*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***

[Hotwired]

The automatic overclocking needs to be look at from the windows of a quarry truck loaded with rock salt.

Overclocking in here is often considered to be fine at a gnats butt hair below unstable for a few hours of stress testing.

That kind of overclocking from AMD out of the box? A company whose reputation will be wrecked if those cpus are even remotely taking risks?

Nah. More like the smidgeons of factory overclock on 3rd party cards.

e.g. stock 480 @ 1120/1266 and the XFX black nudging the boost to 1120/1388, bit under 10% higher. Can call it significant if you want.

 

[ubersonic]

No, there's the official slides floating around that show that the CPU's will hit their normal rated speeds all the time, then if cooling is good enough they'll 'eXtend' the frequency past their rated speed.

You have to appreciate the comedy here, Nvidia invented something to try and give their GPUs an advantage over AMDs, then AMD copied it and now they've ported it to their CPUs and hope to beat Intel around the head with it XD

 

[five8five]

The automatic overclocking needs to be look at from the windows of a quarry truck loaded with rock salt.

Overclocking in here is often considered to be fine at a gnats butt hair below unstable for a few hours of stress testing.

That kind of overclocking from AMD out of the box? A company whose reputation will be wrecked if those cpus are even remotely taking risks?

Nah. More like the smidgeons of factory overclock on 3rd party cards.

e.g. stock 480 @ 1120/1266 and the XFX black nudging the boost to 1120/1388, bit under 10% higher. Can call it significant if you want.

Got to agree, they need to be stable in all conditions including in less than optimally cooled cases with the stock fan.

 

[mmj_uk]

I've seen it hinted that the XFR concept is a lot tamer than what most of us think it is

The X in XFR stands for Extended... but extended relative to what? Relative to the CPU itself? Or relative to its closest non-X model?

i.e. if the 1700 has a max turbo of 3.7GHz then:

• the 1700X has an "extension" of 100Mhz (3.8GHz max turbo when cooling allows)
• the 1800X has an "extension" of 300MHz (4.0 GHz max turbo when cooling allows)

It can't be that lame, can it?

That's what I'm thinking actually and I wouldn't be surprised if the voltage gets ramped up in XFR mode if you have the cooling... all of the talk about 1.4V at 4ghz when nearly all Intel's do 4ghz at 1.1V doesn't really bode well for AMD either.

There has to be a frequency limit for XFR otherwise under lightly threaded loads it will just boost to the point of instability otherwise.

 

[Safetytrousers]

I'm eager to find out if the X chips can perform any better than simply manually overclocking an non-X version. It would seem to make the X versions a bit pointless if you can.

 

[humbug]

That's what I'm thinking actually and I wouldn't be surprised if the voltage gets ramped up in XFR mode if you have the cooling... all of the talk about 1.4V at 4ghz when nearly all Intel's do 4ghz at 1.1V doesn't really bode well for AMD either.

There has to be a frequency limit for XFR otherwise under lightly threaded loads it will just boost to the point of instability otherwise.

1.4v sounds to me like trolling, where did you get that from? 1.4v on 14nm is an obvious troll as that is way above what 14nm finfet can run at reliably long term, if you read it right someones taking the ####, winding you up. litrally they just plucked some number that sounded high out of their ass and went with it, the problem is its far too high to be believable.

 

[Nutella33]

AMD Ryzen Hype Ships

Best thing I've seen for a CPU launch tbh

 

[Scramz]

I'm almost ashamed of myself for watching that to the end lol

Same, but I watched it twice!

 

[tyler_jrb]

1.4v sounds to me like trolling, where did you get that from? 1.4v on 14nm is an obvious troll as that is way above what 14nm finfet can run at reliably long term, if you read it right someones taking the ####, winding you up. litrally they just plucked some number that sounded high out of their ass and went with it, the problem is its far too high to be believable.

While 1.4v sounds high to me too. We know nothing of ryzen yet, so if they don't overclock well then the voltage could get high and quickly hit a wall with diminishing returns.

not too long until we find out what's what .

