Workstation 2990wx or 7980xe?

Beren · 20 Nov 2018 at 09:03

Threadripper supports quad channel Ram... So you want 4 DIMMs. Also if you are saving the cash on TR I would go with a higher spec MB and at least a good AIO, what are you cooling it with?
I would either go all out on the ROG or at least the Taichi. Both awesome boards and should have the power delivery for whatever the next gen TR chips have to offer.
I have had some really awesome TridentZ so would always recommend that, but go 3200+ if you can on a 4 DIMM set. I have 2800 and regret not going that bit quicker.

muziqaz · 20 Nov 2018 at 09:30

Ok, I had a little look. Mixed feelings about it to be fare. CAD behaves extremely well on ryzen system, but I still cannot get away from singlethreadedness of this damn thing. A lot of the tasks were SSD/HDD bound, so make sure you have good storage going, with fast IOPS and throughput. Windows 10 with its latest bug update, hops threads like crazy, but whichever core CAD used is always pinned to its top boost frequency. So I can say with confidence that your chip will sustain single/dual thread boost for the duration of the CAD tantrum.
My ryzen system at the moment has WD velociraptor 300Gb, and it is bottlenecking CAD like crazy, but regardless of that CAD felt waay better with the Ryzen Chip than it is with my workstation.
Also if I could give you some advice, which you can ignore completely that's fine: instead of 2990WX, why not go 2950x, which is 16cores/32threads and is a lot cheaper than top dog, and seeing how you would be upgrading from 12 threads anyway, that would be immense leap anyways, and once 7nm comes out with its(hopefully) improved clocks, you could drop in replace your old part.
Also, hopefully you have good storage system in place. With all the PCI-E links in TR chip you can invest in some cracking fast SSDs

Edit: yes 4 DIMMs is preferable to harness the power that is TR

Beren · 20 Nov 2018 at 18:21

If I read it correctly the OP is on dual Xeons so 24 threads... I would be considering the 2970wx though, especially with what you say about the IOPS though, it is an extra 400 on the budget to perhaps go up to 64GB of fast RAM and high end NVMe storage.

muziqaz · 21 Nov 2018 at 09:00

Yes, my bad, I seem to have lost an ability to pay attention to what I read. So it is 24 threads. The point still stands. Even 2950x would offer huge improvements in multithreaded loads, but 2970 is another option, to double the thread count.

Pat Butcher 3 · 22 Nov 2018 at 07:38

Hi just went for the 2990wx. Fingers crossed it has better single thread performance then current system.

Thanks for all the advice.

muziqaz · 22 Nov 2018 at 13:28

Pat Butcher 3 said:
Hi just went for the 2990wx. Fingers crossed it has better single thread performance then current system.

Thanks for all the advice.

It will be better for sure, just question is by how much

ZXSpectrum · 22 Nov 2018 at 13:48

The TR is the better all round CPUfor the money. It wins hands down in rendering and multithreaded applications over the Intel products in most scenarios with the exception of single threaded workloads. These are starting to become less and less now as software vendors have been updating to utilise more cores in the last couple of years, same with gaming. That said the TR does have lower IPC than the intel this is why Specviewperf results are lower(And according to the leaks may be significantly increased in TR3). My customers are seeing the advantages of going for the TR over the i9 and spending the difference in money on better/faster memory, better GPU and faster disk subsystem.

Oh and the Numa/Uma can cause lower results with the TR2990WX but the new version of Ryzen Pro Master Util can be setup to alter on the fly for specific software usage.

muziqaz · 22 Nov 2018 at 14:28

ZXSpectrum said:
The TR is the better all round CPUfor the money. It wins hands down in rendering and multithreaded applications over the Intel products in most scenarios with the exception of single threaded workloads. These are starting to become less and less now as software vendors have been updating to utilise more cores in the last couple of years, same with gaming. That said the TR does have lower IPC than the intel this is why Specviewperf results are lower(And according to the leaks may be significantly increased in TR3). My customers are seeing the advantages of going for the TR over the i9 and spending the difference in money on better/faster memory, better GPU and faster disk subsystem.

Oh and the Numa/Uma can cause lower results with the TR2990WX but the new version of Ryzen Pro Master Util can be setup to alter on the fly for specific software usage.

The MT software is not in question, that is given. But AutoCAD is heavy single threaded app, and it boggs down single CPU core like no other. And when you have massive drawings going on, it can take a lot of time to work on them waiting for that single core to sort out your actions

by the looks of things, Autodesk has no solution to implement multicore in their CAD programs

kitfit1 · 22 Nov 2018 at 14:49

muziqaz said:
The MT software is not in question, that is given. But AutoCAD is heavy single threaded app, and it boggs down single CPU core like no other. And when you have massive drawings going on, it can take a lot of time to work on them waiting for that single core to sort out your actions by the looks of things, Autodesk has no solution to implement multicore in their CAD programs

In this day and age it's completely unacceptable for a major software company to completely ignore the needs of 90% of there own customers needs. Obviously Autodesk have a monopoly in this market sector, let's face it they charge enough. AutoCad is crying out to be multi threaded and yet even if you have a dual core cpu, it will only use 1 core...................beggers belief :mad:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...t-for-multi-core-processors-with-AutoCAD.html

muziqaz · 22 Nov 2018 at 15:02

kitfit1 said:
In this day and age it's completely unacceptable for a major software company to completely ignore the needs of 90% of there own customers needs. Obviously Autodesk have a monopoly in this market sector, let's face it they charge enough. AutoCad is crying out to be multi threaded and yet even if you have a dual core cpu, it will only use 1 core...................beggers belief
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...t-for-multi-core-processors-with-AutoCAD.html

