What are the current high end options for a new development

[chrisw]

I've a couple of these right now (AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core Processor (4.50 GHz)), purchased three years ago, and am looking to get another high end machine. Any advice on current good options appreciated.

[ColonelPhantom]

The successor to the 7950X, which is the 9950X, is the only one that comes to mind. There's also the X3D options but I don't think they matter much for developers, especially in the context of a chess engine.

I'd also say that a 7950X is good enough to not bother upgrading; the only really noticeable gains will be in AVX-512 code, and only if it operates on full 512-bit wide vectors. (To be fair: that might actually be a decent chunk of it in a chess context, think NNUE evaluation.)

The good news is that a 9950X would be a drop-in replacement. Other than that, at most I can think that more RAM would be worthwhile, but that is ridiculously expensive right now. If you want a more substantial upgrade, I could also imagine a Threadripper system could be worth it for the extra cores and memory bandwidth.

[chrisw]

The successor to the 7950X, which is the 9950X, is the only one that comes to mind. There's also the X3D options but I don't think they matter much for developers, especially in the context of a chess engine.

I'd also say that a 7950X is good enough to not bother upgrading; the only really noticeable gains will be in AVX-512 code, and only if it operates on full 512-bit wide vectors. (To be fair: that might actually be a decent chunk of it in a chess context, think NNUE evaluation.)

The good news is that a 9950X would be a drop-in replacement. Other than that, at most I can think that more RAM would be worthwhile, but that is ridiculously expensive right now. If you want a more substantial upgrade, I could also imagine a Threadripper system could be worth it for the extra cores and memory bandwidth.

My problem is I’m moving countries (air connection only) and don’t fancy hauling the current equipment with me. The 7950’s are AVX512 capable and I’ve also a couple of 64x thread rippers. Started browsing build your own PC sites and they seem to be offering non nvidia GPUs, not sure if those would be up to the job. Advice?

[Joost Buijs]

My problem is I’m moving countries (air connection only) and don’t fancy hauling the current equipment with me. The 7950’s are AVX512 capable and I’ve also a couple of 64x thread rippers. Started browsing build your own PC sites and they seem to be offering non nvidia GPUs, not sure if those would be up to the job. Advice?

The only affordable non NVidia GPU with good performance is the 'AMD AI pro R9700' with 32 GB GDDR6. I looked at this GPU myself, the drawback is that their AI-software support for Windows is still a bit lacking.

AVX-512 on the 7950x is 'double pumped', internally it uses a 256 bit data-path and two 256 bit instructions to emulate 512 bit, the 9950x is clearly faster with AVX-512.

Recently I built a new workstation with a 24 core Threadripper 9960x, last week I added a NVidia 'RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell' GPU to it which has 32 GB GDDR7 with ECC. It has approx. the speed of the RTX-5080, but it has double the memory with ECC. The RTX-5090 is about 1.5 times faster, but it has no ECC, and I don't like the fact that these 'gaming cards' blow all the heat into the computer case. Another problem with the RTX-5090 is that it uses way too much power, which causes power connectors to melt like candlesticks.