 2014 and I gave that machine to my nephew 3 years ago.
Upvote
21
(23
/
-2)
Personally, I'm glad to see a focus on power efficiency. I would rather have a CPU running 10% slower if it's consuming 50% less power and running 10 degrees cooler. If there's an option for a die hard overclocker to get an extra little bit of performance out of it by cranking up the power and cooling it with liquid nitrogen that's fine but that's really not going to be relevant to most people.
Upvote
160
(161
/
-1)
I can’t wait for Lunar Lake and “Ryzen AI” comparisons on mobile to come out in a couple of months. I feel like AMD hasn’t been talking as much about their mobile parts, and I’m very curious to see how Lunar Lake stacks up.
It’s no high powered desktop chip, but it should set the base stakes for arrow lake and give us a lot of expectations (either positive or negative). Intel definitely needs a good leap forward if they want to stay in the game.
It’s no high powered desktop chip, but it should set the base stakes for arrow lake and give us a lot of expectations (either positive or negative). Intel definitely needs a good leap forward if they want to stay in the game.
Upvote
8
(9
/
-1)
I thought I'd be more excited about a new generation of Ryzen, but I want to see how ARM on the [Windows] desktop shakes out over the next couple of years before buying/building another x64 machine, particularly one as iterative as this.
Upvote
0
(17
/
-17)
Looks like all good preliminary news except for the B840. The fact that it is limited to PCIe 3.0 on all slots is garbage. The A620 supports PCIe 4.0 for graphics, and it should at least be no worse than its immediate predecessor.
You have to go back to the A520 to see a board with that limitation.
You have to go back to the A520 to see a board with that limitation.
Upvote
38
(40
/
-2)
My bet is that anyone buying a B840 board isn't buying the highest end components to make the lack of PCIe 4/5 matter. I mean, I expect B850 to be the meat of the enthusiast PC market.
Upvote
36
(37
/
-1)
All AMD has to do is not self destruct their own CPUs this generation.
Intel set the bar really low with 13th and 14th gen. It's still a good iterative improvement in terms of efficiency and a moderate IPC boost-- bigger than gen-on-gen Skylake era Intel chips. I'm really not filled with excitement either, with a top tier AM4 system working fine currently, but the X3D chips will be announced later and frankly those promise to be a lot more interesting.
Upvote
59
(59
/
0)
7950X has ~+15% performance over the 5800X. 9950X so far looks like ~+15% over the 7950X.
So...+30%? Nothing to scoff at by any means, but you're looking at a board upgrade and almost definitely DDR5 RAM kit as well for the upgrade since it's a socket hop from AM4 to AM5.
Upvote
10
(16
/
-6)
Okay, did we resolve the low bios storage issue that thwarted AM4 backwards compatibility with late-model AM4 chips?
Upvote
1
(4
/
-3)
It is, but looking backwards at the long tail of PCIe 2.0 to 3.0, that was the inflection point for usefulness in the 8-10 year range. Ivy Bridge chips had an 8+ year lifespan while the PCIe 2.0 Sandy Bridge went obsolete a lot faster-- despite being fairly similar in performance otherwise when new. If the top tier mainstream board has PCIe 5.0, it might matter within the long-tail lifespan of a computer. PCIe 4.0 for GPUs has been standard for a while. I don't think anyone is likely to pair a B840 with a 4090 or some other GPU that will be a little bandwidth starved on 3.0 intentionally today, but no sense in limiting future expansion. At some point, GPUs that need the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 will become inexpensive. Storage matters a bit as well, but with QLC NAND being targeted towards the midrange, those SSDs won't use full PCIe 4.0 bandwidth except for bursty use. Of course that could also change in the future, and someone buying a B840 might want to install a faster SSD some time down the road.
We've definitely seen times in the past where manufactureres put extra features on the base model chipset and zhoozhing those boards up to be entry level gamer boards. It should at least be pointed out as a cautionary tale, and I'd expect to see the A620 in the entry level a bit longer than the other 600-series chipsets sticking around in their respective niches.
