Stuck in Limbo Land of needing both High Core & High Clock Speed...

[traderjay]

Hello Folks - I am stuck in a limbo land because of the applications I use require a mix of both high core count (video encoding) and high clock speed (image editing applications & gaming & Trading) and I can't find a CPU thats good for my use

I have a XEON 2696 V3 CPU which flies when doing video encoding such as converting 4K videos from my DSLR to a different format, but struggles at image editing applications (DxO Mark, Photoshop etc) and my much older i7 3970x seems to perform better in that case.

I am thinking switching to the X299 platform but that platform is riddled with issues that rivals swiss cheese. I am thinking of single LGA 3647 socket workstation as the new XEONS seem to have decent turbo speed? I can't seem to find the info on the core load for the turbo speed either...

 

[T_Minus]

What about a dedicated video editing station, and a high-frequency desktop for the rest?

With monitors of today you can plug both systems into the same monitor and switch between screens that way, and then get a switch for USB KB and Mouse, or simply unplug / replug into a HUB when needed... couple more options you could do that route too.

 

[Patrick]

That is interesting. I am building a Threadripper 1950X system this weekend. Going to compare to 2P E5-2658 V3 I am using now.

As a point of reference, I did not notice much of a slowdown going from 2P E5-2690 V3 to 2P E5-2658 V3.

Also, have been working on h264->x265 benchmarks. That seems to top out around 16 cores/ threads.

 

[wildpig1234]

That is interesting. I am building a Threadripper 1950X system this weekend. Going to compare to 2P E5-2658 V3 I am using now.

As a point of reference, I did not notice much of a slowdown going from 2P E5-2690 V3 to 2P E5-2658 V3.

Also, have been working on h264->x265 benchmarks. That seems to top out around 16 cores/ threads.

The 2P 2658 v3 will obviously get cremed with single or low core thread count tasks.

For very highly threaded task using as many cores as you can give, it will be interesting. intel (24 x 2.5 = 60) vs (16 x 4.0 = 64, assuming that amd can actually hold the 4.0ghz turbo speed with all 16 cores being used).

Ryzen is a game changer for amd. right now intel does not have any good respond at all as far as any cpu that would give the same comparable multicore performance for the same price

if amd can quickly implement ryzen into their multi cpu offer and keeping the price down, intel would be in trouble.

 

[Patrick]

Creamed is still 25% clock speed Turbo difference.

 

[wildpig1234]

Creamed is still 25% clock speed Turbo difference.

if we take a single thread task, that would be 2.9 vs 4.0 in favor of 1950x. there is simply no comparison of single thread between 2658 v3 and 1950x

if you don't mind using the ES ver, 2x 2658 v3 run about $400 on ebay so you might get somewhat close to 1950x multicore performance but of course at expense of power and the fact of running ES cpu. But at least that's significantly cheaper solution even though it will probably still be slightly slower in multithread.

I think i said the cheapest solution right now to beating 1950x at full multithread would be a dual 2696 v2 setup.

If you want single xeon cpu, this might come real close to 1950x for slightly more expensive and would also allow for the possibility of adding a 2nd cpu which 1950x doesnt:

Intel Xeon E5-2696 v4 OEM SR2J0 ( =E5-2699 v4 )LGA2011-3 22C Compatible X99 | eBay

 

[Stephan]

With the advent of AMD Threadripper and EPIC this whole ES/QS business is imho on its way out. It was created because Intel could set a high price on its CPUs due to no real competition. Good luck getting a microcode update for any of these chips in case a bug like recently with SKL/KBL shows up. Since your setup will not be cheap as in "got it for 200 from ebay all included", I suggest a platform that HAS support. If only for investment protection? For video encoding you can also skip Intel QuickSync because its encoding profiles will not give the very best results. So really it is many cores for that and nothing else.

For gaming you need a fast GPU as in AMD or nVidia and that's it. For trading I suggest a model with 3 to 4 outputs. If you need more monitors to impress the neighbor or watch "the markets" you have other problems. ;-)

So in your case I'd suggest to just get a Threadripper CPU with a board from a reputable OEM some ECC-RAM from the QVL and you are done.

