Caporegime
This ^^^^
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*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***
- Thread starter Boomstick777
- Start date
This ^^^^
Caporegime
Then AMD anti-PR was asked for some laptops and then sent out a Kaveri system with RAM running in dual channel,and then 4 Carrizo system ALL running in SINGLE channel.
Due to the lack of memory bandwidth all the Carrizo systems look a downgrade over the Kaveri one they tested for IGP performance.
Then the Lenovo Y700 which is one the HIGHEST end AMD laptops and even comes with a 1080p Freesync IPS screen ,AMD manages to send a faulty pre-production version:
http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2015/12/42f0ff6d-4ad5-42b9-acc6-c20b72504211.PNG
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38012067&postcount=114
FFS,AMD has enough clout with Lenovo to have a 1080P IPS panel which is Freesync validated. Far more difficult and costly than dual channel RAM.
You can't even make it up.
AMD needs to stop making mistakes like this - they can't afford to do this with Zen. First reviews will be the most important ones - sending out buggy laptops and ones not running dual channel RAM will only make their laptops look worse in reviews,which means less people wanting to buy them.
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Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
You presume that other people couldn't effect the article, wonder who supplies Anandtechs server hardware 
Seriously though, it's no surprise. That it can work with already existing motherboards, due to the lateness in the day a lot of OEMs would probably decide not to release new laptops with Carizo at all, allowing them to use a single channel already existing motherboard may be the only reason some of these laptops exist at all.
Thing about laptops is, most people don't buy them for performance, it's cost/battery life/feels okay when browsing the web. 99% of people couldn't tell you if there was a single channel 15W Carizo or a 45W Skylake quad core with HT something or other because they buy it and spend their time on imgur or reddit.
It doesn't look great but ultimately throwing money into marketing when a lot of websites are biased anyway, is pretty much worthless with this product range. Spend millions trying to get fair reviews of a dead end cpu that actually isn't great..... or save the money and spend it when it comes to Zen reviews?
Seriously though, it's no surprise. That it can work with already existing motherboards, due to the lateness in the day a lot of OEMs would probably decide not to release new laptops with Carizo at all, allowing them to use a single channel already existing motherboard may be the only reason some of these laptops exist at all.
Thing about laptops is, most people don't buy them for performance, it's cost/battery life/feels okay when browsing the web. 99% of people couldn't tell you if there was a single channel 15W Carizo or a 45W Skylake quad core with HT something or other because they buy it and spend their time on imgur or reddit.
It doesn't look great but ultimately throwing money into marketing when a lot of websites are biased anyway, is pretty much worthless with this product range. Spend millions trying to get fair reviews of a dead end cpu that actually isn't great..... or save the money and spend it when it comes to Zen reviews?
Soldato
Well done. You read the first page of the 20 page article and snipped out one bit that lacking context seems to support an attack on AMD's PR department. Here's something explicitly stated by the article: Pressure from OEMs to only have to design one system forced AMD to make a pin-compatible version of their 35W part to the 15W part. As the 15W part can only handle single-channel memory and the pin-compatibility forces the same limitations on the 35W part, that means that for the most part OEMs are buying a single-channel only chip even when they do buy the 35W part. Almost never are they actually giving Carrizo its full potential because they want to cut design costs so they buy the crippled version.
That means even when you can get the 35W Carrizo part, it's hard to know whether they've hobbled it by enforcing single-channel memory.
The article says - with a lot of detailed support - that the poor performance by Carrizo in the real world is largely an issue with OEMs not letting it reach its potential. That is the out and out conclusion of the article. Your weird summary of that however, is "AMD PR department screwed up". How did they? I've just read a detailed and interesting article that says a lot of very positive things about AMD and that largely the problems are the way OEMs use them. That leaves any unbiased reader of the article with a positive impression of AMD.
Soldato
I can imagine CAT's first day on the job. Boldly walking into the boardroom with their solution: "The mistake you've all been making is having OEMs put our chips in bargain-basement systems. As leaders of a company with over 1.5b market capitalization who've been in this business for years, you probably didn't know this. So just get on the phone to Lenovo and tell them to stop doing what they're doing. You're welcome - when do I get paid, by the way?"
Caporegime
You mean like the fact the Lenovo Y700 AMD PR actually supplied is a pre-production version which does not even have final revision hardware?
Here,look:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38012067&postcount=114
The laptop can run dual channel and it was confirmed by another poster.
There are Carrizo laptops out there running dual channel memory since people have run them,so all the lame excuses are that. At least sample ONE dual channel Carrizo laptop to match the DUAL CHANNEL Kaveri laptop AMD sampled to Anandtech too.
Also,if you took your shades off maybe you would see the Y700 even has a FreeSync validated display.
