Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

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Either I had really bad timing or bad luck, but somehow I am ending up with Intel even though I really wanted to switch.

Around 2012 I bought a 4-core Core i5 and after some basic upgrades (max RAM to 32GB and a good SSD) it had more-than-acceptable performance for my work until mid-2018. Even when I dabbled with Machine Learning I borrowed a 1070 from my office and was plenty to run my tasks.

Around end of 2018 I started working more in different offices, so I needed a more powerful laptop. No strong offering from AMD yet, so I ended up with a System76 core i7, 6-core 32GB RAM.

2020 came and with it I got back into working at home. So I got excited about upgrading my workstation. I bought all the components to get a Ryzen 5, a 3700X I think. What a shitshow: had to go through three different pairs of RAM to find one that was actually compatible with the motherboard. Then I had to find a way to upgrade the BIOS, and I could only do it by getting an Athlon CPU. BIOS upgraded, then the original 3700 died. I ended up turning the whole system into a very expensive media center just with the Athlon and continued working with the laptop.

A couple of weeks ago my laptop's battery puffed up, so I decided to go look again into a nice desktop. An 12-core Ryzen 5900X is coming out at 900€ and a basic motherboard is 300€. 10-core Intel i9-10900 is 300€ and a motherboard for it is 180€. Guess which one I ended up taking and that I managed to get running without any issue whatsoever?

Here is to hope that in 6-8 years from now I finally manage to make the switch to AMD.

(Edit: why the downvotes, HN? It's an honest account of my experience.)

> a basic motherboard is 300€

A 'basic' motherboard two weeks ago was the same as it is today, a low-end B550, and can be purchased for under 100€.

The 10900 trades blows with the 3900x, particularly for multi-threaded, workstation-type workloads where the AMD part pulls ahead with its two extra cores. And the 3900x can be had around the same price as a 10900.

So your "honest account" comes off as a little disingenuous, which may explain the downvotes.

(Yes, the high-end Zen 3 parts are pricey and have very limited availability right now, but that is afflicting the entire industry - see also consoles, graphics cards and many other things. With their own fabs, intel are uniquely placed to supply right now, but their CPUs are more competing with the last gen of AMD's if you're talking about a workstation)

I honestly just looked at both AMD's and Intel's latest generation and compared from there.

Still, point taken. If I didn't get burned by the whole ordeal with the 3700x I think I would've taken a second look at the AMD 3000.

I paired up a 5950x with a $200 TUF 570 board - a middle of the road offering. One thing to consider is the BIOS version of the motherboard. The Asus one had a sticker with the build version, and what they were stocking in Microcenter was just new enough to support zen3 OOTB. A better board would allow for BIOS flashing without the CPU, and a few folks have struggled with that first flashing. Check the version first.

The threadripper boards are starting at $400 for the current generations. I regret spending what I did on the first generation boards, as they dropped support for them on the third generation. I'm waiting to see a zen3 series threadripper before I'll replace my old 1950x. The even older 3930k i7 was able to keep up on single threaded processes... which surprised me. Funny it really took 10 years before I got that wow factor again. The number of cores that I'd consider 'normal' has certainly gone up. Think the 3930k was around $600 in 2011, the 1950x around $800 in 2017, and the 5950x at $800, so that price point has not changed much. The first two were picked up at launch date, the last was a paper launch that took till January to find.

> why the downvotes, HN?

Your honest account seems more like a series of errors you've invited on yourself. Your motherboard prices are insane. And this litany of spontaneously breaking components make you sound like you're just yeeting the stuff around. Maybe that's all unfair, but it's how it comes across.

Now you're comparing the prices of the i9-10900 to the 5900X, when the 5800X's performance more than matches it. The 5800X is about 10% cheaper than the 10900 here.

If you don't understand the platform and chipsets, use a picker service or even buy a bundle. There are lots of component sellers flogging matched components in tested configurations. You won't get top-spec motherboards but there's no reason to spunk €300 on a desktop motherboard.

