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

[mmj_uk]

Intel lowering prices on anything is Intel admitting they are over priced now and that AMD are competitive, Intel have more than enough mindshare and fanboys to keep the prices as high as they are today.

It's fairly obvious that they are overpriced at the moment but the market will pay it because AMD have been nowhere for years, there is NO alternative. Do you seriously think people are going to buy a £1000 6900K over a £500-600 SR7 if performance is as close as AMD says it is? the only situation I can see that happening is if Zen is an absolute stinker when overclocking and struggles to hit 3.6ghz or more and even then I wouldn't be surprised if 6900K came down to £800 or less.

 

[Caracus2k]

Has Intel ever done such an official demo with overclocked parts? "Here's a demo of two chips running at 4 GHz....except we won't be releasing any that run at 4 GHz except for boost" - sounds a bit dumb, no? It's pretty clear the point of the demo was to show relative IPC, not overclocking potential. We already know AMD hadn't finalised their boost frequencies by the time they did the demo. Perhaps that's because Ryzen doesn't clock as well as Broadwell-E, we don't know yet.

AMD down clocked the Intel CPU for the comparison surely they could have shown a cpu running at what will be the 'stock' frequencies for their retail chips?

The strong inference is that given AMD could not compare their top chip against a an intel chip run if at its stock frequency is that the top ryzen CPU won't clock as well as the CPU it was being compared against... Again willing and happy to be proved wrong but its not an unreasonable inference to make now is it... AMD want to show their product in its best light... if they could have demoed Ryzen against an intel cpu at stock they would have... I doubt the chips have improved THAT much since the ES ryzen cpus used in the demos last year

 

[Silent_Scone]

For sake of clarity, the 6900K wasn't down clocked, but it was purely running base. Which nobody would ever do frankly, but that ship has sailed now.

[EDIT] Irony considering I said clarity, it was actually running 3.4Ghz IIRC, that means it's not turbo, but 200Mhz above base clock lol. It was really random to be fair.

 

[nashathedog]

You challenged and the zen pricing thread delivers....



spoffle leads the charge.....



Ubersonic seems to think that the 6900k is only the price it is due to no competition so it and any comparable competing CPU should sell for circa £300 even adjusted from q9650 launch (2008) to 2017 ££'s that's around £350-375




Uriel thinks an AMD i7 6700 competing chip could cost £130... Can't see him thinking a 8c/16t cpu will cost much more than £350 if that's the case.....



And or course you can always rely on jigger....



Undesirable helps hammer home my point....


I assume you'll be retracting your statement that my post was hyperbole now????

The problem is that once the prices have been artificially raised by the lack of competition they tend to stay fairly high, We'll see this with the gpu's now too, AMD will want to take advantage of Intel and Nvidia's price hiking themselves and at best undercut them by a small amount, I'm guessing the 8 core will be in the 7-8 hundred price range while the big Vega anywhere from 650 to 800. They're going to jump on the boat not swim behind it.

 

[StarShock]

If you're talking about the ryzen presentation, the 6900k was running stock and the Ryzen was running locked 3.4ghz.

 

[Caracus2k]

For sake of clarity, the 6900K wasn't down clocked, but it was purely running base. Which nobody would ever do frankly, but that ship has sailed now.

[EDIT] Irony considering I said clarity, it was actually running 3.4Ghz IIRC, that means it's not turbo, but 200Mhz above base clock lol. It was really random to be fair.

I was referring to the 3.0Ghz test 6900k vs ryzen last year....

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3109...its-zen-cpu-can-compete-with-intels-best.html

Stock base frequency for the 6900k is 3.2Ghz....

https://ark.intel.com/m/products/94...-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz#@product/specifications

Are you referring to some subsequent demo?

If Ryzen is a food clocker don't you think the could have reached 3.2Ghz then?

Edit: I see the subsequent posted video (from
December?) was at 3.4Ghz, guess will just have to wait and see how the oc clocks turn out

 

[DragonQ]

AMD down clocked the Intel CPU for the comparison surely they could have shown a cpu running at what will be the 'stock' frequencies for their retail chips?

