Almost doubling the TDP for a 25%-30% frequency increase isn't doing most any good (appeals mainly to benchmark obsessed folks with poor sense of scale). But it's the game that marketing people have to play---so hence the 105 watt X-variants.
When I upgrade to AM5 I'll go with 65W no doubt.
But the people who (think that they) really need those extra few % performance also tend to be the ones willing to spend. Personally I think this is fine: the big spenders who buy the top $$$ and TDP parts basically subsidize a lot of the costs for the more price conscious who benefit from all the R&D and still get great performance.
You don't buy high end parts to be fiscally efficient, efficiency has always been the realm of mid to low end parts. This applies to nearly everything.
Another advantage there was that I would not have to build another computer to use two cheaper processors. But that only works as I don't think I am limited by any other factors like memory or disk bandwidth.
I did however limit the processor to a 65W TDP to reduce heat output and power usage, which only slowed down my very parallel programs about 10%, and didn't affect less parallel programs at all. (The duplicated other components of two machines would also draw more power, though perhaps not that much in comparison to processors here.)
[1] For a fuzzer you could easily give separate machines multiple random seeds, so really that is no issue. But for model checking/exhaustive search there needs to be a proper form of work distribution. I haven't a clue what the network bandwidth requirement of e.g. TLC, so that might also require faster NICs than one gets on motherboards to not stall processors on the network.
Having 25-30% faster compile times, faster video renders, higher frame rates, snappier responses is huge. I don’t understand why you’re suggesting it’s not doing anyone any good.
Our CPUs don’t run at 100% all of the time. If my CPU takes 200W instead of 65W for the small fraction of the day that I’m doing something CPU-intensive, the difference is absolutely negligible. I’m going to use more total power when I cook my dinner, probably.
If you are the kind of person willing to give up 1/4 of your performance for slightly lower power consumption under load, then go for those slower chips. You’re not the target market for the premium grade performance parts.
In my experience it's often not the case. Edge with its sleeping tabs function is a big improvement and example when app writers do care a bit about not wasting loads of energy. But it's really a very mixed bag. Many browsers do not.
And there is plenty of nuissance javascript that will peg the CPU and RAM all day long. If you're a Steam user, you know that almost all games, when you idle them in the background, and even in pause mode, peg one or a few CPU threads as well as the GPU.
The problem is greatly reduced for those editing their windows power profiles (or for linux users, cpufreq-set) to have their processors run at reduced frequencies. For those it might justify getting 105W X's over the 65W.
Now the almost 30% peak perf gain that the X models can sustain are potentially a big advantage. Yet real life usage speedup isn't as big as one might expect from looking at benchmark multithread compute scores; compiling has a lot of waiting on IO. And the single thread differences between the mellow frequency non-X and the souped up X versions are not very big, percentage wise. So you might get 30% speedup for some cases, but probably more typical difference might closer to ~15%.
iGPU throttling is an area where the 65W models would be disadvantaged at, sometimes significantly.
So in some cases (workstation type usage), especially if running without a dedicated video card, the 105W choice might admittedly make good sense.
65W vs 105W bottom line: I guess it's a case of YMMV.
Drops on average less than 10% multi core performance and no single core performance at all. Much quieter, cheaper, etc.
I also have a 35W 5750GE (8c16t too) and that’s also a very respectable performer compared to the 105W 5800X!
We’re so far off the ideal part of the perf/W curve it’s not funny, and I swear being closer to that is part of where Apple et al have done so well.
Edit: and from compute benchmarks on my 3090, the best perf/watt - measured in whole system total power drawn to complete a variety of cuda tasks, that card is most efficient around 225W or so… which is crazy considering they’re sold at 350W or more!
People are still buying Intel so might as well try and convince them that AMD is just as "fast"
- "I value 30% faster compilation far more than..."
It takes 10,000 hours of wall-clock CPU time to reach your 200 euro figure. That tradeoff is against a 30% decrease in compilation time, or 3,000 hours.
Say what you will about idle power or whatever; but we're talking about the case of 100% all-core CPU for a programmer who is compiling something, and whether or not they should throttle those CPU cores to save money on power bills. The math is an easy "no".
Since C2D days anything over 65W provided diminishing results for a regular user. But then you can't participate in the di^W gigaherz measuring party.
There's plenty of 4X / RTS / Simulation games where the CPU will be the bottleneck.
Disclosure: I own a 7600X, but strictly because I wanted a new desktop for the Christmas holidays, so I couldn't wait for either the 65W budget option or the X3D high-end (I do play Paradox games a fair bit). Hopefully I'll be able to sell it and upgrade without too much loss, once the full lineup is available.
I resemble this remark. But I will not change :-)