Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)

[Vattila]

Except for the details about the improvements in the microarchitecture, we now know pretty well what to expect with Zen 3.

The leaked presentation by AMD Senior Manager Martin Hilgeman shows that EPYC 3 "Milan" will, as promised and expected, reuse the current platform (SP3), and the system architecture and packaging looks to be the same, with the same 9-die chiplet design and the same maximum core and thread-count (no SMT-4, contrary to rumour). The biggest change revealed so far is the enlargement of the compute complex from 4 cores to 8 cores, all sharing a larger L3 cache ("32+ MB", likely to double to 64 MB, I think).

Hilgeman's slides did also show that EPYC 4 "Genoa" is in the definition phase (or was at the time of the presentation in September, at least), and will come with a new platform (SP5), with new memory support (likely DDR5).

What else do you think we will see with Zen 4? PCI-Express 5 support? Increased core-count? 4-way SMT? New packaging (interposer, 2.5D, 3D)? Integrated memory on package (HBM)?

Vote in the poll and share your thoughts!

 

[Exist50]

If that? Data is out there if one wants to check it
~5% higher clock in mixed/light workloads/typical gaming
~6% higher in heavy multithreaded (eg Blender)
~9% higher in single threaded
Not bad considering it's barely any slower (2%?) than vanilla in productivity, something they never marketed it for (this may change with Zen4 X3D).

As to where other potential gains could be coming from? Who know, they may lower the L3 latency penalty from 3-4ns to 3ns or less somehow. We also have no idea how changes (cache or otherwise) in Zen4 react to increased L3 pools. Seeing how forward thinking Zen3 design was, at least 1 year post launch, with revolutionary stacking tech obviously not being a afterthought, I doubt Zen4 would be just a repeat. Pretty smug to think we know everything and won't be surprised TBH.

Reminder to people that this exists:

Deep Diving Zen 3 V-Cache

This is the deeper dive of AMD’s V-Cache that we teased with our short latency article and we will be covering a little more on the latency front along with the bandwidth behavior of V-Cache …

chipsandcheese.com

Where are you seeing those percentages? For instance, the 1T frequency should be 4700MHz vs 4500MHz, or a 4.4% increase.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Another grain of salt, but there is a graph (scroll down to Quasarzone), it compares the 7950x to the 7950x3d. "supposedly" 37% faster. Completely murderlizes the 13900k, as well.

13900KS is dead before it launches.

Well ye, but the 7950x is still ~10% slower than the 13900k

In applications? Definitely not. I'll leave the gaming discussion to others but in apps the 7950X humiliated the 13900k. Despite doubling e-core count vs 12900k, it still couldn't unseat the 7950X in MT workloads. Everyone who was expecting the 13900k to square the circle and become Intel's next god tier chip is either disappointed or in denial. Raphael showed up well and is very competitive despite being a repurposed server/workstation design.

 

[nicalandia]

In applications? Definitely not. I'll leave the gaming discussion to others but in apps the 7950X humiliated the 13900k.

They are actually pretty even at MT in general tasks(GB, CBR23, Linux), on apps that take full advantage of AVX/2/256/512 then yes, the 7950X is much faster. In Gaming whoever say that the 7950X is 10% Slower is really not being serious are cherry picking games. Overall(50+ games tests) it's within 5% of 13900K

 

[Kaluan]

These results seen a bit low for intel, compared to other tests I have seen, especially the 7700k on average being more than 10% faster than 13700k, and if I read the charts correctly that is with BF V removed.

Hm... wat?
I think you're confusing HUB with Jarrod's. Jarrod's didn't test BF V (or HZD *wink-wink*).
And yes, I think Jarrod's got the text for the 13700K 1080p average wrong. His round-up percentage avg says 7700X is ~2,6% faster @1080p, not ~10%.

 

[Kaluan]

Where are you seeing those percentages? For instance, the 1T frequency should be 4700MHz vs 4500MHz, or a 4.4% increase.

I thought it's a well known fact 5800X3D tops out at a hard 4450MHz and that 5800X boosts to 4850MHz on it's best core (+8.98%)...

Not sure how Ryzen 5000 max 1C boost = fmax (and not advertised boost) is new information after 2 years in a tech forum, but oh well.

