Here here... lol
Don't like the sort of games that are made on engines / compilers like that anyway.
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Steamroller!!
- Thread starter whiteshadow
- Start date
Here here... lol
Don't like the sort of games that are made on engines / compilers like that anyway.
Caporegime
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Few things, I'm not entirely sure on Steamroller, but I'm fairly sure the recently mentioned roadmap which says Steamroller for 2014, also said it about the enterprise chips. If so, I wouldn't be too surprised to see the new cores tip up in desktop/laptop apu's first, and maybe we'll get bigger desktop non apu chips first again as well.
As for the chip itself, its said to amongst many small fixes, split the instruction decoder into two wider ones fixing the main flaw in bulldozer, that alone could be worth a HUGE performance increase, coupled with everything else we could see really significant gains.
One of the biggest/best gains we'll likely see for AMD chips and performance is consoles, consoles using APU's and gains being compiled specifically for AMD chips(which doesn't happen nearly often enough).
You can find quite a few mini reviews showing a program recompiled with a not Intel compiler(ones that generally don't decrease Intel performance at all) will often increase performance on an AMD chip, sometimes significantly. Likewise you can find several situations where some benchmark or program which trails Intel on windows, compiled for a Linux distro outperforms the same Intel chip. Optimisation is crucial, and AMD have often been left out of the loop when it comes to optimisation for their CPU's.
Gaming wise, with all the consoles going AMD gpu and 2 seemingly going AMD cpu(which will most likely be pretty heavily based on AMD's usual APU lineup) should see game dev's heavily optimising their code to extract every last drop of performance from AMD cpu's, and that will certainly spill into pc gaming.
I think next gen consoles + fixed decoder will result in AMD being insanely competitive for gaming performance full stop, and the chip will be pretty damn good anyway. its already actually GOOD performance that can see a Bulldozer/Piledriver beat an 22nm chip in ANYTHING at all, that it can beat them in quite a few things and get close in others, and get spanked most often only in ridiculously obsoleted code(super pi, or a benchmark that is wholy owned by Intel, everyone knows it, but Intel pretend its not true).
Steamroller has likely been delayed either because 28nm at Glofo has been pushed back, or they originally wanted to squeeze it into 32nm, but a delay by 6 months to save cash and only tape it out for 28nm makes more sense for them.
The fact that Steamroller, plus AMD gaming evolved crap due to consoles and what will be almost universal AMD optimisation in gaming, plus enthusiasts liking "control" of their PC and all this happening around a time Intel is seemingly trying to upset the enthusiast market with non upgradeable Cpu's. 2014 could be a pretty fantastic year for AMD to make a real push.
We'll have consoles launching seemingly late 2013 and early 2014, AMD's name plastered all over every game on the new consoles and people thinking about upgrading going "wtf you mean I can't buy a Intel CPU on its own" while the latest benchmarks could easily show AMD beating Intel across almost all new games.
As for the chip itself, its said to amongst many small fixes, split the instruction decoder into two wider ones fixing the main flaw in bulldozer, that alone could be worth a HUGE performance increase, coupled with everything else we could see really significant gains.
One of the biggest/best gains we'll likely see for AMD chips and performance is consoles, consoles using APU's and gains being compiled specifically for AMD chips(which doesn't happen nearly often enough).
You can find quite a few mini reviews showing a program recompiled with a not Intel compiler(ones that generally don't decrease Intel performance at all) will often increase performance on an AMD chip, sometimes significantly. Likewise you can find several situations where some benchmark or program which trails Intel on windows, compiled for a Linux distro outperforms the same Intel chip. Optimisation is crucial, and AMD have often been left out of the loop when it comes to optimisation for their CPU's.
Gaming wise, with all the consoles going AMD gpu and 2 seemingly going AMD cpu(which will most likely be pretty heavily based on AMD's usual APU lineup) should see game dev's heavily optimising their code to extract every last drop of performance from AMD cpu's, and that will certainly spill into pc gaming.
I think next gen consoles + fixed decoder will result in AMD being insanely competitive for gaming performance full stop, and the chip will be pretty damn good anyway. its already actually GOOD performance that can see a Bulldozer/Piledriver beat an 22nm chip in ANYTHING at all, that it can beat them in quite a few things and get close in others, and get spanked most often only in ridiculously obsoleted code(super pi, or a benchmark that is wholy owned by Intel, everyone knows it, but Intel pretend its not true).
Steamroller has likely been delayed either because 28nm at Glofo has been pushed back, or they originally wanted to squeeze it into 32nm, but a delay by 6 months to save cash and only tape it out for 28nm makes more sense for them.
The fact that Steamroller, plus AMD gaming evolved crap due to consoles and what will be almost universal AMD optimisation in gaming, plus enthusiasts liking "control" of their PC and all this happening around a time Intel is seemingly trying to upset the enthusiast market with non upgradeable Cpu's. 2014 could be a pretty fantastic year for AMD to make a real push.
We'll have consoles launching seemingly late 2013 and early 2014, AMD's name plastered all over every game on the new consoles and people thinking about upgrading going "wtf you mean I can't buy a Intel CPU on its own" while the latest benchmarks could easily show AMD beating Intel across almost all new games.
