Intel has released the Intel Core i9-9900KS Special Edition mainstream desktop processor that was originally announced back on May 26, 2019 at the Computex trade show. This was the same day that AMD revealed the details about the 7nm AMD Ryzen 3000 series mainstream desktop processors. The preview announcement of the Core i9-9900KS was seen at the time as an attempt to upstage AMD’s announcement of Ryzen 3000 series.

Now, roughly five months later, Intel has actually released the Core i9-9900KS, which they are touting as “the world’s best gaming processor”. Is this true, and should you want one of these processors for your next gaming rig?

Figure 1: Intel Core i9-9900KS Packaging (from PCMag.com)

Specifications

Let’s start with the main specifications for this new processor. It is a 14nm, 8C/16T “Coffee Lake” processor with a base clock speed of 4.00 GHz and a Max Turbo speed of 5.00 GHz. It has a 16 MB L3 cache, 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and a 127W TDP rating. It uses an LGA 1151 socket and will work in existing 300 series motherboards with a BIOS update. It includes integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630, but does not have a stock CPU cooler in the box. The recommended customer price is $513.00. The warranty is only one year instead of the normal three years that Intel usually offers on most of its other processors.

This new processor is essentially a specially binned version of the existing Intel Core i9-9900K processor (which was released in Q4 2018) that will let you run all of the eight cores at 5.00 GHz without any manual overclocking. One challenge for this new processor is that the existing Core i9-9900K can usually be overclocked to 5.00 GHz on all cores, depending on whether you were lucky in the silicon lottery (meaning you got a “good” sample), your CPU cooler, and your motherboard and BIOS settings. Individual motherboard vendors can choose to use features like Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE), and they can also decide how they want to regulate power usage and Turbo duration. These factors can have a huge effect on benchmark results and real-world performance. Keep in mind that you will want/need a high quality, fairly expensive CPU cooler for an Intel Core i9-9900KS. This might cost anywhere from $75-$200.

Gaming Performance

Intel claims this is the absolute best processor for gaming, but is this actually true? This depends on what type of gaming you plan to do, especially the screen resolution you will be playing at. It makes a big difference whether you game at 1080P (1920 x 1080) or lower; or whether you game at 2K (2560 x 1440) or 4K (3840 x 2160). If you game at 1080P or lower, then your single-threaded CPU performance is usually your bottleneck for getting high frames per second (FPS), assuming you have a good enough video card such that the video card is not the bottleneck. You can use a relatively low performance video card and still get high FPS performance when you are running at 1080P or lower resolution.

Once you go above a certain level of FPS (depending on whether you have a high refresh rate, low latency monitor and whether your monitor has G-Sync or FreeSync), getting even more FPS is not going to make any noticeable difference in your gaming experience. Once you go above 1080P gaming, the video card becomes the bottleneck, unless you have an extremely slow processor. As long as the processor meets a certain relatively low level of performance, your FPS performance in 2K and higher gaming is gated by your video card performance.

What this means is that if your main priority is the absolute highest FPS performance at 1080P or lower, then yes, the Intel Core i9-9900KS is the world’s best gaming processor. If that use case is not your main priority, there are other less expensive choices, and also other similar cost choices that will work much better for many other scenarios.

Other Processor Choices

If you are an Intel fan, you could choose an Intel Core i9-9900K (with the right motherboard and BIOS settings), and very likely get the same level of 1080P gaming performance as a 9900KS. You would probably save $50-$100 by doing this, depending on the actual street prices of both processors. You could also choose a less expensive 8C/8T Intel Core i7-9700K processor and probably save $200-$250 and still get nearly the same level of 1080P gaming performance as a 9900KS. In either case, you could spend those savings on a better video card, or keep the savings yourself. If you are thinking about building a new Intel desktop system, I would urge you to wait until November/December, since there are pretty strong rumors that Intel is going to reduce the prices of their older existing CPUs by perhaps $50 or more.

What about using an AMD processor? One excellent choice for gaming and general purpose usage is the 7nm 8C/16T AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, which is currently selling for $319 (including a pretty good stock Wraith Prism CPU cooler in the box) at Micro Center. The Ryzen 7 3700X is pretty competitive with these Intel processors for gaming, depending on the game and the resolution. It is going to be much better than the Intel Core i7-9700K for general purpose computing since it has 16 threads instead of only 8. You could use the money savings (vs. a Core i9-9900KS) for a better video card, more RAM, or better storage.

You could also step up to a 12C/24T AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (if you can find one) or wait a few weeks and get a 16C/32T AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (which may also be in short supply when it is released). The 3900X is $499 and the 3950X will be $749. These processors will also be pretty competitive with the Intel processors for gaming, depending on the game and the resolution. They will be much better than any mainstream Intel processor for workstation performance because of their higher core and thread counts and PCIe 4.0 support. Speaking of that, the upcoming Ryzen 9 3950X is very likely to be better than the new $979 18C/36T Intel Core i9-10980XE Cascade Lake-X HEDT processor for many workstation workloads.