I read Autodesk software managers opinions at a later date, and even in 2016 they still were talking that speed up would be minimal and implementation is extremely difficult.
In my opinion AutoCAD in its design is ancient. The way it handles multiple drawings being open and the fact that they implemented tabs just couple of releases back tells me they are stuck in 1999. I cannot argue their excuses about code, but when you have several tabs with drawings open, and one of them is doing some serious work, the whole application freezes for the duration of the activity. I am sure there are ways to push separate tabs to separate CPU threads to have CAD behave more freely. But you are correct, they are a monopoly and de facto choice for huge industry, so they have no need to innovate, if money still flowing

kitfit1 · 22 Nov 2018 at 15:42

muziqaz said:
I read Autodesk software managers opinions at a later date, and even in 2016 they still were talking that speed up would be minimal and implementation is extremely difficult.
In my opinion AutoCAD in its design is ancient. The way it handles multiple drawings being open and the fact that they implemented tabs just couple of releases back tells me they are stuck in 1999. I cannot argue their excuses about code, but when you have several tabs with drawings open, and one of them is doing some serious work, the whole application freezes for the duration of the activity. I am sure there are ways to push separate tabs to separate CPU threads to have CAD behave more freely. But you are correct, they are a monopoly and de facto choice for huge industry, so they have no need to innovate, if money still flowing

I don't actually AutoCad myself, i do use Articad though. Articad will and does use as many cores as you can throw at it and runs very very fast using more cores. There is no reason that Autodesk can't make there software use all cores, it's just down to apathy and market monopoly.

Beren · 22 Nov 2018 at 20:52

Just to chuck a completely uneducated POV out there, I was just doing a quick google to see if there is any sign of AutoCAD implementing decent multithreading any time soon. I came across this - which I am sure is either irrelevant or you already know but thought I would just pop it here in case...

WHIPTHREAD
This variable specifies how AutoCAD will use additional processors on the machine. If there is only a single processor then this variable will not have any effect. The default value of WHIPTHREAD system variable is 1 but you can change it to other values as well.

0 – No multithreading used

1 – Regeneration only is carried out by multiple processors

2 – Redraw only is performed by multiple processors

3 – Regeneration and redraw carried out

AutoCAD can use that extra processor to improve the speed of operations such as zoom which redraws or regenerates the drawing. There will be a slight acceleration when you are working with large drawings if you set this variable to 3.

But you should not expect a drastic improvement in the performance just by changing this system variable.

kitfit1 · 22 Nov 2018 at 22:15

Beren said:
Just to chuck a completely uneducated POV out there, I was just doing a quick google to see if there is any sign of AutoCAD implementing decent multithreading any time soon. I came across this - which I am sure is either irrelevant or you already know but thought I would just pop it here in case...

Confirms what i said then. It was designed to use just one core and Autodesk have no intention at all to invest all the millions/billions they have made out of the software to actually improve the performance for the peeps that pay over £1800 a years to use this rubbish.

4K8KW10 · 22 Nov 2018 at 22:26

kitfit1 said:
In this day and age it's completely unacceptable for a major software company to completely ignore the needs of 90% of there own customers needs. Obviously Autodesk have a monopoly in this market sector, let's face it they charge enough. AutoCad is crying out to be multi threaded and yet even if you have a dual core cpu, it will only use 1 core...................beggers belief

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...t-for-multi-core-processors-with-AutoCAD.html

Unfortunately, that is done not because they can not implement multi-threaded support, but because of some weird political reason to keep the operations efficiency as low as possible.

kitfit1 · 22 Nov 2018 at 22:43

4K8KW10 said:
but because of some weird political reason to keep the operations efficiency as low as possible.

In that case then, Autodesk need to be put out of business as fast as possible by a 16 year old that can do the job properly.

muziqaz · 26 Nov 2018 at 12:51

whipthread is not present on my 2017 version anymore.
Talking about the thought to put Autodesk out of business, no chance. Their bread and butter is corporate market, who don't really care if software is single or multithreaded

Beren · 26 Nov 2018 at 20:29

@Pat Butcher 3 - I don't know if you are going to be posting here much, but it would be awesome if you could pop back to this thread once you have your new setup and let us know what you went with and what the difference is.

Distracted · 26 Nov 2018 at 23:56

Pat Butcher 3 said:
Hi just went for the 2990wx. Fingers crossed it has better single thread performance then current system.

Thanks for all the advice.

Beren said:
@Pat Butcher 3 - I don't know if you are going to be posting here much, but it would be awesome if you could pop back to this thread once you have your new setup and let us know what you went with and what the difference is.

Not sure how they are getting on, but they chose the 2990wx. I would also be interested in hearing how the update is performing.

Beren · 27 Nov 2018 at 00:41

I hear you - was interested in what total rig they go with and what actual gains they see from it... we also get a lot of threads of people saying one thing and then ending up with something a significant distance away.

Moments420 · 27 Nov 2018 at 02:38

It’s REVIT but part of the AutoDesk family (same lack of multi core support for modelling).

You can probably extrapolate what a 2990wx Vs 7980XE would do from those numbers.

At stock speeds of a workstation .... both would be relatively slow at modelling. Rendering, AMD would destroy intel. FWIW in structural engineering you spend probably 90% of the time modelling.

Personally, not seeing the value prospect of a 2990wx system unless it’s a dedicated render machine for an entire design office. (Although it’s all academic since the OP has bought).