The 7950X has an IGPU!

[DanceswithUnix]

I see the reviews are out for the 7000 series desktop chips.

Overall looks very interesting, but one thing kind of slipped into the end of the Ars review: the IGP performance.

It's rubbish, don't get too excited if you want to go gaming. But frankly, the fact it exists at all is rather handy. I can build a 7900X workstation and I don't have to buy a GPU!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022...pressive/5/#h2

Edit: I see from the AMD website that it doesn't matter whether you are looking at the 7600X or the 7950X, you get a 2CU IGP, the IGP is on the IO die.

[DanceswithUnix]

It also looks like the 170W TDP is pretty pointless, but thankfully you can turn it down. At 65W that 16 core chips looks damned impressive:

[AGTDenton]

Have to agree for a home server/workstation the iGPU idea is great and with the previous G series just lacking in choice & availability this is a very useful move.
I want to make an unraid server & potentially host a couple of games, so this would be very interesting in the future.

[Rob_B]

I had to look for a review that covered the IGP (as some youTube channels didn't appear to) and was surprised they all get reamed by a 5600G... unless they bring out G suffixed models it looks like a poor showing for anyone who wants to go GPU-less

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/a...-7950x/22.html

[Jonj1611]

[AGTDenton]

I had to look for a review that covered the IGP (as some youTube channels didn't appear to) and was surprised they all get reamed by a 5600G... unless they bring out G suffixed models it looks like a poor showing for anyone who wants to go GPU-less

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/a...-7950x/22.html

...

Useful info.

For a workstation/server where the display is only used for BIOS & initial setup it's nice that it won't be sucking up much additional power unnecessarily whilst not in use. I can see them implementing this in future Threadripper & EPYC designs. As at the moment I believe on EPYC they have some boards with the GPU chip on still, this will do away with that moving forward.

Presuming AMD still come out with G models I can't imagine anyone planning for an X CPU will be thinking of gaming/creative work without a GPU of some kind.

[DanceswithUnix]

I had to look for a review that covered the IGP (as some youTube channels didn't appear to) and was surprised they all get reamed by a 5600G... unless they bring out G suffixed models it looks like a poor showing for anyone who wants to go GPU-less

From the Ars review I linked above:

The company has also said that it intends to keep making G-series APUs with more impressive integrated GPUs that are geared toward gaming, for people building tiny or inexpensive low-end gaming rigs.

So yeah, there will be a 7700G etc for more mainstream gpu-less machines. Note that with just 2 CUs the 7600X is managing better than half the performance of an 8 CU 5700G, so if AMD stay with 8 CUs in their next gen monolithic chips we could be looking at a doubling in GPU performance. If a newer process with more transistors gives us room for a few more CUs, then we could be looking at a rather nice integrated gaming chip.

[kalniel]

Very nice. It seems like only yesterday that I upgraded my system and thought - nah, I don't see performance meaningfully improving for a decade, yet now I'm starting to wonder how much life it has left

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D seems to be close enough for gaming to a Ryzen 7 7700X(and even beating it a decent amount sometimes in games such as MS Flight Simulator),whilst using less power,much cheaper RAM and much cheaper motherboards. The AM5 motherboards look horrendously expensive ATM. DDR5 currently also has very poor latencies too. The Zen4 X3D versions might be the ones to look out for if you really need to get Zen4 this generation,but I would probably hold off. IIRC,even AMD said Zen4 was more an iterative improvement over Zen3.

Zen5 is what I would be waiting for,as it apparently has bigger improvements and by then DDR5 should have improved,as have the motherboards. If AMD is moving to the use of Hybrid cores,then we could be seeing Zen5 "big cores" and Zen4C based "little cores" which might make Zen5 a really big improvement.

Also,WRT to improvements in image editing suites such as Lightroom and DxO Photolab,the Core i5 12600K and Core i7 12700K look very competitive still(especially when you consider the price):
https://www.comptoir-hardware.com/ar....html?start=10
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...AdobePhotoshop

The thing is the Core i5 13600K will probably end up cheaper than the Ryzen 7 7700X(and better overall in image editing work) and have the advantage of being able to be used in a cheaper motherboard/RAM setup. Apparently the Core i5 13400 is going to be a rebadged Core i5 12600K.

