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Is AMD's new Steamroller PC processor architecture a dud?

ALXAndy said:
So no, we're never going to see AMD compete on IPC ever again. Because put simply? even if an I3 beats the 6300 on performance for example? it's more expensive. And at the end of the day the 4 FPS you get extra out of the Intel (if of course you don't overclock your AMD) will make zero difference to your game
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Intel i3 4130 @ £89.99

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-492-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

AMD FX6300 @ £89.99

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-338-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825

I'd go for the higher performance one. Funnily enough, the i3...

Am I missing something? :confused:
 
Davedree said:
As we've all mentioned though broomstick, its a small market to concentrate a lot of money into, Amd don't have the money, or the fabs, they don't have the resources or the engineers to compete with Intel at that level anymore. The best Amd can do is use what they have and aim for the low to middle and make lots of money, Remember the days when they were consistantly in the red, something had to give to keep the afloat through the hard times.
With the onlook of cpu-gpu compute Amd can try to push the boundaries out a little.
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Doesn't make it any less disappointing Deardree..

AMD only have little money now because they keep launching poor products that they can't charge a premium for. It is what it is, the GPU department is awesome, APU's are great as well. It's just a shame that the other markets are being ignored. If AMD could launch a competitive product their than there would be money to be made, but yeah the reasons they have given it up don't make it any less disappointing..
 
ALXAndy said:
The 5ghz that the 6300 easily achieves?

I would say you are, yes.
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But you say yourself in that post I originally quoted that the i3 outperforms the FX6300, wrongly saying it was more expensive.

Now if your original post had said:

"So no, we are not likely to see AMD compete on IPC ever again, however the FX6300 does often achieve 5Ghz, and this offsets the IPC difference between it and the i3."

That would have been a smarter post. However, considering you'd need to buy an aftermarket cooler to put on the chip to keep it cool at that overclock offsets the price advantage by quite a way and I'd have instead pointed that out.
 
ALXAndy said:
The 5ghz that the 6300 easily achieves?

I would say you are, yes.
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images
 
The FX6300 does not "easily" reach 5GHz.

And power draw on a stock FX6300 let alone one at 5GHz is mental in comparison to the i3, and as a result will require a larger PSU, an after-market cooler and most probably a more expensive motherboard, meaning that if you take all of that into consideration it really doesn't seem like such a great option.

And where can you go from a FX6300? to an FX8350 or some other insanely overpriced FX8350 variant which will most likely need an even more expensive motherboard. From the i3 you can go to an i5 for example. An i5K. Even an i7K or some kind of Xeon, most likely including the upcoming Broadwell chips, and any of those CPU's will work in the same motherboard without causing avoidable calls to the fire brigade.

Don't get me wrong, AMD make some cracking stuff. Their APU's are fantastic, the GPU's are fantastic, many of the mobile and server CPU solutions are fantastic, Mantle looks like it will also be fantastic, but I really don't think that they have cracked it (or even come close to cracking it) with the new FX series CPU's. There was a time when AMD's performance CPU's were great, as recently as the Phenom II in-fact, of which I have owned several. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they ditch the high performance CPU's and focus more on GPU's as well as APU's and other similar space/energy saving solutions which could completely change the laptop/mobile landscape.

They should play to their strengths. Making high performance desktop CPU's is not one of their strengths at the moment. I'm not saying that they should never attempt it again, nonono, but perhaps now isn't the time for another stab at it.

Capisce? :)
 
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Martini1991 said:
The FX's are enthusiast CPU's, since when were they not?

This place...
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Pretty sure they are considered mainstream, similarly to i5 and i7 Haswells. AMD don't really produce enthusiast CPU components and they know it, hence the lack of marketing in that direction as they can't compete with X79 (which is the enthusiast platform).
 
acme15 said:
The FX6300 does not "easily" reach 5GHz.

And power draw on a stock FX6300 let alone one at 5GHz is mental in comparison to the i3, and as a result will require a larger PSU, an after-market cooler and most probably a more expensive motherboard, meaning that if you take all of that into consideration it really doesn't seem like such a great option.

And where can you go from a FX6300? to an FX8350 or some other insanely overpriced FX8350 variant which will most likely need an even more expensive motherboard. From the i3 you can go to an i5 for example. An i5K. Even an i7K or some kind of Xeon, most likely including the upcoming Broadwell chips, and any of those CPU's will work in the same motherboard without causing avoidable calls to the fire brigade.

Don't get me wrong, AMD make some cracking stuff. Their APU's are fantastic, the GPU's are fantastic, many of the mobile and server CPU solutions are fantastic, Mantle looks like it will also be fantastic, but I really don't think that they have cracked it (or even come close to cracking it) with the new FX series CPU's. There was a time when AMD's performance CPU's were great, as recently as the Phenom II in-fact, of which I have owned several. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they ditch the high performance CPU's and focus more on GPU's as well as APU's and other similar space/energy saving solutions which could completely change the laptop/mobile landscape.

They should play to their strengths. Making high performance desktop CPU's is not one of their strengths at the moment. I'm not saying that they should never attempt it again, nonono, but perhaps now isn't the time for another stab at it.

Capisce? :)
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Great post, and exactly the point I was making, I think you just wrote it better :D

The performance to power use of Intel is just so far ahead that it's a big advantage, like you said you could buy in at an entry level (Pentium / i3) and have great gaming performance, and if needed step up to a i5, Xeon or i7, with the whole range being superior lol.

I do hope AMD get competitive again in the desktop space, APU's / GPU's are great but I would love AMD to offer a true high end CPU. Each to their own though you know, I'm glad people still are buying AMD chips, still supporting them. I'm doing my bit by buying AMD GPU's :p
 
I'm more interested in the emergence of the highend/enthusiast APU. AMD have a chance with that at least.
 