Frankly, the initial written reviews for the Intel Core i9-9900KS have been pretty brutal:

The Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: The 5 GHz Consumer Special

The Intel Core i9-9900KS Special Edition Review: 5.0 GHz on All the Cores, All the Time

Intel Core i9-9900KS Special Edition Review: More power, less point

There are also many YouTube reviews that have been even more negative about the Intel Core i9-9900KS. Here are a few:

Intel Core i9-9900KS Review, Winner of 2019’s Most Boring CPU Award

Intel is selling BINNED 9900Ks! Core i9-9900KS Unboxing

$513 5GHz Special Edition CPU – Intel 9900KS Review

Intel i9-9900KS Review: Overclocking, Power, & Gaming CPU Benchmarks

INTEL i9 9900KS Release! REVIEW & OVERCLOCK to 5.4 GHz!

Intel i9-9900KS Marketing: Rushed and Hilarious!

Well this is awkward…My golden sample 9900K BEAT the 9900KS

Conclusion

Does all of this mean that the Intel Core i9-9900KS is a “bad” processor? No, absolutely not. If 1080P gaming with the highest FPS performance is your main concern, then this is a great processor. As long as you have a high quality Z390 motherboard with good VRMs, a high quality CPU cooler, and a good enough graphics card, you will be very happy.

If you game at higher resolutions, or do other things besides gaming, you have other choices that are much more affordable, such as an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor. For the same amount or slightly more money, you can get much better general purpose and workstation performance with a higher core count AMD Ryzen 9 3900X or 3950X processor.

What are the implications for the overall mainstream desktop CPU market? Well currently, Intel is losing a lot of both market-share and mind-share with their current offerings. The Core i9-9900KS is a pretty weak response to the AMD Ryzen 3000 series outside of one particular narrow use case. Intel’s next short-term move is likely to be price reductions, which they have never really had to do in the past. Intel has milked the 2015-vintage 14nm Skylake architecture (and its Kaby Lake, Cannon Lake, and Coffee Lake derivatives) about as far as they can.

Intel will eventually have a better response, probably in the late 2020/2021 time frame. By then, AMD should have the next generation Zen 3 processors. If you enjoy computer hardware, this is a great time to watch what is happening in the industry! 

The post Some Thoughts About the Intel Core i9-9900KS Processor appeared first on Glenn Berry.

My old gaming system has a $350.00 6C/12T Intel Core i7-8700K and an older $650.00 AMD R9 Fury Nano video card.

I live fairly close to a Micro Center, so I can take advantage of their bundle discounts when you buy the right set of components together. This can save you over $100 on a complete system.

Component Selection

I’m going to walk through what exact components I selected for the system, with a little bit of reasoning why I made those choices. In every case, I could have spent less money without giving up too much performance.

Processor

I decided to get an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, which is an 8C/16T processor that is a mid-range processor in the Ryzen 3000 series. It has a base clock of 3.6GHz and a max boost clock of 4.4GHz, with a 32MB L3 cache. This particular model has a 65 watt TDP (so it uses less power than the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X), and it comes with a pretty decent RGB Wraith Prism cooler. The Micro Center price was $329.99.

Figure 1: The Sweet Spot Processor

Motherboard

I selected an ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX motherboard.  I tend to favor ASRock motherboards, and all of my recent builds have ASRock motherboards. This motherboard uses the high-end X570 chipset, but it is one of the more affordable models from ASRock.

If you have an existing 300 or 400 series AMD chipset motherboard, you can probably use that with a new Ryzen 3000 series processor, with a BIOS update. You will lose out on PCIe 4.0 support, but that is not a big deal for a gaming system. The Micro Center price was $154.99, plus a $50.00 bundle discount, since I was buying an eligible processor.

Figure 2: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4

Memory

I selected a 16GB G.Skill Trident Z CL15 F4-3600C15D-16GTZ kit (Micro Center SKU 822635), which is two 8GB sticks of memory. Having two sticks of memory puts you in dual-channel mode. Having two sticks of memory instead of four sticks lets you use one DIMM per channel (DPC) which increases your memory performance. TweakTown reviewed this memory here.

Memory performance is actually quite important for AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors. Having higher speed memory with tighter timings makes a significant difference on many synthetic and real-world benchmarks. The price/performance sweet spot seems to be DDR4-3200, with DDR4-3600 being slightly better. This G.Skill Trident Z kit has tight CL15 timing, which is important. The Micro Center price was $199.99, but I actually found an open box kit for $183.96

Video Card

I selected an XFX Radeon 5700 8GB video card. This is the low-end SKU in the Radeon 5700 series. The Radeon 5700 uses less power than the Radeon 5700 XT, but the performance is fairly close in most benchmarks. I do my gaming at 2K (2560 x 1440), so video performance is my main bottleneck. Truth be told, I would have probably picked a 5700 XT card, but Micro Center didn’t have any in stock on July 8, 2019.