So Lenovo,goes to all that trouble with AMD to validate that display,etc for a company who has a tiny mobile dGPU marketshare and then suddenly all the Carizzo laptops are using a single channel memory controller.
I think this smacks of excuse making by AMD.
AMD PR and marketing makes repeated mistakes and the average Joe looks at these things in initial reviews and then things AMD products are worse than they are and goes and buys Intel and Nvidia. AMD needs to up its PR game,and excuses from fans won't help them.
Since AMD makes BOTH CPUs and GPUs,any fallout from bad PR wrecks both sides of the company with regards to its reputation.
Look at the last three GPU launches:
1.)R9 290 series
Decide to add a quiet fan mode,which unsurprisingly throttles. This OFC should have been tested in more detail by AMD and even detailed it would happen(or made reviewers MORE aware it would happen). Que Nvidia PR finding this out and sending free cards out to reviewers who unsurprisingly test the cards in quiet mode making them look like they throttle 100% of the time.
But then 18 months earlier,German and French review sites showed similar throttling issues with Nvidia Kepler based cards,so much so that review sites changed the way they reviewed cards(only single liners about this from a few sites,even though it was a issue if you think about it). Did AMD PR even try to exploit it like Nvidia did,when the GCN cards did not have this issue?? Apparently not.
So,que most average gamers thinking AMD cards run hot and throttle and Nvidia ones running cool and not throttling.
2.)The R9 285 launch
AMD PR sampled the MSI and Sapphire R9 285 to many websites. Only problem the former had by far the worse power consumption of all R9 285 cards. Considering all the GTX750TI hype it made the R9 285 a backwards looking step.
Yet,in reality the other R9 285 cards(like the Gigabyte R9 285) actually were an improvement in performance/watt over the previous generations like the R9 280 but AMD PR screwed it up.
3.)Fury launch
The less said about it the better.
4.)CD using TressFX as the basis of Purehair.
No AMD PR statements(per a vague Twitter post after launch) and nothing on their website.
Wait,Nvidia then again trolls AMD saying how great the tech Crystal Dynamics developed,when it was based on AMD tech.
5.)Not sampling a single Carrizo laptop running in dual channel,even though they do exist.
Yes,AMD PR does a great job of selling its products. Thats why they are making so much money each year and even when they have some decent products,people still will get an Nvidia card over even better AMD ones,etc.
Que,all the fans saying don't criticise them.
Everybody will see all the negativity around AMD products and just not bother buying their CPUs and GPUs. In all my years I have not seen such a strong brand strength towards Nvidia for example,and that's when AMD has decent dGPUs along most of its stack,and its getting increasingly hard to get people to even buy their GPUs,even when the AMD ones are faster and will probably have a greater lifespan.
It worries me that even if AMD has awesome products in Polaris and Zen they might miss on the details at launch.
AMD is being outsold 4 to 1 on graphics cards alone. This is worse than the years of the HD2000 and HD3000 series,with them being walloped by the 8800 series. By the time of the HD3870,ATI could only trade blows with the 4th tier 9600GT!
AMD has a far better relative stack now when compared to the HD2000 and HD3000 years. There is something radically going wrong with how people perceive them.
The PR needs to be more proactive and on the ball,like their competitors are and being nice towards competitors won't help them longterm.
They can't keep playing the victim.
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Caporegime
Also the silly comments about not criticising AMD PR since they are people employed by a billion+ dollar company.
Its like saying we should never criticise politicians for anything since they are helping rule a country with a GDP of a trillion plus pounds,and unless we are politicians then shut up. Also don't bother voting since none of us know how to rule a country,so let the politicians do what they think is best.
Don't criticse the banks and the banking system for their issues - unless you are in the industry what do you know??
Don't criticise a bug budget Hollywood film or series unless you are a director or sceenwriter yourself.
Don't criticise the food at an expensive restaurant unless you are a Michelin star rated chef with a multi-million pound restaurant business and so on.
Next time the trains are delayed don't moan at the train company or Network Rail. What do you know - you don't have your own rail franchise.
Next time your delivery is delayed or lost don't moan at the courier company unless you have worked in the industry. What do you know?
In fact next time you RMA a computer part and it takes too long and you get a worse replacement back,don't criticise the company. What do you know - you don't work in the industry.
Its like saying we should never criticise politicians for anything since they are helping rule a country with a GDP of a trillion plus pounds,and unless we are politicians then shut up. Also don't bother voting since none of us know how to rule a country,so let the politicians do what they think is best.
Don't criticse the banks and the banking system for their issues - unless you are in the industry what do you know??
Don't criticise a bug budget Hollywood film or series unless you are a director or sceenwriter yourself.
