Ryzen
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The NH-D15 G2 is really nice and a pleasure to use. The boxed kit of parts and accessories is very well put together as usual. The fans have a thin piece of paper between the blades and shroud for protection during shipping, that you must notice and remove. Instead of that right-angle Philips screwdriver used in the older HSFs, there is a nice T20 Torx driver with a solid handle. The CPU brackets were upgraded at some point since early 2023 and now have an offset position option. I'm not sure what difference there is as the base is so large, but I used the 7mm offset since there is room in my build. I also noticed that the thermal paste compound is now NT-H2 and there is a plastic shield for the AM CPUs to prevent paste getting into the cutouts. Those changes may have occurred with the later basic D15s.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks for the review, not that I'm currently in the market for an upgrade. Just good to know what's out there.
I don't think the 7000 X3Ds prices are dropping much more since they are a special purpose part that has not been replaced and the regular 9000s are not much better than the regular 7000s. The arrival of the 9000X3Ds should make more of a difference. AMD has to fix the CCX cluster by then, so it might be longer than expected.
Frankly the X3D is only useful in certain applications and the lower TDP means lower performance than the regular CPUs in most others. I would only consider the 9950X3D if it can run well at 170W. 16 cores at 120W is inadequate on the 4nm process they are stuck with since APPLE gets the good 3nm stuff.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2002
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- 5,256
Thank you. Don't think the cpu has ever been over 15%. Memory is pretty consistent at 20% used.
I do feel at odds with the idea of a 9950X3D just in concept. It feels like a bridge-too-far for a practical use for gamers since almost no games really take any advantage of having so many cores and the idea of AMD building out a CPU that size with a gaming emphasis just feels like a marketing "because we can". A 9800X3D or a 9900X3D would likely be the sweet spot for upper end gaming assuming AMD can really optimize and deliver. That or we'll be seeing the need for windows to park a bunch of cores on a 9950X3D for gaming optimization which just feels odd to me.
ddrueding
Fixture
The whole core-parking thing does have me thinking about whatever the top end of their single chiplet design ends up being, or manually disabling all the cores in one chiplet in BIOS until I have some hard compute to do.
sedrosken
Florida Man
I'm sure they could make just one big CCD but the yields would presumably be awful and they might even have to go UP a node to make any kind of volume, which would kind of ruin the performance/watt argument. The prices would be outrageous, and I doubt they'd meet demand. It'd be a paper part for much of its production cycle. Up until now the issues with having multiple CCDs have been fairly minimal, and I'm sure once they iron out their current issues we'll be back to that being the case.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
AMD's hardware is valid and works well under Linux. This suggests to me that Windows is the place to put blame for not understanding something fundamental about how AMD's architecture works, or possibly a limitation of what the PPM drivers can do within Windows to keep performance on track. Either way, the fact that the multiple CCX arrangement is massively better tells me some people need to stare at the code Linux has until they figure out why it's wrong under Windows, and not that a small army of computer engineers need to go back to the drawing board for not making gamers happy enough.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
My guess as a layperson is that MS keeps reusing code which probably dates from the XP days, if not earlier, for large parts of its OS. They just changed the outward appearance of the OS, added some features, but didn't always update their compilers to take advantage of the latest architectures. The end result is layers and layers of inefficient code which technically may work, but not always well. I often wonder why some operations seem no faster on hardware which is 5 or 10 years newer than they did under XP. Sometimes I even get huge lags when I'm typing text on a website. Exactly what are they doing that things should be this slow? Optimizing compilers for each successive software update will probably be a job only AI can handle. The AI will know the end goal from reading the higher level programming language, then just see how to do the operation in the fewest lines of assembly. Sort of what I do now when I program large parts of microcontroller firmware with assembly instead of relying on a compiler to deliver efficient code. Only difference is the stuff I do is fairly simple. No human can manually optimize the stuff today's systems do.
Maybe I'm totally confused, but isn't the problem between the CCDs and not between the CCXs? It isn't like the Bulldog crap of years ago.
ddrueding
Fixture
I agree it is incredibly likely to be an MS issue, and I hope they manage to sort it out. But as I'm not on either engineering team, and running on Linux isn't really an option for my games (yet, it is getting so close), finding an optimal solution in Windows is the goal.
I think you have an unrealistic idea of what AI is doing. It's a useful tool for optimizing and assisting in design, but doesn't "think" like a human to solve complex problems. Does it understand the issues between marketing and engineering and the stockholders?