The Micro Center price was $349.99, plus a $50.00 bundle discount, since I was buying an eligible processor.

Storage

I bought a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 card. This was actually not what I meant to buy (which was a newer and slightly faster 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus), but it was my fault. I had written down my component list and handed it to a sales person to get the components that are locked up, and I simply wrote “500GB Samsung 970 EVO”, so I got exactly what I asked for.  I didn’t notice it until I got home.

A 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD is only about $10.00 less than the much faster 500GB 970 EVO. If you use a SATA SSD, you will have to use a SATA data cable and a SATA power cable, which makes cable management more difficult. An M.2 drive goes directly on the motherboard, with no cables required.

As it turns out, storage performance is not typically a bottleneck on a gaming system, as long as you are not using a slow magnetic hard drive. The Micro Center price was $89.99.

Figure 3: Samsung 970 EVO

Power Supply

I selected a Corsair RM750x 750 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Modular Power Supply. Modular power supplies make cable management much easier, since you only have to install the cables you are actually using. Because of my other component selections, I only needed cables for the motherboard/CPU and for the video card. No SATA or Molex cables were required.

This is a very good quality power supply that is less money than the Seasonic power supplies that I usually buy. Unfortunately, Micro Center doesn’t carry the full Seasonic line of power supplies. Tom’s Hardware reviewed this unit here.

The Micro Center price was $119.99, plus a $10.00 bundle discount, since I was buying an eligible processor.

Case

I selected a Fractal Design Meshify C Tempered Glass MidTower ATX case. This case has very good airflow, and it is still pretty quiet. It is also quite low on the RGB bling factor, which is fine with me. It is a relatively small ATX case, which makes the build a little more difficult than a larger case. It does have good cable management features though. Gamers Nexus reviewed the Meshify C here.

One thing I might do is to replace the stock 120mm fans with 140mm Corsair ML fans, which would move more air and be more quiet. The Micro Center price was $99.99.

Build Notes

You want to make sure you are running Windows 10 Version 1903, and that you get the latest AMD Chipset drivers so that you will get the Windows scheduler fix for Zen processors and the much faster clock speed ramp-up times for Zen 2 processors. You also want to make sure you get the latest main BIOS version for your motherboard and then make an effort to keep it up to date. This will give you the latest AMD AGESA code, which helps memory performance, among other things.

If you get a Samsung NVMe M.2 drive, make sure to install the Samsung NVMe driver and to install Samsung Magician, so you can stay current with the drive firmware. At a bare minimum, you will probably want to enable XMP in your main BIOS. There are also a number of AMD-specific BIOS settings for things like Precision Boost Overdrive to experiment with.

Conclusion

The total (before tax) for the complete system was $1,218.90. This new system is significantly faster than my old gaming system, and it uses less power, while costing less money. I could have saved more money with some different component choices. For example, I could have gotten a cheaper B450 or X470 motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor. I could have used less expensive memory, and gotten a less expensive power supply and case. By doing all of that, I could probably get the price down to around $900.00 for a 6C/12T system that would have pretty comparable gaming performance.

I’ve have some benchmark results in an upcoming post.

The post Building an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Desktop Machine appeared first on Glenn Berry.

AMD Announcements at the E3 Conference

On June 10, 2019 AMD President and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su delivered a presentation at the E3 Expo 2019 in Los Angeles. During this presentation, Dr. Su announced more architectural details about the 7nm Ryzen 3000 series mainstream desktop processors,including a new 16C/32T, Ryzen 9 3950X SKU. AMD also demoed the upcoming 7nm AMD EYPC “Rome” server processors, along with the upcoming 7nm AMD Radeon RX 5700 “Navi” video cards. The updated Ryzen 3000 SKU list is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: AMD Ryzen 3000 Lineup

One of the more interesting bits of new information is the fact that AMD has been working closely with Microsoft to develop improvements to how scheduling and thread allocation is handled on AMD Zen2 architecture processors on Windows 10 Build 1903. They are moving from a hybrid thread expansion strategy (where active cores are placed as far away from each other as possible) to thread grouping, where new threads are allocated  as close as possible to already active cores, hopefully on the same CCX. This improves thread to thread communication by speeding up memory access. This is designed to improve the apparent scheduling issues seen on Windows with some AMD Zen processors. You will need an updated AMD chipset driver to get this improvement.

It is not yet clear how well this will work on more heavily threaded workloads like you typically see on a database server. I am also not yet 100% certain that this fix is in Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 yet. The upcoming AMD EPYC “Rome” processors use the same Zen 2 architecture, so it is possible they will benefit from this change with some workloads.

