5900x too much?

[BUDFORCE]

I genuinely don’t know how it works but all the benchmarks I run and all the evidence I see show the additional 4 cores over an *800 cpu are barely worth having. It’s like supplementing a team of 8 SAS with 4 Boy Scouts.

It depends on what you use your CPU for, despite my earlier comments I dont think the 5900x is a poor choice or terrible CPU by a long shot, in gaming benchmarks at stock speed it is as fast as a 5800x, look at gamers nexus benchmarks, was about 50/50 - 5800/5900 which one came out on top, and then there was only very small percentages in it, which then once you consider it needs to go through the GPU game settings etc etc, its basically nil difference in games.

And....if you use any kind of software that really does utilise a higher core count, and makes good use of those cores, then it makes sense, its not that much more (money) over a 5800x.

But, if all you do is play games, those extra cores are not going to acheive anything, even 8 cores right now are not really being utilised much depending on the game and certainly older games will not use many cores at all. So for single cores speeds and overall consistent core speeds accross all cores, particularly when you factor in overclocking, the 8 core 5800x it looking like it is outperforming the 5900x. Again, margins are, well, in reality not much, but dont forget the 5900x is the more epensive of the two, so again, if ALL you do, is game, you are paying more for wasted cores and a CPU that possibly/probabably doesn't clock as well.

 

[Stu]

No I dont think this is how it works. I don't think they produce a "fast" or "slow" 8 core CCX, they just produce the CCX, of course, some will be better than others, its the luck of the silicone.

When they test them if some of the cores dont meet the grade (whatever that is AMD decide I guess) then the 2 worse cores get disabled and turned into 6 core CCXs which then get put together for a 5900x or just one for a 5600x. But as 2 of the 8 cores didnt make the grade, that CCX as a whole didnt bin as well, and I think that is showing on the overall quality of those CPUs.



Exactly this, ignoring the advertised speeds you only need to look at all the user created post and threads already on these to show that the CPU's with the 6 core CCX's are not overclocking as well, or the cores are inconsistent in performance, vs the 5800 which are getting much more consistent core speeds and better overclocking overall.

I was assuming speed binning and 2 cores being disabled were not necessarily related; however, the manual overclocking results indicate a real difference.

 

[Brazo]

It depends on what you use your CPU for, despite my earlier comments I dont think the 5900x is a poor choice or terrible CPU by a long shot, in gaming benchmarks at stock speed it is as fast as a 5800x, look at gamers nexus benchmarks, was about 50/50 - 5800/5900 which one came out on top, and then there was only very small percentages in it, which then once you consider it needs to go through the GPU game settings etc etc, its basically nil difference in games.

And....if you use any kind of software that really does utilise a higher core count, and makes good use of those cores, then it makes sense, its not that much more (money) over a 5800x.

But, if all you do is play games, those extra cores are not going to acheive anything, even 8 cores right now are not really being utilised much depending on the game and certainly older games will not use many cores at all. So for single cores speeds and overall consistent core speeds accross all cores, particularly when you factor in overclocking, the 8 core 5800x it looking like it is outperforming the 5900x. Again, margins are, well, in reality not much, but dont forget the 5900x is the more epensive of the two, so again, if ALL you do, is game, you are paying more for wasted cores and a CPU that possibly/probabably doesn't clock as well.

I do agree with what you said I just think 8 good cores would suit me better than 6 good cores and 6 poor ones, nb I don’t know that last bit is correct but a 5800x is as fast as a 3900x In multithreaded workloads and yet ipc gains do not match core count losses.

 

[Scooby-DoobyDoo]

You will learn later this year when Intel release the 24-thread (8 big + HT + 8 LITTLE) Alder Lake

This is happening this year. In 5 years, 5600X's relative performance will be lower than what the current entry level Celerons offer compared to Ryzen 9 5950X...

My standard response now:

Good review of the 5600x here from TECHSPOT:

https://www.techspot.com/review/2135-amd-ryzen-5600x/

You need to base you comments on compute power rather than core count:

From the review:

"Speaking of gaming performance, you’re no doubt going to hear nonsense such as "the Ryzen 5 5600X is a poor choice for gamers as it only has 6 cores," and they’ll probably try and prove that by pointing to the new consoles which feature eight Zen 2 cores.

