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

[Martini1991]

Maybe in your anti AMD world. You said in your last post you would take a Fury over a GTX980Ti

I would take a Fury X over a 980Ti. But that's a personal thing.
There's nothing anti AMD about it.

Do you think the Fury X launch went well?
Do you think the FX9590 launch went well?
Do you think Bulldozer launch went well?

 

[Martini1991]

To me FX-8### series CPU's are greatly under estimated and unfairly treated, i had one for two years before i got the 4690K, i know their strengths and weaknesses.

But i still think AMD need to prove themselves, especially for efficiency, a couple of benchmark runs does not tell the whole story, not even close.

I value what well ajusted, knowledgeable and experienced users think far more than any reviewer, in fact i don't think some of these big name reviewers should be doing it at all, they have no idea what they are doing or what they are talking about.

It takes time from scant sources to get the truth about a product, look at those GTX 1080 launches, every mainstream reviewer is almost masturbating over them, that in its self sends alarm bells off in my head as nothing is that perfect and amazing.
A couple of much more independent commentators are finding significant fault with them, to the extent that they don't look anything like as good as Nvidia and those mainstream reviewers have them.

Until I know what the product is in reality i'll stick with what i know, right now what i know is Intel are far more efficient across the board and the performance while not always better or even as good much more often the case, much better balanced performance.

I'm only going off the topic that AMD's going to produce a performance parity product, I don't believe that they will.

I don't care about the brand, only the performance.

I've not seen a full proper GTX1080 review yet to be honest, the whole launch has been weird, and it has a loltastic price.

Although products can be perfect, the i5 2500K was absolutely perfect at launch.

 

[jigger]

I would take a Fury X over a 980Ti. But that's a personal thing.
There's nothing anti AMD about it.

Do you think the Fury X launch went well?
Do you think the FX9590 launch went well?
Do you think Bulldozer launch went well?

I'm not sure TBH, but seeing as you would take the Fury (a card you said was underwhelming and over priced) over the GTX980Ti. It went pretty well?


Twisted perspective.

I would love to know what my Agenda is BTW

 

[humbug]

I'm only going off the topic that AMD's going to produce a performance parity product, I don't believe that they will.

I don't care about the brand, only the performance.

I've not seen a full proper GTX1080 review yet to be honest, the whole launch has been weird, and it has a loltastic price.

Although products can be perfect, the i5 2500K was absolutely perfect at launch.

The Founders Edition (renamed Reference Card) Is 25% faster that a 980TI, for about 10 to 15 minutes, then it throttles by about 10%.

Turns out every mainstream reviewers tested it in the open air for 3 minutes max.

A factory overclocked 980TI matches the 1080 even on a cold run without the throttling.

As for AMD's new CPU, yeah i'm going to wait, my Gigabyte Gaming 3 and 4690K is 6 moths old, tho it does struggle in some aspects i'm happy with it overall, no rush to upgrade.

AMD do need to have a significant price difference to Intel even with parity, a token difference isn't going to sway people to convert to AMD.

 

[Martini1991]

I'm not sure TBH, but seeing as you would take the Fury (a card you said was underwhelming and over priced) over the GTX980Ti. It went pretty well?


Twisted perspective.

I would love to know what my Agenda is BTW

I don't tend to buy Nvidia at all, I don't like them as a company, so I'd get a Fury X over a 980Ti.

But I've bought nothing, because it was underwhelming.
Kind of just sounds like you're after a rise, so I'm done with you, you've got absolutely nothing to offer.

 

[jigger]

I don't tend to buy Nvidia at all, I don't like them as a company, so I'd get a Fury X over a 980Ti.

But I've bought nothing, because it was underwhelming.
Kind of just sounds like you're after a rise, so I'm done with you, you've got absolutely nothing to offer.

I'm just trying to make sense of your nonsense, now you are trying to say I'm bulling you Go back and read what you've posted and how you have responded to me.

 

[Vince]

I was at an AMD/HP/VMWARE track day event yesterday at Mercedes-Benz world, primarily the event was about thin client and AMD's lineup all of which was under NDA but I was chatting to some AMD guys and I am looking forward to Zen. If AMD are to be believed we should see them competing with the i7 in the mobile space by the end of the year.

AMD didn't feature in HP's server space in their Gen 8 servers and appeared to have disappeared from most of the event's I have been to recently so it's great to see them starting to work their way back into HP's lineup with new products. There are also some very compelling arguments for their thin clients specifically if you are wanting 4k across 1, 2 3 or even 12 screens.

I am normally a skeptic but I actually think they they might have something in Zen and Polaris.

 

[Martini1991]

The problem is of course, is that it's always "AMD hopefully should X and Y and Z".

I recently bought an Asus UC305X, it's a Skylake M 3200x1800 13.3" laptop. It's brilliant for me (Although I originally had a HP 3200x1800 Skylake i5 Ultrabook), there's not a single AMD offering to rival what I've bought (In terms of what it is)

 

[humbug]

We are all frustrated at AMD's lack of competition and products generally.
They have also made mistakes with marketing and pricing in the past, we all know that.

