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

[tyler_jrb]

^agreed. Intels word and a little bribing? Will still see them sell more than AMD even in they are offering the same performance for 50% less cost. This has happened before.

But one good thing is intels current lineup are going to look silly in regards to pricing, there ARE going to have to be some price drops once zen is released.

 

[Jono8]

I just hope this forces Intel to improve IPC much more than they have done in recent years. I also hope AMD can develop and improve Zen over the next few years to keep up the competition .

This looks like it is going to be the kick up the butt that the CPU market needed to get things going again.

 

[Scramz]

Will be interesting to see if any big OEM's pick up Ryzen chips, they are decent TDP, offer decent performance, more cores, good chance that you will start seeing them in machines i reckon.

I think big OEM's are the key to AMD gaining the market share back. Without them, it won't be going to the masses that have no idea about computers.

What if Apple picked Ryzen up on macbooks.... then again that won't happen for at least 4 years due to Apples 'behind the times' hardware.

 

[d_brennen]

So the 8 core 1700 1700x 1800x are they all the same apart from clock speed?

X models likely better silicon, obviously by how much is anyone's guess at the moment. No XFR on on the non-X

 

[harney]

I just hope this forces Intel to improve IPC much more than they have done in recent years. I also hope AMD can develop and improve Zen over the next few years to keep up the competition .

This looks like it is going to be the kick up the butt that the CPU market needed to get things going again.

It would not surprise me they have all ways had great IPC test chips sitting there to give to the world but with no real competition all we got was the good old drip feed cpu's year by year

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I had a little thought after watching that PCPER video - David Kanter suspected AMD due to their lack of experience of using SMT,might actually not get as good results from using it as Intel. If this is the case,that might mean if SMT scales worse on Ryzen,they would need to up per core performance if they get close to Broadwell level CPU performance overall.

It will be interesting if this happens to be the case.

Edit!!

OTH,if they get better SMT scaling it goes the other way.

 

[Scramz]

I had a little thought after watching that PCPER video - David Kanter suspected AMD due to their lack of experience of using SMT,might actually not get as good results from using it as Intel. If this is the case,that might mean if SMT scales worse on Ryzen,they would need to up per core performance if they get close to Broadwell level CPU performance overall.

It will be interesting if this happens to be the case.

People have been saying that if Ryzens SMT performance is up there with Intel HT then it would be one of the greatest CPU engineering marvels in the game. I can see where they are coming from.

Plus possibly jumping 4-5 generations worth of performance in one hit.

 

[FloatingPoint]

Motherboards so far look great, any mATX one's announced or leaked yet or are they likely to be later on this year with the APU's?

What happened to the forum design?

 

[DragonQ]

People have been saying that if Ryzens SMT performance is up there with Intel HT then it would be one of the greatest CPU engineering marvels in the game. I can see where they are coming from.

Plus possibly jumping 4-5 generations worth of performance in one hit.

Yes, Intel have had well over a decade to perfect SMT, this is AMD's first attempt. I think at this point we can say it's pretty incredible what AMD has done here, even if it does turn out that official benchmarks are a bit below AMD's cherry picked ones or what's been leaked so far.

 

[SiDeards73]

Someones done a chart of the Firestrike scores, not sure where the infos from, some massive truckload of salt required

Spoiler

Edited to add a link to the Google Spreadsheet they used to math this up lol https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...bVhCq-wWU_Q4tWncQZWkiQo47k/edit#gid=688432193

 

[melmac]

Compared to the current lot of AMD stuff, yes, loads and loads of things, but no, they look to be pretty much on par with Z270 in terms of motherboard features. The one really interesting CPU feature is XFR, which if it works seems to be similar to NVidias boost technology, and the CPU will supposedly overclock its self based on power and cooling available.

Thank you. XFR does sound interesting.

