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

[Pulseammo]

Pulseammo, I did e-mail Alpenfohn as I got an Alpenfohn Matterhorn waiting here for my new build, and as I haven't made up my mind if I wait for Zen or get something by end of the year (depending on finances) I thought I wanted to find out.

Cool, thanks for that! I think the K2 uses the same brackets as the Matterhorn so fingers crossed.

 

[mmj_uk]

Clock speed isn't everything, if i was to run my CPU at 4Ghz i doubt i would really notice the difference.

I think in the near future threads rather than single threaded performance is going to become dominant in importance even for gaming.

AMD and co have been saying that for 6 years already, if that's the case then why have they done a u-turn on their FX architecture? they could be releasing 8/12/16 core FX chips instead.

 

[humbug]

AMD and co have been saying that for 6 years already, if that's the case then why have they done a u-turn on their FX architecture? they could be releasing 8/12/16 core FX chips instead.

AMD have been saying what for 6 years?

That 10% more performance per thread is not always the be all and end all when you have 4 or more extra threads?

They are wise and they are doubling down on threads. FX83### = 8 threads, Zen = 16 threads.

 

[silversurfer]

Hope you right, I have a xeon with 16 threads but at a really low speed of about 2.3ghz. Its ok if all threads are being used and its going to be rubbish if new (demanding) apps come out now using just a few

 

[Bonjour]

AMD and co have been saying that for 6 years already, if that's the case then why have they done a u-turn on their FX architecture? they could be releasing 8/12/16 core FX chips instead.

How is it a u-turn, exactly, offering 16 threads?

 

[jigger]

AMD and co have been saying that for 6 years already, if that's the case then why have they done a u-turn on their FX architecture? they could be releasing 8/12/16 core FX chips instead.

Because the server market demands lower power processing. AMD are heading in the right direction though. Core count is generally more important then clock speed.

 

[Beren]

This is my major bugbear with CPUS. It's that deciding between many cores, and core speed.

Like many I both game and render videos. So there isn't a CPU "for me". I would be sacrificing something what ever I do.

I guess what would be most awesome is a smart chip / programming that has 8 Cores and 16 Threads at a lower speed for rendering and can then switch four off completely if there is a low thread task to increase the thermal envelope and boost speeds right up on the remaining cores.

That way you could get a 3.5 GHZ * 16 for rendering and perhaps 4.5 * 8 for lower threaded tasks.

I don't know if that is even possible but it would be awesome if it is.

 

[Pants]

Better ipc inherently increases performance across workloads. It's so short sighted to call it single threaded performance.

It's still somewhat mutually exclusive though. If you wan't insane IPC then the cores are bigger and thirstier, so where you might have otherwise had 4 cores you now have 2.

The IPC will offset the core count loss but not entirely otherwise we would all be rocking single core x64 beasts with 1 compute unit in our graphic cards.

 

[Pants]

I guess what would be most awesome is a smart chip / programming that has 8 Cores and 16 Threads at a lower speed for rendering and can then switch four off completely if there is a low thread task to increase the thermal envelope and boost speeds right up on the remaining cores.

That way you could get a 3.5 GHZ * 16 for rendering and perhaps 4.5 * 8 for lower threaded tasks.

I don't know if that is even possible but it would be awesome if it is.

I might be wrong but I think IBM Power chips can be configured for thread count, fewer threads increase IPC but more increase overall multi-threaded performance for lighter workloads. Maybe.

 

[DragonQ]

Hope you right, I have a xeon with 16 threads but at a really low speed of about 2.3ghz. Its ok if all threads are being used and its going to be rubbish if new (demanding) apps come out now using just a few

Well this is where Turbo Boost is actually useful, although it could be used even more aggressively. For example, it'd be cool if you had such a CPU that could go to 4+ GHz over 1-4 cores but then when 5+ are in use the clock speed ramps down, finally to 2.3 GHz or whatever when all 8 are in use.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I saw this slide over on AT forums:

Spoiler

So a 40% improvement in performance per watt over Excavator core for core??

