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

[Panos]

AMD always said excavator is the base to calculate the IPC performance boost.
which was 20% faster than the buldozer to boot.

 

[dazzerd]

Touch wood this is all true with bring about a fundamental change in the market having companies who can actually compete with each other. You just know though Intel will either have something up there sleave or there will be a massive price drop as soon as we get closer to release date.

 

[Nutella33]

Was there a time frame announced at all or is it still "October ish"

 

[layte]

So where does 40% higher IPC over their previous CPU's put them in the grand scale of things?

Depends on what it is a 40% improvement over. 40% better than Bulldozer would put them somewhere very close to Sandybridge on single threaded performance. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/698?vs=287

 

[opethdisciple]

Touch wood this is all true with bring about a fundamental change in the market having companies who can actually compete with each other. You just know though Intel will either have something up there sleave or there will be a massive price drop as soon as we get closer to release date.

Fingers crossed. But I doubt it.

It will just line up in the stack at the appropriate price range.

So we are talking a 4770k with 8 cores 16 threads? A proper upgrade on a 3570k. It feels wrong to go and buy a 6700k when it is still 4 cores.

Sounds epic. If its affordable.

 

[DragonQ]

Depends on what it is a 40% improvement over. 40% better than Bulldozer would put them somewhere very close to Sandybridge on single threaded performance. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/698?vs=287

We've seen repeatedly that the official "40% IPC improvement" figure is compared to Excavator, not Bulldozer.

 

[jigger]

Sandybridge, Devils Canyon, Ivybridge who cares? All of those perform within a tiny margin of each other.

If Intel released an unlocked 8 core Sandybridge chip for £2-300 it would be the best CPU we have seen for the last 10 years.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

It would be great (for us the consumers) to have some competition back at the higher end, assuming the pricing is right of course.

 

[mnc fear]

They wont though- as Intel has a monopoly so why give something away that they don't have to

Its all about the Benjamins

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

They wont though- as Intel has a monopoly so why give something away that they don't have to

Its all about the Benjamins

Its all about the Pentiums!!

 

[mmj_uk]

IPC is meaningless without knowing the overall clockspeed, it may well have 40% increase in IPC compared to FX architecture but if it doesn't scale as high and it's clocked 1ghz lower you aren't going to get a 40% increase in performance.

One of the main reasons why Pentium 4/Bulldozer architectures achieved such high clockspeeds was due to the low IPC.

 

[Freddie1980]

Fingers crossed. But I doubt it.

It will just line up in the stack at the appropriate price range.

So we are talking a 4770k with 8 cores 16 threads? A proper upgrade on a 3570k. It feels wrong to go and buy a 6700k when it is still 4 cores.

Sounds epic. If its affordable.

Technically the AMD equivalent of the 4770K would be an APU but 8th generation Zen based APU’s aren’t coming out for probably a year before that we are getting the higher end desktop chips which feature proper CPU cores (as opposed to modules that we got with Bulldozer). In theory the first Zen chips will be the new FX line without a GPU part and will go up against the Core i7/X99 range.

TBH the APU’s seem more exciting, the rumours are the Zen based APU will come with HBM2 if they add on competitive CPU Intel could find it’s mainstream segment evaporate very quickly. Again it’s all hearsay and rumour at this point but even without HBM AMD’s GPU design and drivers are miles ahead of Intel and will most likely have a big performance advantage.

Depends on what it is a 40% improvement over. 40% better than Bulldozer would put them somewhere very close to Sandybridge on single threaded performance. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/698?vs=287

AMD have said it's 40% over Excavator, which is several generations ahead of Bulldozer and IPC has steadily improved in that time. In total compared to the original Bulldozer Zen might have an IPC improvement of about 60%+ over Bulldozer if AMD do liver.

 

[opethdisciple]

In theory the first Zen chips will be the new FX line without a GPU part and will go up against the Core i7/X99 range.

But hopefully not at the same price point! £500 - £1000 for the new X99 chips is ridiculous.

Around the £300 mark would be affordable.

 

[Beren]

It would be pretty awesome if they follow the rhetoric of the 480 with a 6 core 12 thread CPU at the same kind of value.

 

[opethdisciple]

It would be pretty awesome if they follow the rhetoric of the 480 with a 6 core 12 thread CPU at the same kind of value.

If the IPC is better then yes. Otherwise it will be just current FX processors 2.0.

 

[JonSmith]

These benchmarks give a pretty good idea about the scaling:

http://www.planet3dnow.de/cms/18564...er-architekturen/subpage-rendering-cinebench/

However, I'm not sure which Piledriver chip they tested with so any performance regressions compared to Excavator may be a result of L3 cache being present.

 

[humbug]

These benchmarks give a pretty good idea about the scaling:

http://www.planet3dnow.de/cms/18564...er-architekturen/subpage-rendering-cinebench/

However, I'm not sure which Piledriver chip they tested with so any performance regressions compared to Excavator may be a result of L3 cache being present.

Good find.
It doesn't really mater which Piledriver chip they used, no Steamroller or Excavator chip have L3. lets just assume these benches are with a none L3 Piledriver, if its an FX series CPU it just makes the up lift in Steamroller and Excavator that much more.

It confirms what i said before, there is already a significant step up from Piledriver to Steamroller and again to Excavator.

 

[opethdisciple]

Q. May seen unrelated, but the fact the name Zen is a complete deviation from the current construction machine theme, does that mean it's based on a completely new architecture design as opposed to just a refinement of the old?

 

[DragonQ]

Q. May seen unrelated, but the fact the name Zen is a complete deviation from the current construction machine theme, does that mean it's based on a completely new architecture design as opposed to just a refinement of the old?

Yes it is the first ground-up redesign since Bulldozer.

 

[Orangey]

Actually it's a redesign of Bulldozer shopped to AMD by Jim Keller.