Boomstick777 said:
I do hope AMD get competitive again in the desktop space, APU's / GPU's are great but I would love AMD to offer a true high end CPU.
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But why? What are you CPU limited by today? I think the article actually makes a good point here:

You could, of course, make the good-enough argument. That is, you could say that CPU core part of the PC processor equation is already 'good enough'.
A lot of the time, you'd be quite right. CPUs are fast enough for most people most of the time. But they're not fast enough for eveything all of the time.
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The performance of CPUs from both Intel and AMD is generally plenty, and when it isn't people use more appropriate solutions (ASICs, GPUs, and clusters) and/or reduce existing bottlenecks (Mantle). A more powerful CPU will only please enthusiasts like the author of the article ("we need more powah!").

Also, the author seems to have forgotten that the only ways a CPU can physically get more powerful now are:
1. More cores/vectorisation, but you'll just run out of die space and converge to a GPU-like solver, and if your code is suitable for many CPU cores then it's probably already possible to use a GPU to do it.
2. Improve efficiency (IPC). Intel are the kings here and I'm not sure how much further they can go.
3. Make semiconductors from a better material than silicon (far future).

I'm with eddyr, the future for CPUs is to pull in parallel compute units and develop clever techniques for balancing computation where it's best performed.
 
Ok I'm confused, on the one hand we have people saying that APU's are the future. We know that most AMD APU's are better than the Intel ones.
AMD have already said that Kavari will be quad core only? (I think this is correct)
There will be no update to the FX range in 1014.

Then on the other hand we have AMD pushing Mantle, with the developers all saying that it scales brilliantly with 8 core/thread CPU's.

I really don't understand what AMD are thinking, either they want to push APU's and that they are not making any 8 core variants for the next generation, or they want to show how good Mantle is with a large amount of cores.

Surely the two are rather conflicting?
 
Orangey said:
£1000 says enthusiast to me. AMD had a FX CPU at that price point recently.
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Martini1991 said:
The FX's are enthusiast CPU's, since when were they not?

This place...
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The issue is that people have corrupted what enthusiast is supposed to mean. The people who have more money than sense who were happy to throw their money at 2, 3 and 4 Titans for example, are not enthusiasts.

I'd call that segment, the mug segment. Where you've got CPUs like the 4960X which is nearly exactly the same CPU as a 4930K but costs twice the price.
 
bru said:
Ok I'm confused, on the one hand we have people saying that APU's are the future. We know that most AMD APU's are better than the Intel ones.
AMD have already said that Kavari will be quad core only? (I think this is correct)
There will be no update to the FX range in 1014.

Then on the other hand we have AMD pushing Mantle, with the developers all saying that it scales brilliantly with 8 core/thread CPU's.

I really don't understand what AMD are thinking, either they want to push APU's and that they are not making any 8 core variants for the next generation, or they want to show how good Mantle is with a large amount of cores.

Surely the two are rather conflicting?
Click to expand...

I think it's time you did some reading about HSA, and, what AMD are aiming to do.

http://developer.amd.com/resources/...hat-is-heterogeneous-system-architecture-hsa/

With hardware working in such a manner you need much lower powered hardware. So what they are basically doing is making games need a lot less horse power. So you should be able to take an AMD APU and get half decent gaming performance from it.

Remember - the 'enthusiast' makes for a tiny, tiny percentage of PC users. Intel are moving away from us too, Haswell was for low powered laptops and touch screen devices and was not designed for the enthusiast at all, even though some like to think so.

The money now, and the market, is in small PCs, touch devices and laptops. Go into a manky horrid store near you (the large chain, you know who I'm talking about) and take a walk through the desktop section. They're all pitiful tiny little things with no macho PCs in sight. That's because people don't want them any more.
 
linktoinsanity said:
But you say yourself in that post I originally quoted that the i3 outperforms the FX6300, wrongly saying it was more expensive.

Now if your original post had said:

"So no, we are not likely to see AMD compete on IPC ever again, however the FX6300 does often achieve 5Ghz, and this offsets the IPC difference between it and the i3."

That would have been a smarter post. However, considering you'd need to buy an aftermarket cooler to put on the chip to keep it cool at that overclock offsets the price advantage by quite a way and I'd have instead pointed that out.
Click to expand...

I said - Even if the I3 beats the 6300 it's more expensive. Note the even if part. Yet if we look at an honest review we see this -

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Proces...cessor-Review-Vishera-Breaks-Cover/Conclusion

And again I emphasise -

So what do we actually get with this release? Well, it is a bittersweet release for AMD. The pricing on these parts is not only competitive, it undercuts Intel by a significant amount across the board. The 8350 is very competitive with the 3570K, and it can be had for $30 less. The 6300 will walk all over the Intel products that exist at the $132 price point, and in fact is more competitive in terms of performance with the $185 Intel products. Again, we get a nice $50 discount for essentially the same performance. In these cases though, expect the AMD CPU to consume more power. Would it be enough to make one nervous about energy bills? Not really.

As for the power argument being brought up again? no point. If you truly understand what it costs to run the AMD you'd know it's peanuts.
 
^ That article is filled with absolute cack to be honest, and I fail to see how it even aids your point. It uses a specific set of benchmarks, only shows a single game at an unusual resolution, and what on earth is an "i7 3570K"? Did they even proof read it?

As for the power argument, if you are referring to my previous post, I meant the increased power consumption of the CPU alone having an impact on the choice of other system components, not the increased leccy bills.
 
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