Figure 2: Topology Awareness

Another Windows 10 Build 1903 improvement that will definitely help AMD Zen architecture processors is a feature that AMD calls faster clock ramping. It is actually UEFI Collaborative Power Performance Control 2 (CPPC2), which lets the processor and operating system cooperate more closely (and quickly) to increase the clock speed of individual cores more rapidly under a load. This feature moves P-state control from the OS to the processor, so the processor can “throttle up” much more quickly than before. AMD is claiming a clock ramp time of 1-2ms with this improvement compared to about 30ms before. This will also require a UEFI/BIOS update and a new AMD chipset driver before it will work.

This feature is very similar to Intel Speed Shift, which was introduced with their Skylake processors, and improved with Kaby Lake. Intel Speed Shift requires Windows 10 v10586 or Windows Server 2016 or newer. Intel Speed Shift takes 15-30ms to ramp up, so it is not as responsive as AMD’s implementation. AMD also revealed that the Zen 2 architecture processors will have hardware level mitigations for Spectre and Spectre v4. Keep in mind that AMD processors are not vulnerable to Meltdown, or newer exploits such as Foreshadow or Zombieload.

These architectural improvements in the Zen 2 architecture will also show up in the upcoming (Q3 2019) 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” server processors, which is very exciting from a SQL Server perspective.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For June 13, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

AMD Computex 2019 Announcements

On May 27, 2019, AMD President and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su delivered the opening keynote at Computex 2019 Taipei. During this keynote, Dr. Su announced more details about the 7nm Ryzen 3000 series mainstream desktop processors, 7nm AMD EYPC “Rome” server processors, 7nm AMD Radeon RX 5700 “Navi” video cards and the upcoming X570 chipset motherboards.

AMD is claiming a 15% IPC improvement, a 2X L3 cache size increase, and a 2X floating point performance improvement over the Ryzen 2000 series. AMD revealed some fairly detailed specifications and pricing for some of the Ryzen 3000 series processors, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Processors

AMD ran some Cinebench R20 and Blender demonstrations on stage comparing Ryzen 3000 series processors to various Intel mainstream desktop and HEDT processors. If these demonstrations are accurate (and we won’t know for sure until the various hardware enthusiast sites and respected YouTube hardware reviewers do independent testing), then AMD should have an amazing, game-changing product. They will have better single-threaded CPU performance, better multi-threaded CPU performance, PCIe 4.0 support, and lower prices than equivalent current Intel processors.

Just in case 12C/24T isn’t enough, there are many reports from good sources that there will be a 16C/32T SKU that will be released later this year. The Ryzen 3000 processors are due to be on store shelves on July 7, 2019.

Figure 2: AMD Ryzen 3000 Performance Comparisons

There was also a quick AMD EPYC “Rome” demonstration, comparing a two-socket AMD EPYC “Rome” system to a two-socket Intel Xeon Platinum 8280M system, where the AMD system had more than twice the performance. This isn’t a huge surprise, since the AMD system had 64C/128T processors vs. 28C/56T processors for the Intel system. We still don’t know the detailed specifications for the  7nm “Rome” processors, but if they show similar IPC improvements to the AMD Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors (they both use the same Zen 2 architecture), it will be very impressive.  Forrest Norrod, AMD’s SVP and GM of the Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, confirmed a Q3 2019 Release Date for “Rome” during the keynote.

Here are some relevant YouTube videos:

AMD R9 3900X, 3800X, 3700X Specs & Price: 16-Core Held Back for Now (& RX 5700 GPU)

3rd Gen AMD Ryzen 5, 7 & 9 Announced… It’s Official, Intel’s Screwed

AMD’s $500 12-Core Ryzen 9 3900X CONFIRMED! Computex 2019 Keynote Recap

I need to buy AMD stock. NOW.

Gigabyte X570 Master VRM & PCB Analysis | Efficiency Estimations

Corsair Force Series MP600 SSD PCIe 4.0

Corsair announced a new Force Series MP600 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD at Computex 2019. If you have this drive in a PCIe 4.0 system, you will get up to 4,950 MB/s of sequential read performance and 4,240 MB/s of sequential write performance. That is pretty impressive, but it is not close to what a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 socket can deliver, which would be nearly 8 GB/sec. Apparently, the Psison PS5016-E16 controller is the bottleneck, keeping the drive limited to about 5GB/sec on reads.

The large heatsink means this won’t fit in your laptop! Actually, because PCIe 4.0 uses significantly more power than PCIe 3.0, I don’t think we will be seeing PCIe 4.0 support in laptops for a while. That large heatsink should help reduce thermal throttling of the drive in desktop systems.

