First play with the 3960X and Photoshop.

[Pooh]

Just finished building the rig with the gear bought in the MM. 3960X, 128GB Ram and Strix TRX40-E.

All seems OK but it's a different beast when it comes to clocking the CPU & RAM. This is the first AMD setup since I went from AMD to an Intel Core2Duo many years ago so I've got a lot of learning to do.

I also did a quick play in Premier Pro and when exporting the RAM usage went up to over 90GB when rendering. PPro does like lots of memory.

This is the first run at rendering an image within Photoshop. All seems good.

 

[tommoT.Striker]

Those are some very nice temps for 24 cores at 4.3 Ghz.
I imagine 3200Mhz with a massive 128gb Ram is as fast they'll go?

As I don't use photoshop much, how long does it take to render a photoshop image with whatever you're doing to it?

 

[Quixote]

That CPU is a beast. Throw it some proper 3D benchmarks, it can't be breaking a sweat on that 2D stuff.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

That CPU is a beast. Throw it some proper 3D becnhmarks, it can't be breaking a sweat on that 2D stuff.

You'd be surprised actually. I do some very heavy 2d image work that really stretches the legs of my 3960x, especially when doing batches.

 

[Quixote]

You'd be surprised actually. I do some very heavy 2d image work that really stretches the legs of my 3960x, especially when doing batches.

I haven't looked at it in great detail but from what I can see of premier benchmarks, for example, they show pretty small gains as the number of cores scale up.
All sorts of 3D workloads like CPU rendering, Unreal builds, photogrammetry etc scale almost linearly. Although tbh, I'm a CG Artist & just being a bit partisan & tongue in cheek
It's an awesome CPU. I'm very happy with the 3950x but if money were no object I would definitely have a Threadripper.
I shudder to think what the 5-series threadrippers wil be like

 

[Pooh]

Those are some very nice temps for 24 cores at 4.3 Ghz.
I imagine 3200Mhz with a massive 128gb Ram is as fast they'll go?

As I don't use photoshop much, how long does it take to render a photoshop image with whatever you're doing to it?

Thanks - I did try a small O/C on the RAM without much success but I'm not sure of best practice with RAM O/C on AMD platforms. I'll need to do some research.

The 3D element is some text on the image - nothing of note, more of a test image to see the performance over my 7960. It took about 7 minutes compared to well over 10 minutes.

Premier pro prefers tons of RAM to cores. You don't really get any major improvements in rendering out the final video over a 16 core CPU but it does make a difference if you're using a lot of effects such as warp stabiliser as that can eat up cores and RAM if you use it on lots of clips.

I do hope that the 5-series TRs will be socket compatible.

 

[ChrisD.]

Hi @Pooh. I ran the system with 256GB of RAM, using the BIOS default it was fine at 3000 MHz but seemed to have issues at 3200 MHz. I tried 300 MHz with only 64GB which seemed fine, but, as we discussed I had instability running Blender and I can't be certain if it was the CPU overclock or the RAM, or a combination of both. The RAM does have a profile for 3200 MHz so I would try that (it's called AMP on AMD systems) and drop the CPU to 4.2 GHz with 1.3V or use it with PBO.

 

[Pooh]

Thanks Chris I'll have a look

I think I've got the RAM stable at 3200. Bios defaults to 1.2V so it needed to be set at it's rated 1.35V minimum and because I've got lots of cooling I've upped it to 1.38V for a bit of extra oomph. Anything over 3200 is unstable. I'm struggling to find ideal memory timings so they are set on Auto which is not ideal.

CPU wise I'm still trying to tune it in. Thanks for the tip.

 

[ChrisD.]

Any pictures of the rig at all?

 

[Pooh]

Any pictures of the rig at all?

It's a bit of a Frankenstein I'm afraid. Lots of fans, some low speed, mostly pwm though so they ramp with temps. just did a count, 2 low speed just to circulate air, 7 pwm fans, 3 on the 360 rad, 1 blowing on ram/cpu socket, 2 on the 240 rad and one biggie front case fan chucking in loads of nice fresh air.

 

[Pooh]

Starting to get there

Stable at 4.3 at 1.2875V

Cinebench 14242

Blender Benchmark completed 16m 7 sec

Temps look OK

 

[ChrisD.]

Hmm, maybe I had the RAM voltage too low then when I tried Blender at 4.3 GHz. You're not going to see much difference in 100 MHz so if you're concerned about power you could try dropping it to 4.2 GHz and then undervolting to the point it becomes unstable. It might save a considerable amount of socket power used.

 

[Pooh]

I agree re the 24/7 overclock. I usually find the limit and then back it off a little. as you say a small reduction in speed can result in a big reduction in volts required so much less wattage and heat generated.

 

[Mr Oblong]

It's a bit of a Frankenstein I'm afraid. Lots of fans, some low speed, mostly pwm though so they ramp with temps. just did a count, 2 low speed just to circulate air, 7 pwm fans, 3 on the 360 rad, 1 blowing on ram/cpu socket, 2 on the 240 rad and one biggie front case fan chucking in loads of nice fresh air.

That's cool in its own way. Function over form

 

[subbytna]

Hi @Pooh. I ran the system with 256GB of RAM, using the BIOS default it was fine at 3000 MHz but seemed to have issues at 3200 MHz. I tried 300 MHz with only 64GB which seemed fine, but, as we discussed I had instability running Blender and I can't be certain if it was the CPU overclock or the RAM, or a combination of both. The RAM does have a profile for 3200 MHz so I would try that (it's called AMP on AMD systems) and drop the CPU to 4.2 GHz with 1.3V or use it with PBO.

256Gig of Ram, that's insane lol

 

[Deleted member 77746]

oh wow nice. I'm a little bit jealous.

 

[ChrisD.]

256Gig of Ram, that's insane lol

I needed it at the time. I could easily consume 220GB plus.

 

[chaosophy]

Thanks Chris I'll have a look

I think I've got the RAM stable at 3200. Bios defaults to 1.2V so it needed to be set at it's rated 1.35V minimum and because I've got lots of cooling I've upped it to 1.38V for a bit of extra oomph. Anything over 3200 is unstable. I'm struggling to find ideal memory timings so they are set on Auto which is not ideal.

CPU wise I'm still trying to tune it in. Thanks for the tip.

I'm a big fan of 'Ryzen DRAM Calculator' , helped me a lot in setting my timings and got me a decent up lift in ram perf.
You can use a tool called 'Thaiphoon' to export a report of your mem sticks pull that report into RDC, pick a few options about cpu, mobo type etc and then it will calculate some timings to try out that you just put in BIOS.

 

[Pooh]

I'm a big fan of 'Ryzen DRAM Calculator' , helped me a lot in setting my timings and got me a decent up lift in ram perf.
You can use a tool called 'Thaiphoon' to export a report of your mem sticks pull that report into RDC, pick a few options about cpu, mobo type etc and then it will calculate some timings to try out that you just put in BIOS.

excellent info, thanks. I’ll have a play when I get back home on Monday