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

Caporegime
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To be fair there aren't many facts floating about because AMD are keeping things very close to their chest, most of this thread is speculation. The best benchmarks we have are the French magazine and they say it's equivalent to Haswell-E (5960X) and only approaching Broadwell-E (6900K).

The Horizon event with Blender benchmark was more of a marketing exercise and the accidental uploading of the wrong file and recommending a slower version of Handbrake are marketing tricks.
 
Soldato
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Eastbourne , East Sussex.
To be fair there aren't many facts floating about because AMD are keeping things very close to their chest, most of this thread is speculation. The best benchmarks we have are the French magazine and they say it's equivalent to Haswell-E (5960X) and only approaching Broadwell-E (6900K).

The Horizon event with Blender benchmark was more of a marketing exercise and the accidental uploading of the wrong file and recommending a slower version of Handbrake are marketing tricks.

did you read another version of the CPC article than the rest of us then? as it seems that Ryzen is trading blows with the 6900k!
 
Soldato
Joined
28 May 2007
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18,243
To be fair there aren't many facts floating about because AMD are keeping things very close to their chest, most of this thread is speculation. The best benchmarks we have are the French magazine and they say it's equivalent to Haswell-E (5960X) and only approaching Broadwell-E (6900K).

The Horizon event with Blender benchmark was more of a marketing exercise and the accidental uploading of the wrong file and recommending a slower version of Handbrake are marketing tricks.

If Zen is as fast as Haswell-E then it's also Broadwell-E because Haswell=Broadwell :p
 
Soldato
Joined
31 Dec 2006
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7,224
To be fair there aren't many facts floating about because AMD are keeping things very close to their chest, most of this thread is speculation. The best benchmarks we have are the French magazine and they say it's equivalent to Haswell-E (5960X) and only approaching Broadwell-E (6900K).

If it's "ONLY" approaching the 6900k, that's a pretty big deal lol! Assuming the price rumours of 30-40% less are correct. Of course, AMD could still screw this up by charging a silly high price, or just not meeting expectations with the performance.
 
Soldato
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If it's "ONLY" approaching the 6900k, that's a pretty big deal lol! Assuming the price rumours of 30-40% less are correct. Of course, AMD could still screw this up by charging a silly high price, or just not meeting expectations with the performance.

I dont think its going to be cheaper than £750 if the performance is there unfortunately.
 
Associate
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I dont think its going to be cheaper than £750 if the performance is there unfortunately.

So if on par with a 6900K (which is at least £1000) what's not to like? Far cheaper.

I don't see why people feel AMD owes them a 30-40% price reduction (or more) over intel for like-for-like hardware (in performance terms). They will be competitive but they need to run a business.
 
Soldato
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Do we know anything about the cooler mounting for Zen? It'd be nice if it was just straight up compatible with the Intel holes... don't relish having to replace my 240mm AiO if I wanted to switch to AMD next year.
 
Associate
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Do we know anything about the cooler mounting for Zen? It'd be nice if it was just straight up compatible with the Intel holes... don't relish having to replace my 240mm AiO if I wanted to switch to AMD next year.

We know that it is slightly different from AM3 but still incompatible.
Noctua and Alpenföhn will offer AM4 mounting to their customers.
 
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Soldato
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We know that it is slightly different from AM3 but still incompatible.
Noctua and Alpenföhn will offer AM4 mounting to their customers.

Dang. Well... they've missed a trick, tbh. A lot of enthusiasts will have pretty pricey cooling solutions, and they'll have to factor that in to the price of a platform swap.

Ultimately if Zen can go toe-to-toe with Intel, and they price so's to allow me to re-purchase equivalent cooling and still come up cheaper, I'll still swap. But they could have guaranteed being about £80 cheaper just by drilling the holes in the same places :S
 
Associate
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Dang. Well... they've missed a trick, tbh. A lot of enthusiasts will have pretty pricey cooling solutions, and they'll have to factor that in to the price of a platform swap.

Ultimately if Zen can go toe-to-toe with Intel, and they price so's to allow me to re-purchase equivalent cooling and still come up cheaper, I'll still swap. But they could have guaranteed being about £80 cheaper just by drilling the holes in the same places :S

Too many traces if I remember right, they needed more space around the socket for all the connections. We'll have to see who else offer free mounting kits.
 
Caporegime
Joined
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Posts
33,188
Dang. Well... they've missed a trick, tbh. A lot of enthusiasts will have pretty pricey cooling solutions, and they'll have to factor that in to the price of a platform swap.

Ultimately if Zen can go toe-to-toe with Intel, and they price so's to allow me to re-purchase equivalent cooling and still come up cheaper, I'll still swap. But they could have guaranteed being about £80 cheaper just by drilling the holes in the same places :S

Enthusiasts are a tiny number of total sales, though they have a good effect in terms of they end up being asked what to buy by all their friends/family.

Either way, 99.9% of all Zen chips ever sold, actually 99.99999% of chips ever sold will be inside something like a Dell/Acer/Lenovo box and come with a cooler.

If they make a better cooler or a better motherboard that reduces costs for mobo manufacturers, increasing cooling and reliability via a higher pressure and/or higher reliability mounting method then they've improved how much OEMs like it vs upsetting the 0.00000005% of sales that are upgrades in which a compatible cooler is already available.

Of course, most of the boxed chips will still come with a cooler in the box and it's a vastly improved cooler compared to previous generations as well.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Feb 2011
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3,099
Dang. Well... they've missed a trick, tbh. A lot of enthusiasts will have pretty pricey cooling solutions, and they'll have to factor that in to the price of a platform swap.

Ultimately if Zen can go toe-to-toe with Intel, and they price so's to allow me to re-purchase equivalent cooling and still come up cheaper, I'll still swap. But they could have guaranteed being about £80 cheaper just by drilling the holes in the same places :S
I don't think the cost of a different mounting bracket (either free from manufacturer or for something like a tenner) is really a consideration for the market segment you are talking about.
 
Soldato
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So whats the general consensus regarding Zen? I mean Bulldozer was blown to bits by enthusiasts before it was even released, I cancelled my pre-order and got a 2600k because of all the bashing it got on these forums.
 
Associate
Joined
6 Mar 2008
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If its decent then its game changer, on par its worth considering,
I suspect it won't be a huge improvement over where Intel has been since sandy bridge at 4.5ghz, on a per core basis or price.

5 years ago i thought there would be 8core CPU with around double the per core performance for around same price as a sandy bridge CPU.

Gfx cards roughly doubled in performance over that time at £200 250 price bracket
 
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