The numbering thing...

[rainless]

So about a decade ago AMD's numbering system stopped making sense to me... (ok... it NEVER made any sense... but I've sense lost track of the method behind the madness).

So... is the 5000 series of CPUs the more power one? Or is it the 7000 series? How do you tell what's the most powerful AMD CPU these days without diving into the specs?

Like what's the AMD equivalent to i9, i7, i5, etc...?

 

[Woomack]

1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000 ... nothing really weird here

Now here is the difference:
4000 = only APUs and laptop series
6000 = only APUs and laptop series

Letters after the number:
X = desktop series, OC, unlocked
X3D = desktop series with 3D cache
G = desktop APU
HX/H/U - laptop series

The highest is always desktop X or X3D and 9 after the generation number, so 3950X, 5950X, 7950X (4000 and 6000 were only laptop series as I mentioned above). We will see 7950X3D soon.
Other way to find out which one is the highest, is to check its price.

 

[EarthDog]

Like what's the AMD equivalent to i9, i7, i5, etc...?

Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 would be the equivilants. The higher the number that follows, the newer the generation. So a Ryzen 9 7000 series is newer than a ryzen 9 5000 series cpu. Woomack has the details covered well above.


Edit: Worth mentioning, since you're interested in helping the site out, is proper titles for threads help. Google search doesn't pick up 'the numbering thing' when someone searches for 'amd processor naming convention', ya know? Something to think about when creating threads.

 

[rainless]

1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000 ... nothing really weird here

Now here is the difference:
4000 = only APUs and laptop series
6000 = only APUs and laptop series

Letters after the number:
X = desktop series, OC, unlocked
X3D = desktop series with 3D cache
G = desktop APU
HX/H/U - laptop series

The highest is always desktop X or X3D and 9 after the generation number, so 3950X, 5950X, 7950X (4000 and 6000 were only laptop series as I mentioned above). We will see 7950X3D soon.
Other way to find out which one is the highest, is to check its price.

Okay... so here's where it gets weird: Would a 5950X be more powerful than a 7800?

With Intel you could sort of reason this out by the generation number. a 12th gen 12400f might be slightly more powerful, or the equivalent of my 9th gen 9600kf. (And obviously a 12th gen 12600kf would blow the doors off of it).

But WOULD that 5950X be more powerful than the non-X 7800? Or are the differences between numbers and gets so great that a 7000 anything would be more powerful than a 5000 anything?

Edit: Worth mentioning, since you're interested in helping the site out, is proper titles for threads help. Google search doesn't pick up 'the numbering thing' when someone searches for 'amd processor naming convention', ya know? Something to think about when creating threads.

Are you seriously taunting me about thread titles??! You're lucky you're the co-owner of this site... otherwise I'd use my non-existant power to... SOMETHING!

 

[Woomack]

Okay... so here's where it gets weird: Would a 5950X be more powerful than a 7800?

With Intel you could sort of reason this out by the generation number. a 12th gen 12400f might be slightly more powerful, or the equivalent of my 9th gen 9600kf. (And obviously a 12th gen 12600kf would blow the doors off of it).

But WOULD that 5950X be more powerful than the non-X 7800? Or are the differences between numbers and gets so great that a 7000 anything would be more powerful than a 5000 anything?

It's a different generation and it's not any different than with Intel. 5950X has over two years and is 16c/32t CPU, 7800X is a new series and is 8c/16t CPU. In multithreading, 5950X will be still faster. Even 7800X3D will be slower because has 8 cores less. In games where CPU frequency counts much more than amount of cores, 7800X/7800X3D will be faster.

Intel is often more confusing as non-X chips are using 12 and 13 gen dies, depends on batch. You can get i5 13400 which is using Alder Lake die.

 

[EarthDog]

Are you seriously taunting me about thread titles??!

Taunting? No, not at all! From the emoji thread, I thought you were interested in helping the site out. This is something that's in your control (in all users' control... and I think it's mentioned in the rules) to improve the site/get more people to see the site and hopefully post at it. Tough to search for apples when the thread title is oranges, ya know?

This is a great thread with information people frequently ask about... but it's not very searchable because of the unrelated/vague title.

Okay... so here's where it gets weird: Would a 5950X be more powerful than a 7800?