That website is probably slow because it is running a ton of scripts that are tracking you to sell you a bunch of stuff or sell your info tothers. It may also be doing a lot of predictions and analytics.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Granted but my point is I wonder how well compilers work at outputting a bare minimum number of commands to accomplish a given task. To me it seems all they do is translate whatever the programmer wrote in high-level language into machine language. It the programmer wrote a convoluted way to arrive at an answer, you'll end up with a slower program. Same if they use a bunch of APIs, instead of writing a program from scratch to accomplish the same task. My thoughts were AI could figure out what the end goal is given a set of inputs, and optimize the machine language. In other words, cut out unnecessary intermediate steps. Today's machines are so fast barring some compute intensive tasks you shouldn't ever be waiting for your machine.
There should also be a way to turn off scripts that add nothing to the user experience. There are times I feel like I'm still on 56K dial-up Internet.
I'll also add some websites are just stupid. I remember one where I had to enter stuff like my email address. After every character I would get a warning "Not a valid e-mail address" until I typed the entire thing. Same with the other fields. Why didn't it just check for validity after you went to another field?
I suspect that the proportion of exclusively Linux users on the desktop CPUs is pretty low, so Windows will be their target market.
Even if you look at all the Photoronix testing in LiNux the 9950X is not all that great of an upgrade compared to previous and faster upgrades, with the exception of the AVX-512 accelerated programs. At best I think the 9000 series will be a meh rather than a dog after it is all over.
It boggles my mind that so many adults play video games, but perhaps AMD will pull something better out of the hat with the 3DX for them.
fb
Storage is cool
I think regarding code vs speed, when performance increases we come up with more bloat.
It would be great if we could write in plain English what we want the result to be and it outputs ASM-code (and compile it for us), but it seems like there is some way to go.
And even then we need to have expert prompt writers to get the correct end eesult. Maybe sales can write everything they promise customers , and sales in private companies just scan public procurements into a prompt.
Regarding CCD:s, I got a little suspect when even the 8 core EPYC came with 4 NUMA nodes, (I changed it to report as one in the BIOS), but it's still faster and competitively priced against intel.
It would be great if we could write in plain English what we want the result to be and it outputs ASM-code (and compile it for us), but it seems like there is some way to go.
And even then we need to have expert prompt writers to get the correct end eesult. Maybe sales can write everything they promise customers , and sales in private companies just scan public procurements into a prompt.
Regarding CCD:s, I got a little suspect when even the 8 core EPYC came with 4 NUMA nodes, (I changed it to report as one in the BIOS), but it's still faster and competitively priced against intel.
sedrosken
Florida Man
The way I understand it is that Microsoft has been slowly updating the instruction sets they target for compilation (most recently some instructions added post-Kentsfield that block off Windows 11 24H2 from running on such machines) but that they can't go too far because there's no real unified standard on what "level" of x86_64 you're on. The Linux-y classifications of v1, v2 and v3 are arbitrary and can leave out machines that'd otherwise be current.
Before Core2 it was relatively easy -- you'd segregate by i386, i486, i586 (Pentium and clones thereof), i686+pae (Pentium Pro+ with some exceptions in the Pentium M range, K7 Athlons+), MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, etc etc. Those would give you rough blocks of machines you could allow to run your software or not. The mobile and ultramobile SKUs more or less kept pace and the lowest common denominator was, for a long time with XP, i586 anyway.
The whole OS, and all of its bundled programs, could be set to use these improved instruction sets if available for speedup, but couldn't target them as a baseline because at the end of the day it still had to be able to run, however slowly, on an original Pentium.
Now, instructions have been added piecemeal and somewhat haphazardly, such that there's no clear way to segregate, say, a second-gen i7, which shouldn't be supported, from an 8th gen Pentium or equivalent Atom, which should, other than checking the CPU ID, which I believe is considered bad practice.
It's not quite as automatic as you might want, but NoScript lets you toggle scripts by domain. You'd be surprised and disgusted just how much something like YouTube needs for basic functionality. So many scripts running from so many domains...
Some jscript devs are paid by the project rather than by the hour, so rush jobs and stupid code is an inevitability, and the onward march of hardware ensures that this stupidity isn't punished as long as it'll run acceptably enough on new kit.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm reading sed's very helpful reply here and ironically I have an i7-2600k I'm about to stick in someone's POS-but-still-in-use Inspiron 660. It's replacing a Celeron G470 and the only reason I'm bothering to do it is that I have a small box of CPUs I've salvaged from PCs I've tossed.
Ask me why anyone is still using an Inspiron 660 and I will answer honestly that I have no earthly idea except that it looks like they've been ripping DVDs on it.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
You should find a higher class of clients.
This is in "favor for a retiree" territory. No one is getting paid. It's also exactly the reason I keep ~12 year old CPUs around.