Don't criticise the food at an expensive restaurant unless you are a Michelin star rated chef with a multi-million pound restaurant business and so on.
Next time the trains are delayed don't moan at the train company or Network Rail. What do you know - you don't have your own rail franchise.
Next time your delivery is delayed or lost don't moan at the courier company unless you have worked in the industry. What do you know?
In fact next time you RMA a computer part and it takes too long and you get a worse replacement back,don't criticise the company. What do you know - you don't work in the industry.
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Soldato
Where did anybody make any such comment? All that a couple of people said (me being one of them) is that maybe there's a little bit more to resolving this situation than a PR department having not noticed that their chips are put in bargain basement laptops; and that the idea you know better because you're pointing this out, is daft. The AMD article has an extended section on how this "Negative Feedback Loop" (their words) could possibly be escaped from and nowhere in it is the suggestion that it's just a case of a PR department noticing this. Yes, yes - being pressured into designing a pin-compatible 35W version of Carrizo is a mistake by AMD's marketing department you're absolutely right.
Well actually, no. You've weirdly honed in on one thing from the first page of the article that actually supports the point the article is making.Fact is, you've taken an in-depth article the conclusion of which was overtly that Carrizo has good potential but suffers from OEM design decisions and OEM pressure, and tried to spin it as "AMD PR is so sloppy..." etc. with a couple of very context-lacking quotes. You seem incensed that they weren't testing dual-channel configurations? Why? Do you require proof that dual-channel would make a huge difference here? Obviously you don't because the fact that it does is the basis of your attacks. Do you think anyone else here needs proof that dual-channel would make a big difference? No, I don't think anyone on this forum is so unaware of that. Do you think that hypothetical people out there are being misled into thinking by this article that dual-channel memory wouldn't make a difference? I would hope not given that the article makes clear over and over again that the authors believe it would. (And they have other articles that show it if you struggle with that). So what, exactly, is the PR disaster you are adamant exists, in this article? Because all I see is an article that says Carrizo is held back by the OEMs and supports that. Hardly egg on the face for AMD.
Steve Wozniak could walk amiably through the holes in your logic without even having to breathe in.
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Caporegime
Where did anybody make any such comment? All that a couple of people said (me being one of them) is that maybe there's a little bit more to resolving this situation than a PR department having not noticed that their chips are put in bargain basement laptops; and that the idea you know better because you're pointing this out, is daft. The AMD article has an extended section on how this "Negative Feedback Loop" (their words) could possibly be escaped from and nowhere in it is the suggestion that it's just a case of a PR department noticing this. Yes, yes - being pressured into designing a pin-compatible 35W version of Carrizo is a mistake by AMD's marketing department you're absolutely right.
Fact is, you've taken an in-depth article the conclusion of which was overtly that Carrizo has good potential but suffers from OEM design decisions and OEM pressure, and tried to spin it as "AMD PR is so sloppy..." etc. with a couple of very context-lacking quotes. You seem incensed that they weren't testing dual-channel configurations? Why? Do you require proof that dual-channel would make a huge difference here? Obviously you don't because the fact that it does is the basis of your attacks. Do you think anyone else here needs proof that dual-channel would make a big difference? No, I don't think anyone on this forum is so unaware of that. Do you think that hypothetical people out there are being misled into thinking by this article that dual-channel memory wouldn't make a difference? I would hope not given that the article makes clear over and over again that the authors believe it would. (And they have other articles that show it if you struggle with that). So what, exactly, is the PR disaster you are adamant exists, in this article? Because all I see is an article that says Carrizo is held back by the OEMs and supports that. Hardly egg on the face for AMD.
Steve Wozniak could walk amiably through the holes in your logic without even having to breathe in.
No,because again you on purpose are ignoring the fact that AMD PR messed up and you are making it into some conspiracy that AMD are the victim.
The fact is most people will read that article and think most if all AMD Carrizo laptops are single channel designs - what you don't get into your head is that AMD is selling the graphics side of their APUs massively.
With only one single DIMM it destroys performance to the extent that the Intel solutions look better/competitive,and that EVEN ADDING ANOTHER DIMM WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE TO IGP PERFORMANCE.
This means people will take home from that article that ALL the AMD Carrizo designs are gimped and people should not bother.
Again,for the fourth time stop deflecting and ignoring simple things like this:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38012067&postcount=114
The Lenovo Y700 is not a budget AMD design - it has a Freesync panel and a 1080P IPS panel which is rare for an AMD laptop. AMD had enough OEM control with Lenovo to not use a cheap 1368X768 TN panel for once.
Plus,even if you bothered to look at the link the Y700 laptop sent was not even production standard. As noted by another poster he had seen the Y700 tested in DUAL CHANNEL mode for RAM.