Figure 3: Corsair Force Series MP600 SSD

This is one of the first announced PCIe 4.0 drives in the consumer space. There are no details yet about capacity, pricing, or availability.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For May 28, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

Microarchitectural Data Sampling in Intel Processors

On May 14, 2019, news broke that a new series of speculative execution side-channel flaws are present in most existing Intel mobile, desktop, and server processors. These newly announced exploits are detailed in this advisory from Intel. Jon Masters from Red Hat has a pretty detailed explanation of these vulnerabilities here.  Here are the four CVEs:

CVE-2018-12126 Microarchitectural Store Buffer Data Sampling (MSBDS)

CVE-2018-12127 Microarchitectural Load Port Data Sampling (MLPDS)

CVE-2018-12130 Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling (MFBDS)

CVE-2019-11091 Microarchitectural Data Sampling Uncacheable Memory (MDSUM)

For affected Intel processors, you will need OS patches plus microcode updates (BIOS updates) from your hardware vendor. You may want to consider disabling hyper-threading on affected processors. Microsoft has updated their guidance on this subject here:

SQL Server guidance to protect against Spectre, Meltdown and Micro-architectural Data Sampling vulnerabilities

Intel has a deep dive on this subject here:

Deep Dive: Intel Analysis of Microarchitectural Data Sampling

Microsoft has already released an updated PowerShell script that you can use to check your current OS and hardware status regarding these exploits. This article walks you through how to download the PowerShell script and run it to check your patching status:

How to test MDS (Zombieload) patch status on Windows systems

Figure 1 shows the results on my AMD Threadripper 2950X system (which is intrinsically less vulnerable to these types of attacks). This is after I patched Windows 10 yesterday.

Figure 1: Get-SpeculationControlSettings Results

BTW, the SQL Server 2017 security update for SSAS that was released on May 14, 2019 is for a completely different issue.

AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Speculation

As Computex Taipei 2019 gets closer (May 27), there are an increasing number of leaks and rumors about the exact specifications and features of the upcoming AMD Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors. This family of 7nm mainstream desktop processors will supposedly have SKUs starting with 6C/12T, going up to 16C/32T. Ryzen 3000 series processors will also have PCIe Gen 4.0 support. These processors are supposed to work in most existing 300 and 400 series AM4 socket motherboards. There will also be new 500 series motherboards that will offer additional features.

Figure 2: 2019 AMD Client Lineup

The main unknowns at this point are the exact specifications in terms of base and max boost speeds and how much instructions per clock (IPC) improvement we will see compared to the existing AMD Ryzen 2000 series processors. Depending on what the answers to these are, we may see these processors actually having better single-threaded CPU performance compared to Intel. If that happens, it will further establish AMD as a viable competitor to Intel from nearly every perspective in this market segment. This would be great for the consumer.

Here are some videos that cover the latest rumors and leaks:

The Full Nerd ep. 93: AMD Ryzen 3000 and Radeon Navi rumors, Computex predictions, Q&A

AMD Ryzen 3000 16c specs LEAKED, RX 600 series, Nvidia SUED | Awesome Hardware #0187-A

HW News – Intel Shortage Ending, Ryzen 9 16-Core, & AMD Supercomputer

You might be thinking that this is interesting, but what does it have to do with SQL Server? If the Ryzen 3000 series performs as expected, and is successful in the marketplace, it will be a good precursor to the upcoming 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” server processors. It will give us some hint about the IPC and clock speed increases that we can expect from the Zen 2 architecture. We should also get much more detail about the Rome processors at Computex.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For May 15, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

SSMS 18.0 Goes GA

SQL Server Management Studio 18.0 became generally available on April 24, 2019. This means that it is the final release version (as opposed to being a preview or release candidate version). It is Build 15.0.18118.0. The Release Notes detail all of the new features, improvements and bug fixes in SSMS 18.0.

Figure 1: SSMS 18.0 About Form

It is officially supported on Windows 10 version 1607 Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit), Windows Server 2012 (64-bit), and Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit). Older preview versions worked on 64-bit Windows 7 SP1.

If you have a preview or release candidate version of SSMS 18.0 installed, you should uninstall it before you install the GA release version.You can download it here.

SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.5 Available

On April 24, 2019,  Microsoft also released SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.5. Many of the new features in this release are focused on making it easier to deploy and manage “big data clusters”.  This is how Microsoft describes a big data cluster:

Starting with SQL Server 2019 preview, SQL Server big data clusters allow you to deploy scalable clusters of SQL Server, Spark, and HDFS containers running on Kubernetes. These components are running side by side to enable you to read, write, and process big data from Transact-SQL or Spark, allowing you to easily combine and analyze your high-value relational data with high-volume big data.

Figure 2: Kubernetes Cluster

There are also improvements in sys.dm_exec_query_plan_stats, including a new database scoped configuration option that lets you control whether last query plan statistics are available at the database level (as opposed to instance-wide with TF 2451).

