The ryzen is only 20% better in single threaded performance. I could easily overclock my cpu to close further the gap. Just need to upgrade my gpu and I'm good for a few more years. These cpus have aged quiet well.
Double the performance isn't too bad obviously, but that's about the same timespan as between the 486 and the Pentium III.
I made my desktop in 2014 with a Haswell i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz. Overclocked it to 4.3GHz, and I still don't have a reason to upgrade. I really want a Ryzen 2700X also but staying patient. Newer and better hardware will keep coming out so I'm in no rush. (but my next CPU will definitely be AMD)
My current thing right now is compiling the Linux kernel exactly catered to my Haswell machine, and using the latest gcc with "-march=native -O2" optimizations. It might seem minor, but man if she ain't screaming right now. I should mention I have an AMD RX 480 graphics card also. So I'm up-to-date in that world and enjoying the best of team red and blue right now. New drivers, software, kernels, and optimizations keep coming out that make my current hardware faster. But then came Spectre and Meltdown lol.
One thing I will say, compiling your own has many benefits, as all the distribution kernels use Generic x86-64 and miss out on all the Intel/AMD optimizations.
For example, just by switching from "Generic-x86-64" to "Core 2 or newer" in Processor type and features -> Processor family in kernel config, adds these 5 optimizations:
CONFIG_X86_INTERNODE_CACHE_SHIFT=6
CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_SHIFT=6
CONFIG_X86_INTEL_USERCOPY=y
CONFIG_X86_USE_PPRO_CHECKSUM=y
CONFIG_X86_P6_NOP=y
You can say it's pulling hairs, but hey, that's what I want. Not many people have the time, know-how, run Linux, etc. to be able to make these optimizations.
For example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-i7-4770-3-4GHz-Quad-Core-Syst...
https://ark.intel.com/products/80807/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-Pro...
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) ‡ Yes
And that's not even covering motherboard incompatibilities with Linux (e.g. sleep/shutdown not working, WiFi/Bluetooth broken, etc.)
Have those problems been fixed definitively? Or should one stick to Intel for Linux at the moment?
Yes, of course!
> What about compiling large source code bases? There were some scary bugs reported on Linux when Ryzen came out.
Are you referring to this? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/254750-amd-replaces-ry...
The later revisions of Ryzen 1000 CPUs have been fixed, you could RMA your CPU if it was affected (I did this myself, AMD's support was excellent). Ryzen 2000 CPUs aren't affected.
> Have those problems been fixed definitively? Or should one stick to Intel for Linux at the moment?
I've never heard of any motherboard incompatibilities. The WiFi chips in some of those AMD motherboards are actually from Intel btw.
I'm running an AMD Ryzen workstation with Linux for over a year now and it works perfectly.
Also, since I use the Arch distro, installing packages from the AUR requires compiling stuff. So far ffmpeg has been among the packages with large source code base that I compile regularly and I've never had issues. I would like to compile the kernel too, but I'm unsure as to whether the difference will be noticeable for my daily usage. On my old machine, the Zen-kernel did improve responsiveness, but on my current one, I'm sticking to the LTS kernel.
Word is that the 2nd generation of Ryzen a.k.a Raven ridge are more stable and worth it if you can afford them (watch out for motherboard compatibility though).
I for myself couldn't suffer a machine where I occasionally need to reset , destroying flow.
Most of your gripes come from running Linux on a laptop machine. If you are a person who likes to work on powerful desk workstations, Linux behaves great on those. Granted, some things, such as multifunction printers (which are mostly software-driven) don't have support. You do have to be careful when selecting hardware, unfortunately.
My much newer one (six core 6850/950 NVME/1080ti/32gb) really isn't that much faster, GPU aside.