> If you don't understand the platform and chipsets, use a picker service

Like I actually did, I have been doing since I can't even remember to build previous workstations, NAS, the dappnode under my desk, and my home server that runs the services I self-host?

    - Ryzen upgrade: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/Dxx2nL
    - Intel upgrade: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/rP8jCz

Looking around now, it seems that MSI X570 is available at a lower price, but it wasn't when I first checked.

So, yeah, bad timing. But this patronizing is unwarranted.

> The 5800X is about 10% cheaper than the 10900 here.

In Germany it's about 15% more expensive, and my calculation was based on price-per-core than absolute performance, not to mention that the 10900 has a 65W TDP vs 105W for the Ryzens.

That motherboard supports BIOS flashback so you didn't need a CPU installed to update the BIOS.

You're technically supposed to buy memory from the motherboard's QVL for exactly that reason, but I don't know anyone who does that anymore.

>Not to mention that the 10900 has a 65W TDP vs 105W for the Ryzens.

TDP is lie these days .The 65W intel chips will use over 200W in most motherboards.[1] The 10 core you're using will use even more. The 5900X would use 130W max.

Watch your temps, your passive thermal solution may not be up to the task and your CPUs may be throttling or dying prematurely.

[1] https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16343/120661.png

Now that is a comment that brings a productive discussion. Thank you. :)

I was indeed weary of keeping only the fanless cooler, so I ended up installing the stock one. Coupled with the fact that it is a big case and it has a lot of fans, I assume that would be enough.

Anyway, what you are saying about the misleading TDP is interesting. Perhaps I will get a 3900X or a 5800X system and if it works out I will return the Intel.

AMD is beating Intel on performance, but with recent price cuts, Intel is offering VERY good value right now and also much better availability. If you don't need the absolute best, Intel is the way to go easily.

That is the most succinct and business-minded summary in the entire thread.

Relatedly, I am surprised by the commenters who believe that the trends in Intel pricing were somehow involuntary. The outperformance of AMD CPUs was clear even prior to the pandemic, and I recall talk at that time about Intel using price pressure to resist AMD's expansion of market share and gross margins. Now that silicon supply is getting tight, market share is all the more relevant because whatever demand AMD can't meet gets caught by Intel. It's not all about benchmarks (although IMO Intel is hanging in there with Rocket Lake). You actually have to get a customer to buy your product in order to generate revenue.

> somehow involuntary

Given the choice, Intel would rather resist AMD's expansion of market share and gross margins without lowering their prices.

An involuntary price change would be one in which Intel is following a price set by AMD. Think about price takers and price makers.

In this case Intel is undercutting AMD and setting a low price that forces AMD to keep its own pricing lower. This is disadvantageous for AMD because its ability to satisfy spikes in demand is capped; additional orders for unexpected demand have to flow through the TSMC pipeline, which is also used by many other companies. In contrast, Intel can meet demand because it owns its production processes; Intel churns out more product and absorbs the unexpected demand. Per-unit margin matters less for Intel because its share of the unexpected/marginal demand is high.

Thank you for that. This downvoting is making me feel like I kicked some sacred cow.

What an odd experience. I haven't heard of anyone having similar experiences with Ryzen, including myself. Maybe you got some unusually finicky motherboard?

It's a mini-ITX Gigabyte B450, the Aorus line. From what I found online, there were plenty of cases of incompatible RAM that would simply not boot.

The "odd" thing is that this Intel system I put together ended up being the very same brand. I am regretting it now a bit because I realized that the board can only do 4k@30Hz through the HDMI port and the i9 can do 4k@60, but given that my laptop had a similar limitation and I got used to run with my monitor at 1440p, I think I will hold on to it until I feel like it is time to get a dedicated GPU.

The difference may be due to the version of the HDMI port: HDMI 1.4 can only do 4k@30Hz while HDMI 2.0 can do 4k@60Hz.

Yeah, that is exactly the problem. I'm wondering now if there is any way I can jerry-rig one of the USB 3.2 ports from the mobo to get 4k@60hz to my monitor, but like I said I am ok with staying at 1440 until prices of graphic cards come down.

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