This shows some awesome performance but the tradeoff is the limited memory capacity. If you don;t need that great. If you do then Threadripper is not the best option.
A stack of them even :). Thing is memory support doesn't make for a more interesting review, doesn't really change any of the bars there. It's a tick box "supports up to 2TB of RAM".
Memory support is of the things that makes an otherwise absurdly expensive workstation like the Mac Pro attractive (that and the fact that for whoever needs to stay within that ecosystem the licenses alone probably cost more than a stack of Pros).
The P620 supports up to 512GB of RAM. Generally OK and probably delivers on every other aspect but for those few that need 1.5-2TB of RAM it still wouldn't cut it. For that the go to is usually a Xeon, or EPYC more recently.
I wonder the impact of the 8-channel config on single-threaded workloads. The 256MB of L3 is already quite ample to the point I'm unsure how diminished are the returns at that point.
This is my biggest concern and rarely considered or studied in reviews. Design space exploration. CAE over many design variations. Hundreds of design variations calculated as much as possible in parallel over the available cores (one core per variation, but each grabbing a slice of the memory). I've tested this on a 7960xe, purposely running it on dual channel and quad channel memory. On dual channel memory, at 12 parallel calculations (so 6 cores/channel) I measured a 46% increase in the calculation time / sample. in quad channel, at 12 parallel calculations (so 3 cores/ channel) I already measured a 30% reduction per calculation. (can anyone explain the worse results for quad channel?) Either way, it leaves me to conclude that 64 cores with 4 channel memory for this type of workload is a big no go. Something to keep in mind. I'm now spec'ing a dual processor workstation with two lower core count processors and fully populated memory channels. (either epic (2x32c, 16 channels) or Xeon (2x24c, 12 channels). still deciding).
256GB is indeed enough for anybody... only the people who buy this workstation aren't just "anybody" :). Unlike the 640K, the memory support on this kind of workstation isn't a matter of the implied "for now" or "for the target audience" but a very practical and current one.
What I find most interesting is the name... A magnetar is a scary celestial object that can pull the iron out of your cells at less than 100,000 miles away due to the intense MAGNETIC field. Magnets and computers are a great mix, from what a hear. Oh...
Magnets aren't really a threat to a modern PC unless they are strong enough to move the metal in the components. Magnets were a problem when systems were using spinning disks primarily for storage (HDD's) since those store the data magnetically. With SSD's, that just isn't an issue.
A big enough magnet's a threat. Magnetar fields would induce electrical flow suitable to fry everything in the system. Assuming you could stop the magnetar from physically ripping the system into confetti, that is.
I was going to say the same thing. It almost seems like the company that named the system doesn't really understand what a magnetar is, but simply used the name because it sounded cool or something along those lines.
I think it's a pretty cool name, and worthy of its computing power. Also, thanks for this discussion, everyone. I never did come across magnetars before, as far as I can remember. Anyhow, I can't wait to read more about them. It seems to stir that feeling of awe I first got when hearing of black holes as a child. Let's hope a good director handles it properly when the time comes, and we don't get some ready-made junk churned out from the Hollywood machine.
I feel like people don;t understand what a "Corsair" really is. Freebooter just didn't sound as nice. And they could have been scary as hell. AMD's Navi AMD's and the rest of their "star" architectures are, well... stars, a scary celestial object that can burn all of your cells at less than 100,000 miles away. You don't have to struggle to find such examples of things that "are a great mix" with computers. Intel's lakes anyone?
It's the name of a product which is relatively uniquely identifiable, sounds cool, and perhaps is also intended to suggest "powerful", like a magnetar. Don't overthink it. Or underthink it.
Also amari are a class of bitter Italian liqueurs (singular amaro). So clearly this computer is bitter with a strong enough magnetic field to rip your fillings out
I mean if you take the name so literally... An Apple a day keeps the doctor away since iPhones are expensive and you won't be affording any doctor. I can't even see a Microsoft it's too small. Those Alienwares are true space age technology gifted by extraterrestrials.
It's just a name. In this case, I could argue it's a dense celestial object capable of unimaginable force.
My inner autistic physicist was screaming Spunjji. Couldn't help myself, haha. It's like naming your computer "Blackhole." Ain't nobody got time fo' dat kind of gruesome ending.
Personally, I just think it might be a bad omen for the system to name it after such a destructive object, LOL.
can you get this back to test with Dual 3090s? being the only card that still has SLI connectors. Microsoft flight simulator might have a worthy machine for 4k-8k......
Ian, you wrote that this system has Windows 10 Pro, but earlier this year your benchmarks showed that Windows 10 Pro for Workstations yields better results in these multicore systems. Any comment on this?
