The days of 2011 is dimming?

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wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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So i finally have a chance to catch up on the latest CPU news, a few months late...lol

AMD Ryzen 9 3900x is one FAST cpu. it's faster than 1950x (dual 2696 v2) in everything except 64 thread task for $499 retail (unfortunately due to shortage it's more like 600+ right now)... It's only slightly slower than 1950x at 64 threads

The 3950X will probably beat 1950x in everything

so i have no idea why 2696 v2 is still still selling for $250 each. The only thing still going for 2011 v2 is the cheaper ram....

At this point if someone asking for my recommendation, if what they need use less than 128gb ram, i would definitely recommend ryzen 9. only if they need something with more than 128gb ram would i recommend maybe v2 if they have limited budget.

The high end server market still need the ultra expensive stuffs. but for a large amount of people, a workstation with these new cpu seem like fine.?
 
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vladimir.mijatovic

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Jan 12, 2019
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That is the exact same thoght process i've had. :)
I have quad E5-2640 v1 & dual 2690 v1 and E5-1650v4.
There are some benefits in loads of pcie lanes, cheap (quad channel) ram and "enterprice" feeling of R620's and Asus ws mobo.
You probably won't see those amazing passmark single threaded scores in virtualization env.

I would currently try ryzen 3600+ before (dual) E5-2600 vX and even w-21xx cpus.
But I will say that E5's helped me A Lot to better understand different usages and platform options. So there are still many benefits in these systems beside good pricings.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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lol... i might have to cash out my 2011 v2 system soon while i still can sell them for good price. probably keep a few. the Lenovo S30 and D30 i got are such nice system though.
 

vladimir.mijatovic

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Jan 12, 2019
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I doubt that you will be able to get the amount worth selling for. I put on sale my asus ws z9-pe ws, 64gb 18xx MHz ecc ram + dual e5-2690 for 1.150eur. No calls.

It's been really great ws for 24/7 2-3y now and I've learned a lot with it. It still runs LSI 9270-8i, X710/4x sfp+ 10Gb nic, intel 750, EVO 960 via pcie adapter, gtx 1070, sata ssd boot drive. Dual nic is min I would take now and still often find it one short when testing some networking stuff.
Anything under 1000e leaves me picking up something more consumerish and wondering what will be missing down the road.
 

lhibou

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Jun 12, 2019
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Seems like AMD is making some strides in the CPU Land lately. Looks like a nice chip.

I'm a little torn. Currently it's between the Xeon E-2200 (soon to be available?), plus C246 workstation motherboard, or the Ryzen with an Asus WS motherboard (w/ ECC) for a new workstation build. Intel is obviously more expensive for the same performance or a little worse.

I'm a little daft when it comes to memory for the AMD stuff, so correct me if I am wrong but it looks like the AMD chips like higher clock speeds than Xeon equivalents? Is that right or am I getting mixed up? I can't seem to find ECC DDR4 roughly near to stated memory speeds most people are building Ryzens with.

I've not had an AMD since the Athlon XP days, though. I'm a little hesitant to take the plunge, mostly due to concerns over reliability in a moderately high end workstation build. Anyone have experience running a Ryzen build with ECC here on the forums?
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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I'm a little daft when it comes to memory for the AMD stuff, so correct me if I am wrong but it looks like the AMD chips like higher clock speeds than Xeon equivalents? Is that right or am I getting mixed up? I can't seem to find ECC DDR4 roughly near to stated memory speeds most people are building Ryzens with.
ECC UDIMMs basically max out at 2666MHz as that's the official ceiling for the JEDEC specs.

The good news from a Ryzen 3000/Zen 2 standpoint is that thanks to the IO die, memory speed and latency is of much less importance than it was with Zen and Zen+. The vast majority of real-world benchmarks show only a couple of % performance difference between 2666 and 3200, and even dropping to single-channel doesn't halve performance like it used to. TPU made a nice little performance comparison for the 3900X here.

Personally I tried some ffmpeg benches on my new 3700X with both my 2666 ECC UDIMMs and some 3200 low latency stuff I have in my HTPC and the performance difference was negligible.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Anyone have experience running a Ryzen build with ECC here on the forums?
I should qualify my recommendation above also that as long as you don't need ECC . Which a lot of time you don't even in a WS.

If you have to have the ECC feature, then ryzen is not for you. epyx uses ecc but more expensive.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Ryzen can very definitely use ECC RAM; I'm using it with ECC RAM. The only thing it doesn't support is registered/RDIMMs, you need to use UDIMMs.
Right. No RDIMM for ryzen or TR.

ECC support is still iffy. From what i know, it seems to depend on MB.

As far as price goes for DDR4, is there much price difference between 16/32GB ecc and non-ecc udimm now? how about compared with ddr4 rdimm price?