I think Microsoft must be pushing pretty hard to get SQL Server 2019 to GA status by July 9, 2019, which is when SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 fall out of extended support. This is just my own common sense speculation. That’s what I would be pushing for if I were in charge!

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 5oth Anniversary Edition

AMD is releasing a special 50th Anniversary Ryzen 7 2700X desktop processor. This processor will have the same exact specifications as a normal AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor, but will come in special gold colored packaging. It will also have a laser engraved signature from AMD President and CEO  Dr. Lisa Su on the heat spreader as shown in Figure 3. This will be covered up when you install the processor.

Figure 3: 50th Anniversary AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Processor

To be fair, AMD is including a few other things to help justify the cost of this processor compared to a typical Ryzen 7 2700X processor. These include a coupon for a AMD 50th Anniversary T-Shirt, and a special AMD sticker signed by Dr. Su.

Figure 4: AMD 50th Anniversary AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Packaging

Some retailers are also adding game bundles to the deal.

Personally, I wouldn’t buy this. It is interesting as a collector’s item, but I am not that much of a collector. It would have been much more interesting if AMD had decided to offer higher specifications on a cherry-picked version of this processor, similar to what Intel did with the special Intel Core i7-8086K processor.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For April 29, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

Introduction

Earlier this week, I bought a new HP Spectre x360 13-AP0023DX convertible laptop at Best Buy. I have often criticized Best Buy as a bad place to buy a computer, but in this case I ignored my own advice for some good reasons. First, this was a great deal for $1050.00. This particular laptop has an Intel Core i7-8565U “Whiskey Lake” processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB Toshiba XG5 M.2 NVMe SSD, a 13.3” IPS 4K touchscreen, Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics, two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, and one USB-A 3.0 port. Second, I was planning on swapping out the 512GB Toshiba M.2 NVMe drive for a bigger and faster 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

The Best Buy computer buying experience has dramatically improved over what it was several years ago. Back then, if you bought a computer, they would doggedly insist that a “Geek Squad” tech needed to unbox your machine, power it on, and “configure” it for you. That service might have been well suited for a non-technical person, but since I am my own Geek Squad, I didn’t need or want it back then.

The main remaining problem with buying a laptop from Best Buy is that their machines will have whatever bloatware the OEM decided to add to their standard Windows 10 Home image. You can try to uninstall everything you don’t want, or you can just install a fresh copy of Windows 10 Professional. If you go with the latter route, you will also need to download and install all of the HP and Intel-specific drivers from the HP Support website. You will probably need to update your main system BIOS and any other firmware that is out of date. You can avoid most of this hassle if you buy a laptop from a Microsoft Store, where they use a very clean, bloatware-free image on their machines. This is called Microsoft Signature Edition.

Performance

After getting everything reinstalled and fully updated, I ran a few quick performance tests. This machine is pretty speedy from a CPU and storage perspective. Since it has two PCIe 3.0 x4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, I can use some very fast external storage if I need to. I do wish it had 32GB of RAM.

The purpose of this machine is to be a backup for my main work laptop (a 15” Dell Precision 5520), just in case I ever have problems with it when I am on the road. It only weighs 2.8 pounds, and it came with a touch pen that you can use to draw with as a tablet. It also has a 12-hour battery life, which is very handy. This machine is actually faster than my two-year old Dell Precision 5520 with an Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6 processor.

Figure 1: Intel Core i7-8565U Information

This processor compares pretty well to the old (Q3 2015) Intel Core i7-6700K desktop processor, which is pretty impressive for a mobile processor with only 15W TDP. I have confirmed that it is using Intel Speed Shift in combination with Windows 10. This means that it throttles up it’s clock speed much more quickly.

Figure 2: Intel Core i7-8565U Benchmark Results

It was pretty easy to get to the SSD, after removing six small Philips screws that are hidden under two rubber strips on the bottom of the machine. After swapping out the OEM Toshiba SSD for the 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD, I ran CrystalDiskMark, with the results shown below.

Figure 3: CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 Results

I am very impressed by the 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus. I am still waiting for the 2TB model to become available.

Figure 4: 1TB Samsung EVO Plus

Here are a few reviews of this machine:

HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2019) Review

HP Spectre x360 13 (2019)

HP Spectre 13 review

The post New HP Spectre x360 Laptop appeared first on Glenn Berry.

April Release of Azure Data Studio

On April 18, 2019, Microsoft released Azure Data Studio 1.6.0, which you can download here. The release notes are here. The highlights include some UI changes, such as renaming the Servers tab to Connections, and moving the Azure Resource Explorer as an Azure Viewlet under Connections. There are also a number of improvements for SQL Notebooks and 78 bug fixes on GitHub.