Since Ian didn't comment.... It ended up just being patches were not applied to Windows 10 Pro. There was no difference when both were properly patched.
I'd like to see the NAMD results be updated to the 2.15 development [aka 2.14 nightly] builds where AVX-512 has been massively tuned. COVID-19 researchers are using it right now on Frontera: https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/08/12/intel-speeds-na...
Very impressive box!...;) Great write-up, too! Great job, Ian--your steady diet of metal & silicon is really producing obvious positive results! I would definitely want to go with a different motherboard, though. Even the GB x570 Aorus Master has received ECC ram support with the latest bios featuring the latest couple of AGESA's from AMD--so it seems like a shoe-in for a TR motherboard. I agree it's kind of an odd exclusion from AMD for TR. But, I suppose if you want ECC support and lots more ram support you'll need to step up to EPYC and its associated motherboards. This is a real pro-sumer offering and the price--well, everything about it--seems right on the money, imo. I really like the three-year warranty and the included service to change out coolant fluid every three years--very nice! If I used water cooling that is the only kind of fluid I would want to use--some of these el cheapo concoctions will eat up a radiator in a year or less! Enjoyed the article--thanks again...;)
Overclocking doesn't have to be unstable - and for some workloads, the extra performance is worth the effort to find the limits and beef up the cooling solution.
Had a chat with Armari. The system was built with the OC requirements in mind, and customized to support that. They're using a PBO-based overclock as well, and they've been really impressed with how AMD's latest variation of PBO can optimize the DVFS of the chip to keep the system stable regardless of workload (as long as heat is managed). In my testing, there was zero instability. I was told by Armari that they can build 10, 20, or 50 systems in a row without having any stability issues coming from the processor, and that binning the CPU is almost virtually non-existant.
Anyone can build TWO 3990X systems for less then half the price AND less then half the power consumption with each of them easily getting ~90% of the benchmarks.
That is with a top of the line titanium PSU, top of the line MB, top of the line 2TB SSD, top of the line Quadro RTX 4000 (oh damn paying 5X for the 6000 for only less then 2X the performance, what a b1tch, not), top of the line ... everything.
So ~1.8X of the total performance at ~1.8X the cost (sale pricing for all components otherwise make that ~1.9X the cost) and ~0.9X of the total power consumption.
But, you say, an ~15KUS system pays for itself, in less then 1E−44 seconds, even. Magnetarded indeed. /:
That's a pretty disingenuous stance. Yes, you can split the performance across multiple systems, likely for cheaper, but that ignores general infrastructure requirements, like having multiple locations to set up a system in, having enough power outlets to run them all, being capable of splitting the workload across multiple systems.
Not every workload can support distributed processing. Not every office has the space for a dedicated rack of systems churning away. Not every workload can sufficiently run on a half-performing GPU, even if the price is only a fifth of the one used here.
If your only metric is price-to-performance, then yes, this isn't the workstation for you. But this clearly isn't hitting a price-to-performance metric. It's focusing on the performance.
Perish the thought that someone might order one of these with a Quadro 4000 and obviate his biggest gripe (not that it would solve the potential problem of fitting a dataset into 8GB of RAM instead of 24GB)
Well there is that 20% VAT that pushes the actual system price to ~$17K US so dividing by two ~$8.5K per system minus the cost of a RTX 4000 at ~1K US gives one ~$6K US sans graphics card (remember I said build two systems with RTX 4000 at ~$7K US).
So I have about ~$2.5K per system for a graphics card. Which easily gives one RTX 5000 per build at ~$2K US. Whiich is 2/3 of the RTX 6000.
But, if the GPU benchmarks are all eventually CPU bound, which appears to be the case here in this review, then yes I get two systems at ~$8K US or ~$16K US for two systems, in other words, I get to build a 3900X system for about ~$1K US to boot..
So no, I would rather see benchmarks at 4K, mind you (as these were at standard HD) with different GPU options. Basically, I would want to use my money wisely (assuming at a minimum a 3990X CPU at ~$4K US as the entry point).
Therefore, this review is totally useless to anyone interested in efficiency (which should normally include everyone) and costs (ditto).
"Unfortunately due to how quickly this system was rebuilt for this review, the system I was sent was using DDR4-3200 at CL20, as some of the original memory was accidentally splashed with coolant, and Armari wanted to ensure I wouldn’t have any issues with the system."
Unfortunately, they could not give one of these systems. In fact, they would have to give me $15K and this system, call it a warranty in reverse. :)
That's the sort of trouble you have with using a little company like this as a supplier. They toss together shoddy bits and pieces because they don't retain proper inventory to support builds (and likely cannot afford to do so) and then for press-related reviews, they make absolutely sure there will not be issues with stability. Can we be certain they take the same care with hardware sold to non-journalist buyers or do those customers get the coolant-soaked memory and less stability testing? Who ensures there is adequate quality control in a smaller system builder like this?
