AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is such a hit it almost outsold Intel’s entire CPU range | Hacker News Reader

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is such a hit it almost outsold Intel’s entire CPU range

techradar.com

160 pointsJerry289 comments

... Says a single German PC enthusiast retailer. Hardly representative. They could have just run a big Ryzen ad campaign or something. The clickbait headline suggests this is based on official numbers.

Wall Street probably has better numbers, AMD just tanked on earnings and sales: https://yhoo.it/2OC9q7y

Earnings call numbers were about Q2 with desktop CPU and GPU sales down due to long hyped new CPUs and GPUs launching on June 7th. PS4 and Xbox One are also long in the tooth now - semi-custom SoCs are down too.

The article here is about sales after the June 7th launch which went really well.

The launch was July 7th.

Also, big Wall Street traders are known to go to extremes to find sales figures, like using photos from spy satellites of Walmart parking lots to estimate sales before earnings dates. If AMD's sales were truly spectacular, they would be loading up AMD stock by the bucketload right now.

Haha that do you have any articles talking about that satellite thing? I feel like the finance industry has a lot of similarities with the security industry in terms of unconventional techniques used.

https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satel...

Other times, they don't know the first thing about what companies actually do. The success of Ryzen looked quite probable even before release, yet the stock price didn't move much. I bought some.

While the headline is a bit clickbaity, for the retail CPU market, I don't think it's actually that unrepresentative.

Here's reports from Japan of AMD overtaking Intel in retail CPU market share in July for the first time ever. The month-to-month trend is actually pretty impressive even before the Zen2 launch: https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1197213.html and https://www.bcnretail.com/market/detail/20190703_126041.html

AMD also overtook Intel for the first time ever in Korea: http://dpg.danawa.com/news/view?boardSeq=293&listSeq=3960065...

It looks like AMD is also scoring OEM wins on desktop and server (still weak on laptops where Intel seems like they're putting in a good fight and where AMD's staggered releases about 6-9mo behind).

>still weak on laptops where Intel seems like they're putting in a good fight

Compared to just a year ago, AMD are absolutely killing it in the laptop market. The old A-series APUs were strictly relegated to very low cost machines, first-gen Ryzen struggled to gain traction, but most major manufacturers are now offering Ryzen-based laptops across the midrange. AMD are a long way from dominance, but they've become a legitimate competitor in a remarkably short space of time; for the first time ever, I expect my next laptop to be AMD-based.

Mine is. AMD Ryzen 3 3200U in Acer Aspire ~$300. Like it a lot. First non Intel in a laptop for me.

Also, sales were already skewed towards AMD processors.

Article says marketshare at that retailer for AMD was 68% in June, before the new processors launched on 7/7. In July it went up to 79%, which isn't that impressive considering pent up demand caused an increase of +11%.

Aren't "PC enthusiasts" the whole customer base for those CPUs? Majority of people that need a computer buy laptops, and gamers buy consoles.

> .. and gamers buy consoles.

Disagree, many if not most gamers build their PCs. On my forum, in every new build thread, all advise Ryzen, no one advises Intel.

Many, if not most PC gaming enthusiasts build their PCs.

Most gamers would never even consider such an endeavor.

Just be aware that echo chambers are nasty business. They can make you think things are globally true when only a small minority acts that way

Roger. I usually do my own research when I buy stuff.

Sorry, I wasn't clear — it's not about what the right purchase is, it's about the perception that AMD is doing phenomenally in the marketplace.

The enthusiast market is clearly in a place where it favours AMD (I'm personally likely getting myself a new build based on their CPUs in the coming months), but this isn't necessarily representative of the CPU market as a whole.

Intel follows IBM and Microsoft as the latest selection that one probably can't get fired for picking. But your point is valid. Despite the Ryzen 5 3600X sitting under my desk for this weekend's new build, for $NEW_JOB I picked out a Xeon laptop because it's a safer choice for a new job and Dell will be there next year if it needs fixing.

Companies building and selling pre-built computers are probably the main customer base. This specific one is probably a bit too expensive to end up in your average office machine, but I could see companies with higher requirements (like CAD etc.) use it.

