Ryzen 1800x test - quick revisit

In the UK the 6850k is £50+ more than the 1800x, so the latter could still be worth it as the performance isnt too far off, plus it has two extra cores but those arent useful until a programme uses them all.
 
Id say if the Ryzens were £100 less than the nearest Intel chip instead, then they would be seriously good value.
 
At least the Ryzens werent good enough to induce buyers remorse as I upgraded to the 6850k and my expensive mobo right when they came out.

It was the Fatal1ty.
Much better motherboard than the Asus.
There was no trace of flaky behavior.
 
$500 isn't a budget CPU.
If you're working with low-latency audio, the 6850k offers significant performance benefit.
 
I'll post results from the 7700k tomorrow.  

Passmark does have a Single-Thread test option.
In that test, the 6850k is faster than the 1800x.
 
Another factor is how well the CPU performs at low-latency.
This is a particularly weak area for Ryzen.
If you just looked at generic benchmarks, you'd expect the 1800x to smoke the 6850k.
It beats the 6850k handily at Floating Point and stomps it at Integer Math.
This is why audio specific stress-testing is important.
 
Image Line posted on KVR recently... and that post is relevant to this conversation.
 
From that Image Line post:
Interesting conversation, and one we often have with our customers in conjunction with system vs DAW CPU load...two issues to consider:

Time-scales

The audio buffer size, 1 ~ 50 ms. While the operating systems CPU meter may show 30% utilization, over the last 1000 ms (system meters are around 1 sec integration), there may have been multiple occasions during that period where real-time audio processing experienced interruptions. Why? If real-time audio 'Mixer threads' (packages of work for the CPU), have to wait on other threads to finish, because they can't be multi-threaded (processed at the same time), the DAW may experience audio underruns, or at least very high internal CPU meter readings. At the same time, the OS may report low overall and or individual CPU utilization. The CPU could have done a lot more work than it did, if it had something else to do at the same time. The reality for audio processing is the CPU must often wait for program and system related tasks to complete before it can continue, and so, may struggle to keep up with the very high demands of realtime audio output (generating 44100 samples per second, on an ongoing basis, without an interruption of a single sample, 0.02 ms). Just why the CPU must 'wait' is all to do with logic:

The logic of audio processing

There are long lists of tasks that must be processed in sequence, and this means logically can't be simultaneously multithreaded. For example: Plugins must wait for instructions from the Piano roll and Playlist before they make sound. Effects must wait for the audio stream from upstream instrument plugins before they can process it. Further, it's not possible to parallel-process (multithread) instruments and FX that are on the same Mixer channel (their audio is mixed together), or even in the same Mixer routing pipe-line (when one Mixer track is linked to another and another, even FX processing has an order from top to bottom in the FX stack). Then, the Master Mixer track must wait for every instrument > mixer track > effect to be processed before it can process the audio through the Master effects. Logically, there is a lot of waiting, that is a natural and unavoidable fact of DAW music processing. 

Think of a production line. This means the CPU may not be particularly busy, using all its cores and processing slots, yet it runs out of time to fill that tiny 5 ms audio-buffer because there was a lot of waiting for things that needed to be processed in sequence. It should be clear that fast processing is very important and this is not the same thing as multi-core processing. The best CPU is one that has enough cores to spread the work around AND can do the most work on a single core during each buffer time-slice. Which leads to our TIP: When comparing CPUs, look for the fastest single-core performance scores in a package with at least 4 physical cores. Most CPU benchmarks list single core performance. For example, the CPU Benchmark website lists the single core scores.
 
 

Passmark does have a Single-Thread test option.
In that test, the 6850k is faster than the 1800x.
 
Another factor is how well the CPU performs at low-latency.
This is a particularly weak area for Ryzen.
If you just looked at generic benchmarks, you'd expect the 1800x to smoke the 6850k.
It beats the 6850k handily at Floating Point and stomps it at Integer Math.
This is why audio specific stress-testing is important.

Update on tests from a Vi control member...
https://youtu.be/xama-Np0yKo

I guess, in general, it is true that you get what you pay for. If they were truly equivalent, or even better, they should cost more than the Intel, not less.
 
Dan