5 hours ago, jpe828 said:

No entertaining an AMD CPU? They are smoking fast, and generally a bit cheaper. 

Yes - and less watts. (see sig) About $500 some these days for a 5900X.

Cheers

bs

Edited February 14, 20215 yr by bean_sprout

The KF being a touch slower in "user benchmarks" is not surprising, the population sample of K users probably has higher specced machines. userbenchmarks does not control for variations in other hardware and K users as a rule probably go for more expensive other hardware.

 I suppose it is possible the F are actually Ks binned due to bad GPUs but that is not necessarily going to carry over to poorer performance.

As for  buying AMD.  The basic attitude where I  work is AMD are fine for individuals to buy for home use as they are often better value for money and with a home gaming PC a weekend spent sorting out driver issues is neither here nor there when you are saving a few hundred dollars of your own money. 

However, for the workplace, a system going down because of driver issues can cost thousand of dollars an hour or even stuff up a million dollar contract closure. There have simply been too many AMD driver related outages over the years where I work  and the boss sticks with all Intel as a policy.  This is very common in Enterprise unless the IT manager is also a gamer and AMD fan.

With the most recent server I purchased for work we ended up with a dual Xeon Gold, 1.5 terabytes of ram, 4 x 1200w PSU to cope with up to 4 x A100 tesla, it was going to be over $50,000 in a DL380 version and that is without the Teslas, so I went SuperMicro at about 2/3 of that instead . we investigated AMD and could have saved about $10,000,  but the company that writes our genetic software simply said " do not even think about it" .

Edited February 15, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

5 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

It's pretty hard to get your hands on AMD CPUs right now. I really like my 3950X, I'd like a 5950X but I don't have time to sit clicking the refresh button all day on weekdays to try to snag one.  At this point we are so long into the release cycle that I might just suck it up and wait for AM5 and whatever comes next for my next CPU upgrade.  Really need a GPU though.

The fastest AMD 16-core CPUs have a Peak Power Target (the most power they will every draw from the socket even under boost) of 142W

These Intel 14nm++++++ (I forget how many pluses we are on right now) CPUs have a PL2 turbo power draw of 250W, for both the 10-core current series and the upcoming Rocket Lake that only has 8 cores.

Granted you typically only hit these huge power draws under heavy multicore load, but Intel's process is way behind, and I hate to support rewarming over the same thing for 6+ years.

If you are in the US Newegg shuffle is your friend. I too got tired and frustrated being unable to get both a new GPU and CPU. Granted i didnt need it immediately (3700x/rtx 2080super) but i was kinda avoiding the real major airports because i knew it would bring the sim to a crawl a bit.

Entered the Shuffle and picked up a GPU ... a few days later entered it again and picked up a new CPU. If you really are in the market to upgrade i think its the best way to go instead of fighting bots. You wont win the shuffle every time you enter but i didn't think i could have won the right to purchase those items so quickly after entering.

20 minutes ago, Maxis said:

If you are in the US Newegg shuffle is your friend. I too got tired and frustrated being unable to get both a new GPU and CPU. Granted i didnt need it immediately (3700x/rtx 2080super) but i was kinda avoiding the real major airports because i knew it would bring the sim to a crawl a bit.

Entered the Shuffle and picked up a GPU ... a few days later entered it again and picked up a new CPU. If you really are in the market to upgrade i think its the best way to go instead of fighting bots. You wont win the shuffle every time you enter but i didn't think i could have won the right to purchase those items so quickly after entering.

Newegg has horrible CS historically so hope you never need help from them

11 minutes ago, Flyfaster_MTN002 said:

Newegg has horrible CS historically so hope you never need help from them

I usually know what i'm buying so no i've never had to return a product (I research and eval for weeks or months). I also don't foresee getting push back if i received a DOA product. Ordered quite a few things from them over the years. But i guess everyone's mileage may vary. I also know which forums their senior customer service agents lurk so if i am ever truly aggrieved and feel the issue is not being taken care of i know exactly where to start yelling and posting the evidence. They are very quick to nip that in the bud once someone starts "screaming" lol

So far their service has been problem free .. for me at least over the years.

But back on topic i guess

Edited February 15, 20215 yr by Maxis

23 hours ago, jpe828 said:

We have a very similiar PC. Mostly with the 5700XT I have had to keep old drivers, otherwise I get constant CTDs in the sim. 

20.8.3 is definitely the driver offering the best stability for most of us suffering the driver timeout issue. I'm still getting occasional CTDs but haven't had a driver timeout message since rolling back to 20.8.3.