It's a good thing to see ddr4 price gone down lately.
 
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vangoose

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May 21, 2019
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I'm thinking to replace my E5 v2 each with 128G ram running esxi. They are still running strong but they are pretty old.

DDR4 RDIMM price is getting very reasonable now, CA$206 for 32GB module.
 

lhibou

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Jun 12, 2019
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Right. No RDIMM for ryzen or TR.

ECC support is still iffy. From what i know, it seems to depend on MB.

As far as price goes for DDR4, is there much price difference between 16/32GB ecc and non-ecc udimm now? how about compared with ddr4 rdimm price?

It's a good thing to see ddr4 price gone down lately.
UDIMM does still seem to be pricier than RDIMM DDR4, but not 3x the price at least (I'm lookin at you, DDR3 a few weeks ago, hah!)

It does seem to depend on motherboard implementation. The x570 WS ("worksation") motherboards for Ryzen do mostly seem to support the ECC option. Well, at least the ones I've seen from Asus and AsRock do. This is the one I've been eyeballing (main contender to a C246 + Xeon for me...still can't decide).

Pro WS X570-ACE | Motherboards | ASUS Global

Maybe it's superstition, but I'm also in a way with you on not being sure about the ECC Ryzen support. I've read that ECC support was part of the feature-set at launch, and it's nothing to be surprised about, but just the fact that it's taken digging to find out if it's actually supported or not, what peoples' experiences have been - and Reddit seems also to be full of mixed reports - it leaves me feeling a bit confused about it all and perhaps a bit sketchy on it.

It may just be that ECC memory on a CPU that is primarily a hot sell to gamers (not to mention, relatively new) is kind of a fringe use case that isn't a huge priority for motherboard makers. Yeah, plenty of people use non-Xeon CPUs for all manners of other things but afaik there's no "supported" ECC with regular i7, i9, etc?

I dunno. Wouldn't mind hearing some anecdotal reports from anyone that's had experience with it. Found a foreign review of the aforementioned mobo here but they weren't using ECC RAM with it. They did mention the support for it though.

EDIT: oops, I missed reading a reply. Thanks @wildpig1234 - what is your system config if you don't mind me asking?
 

lhibou

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Jun 12, 2019
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ECC UDIMMs basically max out at 2666MHz as that's the official ceiling for the JEDEC specs.

The good news from a Ryzen 3000/Zen 2 standpoint is that thanks to the IO die, memory speed and latency is of much less importance than it was with Zen and Zen+. The vast majority of real-world benchmarks show only a couple of % performance difference between 2666 and 3200, and even dropping to single-channel doesn't halve performance like it used to. TPU made a nice little performance comparison for the 3900X here.

Personally I tried some ffmpeg benches on my new 3700X with both my 2666 ECC UDIMMs and some 3200 low latency stuff I have in my HTPC and the performance difference was negligible.
Ahh - that is very helpful information. TIL. Thanks for sharing!

I think I'd read somewhere a caution on maxing out memory speed and optimising latency in the CPU before - and probably totally missed that they were talking about a different generation, by the sounds of it. Sounds like it's not so much of a concern for the 3000/Zen 2.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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Yup, the IMC on the Zen 2 chips is a markedly different beast from that on the Zen and Zen+. Those first two gens really do want RAM as fast as you can get it

All of the Ryzen CPUs support ECC UDIMMs because the Ryzen IMC supports it, and AMD don't disable it on certain chips in order to charge more for it. Of course besides an IMC that supports ECC, you also need a) a BIOS that supports ECC and b) hardware that supports ECC, since it requires additional traces on the motherboard in order to work. Some manufacturers make an effort to support ECC, others don't. Some have it enabled on some boards but not others.

Ryzen 2's still too new for my relatively ancient debian install to work with EDAC yet but I can see from my testing that using regular UDIMMs I get a data width of 64 whilst with ECC UDIMMs I get a data width of 128 - this isn't correct as it should be 72, but apparently it's a common bug where the data width is mis-reported by the BIOS. As soon as I get evidence either way (which will basically amount to actually getting a memory error in the log) I will of course furnish the X470D4U thread with the information.
 
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lhibou

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Jun 12, 2019
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Yup, the IMC on the Zen 2 chips is a markedly different beast from that on the Zen and Zen+. Those first two gens really do want RAM as fast as you can get it

All of the Ryzen CPUs support ECC UDIMMs because the Ryzen IMC supports it, and AMD don't disable it on certain chips in order to charge more for it. Of course besides an IMC that supports ECC, you also need a) a BIOS that supports ECC and b) hardware that supports ECC, since it requires additional traces on the motherboard in order to work. Some manufacturers make an effort to support ECC, others don't. Some have it enabled on some boards but not others.