5800X3D is a strange case tho, half surprised no class action lawsuits have been started over that missing 50MHz 😂

But in both cases, advertised boost =/= real world boost

 

[Carfax83]

7600X vs. 13600K - 54 Game Benchmark | TechSpot

Talk about cherry picking. The BF5 results is an anomaly and clearly either a bug or a configuration problem as there is no way on Earth that the 7600x is 50% faster than the 13600K.......at 4K. That's absurd and practically impossible given how GPU bound 4K is.

Case in point, another review shows that Raptor Lake doesn't have some magical vulnerability to BF5 performance. Apologize for the overly bright screen shot, but this monitor has FALD and so windows are brightened automatically.

I said it already, they never should have uploaded that result as something is clearly off. In BF 2042 (on the same or a more advanced form of the engine) the 13600K is ahead, which makes you wonder what the hell is happening. HWU has a penchant for anomalous results lately it seems. That said, we don't have to look for cherry picked reviewers to make a point , as 3D center already did a review meta analysis and in it they found the 13600K faster than the 7600x, and the 13700K is faster than the 7700x.

Also, another factor to consider is that turning on RT can change the results in those games that support RT and make it more CPU intensive, which favors Raptor Lake.

 

[Carfax83]

That's insane. The 7600X is very much a match in gaming for the 13900K, if The 5800X3D is a virtual match(1.3% with 4090) so is the 7600X who is actually a bit faster than the 5800X3D

According to the launch review meta analysis conducted by 3D center, the 13900K is 15% faster than the 7600x, which is substantial.

Also, you're not giving the full picture. At 1080p, the least GPU bound resolution that TPU tested, the 13900K was 6.2% faster than the 5800X3D, not 1.3%. And when you remove the massive, anomalous outlier of Devil May Cry 5 (either a bug or a configuration problem), then the gap widens even more.

These outliers are becoming a problem. There is no reason I can think of for DMC 5 to have a 40% lead on the 5800X3D compared to the 13900K other than a bug with the game using E cores when it's not supposed to, or a configuration problem.

 

[Markfw]

I don't understand why some here are all about proving the 13900k is the fastest cpu for gaming, when we were derailed in the middle about talking about the 78xx3d upcoming cpu's and how well the 3dcache will benefit it. This is a Zen 4 thrread, but I guess there are those who want to detail this with talk of Raptor lake gaming.

I will try to get us back by saying that I think that all 3 that are planned will beat everything at gaming. and the 2 with 2 ccx's and double the cache will go one further, and in a few applications will totally dominate everything due to the cache.

 

[In2Photos]

Talk about cherry picking.

How is choosing a 54 game review "cherry picking" exactly? Why don't you ever throw out the games where Intel is significantly ahead?

Also, another factor to consider is that turning on RT can change the results in those games that support RT and make it more CPU intensive, which favors Raptor Lake.

And that's clearly what you're after right?

 

[nicalandia]

According to the launch review meta analysis conducted by 3D center, the 13900K is 15% faster than the 7600x, which is substantial.

This type of Baseless Statements is what make some people believe that the 7800X3D will be barely faster than the 13900K. When in fact the 13900K is 1.3% faster than OG 5800X3D.

 

[Carfax83]

How is choosing a 54 game review "cherry picking" exactly? Why don't you ever throw out the games where Intel is significantly ahead?

By cherry picking I mean using obviously erroneous results. I mean come on, 50% faster in BF5 at 4K? I don't know what HWU did to obtain such a result, but anyone that knows hardware should raise the B.S flag on that one.

Also, it's not as though we don't have the available data. The majority of reviews show the 13600K faster than the 7600x, and the 13700K faster than the 7700x.

Doing proper benchmarking is harder than most would think. There are a lot of mistakes that can be made by accident, due to the sheer amount of data involved. So whenever we see outliers that don't have a good explanation, we should question them.

It's nonsensical for a 7600x to be 50% faster than its competition at a GPU limited resolution, so it requires a good explanation. If the 13600K was 50% faster than the 7600x in BF5, I would say the same thing because it's abnormal for a CPU to produce such a result at that resolution.

And that's clearly what you're after right?

I like truth. Don't B.S me by using two reviews that conveniently support your narrative, when the bulk of the data says otherwise. As I said before, benchmarking can be problematic due to the great propensity for errors and inaccuracies; usually due to human error, but sometimes also because of game bugs and OS issues.