The strong inference is that given AMD could not compare their top chip against a an intel chip run if at its stock frequency is that the top ryzen CPU won't clock as well as the CPU it was being compared against... Again willing and happy to be proved wrong but its not an unreasonable inference to make now is it... AMD want to show their product in its best light... if they could have demoed Ryzen against an intel cpu at stock they would have... I doubt the chips have improved THAT much since the ES ryzen cpus used in the demos last year

They clocked it down for the demo in August. They ran it at stock speeds in the December demo, so clearly they've been ramping up clock speeds in that time. Comparing against retail stock clocks is clearly the most sensible way to go about a demo like that.

 

[Caracus2k]

The problem is that once the prices have been artificially raised by the lack of competition they tend to stay fairly high, We'll see this with the gpu's now too, AMD will want to take advantage of Intel and Nvidia's price hiking themselves and at best undercut them by a small amount, I'm guessing the 8 core will be in the 7-8 hundred price range while the big Vega anywhere from 650 to 800. They're going to jump on the boat not swim behind it.

I know its frowned on by some round these parts but when you take a look at some actual FACTS (intels financial reports) you can see that Intel's profit margins on their CPU line is likely to be in the region of 25% or less of their pre tax prices so I think some people are in la la land when they talk of intel's cpus costing 'double' what they should......

Spoiler

Let's examine your suggestion that some of intel's cpu's cost 'double' what they should.

Intels 2015 figures for the Client Computing Group which is the unit that deals with cpu sales for desktops laptops and phones....


$32.2 billion revenue out if a total intel revenue of $55.4 billion. Total net income for all of the business was $11.4 billion

http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=950391

So intel's revenue (not profit) in 2015 were just over 58% due to CPU sales.

Assume more profit is due to the cpu sales than other business so let's say 75% net profit is from cpu sales rather than a proportinal 58%

Thats $8.55 billion net profit on sales of $32.2 billion which is around 26.5% net profit as a proportion of my generous assumption for profit accounted for by intel cpu's. So you could say from my example the average intel cpu has a circa 25% profit component for intel in its pre tax price (note UK vat is 20%).

So your claim that intel sell cpu's at double cost price looks a bit unlikely (especially in the uk where 20% of the retail coat is due to vat alone and not down to intel) if their average profit margin on the average cpu was circa 25% not closer to well over 100% which would be the situation if intel were selling their cpu's at 'double the price they should be'

You will note that intel spent a not inconsiderable $20.1 billion on r+d and aquisitions in the same period.

The claim that intel have been sitting around doing nothing for years whilst massively overcharging customers is a myth. People on this forum are just too myopic to realise that most of the advancement's in the last 10 years have been in a far more relevant area.... power consumption

This is due to cpu frequencies stalling at around 4Ghz with silicon and increasing core counts quickly showing diminishing returns in most applications.

Simply put the big increases on cpu speeds with silicon cpu's have most likely already been obtained and its pure physics that has left the market leader (intel) only being able to offer small incremental increases in recent years

You have to remember that the r+ d costs for modern cpu's are a massive component of the total cost and that to keep up a high r+ d spend you need to have a healthy flow of money coming in...

 

[Silent_Scone]

If you're talking about the ryzen presentation, the 6900k was running stock and the Ryzen was running locked 3.4ghz.

Spoiler

I thought the Blender scene was running 3.4Ghz on the 6900K. Actually, that's namely due to some of the tech sites trying to do comparisons at that speed.

This is why you shouldn't trust tech journalists lol

 

[DragonQ]

I know its frowned on by some round these parts but when you take a look at some actual FACTS (intels financial reports) you can see that Intel's profit margins on their CPU line is likely to be in the region of 25% or less of their pre tax prices so I think some people are in la la land when they talk of intel's cpus costing 'double' what they should......


You have to remember that the r+ d costs for modern cpu's are a massive component of the total cost and that to keep up a high r+ d spend you need to have a healthy flow of money coming in...

They'd probably make more profit if instead of spending billions on R&D for 3-5% IPC improvement, they spend $0 on R&D for 0% IPC improvement.