Chasing so-called "world records" in benchmarks in the hopes of increasing productivity by purchasing little-builder-overclocked hardware is asking to shoot your own business operation in the foot when the hardware fails. I would be very reluctant to trust my company's workload on out-of-spec computers cobbled together by a company that can't even be bothered to keep coolant fluids off the memory.
I received this system three or four days ago - I wasn't even in contact with the company a week ago. I suggested a review if a system was ready, and so they scrambled to action. Obviously they weren't going to send me a system that a customer had already ordered, delaying someone with a financial contract, and so they pulled out the system they built for the record and wanted re-test and update so I had the latest components. Best laid plans and all that, combined with a quick turn-around requirement, might lend more readily to non-ideal situations, but given what was done in that time (I was told that included a couple of engineers 7am-11pm the day before), it was actually very well executed.
"...by a company that can't even be bothered to keep coolant fluids off the memory." God forbid you ever see what goes on in the large system integrators' build rooms..!
Accidents happen, it's how they're dealt with that marks a bad supplier from a good one. "Something went wrong and we had to alter the spec" is infinitely better than "Oh well, the fluid's mostly inert, bung the RAM in and hope it works and blame the customer if it goes wrong."
I applaud this Company for its honesty and hustle. They are a small organization that cares about what they do. They appreciated Ian being available to them as a small business and are thankful for the exposure. Many readers here work in large organizations and have no appreciation for the real-world stress ( what is the balance of the checkbook today and where will we be in 1 month for cash and sales) on small businesses in this hyper-competitive atmosphere. Try sitting in the chair of the person who personally values each customer, who without they are shortly destined to fail.
Yeah, curiously they couldn't replace the "splashed" memory with modules of the same type. There are a small company and i don't expect them to have big inventory. If they don't have stock of these memory modules for at least two or three rigs like these, it tells me this is a cash-strapped operation that probably pays part orders from the advance payments from customers ordering one of their systems. And such vendors are always a major head-ache, because you pay for the system and then you wait and wait and don't get your ordered goods because the vendor struggles to place some order for some component with some supplier, not to mention what could happen if you need to do a RMA or warranty exchange through such a vendor. Mind you, i cannot tell with certainty that Armari is such a company. But this occurence would be a major red flag for me if i were shopping for a boutique workstation (as little sense as that would make, as Peach has explained already; and i would also add uncertainty about the ability to do quick-turnaround on-premises support/service, which larger vendors -while occassionally also being a bitch about- usually don't struggle with in and around large metropolitan areas wherever in the country)
Never mind what i just wrote. I should have checked their website beforehand. Their product range seems to big and too broad to be one of those no-inventory boutique vendors. Mea culpa!
Thought it was gonna be some ARM workstation based on the name, stopped reading after first few paragraphs.
what sorta business would be buying a stupid overclocked amd "workstation", these things need to be stable, not some bullshit kiddie water cooled omg l33t crap lol. oh wait, it's amd, stable is already not gonna happen OC or not.
"On stability, throughout all of our testing, there was nothing to mention - there wasn't a single hint of instability. On speaking with Armari, the company said that this is down to AMD's own internal DVFS when implementing a high level PBO-based overclock: I was told that because this system was built from the ground up to accommodate this power, along with the custom tweaks, and the fact that AMD's voltage and frequency tracking metrics always ensured a stable system (as long as the temperature and BIOS is managed), then they can build 10, 20, or 50 systems in a row and not experience any issues."
It would be useful to see some bioinformatic style sequencing benchmarks in the science section. A very common usecase in life sciences is to take fastq sequence data for an individual align it to a reference genome using BWA MEM, and then identify variant regions using software like freebayes, GATK or BCFtools. Or alternatively take raw sequence data and de novo assemble that data into a new genome using software like CANU. For reasonable sized research projects these sorts of jobs these sorts of jobs can take 10's-100's of thousands of compute hours. For some of the large collaborations they can take millions of CPU hours, and petabytes of this data is getting generated during the course of a year. In certain cases like cancer-care or infectious diseases these processes can be time critical, and thus there can be significant benefits to using a machine that can trim a few percentage points off. Finally a lot of these jobs scale close to linearly with core count. Happy to discuss how a realist test case could be set up.
Are there power consumption results for the other systems? Compare with AMD @stock and @OC doing same workloads. How do they compare when using same average power? The higher room ambient temperature may limit performance.