I'm willing to accept that Zen 4 3D may very well end up being faster than Raptor Lake in gaming, but base Zen 4? Nope...

 

[Carfax83]

This type of Baseless Statements is what make some people believe that the 7800X3D will be barely faster than the 13900K. When in fact the 13900K is 1.3% faster than OG 5800X3D.

Repeating something over and over doesn't make it true. We all have eyes and can read the reviews and interpret the data as we see fit.

 

[Joe NYC]

Another grain of salt, but there is a graph (scroll down to Quasarzone), it compares the 7950x to the 7950x3d. "supposedly" 37% faster. Completely murderlizes the 13900k, as well.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Coming in Jan 2023: 30% Faster than the Intel Core i9-13900K, Courtesy of ~200MB Cache [Rumor] | Hardware Times

The Ryzen 9 7900X3D will feature 16 cores with two 64MB cache dies or a single denser cache die with 128MB of SRAM.

www.hardwaretimes.com

Seems like a lot of conflicting info on availability of the V-Cache models. The last line of this article says January 23rd availability, while some others say March availability...

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

Currently those e cores are pretty useless at gaming.

View attachment 72402

RTX 4090 & 53 Games: Core i9-13900K E-Cores Enabled vs Disabled Review

In this week's TPU50 Megabench we're testing whether you can unlock additional gaming performance by disabling the E-Cores on a Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K processor. For our benchmarks we used the mighty GeForce RTX 4090, with 53 games at three resolutions.

www.techpowerup.com

Is It because of E-cores being useless, or because those games are limited to 8 cores?
If TPU also compared 7700X vs 7950x then we would have an answer to this question.

 

[moinmoin]

Seems like a lot of conflicting info on availability of the V-Cache models. The last line of this article says January 23rd availability, while some others say March availability...

The former date is for a launch around CES, the latter date was based on the supposed timeline precedence set by 5800X3D's launch suggested by Greymon who subsequently deleted themselves. We will see which one applies, if any.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

This type of Baseless Statements is what make some people believe that the 7800X3D will be barely faster than the 13900K. When in fact the 13900K is 1.3% faster than OG 5800X3D.

That's only at 4K! From when do we compare which is the better gaming CPU in that resolution?
If you want to compare them at that resolution, then yes, It's highly likely that 7800X3D will be barely faster.

TPU tested 53 games 13900K vs 5800X3D with RTX 4900,Link
13900K is faster by
1080p: 6.2% (this should be truthfully higher for Intel, because DMC5 had a massive gain of +40.6% in favor of AMD in this single resolution, in 1440p It was only +5.9%)
1440p: 4.7%
2160p: 1.3%

How much better 7800X3D ends up on average is still unknown, we will see at launch.

 

[Joe NYC]

The former date is for a launch around CES, the latter date was based on the supposed timeline precedence set by 5800X3D's launch suggested by Greymon who subsequently deleted themselves. We will see which one applies, if any.

Upcoming CES is between January 5th and January 8th, 2023. His January 23rd retail availability - I don't know what his source of that is.

Recent AMD launches had ~ month + from intro to retail availability, but in those cases (Zen4 and RDNA3), AMD was free to set the intro dates, unlike CES, which is outside of AMD control.

5800x3d was mentioned at CES 2022, and retail availability was said to be "Spring", which then turned out to be April 20.

Hopefully, less of a lag for Zen 4. But it would be good to know what the bottleneck is, if it, by any chance, TSMC. AMD is likely the first company to introduce SoIC stacking on N5 node...

 

[uzzi38]

Where are you seeing those percentages? For instance, the 1T frequency should be 4700MHz vs 4500MHz, or a 4.4% increase.

Actual ST boost is kinda variable with Zen 2 and on. Zen 2 used to clock in a little below rated max frequency, Zen 3 is usually at rated max frequency or even beyond it (up to 150MHz is technically allowed by firmware) but it varies based on the actual silicon you have. So some variance between samples is possible.

 

[Abwx]

Also, another factor to consider is that turning on RT can change the results in those games that support RT and make it more CPU intensive, which favors Raptor Lake.

In Spiderman once you activate RT the 7700X and 7600X are faster than the 7950X, so RT has apparently nothing to do with CPU throughput capability when it comes to FPS.