I thought the Blender scene was running 3.4Ghz on the 6900K. Actually, that's namely due to some of the tech sites trying to do comparisons at that speed.

This is why you shouldn't trust tech journalists lol

I can't find any information on how far the i7-6900K boosts when all cores are loaded. Could be anywhere between 3.2 and 3.7 GHz. We also don't know if it throttled during the test due to heat, but considering the chips were neck-and-neck the whole way, I don't think that's the case. Otherwise we'd have seen Intel start ahead and AMD pull back at the end.

 

[Caracus2k]

They'd probably make more profit if instead of spending billions on R&D for 3-5% IPC improvement, they spend $0 on R&D for 0% IPC improvement.

Good thing you don't run a tech company.... Don't think it would last long with no r+d spend or staff on hand!

 

[DragonQ]

Good thing you don't run a tech company.... Don't think it would last long with no r+d spend of staff on hand!

Ha, true. In a real competitive market though, if you spent that much on R&D and came back with not much to show for it, you'd have a bad year financially. Intel doesn't because they can charge what they like to compensate. It wouldn't surprise me if they were getting a bit complacent in this regard but that's just speculation.

Everyone's complains with Intel all comes back to competition, or lack thereof.

 

[humbug]

It's fairly obvious that they are overpriced at the moment but the market will pay it because AMD have been nowhere for years, there is NO alternative. Do you seriously think people are going to buy a £1000 6900K over a £500-600 SR7 if performance is as close as AMD says it is? the only situation I can see that happening is if Zen is an absolute stinker when overclocking and struggles to hit 3.6ghz or more and even then I wouldn't be surprised if 6900K came down to £800 or less.

I do, and as always some shills will find something to justify Intel stratosphere pricing.

The 6900K has DDR4 and will probably have more PCIe lanes, perhaps a couple of other things that don't really matter but will be very loudly cited by a few as if its critically important and why Intel are #1 with AMD third rate junk.

Just watch.

 

[humbug]

If you're talking about the ryzen presentation, the 6900k was running stock and the Ryzen was running locked 3.4ghz.

Right, so the 6900K was running at ~3.7Ghz.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I do, and as always some shills will find something to justify Intel stratosphere pricing.

The 6900K has DDR4 and will probably have more PCIe lanes, perhaps a couple of other things that don't really matter but will be very loudly cited by a few as if its critically important and why Intel are #1 with AMD third rate junk.

Just watch.

lol, why are PCIE lanes not important?

 

[humbug]

lol, why are PCIE lanes not important?

I didn't say that.

 

[Silent_Scone]

A couple of 'other' things implies you did but I see what you meant now if that's not the case. They sure as hell are important!

 

[Caracus2k]

I do, and as always some shills will find something to justify Intel stratosphere pricing.

The 6900K has DDR4 and will probably have more PCIe lanes, perhaps a couple of other things that don't really matter but will be very loudly cited by a few as if its critically important and why Intel are #1 with AMD third rate junk.

Just watch.

From my figures based on factual intel financial figures a 6900k would drop from circa £1000 inc vat to £750 inc vat if intel sold with NO PROFIT COMPONENT hardly 'stratospheric' pricing

(if profit margin was equal across all lines which it isn't but it still gives you an idea.... We know that intel has actually sold some of its cheaper cpu's at a loss I.e some of their atom chips... Still its common practise in lots of industry to make bigger margins on your newer and/ or higher performance lines)

 

[JediFragger]

They do, but they do it across 128-bit registers requiring double the clock cycles. On the other hand this helps with power consumption and temperatures.

Thanks

At least it'll be capable of doing it, and may even bring sopme benefits in the programs that use it.

 

[humbug]

A couple of 'other' things implies you did but I see what you meant now if that's not the case. They sure as hell are important!

Here we go again with a Silent_Scone special, implying someone said something between lines that don't exists.

How does "A couple of other things" imply "PCIe lanes are not important" of course they are important, you can't run a GPU without them, what i actually said was the "6900K may have more PCIe lanes, that is not critically important"

Stop trolling.