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

[Deleted member 651465]

When you actually get one THEN you can correct others IF they are indeed wrong in their assertions, right now despite your claims and assertions you do not have one, right now you know the same as the rest of us. nothing.

You raise a valid point, but let's not make this personal.

On topic: I hope that AMD puts the cat amongst the pigeons. Competition is good and a competitive chip that's well below Intels pricing structure is only good for everyone. It's been years since a good bit of competition came around.. I just hope it's not another "we're the budget choice" moment.

 

[Panos]

So I have found at least 5 UK e-tailers listing the Ryzen CPU's and pricing. The interesting thing is these e-tailers nearly always price the products higher than actual costs which was also the case with a monitor I recently purchased.

Would be interesting if the release price is actually lower than these leaks. Exciting times.

We need OCUK see the stuff on the market and order, but......

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You raise a valid point, but let's not make this personal.

On topic: I hope that AMD puts the cat amongst the pigeons. Competition is good and a competitive chip that's well below Intels pricing structure is only good for everyone. It's been years since a good bit of competition came around.. I just hope it's not another "we're the budget choice" moment.

Yep,and this is what happened between 1995 and 2007,which was a golden decade for great price/performance CPUs. We had not only AMD and Intel but loads of companies trying to push each other and we had big performance jumps too as companies were forced to innovate.

 

[Silent_Scone]

When you actually get one THEN you can correct others IF they are indeed wrong in their assertions, right now despite your claims and assertions you do not have one, right now you know the same as the rest of us. nothing.

You raise a valid point, but let's not make this personal.

On topic: I hope that AMD puts the cat amongst the pigeons. Competition is good and a competitive chip that's well below Intels pricing structure is only good for everyone. It's been years since a good bit of competition came around.. I just hope it's not another "we're the budget choice" moment.

Only it's not valid; as you don't need to have possession of a particular CPU to understand how vendors operate lol, which is what I was replying to.

But don't let that get in the way of the discussion! In no way have I been trying to cast defamation on Zen, just being realistic.

 

[humbug]

Only it's not valid; as you don't need to have possession of a particular CPU to understand how vendors operate lol, which is what I was replying to.

The vendor you are referring to in this case must be AMD, what do you claim to know about the way they operate that the rest of us don't, and what about that makes you think you have the right to correct us?

 

[ubersonic]

Competition is good and a competitive chip that's well below Intels pricing structure is only good for everyone. It's been years since a good bit of competition came around.. I just hope it's not another "we're the budget choice" moment.

Don't you mean AMD's "we're a premium brand too!" moment?

Them acknowledging they are the budget option and taking advantage of it is where they have historically had the most success (K6, Athlons, etc).

 

[Silent_Scone]

The vendor you are referring to in this case must be AMD, what do you claim to know about the way they operate that the rest of us don't, and what about that makes you think you have the right to correct us?

It is what it is, sorry.

We're talking about motherboard vendors. As I've already said, the platform is brand new. Time is needed for the platform to mature, and even the bigger brands have had little time/resources to reverse engineer anything.

I'm sure they'd love to be able to provide you with ITX boards slap bang on the day...

If it was my intention to wind you up, this is where I'd tell you there won't be any at all; for some made up reason with the trace routing. But that would be trolling

 

[humbug]

It is what it is, sorry.

What is what? don't be sorry, just stop presenting yourself with more provenance than the rest of us, your text of this forum is as worthless and as speculative as what we all write.

I'm off for some dinner....

 

[Silent_Scone]

What is what? don't be sorry, just stop presenting yourself with more provenance than the rest of us, your text of this forum is as worthless and as speculative as what we all write.

I'm off for some dinner....

Good, maybe you'll digest that easier lol

 

[gavinh87]

It is what it is, sorry.

We're talking about motherboard vendors. As I've already said, the platform is brand new. Time is needed for the platform to mature, and even the bigger brands have had little time/resources to reverse engineer anything.

I'm sure they'd love to be able to provide you with ITX boards slap bang on the day...

If it was my intention to wind you up, this is where I'd tell you there won't be any at all; for some made up reason with the trace routing. But that would be trolling

Enlighten us on why motherboard manufacturers need to reverse engineer anything?

 

[Klo]

What is what? don't be sorry, just stop presenting yourself with more provenance than the rest of us, your text of this forum is as worthless and as speculative as what we all write.

I'm off for some dinner....

Just ignore him and don't react, its what he wants.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Enlighten us on why motherboard manufacturers need to reverse engineer anything?

For the same reason they do anything else. How do you think things like T-Topology came about? It wasn't at a cake sale lol

Just ignore him and don't react, its what he wants.

Yeah, heaven forbid you might learn something. Maybe you can step up and correct me, put me in my place.

 

[Stretlow]

Think we got an hour today without the kids.... ahh well better than nowt

 

[Armageus]

Enlighten us on why motherboard manufacturers need to reverse engineer anything?

Maybe they only get samples after it's launched as well

Or

They don't given that AMD will provide them with all the specs they need for the platform/chipset. It's more likely that the ITX chipset isn't ready, or has had to be respun due to a bug (e.g Intel sata ports way back when)

 

[Beren]

Yesterday was a good day, we had a heap of actual news - today, not so much.

I actually enjoy reading some of silent_scone's posts. I don't believe anything I read here outright but put together with other sources it adds to the picture you can build as to what is going on. The discussion in this thread devolving to ridiculing each other is irritating, pointless and just lowers the quality of information. Can we all stop wasting quite so much space on it?

