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Writer's pictureSasha W.

Sash Thoughts: WCG: R7 3700X goes full-time (for now). Oh, and R3 1200 gets revived.

I had to post this, because I just broke 30,000 Average on my World Community Grid Profile. This means that a lot of Science! is being done. And that is good. (As long as the Science! gets done).


I made a cool annotation of the User Average section of the WCG Interface! :D

As you can see from this picture, I had reached a sort of plateau of Science! around Christmas Eve. This is with the Ryzen 7 2700 (8-core 16 thread) and Ryzen 5 2600X (6-core 12 thread) processors doing Science! 24/7, that is, non stop, and my lovely Ryzen 7 3700X (8-core 16 thread) only doing Science! when I am not gaming or using it for creativity for my universe or video editing or something like that.


In all honesty, it was quite a lot of time where the highly efficient 'Zen2' CPU cores were not doing Science! (I'm sorry if this bugs you but I love it :3). So I thought to myself the other day, would I really notice the difference in the games that I play if I use my 2600X and RX 590 for my 'main usage' system and the 3700X and RX 5700 could just do Science! 24/7?


Well you can see from the above picture that I am definitely noticing it in WCG. Though, to be fair I also did revive my trusty old Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core 4 thread) processor, which is now sitting atop two of my three desktop systems; because I don't have a case for it right now. Seriously.


No Case? No Problem. (Yes that's an R9 290X. And Yes that's a 300W Powersupply. And yes those are Molex -> PCI-E adapters).

Anyway, with those four little first-generation Zen cores and no SMT (so you only get one Logical thread per core), doing Sciecne! 24/7 alongside the full grunt of the 3700X, my Average Score went up, a lot. And it's still going up - beyond the 30,000 target I set for myself. This means that a lot more Science! Is getting done.


And that's all that matters.


You know what's really cool, though? The power usage of the 3700X in its 'Eco-mode' is around 60W. That's the PPT - Platform Power Tracking. In that, it will only consume around that much power. The 'TDP' (Thermal Design Power) for the processor in this mode is 45W. That is the amount of heat that the cooler must deal with to be suitable for it. Power Use =! TDP and they often get confused. (Intel lol). Though they are sometimes closely related.


Anyway, the power use for the 3700X, with all of its cores at 3.8 GHz, and all 16-threads in full load is around 60W. It runs so cool and quiet, I don't even notice it. The efficiency is extremely high - my 2700 needs about 65-70W for 3.2-3.3 GHz. Also remember the Zen2 part is getting about 10-15% more work done per clock cycle, too.


Right now, the price of the 3700X (~£300) is a bit high for me to consider it to replace the 2700 and 2600X systems even for 24/7, because the cost of investment is balanced against the cost of running. That is to say, 2700 for £128 is going to be more cost effective short to medium term than 3700X for £300, even if I normalised performance on both parts, the 3700X uses much less power. That said, I am super-excited for Zen3 to launch next year, so I can get discounted Zen2 parts. :3


Maybe 3700X for < £150? Yes please! I'll take three! For Science!

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