I'm actually surprised that it was an easy upgrade. I was a little worried that the shitty 180W PSU would handle a 95W part but it seems to be OK. I probably have a 350W FlexATX PSU around somewhere but I'm a lot less sure of that than the spare CPUs I have.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
LM, even boomers might've bought a Pong console in 1975, when they were already fully adults and on their way to the disco, cocaine and herpes -exposure parties they were undoubtedly having before that generation pulled the ladder of fun up for all time. The most active gamer I know is a retired and divorced woman who spends 12+ hours a day playing MMOs. Relative to other hobbies adults might have, gaming is a lot cheaper and more accessible than things like golf or motorcycle ownership. Or, you know, photography.
I have no idea what regular people do now nor then, nor is there anything wrong with it. I know that 10 YO children with money had the Odyssey in 1973. (IIRC Pong was an arcade game.) I had the Atari 2600 later in the 70s, but I just assumed that people outgrew video games when they were in school and then working full time, raising their own families, etc. Apparently I was wrong.
I do know that everyone was not a hippie in the 60s or degenerate druggie with VD in the 70s. Some yoiung people did that for a while and then cleaned up their act and were successful later on. Probably people of your parents generations would be around then.
sedrosken
Florida Man
Several companies released Pong consoles in the 70s and early 80s. There's a whole AVGN episode on them. Heck, even Nintendo made a couple, though I believe they were Japan-exclusive. The Fairchild Channel F was a very early cartridge system, but it had probably my favorite version of Pong that I've seen around, and it paired well with its interesting controllers. My great-grandparents had an RCA something-or-other, somewhere.
I know plenty of people who played games deep into adulthood. My own mother is one such person, as was my father before his sight really started to fail him. As my dad was physically disabled, when I was growing up, and especially on a rainy afternoon, I'd be playing Asheron's Call with one or both of them, or Diablo II, or some permutation of Command and Conquer over our home LAN. My brother is, and I of course am, still an avid gamer. I just played 7 Days to Die with him literally the weekend before this last one. My grandpa used to love the hidden object games and TextTwist, and my grandma played a little of everything under the sun. I got my copy of Snood from her. Registered to her old friend Brenda, as they used to trade off buying games every so often and they'd just give each other their codes.
I went through a phase for a while where I got a lot more mileage enjoyment-wise from building computers and configuring them than playing games on them, but then I started interacting with more groups online and putting together a group for a game isn't such a tedious drag anymore. In fact these days I think I play more multiplayer stuff than I ever have. And I'm an adult with a fairly successful (relative to what I expected, anyway) career.
I guess what I'm trying to say, Lunar, is that gaming is a hobby much like any other, where the barrier to entry (mostly in price) vs hours of enjoyment figure is much more favorable than a lot of others. Being a gamer != being a loser, as I felt like you were implying before you clarified.
I know plenty of people who played games deep into adulthood. My own mother is one such person, as was my father before his sight really started to fail him. As my dad was physically disabled, when I was growing up, and especially on a rainy afternoon, I'd be playing Asheron's Call with one or both of them, or Diablo II, or some permutation of Command and Conquer over our home LAN. My brother is, and I of course am, still an avid gamer. I just played 7 Days to Die with him literally the weekend before this last one. My grandpa used to love the hidden object games and TextTwist, and my grandma played a little of everything under the sun. I got my copy of Snood from her. Registered to her old friend Brenda, as they used to trade off buying games every so often and they'd just give each other their codes.
I went through a phase for a while where I got a lot more mileage enjoyment-wise from building computers and configuring them than playing games on them, but then I started interacting with more groups online and putting together a group for a game isn't such a tedious drag anymore. In fact these days I think I play more multiplayer stuff than I ever have. And I'm an adult with a fairly successful (relative to what I expected, anyway) career.
I guess what I'm trying to say, Lunar, is that gaming is a hobby much like any other, where the barrier to entry (mostly in price) vs hours of enjoyment figure is much more favorable than a lot of others. Being a gamer != being a loser, as I felt like you were implying before you clarified.
What I recall was seeing the Magnavox in holiday 1973, but I was a mere youth and could only window shop.
I think it would be interesting for you historically. I will say that the silly overlays would get stuck to the screen unevenly and damaged so many people just played the basic table tennis and not hockey for example.
I think it would be interesting for you historically. I will say that the silly overlays would get stuck to the screen unevenly and damaged so many people just played the basic table tennis and not hockey for example.
sedrosken
Florida Man
I've seen the Odyssey and Odyssey II showcased before, and while they held academic interest for me, there's only so simple I can go before my imagination just doesn't have anything to work with anymore. The Odyssey I was so basic it wasn't even really a Pong console -- the paddles could just go wherever they wanted. The Odyssey II seemed to focus a lot more on its god-awful keyboard. I hear that thing made the ZX Spectrum look luxurious.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
There's probably a way to save the result and upload from another PC.