 

[MarkPost]

Talk about cherry picking. The BF5 results is an anomaly and clearly either a bug or a configuration problem as there is no way on Earth that the 7600x is 50% faster than the 13600K.......at 4K. That's absurd and practically impossible given how GPU bound 4K is.

Case in point, another review shows that Raptor Lake doesn't have some magical vulnerability to BF5 performance. Apologize for the overly bright screen shot, but this monitor has FALD and so windows are brightened automatically.

Spoiler

I said it already, they never should have uploaded that result as something is clearly off. In BF 2042 (on the same or a more advanced form of the engine) the 13600K is ahead, which makes you wonder what the hell is happening. HWU has a penchant for anomalous results lately it seems. That said, we don't have to look for cherry picked reviewers to make a point , as 3D center already did a review meta analysis and in it they found the 13600K faster than the 7600x, and the 13700K is faster than the 7700x.

Also, another factor to consider is that turning on RT can change the results in those games that support RT and make it more CPU intensive, which favors Raptor Lake.

The issue with your try is that without that game, basically nothing change. From the review. It seems you missed it:

"In our day-one review data, which is based on a 12 game sample, we had the 7600X leading the 13600K by a 3% margin. With that testing expanded to 54 games, the 7600X is 5% faster. If we remove the potentially bugged Battlefield V data (issue with the E-cores?), the 7600X was just 4% faster."

On the other hand, a review meta data analysis like 3D Center does, is useless. Reason is that a lot of the games tested are common among reviewers, so if some of those 6-8-10 games usually used by reviewers favour for any reason to one or another architecture, you are counting those games over and over again, so the final conclusion is misleading.

But if you take a massive games review like those I posted (Techspot or Jarred), you have the real picture.

So give me a meta data analysis of a bunch of apps/games. Thats the real deal.

A simple meta data analysis of a bunch of reviews that share and count over and over again a lot of the same apps/games, is just pointless.

 

[In2Photos]

By cherry picking I mean using obviously erroneous results. I mean come on, 50% faster in BF5 at 4K? I don't know what HWU did to obtain such a result, but anyone that knows hardware should raise the B.S flag on that one.

Also, it's not as though we don't have the available data. The majority of reviews show the 13600K faster than the 7600x, and the 13700K faster than the 7700x.

Fine, throw out that result. The 7600X is still faster in 34 of the 54 games and equal in 5 more titles.

Doing proper benchmarking is harder than most would think. There are a lot of mistakes that can be made by accident, due to the sheer amount of data involved. So whenever we see outliers that don't have a good explanation, we should question them.

The problem is that you throw out the entire review and not just that one result unless the review fits your narrative. If benchmarking is so hard why has it never occurred to you that the reviews that favor Intel might have done something wrong?

It's nonsensical for a 7600x to be 50% faster than its competition at a GPU limited resolution, so it requires a good explanation. If the 13600K was 50% faster than the 7600x in BF5, I would say the same thing because it's abnormal for a CPU to produce such a result at that resolution.

Would you though, honestly? Or would you try and tell us it has something to do with some process in the game that Intel does better than AMD? Oh wait, you've already done that.

I like truth. Don't B.S me by using two reviews that conveniently support your narrative, when the bulk of the data says otherwise. As I said before, benchmarking can be problematic due to the great propensity for errors and inaccuracies; usually due to human error, but sometimes also because of game bugs and OS issues.

You like "truth" when it supports your narrative! You're willing to use results when they back up your agenda, but also want to throw them out when they go against it. There's a clear bias to your "truth".

I'm willing to accept that Zen 4 3D may very well end up being faster than Raptor Lake in gaming, but base Zen 4? Nope...

We'll see what the reviews say when they become available.

 

[In2Photos]

The issue with your try is that without that game, basically nothing change. From the review. It seems you missed it:

"In our day-one review data, which is based on a 12 game sample, we had the 7600X leading the 13600K by a 3% margin. With that testing expanded to 54 games, the 7600X is 5% faster. If we remove the potentially bugged Battlefield V data (issue with the E-cores?), the 7600X was just 4% faster."

On the other hand, a review meta data analysis like 3D Center does, is useless. Reason is that a lot of the games tested are common among reviewers, so if some of those 6-8-10 games usually used by reviewers favour for any reason to one or another architecture, you are counting those games over and over again, so the final conclusion is misleading.

But if you take a massive games review like those I posted (Techspot or Jarred), you have the real picture.