Regardless of knowing the naming convention of AMD or Intel or any AMD/Intel for generations, you'd have to figure that out by looking at reviews. There are too many variables. Core counts are different... clock speeds are different, and IPC is different. etc. As mentioned above, the only thing you can glean from the name is what we've mentioned already. Generation, place in the product stack. But comparing past gens against current only by name is difficult because those variables (core count, clock speeds, IPC) aren't the same.

To work with your example, A 5950X with its 16c/32t configuration versus a 7800X with a 8c/16t config. The generational jump in both IPC and clocks doesn't make up for the additional cores in heavily multi-threaded operations. HOWEVER, the 7800X IS faster with anything 8c/16t or less (likely even a couple more cores because of the IPC and clock speed increases) and single-threaded.

 

[rainless]

Okay. So just to make sense of this in my head:

Ryzen 9: 7950

Ryzen 7: 7750 (or 7700 or whatever)

Ryzen 5: 7650 (or 7600 or whatever)

Is that about right? It's always going to be 9, 7, and 5 . NO! I'm getting confused again!

I was just looking at this site: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-9600K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-5600X/4031vs4084

It said the 5600X was superseded by the 7600X. Which would lead me to believe that the 5600X is kinda like the 5th gen AMD i5 equivalent and the 7600X is the 7th gen i5 equivalent.

But we just said the 5950X is more powerful than the 7800X. Is that just because the 5950X would belong to the Ryzen 9 (i9 equivalent) series (even though it's older) and the 7800X would belong to the Ryzen 7 series?

I think this is where I keep getting confused...

 

[EarthDog]

Okay. So just to make sense of this in my head:

Here's a link to AMD's list of SKUs - https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen

But we just said the 5950X is more powerful than the 7800X.

As I said, In SOME cases, it is; in others, it's not. It depends on what you're doing with the CPU. The 5950X is part of the Ryzen 9 as it's the 'flagship-class' processor in that family (as you likely saw above, there are multiple SKUs in the families) as are the i9 SKUs from Intel. The 7700X (no 7800X, just 7800X3D - different story) is part of the Ryzen 7 family, yes (refer to link above). Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule to make things easy to see the performance at the level you want through just the name.

 

[DaveB]

But we just said the 5950X is more powerful than the 7800X. Is that just because the 5950X would belong to the Ryzen 9 (i9 equivalent) series (even though it's older) and the 7800X would belong to the Ryzen 7 series?

5950X = 16 cores/32 threads

7800X - 8 cores/16 threads

Maybe you can see how having twice the cores/threads might make the 5950X more powerful for multi-threaded applications?

For single threaded applications, the 7800X would be faster due to a 13% IPC advantage.

 

[EarthDog]

For single threaded applications, the 7800X would be faster due to a 13% IPC advantage.

...and clock speeds! The 7700X (7800X3D is a different story) boosts to 5.4 GHz while the 5950X boosts to 4.9 GHz (base is 4.5 GHz vs. 3.5 GHz on the 5950X as well). All around, it's faster......until you get into heavily multi-threaded applications (Read: much past 8c/16t).

 

[rainless]

Okay, Okay. I get the core thing. I understand why in some cases the 5950X would be faster and that the 7700X has a faster clock speed.

(See... I'm so confused I'm confusing ALL of you! )

My ONLY question is about TIME:

5000 series is OLDER, right? 5th gen equivalent, right? 7000 series is NEWER... 7th gen equivalent, right?

All the rest of the info can go to hell for now seeing as I'm probably months, if not YEARS away from actually buying one of these things.

Me being me however... I should at least UNDERSTAND all of this. It won't be more than a week before someone comes and asks me the exact same thing.

 

[JLK03F150]

My ONLY question is about TIME:

5000 series is OLDER, right? 5th gen equivalent, right? 7000 series is NEWER... 7th gen equivalent, right?

Yes.

 

[EarthDog]

(See... I'm so confused I'm confusing ALL of you! )

We're not confused.

5000 series is OLDER, right? 5th gen equivalent, right? 7000 series is NEWER... 7th gen equivalent, right?

More or less.

So, story time.... The Ryzen architecture code name is Zen. Zen was the original Ryzen 1000 series (and its APUs). Zen 2 was 3000 series (and its APUs), Zen 3 was 5000 series (and its APUs), and finally, Zen 4 is the 7000 series and its APUs). Each of these Zen/Zen2/3/4 are significant improvements/next generation. So, while generically you have the idea (1000/3000/5000/7000 and Zen/Zen2/Zen3/Zen4) are generations, the numbering scheme is relative to the architecture it's based on. They don't skip from the 5th to 7th gen, as in your example. If you're counting, Zen4/7000 series is the 4th generation of Zen(Ryzen)-based CPUs.