But you do complain a bit too much, Martini1991
Don't prejudge so much gloom.
If AMD can't get back to strength this time round we wont need to worry about AMD anyway.

Keep an open mind.
They have nailed it before, they are capable of doing it again.

 

[Martini1991]

We are all frustrated at AMD's lack of competition and products generally.
They have also made mistakes with marketing and pricing in the past, we all know that.

But you do complain a bit too much, Martini1991
Don't prejudge so much gloom.
If AMD can't get back to strength this time round we wont need to worry about AMD anyway.

Keep an open mind.

I have an open mind, it's just no use when I'm trying to buy something and can't because AMD simply doesn't have an available option, so I just buy an Intel.

That Asus Laptop I bought only 3 months ago.

 

[Vince]

The problem is of course, is that it's always "AMD hopefully should X and Y and Z".

I recently bought an Asus UC305X, it's a Skylake M 3200x1800 13.3" laptop. It's brilliant for me (Although I originally had a HP 3200x1800 Skylake i5 Ultrabook), there's not a single AMD offering to rival what I've bought (In terms of what it is)

You are not wrong, I bought an i7 6700HQ - GTX970 machine and like you say their isn't an amd offering which can really get close in the mobile space.

Yesterday I saw their thin clients offloading h.264/265 from vdi to the local resources and rendering 3d on 4x4k pannels all from a single thin client which it has to be said was quite impressive.

 

[gpuerrilla]

To me FX-8### series CPU's are greatly under estimated and unfairly treated, i had one for two years before i got the 4690K, i know their strengths and weaknesses.

This statement is almost spot on. If people had the right guidance and all bought 8320's or 8350's overclocking them on moderate frequencies then the price spent would have always meant a reasonable justification as they do hold their own in the majority of real world situations.

The only issue was having to buy a quality motherboard and cooler. At a push though a wise buyer could always undercut the intel build. It unfortunately got twisted through bias and ended up messy with fanboy wars.

The great thing about the FX is if you replace it and move on they make a great VM box continuing to be handy.

 

[Bonjour]

I loved my 8320 (with a relatively straightforward oc of 4.6GHz). Was slightly underwhelmed when I upgraded to a 4790K.

I still have my 8320 sitting in an ESXi home lab, in which the 8 cores excel.

 

[mmj_uk]

To me FX-8### series CPU's are greatly under estimated and unfairly treated, i had one for two years before i got the 4690K, i know their strengths and weaknesses.

...and yet you still deemed it necessary to move to Intel.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It appears that AMD pdf had a picture of Zen in it by mistake:

http://semiaccurate.com/2016/05/22/38688/

Some more in-depth analysis by Dresdenboy and Hans de Vries:

http://dresdenboy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/first-amd-summit-ridge-wafer-spotted.html

http://i.imgur.com/60J59QP.jpg

Edit!!

It appears the pdf I linked earlier was changed and that is where the picture is from:

phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MzM5NDM5fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1&cb=635994397107592147

 

[Orcvader]

All of that from a wafer shot that may not even be Zen and just a generic picture ?

Although it sort of makes sense if the photo is real, having 4 cores grouped next to each other will allow AMD to easily scale it to other designs such as server CPUs and APUs. But then it makes me wonder, would 4 cores be the minimum Zen based CPUs will have, including the low end?

 

[DragonQ]

If they go for 4 cores as a minimum, you can bet a 3 core variant will appear later as they will never have 100% yield.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

All of that from a wafer shot that may not even be Zen and just a generic picture ?

Although it sort of makes sense if the photo is real, having 4 cores grouped next to each other will allow AMD to easily scale it to other designs such as server CPUs and APUs. But then it makes me wonder, would 4 cores be the minimum Zen based CPUs will have, including the low end?

The design seems unlike other CPU designs,and it was not in the pdf but a livestream(after reading the SA article).

I suspect 4 cores might be the lowest end,and I do wonder by grouping the cores like that,would it be easier to replace one cluster with a graphics section,etc?

 

[Armageus]

would 4 cores be the minimum Zen based CPUs will have, including the low end?

I suspect 4 cores might be the lowest end

Why does 4 cores have to be the lowest end? Unless there is anything specific that stops individual cores being fused off then I would imagine there is nothing stopping 2 failed cores being fused off to create a Dual Core part if required.

If they have gone all in with regards to being Modular, you would image even some of the L3 could be fused off, e.g. if defective, or to support 2 or 3 core modules (or e.g. 6 Core SKU from the 2x 4 Core Modules)

If they go for 4 cores as a minimum, you can bet a 3 core variant will appear later as they will never have 100% yield.

Not necessarily a 3 Core (although obviously has been done in the past), but even if yields were 100%, if there is a market for a cheaper processor (e.g. Celeron competitor) then there is still a chance that cores could be fused off and sold as a Dual core part if required (e.g. if there is a huge market for low end parts, then assuming it still makes a profit it may be better to sell low end parts than have excess midrange stock).

 

[Orcvader]

Well it seems likely they will sell the defects as dual core etc, and SMT probably off. But it could be fun attempting to unlock the cores, the triple core PII was very popular for being cheap but with a high chance of unlocking to quad core.