At the start of 2017 I would have suggested an Intel Xeon still, because of the more reliable platform with less bugs. Yeah well Skylake damaged this opinion beyond repair. AMD has the cores, the speed and proved that it can fix RAM incompatibilities and also CPU bugs with satisfactory results.

 

[wildpig1234]

i agree the market for v3 and v4 ES/QS has just got a major squeeze. the market for v2 non es/qs is still ok for now. a dual 2696 v2 setup would likely beat 1950x at the expense of more power and less pci-e lanes, etc. but ddr3 is still much much cheaper than ddr4 ecc right now.

seeing that 1950x has such a big socket, i am guessing that this make dual cpu MB nearly impossible? also this was not designed for dual cpu configuration anyway.

The only regretable thing is that EPYC cpu at this point are not clocked very fast and is slower than 1950x for single threads.

 

[Stephan]

I forgot a corner case: If a major cloud hoster again dumps Xeons in the thousands and those show up on ebay like the Facebook Xeons for 150 a pair and boards for those chips are not 600 per piece because no-one makes them anymore.

 

[amalurk]

@Stephen, does AMD really have the cores and the speed? Is a 1950x core at 4ghz going to compare in work does/IPC to W2145 core at 4.5ghz. I think the 1950x is going to be decently slower than even the 12% clock difference implies on less parallel tasks. Granted double the cores will fly on parallel tasks but I am not seeing AMD having the cores and the speed.

 

[traderjay]

Thanks all for the replies and suggestions! The program that I use is called DxO Optics Pro and its RAW image denoising is second to none but extremely CPU intensive - Advanced Image Processing Technologies | DxO

However, it is not well threaded and on my 18 core CPU, it uses probably only 5 to 8 core MAX when doing image processing, hence this program somehow runs faster on my i7-3970x which has an all core turbo of 4 Ghz.

I will see how stable the AMD platform is but doesn't intel still have higher per core IPC? For trading, I need absolute stability and the platform is Java and extremely memory intensive as everything resides in-memory. I once had AMD in their Opteron days and recall the nightmare of trying to revive that system from an overnight hard lock at 8.30 am before the start of the trading day...or worst yet BSODing in the middle of the day...

My trusty 3970x running on an ASUS p9x79E ws has never crashed on me once since 2013.

 

[Stephan]

@amalurk Well for his purposes AMD would give double the cores/threads at similar price, more PCIe lanes (64 instead of 48 which really is only 44 because of DMI to X299 stealing 4) so if his trading requires it, he could install at the minimum one more x16 video card in an AMD system than with Intel. With gaming it does not matter, the bottleneck at UHD resolutions is the GPU. This leaves video encoding and that is well parallelizable to 32 threads with cache trashing / RAM bandwidth becoming the bottleneck I suspect. So if the money is there, go DDR4 with ECC.

 

[traderjay]

@Stephen, does AMD really have the cores and the speed? Is a 1950x core at 4ghz going to compare in work does/IPC to W2145 core at 4.5ghz. I think the 1950x is going to be decently slower than even the 12% clock difference implies on less parallel tasks. Granted double the cores will fly on parallel tasks but I am not seeing AMD having the cores and the speed.

This is what I am debating as well, the Threadripper has an all-core turbo of 4 Ghz, which is significantly higher than any HCC XEONs out there... This is why I have feeling that my 2969 v3 is creamed by the threadripper too

 

[amalurk]

No disagreement there, definitely more cores for the money in AMD. However if you don't need as high as 16 core count, and really need to maximize single core performance too, one of the Intel processors is going to do better probably, at an Intel price premium of course.

 

[traderjay]

No disagreement there, definitely more cores for the money in AMD. However if you don't need as high as 16 core count, and really need to maximize single core performance too, one of the Intel processors is going to do better probably, at an Intel price premium of course.