Ian, Suspicion exists that your particle movement test is purely artificial BS, you confuse the community with its results for two years now. It is not a sole representative of any whole real model, so it is abstract like am assumption of some spherical horse in the vacuum.
What was done inside your code by Intel engineer no one knows including yourself. Two years passed and not a single person confirmed 5x lead in performance of Intel over AMD in any their real codes applying AVX512. This option in our 3D PIC models for example never got us more than 15-20% improvement which in supercomputing world is literally nothing. Codes do not consist of one single operation which Intel succeeded to speed up.
Despite being far from an expert on this, I'm fairly certain that a 15-20% performance gain is *huge* in the supercomputing world where time on the system costs stupendous amounts of money.
"Despite being far from an expert on this, I'm fairly certain that a 15-20% performance gain is *huge*..." Besides being far from expert, you are also far from common sense. If 15-20% were huge the customers would upgrade their supercomputers as soon as they get those 15-20% boost while they typically upgrade when they are almost an order of magnitude larger.
I resurrected my wife old Toshiba Satellite L515 lappy with Intel Pentium Dual Core T4400 at 2200 Mhz. I started by deleting all the crap she had install, mostly by accident. Then I swapped out the 5400 rpm drive with a 120 GB Samsung SSD from upgrading my main system. That alone made a huge difference. This week I received a 2GB stick to replace a 1GB one, to give it 4GB of DDR 2 RAM. :) I use it when we travel to check email, FB and to surf the web. It does a good job at all of those tasks. So, I was pleased to see this article about browsers as I'd been curious which would work best in a 4GB system. Task Manager told me it was not Firefox, my go to option. So, it looks like ChromeEdge wins out.
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KillgoreTrout - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Intelolclose - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
This shows some awesome performance but the tradeoff is the limited memory capacity. If you don;t need that great. If you do then Threadripper is not the best option.twotwotwo - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Hmm, so you're saying AnandTech needs a 3995WX or 2x7742 workstation sample? :)close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
A stack of them even :). Thing is memory support doesn't make for a more interesting review, doesn't really change any of the bars there. It's a tick box "supports up to 2TB of RAM".Memory support is of the things that makes an otherwise absurdly expensive workstation like the Mac Pro attractive (that and the fact that for whoever needs to stay within that ecosystem the licenses alone probably cost more than a stack of Pros).
oleyska - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
https://www.lenovo.com/no/no/thinkstation-p620will probably be able to help.
close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
The P620 supports up to 512GB of RAM. Generally OK and probably delivers on every other aspect but for those few that need 1.5-2TB of RAM it still wouldn't cut it. For that the go to is usually a Xeon, or EPYC more recently.schujj07 - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Remember that Threadripper Pro supports 2TB of RAM in an 8 channel setup. While getting 2TB/socket isn't cheap, it is a possibility.rbanffy - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I wonder the impact of the 8-channel config on single-threaded workloads. The 256MB of L3 is already quite ample to the point I'm unsure how diminished are the returns at that point.sjerra - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
This is my biggest concern and rarely considered or studied in reviews. Design space exploration.CAE over many design variations. Hundreds of design variations calculated as much as possible in parallel over the available cores (one core per variation, but each grabbing a slice of the memory). I've tested this on a 7960xe, purposely running it on dual channel and quad channel memory. On dual channel memory, at 12 parallel calculations (so 6 cores/channel) I measured a 46% increase in the calculation time / sample. in quad channel, at 12 parallel calculations (so 3 cores/ channel) I already measured a 30% reduction per calculation. (can anyone explain the worse results for quad channel?)
Either way, it leaves me to conclude that 64 cores with 4 channel memory for this type of workload is a big no go. Something to keep in mind. I'm now spec'ing a dual processor workstation with two lower core count processors and fully populated memory channels. (either epic (2x32c, 16 channels) or Xeon (2x24c, 12 channels). still deciding).
sjerra - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Edit: 30% increase of course.mark625 - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
256GB should be enough for anybody. Or was it 640KB? Something like that, anyway...close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
256GB is indeed enough for anybody... only the people who buy this workstation aren't just "anybody" :). Unlike the 640K, the memory support on this kind of workstation isn't a matter of the implied "for now" or "for the target audience" but a very practical and current one.prophet001 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
People who want raw clock will still buy Intel.Example: People who want max performance from largely single thread performance games like World of Warcraft.
frbeckenbauer - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
the 3995WX really should be available to small system builders like this (and be overclockable)drexnx - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
wish there were a 3700x or 10900k something similar in the charts for perspective on just how powerful this thing is.nathanddrews - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
ArmariCinebench R20: 31,006
Cinebench R15: 12,406
3700X stock
Cinebench R20: ~4,800
Cinebench R15: ~2,100
10900K stock
Cinebench R20: ~6,400
Cinebench R15: ~2,600
nathanddrews - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
More results in BENCHhttps://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2630?vs=26...
