Intel CEO wants to see the industry shift its focus away from "benchmarks"

[Avet]

i feel like everyone is slowly converging on the same argument which essentially boils down to... 'horses for courses'

It is not. The point is, as Intel CEO is trying to allude, and as I have stated above, that many benchmarks are pointless and don't give you the correct answer. And they couldn't be further away from the real-world performance. In all "productivity" benchmarks (Cinebench, V-Ray, Corona, Blender, etc.) 3950X beats 9900K by a hefty margin. And all reviewers are singing like a choir "3950X is much better for productivity because it beats 9900K in all benchmarks". But 3950X is NOT a better CPU than 9900K for any application that uses those renders. Because you don't render with CPU. Don't get me wrong they can both do a very good job but the performance (mainly viewport in all those apps) is on the side of Intel and it is noticeable and measurable.

The "reviewer consensus" is: "Don't bother with Intel if you want productivity you must go with AMD." That is so completely wrong.

PugetSystems is recommending 9900K as the best CPU for Editing Rigs!!! Why is that? And they are a very smart bunch of people.

The only workload I would explicitly recommend AMD over Intel is 4K and above video rendering.

For everything else like 3D modeling (3ds Max, Maya, Blender, SolidWorks, Sketchup), design (AutoCAD all variants), Photoshop, Music Production, ... Intel is the better CPU.

Why? You might ask. Because of this:

- All those tasks cannot be properly parallelized as Tiled rendering can. It means that the tasks are executed in sequence and that is where Intel's superior latency and single-thread performance comes to light. It doesn't matter that you have 32 cores because 28 of them can't do a thing until 2 cores finish their task. That is why Intel CPUs are superior in gaming.

- All applications in the past 10 or more years are specifically designed and optimized for Intel. Sad but true, and you can't go past it. It will take a long time for developers to redesign everything for AMD.

The actual real-world performance king, despite all benchmark results, for production and gaming (except 4Kvideo editing) was 9900K and now 10900K and not 3950X.

I must emphasize again the performance gap isn't gargantuan. They are both good CPUs. Expect it to be like in games. And there Intel is undisputedly better.

And again I am not Intel fanboy and everything I have said in this post is provable. So please restrain your self from hateful comments.

Edit 1: AMD hype is mostly propagated because all reviewers are mainly doing Video editing and that makes them a bit biased towards AMD. Because Ryzen is a really good CPU for that.

Edit 2: Also if you are a Linux GURU and you do 7 compiles at the same time while having 6 VMS running Threadripper is Godsent.

 

[Kleptobot]

I was agreeing with you, but i think my statement may have been misleading. I was intending it to be understood as pick the hardware that is best suited to your task not a benchmark. But i can see how that did not come across.

EDIT: the horses being the hardware and the courses being the tasks you want to perform

 

[Avet]

I was agreeing with you, but i think my statement may have been misleading. I was intending it to be understood as pick the hardware that is best suited to your task not a benchmark. But i can see how that did not come across.

EDIT: the horses being the hardware and the courses being the tasks you want to perform

Yea. You have a choice now. Which is great. Buy whatever you want. It is your money. But if you are just a regular Joe and not a computer geek and you want to buy a balling computer for Blender most of the popular review channels will give you the wrong information.

Just flaws of YouTube. Everyone is following the hype, click baits, and copying everyone else.

 

[Warchild]

Well one thing we need to keep in mind now has nothing to do with workloads. The 9900k and also 10900k... The heat these cpus produce is something I would not want to have in my system unless running a full WC setup.

I would take a lower performing processor that peaked at 80C over a higher performer that is approaching TDP of 105C.

 

[demonking]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Intel:
2015: Look at these benchmarks, we are at the top and better at everything and you should buy our product based on these
2020: Don't look at benchmarks they don't demonstrate real world performance and you should not buy a product based on synthetic benchmarks(because we are no longer at the top of most of them)

Looks like Intel's reputation is going the same way as their performance advantage. Good luck with eating your own hat

 

[Avet]

Well one thing we need to keep in mind now has nothing to do with workloads. The 9900k and also 10900k... The heat these cpus produce is something I would not want to have in my system unless running a full WC setup.

I would take a lower performing processor that peaked at 80C over a higher performer that is approaching TDP of 105C.

9900K is a furnace. 10900K is actually quite easy to cool. For most users, high-end air coolers or any AIO above 240 will have no problem with cooling it quietly if you don't overclock it balls to the wall.

If you want to extract every single bit of performance then yea a proper WC loop and delid are required.

 

[Warchild]

9900K is a furnace. 10900K is actually quite easy to cool. For most users, high-end air coolers or any AIO above 240 will have no problem with cooling it quietly if you don't overclock it balls to the wall.

If you want to extract every single bit of performance then yea a proper WC loop and delid are required.

Exactly, and this option is a niche market, yet many users will opt for an AIO or god forbid.. Air cooler. That simply isnt good enough.

But how is a 10900k easier to cool than a 9900k when its effectively the same thing with 2 more cores? What I have seen with a 240 AIO has not been pretty.

 

[Avet]

Exactly, and this option is a niche market, yet many users will opt for an AIO or god forbid.. Air cooler. That simply isnt good enough.

But how is a 10900k easier to cool than a 9900k when its effectively the same thing with 2 more cores? What I have seen with a 240 AIO has not been pretty.