The video encoding software such as handbrake and Adobe Encore will use all cores at 100% which is nice. As for AMD, they look great but I question their absolute reliability since it is such a new platform. Hence I am in a limbo land lol...

I am also an enthusiast and sometimes i sacrifice stability for speed to get the highest FPS in games. But when it comes to trading its a whole different ball game. In my other field of work in machine vision, robotics and automation, we have industrial grade intel PCs deployed on huge manufacturing lines and those cannot go down because every second of stoppage cost untold amount of $$$. This is why Intel is dominant in professional applications due to their reliability track record.

 

[Stephan]

For this kind of stability you need to switch priorities:

- Don't pick the very latest CPU like EPIC/Threadripper/Skylake/Kaby Lake, compare my remarks about recent Skylake CPU bugs; in your case that would mean anything pre-Skylake, e.g. Broadwell in a late stepping, because those are truly battle tested.

- ECC RAM is a must, registered DDR3 or DDR4 would be both good.

- Motherboard/system from top quality vendor; could be a workstation from HP or Supermicro or something self-built with a Tyan motherboard if you are up for it.

- Choose an older OS to run Java on (I assume TWS); like Win7 with updates fully off, or W2k8R2; because Win10 is in perpetual upgrade hell and this cannot be turned off as easily anymore i.e. the next best update by Microsoft can botch the machine; this collides with your intentions of gaming with it. For that get a console or a separate machine. Your denoise software should be okay though.

- Quality PSU and graphics card if self-built; I suspect on Windows nVidia has better drivers than AMD, so anything with a 1050..1080 chip should work for a multi monitor setup. Semi passive cards should keep noise down because the fan is usually off and the card is passively cooled only.

- Quality SSDs of the SAS/SATA variety with TBW in the 1TB+ range, as RAID1 and with power loss protection.

- For any lockups, which can happen at any time on any system, you need to investigate the possibility of using onboard watchdog circuitry in IPMI or the chipset. BSODs should not happen and would need to be investigated (usually unstable driver or bad hardware). NTFS is mature enough to survive sudden hardware events once a year, your database or whatever you run should too. I recommend Postgresql, google ACID.

Save on any component and it will bite you. After 4-5 years, refresh everything.

 

[LukeP]

imho overkill. traders always like to spend money to justify their professionalism. the cheapest laptop can run TWS fine. its nearly never going to be hardware. if one missed trade is going to 'bite' you, you are doing it wrong anyway!

 

[traderjay]

imho overkill. traders always like to spend money to justify their professionalism. the cheapest laptop can run TWS fine. its nearly never going to be hardware. if one missed trade is going to 'bite' you, you are doing it wrong anyway!

Did you read my post? The computer is used for other tasks which are more resource intensive hence the increased system requirements. The stability factor is preferred for my trading because I do not want to be troubleshooting computer problems in the middle of a trading day. When I had the AMD system that failed on me in the morning, I couldn't exit and enter new positions on time and resulted in a loss that is approximately the size of the average annual salary of a US worker. Did it derail my trading career? No but I prefer not to lose unnecessary money caused by system failure. Hence now I have a backup workstation as a failover.

While I am not a day trader, I do manage a sizeable portfolio and prefer a stable and efficient system. During crazy times where I can do short term trading like Brexit , US election or earning seasons, I will have multiple charts open with fast refresh times and it can become taxing to the system.

 

[LukeP]

i do commiserate your situation. i went through the same quandary.

in the end you will find you need to run several computers/servers to meet all your demands.


i really laugh at how bad intel is now. the 2667 v3 and v4 are slower than the v2 in core speed. who honestly thought that was a good idea? give us some 4.7GHz 10 core dual procs please intel. we know you can do it. just stop with the low core speed baloney!

the core speed problem is difficult though, until perhaps we get photon circuitry. quantum mechanics really screwed intel. thats why they are going wide wide wide. no where else to go! and we lap it up! sad (sound like trump lol)

 

[eva2000]

What about overclocking as the great equalizer. Pick a cpu which can overclock well for high clock tasks ?