Azure Data Studio is stable and mature, and Microsoft (and open source contributors) seem very serious about improving it and maintaining a regular release schedule. They are regularly adding interesting new features, such as Jupyter Notebook support. If you haven’t started playing around with Azure Data Studio, you probably should try it out pretty soon.

SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Updates

On April 16, 2019, Microsoft released SQL Server 2014 SP3 CU3 (12.0.6259.0) and SQL Server 2014 SP2 CU17 (12.0.5632.1). These have four and three public hotfixes, respectively, so they are not big cumulative updates. You should be on the SP3 branch by now, but if not, you should plan on getting there as soon as you can. It is my understanding that there won’t be a Service Pack 4 release for SQL Server 2014, which makes sense given the time constraints.

Remember, SQL Server 2014 falls out of mainstream support on July 9, 2019, which means no more Service Packs or Cumulative Updates. Going by the calendar, there should be one more cumulative update for each branch before July 9, 2019.

If you are going to be stuck on SQL Server 2014 for a while, you should make a concerted effort to get on the latest SP and CU as they become available, and you are able to do your own pre-deployment testing.

AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Rumors

AMD is said to be introducing the 7nm Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs during the COMPUTEX CEO Keynote address of AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su on May 27, 2019. The rumor mill has been working overtime over the past several months, and there is huge anticipation among hardware enthusiasts about what the ultimate truth will be.

Figure 1: AMD Ryzen 3000 Prototype

These processors will work in most existing AM4 socket motherboards, with a BIOS update. There will also be new 500-series chipset motherboards that will better support new features, such as PCIe 4.0.

Here are some blog posts with the latest information:

AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs: Rumors, Release Date, All We Know About Ryzen 3

AMD Ryzen 3000 release date, price, specs, and everything we know

The bottom line is that you might want to hold off on building a new desktop system, especially a dedicated gaming rig, until after this new generation is released and available. We are already seeing deep discounts of previous generation Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series processors as we get closer to the Ryzen 3000 release date.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For April 18, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

Intel Data-Centric Innovation Day on April 2

On April 2, 2019 Intel streamed a live event where they announced multiple new product lines, including the 2^nd Generation Intel Scalable Processor Family (Cascade Lake-SP), the Intel Xeon 9200 family (Cascade Lake-AP), Optane DC Persistent Memory, new models of Optane Storage, and several other product lines.

The 2^nd Generation Intel Scalable Processor Family is going to be the most interesting for SQL Server usage. These offer minor performance improvements compared to the previous Skylake-SP line. I talked about this in more detail here:

Intel Cascade Lake-SP Processor Analysis for SQL Server

The bottom line is that this is a pretty weak effort by Intel, for SQL Server usage. It will be a nice upgrade if you are currently running a much older processor family. For example, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell. It is the best choice now available from Intel. Cascade Lake-SP will have to compete against the upcoming 7nm AMD EPYC Rome processors pretty soon (probably in June), and this could be a big problem for Intel. Time will tell. Figure 1 shows you how to understand what a specific Xeon SKU model name means.

Figure 1: Intel Processor SKU Naming

Figure 2 shows most of the SKU list for the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processor line. Remember, you should never get a Silver or Bronze family processor for SQL Server usage. You will give up a very large amount of performance for a relatively minor hardware cost savings.

Figure 2: Cascade Lake-SP SKU List with Pricing

Note: I believe that the Xeon Platinum 8256 actually has four cores, not 24 cores (based on the previous Xeon Platinum 8156 and the L3 cache size). This list does not include the Xeon Platinum 9200 series or any of the M or L SKUs (which will be very expensive).

Here are some other blog posts that cover this event:

2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Launch Details and Analysis

Second Generation Intel Xeon Scalable SKU List and Value Analysis

The Intel Second Generation Xeon Scalable: Cascade Lake, Now with Up To 56-Cores and Optane!

Intel Announces Cascade Lake: Up to 56 Cores and Optane Persistent Memory DIMMs

Computex 2019 Keynote

AMD’s CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, is going to present the opening Computex 2019 Keynote on May 27, 2019 in Taiwan. She is expected introduce their next generation 7nm products. These include the Ryzen 3000 series mainstream desktop processors, Radeon RX Navi GPUs and the EPYC “Rome” server processors.

This event will give us more specific information about AMD’s counter to Intel Cascade Lake-SP. Scottish YouTuber AdoredTV has another great video: Zen 2 – Even More EPYC. This covers the latest information he has received from his confidential sources along with his thoughtful analysis.

Personally, I think the AMD Rome processors will have many technical advantages compared to Intel Cascade Lake-SP. These include higher memory density, and DDR4-3200 memory support. There will be a much higher number of PCIe lanes (which will be Gen 4 instead of Gen 3). The big remaining question is how single-threaded CPU performance ends up. I think this will depend on whether AMD decides to offer frequency-optimized SKUs.