 

[humbug]

While 1.4v sounds high to me too. We know nothing of ryzen yet, so if they don't overclock well then the voltage could get high and quickly hit a wall with diminishing returns.

not too long until we find out what's what .

We don't have any facts yet but leaks say 4Ghz Boost for the 1800X, so is it running 1.4v out of the box? lol.......no! even if by some miracle they are its still with a 95 Watt TDP....... HELLL NO!

This one is an obvious wind-up, the trouble for people who do this is they need to have it sound fantastically bad for impact, that then always ends up a ridiculous thing to say.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Given you've not seen how XFR works, it's quite possible the voltage ceiling is up that high. The term TDP is thrown around a lot these days...It's not as unrealistic as you seem to be proclaiming.

Skylake processors have varying VID, some high as 1.35v.

 

[labbby]

So what's the score between the 1800x and 1800 pro ?

Do we think its the case that the 1800x will boost clock speeds with XFR automatically (only) but the 1800 pro is more for overclock enthusiasts and could potentially be faster with manual (only) overclocks ?

 

[Yaayuh!]

So what's the score between the 1800x and 1800 pro ?

Do we think its the case that the 1800x will boost clock speeds with XFX automatically (only) but the 1800 pro is more for overclock enthusiasts and could potentially be faster with manual (only) overclocks ?

Pro is likely to be for workstations/professional use. What that entails, I don't know. ECC RAM? Stability? Virtualisation?
The 'X' seems to identify 'XFR' support.

 

[dazzlaa]

Just watched the reveal, it was impressive to see the performance at a lower power tdp.
I wish they announced the prices of vega though, I have two PC's here, one intel/nvidia and one intel/amd, I'd be interested to upgrade the second PC to ryzen/vega and I really feel the pricing will be tempting. We all know intel and nvidia like to price high!

 

[labbby]

Pro is likely to be for workstations/professional use. What that entails, I don't know. ECC RAM? Stability? Virtualisation?
The 'X' seems to identify 'XFR' support.

thanks

 

[mmj_uk]

We don't have any facts yet but leaks say 4Ghz Boost for the 1800X, so is it running 1.4v out of the box? lol.......no! even if by some miracle they are its still with a 95 Watt TDP....... HELLL NO!

The TDP rating might be at stock without any boost we don't really know how AMD have rated it, it might be average/typical TDP whereas Intel tend to advertise worst case. They're including a 140W cooler so they're obviously expecting it to go way above the rated 95W.

 

[TaKeN]

Just watched the reveal, it was impressive to see the performance at a lower power tdp.
I wish they announced the prices of vega though, I have two PC's here, one intel/nvidia and one intel/amd, I'd be interested to upgrade the second PC to ryzen/vega and I really feel the pricing will be tempting. We all know intel and nvidia like to price high!

What reveal? I'm confused now!

 

[ubersonic]

They're including a 140W cooler so they're obviously expecting it to go way above the rated 95W.

There is also the possibility that they are over specifying the cooler to leave room for manual overclocking or just for silence.

 

[Hagar]

There is also the possibility that they are over specifying the cooler to leave room for manual overclocking or just for silence.

I did read somewhere that the power (TDP limit or Tcase) is adjustable on the higher end motherboards in the UEFI bios settings.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

There is also the possibility that they are over specifying the cooler to leave room for manual overclocking or just for silence.

Yes, it would make sense for them to include a beefier cooler with the higher end XFR chips, as then you'll still get a boost when you enable it out the box or it'll run quieter, with a larger lead with more formidable cooling. Also means they can essentially throw in 'better' clocks out the box; another way of obfusticating the final clock speeds of these chips from Intel.

THat might all be wishful thinking however, reviews will be the teller. Just by redesigning the Wraith Cooler, AMD have shown they're taking stock cooling more seriously and potentially want to get away from the hot/power-hungry label they used to carry.