 

[DragonQ]

Someones done a chart of the Firestrike scores, not sure where the infos from, some massive truckload of salt required

Spoiler

Edited to add a link to the Google Spreadsheet they used to math this up lol https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...bVhCq-wWU_Q4tWncQZWkiQo47k/edit#gid=688432193

These kinds of charts are really annoying because they easily mislead. Taking a multithreaded score and dividing by the number of cores to give a "per core" score is stupid - it just shows that the benchmark doesn't scale 100% per core, it doesn't tell you anything about the CPU. The fact that the 4 core chips have better per-core performance at the same clock than 6/8 core chips in this particular benchmark is meaningless.

With the number of leaks we have now, I think it's safe to say Ryzen is around Kaby Lake IPC or even better on average.

 

[dl8860]

Seeing as one of the CPUs in that comparison doesn't exist (6960X), and there's no source whatsoever, I think that'll go in the 'suspicious' pile.

 

[SiDeards73]

Seeing as one of the CPUs in that comparison doesn't exist (6960X), and there's no source whatsoever, I think that'll go in the 'suspicious' pile.

Yeah if you read the Reddit thread it was pointed out and the doc author apologised for the mistake I think it was suppose to be a 5 and not a 6

 

[StarShock]

These kinds of charts are really annoying because they easily mislead. Taking a multithreaded score and dividing by the number of cores to give a "per core" score is stupid - it just shows that the benchmark doesn't scale 100% per core, it doesn't tell you anything about the CPU. The fact that the 4 core chips have better per-core performance at the same clock than 6/8 core chips in this particular benchmark is meaningless.

With the number of leaks we have now, I think it's safe to say Ryzen is around Kaby Lake IPC or even better on average.

Yeah, seen a few of these now, and at best they're taking like one score on the ryzen and just extrapolating the rest of the chart. Willing to bet that in several cases they're working from someone else's number.

What we've seen all looks very good, but so far I've yet to see any benchmark that I'm willing to take too seriously. Hopefully we'll get real stuff soon.

 

[mmj_uk]

Intel have been caught by the danglies pretty much, if the performance being leaked is reported to be anywhere near the truth, Intel can slash all they like, they will have upset a lot of people who suddenly see them for what they are, to be fair to Intel they have had no competition so they could keep putting up prices, but AMD is showing that you can potentially have comparable performance for much cheaper, and making Intel look bad in the process.

If Intel drop prices, they look bad for not doing so earlier as people question why they couldnt have done it when they purchased their cpu etc
If Intel Dont drop prices, they lose sales to people who would have bought their cpus but will gamble on getting more cores for their money

Most interesting to see will be how it affects Intels Halo CPU's like the 6950x and 6900 etc, if at all, cos tbh i think 6900 is now irrelevant at its current price, even at half its current price its going to find a hard sale.

I think most people already realise that Intel have been heavily price gouging in recent years so I don't see why price drops would suddenly make them look bad. That's why I've always laughed when people said that if AMD went bankrupt Intel would rob us all blind, they've been doing it for years already. You need a competitive market to bring/keep prices down.

 

[Relentless81]

Does anyone have a link to a RAM guide for Ryzen/AM4 please?

Need to get my head around what RAM I want and I never looked into DDR 4 in the past

 

[jigger]

I think most people already realise that Intel have been heavily price gouging in recent years so I don't see why price drops would suddenly make them look bad. That's why I've always laughed when people said that if AMD went bankrupt Intel would rob us all blind, they've been doing it for years already. You need a competitive market to bring/keep prices down.

Intel have been price hiking for some time now. What most people don't understand is that Intel are massive and no one with ever be able to compete with them. Intel simply don't have to lower prices at this end of the market.

 

[Hagar]

Does anyone have a link to a RAM guide for Ryzen/AM4 please?

Need to get my head around what RAM I want and I never looked into DDR 4 in the past

Neither have I currently, but I am interested in G Skill 3600 c16 sets

 

[AlamoX]

X models likely better silicon, obviously by how much is anyone's guess at the moment. No XFR on on the non-X

my guess on it is that the X is XFR enabeled for automatic overclock, the non X is manual overclock, and the Binned chips will be 1800X.
so to me unless you put your rig under water, you are better off with 1700X.
also need to see how good this XFR is, would it push clock really high or is it gonna push half way then leave the rest manual, in which case 1700 might be worth considering.