LordSojar - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
What I find most interesting is the name... A magnetar is a scary celestial object that can pull the iron out of your cells at less than 100,000 miles away due to the intense MAGNETIC field. Magnets and computers are a great mix, from what a hear. Oh...Reflex - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Magnets aren't really a threat to a modern PC unless they are strong enough to move the metal in the components. Magnets were a problem when systems were using spinning disks primarily for storage (HDD's) since those store the data magnetically. With SSD's, that just isn't an issue.Lord of the Bored - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
A big enough magnet's a threat.Magnetar fields would induce electrical flow suitable to fry everything in the system. Assuming you could stop the magnetar from physically ripping the system into confetti, that is.
PeachNCream - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
I was going to say the same thing. It almost seems like the company that named the system doesn't really understand what a magnetar is, but simply used the name because it sounded cool or something along those lines.Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Isn't it more likely they know exactly what a magnetar is, and named it that because it's badass?GeoffreyA - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
I think it's a pretty cool name, and worthy of its computing power. Also, thanks for this discussion, everyone. I never did come across magnetars before, as far as I can remember. Anyhow, I can't wait to read more about them. It seems to stir that feeling of awe I first got when hearing of black holes as a child. Let's hope a good director handles it properly when the time comes, and we don't get some ready-made junk churned out from the Hollywood machine.close - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
I feel like people don;t understand what a "Corsair" really is. Freebooter just didn't sound as nice. And they could have been scary as hell. AMD's Navi AMD's and the rest of their "star" architectures are, well... stars, a scary celestial object that can burn all of your cells at less than 100,000 miles away. You don't have to struggle to find such examples of things that "are a great mix" with computers. Intel's lakes anyone?It's the name of a product which is relatively uniquely identifiable, sounds cool, and perhaps is also intended to suggest "powerful", like a magnetar. Don't overthink it. Or underthink it.
AlexTopfer - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Also amari are a class of bitter Italian liqueurs (singular amaro). So clearly this computer is bitter with a strong enough magnetic field to rip your fillings outTallestGargoyle - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I mean if you take the name so literally... An Apple a day keeps the doctor away since iPhones are expensive and you won't be affording any doctor. I can't even see a Microsoft it's too small. Those Alienwares are true space age technology gifted by extraterrestrials.It's just a name. In this case, I could argue it's a dense celestial object capable of unimaginable force.
Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Thanks for injecting some sense into the weirdest gripe I've seen in a while 😅LordSojar - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
My inner autistic physicist was screaming Spunjji. Couldn't help myself, haha. It's like naming your computer "Blackhole." Ain't nobody got time fo' dat kind of gruesome ending.Personally, I just think it might be a bad omen for the system to name it after such a destructive object, LOL.
Lord of the Bored - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
Speaking of bad omens, I tend to name my computers after Decepticons.LordSojar - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
No, that's just cool as hell. Soundwave was an amazing hacker.I name all my drives after Roman gods and Titans, and my main rig is Alpha, and my NAS is Omega.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
There are no gaming benchmarks here.Surely, a $14,000 system is a great price for a gaming system in light of the new Ampere cards. ;)
IanCutress - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
I don't have an Ampere card :(Psycho_McCrazy - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Surely you jest! Or did Ryan hog 'em all?MFinn3333 - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Can you run Crysis with CPU rendering only?close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Yes... sort of.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LaKH5etJoE
close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
At 9:15, for the curious.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
You can run the game with CPU rendering. For some reason the benchmark doesn't like CPUs with more than 32 threads. No idea whyMFinn3333 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Thanks!ballsystemlord - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Maybe you'll be playing with BIG NAVI later then! :)m1013828 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
can you get this back to test with Dual 3090s? being the only card that still has SLI connectors.Microsoft flight simulator might have a worthy machine for 4k-8k......
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Looks like the pump is sitting on a piece of metal rather than being suspended. Sounds like a recipe for vibration.rrinker - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Looks like it's sitting on big rubber feet on that metal plate.Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Agreed - it looks to be isolation mounted on some fairly tall rubber cylinders.eek2121 - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Just imagine when the Zen 3 version rolls out.sandtitz - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Ian, you wrote that this system has Windows 10 Pro, but earlier this year your benchmarks showed that Windows 10 Pro for Workstations yields better results in these multicore systems.Any comment on this?
close - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
@sandtitz - "Windows 10 Pro for Workstations"You mean Enterprise.