I had an opportunity to decide on what cpu to use for our company’s system refresh last October. We have about 300 laptops and 150 desktops. The only restriction was it had to be a certain Dell latitude version or Dell Optiplex. Dell did not offer any AMD CPU’s for those models at that time. I haven’t checked since. We decided to go with intel core i7. This was a lost opportunity as the Dell rep explained that in order to have the Amd chip, Dell would need to change the motherboard and other items and those systems were designed for Intel. I am disappointed but the corporate restriction on which model to use had to do with the corporate images that were only compatible with those models

Just upgraded from my old i5-4430 to the new 3700x. I'm very happy for the performance upgrade but there are a couple issues. I had to install Ubuntu using the netboot image because of the RDRAND bug affecting systemd. Systemd has already been patched with a workaround but the old one is hardcoded in the standard Ubuntu ISO. As usual the drivers for new hardware are lacking on Linux, as far as I know temperatures and fan controls are off the table until Linux 5.4.

Depending on how quickly your mainboard manufacturer reacted there should be a BIOS update for the RDRAND issue: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Rele...

This has been revoked because it was rushed and introduced other bugs.

I needed to upgrade my i7-3770, the 3700x was too good of a deal. I saw a nice decrease in build times, can't wait to test how it is for gaming but I havent upgraded my GPU yet. Im still waiting for the AIB RX 5700's, Nvidia pricing is ridiculous in Aus

Aus dollar is lowest it has been for a decade. Pricing of everything is going to be ridiculous.

Worth waiting out for specials. I picked up a ThreadRipper 2920Z from Computer Alliance just before EOFY for a (relatively) decent price at $950AUD.

How's the local used market? Used Vega has been an incredible deal at least as of like half a year ago..

Likely the price of Vega went down due to imminent release of 5700(X).

Price of vega is quite cheap atm, likely due to the new navi cards, but not cheap enough to make it the better buy in terms of performance per dollar

> Im still waiting for the AIB RX 5700's

Curious, why are people waiting for these/what's the advantage?

> > Im still waiting for the AIB RX 5700's

> Curious, why are people waiting for these/what's the advantage?

The blower coolers on the reference board have been reviewed as loud and not very effective. The AIB coolers will likely run quieter, cooler, and not be blower style.

(A blower cooler is designed to have one giant fan that blows air across the card and out the slot cover. The advantage is almost any pc, regardless of case airflow, can safely run them... but most people dropping that much cash on a video cards can afford a case fan or two.)

Good to know, thanks!

The 3900X is also a big hit. It's such a big hit, that stores in Europe have not had any in stock since launch.

Not just EU, Canada too - I've been waiting for mine to ship for 3 weeks now.

Canada Computers has them in stock frequently. I’ve been able to get two from them.

I ordered online 10 days ago or so and got it last week. Didn't have to try too hard and their physical locations have had them fairly often as well.

I bought three of them last week, the store seemed confident in a week and a half lead time. So I guess somewhere next week AMD will deliver a new batch to retailers.

What store? I ordered from komplett on July 20th, they seemed pretty confident they were getting more (of which 3 were unsold) on Monday.

On Wednesday they said they didn't get any, my order is on hold until they arrive. On Friday they said they don't know if they'll get any in August

We put the order in on wednesday, at Azerty.nl. I double checked their delivery and they reaffirmed it was 1.5 weeks, the only hold up was the ram, we need the DC stuff to outfit each machine with 128GB ram.

Could be just scarcity on AMD's side though. I remember how hard it was to get a Vega card for a while. Which, AFAIK, was due to HBM2 being scarce.

I suppose, 65W TDP was the USP of Ryzen 7 3700X together with performance for the price-tag.

My last desktop's MB(D865GBF) got screwed 10 yrs back. Since Ryzen 7 3700X happened, I've developed an itch in my mind to assemble a gaming Desktop.

Detailed analysis: https://www.anandtech.com/print/14605/the-and-ryzen-3700x-39...

Is anyone else holding on to their years old PC waiting for ddr5 to come out before upgrading?