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
I updated my Broadwell Intel machine to AM4 and it was the best decision I ever made. 3600 during the start of the pandemic, 5800x and a new GPU when everything calmed down, then a 5800x3D to keep pace with the newfound importance of CPU to performant raytracing and high framerate games. I'm not sure if I even need to go to AM5 since this motherboard and CPU do everything I need, but I do know when I upgrade it will be to AMsomething.
Upvote
54
(54
/
0)
It would also make me curious about how a next-gen Steam Deck would work, given the better power consumption numbers.
Upvote
35
(35
/
0)
Yeah what he said. Please don't use UserBenchmark if you expect any accuracy. Their marginal usefulness is in getting very broad stroke comparisons between two products that would be unlikely to be benchmarked next to each other, and even then expect highly inaccurate results.
A gen-on-gen uplift of maybe 15%ish is reasonable here, but the devil will be in the details for the exact types of operations and applications you use.
Upvote
45
(46
/
-1)
I'm thinking board partners know what AMD will do in terms of socket retention by now, and plan on allocating BIOS space accordingly.
It was an issue back in the X370/B350 days because Ryzen was so new, and absolutely no one thought AMD would be even close to as competitive (and how long-lasting AM4 has been) compared to Intel.
Upvote
20
(20
/
0)
My main desktop is an Ivy Bridge PC so I'm way overdue too. Seems like this year the releases should line up reasonably well so just gonna wait and see what Arrow Lake brings to the table. Then Blackwell should be just around the corner too....
Upvote
0
(2
/
-2)
Looking at the specific question, a 5800x to 9950x might be a really substantial boost if you can do "just" the processor swap and the $800 or so buy in works. Keep in mind you might also need a different/improved heat dissipation solution depending on what you've got, though.
You're doubling the core count, getting a couple generations of updated processor internals, and also getting higher boost clocks with the 9950x. I would expect single threaded uplift in the ~30-40% range (max) with some workloads faring worse than that, and others better. If you can really use all 16 cores on a routine basis, though, that's where you should expect genuinely multiplicative gains. If you're compiling, calculating, etc, and you can double core count and not lose too much efficiency, you'll be very pleased with the upgrade.
Upvote
21
(22
/
-1)
It's not just the i9 chips anymore. Seems like the i7 chips are being affected as well (should be noted they have a couple chips listed twice on that chart).
Upvote
29
(29
/
0)
You'll probably be better served going to a 7800X3D, over the 9950x. Cheaper, better gaming performance (AMD hinted that the x3d will perform better there). Unless you're looking for a reason to move to AM5.
Upvote
2
(5
/
-3)
For now, probably will be getting a laptop replacement when AMD releases their AI 300-series for mobile.
Also looking forward to getting a desktop replacement later when AMD announces their 9000-series X3D. That's probably the one to wait for, especially if you're doing a whole platform upgrade (AM4/DDR4 to AM5/DDR5) and you want to enjoy the best in gaming along w/work performance.
Also looking forward to getting a desktop replacement later when AMD announces their 9000-series X3D. That's probably the one to wait for, especially if you're doing a whole platform upgrade (AM4/DDR4 to AM5/DDR5) and you want to enjoy the best in gaming along w/work performance.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
I'm not just looking for gaming prowess though. I know the 7800x3D is an awesome chip, but for productivity tasks, and especially with the fact I use VMs on my main PC for other tasks too, more cores are genuinely better for that task. Also, 7800x3D is AM5, 5800x is AM4. If you meant the 5800x3D, then yeah, I can see that.
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
AMD, Intel, and Nvidia have all been guilty lately of wastefully testing the limits of power draw on their chips for negligible performance gains. It's good to see AMD taking a step back from that. I know with my 5800X3D I was able to use AMD's Curve Optimizer to significantly drop my wattage (and temps) while actually increasing performance because it could boost longer.
Upvote
35
(39
/
-4)
I agree, especially during the summer/warmer months, I'd rather not double dip on a power hungry chip then having to re-cool the room with A/C or something. Maybe some people can set up to have the tower in another room but otherwise I'd rather just play on something running cool like a Switch.