So give me a meta data analysis of a bunch of apps/games. Thats the real deal.

A simple meta data analysis of a bunch of reviews that share and count over and over again a lot of the same apps/games, is just pointless.

Oh, he didn't miss it, it's been pointed out to him several times. He just chooses to ignore it.

 

[Carfax83]

I don't want to derail this thread anymore than it already has been, but HWU's 7600x vs 13600K has garnered a lot of criticism from lots of people, not just me. In fact, there's a large Reddit thread on r/hardware which discusses the results and Steve from HWU actually chimes in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/yt30ei

A poster in the Reddit thread brought up something interesting that I never noticed about the review. In the HWU roundup, A Plague Tale Requiem has the 13600K rig using nearly 120w more than the 7600x rig, yet it loses in that game by 10% at 1440p. How is that even possible?

I have that game, and it really only becomes moderately CPU intensive when the rats are on screen or if it's in a populated area. But if the 13600K rig is pulling that much extra power draw over the 7600x, it's not going to be from the CPU as a gaming workload won't stress the CPU that much. So assuming the power consumption figures were correct, the GPU must be drawing extra power with the 13600K......but where is the performance if that is the case? I guess all of that extra power is going into a black hole LOL!

In the Gamers Nexus 13600K review, Tech Jesus found that the 13600K drew about 44w more than the 7600x in Blender, a workload that maxes out all cores.

A Plague Tale requiem benchmarks are hard to find, but Computerbase.de did benchmark it at 720p with an RTX 4090 and a 13900K vs a 7950x and they found the 13900K to be 18% faster:

Other posters also took him to task for not including ray tracing in the benchmarks, when everyone knows that it increases CPU load significantly. Especially as he tested with an RTX 4090. These are legitimate criticisms whether you want to deny them or not.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I vastly prefer Computerbase.de's approach to testing in that they are very specific in the details about their testing methodology and actually provide the settings used for each individual game.

HWU is still a relatively good source for bulk data points, but their testing methodology leaves much to be desired and has plenty of unexplained anomalies.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

In my testing, my 7950X has considerably higher L3 bandwidth and lower L3 access latency than my 5950X. These two factors alone may explain better performance scaling to 3D cache models. However, we still have no idea what the cache size of the stacked die for Zen 4 3D will be. I have seen rumors of 64MB, 96MB, and 128MB. If the cache size is increased, that in addition to better performing L3 cache would absolutely explain better performance scaling over Zen 3 3D.

 

[uzzi38]

I don't want to derail this thread anymore than it already has been, but HWU's 7600x vs 13600K has garnered a lot of criticism from lots of people, not just me. In fact, there's a large Reddit thread on r/hardware which discusses the results and Steve from HWU actually chimes in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/yt30ei

A poster in the Reddit thread brought up something interesting that I never noticed about the review. In the HWU roundup, A Plague Tale Requiem has the 13600K rig using nearly 120w more than the 7600x rig, yet it loses in that game by 10% at 1440p. How is that even possible?

I have that game, and it really only becomes moderately CPU intensive when the rats are on screen or if it's in a populated area. But if the 13600K rig is pulling that much extra power draw over the 7600x, it's not going to be from the CPU as a gaming workload won't stress the CPU that much. So assuming the power consumption figures were correct, the GPU must be drawing extra power with the 13600K......but where is the performance if that is the case? I guess all of that extra power is going into a black hole LOL!

In the Gamers Nexus 13600K review, Tech Jesus found that the 13600K drew about 44w more than the 7600x in Blender, a workload that maxes out all cores.

A Plague Tale requiem benchmarks are hard to find, but Computerbase.de did benchmark it at 720p with an RTX 4090 and a 13900K vs a 7950x and they found the 13900K to be 18% faster:

Other posters also took him to task for not including ray tracing in the benchmarks, when everyone knows that it increases CPU load significantly. Especially as he tested with an RTX 4090. These are legitimate criticisms whether you want to deny them or not.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I vastly prefer Computerbase.de's approach to testing in that they are very specific in the details about their testing methodology and actually provide the settings used for each individual game.

HWU is still a relatively good source for bulk data points, but their testing methodology leaves much to be desired and has plenty of unexplained anomalies.

> r/hardware

And on that point alone everything in this message is instantly not even worth discussing.