I was considering it but the prices on RAM have dropped a bit recently and my DDR3 was leaving a lot to be desired. Pulled the trigger and got 32GB of 3200Mhz of DDR4. I got 6 years out of my prior build, I'm sure my new build will last the same if not longer.

I have a fx6300 with 24gb ddr3 and a 1070ti and win10 and I am quite happy with it still.

Depends what you're doing with it. Newer memory is usually very expensive when it first comes out, to the point that you can often get better performance by spending the same money on a system with the older memory and higher end other components. It's only really worth waiting if your workload is sufficiently memory bound (and most of them aren't).

And, of course, if you're the sort who values performance over money then you buy a new one now and when the new memory comes out.

I suppose I could also argue if you value money over performance you would not upgrade at all. That's me right now.

I guess I am one of those people who absolutely hates the idea of swapping out the ram, motherboard and cpu just for a mid life upgrade. I would actually rather pay more to jump in at the beginning of a new era knowing I will be able to upgrade to a new cpu in 3 years time without upgrading everything else at the same time.

If you want the mid life upgrade you can always build for it on purpose. A second gen Ryzen 5 is presumably a noticeable improvement over whatever DDR3 quad core it would be replacing, but then you get to upgrade it to a third or fourth gen Ryzen 9 later when the price comes down.

That's one of the cheapest ways to stay semi-current, e.g. a Ryzen 5 2600 is $135 today on Newegg, add motherboard and 16GB memory and it's a little over $250. Then another $250 in three years for the Ryzen 9 from today, and the DDR5 version of the Ryzen 5 system three years after that. Much cheaper than buying the new thing the day it comes out (but also never as fast).

My desktop was built in 2013 and I feel it has another 4-5 years left before I upgrade. I used the best parts at the time and they are still more than enough for my usage.

There's so much cache on modern CPUs that memory performance matters a lot less than you'd think.

The best time to upgrade would be to get a previous generation CPU and mainboard when ddr5 comes out. Prices for the 1 year old stuff will drop hard because no one wants ddr4 ram anymore, including mainboards and CPUS. You could probably easily afford 32GB of RAM or more that way.

I built my new PC with AMD (Ryzen 5), so far happy with the price/performance, but for some reason I can't make any Android emulator (x86) to run.

Can anyone knowledgeable comment on the performance? Are the recent AMD CPUs generally better for their price than Intel ones, and are there any downsides? My personal context is compiling programs, but I do get that gamers is the other big market. And I guess this is mostly a choice for desktops, since laptops have a pre-made choice of CPU.

I can tell you unequivocally no AMD is not faster. I have both AMD and Intel CPUs and the latest AMD is still slower than last generation Intel CPUs on standard workloads.

That being said... I have SSD and like 800 billion GB of RAM so I hardly notice the difference, but I definitely do notice a difference.

They're generally cheaper than the Intel counterpart with similar performance. They're also significantly more power-efficient right now, mostly because they're one process node ahead of Intel.

The single-core performance gets very close to the fastest Intel processors, and you can get a 12 core Ryzen now (and a 16 core later this year) while Intel is at most 8 cores on the mainstream desktop platform.

There are differences in specific applications between Intel and AMD, but you'll have to look for individual benchmarks on this.

>The single-core performance gets very close to the fastest Intel processors

I would add: While using way less power to get to that level of performance.

At least in Australia, the 3700x undercuts it's price competitor (9700k) by a fair margin and has around 40% faster multi-core performance with very comparable single core. For compiling I don't think its even a contest at this point. Even before this generation AMD offered more multi-core performance per $, and much higher end HEDT processors (32core 2990wx).

