Agreed, AMD now have the CPU horsepower to match a decent IGPU. The Zen APU's could be very good for budget builders and HTPC's. I imagine not even needing a DGPU for the lower tier at all.
-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***
- Thread starter Boomstick777
- Start date
Agreed, AMD now have the CPU horsepower to match a decent IGPU. The Zen APU's could be very good for budget builders and HTPC's. I imagine not even needing a DGPU for the lower tier at all.
They will have competitive CPU performance but I don't see how the IGP still isn't hamstrung by limited bandwidth without HBM (even with Vega's updated compression), and I cant see them using HBM, as it stands to excessively increase the price.
3000MHz DDR4 is ~50GBs and less than half that of the rx460.
3000MHz DDR4 is ~50GBs and less than half that of the rx460.
Soldato
Exactly. Using DDR4, I don't think you could even match the bandwidth of an old AMD 7750 (gddr5) GPU.
The sums are easy enough, if someone wants to check
Soldato
I'm eagerly awaiting the Zen based APUs, loved my previous 7850k setup.
Have considered purchasing a 9800 and AM4 ITX board just now then changing the CPU out when they are out but... Waiting is the smarter choice.
Have considered purchasing a 9800 and AM4 ITX board just now then changing the CPU out when they are out but... Waiting is the smarter choice.
Soldato
There was talk of using a very small amount of HBM1/2 as cache (128/256MB or similar) which could help, and if its small, it may keep the cost impact down. Something small like that may keep the pricing much more reasonable. I also seem to remember around October time, Hynix IIRC was going to start offering HBM2 as opposed to just Samsung, so as Raven Ridge isn't here, it's still possible. In fact, it could even be Raven Ridge is delayed to allow for increased HBM shipments.
This is all talk however, it'll be interesting to see how crippled Vega is by low memory bandwidth, and whether it can surmount those to at least be reasonable; and safer to assume it won't have HBM.
Soldato
If they do an equivalent to the Intel Iris Pro/Plus line, then I would expect some sort of on-package memory.
Going back to Kaveri, they had GDDR5 support pencilled in to the memory controller spec in the Kernal Developers Guide. It never happened, but it was certainly thought about.
Limited by dual channel DDR4 at, let's say, 3000mhz offers memory bandwidth of 48GB/s, compared with an AMD 7750 GPU offering 72GB/s. It would be a nice little APU, but won't blow anyone's socks off GPU-side.
Soldato
For CS:GO or DOTA box...
Soldato
If memory serves, XBOne GPU has on-package ESRAM to give a serious boost to memory bandwidth: in excess of 200GB/s, compared to that 48GB/s I mentioned above using traditional (fast) DDR4 dimms.
It's not getting used and never took off. MS dropped the ERAM and would have got more performance from using that space for graphics pipelines. Look at the PS4 it has a huge amount of bandwidth and is only slightly faster than the Xbox one.
Soldato
They've dropped it for Scorpio, instead moving to GDDR5 giving 300+GB/s memory bandwidth. It's still used for the standard Xbone: it has to be as the rest of the system memory is dead slow DDR3
Soldato
Devs absolutely have been using ESRAM: the problem was just that its size (32mb) means they often cannot hit 1080p.
Soldato
Oh yes, but when we're talking about potential of Ryzen APUs, it's still worth comparing, say, the performance of the DDR3 and GDDR5 versions of a low power card like an AMD 7730: the DDR3 version has something like 30GB/s bandwidth, but is horribly throttled by it. If 3000mhz DDR4 offers only 48GB/s bandwidth, then the ceiling of performance isn't very high.
AMD 7730 review, comparing DDR3 and GDDR5 versions:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-hd-7730-cape-verde-review,review-32751.html
1-2Tflops maybe a little more depending on clock speeds I would say. If DDR4 is the bottleneck for an APU at those kinds of performance remains to be seen.
We Know 40Gb/s is enough for 1.1Tflop and that's without the advantage of having the GPU and CPU as one chip. We also know DDR3 isnt holding the XBox back.
We Know 40Gb/s is enough for 1.1Tflop and that's without the advantage of having the GPU and CPU as one chip. We also know DDR3 isnt holding the XBox back.
Soldato
What gives 1.1 Tflop at 40GB/s?
A 7730's 0.6 Tflop is bottlenecked by a 28.8GB/s bandwidth.
And Ddr3 is only not holding the xbox back thanks to the 200GB/s memory bandwidth of the esram!
A 7730's 0.6 Tflop is bottlenecked by a 28.8GB/s bandwidth.
And Ddr3 is only not holding the xbox back thanks to the 200GB/s memory bandwidth of the esram!
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Aug 2004
- Posts
- 10,996
When do we think Zen 2 will arrive for Socket AM4 ? loving my 1700 but also looking forward to Zen 2 and higher clocks.