Mugur - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
There is also a Pro for Workstations SKU.FreckledTrout - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Since Ian didn't comment.... It ended up just being patches were not applied to Windows 10 Pro. There was no difference when both were properly patched.CajunArson - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
I'd like to see the NAMD results be updated to the 2.15 development [aka 2.14 nightly] builds where AVX-512 has been massively tuned. COVID-19 researchers are using it right now on Frontera: https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/08/12/intel-speeds-na...MenhirMike - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
I'm not complaining, but the naming at first made me think this is an ARM workstation, possibly built around the A64FX chip.WaltC - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Very impressive box!...;) Great write-up, too! Great job, Ian--your steady diet of metal & silicon is really producing obvious positive results! I would definitely want to go with a different motherboard, though. Even the GB x570 Aorus Master has received ECC ram support with the latest bios featuring the latest couple of AGESA's from AMD--so it seems like a shoe-in for a TR motherboard. I agree it's kind of an odd exclusion from AMD for TR. But, I suppose if you want ECC support and lots more ram support you'll need to step up to EPYC and its associated motherboards. This is a real pro-sumer offering and the price--well, everything about it--seems right on the money, imo. I really like the three-year warranty and the included service to change out coolant fluid every three years--very nice! If I used water cooling that is the only kind of fluid I would want to use--some of these el cheapo concoctions will eat up a radiator in a year or less! Enjoyed the article--thanks again...;)Makaveli - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
"Ideally AMD would need a product that pairs the 8-channel + ECC support with a processor overclock."But why?
I maybe wrong here but when you are spending 10k+ on a build isn't stability more important than overclocking?
MenhirMike - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Overclocking doesn't have to be unstable - and for some workloads, the extra performance is worth the effort to find the limits and beef up the cooling solution.Ian Cutress - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Had a chat with Armari. The system was built with the OC requirements in mind, and customized to support that. They're using a PBO-based overclock as well, and they've been really impressed with how AMD's latest variation of PBO can optimize the DVFS of the chip to keep the system stable regardless of workload (as long as heat is managed). In my testing, there was zero instability. I was told by Armari that they can build 10, 20, or 50 systems in a row without having any stability issues coming from the processor, and that binning the CPU is almost virtually non-existant.Everett F Sargent - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
So, such a waste of power, time and money.Anyone can build TWO 3990X systems for less then half the price AND less then half the power consumption with each of them easily getting ~90% of the benchmarks.
That is with a top of the line titanium PSU, top of the line MB, top of the line 2TB SSD, top of the line Quadro RTX 4000 (oh damn paying 5X for the 6000 for only less then 2X the performance, what a b1tch, not), top of the line ... everything.
So ~1.8X of the total performance at ~1.8X the cost (sale pricing for all components otherwise make that ~1.9X the cost) and ~0.9X of the total power consumption.
But, you say, an ~15KUS system pays for itself, in less then 1E−44 seconds, even. Magnetarded indeed. /:
TallestGargoyle - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
That's a pretty disingenuous stance. Yes, you can split the performance across multiple systems, likely for cheaper, but that ignores general infrastructure requirements, like having multiple locations to set up a system in, having enough power outlets to run them all, being capable of splitting the workload across multiple systems.Not every workload can support distributed processing. Not every office has the space for a dedicated rack of systems churning away. Not every workload can sufficiently run on a half-performing GPU, even if the price is only a fifth of the one used here.
If your only metric is price-to-performance, then yes, this isn't the workstation for you. But this clearly isn't hitting a price-to-performance metric. It's focusing on the performance.
Tomatotech - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Something something chickens and oxen.Or was it something something sports cars and 49-ton trucks? I’ll go yell at clouds instead.
Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Perish the thought that someone might order one of these with a Quadro 4000 and obviate his biggest gripe (not that it would solve the potential problem of fitting a dataset into 8GB of RAM instead of 24GB)Everett F Sargent - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
Well there is that 20% VAT that pushes the actual system price to ~$17K US so dividing by two ~$8.5K per system minus the cost of a RTX 4000 at ~1K US gives one ~$6K US sans graphics card (remember I said build two systems with RTX 4000 at ~$7K US).So I have about ~$2.5K per system for a graphics card. Which easily gives one RTX 5000 per build at ~$2K US. Whiich is 2/3 of the RTX 6000.
But, if the GPU benchmarks are all eventually CPU bound, which appears to be the case here in this review, then yes I get two systems at ~$8K US or ~$16K US for two systems, in other words, I get to build a 3900X system for about ~$1K US to boot..
So no, I would rather see benchmarks at 4K, mind you (as these were at standard HD) with different GPU options. Basically, I would want to use my money wisely (assuming at a minimum a 3990X CPU at ~$4K US as the entry point).
