I am struggling to figure out if I should go with the above mentioned CPUs for a new workstation (upgrading from a 2970x that just kicked the bucket).
I’ll start with what I will be using it for: Blender/rendering, MasterCam, Fusion 360, Adobe software suit video editing (hobby) and some for machine learning/deep learning (another hobby at the moment).
I’m torn as there is a lot of mixed information, the two trade blows back and forth. Price is not much of a concern here as they are both very close in price for the CPU and Motherboard, I am leaning towards the Zeon though, mostly because there’s a Dark board from EVGA… I have had great experiences with dark boards but I don’t want to be blinded by MOBO bias.
I am unsure which trade offs are the bigger deal, do I really need PCIE 4.0? I am have been running 3090s, I don’t think they even use up the whole bandwidth from what I understand, faster memory opposed to more memory (my threadripper never could hold stable overclocks with water cooled ram, I’ve heard similar things about 3000 series, so is it really faster?)
I will be throwing it into a custom loop, probably lapping and deliding as well, I have decent amount of overclocking experience.
Sorry for the multiple edits, I am just fixing grammar and adding things I forgot, let me know if I haven’t clarified something.
For blender you’ll benefit more from a GPU than CPU rendering, as far as I’m aware the adobe suite won’t fully load an hedt CPU, how many lanes do you need? A 7950X might be more in line with a high frequency
8x 4.0 should be enough to keep each 3090 fed
What exactly about the 2970X died, was it the motherboard or CPU, generally the CPUs don’t just die and that soon
If you think you can combine production work and overclocking prepare yourself for a world of pain.
Both the proposed platforms have been dead for some time so I personally wouldn’t waste too much time on those. Der8auer has good youtube videos from a couple years back on the 3175X if you choose to go down that route. He calls it “Project Irrationality” for a reason.
You should probably look into one of the consumer platforms (Ryzen 7000 or Intel 13th gen) or Threadripper Pro if you can justify the cost.
I agree a couple of my work loads are GPU bound except for some of my fusion programs and cams, I would be utilizing all my cores then. During video editing more cores definitely made a difference, I have been trying to use my 5950x in the meantime but a lot of these programs chug or even crash, especially when I am programming CNC parts. I also have multiple of these programs running at once most of the time… well not on the 5950x. I think I need the lanes, I was running triple 3090s, a bunch of NVME (including a SSD PCIe card) on my 2970x, my 5950 doesn’t like that set up (had to drop a 3090) so I don’t see it working that much better on a 7950x (correct me if I’m wrong).
Well I don’t really know what killed it, I think I just had a meh chip to start with, first gigabyte extreme died, bought another and serval months later it was getting really hot under load, some cores clearly died then it just stopped posting, had it tested by a friend and micro center said it was the cpu not the board, RMA’d it, AMD said it was dead and sent it back.
I think that last part was asking how much I used it? Everyday for 2-10 hours a day, I have had some work loads that I’ll let go, go to bed then get up and and start on the next thing so the computer was being used for days at a time. It was in a custom loop with for four 520mm rads push pull fan setup.
I don’t know your budget but I would definitely go with a 5965wx, you can raise it’s max turbo to 4.7ghz with a +200mhz with PBO for single threaded tasks and reduce the wattage with negative curve optimizer, doing that will raise your all core turbo
I would generally block one or the other but if your silicon is good enough you can max out both
Overclocking isn’t really a thing with zen 2 and 3, it’s all PBO
PCIe 4.0 is a nicety. The 4.0 vs. 3.0 had little damper, with PCIe 4.0 x16 peripherals
Anything x8 [or <], be when things start getting a lil’ bit hairy, on PCIe 3.0 platform
Zen2(+), would have better memory support, over your Zen+ [which be leaps > Zen]
TR/TRPro, will definitely offer up moar PCIe [esp. if you’re running triple 3090 / M2s]
Your goal with TR/TRPro, would be the efficiency [~same throughput, at a lower W]
sTRX8 has offered up 2(+?) generations of processors [TRPro]… compared to sTRX4 [1]
So the cost of the 5965x is an issue, I think once I grab a motherboard and tax I am right around $4k.
I can build the other two systems for right around (or under) $2k after tax, almost double the cost is a hard pill to swallow. I don’t feel comfortable spending $4k on a workstation right now, especially sense in this economy, both my businesses are taking a hit.
If I was limping along on the old ripper I’d probably just save for 3-6 months but I think I am at 30-40% productivity on my 5950x. Maybe less because of crashes.
In terms of blocking, my case has a dual loop so I can block both the GPUs and the CPU no problem.
I really appreciate all this input, it’s been very helpful, I’ll for sure send you a Venmo tip later.
I actually did a fresh install a couple weeks ago thinking some how I’d installed something that may have been causing a bottle neck or something, didn’t change anything.
I think it’s just that 16 cores just isn’t enough some times for these auto cad/programming/multi-tasking. Just so I’m clear it’s the programs crashing not the computer, this 5950x has never blue screened, this was/is my gaming rig and it’s still a gaming beast.
My girlfriend gave me the EVGA SR-3 Dark as a belated birthday present so I thought, “well guess I’ll go this route”. Then at a get together, a friend of ours is working at a tech startup that is liquidating most its assets to stay alive…. Sold me a 3990x new in the box for $2k.
Guess I’ll just hold onto that dark board to play around with in the future when and if I find a dirt cheap w3175x, for now, it’s time to hunt down a nice motherboard and get this 64 core monster working, thanks again for all your guys help!
I never thought to look at that, luckily I don’t have to worry about this anymore, got a new threadripper (explained in my last post). However I may take look at that just for giggles.
It’s definitely a me problem overtaxing the 5950x, I think I am outside the intended use.