AMD Ryzen worth for CGI stuff?

#1

Hello there, so AMD ryzen is comming (new CPU from AMD for a good price).
The tests are still not out, but i wanted to ask, will it (most likely) be worth it for CGI stuff in general? Like 3ds max, Vray rendering, GPU rendering, other uses, video stuff etc.?

Most tests in mainstream HW media wont cover these test most likely, so i guess i want to ask- IF the general results for the CPU from the tests are good, better or comparable to Intel CPUs, the AMD ryzen can be safely used also for CGI graphic stuff, right?

Like for example AMD ryzen wont miss and features (like instruction sets in cpu) that would provide them “good” score in general (like games) but BAD performance in graphic stuff?

Correct?

#2

All cuurently known facts point to a line of CPUs that can be competitive to the current Intel lineup.
Due to the very limited availability of test systems it is currently hard, if not impossible, to give any relay well founded advice. It will take until release i fear.

#3

well there are already rumors and quite reasonable that say that hyperthreading on these AMDs (SMT it is called) wont work properly on Windows 7 which might hinder performance on this platform…

so yes there are some things that can be said already :-).

#4

For the FX processors AMD used a single floating point processing unit (FPU) for each pair of CPU cores. This saved cost and didn’t affect most applications because most things don’t use the FPU to the same extent that ray tracing rendering does. This effectively cut the number of cores in half for 3D rendering.

The Ryzen processors have a FPU for every processor core like AMD products prior (Phenom, Athlon 64, etc.) so the performance is on par with the Intel processors for 3D rendering. What it comes down to is the price which if the leaks are accurate the pricing is very competitive. I’m more interested in seeing what they do with the next generation of Opteron or whatever their workstation and server line will be. That’s where Intel is just price gouging the crap out of people.

#5

Wow thanks. I didnt know that about the FX cpus…

So in AMD ryzen, there is not any “hidden” problem like this (as far as people are currently aware of?)

Also it doesnt lack and instruction sets or anything similiar in comparison to Intel CPUs…?

(I gues im just really carefull… i know for example that although ATI and NVIDIA cards are comparable in games etc., that doesnt apply in "profesional GPU calculations (like CGI) where NVIDIA rocks ATI (because ATI doesnt support something)

#6

From everything I’ve read thus far the upcoming Ryzen processors are a viable alternative to Intel processors for 3D graphics. The FX processors were a good option for low cost machines but it looks like Ryzen will be competitive even with the high end offerings from Intel. I reserve the right to reverse my opinion after February 28th when they are released!

#7

AMD is still holding back a lot of information on the Ryzen, but i don’t think they are holding back a lot of bad news. Different to their behaviour in the past, and to Intel, they are very tightlipped even towards partners. Many of the details are not yet known outside of a very small circle.
I don’t expect any earth shattering news, but chances are they are holding back to give Intel less time to react.

#8

Hey, do you have a source for that? What I know is that each par of cores share an instruction cache. Actually rendering FX-8 cores uses 8 threads.

#9

It shows all the cores in the software and task manager but each pair of cores shares a single FPU so they’re waiting on the other core to be done with the FPU half of the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)#/media/File%3AAMD_Bulldozer_block_diagram_(CPU_core_bloack).PNG

This is why the 8 core FX chips were on par with 4 core chips from Intel at the time in terms of 3D rendering performance and pricing.

#10

…yep, you are right, it´s more clear in this one

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)#/media/File%3AAMD_Bulldozer_block_diagram_(8_core_CPU).PNG

(the next one in the wiki page)

anyway seems a big par a? ;¬)

#11

We had quite a few angry customers asking us why our Software only uses half their CPU power when rendering. They weren’t happy to be told that their “8 Core” CPU was actualy more of a 4+ Core CPU.

#12

You should also keep in mind that most developers optimize their renderers on Intel and some of them like Vray and Corona are based on embree. While this does not mean that rendering will be slower on a Ryzen processor than on an Intel, I would not be too surprised if it will.

#13

I think Embree was a push to get people to adopt Xeon Phi because it supports AVX512. By putting Embree out there it makes it easier for developers to support Xeon Phi. On all other processors Embree uses whatever is available (SSE, AVX, AVX2, and AVX512). Both older and the upcoming AMD processor support SSE and AVX so it should run equivalently on either AMD or Intel processors with all other factors being equal.

#14

yep… thanks, this was the sort of information i was looking for. Will keep it in mind, lets hope it wont affect in the end when the “final” results are released .

#15

The benchmarks and pricing are official now. The Ryzen 7 1700X is on par with the Core i7-6900K in Cinebench R15. One is $399 and the other is $1099.

#16

So beware… i read that the AMD ryzens might be 2 times SLOWER than intel in applications that are using some “AVX instructions” set. Which im not sure what if any application use it (i know about one “mainstream” that does)…

citation… :"…Ryzen’s support for AVX instructions is 128-bit in nature, meaning two cycles are required to achieve what an Intel core does in one…"

so phew… probably gonna be better to wait for the tests…

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-how-amds-ryzen-will-disrupt-the-cpu-market

#17

Liquid nitrogen cooled Ryzen breaks Cinebench Record

Sounds interesting. Can’t wait to see more benchmarks.

#18

embree support or not, it still doesn’t stop the cinebench scores from being what they are

chip looks solid
glad to see AMD get back in the market

AVX code that slows something down to 50%, I’d think would be an emergency-level optimization made by whoever makes that software…maybe unless it’s Mental Ray - they probably don’t care if their CPU code is 50% slower. They’d probably welcome that “feature” to help them sell nvidia cards.

#19

Has anyone been following the news, will there be dual socket AM4+ motherboards available?

#20

I looked closely but so far nothing has been said. I would expect this to be announced a short while after the actual releas of thy Ryzen. I would expect them to release these new cpus with an own sockect and very oikely under an own name, like the opteron.