[DanceswithUnix]

Some interesting nuggets in here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022...west-chipsets/

The IGP apparently allows for graphics over USB-C ports, allowing a bunch of monitors to be plugged in as standard.
The USB in the IO die also supports bios flashback much easier, which will hopefully avoid some of the upgrade woes AMD has had with AM4.

[Saracen999]

Very nice. It seems like only yesterday that I upgraded my system and thought - nah, I don't see performance meaningfully improving for a decade, yet now I'm starting to wonder how much life it has left

Arguably, quite a bit, IMHO. It depends (again, IMHO) how you calibrate expectations.

I think it was Steve at GN (or maybe Jayz) made a point, and I'm paraphrasing here, on whether the (high core count variants) 7000 are "worth it" to upgrade and the gist of was .... in a sheer production environment where time is money, yeah the 7950X is probably value for money, but for pretty much everyone else, the 7900X is probably better.

The point was also made, and this is my current sticking point, what about cost of :-

- mobo
- DDR5
- probably a cooler upgrade (depending on what you have now)
- possiby a PSU upgrade.

The basic point though, was .... don't upgrade just 'cos it's new and shiny. Upgrade if the upgrade solves a problem with your current setup. And sure, in encoding, espcially in rendering, maybe very big compiles, etc, time saved = money saved.

For me, while I'm doing some of that kind of thing, and some gaming, I'm not doing enough of either, and not making money from either (or anything tech-related for money these days) for that to be the case. I'd also be going from much older hardware (think Q6600/DDR2 era) on desktops. So I'm buying PSU, RAM, cooler and mobo anyway, and while the price difference, currently, looks to certainly not be insignificant, it's not in the same leaque as upgrading from a pretty modern (i.e. current gen until today) entirely. And even that price differential isn't small, as all that seems on offer right now (if you can find them at all) is X670E mobos. The hell with that. I was looking at X570, and prepared to go to £300-ish for mobo, but "Extreme" class? £500 and up for a mobo? not for me. I think 5900X and the bits and bobs to go with it probably still makes sense for me to buy, even now, on the basis that while, yeah, 7000 is a lot faster, will it make much real difference to my user experience? probably not. But ....

Until the dust settles and more sensible products (B-series is what, October release) upgrading is going to be very expensive just on those price differentials between AM4 and AM5, DDR4 and DDR5, PSU (ATX 3?) and maybe, cooler and that's without the difference in CPU price.

I might yet do it, once non-E boards come out, but only because I don't have current gen hardware I'm ugrading from. (Except laptop, but that's a different use case). Even the not inconsiderable performance benefits would, for me, justify upgrading any time soon unless it was a time=money thing on reduced render times, etc. Then, if the sums work out, it's a no-brainer, but without that, I feel it's just the appeal of new/shiny.

YMM, of course, V.


Oh, and if it is a time=money thing, at least hide your wallet until Intel 13th gen gets benchmarked or, just maybe, you end up kicking yourself when it does. Maybe.

[DanceswithUnix]

Phoronix report that AMD are continuing their policy on ECC ram, so if a motherboard maker wants to support it then that's up to them:

https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-...-7950x-linux/2

[AGTDenton]

Here's some pricing directly from AMD.

https://www.amd.com/en/direct-buy/gb

7950X = £777.44
7900X = £610.61
7700X = £443.77
7600X = £332.56

[DanceswithUnix]

Interesting pricing. The dollar release pricing I had seen was on par with 5000 series, with a bit of a discount on the 7950X ($699 vs $799 for the 5950X at release).

Perhaps our exchange rate is hurting us atm, though I see that AMD shop has zero stock in it so not sure what to think really

[Rob_B]

... Perhaps our exchange rate is hurting us atm...

This will have a huge impact considering just how far it's fallen recently.

[DanceswithUnix]

Scan seem to have stock for those that can take early adopter pricing:

7700X for £429
7900X for £595

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer...3645/3644/3643

Motherboards are a bit scarce on Scan, but should start at £320 for an Asrock X670E or Asus TUF X670E board when in stock.

Cheapest atm is an MSI board for £350:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/nda-...-32-gen2x2-atx