Most users won't overclock their CPU to 5.3 GHz all-core with 4600MHz memory and tight all three tiers of timings. For stock settings and normal use conventional cooling is good enough.

For example, I would never run a Threadripper system without a dedicated WC loop. For the workloads that you need that much horsepower, you leave so much performance behind with AIOs or Air coolers.

Edit: Wendell form Level1 has started building custom WC for his Threadripper systems. That is saying few things.

 

[looz]

Also worth noting that in many real world tasks the short boost windows work wonders, and a cooler with enough thermal mass will soak those load spikes without issues.

 

[Avet]

Also worth noting that in many real world tasks the short boost windows work wonders, and a cooler with enough thermal mass will soak those load spikes without issues.

That is exactly why AIO coolers are better than Air. Watter has immense thermal capacity. Even though they might have the same max temperatures during long tests the time it takes to saturate cooler is much longer on water, and because of that, they will dampen heat spikes much better.

 

[AlienALX]

It is not. The point is, as Intel CEO is trying to allude, and as I have stated above, that many benchmarks are pointless and don't give you the correct answer. And they couldn't be further away from the real-world performance. In all "productivity" benchmarks (Cinebench, V-Ray, Corona, Blender, etc.) 3950X beats 9900K by a hefty margin. And all reviewers are singing like a choir "3950X is much better for productivity because it beats 9900K in all benchmarks". But 3950X is NOT a better CPU than 9900K for any application that uses those renders. Because you don't render with CPU. Don't get me wrong they can both do a very good job but the performance (mainly viewport in all those apps) is on the side of Intel and it is noticeable and measurable.

The "reviewer consensus" is: "Don't bother with Intel if you want productivity you must go with AMD." That is so completely wrong.

PugetSystems is recommending 9900K as the best CPU for Editing Rigs!!! Why is that? And they are a very smart bunch of people.

The only workload I would explicitly recommend AMD over Intel is 4K and above video rendering.

For everything else like 3D modeling (3ds Max, Maya, Blender, SolidWorks, Sketchup), design (AutoCAD all variants), Photoshop, Music Production, ... Intel is the better CPU.

Why? You might ask. Because of this:

- All those tasks cannot be properly parallelized as Tiled rendering can. It means that the tasks are executed in sequence and that is where Intel's superior latency and single-thread performance comes to light. It doesn't matter that you have 32 cores because 28 of them can't do a thing until 2 cores finish their task. That is why Intel CPUs are superior in gaming.

- All applications in the past 10 or more years are specifically designed and optimized for Intel. Sad but true, and you can't go past it. It will take a long time for developers to redesign everything for AMD.

The actual real-world performance king, despite all benchmark results, for production and gaming (except 4Kvideo editing) was 9900K and now 10900K and not 3950X.

I must emphasize again the performance gap isn't gargantuan. They are both good CPUs. Expect it to be like in games. And there Intel is undisputedly better.

And again I am not Intel fanboy and everything I have said in this post is provable. So please restrain your self from hateful comments.

Edit 1: AMD hype is mostly propagated because all reviewers are mainly doing Video editing and that makes them a bit biased towards AMD. Because Ryzen is a really good CPU for that.

Edit 2: Also if you are a Linux GURU and you do 7 compiles at the same time while having 6 VMS running Threadripper is Godsent.

Big lots of waffle defending an inferior product.

Even Intel know it. That's exactly why they don't want to play the benchmark game.

 

[looz]

That is exactly why AIO coolers are better than Air. Watter has immense thermal capacity. Even though they might have the same max temperatures during long tests the time it takes to saturate cooler is much longer on water, and because of that, they will dampen heat spikes much better.

It's a pro for sure, but I still don't think they're worth the trade-offs (finite lifespan, extra cost, extra noise from pump when idle). After trying one AIO I won't buy another unless I'm making an extra compact build.

 

[Kleptobot]

It's hard to find many benchmarks for software packages like autodesk inventor or solid works. I found some numbers for a 3950x but all I have to compare them to are a 6yr old xeon

 

[NickOmega]

....Everyone is talking about how AMD CPUs are good for streaming. Again wrong. You don't stream with CPU you stream with NVENC (new) without any drop in performance.

Well no it's not "wrong" at all.. Yes typically a streamer would use NVENC for rendering the stream output, HOWEVER, the streaming software is utilising the CPU.
So for people using complex scenes and transitions in OBS with many sources, animations, multiple captures... AMD IS good for streaming (Read: Better than Intel), especially when gaming on the same system.

 

[Avet]

This is what Intel CEO was talking about. Forget about Cinebench, Blender, V-Ray, and other Rendering benchmarks. They are all pointless because you use Nvidia CUDA and OptiX for rendering, not your CPU. What matters is the actual real-world performance in editing.

Look at the General Actions Results. And that is a bog-standard clock with 4x DDR4-2933 16GB memory. Imagine the performance gap at 5.2GHz with 3200MHz CL14 or 4000MHz CL17 memory.

10900K is by far the best CPU for most production workloads. Except for 4K+ Video editing, heavy multi-threaded workloads like code compile, VMs, and CPU Rendering tasks.

It is not like a few years back when 6950X was one CPU for all. AMD has gained an advantage in some workloads mainly Video editing, but despite the popular opinion, Intel is still rocking hard.

Thank you PugetSystems for this actual performance benchmark.

Again I am not a fanboy. The best choice for you depends on your workload, but AMD is not the best for all professional work as many think. Just look at the numbers.