> Are the recent AMD CPUs generally better for their price than Intel ones, and are there any downsides? My personal context is compiling programs,

Oh boy, are you in for a nice surprise. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-37... the Ryzen 7 3700X (323 USD) stands its ground against the i9 9900K (485 USD). The top end is not even funny, there is no consumer Intel CPU that can stand against the Ryzen 9 3900X (499 USD), the LGA 2066 workstation chips that can are double, triple the price. Or, to put it another way: at the same price the 3900X vs 9900k it is 32% faster when compiling the kernel. Passmark https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X-vs-In... shows no less than fifty percent. Right now the 3900X is in such a short supply it sells for 700-ish on eBay. This will resolve in a few months -- there's a 3950X scheduled for September with 16 cores instead of 12 cores, slightly lower base clock (3.8 vs 3.5) but slightly higher turbo clock (4.7 vs 4.6) tightening the screw on Intel. Of course, it'll have a "halo" price at 750 USD but will compete, again, with Intel workstation chips double the price (and much higher TDP as well). Intel is in deep... and they have nothing to counter with, Comet Lake-S is only scheduled for next year, this roadmap was posted just a few weeks ago: https://www.techpowerup.com/img/Gouh8r91rj9vR7FV.jpg and these are just words, there is no guarantee whatsoever they will be able to ship 10nm in mass market quantity ever.

Ps. Intel's workstation (HEDT) strategy is a mess anyways -- https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i9-9900K-vs-Intel... they essentially have nothing to offer between 485 USD and 950 USD which of course right now hits them with a vengeance because they can't just take a 700 USD CPU, bring it down in price a bit and make it into a 3900X competitor. The LGA 2066 platform was nothing but a mess ever since launched, watch this video from 2017 highlighting the problems with LGA 2066: https://youtu.be/TWFzWRoVNnE

Thanks - and wow! I had heard that they are good, but not this good. Since price per performance is pretty much what I always look at then AMD looks like a clear winner.

Some time ago I had just had a discussion on CPU choice with a friend and I think he went with Intel (citing something vague about "less problems"), and unfortunately I didn't look anything up then. It is sad in how little the general public knows about what is the best choice at any given moment and how long it takes for this knowledge to spread.

The only downside is that Intel CPUs are better for gaming, especially if you pair with a high end GPU and high refresh rate monitors

Only slightly, like 5% between the 3900x and 9900k. And if you're not gaming with a 2080ti you're likely to not even notice the difference between a similarly priced Intel/AMD chips. If you do anything else other than gaming though the Ryzen chips blow Intel out of the water.

But are they really better? I.e if the CPU can have any cost then maybe, but if looking at any performance level where both AMD and Intel are present, then AMD is always cheaper?

Not if you go 1440p+ where the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

If you don't mind watching a video, Linus Tech Tips compared Ryzen 7 & 9 with similar (but more expensive) consumer Intel chips and Ryzen came ahead in basically all tests except one related to high-end gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3aEv3EzMyQ Price/performance of the AMD chips was ahead in everything.

Depends on the workload. In games, Intel is still the leader (unless you're bottlenecked by the GPU in which case there's no difference). I expect this will change when game companies start optimizing for AMD CPUs, often games run faster when SMT is turned off. See for example: https://youtu.be/yqQ2X1y0jvw?t=892

AMD is better in parallel workloads, like compression and especially Linux kernel compilation which takes advantage of the massive L3 cache.

Certainly this is a great CPU, but there's also a question of pent up demand. Those in the market for a CPU without a clear deadline earlier this year would have decided to either buy an Intel CPU then, buy an AMD CPU then, or postpone the purchase until July when the new AMD chips were coming out.

They're using numbers from one retailer. I imagine the chip really is selling well overall compared to past numbers, but there is a high risk this isn't a representative sample, especially the part about one model outselling all of Intel.

It's pretty much guaranteed it's not a representative sample of the total PC market but rather just the DIY/builder segment. The largest PC manufacturers (i.e. Lenovo, HP etc.) who ship the lion's share of the volume are slow to transition and they've only recently started adding AMD back as an option to their product lines, let alone really trying to move AMD boxes in volume.

Exactly. One German shop with boxes. I don't think this is where Intel make the majority of their money - which I presume is in supplying FANG plus Dell, HP etc etc.

either way, it's good for the market that people choose AMD over Intel.

I have found the situation with ECC ram to be confusing. Some motherboard options seem to accept the RAM, without getting the benefit of the checksum. Does anyone know which of the motherboard options give the full benefit of ECC?