One thing that is evident - the prices have stayed up in this thread for a long while - normally posting them would have earned someone a warning or a holiday. It makes me think OCUK are not unhappy for people to see them... which either means that they 100% know they are rubbish or that they are not a threat to where OCUK are going to price them. I guess 3 weeks to find out which is right!

Also - Knowing that AMD has significantly less density than Intel but is competing with Skylake on IPC bodes really well, not just now but for there being significant room for iterative development as the process matures... but then Sunderland compete with Chelsea in the Premier league... they are not exactly equals though!

I am genuinely excited to see the benchmarks on this one when they release - I genuinely think we are going to see a number of big shocks in the gaming market this year caused by AMD.
1) Ryzen - I think there is going to significant uptake from frustrated 2500k and 4770k and the like users and that AMD are going to capture a reasonable share of the prosumer and upper end gaming market.
2) Vega - I have absolutely no expectations about Vega at this stage, but I am hoping they are at least going to beat the 1080ti and push nVidia. I think we are going to be really close to proper 4k and VR gaming systems this year.
3) Ryzen and Vega based APU's coming 2nd half of the year. This is personally where I am excited, I think there could be a new way to enter the budget gaming market this year with very significant improvements over previous APU's. Budget gaming laptops are going to see a very significant boost as well - all of which is just awesome for me with 2 kids and a very small IT budget.
4) I am hoping that despite the fact that I want AMD to have an awesome 2017 that Intel once they have some real competition start to really push and show strong improvements again.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Maybe they only get samples after it's launched as well

Or

They don't given that AMD will provide them with all the specs they need for the platform/chipset. It's more likely that the ITX chipset isn't ready, or has had to be respun due to a bug (e.g Intel sata ports way back when)

Pretty low blow for a Don?

You can make up your own fiction about an alleged chipset, sure. Vendors simply aren't ready. Or willing at this point.

In fact just take a look here from CES (I know how some of you need to hear it from someone with a face before you'll lower the pitch forks).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/commen..._this_now_that_ces_is_done/dc7j5hl/?context=3

If you're going to put an ITX product out there, it requires time and resources (if you want it done right). The top brands at an engineering level want to make it worth their while. Having the highest DRAM ratio support for example, does actually sell boards. Believe it or not...

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Maybe they only get samples after it's launched as well

Or

They don't given that AMD will provide them with all the specs they need for the platform/chipset. It's more likely that the ITX chipset isn't ready, or has had to be respun due to a bug (e.g Intel sata ports way back when)

Its a historical thing going back to even the earlier AM and FM platforms. Even with Llano which was based on pretty tried and tested tech,it took a very long time for them to get mini-ITX motherboards out,and it was the same with FM2,etc. Me and quite a few other people I know waited and waited for FM1 based mini-ITX motherboards and got fed up and just got something else.

I mean if you look at AM3+ it only ever had one 970 based mATX motherboard really available late in the day,yet you had PCs from the likes of HP having them way before that.

This was mentioned earlier in the thread:

MSI, Biostar haven't made any negative declaration yet about X300 mITX boards.

Gigabyte, Asrock and Asus have said they will produce them, only if the Ryzen CPU sales are good enough.

The problem is that hints at a number of companies not even bothering yet and that is not really good news,and AMD probably not pushing enough. But the problem is that instead we get a 1000 slightly different versions of the same X370 or B350 motherboard released by each company. Its like when I looked at some B250 one recently and they had like three or four similar ones with different colours,etc but more or less the same functionality.

If they leave it 9 months after launch(yes this is quite plausible as it has happened before),it basically means Coffee Lake is around the corner,and that negates any real advantage AMD will have,especially if Intel can increase clockspeeds and IPC further,ie,high clocked 6C CPU against a lower clocked 8C one.

If it is like three months to four months it does not matter,but mini-ITX is increasingly popular and AMD was heavily pushing mini-ITX type builds when the Fury X,Fury Nano and Radeon Pro Duo were launched.

The problem is if AMD snoozes they just give another area where Intel can exploit. Its no point going on how Ryzen is power efficient when its in a huge ATX motherboard.

 

[Spyhop]

The various clickbait model listings have shown Ryzen models with both "X" and "Pro" designations.

Do you think "Pro" might signify ECC RAM support? Afterall, AMD are designating their workstation graphics cards "Pro".

 

[mmj_uk]

I would've thought ECC would be limited to the Opteron range.

I wonder if AMD have gone a similar route to their graphics cards and they are setting a TDP hard limit? the much cheaper non-X model listed is 65W versus 95W for the more expensive X editions. What if for example you get an overclocking control allowing you to increase TDP up to a maximum of 50% extra and when the processor hits the TDP limit they throttle clock speed to stay within the limit like their GPU's do? that might explain why base clock speeds are suddenly upwards of 4ghz and no turbo is listed.

edit: It'd also explain the weird shenanigans in the launch event when they had turbo disabled for Zen.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would've thought ECC would be limited to the Opteron range.

I wonder if AMD have gone a similar route to their graphics cards and they are setting a TDP hard limit? the non-X model listed is 65W versus 95W for the more expensive X editions. What if you get an overclocking control allowing you to increase TDP up to +50% extra and when the processor hits the TDP limit they throttle clock speed to stay within the limit like their GPU's do? that might explain why base clock speeds are suddenly upwards of 4ghz and no turbo is listed.

I think there was some noise in some of the released bumpf about they were trying to do something similar to the non-deterministic Turbo in Nvidia cards,ie,as long as you have decent enough cooling it will boost higher than the stock clockspeeds.

At least that is what I remember.

Edit!!

Yep,XFR:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10907...nvme-neural-net-prediction-25-mhz-boost-steps

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/10...-017.jpg?_ga=1.227669333.919803675.1450708291