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

=XDC=FluphyBunny said:
So you would do an entire system change for a 'slight' upgrade?
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Sure. With that slight increase in raw CPU performance, you're probably also going to get an upgrade in the memory it supports (DDR4, higher clocks), more PCI lanes, an up to date instruction set, almost certainly lower power consumption and probably other modern features.

It brings with it a whole range of side-benefits even if the increase is only slight. Plus if they have a 4770K their system as a whole probably has things they'd likely want to upgrade as well anyway.
 
SiDeards73 said:
Im in the exact same boat, if Zen beats my 4770k even slightly im swapping, simple as that.
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http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1550

I just a random forum poster who likes this stuff so take my numbers with a huge pinch of salt. In the above link I've put the FX8350 against the I7 6700k 4.8Ghz and I'm using the Handbrake benchmark as the comparison since it requires a huge amount of CPU horsepower.

AMD 8350 @ 4.0 GHZ = 357
Intel 6700k @ 4.8 GHZ = 690

Ok let's normalise the clock speeds so both are at 4.8 GHZ which means a 20% on the AMD chip and lets assume that gives us a 20% increase in score (yes I know this isn't exactly scientific and it doesn't work like that) which increase the score by 71:

AMD 8350 @ 4.8 GHZ = 428

Now that 8350 is running Piledriver, since then we have had Steamroller and soon we will get Excavator which in total add's roughly 15% in IPC over Piledriver. Now if AMD delivers and gives use 40% over Excavator we get a 55% IPC on Piledriver would give us another 236 points:

AMD Zen @ 4.8 Ghz = 664
Intel 6700K @ 4.8 Ghz = 690

This is pure speculation there are a million other variables to consider but given what we know it's an educated approximation. If the results are this close, I'm sold.

Edit:
Using the shame methodology as above in Cinibench single threaded performance you get:

AMD Zen = 185
Intel I7 6700K = 206


It's shame there is gaming benchmarks but if the above is true and we numbers that are smiler Zen should certainly eliminate any performance differences in CPU bound games.
 
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h4rm0ny said:
Sure. With that slight increase in raw CPU performance, you're probably also going to get an upgrade in the memory it supports (DDR4, higher clocks), more PCI lanes, an up to date instruction set, almost certainly lower power consumption and probably other modern features.

It brings with it a whole range of side-benefits even if the increase is only slight. Plus if they have a 4770K their system as a whole probably has things they'd likely want to upgrade as well anyway.
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All of what you listed (memory/pci lanes/instruction sets) merely counts as the 'slight' performance and would give negligible real world benefit to most pc users. Why do you think all threads which ask 'what to upgrade to from Sandy through to Haswell' are met with don't bother, spend the money on a GPU.

Zen would have to be spectacular to warrant someone moving from Haswell, and sadly given AMD's track record and the improvement in IPC needed just to catch up, never mind surpass Intels offerings I remain in the 'I will believe it when I see it camp.
 
Surely though there is no real danger of AMD getting close to the Broadwell-E performance? It just feels unlikely to me...

I am pretty happy with my 5930k, but I am currently building a beast and looking for a 6950X on launch.... There is no threat of AMD getting close to the Extreme chips... right? And if not, then surely they are still plodding around in the middle-of-the-road nearly-as-fast-but-cheaper bracket?

Cheers
Ben
 
Rasphelt said:
Surely though there is no real danger of AMD getting close to the Broadwell-E performance? It just feels unlikely to me...

I am pretty happy with my 5930k, but I am currently building a beast and looking for a 6950X on launch.... There is no threat of AMD getting close to the Extreme chips... right? And if not, then surely they are still plodding around in the middle-of-the-road nearly-as-fast-but-cheaper bracket?

Cheers
Ben
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Unless looking at the 10 core chip if it's really needed, then moving from HW-E to BW-E could well be pointless. Difference in IPC might be really small, probably 5% or less but i guess we'll see soon from proper real world benchmarks.
 
Rasphelt said:
Surely though there is no real danger of AMD getting close to the Broadwell-E performance? It just feels unlikely to me...

I am pretty happy with my 5930k, but I am currently building a beast and looking for a 6950X on launch.... There is no threat of AMD getting close to the Extreme chips... right? And if not, then surely they are still plodding around in the middle-of-the-road nearly-as-fast-but-cheaper bracket?

Cheers
Ben
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If you're looking at the 10-core chip, then presumably you care more about cores than IPC? If not, then why would you look at the 10-core chip...

That being the case, it's very very likely AMD will offer more performance for the same money in multi-core terms. I imagine you'll be able to get a server (Opteron in AMD's case) motherboard, and a Zen CPU with 16 cores for the same money as an X99 board with a 6950X.

Zen will likely be behind by 10-15% in IPC, but wayyy ahead in multi-thread for the same money.
 
=XDC=FluphyBunny said:
All of what you listed (memory/pci lanes/instruction sets) merely counts as the 'slight' performance and would give negligible real world benefit to most pc users. Why do you think all threads which ask 'what to upgrade to from Sandy through to Haswell' are met with don't bother, spend the money on a GPU.
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If you're going to invoke "most PC users" then we can shut down this entire discussion because most PC users have long since had their needs met with current generation chips from AMD or Intel. A Kaveri A10-7850K would meet most people's needs and people can play Counter Strike on it all day long. The sort of people who are on this forum and wanting to run games at high settings on high resolutions do not constitute "most PC users".

The list I gave is not "negligible". Lack of PCI-E lanes constrains storage, jumping over 1,000MHz in RAM speeds isn't negligible. Going beyond 4cores is not negligible (want to run VMs? More cores is a big plus). Having hardware support for encryption is a big plus. But I've gone over all this before and more...

Basically, I pointed out that there was a lot more to the upgrade than "only" the raw performance increase. I stand by that.
 
My 4770k is a few years old as is my ddr3 2400mhz ram and my z87 mobo, it's either swap them all out soon for an Intel product that will be a slight upgrade but cost a fair bit, or swap them for an AMD upgrade that could potentially be little to no upgrade but could cost a fair bit less than the Intel option.

Also the AMD offerings should hopefully offer more cores for less than Intel offers and if DX12 picks up enough and proves to be better with more cores in the long run its a better investment, especially when I now only really upgrade every 3 years or so
 
SiDeards73 said:
My 4770k is a few years old as is my ddr3 2400mhz ram and my z87 mobo, it's either swap them all out soon for an Intel product that will be a slight upgrade but cost a fair bit, or swap them for an AMD upgrade that could potentially be little to no upgrade but could cost a fair bit less than the Intel option.

Also the AMD offerings should hopefully offer more cores for less than Intel offers and if DX12 picks up enough and proves to be better with more cores in the long run its a better investment, especially when I now only really upgrade every 3 years or so
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With proper thread management in a development even DX11 can and does benefit from more cores and threads, Cryengine for example has 16 A-Synchronous command threads, its simply a case of efficiently organising how the project makes use of them, instead of just dumping everything on one or two. :)

 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
According to an AMD PR guy Zen will compare favourably to Skylake:

http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-n...ll-favourably-compete-with-intel-skylake.html
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John has been at AMD since 2006 so I was somewhat stunned when he said with its 7th generation Zen processors (CPU and APU) and new Radeon graphics processors (GPU) that it had finally caught up to, or surpassed Intel’s Skylake offerings. “Zen will compete with Intel on performance, power and specifications – not just price,” he said.
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Well, lets see :)
 
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