The Ultra 9 285k has a TDP of 125W with 8P/16E and no Hyperthreading. Curious how it will stack up.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Is it to exceed Zen 5, though? AMD's has been bringing the heat for multicore or all-core workloads on its mainstream desktop CPUs basically since Zen 2 and Intel has voluntarily dropped hyperthreading on its P-cores for Arrow Lake. Intel's bragging rights since Skylake was released have been largely contained to "watch what happens to single core benchmarks when we see how close we can get to tripping a breaker."
fb
Storage is cool
Even if we had 32 x 6 GHz cores and 1TB of RAM developers would make software that makes the OS lag... more bloat, new frameworks, new versions of Teams and Outlook with AI and whatnot...
My sons computer feels pretty fast but he doesn't have Teams or Outlook installed. But every other computer I use lags, even VS Code feels slow.
My sons computer feels pretty fast but he doesn't have Teams or Outlook installed. But every other computer I use lags, even VS Code feels slow.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Outlook is a poster child for deeply shitty software and that's a hill I will die on with a steely glint in my eye. It sucked in 1997 and it sucks today.
Your corporate PC probably has shit tons of monitoring agents, group policies and access control lists you aren't going to see on a home system, and unless you're an Active Directory or security admin, almost all of that stuff is probably invisible to you. Enterprise AV software is basically the worst and it's particularly bad for people whose work draws in a lot of tiny little files, like developers and engineers.
The business analyst a couple offices down the hall whose entire life is a single Excel spreadsheet and like six reports a month will have no complaints though.
fb
Storage is cool
My only comfort is that I don't have to use Citrix, like most people in the organisation. LOL.
I cannot agree more about Outlook, and on my previous laptop I couldn't be in teams meetings when the AV was scanning, not sure if it was a feature or a bug.
Then, maybe the bad performance is not only the developers fault, I just realized we (at least I) use more browser tabs, more documents, more applications open forever and mostly only reboot the computer completely after patch Tuesdays...
I cannot agree more about Outlook, and on my previous laptop I couldn't be in teams meetings when the AV was scanning, not sure if it was a feature or a bug.
Then, maybe the bad performance is not only the developers fault, I just realized we (at least I) use more browser tabs, more documents, more applications open forever and mostly only reboot the computer completely after patch Tuesdays...
sedrosken
Florida Man
I loathe Outlook deeply. Thirtyish (remember Schedule+?) years of just... code, on top of code, on top of code, and none of it worked well to begin with. I cannot tell you just how much of my job is doing the arcane rituals necessary to prod Outlook into working. God help you if you have more than one mailbox you're working with in it, too -- Outlook takes well over a minute to launch on my i7-8665U laptop with an NVMe SSD. Not a single one of my mailboxes are at anything over a gigabyte full. I recognize that the 8665U is no spring chicken but it shouldn't be struggling with farking email.
Santilli
Hairy Aussie
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2002
- Messages
- 5,256
I have no idea why your CPU usage is so low, unless it's running old software that doesn't implement SMT very well. Many users will find that the single-threaded performance is what makes a computer feel fast, combined with a lack of crapware.
sedrosken
Florida Man
Install Outlook and Teams and get back to me. Even better, do that, then add some corporate-grade antimalware, MDR, a backup program, whatever other meeting platforms your company's decided to "standardize" on...
I wish I was kidding. This crap has a real way of making a fast machine feel slow. I just installed a couple workstations with i7-13700s and plenty of RAM/SSD -- they went from being blindingly quick to boot and be ready to use to being just another office box after all that junk was in place. Business apps can get as bloated as they want because IT will just respond with using it as an excuse to balloon their spending limit and justify higher end machines than they should need. Do you know what that 13700 box is used for? Email, an online dispatching and CRM software, Quickbooks, and editing PDFs in Adobe. That is it. I legitimately felt bad for needing to recommend something that high end, but personal experience taught me that an i5 or especially less will feel old before its time and companies don't upgrade incrementally like we would.
So they are all dropping now. The 9700x numbers are obviously mostly or all at stock 65W. The 9950X (n=15) are less than 10% better than the 7950X in single-thread and about 6% in overall CPU Marks.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Exactly why I never have AV software. Every single one I've tried slows the machine to a crawl, especially when doing file intensive operations. It's like the software has to scan every single file in use multiple times.
Sometimes I honestly think software bloat is intentional in order to get people to constantly upgrade their hardware.