Therefore, this review is totally useless to anyone interested in efficiency (which should normally include everyone) and costs (ditto).
TallestGargoyle - Monday, September 14, 2020 - link
That still doesn't take into account the issues I brought up initially with owning and running two systems.Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
There's nothing more sad than a lack of imagination.Everett F Sargent - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
"Unfortunately due to how quickly this system was rebuilt for this review, the system I was sent was using DDR4-3200 at CL20, as some of the original memory was accidentally splashed with coolant, and Armari wanted to ensure I wouldn’t have any issues with the system."Unfortunately, they could not give one of these systems. In fact, they would have to give me $15K and this system, call it a warranty in reverse. :)
PeachNCream - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
That's the sort of trouble you have with using a little company like this as a supplier. They toss together shoddy bits and pieces because they don't retain proper inventory to support builds (and likely cannot afford to do so) and then for press-related reviews, they make absolutely sure there will not be issues with stability. Can we be certain they take the same care with hardware sold to non-journalist buyers or do those customers get the coolant-soaked memory and less stability testing? Who ensures there is adequate quality control in a smaller system builder like this?Chasing so-called "world records" in benchmarks in the hopes of increasing productivity by purchasing little-builder-overclocked hardware is asking to shoot your own business operation in the foot when the hardware fails. I would be very reluctant to trust my company's workload on out-of-spec computers cobbled together by a company that can't even be bothered to keep coolant fluids off the memory.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I received this system three or four days ago - I wasn't even in contact with the company a week ago. I suggested a review if a system was ready, and so they scrambled to action. Obviously they weren't going to send me a system that a customer had already ordered, delaying someone with a financial contract, and so they pulled out the system they built for the record and wanted re-test and update so I had the latest components. Best laid plans and all that, combined with a quick turn-around requirement, might lend more readily to non-ideal situations, but given what was done in that time (I was told that included a couple of engineers 7am-11pm the day before), it was actually very well executed.Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
"...by a company that can't even be bothered to keep coolant fluids off the memory."God forbid you ever see what goes on in the large system integrators' build rooms..!
Accidents happen, it's how they're dealt with that marks a bad supplier from a good one. "Something went wrong and we had to alter the spec" is infinitely better than "Oh well, the fluid's mostly inert, bung the RAM in and hope it works and blame the customer if it goes wrong."
Arutius - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
I applaud this Company for its honesty and hustle. They are a small organization that cares about what they do. They appreciated Ian being available to them as a small business and are thankful for the exposure. Many readers here work in large organizations and have no appreciation for the real-world stress ( what is the balance of the checkbook today and where will we be in 1 month for cash and sales) on small businesses in this hyper-competitive atmosphere. Try sitting in the chair of the person who personally values each customer, who without they are shortly destined to fail.MrVibrato - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Yeah, curiously they couldn't replace the "splashed" memory with modules of the same type. There are a small company and i don't expect them to have big inventory. If they don't have stock of these memory modules for at least two or three rigs like these, it tells me this is a cash-strapped operation that probably pays part orders from the advance payments from customers ordering one of their systems. And such vendors are always a major head-ache, because you pay for the system and then you wait and wait and don't get your ordered goods because the vendor struggles to place some order for some component with some supplier, not to mention what could happen if you need to do a RMA or warranty exchange through such a vendor. Mind you, i cannot tell with certainty that Armari is such a company. But this occurence would be a major red flag for me if i were shopping for a boutique workstation (as little sense as that would make, as Peach has explained already; and i would also add uncertainty about the ability to do quick-turnaround on-premises support/service, which larger vendors -while occassionally also being a bitch about- usually don't struggle with in and around large metropolitan areas wherever in the country)MrVibrato - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Oh well, *There* should be *They*, and*it tells me this is a cash-strapped operation*
should be
*it tells me this is perhaps a cash-strapped operation*
MrVibrato - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Never mind what i just wrote. I should have checked their website beforehand. Their product range seems to big and too broad to be one of those no-inventory boutique vendors. Mea culpa!Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Perhaps check before leaving the big stinky comment full of bold assumptions on the small system integrator's offering?MrVibrato - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
No shit sherlock! Wanna mate?Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Are you being paid to leave multiple jackass comments or is it just a hobby?MrVibrato - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Both!timecop1818 - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Thought it was gonna be some ARM workstation based on the name, stopped reading after first few paragraphs.what sorta business would be buying a stupid overclocked amd "workstation", these things need to be stable, not some bullshit kiddie water cooled omg l33t crap lol. oh wait, it's amd, stable is already not gonna happen OC or not.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
High demand from UK VFX industry.RSAUser - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Interesting that it is stable then...You need to go and look up what overclocking actually is.
Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
You could at least read the article and a couple of other comments before you comment, timecrap.But no. Make a bunch of assumptions, chuck in some fanboy bullshit for good measure and high-five yourself on the way out. What a dick.
Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Relevant section:"On stability, throughout all of our testing, there was nothing to mention - there wasn't a single hint of instability. On speaking with Armari, the company said that this is down to AMD's own internal DVFS when implementing a high level PBO-based overclock: I was told that because this system was built from the ground up to accommodate this power, along with the custom tweaks, and the fact that AMD's voltage and frequency tracking metrics always ensured a stable system (as long as the temperature and BIOS is managed), then they can build 10, 20, or 50 systems in a row and not experience any issues."
realbabilu - Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - link
Just raise a question : how about running clustered ryzen 3900x against this oneeonsim - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
It would be useful to see some bioinformatic style sequencing benchmarks in the science section. A very common usecase in life sciences is to take fastq sequence data for an individual align it to a reference genome using BWA MEM, and then identify variant regions using software like freebayes, GATK or BCFtools. Or alternatively take raw sequence data and de novo assemble that data into a new genome using software like CANU. For reasonable sized research projects these sorts of jobs these sorts of jobs can take 10's-100's of thousands of compute hours. For some of the large collaborations they can take millions of CPU hours, and petabytes of this data is getting generated during the course of a year. In certain cases like cancer-care or infectious diseases these processes can be time critical, and thus there can be significant benefits to using a machine that can trim a few percentage points off. Finally a lot of these jobs scale close to linearly with core count. Happy to discuss how a realist test case could be set up.Ian Cutress - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
For my automated test suite, there are usually some limitations: requiring Windows (or WSL) and a non-expert guide are usually the top two :)If you have a suggestion for a benchmark, please drop me a line at [email protected]
eonsim - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Will do, should be doable on WSL with reasonable performance.tygrus - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Are there power consumption results for the other systems? Compare with AMD @stock and @OC doing same workloads. How do they compare when using same average power?The higher room ambient temperature may limit performance.
Hifihedgehog - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
> "something the larger VFX houses have requested en masse"Hey Ian! Are you privy to which VFX houses are among these purchasers? Are these the household names like Pixar and ILM?
Whiteknight2020 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
"who are these VFX houses?"How about:
The Moving Picture Company
Cinesite
Double Negative
Soho VFX
Etc, all world leading and Oscar winning VFX houses.
Hifihedgehog - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Thanks, @Whiteknight2020Whiteknight2020 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
"who are these VFX houses?"How about:
The Moving Picture Company
Cinesite
Double Negative
Soho VFX
Etc, all world leading and Oscar winning VFX houses.
SanX - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Ian,Suspicion exists that your particle movement test is purely artificial BS, you confuse the community with its results for two years now. It is not a sole representative of any whole real model, so it is abstract like am assumption of some spherical horse in the vacuum.
What was done inside your code by Intel engineer no one knows including yourself. Two years passed and not a single person confirmed 5x lead in performance of Intel over AMD in any their real codes applying AVX512. This option in our 3D PIC models for example never got us more than 15-20% improvement which in supercomputing world is literally nothing. Codes do not consist of one single operation which Intel succeeded to speed up.
Spunjji - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Despite being far from an expert on this, I'm fairly certain that a 15-20% performance gain is *huge* in the supercomputing world where time on the system costs stupendous amounts of money.SanX - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
"Despite being far from an expert on this, I'm fairly certain that a 15-20% performance gain is *huge*..."Besides being far from expert, you are also far from common sense. If 15-20% were huge the customers would upgrade their supercomputers as soon as they get those 15-20% boost while they typically upgrade when they are almost an order of magnitude larger.
bigboxes - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
So, what's the best TR mobo?JWMiddleton - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
I resurrected my wife old Toshiba Satellite L515 lappy with Intel Pentium Dual Core T4400 at 2200 Mhz. I started by deleting all the crap she had install, mostly by accident. Then I swapped out the 5400 rpm drive with a 120 GB Samsung SSD from upgrading my main system. That alone made a huge difference. This week I received a 2GB stick to replace a 1GB one, to give it 4GB of DDR 2 RAM. :) I use it when we travel to check email, FB and to surf the web. It does a good job at all of those tasks. So, I was pleased to see this article about browsers as I'd been curious which would work best in a 4GB system. Task Manager told me it was not Firefox, my go to option. So, it looks like ChromeEdge wins out.Meteor2 - Monday, September 14, 2020 - link
How on earth have you managed to comment on the wrong article? 🙂😄jonnick - Wednesday, December 1, 2021 - link
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