 

[Zerileous]

I just wanted to clarify, to my knowledge, the only desktop Ryzen CPU with a locked multiplier is the 5800X3D. I believe this was done for stability reasons, as the architecture wasn't necessarily designed with 3D cache in mind like the 7000 series. The X on an AMD CPU is in a lot of ways not equivalent to the K on the Intel CPU, but I think the resemblance is intentional. A lot of people will buy AMD X CPUs just based on the imposed restrictions that Intel has placed on non K CPUs. In general, out of the box an X CPU will be less than 5% faster than a non-X.

The only actual differences in AMD X CPUs is a higher boost clock out of the box, higher TDP (relating to the boost clock, how much power it can draw to get there) and in theory better binning. The enthusiast knows that with PBO (which works just fine on non-X SKUs) the TDP limits can be changed, that the x570 chipset (not sure about the b550) can "overclock" or increase the maximum single core boost clock. And of course traditional all core OC is still functioning however the trade off is generally decreased single core or lightly threaded clocks.

The R 3/5/7/9 or I 3/5/7/9 has never directly corresponded to the numbers in the model number of every CPU under that umbrella. It is just a way for the less interested to get a ballpark idea without breaking down every detail. But it's just a four digit code: xxxx, the first digit is the generation, the last three is the numbers of cores: 500, 600 = 6 cores, 700 or 800 = 8 cores, 900 = 12 cores, 950 = 16 cores (100 and 300 for 4 cores when they were made). I think this is pretty similar to Intel. The short version is that the first digit is the generation and the higher the rest are the faster it is.

 

[rainless]

I just wanted to clarify, to my knowledge, the only desktop Ryzen CPU with a locked multiplier is the 5800X3D. I believe this was done for stability reasons, as the architecture wasn't necessarily designed with 3D cache in mind like the 7000 series. The X on an AMD CPU is in a lot of ways not equivalent to the K on the Intel CPU, but I think the resemblance is intentional. A lot of people will buy AMD X CPUs just based on the imposed restrictions that Intel has placed on non K CPUs. In general, out of the box an X CPU will be less than 5% faster than a non-X.

The only actual differences in AMD X CPUs is a higher boost clock out of the box, higher TDP (relating to the boost clock, how much power it can draw to get there) and in theory better binning. The enthusiast knows that with PBO (which works just fine on non-X SKUs) the TDP limits can be changed, that the x570 chipset (not sure about the b550) can "overclock" or increase the maximum single core boost clock. And of course traditional all core OC is still functioning however the trade off is generally decreased single core or lightly threaded clocks.

The R 3/5/7/9 or I 3/5/7/9 has never directly corresponded to the numbers in the model number of every CPU under that umbrella. It is just a way for the less interested to get a ballpark idea without breaking down every detail. But it's just a four digit code: xxxx, the first digit is the generation, the last three is the numbers of cores: 500, 600 = 6 cores, 700 or 800 = 8 cores, 900 = 12 cores, 950 = 16 cores (100 and 300 for 4 cores when they were made). I think this is pretty similar to Intel. The short version is that the first digit is the generation and the higher the rest are the faster it is.

Yeah it sounds like all this would've made a lot more sense if I hadn't stopped following AMD around the time I joined OCF and returned to Intel with the E6400 (I really never switched again).

I really didn't think the whole "Zen" thing was going to take off to be honest with you. I was as shocked as anyone when they started getting 1up on the nanometer and core race...

Then again I also thought the M1 architecture was a fable... They got me with that one, too.

 

[freeagent]

I really didn't think the whole "Zen" thing was going to take off to be honest with you.

Oh yeah, its not bad. I ran Intel from 2006-2020 and I tried Zen 3 when it was fresh off the presses, first one was a 5600X. Beasty little 6core.. fast as feck if you aren't used to them. My sample is a unicorn. Next was 5900X because I couldn't buy a GPU and I really wanted 5GHz.. so I bought a 5900X, and I have it tuned to boost to its 5150MHz limit. Then X3D came out and I wasn't going to buy it.. but glad I did. It is as easy, if not easier to cool as a 5600X. Its a boring CPU to tune, but its still Zen 3, so its quick, and well its pretty decent for games too. It effectively turns your rig into a semi tunable Dell

But now Zen 3 is old, but still better than Zen 2