Some people also like to confuse how games and cores work. Making statements like games will require 8 cores or something to that effect. Games don’t require a certain number of cores, they never have and they never will. Games require a certain level of CPU performance, it’s really that simple."

 

[clv101]

My standard response...

Is spot on! Let's hope we can put this to bed now.

 

[Stu]

You will learn later this year when Intel release the 24-thread (8 big + HT + 8 LITTLE) Alder Lake

This is happening this year. In 5 years, 5600X's relative performance will be lower than what the current entry level Celerons offer compared to Ryzen 9 5950X...

Since the 8 LITTLE cores will not contribute to top level performance, that means 8 BIG cores and 16 threads... that on its own is not telling me that Alder Lake is going to destroy Ryzen 5000... sounds like a Ryzen 5800x.

 

[Minstadave]

I genuinely don’t know how it works but all the benchmarks I run and all the evidence I see show the additional 4 cores over an *800 cpu are barely worth having. It’s like supplementing a team of 8 SAS with 4 Boy Scouts.

In gaming the 4 extra cores don't do much, but don't seem to hinder. In multicore loads no amount of overclocking is going to make up for the lack of cores between the 5800X and 5900X.

 

[4K8KW10]

Since the 8 LITTLE cores will not contribute to top level performance, that means 8 BIG cores and 16 threads... that on its own is not telling me that Alder Lake is going to destroy Ryzen 5000... sounds like a Ryzen 5800x.

It depends on what the new little cores are capable of - if they have Skylake level of performance, then they will contribute.

Golden Cove +50% IPC over Skylake + Gracemont ~ Skylake will be 24 strong threads.


https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34435628/
Anyone getting Rocket lake!

 

[Brazo]

In gaming the 4 extra cores don't do much, but don't seem to hinder. In multicore loads no amount of overclocking is going to make up for the lack of cores between the 5800X and 5900X.

Absolutely agree but it’s not 50% better as one might expect it’s barely 20% better so one must question just how useful those four very weak cores are.

 

[Minstadave]

Absolutely agree but it’s not 50% better as one might expect it’s barely 20% better so one must question just how useful those four very weak cores are.

It depends on what benchmarks you look at. With software with decent multithreaded scaling you see an almost linear benefit.

You can see that in some of the benchmarks here:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1621...-review-5950x-5900x-5800x-and-5700x-tested/14

With other software like Adobe's the gains simply aren't there.

The main issue limiting performance isn't that one CCD is particularly weak (its only a few hundred mhz behind at worst) but that the 5800X and 5900X have the same power limit in a stock config, so all core clocks are lower on the 5900X.

If you manually clock the CCDs separately with a manual overclock you can get some pretty big numbers. People are still stuck in the old fashioned all core overclocking which will net you less impressive results.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Just because consoles have gone 8 core now doesnt mean magically they will be able to get perfect scaling with all threads active in games overnight. Games still dont scale well with more cores/threads and i suspect the gpu will be a limit before the cpu is in the new consoles.
From what i read the extra threads are mostly to do with the io sub system and background stuff which these new consoles seem to have running in the background more so than last gen consoles.
Still at 500 quid these new consoles pack good value for money on the hardware side.

 

[Brazo]

The main issue limiting performance isn't that one CCD is particularly weak (its only a few hundred mhz behind at worst) but that the 5800X and 5900X have the same power limit in a stock config, so all core clocks are lower on the 5900X.

If you manually clock the CCDs separately with a manual overclock you can get some pretty big numbers. People are still stuck in the old fashioned all core overclocking which will net you less impressive results.

The first point certainly makes sense as the same power is shared between less cores on a 5800x so that’s why they are ‘stronger’.

On my 3900xt I’ve disabled SMT and overclocked the two strongest cores to 4.7 and left everything else alone!

On MSFS 2020 this has increased my fps in busy cities from 30fps to 40 fps (on my chosen settings)

Regardless IPC and single core speed are still king when it comes to gaming and adding moar cores can often dilute performance.