Here are some recent stories about the predicted impact on the Rome processor on the server market.

AMD to see sales increase sharply in 2H19

AMD EPYC could force Intel’s server market share below 90 percent

AMD Predicted To Further Chip Away At Intel Server CPU Market Share With EPYC Through 2020

Having viable competition from AMD keeps the pressure on Intel, and forces them to innovate and offer more functionality at lower prices, which is good for the market. For example, if it wasn’t for the AMD Zen architecture, Intel would probably still be releasing 4C/8T processors as their “top of the line” for desktop and mobile usage. They would also still be stuck at 10C/20T offerings for the HEDT market.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For April 3, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.

AMD Processors Not Vulnerable to SPOILER CPU Exploit

A new research paper (PDF warning) details a new speculative execution, side-channel CPU exploit that can dramatically speed up some previously known attack types. All modern Intel processors, going back to the original Intel Core architecture from 2006 are vulnerable to this exploit.

As the paper states:

“The root cause for SPOILER is a weakness in the address speculation of Intel’s proprietary implementation of the memory subsystem, which directly leaks timing behavior due to physical address conflicts. Existing spectre mitigations would therefore not interfere with SPOILER”

Intel was informed of these findings on December 1, 2018. AMD has released a short statement, where they confirm that their products are not vulnerable to SPOILER.

This is another piece of bad news for Intel. Initial analysis indicates that this exploit may be extremely difficult to patch at the software level. Patching at the microcode level could have a serious impact on performance.

Should You Be Worried?

That is a good question. Personally, I am more worried about more primitive, well-known attack methods, especially when it comes to SQL Server. Things like SQL injection attacks, applications using sys admin rights, and people running seriously unpatched systems. Getting those barn doors closed should be a much higher priority for most organizations.

What do you think? Were you concerned about the Spectre/Meltdown exploits in early 2018? Did you do any specific patching for that? I believe in digital “herd immunity” meaning that if a large percentage of the population does a good job of securing and patching their systems, it will help protect everyone. Plus, if you do a good job protecting your system, a higher percentage of lower skill attackers will look for an easier target.

Intel Demonstrates 100GbE OCP NIC 3.0 Adapters

At the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit 2019, Intel showed and demonstrated several new 100GbE adapters that use the OCP NIC 3.0 form factor. These are relatively small daughter cards that easily fit horizontally in 1U servers. Intel is a little late to the 100GbE market, behind vendors like Mellanox. Despite this, having more vendors to choose from is a good thing. Intel did a short presentation about the OCP NIC 3.0 specification at the OCP Global Summit that you can watch here.

Intel Comet Lake Processors Coming Soon

With AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 3000 mainstream desktop processors getting closer to release (probably announced at the Computex 2019 show), Intel needs a competitive response for 2019. This appears to be a new 14nm Comet Lake family that may also be released in mid-2019. These are rumored to have up to 10 physical cores for desktop chips and up to eight physical cores for mobile chips.

It is unclear at this point whether these Comet Lake processors will work in existing Intel Z390 motherboards. Intel has a pretty mixed track record when it comes to backwards compatibility for motherboards, but perhaps they are changing their ways.

These processors should perform quite well on heavily multi-threaded workloads, and they will give you another alternative to jumping up to a more expensive HEDT system. This line of processors will have to compete with the AMD Ryzen 3000 processors.

AMD Ryzen 3000

Current speculation is that the 7nm AMD Ryzen 3000 series may have up to 16 physical cores in a mainstream desktop processor. The Ryzen 3000 series may also have better single-threaded performance than Comet Lake. If both of these rumors are true, it will be a huge achievement for AMD that will put a lot of pressure on Intel.

Figure 1: AMD Ryzen 3000 Desktop Processor

Healthy competition between Intel and AMD is good for consumers, and I hope it continues. Like many people, I was very tired of Intel rolling out annual product updates of four-core processors with very marginal performance increases. They had been doing this for the past 4-5 years, and they could get away with it because AMD just wasn’t competitive. That is no longer the case.

Intel Hires Kyle Bennet of HardOCP

Speaking of Intel changing their ways, they have hired Kyle Bennett (the founder of the HardOCP web site), starting April 1, 2019. He will be the Director of Enthusiast Engagement for their Technology Leadership Marketing group.

As a result, the HardOCP website will be “mothballed” with no new content. The HardForum will be demonetized and sold but will stay in operation. I have been a long-time reader of HardOCP, so I am sorry to see it essentially going away. This is a great opportunity for Kyle, and it is one piece of evidence that Intel is trying to change their image. This is similar to Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective going to Intel last October as their Chief Performance Strategist.

The post Glenn’s Technical Insights For March 20, 2019 appeared first on Glenn Berry.