The AMD example sent HAD PROBLEMS RUNNING RAM IN DUAL CHANNEL WHEN ANANDTECH TRIED.
So,AMD PR sent a laptop with bugged hardware/BIOS to one of the biggest hardware review sites in the world.
Plus,to even show how more incompetent AMD PR is:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Pavilion-15-ab052ng-Notebook-Review.152289.0.html
Oh,wait its running RAM in DUAL CHANNEL and AMD are the ones who even provided the extra SODIMM.
That is a £400 to £450 laptop with an A10 8700P.
This is the point - the article INCORRECTLY states that all the AMD chips running at 15W TDP can only run memory in single channel.
That part is capable of running dual channel memory.
Plus,whats the point of sampling a Kaveri laptop running dual channel memory when all the Carrizo designs sampled were single channel designs?? Why not sample a single channel Kaveri design??
People reading Anandtech will see some sob story about OEMs making subpar AMD laptops and then see benchmarks showing this:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10000/RL720.png
Kaveri beating Carrizo in graphics benchmarks.
Except there are dual channel capable Carrizo laptops out there. Sigh.
Oh,I am being an illogical AMD HATER there too.
But according to YOU AMD PR is PERFECT and totally competent and consistent in doing everything correct and anybody who shows flaws in them is not making any sense.
AWESOME. Overclockers dream indeed.
I am not going to bother argueing anymore - I expect if AMD PR/marketing screws up again it will be somebodies elses fault or the person who points it out.
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Soldato
I'm not ignoring that their PR messed up because they didn't. OEMs pressuring AMD into making a 35W version of Carrizo that is limited to single-channel isn't their PR department "messing up" and is the primary issue highlighted by the article. Ergo, it's not a PR snafu. As to "some conspiracy that AMD are the victim"... The article is about examining the impact of OEM decisions on AMD. Where is the conspiracy? I'm just quoting what the article says. If you have an issue with that, take it up with Anandtech. Or, indeed, with reality.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. I'm not embarrassed by that.
Which is what the article said. Now try and connect your statement up with your conclusion with this article being 'another example of sloppy PR by AMD'. Because the one doesn't lead directly to the other. AMD's PR department didn't decide that they would do a pin-compatible 35W part. Your bizarre obsession with attacking AMD's PR department is lending them all sorts of outsize influence in your mind.
There is nothing AMD, nor Intel, nor the President of the USA, Moses, Mohammed and the Barvarian Illuminati's powers all combined can do to stop people posting a graph out of context. If someone is going to reach into an in-depth technical article, pluck out a graph with no context and post it somewhere in an argument thread, no force on Earth is going to cure that. And if someone is dumb enough to see such a graph and go - as you suggest - "OMG!!! Carrizo is a step down from Kaveri look at teh charts!" then no force on Earth can help them either - they are incurably stupid. The fact that you think AMD's PR department is incompetent because they allowed Anandtech to publish an accurate chart as part of an examination of the impact of OEM design decisions on performance, shows a weird kind of faith in their power. You simultaneously think that they are too incompetent to function yet are also responsible for ensuring nobody can ever take a chart out of context.
Really? I called you a hater, did I? I said AMD PR is perfect, did I? I said any critic of AMD is not making sense, did I? Fascinating. Where did I do any of these things? You seem to be creating an entire mental construct of me to argue with. Would you like to write my next post for me? One style note if you do - I tend to use fewer CAPITAL EMPHASES, just so you know.
Soldato
Add freesunc to the list.
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AMD's marketing has been, in turn: juvenile, misleading, ineffective.
I can't remember the last time I thought AMD's PR machine had done a good job of stoking up interest in any of their products. Mostly our stoking comes from leaks/speculation via tech sites.
I can't remember the last time I thought AMD's PR machine had done a good job of stoking up interest in any of their products. Mostly our stoking comes from leaks/speculation via tech sites.
Caporegime
Soldato
Thanks for posting this! Very interesting. Core counts are the big headlines for most people, I guess, but the interesting parts for me are 40+ PCI-E lanes at Gen 3.0 and Eight Channel memory. Seriously? Eight-channel DDR4?
If they get the IPC even roughly up to modern levels, then that's good enough for me - What I really need for my development work is memory bandwidth and storage. My big fear was that AMD would skimp on that and the system would remain deficient in PCI-E lanes and memory (the main reasons I am upgrading my FX-8350 is lack of support for these things rather than the processor itself).
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
8 channel is for server level chips which would likely be 2-4 chips on a package together and if 4 or 8 cores chips need dual channel memory bandwidth, how much memory bandwidth would 32 cores want to be fully utilised?
Caporegime
Wrong thread!! Sorry!!
