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

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
Click to expand...

AMD staff also stated that Bulldozer's IPC hadn't decreased from Phenom II (When in most cases it had), and I distinctly remember being told that "We would be pleasantly surprised" by Bulldozers performance.

They both came from confirmed AMD staff members on forums.

Also, saying that X can compare with Y will probably mean in its entirety, an FX8150 could compare favorably to a Sandybridge in about 1/10 tasks, by the time Zen launches it'll be about 5-6 years on from that, so with the higher parallel loads, it might not be much higher IPC to achieve positive comparison.

That's pretty negative thinking though, and hopefully it'll at least be an upgrade in 100% of situations over an i5 2500K, anything but that is pretty meh to me.
 
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But not pleasantly.

I remember some kind of live chat where benchmarks were unveiled and most of us assumed it was a joke/fake to start with because the results were pretty bad. Then the realisation that they were real sunk in and it was all very depressing.
 
DragonQ said:
But not pleasantly.

I remember some kind of live chat where benchmarks were unveiled and most of us assumed it was a joke/fake to start with because the results were pretty bad. Then the realisation that they were real sunk in and it was all very depressing.
Click to expand...

Yep. When I first saw the benchmarks I though the CPU's given to reviewers must have been faulty. Unfortunately the fault was the design. I hope the AMD PR guy mentioned above is correct and Zen will be competitive but I have to admit, after Bulldozer, I kind of won't believe him until I see it...
 
Phenom II benchmarks are rare these days but they still seem to match the 2 module / 4 thread Steamroller / Piledriver CPUs clock for clock in gaming performance - although obviously the later CPUs tended to be clocked higher.

If you got a PII x6 clocked anywhere near 4GHz the only CPU / platform upgrades worth bothering with for games have been made by Intel.
 
DragonQ said:
But not pleasantly.

I remember some kind of live chat where benchmarks were unveiled and most of us assumed it was a joke/fake to start with because the results were pretty bad. Then the realisation that they were real sunk in and it was all very depressing.
Click to expand...

I remember the stream.
I remember every excuse under the sun.

I could never ever ever touch a Bulldozer.
But I have bought and installed a few Piledrivers
 
humbug said:
I went from a Phenom II x6 1090T to an FX-8350, this is what i found...

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18604818
Click to expand...
I never really understood why clock-for-clock comparisons are done. It's kinda cool to see which chips have the best IPC (for science!) but in the real world, we care about two things: performance at stock, and performance at the best reasonably achievable clocks (e.g. 4 GHz for Nehalem, 4.5 GHz for Sandy Bridge, etc.). If Zen increases IPC by 60% but only runs at 2 GHz, it'll suck, for example...
 
Perfect_Chaos said:
Won't have to change motherboards every other CPU release like with Intel either, could mean keeping a board for 4-5 years. If Zen is as good as they say then that is good news and certainly an advantage over Intel.
Click to expand...

You've not had a CPU for 4 years though, so it's not really a plus.
Plus, AMD have had a ton of FM sockets.

2 year cycle I'd be happy with though.
 
DragonQ said:
I never really understood why clock-for-clock comparisons are done. It's kinda cool to see which chips have the best IPC (for science!) but in the real world, we care about two things: performance at stock, and performance at the best reasonably achievable clocks (e.g. 4 GHz for Nehalem, 4.5 GHz for Sandy Bridge, etc.). If Zen increases IPC by 60% but only runs at 2 GHz, it'll suck, for example...
Click to expand...

You said it yourself.

Because its interesting to see what the IPC difference is :)
 
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