Edit!!

Zen being previewed in two weeks time too:

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon

 

[humbug]

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon

.......for an exclusive advance preview of our new “Zen” CPU ahead of its 2017 Q1 launch.

This is the first time the public will be able to try it themselves and see what it’s capable of. If you’re serious about gaming, this is an event you do not want to miss.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

Breaking it down to the most basic consideration - Intel own the market, therefor Zen will flop. Sad but true

 

[chilipeppersc]

Come on Zen. Why do they not just let people know what is coming and make us speculate, knowing that we will know eventually anyway, and if it's going to be an obvious flop... Why do they bother with it???

Madness

 

[mmj_uk]

It's still very misleading because Zen won't be clocked anywhere near as high as the FX series was, if 40% IPC is to be believed then a 3ghz Zen is going to be roughly the same as an FX9590 @ 4.7ghz, so given that clockspeeds are rumoured to be circa ~3.2ghz you're only likely to see a significant gain when overclocking (assuming Zen overclocks to 4ghz+).

 

[DragonQ]

It's still very misleading because Zen won't be clocked anywhere near as high as the FX series was, if 40% IPC is to be believed then a 3ghz Zen is going to be roughly the same as an FX9590 @ 4.7ghz, so given that clockspeeds are rumoured to be circa ~3.2ghz you're only likely to see a significant gain when overclocking (assuming Zen overclocks to 4ghz+).

You're forgetting about the benefit of having "full" cores with SMT rather than the previous modular design though. Should be much faster with floating point calculations especially. There weren't any 8-module FX chips but we will get 8c/16t Zen chips.

 

[humbug]

It's still very misleading because Zen won't be clocked anywhere near as high as the FX series was, if 40% IPC is to be believed then a 3ghz Zen is going to be roughly the same as an FX9590 @ 4.7ghz, so given that clockspeeds are rumoured to be circa ~3.2ghz you're only likely to see a significant gain when overclocking (assuming Zen overclocks to 4ghz+).

Its not misleading, your confused, +40% IPC over Excavator which is already 20% over FX CPU so +60% total.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think people need to also realise the purported Zen leaks are for the 8C/16T model which might be one of the 95W TDP versions too(most likely a 125W TDP model I suspect).

The thing is the Core i7 6900K which is 8C/16T has a 140W TDP and only runs at 3.2GHZ to 3.7GHZ:

https://ark.intel.com/products/94196/Intel-Core-i7-6900K-Processor-20M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz

Remember,Zen is meant to be an SOC too,so the TDP rating also includes a whole lot of chipset related functionality too.

So the current Zen leaks at 3.2GHZ to 3.5GHZ are well within the clockspeed ranges for the Intel CPUs they are competing with.

 

[~>Dg<~]

Come on Zen. Why do they not just let people know what is coming and make us speculate, knowing that we will know eventually anyway, and if it's going to be an obvious flop... Why do they bother with it???

Madness

its obvious why because its slower.if it was faster than big intel chips you would be hearing about it.promotion is massive for sales.why would you not promote a faster cpu before release.its because its slower than the intel counterpart.

so its going to be slightly slower than intel counter part at a cheaper price.basically same as every other amd cpu release for last 15 ish years.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

its obvious why because its slower.if it was faster than big intel chips you would be hearing about it.promotion is massive for sales.why would you not promote a faster cpu before release.its because its slower than the intel counterpart.

so its going to be slightly slower than intel counter part at a cheaper price.basically same as every other amd cpu release for last 15 ish years.

Apart from the Athlon,Athlon 64 and Athlon X2 which were faster. I suppose you were one of those people who bought a P4 Williamite for desktop - I was wondering who bought one of those!! Did you replace it with one of those nice Presshot..sorry..Prescott chips??