• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

AMD: "FX is Not EOL" & Why What We Need in a CPU is Changing

Soldato
Joined
7 May 2006
Posts
12,183
Location
London, Ealing
We recently posted about an alleged slide leak from AMD that, if real, seemed to suggest the end of the line for FX-series CPUs and the AM3+ socket. The slide stirred a great deal of concern throughout major social networks and enthusiast websites, and so I attempted to bring things back down to earth in our original analysis. I reached out to AMD for comment prior to publication, but we weren't able to speak with the company until yesterday.

AMD Manager of APU/CPU Product Reviews James Prior was quick to negate the slide's legitimacy: "I've never seen that slide before, I don't know where that came from," he told me in our call, and quickly followed-up by stating that "it's not real. FX is not end-of-life." Prior pointed-out that it's rare to ever see more than a year into the future with roadmaps, and that the real AMD roadmap looks like this:

http://www.gamersnexus.net/news/1240-future-of-amd-cpus-fx-not-eol
 
Interesting read but I think AMD is making a massive massive mistake not pushing ahead with 8 core Steamroller CPUs. They are in a position they could strike hard with them even if in the future computing changes - but seem to be making a stand on some almost politicalised ideal instead :|
 
Read that article, looked at the supposed 'fake' roadmap VS the 'legit' one, I noticed that both are identical expect the 'fake' roadmap just shows a bit more of the future.. Both roadmaps show nothing but Piledriver for all of 2014.. So it does seem they are focusing on APU's and Steamroller may not see desktop until DDR4 can be utilized, maybe they will be on excavator at that point? ..
 
Its good to have some clarification on the matter from someone who works in AMD. Up until the last 2 months all roadmaps said steamroller on am3+, so could change again next year.
 
"not EOL" doesn't mean we'll be receiving new CPUs.

It's obviously not EOL, since AMD have already confirmed it's their top-end part for 2014. We knew this, but the concern from enthusiasts is firstly whether we will see a new FX on AM3+ (we won't), and secondly whether we will see a new FX on a new socket after AM3+ is EOL (we might). This "confirmation" doesn't answer that at all.
 
"not EOL" doesn't mean we'll be receiving new CPUs.

It's obviously not EOL, since AMD have already confirmed it's their top-end part for 2014. We knew this, but the concern from enthusiasts is firstly whether we will see a new FX on AM3+ (we won't), and secondly whether we will see a new FX on a new socket after AM3+ is EOL (we might). This "confirmation" doesn't answer that at all.

^^ This.
 
Read that article, looked at the supposed 'fake' roadmap VS the 'legit' one, I noticed that both are identical expect the 'fake' roadmap just shows a bit more of the future.. Both roadmaps show nothing but Piledriver for all of 2014.. So it does seem they are focusing on APU's and Steamroller may not see desktop until DDR4 can be utilized, maybe they will be on excavator at that point? ..


A good point thinking about waiting till DDR4.
 
It's quite amazing just how many PC enthusiasts don't seem to grasp the common rules of business.

Money out = as little as possible vs money in = as much as possible.

If you spent the money on R&D for Bulldozer and sold enough CPUs to make it a viable business proposition, then did a controller refresh for Piledriver spending as little as possible and the chips sell then why on earth would you stop making them just because they can't compete?

Fact is that Pilredrivers are selling, simply because many do not want to pay Intel a premium. Why? because that premium has little to do with benefit for them.

IE - loads of money goes into R&D for Haswell and a premium is charged for it. But what are you paying for? a smaller die that can't be soldered so runs as hot as heck and was basically only done for laptops and portable devices. Why on earth would you pay a premium for that when you can pick up a 3570k or what not much cheaper?

Intel discontinue their own CPUs to make sure that their newer ones sell. However, they're not doing it for you they're doing it for them.

Most games simply do not need faster CPUs as they are being designed and produced on engines designed to run on slower older CPUs. Thus, older CPUs can still cut the mustard when gaming, and, cost much less.

AMD will only stop making AM3 CPUs when they stop making them money. It really is as crushingly simple as that and has little to do with what Intel do.
 
Last edited:
It's quite amazing just how many PC enthusiasts don't seem to grasp the common rules of business.

AMD will only stop making AM3 CPUs when they stop making them money. It really is as crushingly simple as that and has little to do with what Intel do.

Yet at the same time, AMD GPU division stops making 7990's even though they are a very successful line of cards with no replacement out and they are selling out like hell.

One could think they have business sense, or not.
 
Yet at the same time, AMD GPU division stops making 7990's even though they are a very successful line of cards with no replacement out and they are selling out like hell.

One could think they have business sense, or not.

GPU lifecycles are generally a lot shorter than CPUs and with the 290-series cards already out, I doubt the 7990 replacement is that far away. Selling out is mainly as a result of the recent mining craze. Even with ridiculously low prices, there were loads of 7990s around for sale for 2-3 months. The stock sell out has only happened in the last 2 weeks.
 
Yet at the same time, AMD GPU division stops making 7990's even though they are a very successful line of cards with no replacement out and they are selling out like hell.

One could think they have business sense, or not.

The 7990 was a complete flop. It only started selling when the price was dropped to a level that indicates clearing stock, not making money.

AMD released the 7990 into a market that knew Crossfire was buggered and charged a grand for it. They literally had to reinvent their drivers and cut the price in half to make it sell. A mistake, basically.
 
its an amazing card tho, when its paired with a FX83xx CPU in BF4 it just munches straight through it lol.

not sure about other games really, only played BF4 and tomb raider atm with it.
 
its an amazing card tho, when its paired with a FX83xx CPU in BF4 it just munches straight through it lol.

not sure about other games really, only played BF4 and tomb raider atm with it.

I'm sure it munches through any game just fine that supports Crossfire. That's almost all the modern ones.

I was considering one, but I heard SLI/Xfire don't work in windowed mode properly.
 
I'm sure it munches through any game just fine that supports Crossfire. That's almost all the modern ones.

I was considering one, but I heard SLI/Xfire don't work in windowed mode properly.

I know Nvidia have fixed it because I run windowed sometimes when I alt tab to get my emails and what not. Not sure about AMD though.
 
Back
Top Bottom