Upvote
8
(9
/
-1)
I think that ended up being a near non-issue - I'd completely forgotten about it. MBs that dropped support for older processors I think mainly dropped support for the APUs. I started with a mid-range B350 board and a Ryzen 5 1600, and upgraded to a 5600X. That's 3.5 generations.
Upvote
16
(16
/
0)
Ironically, the biggest situation where lack of PCIe 4/5 might actually matter is probably the low end of things for the budget GPUs that don't have a full PCIe x16 support. Even a very high end GPU is not likely to be limited much by a PCIe x16 slot even at PCIe 3 speeds. When a low end GPU has a PCIe x4 slot, running that at PCIe 3 speeds can definitely be a bottleneck. As long as you are avoiding those specific GPUs that have a limited bus width I don't expect it to be a problem.
As far as the socket life I'm really rather mixed. I don't upgrade that often and in my decades of building and upgrading my computers I have rarely found it worth it just to upgrade a CPU. By the time I'm looking at an upgrade current CPUs require a new MB and usually ram and offer a bunch of other new improvements like more/better USB support, newer/faster PCI slots, etc. so it's almost always an upgrade of a set (CPU, MB and Ram). GPU, storage, monitor, etc. all get upgraded on their own as needed.
On the other hand, AM4 is one of those rare instances where I did actually upgrade my CPU. I went from a 1500x to a 5600x as a drop in replacement on my MB which gave a pretty decent ST improvement and went from 4 core to 6 core. It also added Windows 11 compatibility which will probably be useful as this will likely remain in use for quite a few years as it will most likely be handed down to my son to replace his first gen i7 when I decide to upgrade.
Upvote
19
(19
/
0)
Upvote
16
(18
/
-2)
The 7800X3D is AM5.
The X3D CPUs are fantastic for gaming. I upgraded my gaming desktop to a 5800X3D from a 3900X. But the extra cache doesn't help in every workload, so if you need the threads, the x950X CPUs still kill it. My server is a 5950X for that reason.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
Anandtech's Bench database has the 7950x and 5800x in it so you can get a close comparison across a bunch of apps. The 9950x will have some performance uplift above the 7950x, so you can expect performance increases at least as good as those listed in the benchmark database. For some workloads it won't be all that much.
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
That's one of the things I've often wondered about. If it CAN be overclocked, why not just ship the cooling solution to let it throttle up to the max and down to idle as needed to do the job? This should not be a calculus DIY'ers should have to do. The CPU should come "unlocked" by default.
Is the power use significant enough to be THAT MUCH more expensive if it auto-throttles higher for much shorter times than if it runs at a slower speed for a lot longer? (Gaming notwithstanding). Or does setting the clock speed higher mean it always runs higher? I was under the impression clock speeds varied depending on the task the CPU is processing.
I could be wrong, there, I supposed.
Personally, I've never overclocked a CPU. I've just bought increasingly faster CPU's over the years and been satisfied by the speed boost. And I get there's a sweet spot between performance needed, and power consumed. But that's what CPU's do all the time - throttle up and down.
Why not max it out to begin with, and have a cooling solution (included, ideally, but at least something recommended) for a general build and have the best of both worlds? It shouldn't be using any MORE power than it normally would at whatever level you're needing to run it anyhow.
Upvote
0
(3
/
-3)
As I recall, there was only one budget GPU that relied on a x4 bandwidth instead of a x16.
So unless AMD repeats that mistake (and I doubt nVidia or Intel will commit it), then hopefully that issue is moot.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
That wait should't be too long.
Rumor: AMD Ryzen 9000X3D Release Date Could Be Sooner Than Expected
Maybe a couple of months, certainly by the ned of the year.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
I believe AMD ultimately released 2 or 3 variants of that GPU all based on the same die. Also the RX 7600 has a PCIe 4 x8 limitation which again might end up being more of a limitation on a PCIe 3 slot but yes as long as you make sure you use a GPU with full x16 support PCIe 3 is unlikely to actually make a difference.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)