I seem to recall @ndrew mentioning that AMD processors were no good for blender…does anyone know more specifically what he was talking about? It seems like they are economical, but worthless of course if it won’t run blender.
AMD processors can run Blender, but I’ve heard that the ‘eight core models’ are actually only equivalent to the Intel i5 because only four of them have an FPU (a type of processing unit critical for rendering).
Supposedly the chips so far are a stepping stone to some bigger changes down the line according to AMD press releases, but right now Intel remains the superior choice for 3D enthusiasts.
Nonsense. I run Blender almost exclusively on AMD CPUs and it runs just fine.
Intel CPUs are generally faster - I give you that - but that doesn’t mean AMD CPUs are “no good”.
Just remember: If you want a fair comparison, then compare CPUs at the same price point.
I haven’t bothered to check the “1.5x” figure below, but it’s probably more or less accurate. In doubt, check hardware review sites for benchmarks:
Intel cores are about 1.5x as fast as AMD modules*, so you’d need about 1.5x the clockspeed to even out (which is why AMD CPUs are generally clocked a bit higher). To see which is the better deal, you’d have to carefully compare benchmarks, prices and use-cases. Since a lot of Blender is still single-threaded (uses only one core), Intel CPUs probably fare better. If you’re looking to only render, the AMD CPUs are probably a bit cheaper. However, they will also draw more power.
EDIT:
*Most AMD processors these days are advertised with twice as many “cores” as Intel CPUs. As it has been mentioned, such modules contain only one FPU per two cores.
Interesting. Same deal with their graphics cards I would assume.
Usually an AMD APU ( they are pretty much all APUs this days ) if compared to an Intel APU :
- runs hotter ( higher temperatures and TDP )
- has less to offer in terms of performance, especially on the threading side
With AMD there are also other complementary problems like a really poor support for the drivers and basically no usable or productive library from the vendor, Intel offers a lot of libraries ranging from math libraries to threading libraries, AMD has really nothing to offer on this side and this is also a bad sign of how much this brand cares about the performances of its own product.
I also doubt the fact that AMD APUs are convenient, this days the prices are high for both, I can’t really find a good reason to recommend an AMD APU if compared to the equivalent Intel APU in the same league.
“APU” is a marketing term for the AMD processors that come with integrated Radeon GPUs. Those are the “A10” series for the FM sockets. I wasn’t referring to those in the above post, I was referring to the “FX” series (AM socket) without integrated GPU. Since the GPU needs a lot of die space, the A10 only come as quad-core/dual-module, whereas the FX also come as eight-core/quad-module. For Blender users, there’s little point in getting an A10.
While many (if not most) Intel CPUs have an integrated GPU these days, they are not referred to as APUs.
If you’re using just the CPU, things like drivers and complementary libraries are (thankfully) irrelevant.
OpenCL is still relevant, libraries for the threading are still relevant, even with just a CPU, to my knowledge AMD doesn’t provide anything that could be relevant in this scenario.
APU is a term used for APUs, this term is used for Intel chipsets too, sure there are some plain old CPUs around, but how many ? It’s a small fraction of the market, they are implemented when you need for a design with a lower TDP or cheaper CPU, even Atoms and Celerons this days have a discrete GPU integrated in the die.
Most library stuff (certainly anything threading-related) will work on either AMD or Intel CPUs. Maybe some of the very latest vector extension stuff may not run on all AMD (or even Intel) CPUs, but developers don’t really use those a lot, anyway. The AMD OpenCL CPU driver (as opposed to their GPU driver) works just fine on both Intel and AMD CPUs.
APU is a term used for APUs, this term is used for Intel chipsets too, sure there are some plain old CPUs around, but how many? It’s a small fraction of the market, they are implemented when you need for a design with a lower TDP or cheaper CPU, even Atoms and Celerons this days have a discrete GPU integrated in the die.
The term APU was coined by AMD for their APU products. I haven’t ever seen Intel refer to their CPU/GPU combos as “APU”. The AMD FX series is not an APU and still represents a large segment of their market. The AMD APUs are made for people who do not want to use a dedicated GPU, at all. Compared to those, the Intel iGPUs are less powerful and need much less die size and power.
You haven’t seen it but there are people that are using it, doesn’t mean that is wrong …
Of course the libraries are working on both, that wasn’t my point, AMD does almost zero to support its own product from the software side, can you name 1 single useful library from AMD ? Most of them are not even truly multiplatform while being written for technologies that are supposed to be functional across several OSs .
I have a AMD 8 core at 3.2 and it is fine but next time Ill get a Intel. I just got my butt kicked at a corona render bench mark. My render was almost 15 minutes when most Intel quad cores ( 8 threads) was under 5. It uses CPU. you do not need corona installed to run it. http://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php/topic,559
Just did that render test… 7min 34sec, which means the FX-8350 is at least on par with the i5-4670K (8min 44sec in the benchmark list) and still significantly cheaper.
What did you expect? A FX-8350 for 165 Euros competing with i7s for 275 Euros?
I was just making a statement I did not expect anything.EDIT You did not bother posting you clock speeds. The i5 you posted above is less then 200 Euros here. Also on the corona bench mark 2 amd 955’s would not even run. I do not think i like AMD at all anymore now that you helped me decide. Intel is always more stable.
The clock speeds are in my signature…
Yes, the i5 I posted is around 200 Euros here, too. And with the FX-8350 being around 165 Euros, the latter is significantly cheaper, is it not?
What I meant was: What did you expect when running the render benchmark? Obviously you expected your AMD 8-core to perform roughly on a comparable level to the Intel 8-cores. And that’s the problem IMHO: You can not compare CPUs at so different price points. The competitor of the AMD FX 8 cores is the i5 and not the i7. And compared to the i5, the FXs are both faster (In rendering, that is. Single core performance is another topic…) and cheaper.
Doubtable.
I’m a bit confused: In your first post you said you had an AMD 8-core at 3.2 GHz. And now you complain that some benchmark doesn’t run on an “AMD 955”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz is a quad-core. And an aging one, if I might add.
the worst the multithreading is, the more the difference will be less evident, and the multithreading under Blender is years behind the modern standards with a lot of potential that is wasted.
Blender is a cool open-source and flexible 3d editor, not a bench for multithreading, probably at least half of what Blender is or does, it’s not even multithreaded.
That was no Blender render benchmark…?
That aside: Wouldn’t Blender’s multithreading be equally worse on Intel and AMD - and therefore be comparable again as far as CPU power goes?
All CPU benchmark results I found indicate that the FX-8350 is alltogether on par with the i5-4670K, with the i5 ahead in single threaded performance and the FX about 15 % faster in render benchmarks (latest Cinebench, e. g.).
The basic question of this thread was, if AMD CPUs are a viable alternative for using Blender. And I think the answer is clear:
If you want raw CPU power, there’s no alternative to Intel i7s, if you’re willing to pay the premium price.
In the price range of the Intel i5s however the 8-core AMDs put up a decent fight.
AMD chips are very overclockable I have my my fx6100 (stock 3100 mhz) running at 4.2ghz reckon I could get more if I tried, running blender fine… Would be happy to upgrade to the FX8350
I have an amd fx8350 and i’m quite satisfied with it… what would be nice though is to have a blender benchmark for cpu forum thread, like there is for gpu…