Ryzen 2's still to new for my relatively ancient debian install to work with EDAC yet but I can see from my testing that using regular UDIMMs I get a data width of 64 whilst with ECC UDIMMs I get a data width of 128 - this isn't correct as it should be 72, but apparently it's a common bug where the data width is mis-reported by the BIOS. As soon as I get evidence either way (which will basically amount to actually getting a memory error in the log) I will of course furnish the X470D4U thread with the information.
Very useful info, thanks! Learning a lot about AMD's recent stuff today. That's interesting about the data width on the memory.

Ah great, I was going to be to ask if anyone here had Linux experience with these newer chips! Out of curiosity, when you say relatively ancient deb install, what release are you on that it's missing from the kernel at the moment?
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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The current install is debian oldstable but using the same 4.19 kernel as stable (via backports); however, the updated EDAC driver for Ryzen 3000 was only added in 4.20. I've not found any live distros that include edac-utils yet so if I get the time I might try a test install of bullseye.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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EDIT: oops, I missed reading a reply. Thanks @wildpig1234 - what is your system config if you don't mind me asking?
my 2011 v2 system: dual 2696 v2 with 16x 16GB ddr3 rdimm with asus z9pe- d16.

my 2011 v3/v4: dual 2686 v3 QS or 2696 v3 QS or 2698 V4 ES QHUZ with 8x 16GB rdimm ddr4 on asus z10pe-d16ws.

I also have a bunch of other 2011 v2 cpu like 2690, 2680, 2667...

So in term of multicore computing raw power, i am still doing sorta ok for now.... the ram issue is what keeping me from replacing my v2 with ryzen.
 

Markess

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May 19, 2018
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Great information! I'd never have thought AMD for anything but desktops lately, but now maybe I need to change my thinking. The last AMD "server"ish hardware I had were a couple Opteron 3320EE, that were AM3+ CPUs designed to work with consumer grade motherboards for cheap webservers. I hadn't given AMD any serious consideration since, as Epyc is way more than I need these days.

I think 2011 is still good for small deployments and homelabs on a budget though, especially if you're doing a Do It Youself hobbyist setup like I am these days. Still a supply of new motherboards and lots of used CPUs through various channels. And DDR3 RDIMMs are still so much cheaper ECC UDIMMs, or any DDR4. I put a "new" ESXi system together earlier this year, and the new SM motherboard, 128GB of used RAM and a pair of used 8 core E5-2628ls (I needed core count over clock speed) ran only $182 (US) shipped. combined

Although I agree that higher spec v2 CPUs seem to be priced too high at the moment. v1 prices tumbled when all the enterprise started pulling v2 servers from service. v3 have got to be going in mass numbers at this point, so v2 prices ought to be falling soon I'd think?

On the other hand, by the time my oldest machine, running E5 2630 v1, is ready to retire, I'm sure there will be a supply of used Ryzen to choose from!
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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IMHO this is more of an "it depends" situation.

I'm not going out today and buying a V1\V2 chassis and CPUs and RAM I'm going for V3\V4, but that doesn't mean I'm not buying V2 CPUs and DDR3 for existing v1\v2 systems to upgrade, or build out empty ones especially if I can find deals on the v2 cpus and ram.


$30-$40 DDR3 32GB vs $90 DDR4 is a big deal
$175 for V2 or $205 for a V3 CPU is not so much a big deal.
$500 for a V1\V2 system\barebones vs $1000 for a v3\v4 is a big deal.

I'm building mostly V3\4 now because of the price\value and upgrade path to higher core V4s when they drop in price, but I've also gotten some V2 CPUs and DDR3 for existing hardware I have ;)

V1 is dated, and next year maybe everything else will drop where v2 will make no sense but we need to see more improvements in performance and power reduction for many to dump them completely.
 
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EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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Well I wouldn't exactly call the Ryzen stuff "server" grade but as it stands the Ryzen 3000 and the X470D4U make a good-enough and highly economical platform. For the price of just the 8P Xeon W-2145 (£1100 in the UK), I've bought an equally fast 8P chip that uses less power, motherboard, 32GB of RAM and two 1TB SSDs.

I had high hopes for the Epyc 3000 embedded series but sadly the boards I wanted to see (mainly mATX or ATX) haven't materialised, and now of course I want an embedded Epyc with Zen 2 inside. Regular Epyc is likewise a bit rich for my blood, and I've a number of tasks (most importantly video filters) that want high single-thread performance so Ryzen fits the bill for me perfectly.
 

zer0sum

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Mar 8, 2013
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It's an awesome CPU, but I just can't get excited really until there are a few ATX size MB's with IPMI.

I might be waiting a while though :(