Most motherboards should have support, but you can double-check the memory QVL for each board to see for ECC UDIMMs to use. ECC support should be based on the AMD IMC (on chip) and AGESA and should work with all Zen CPUs except for the consumer APUs.

Here's the output from a Ryzen 7 1700 and an Asrock B350 board:

  lhl@z ~> journalctl -b | grep EDAC
  Jul 28 18:53:49 z kernel: EDAC MC: Ver: 3.0.0
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: Node 0: DRAM ECC enabled.
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: F17h detected (node 0).
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC MC: UMC0 chip selects:
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 0:  8192MB 1:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 2:     0MB 3:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 4:     0MB 5:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 6:     0MB 7:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC MC: UMC1 chip selects:
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 0:  8192MB 1:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 2:     0MB 3:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 4:     0MB 5:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MC: 6:     0MB 7:     0MB
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: using x8 syndromes.
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC amd64: MCT channel count: 2
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC MC0: Giving out device to module amd64_edac controller F17h: DEV 0000:00:18.3 (INTERRUPT)
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: EDAC PCI0: Giving out device to module amd64_edac controller EDAC PCI controller: DEV 0000:00:18.0 (POLLED)
  Jul 28 18:53:50 z kernel: AMD64 EDAC driver v3.5.0
  Jul 28 18:53:57 z systemd[1]: Starting Initialize EDAC v3.0.0 Drivers For Machine Hardware...
  Jul 28 18:53:57 z systemd[1]: Started Initialize EDAC v3.0.0 Drivers For Machine Hardware.
  lhl@z ~> edac-ctl --status
  edac-ctl: drivers are loaded.
  lhl@z ~> edac-ctl --mainboard
  edac-ctl: mainboard: ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac
  lhl@z ~> edac-util -v
  mc0: 0 Uncorrected Errors with no DIMM info
  mc0: 0 Corrected Errors with no DIMM info
  mc0: csrow0: 0 Uncorrected Errors
  mc0: csrow0: mc#0csrow#0channel#0: 0 Corrected Errors
  mc0: csrow0: mc#0csrow#0channel#1: 0 Corrected Errors
  edac-util: No errors to report.

AMD had poor forcasts and a poor showing though at their last earnings release.

I suppose that's why the market cap is only 31.96B, less than half the value of Uber, although more than Snap Inc.

You can't really compare an established semiconductor company that has real earnings with a fantasy of global domination in the transport industry.

If you compare Intel vs AMD based on P/E, there's a lot of growth priced into AMD that has yet to materialize. Don't expect good earnings to push up the stock price even further. In fact, you can expect a drop even after good sales numbers, as traders will use that opportunity to sell.

I think it was just this quarter. I loaded up stocks again. It had a nice decrease in value recently.

They just need more preassembled computer market share.

And with this performance it will happen. Every OEM would be insane to have no AMD.

Servers are also getting AMD again.

In 2000 it was 50, now it's 30 or something, coming from 10.

Not sure how that is relevant to this discussion. That earnings release was before the current CPU lineup was released.

The lower forecast makes it relevant. Are they going to blow away their forecast given the response to the new lineup? They weren't able to predict demand? Or did they anticipate, and these increased sales aren't going to move the needle and their forecast was correct?

forecast are just that forecasts. They are irrelevant once real data has come out.

hard to find a better value than the 3600/3700. and it's certainly going to improve a few percentage points as the drivers/bios mature.

By building with TSMC, AMD can ramp up production quicker than they could in their own fabs (since their orders are a smaller percentage of available capacity)

They haven't had own fabs for like a decade.

But their competitor intel does.

Intel regularly has delays due to limited fab scaling ability.

Apparently the option’s market is betting that AMD’s stock will be roughly $31 in 1 year. Last time I checked it was about $30 which is hardly a gain.

May I ask a question? Looking to build a machine for 4k video editing, music production, and light ML. Where do I want to be right now?

Threadripper.

What's going on with this part server-side?

Well AWS has got now lots of "a" suffixed instance types, which didn't exists a year ago. And they are cheaper.

>cheaper

While also faster than the non-a variants.

The next generation of Zen server processors Eypc 2 (aka "Rome") launches next Wednesday, August 7.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com