Even though my i7 920 is going damn strong atm, im tempted to go out and buy a FX8350 and board and some ram to go with it and see how it does just because i can.
Im among those who are SICK to the very core of devs using bad and horrific engines (PhysX springs to mind) and/or "forgets" to optimize properly giving one side (fx nvidia, but it goes for AMD and Intel users as well) the edge.
If you make something make sure it damn well runs as good as it can no matter if the CPU is branded Intel or AMD.
Im among those who are SICK to the very core of devs using bad and horrific engines (PhysX springs to mind) and/or "forgets" to optimize properly giving one side (fx nvidia, but it goes for AMD and Intel users as well) the edge.
If you make something make sure it damn well runs as good as it can no matter if the CPU is branded Intel or AMD.
how does piledriver suck?
Humbug,
You demonstrated how bad the AMD CPU performance on games can be when you posted your Skyrim benches.
How can you say that was acceptable performance ?
Caporegime
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If you believe half the people on forums,no one with a CPU other than a SB/IB Core i5 or Core i7 overclocked to 4.5GHZ,could run any game. Of course what they don't understand is that making PC gaming look more expensive than it is,it pushes more and more people to consoles,leading to more and more crappy PC console hatchet jobs. Yay! 
Even a £90 CPU and a £130 graphics card would still produce better framerates and render a game at higher resolution than consoles.
The thing is that I have been to a few LANs(and I also know a whole load of gamers too),and I have met Platinum League SC2 players using Phenom II X4 and Core2 quads,and many others running Skyrim at 1920X1080 too with similar CPUs. I was actually surprised at this,I really thought that at least for SC2 MP they would be having high end CPUs,going by what many people on forums say.
They are obviously NOT casual players,so it seems ability is more important overall.
Do people believe,that a game like Skyrim with over 10 million copies sold,everyone is running £100+ CPUs,let alone the latest ones??
It also ties into the fact,that the PC CPU market is shrinking,which means more people are sticking with their older PCs and probably upgrading them now,instead of just buying new ones.
Even a £90 CPU and a £130 graphics card would still produce better framerates and render a game at higher resolution than consoles.
The thing is that I have been to a few LANs(and I also know a whole load of gamers too),and I have met Platinum League SC2 players using Phenom II X4 and Core2 quads,and many others running Skyrim at 1920X1080 too with similar CPUs. I was actually surprised at this,I really thought that at least for SC2 MP they would be having high end CPUs,going by what many people on forums say.
They are obviously NOT casual players,so it seems ability is more important overall.
Do people believe,that a game like Skyrim with over 10 million copies sold,everyone is running £100+ CPUs,let alone the latest ones??
It also ties into the fact,that the PC CPU market is shrinking,which means more people are sticking with their older PCs and probably upgrading them now,instead of just buying new ones.
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On v1.1 with the game maxed out i averaged 47 FPS with vSync that i can't turn off, and on a 7870.
Those were perfectly acceptable frame rates and the FX-8350 betters that by quite a lot as you can see from this slide its way faster than my x6 and averages 67 FPS (with vSync off) http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-14.html
Are you seriously going to sit there and try and tell me that the perfectly smooth frame rates i'm getting;- and are greatly improve on the new PD chip (67 FPS) are not good enough?
Yes the i5 gets 20 FPS more @ 1080P, but whats 20 FPS on top of whats already over the 60 FPS magic number?
It amounts to nothing.
I would rather spend the money saved on something else and have better application performance for it
Your narrow single mindedness on a few extra FPS that you don't need on a few games only; and a hit on application performance being worth more money is barking mad to me. I might even be inclined to flush that wasted money down to toilet for all the good it would do, i would feel i got more out of it watching it swirl round.
I don't think your at all wrong with that, watch the fan get really really dirty 'if' that comes to pass, there will be a lot of very very very angry people around.
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Caporegime
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If you believe half the people on forums,no one with a CPU other than a SB/IB Core i5 or Core i7 overclocked to 4.5GHZ,could run any game. Of course what they don't understand is that making PC gaming look more expensive than it is,it pushes more and more people to consoles,leading to more and more crappy PC console hatchet jobs. Yay!
Even a £90 CPU and a £130 graphics card would still produce better framerates and render a game at higher resolution than consoles.
The thing is that I have been to a few LANs(and I also know a whole load of gamers too),and I have met Platinum League SC2 players using Phenom II X4 and Core2 quads,and many others running Skyrim at 1920X1080 too with similar CPUs. I was actually surprised at this,I really thought that at least for SC2 MP they would be having high end CPUs,going by what many people on forums say.
They are obviously NOT casual players,so it seems ability is more important overall.
Do people believe,that a game like Skyrim with over 10 million copies sold,everyone is running £100+ CPUs,let alone the latest ones??
It also ties into the fact,that the PC CPU market is shrinking,which means more people are sticking with their older PCs and probably upgrading them now,instead of just buying new ones.
People will happily game with 6670's, Athlon II's, Athlon X2's (90nm) etc.
GT640's etc.
Hell, some people will game on HD4000's
.On my old 790GX board, I bet people could game on the IGP on that, I even played Aion acceptably at 1920x1080 on lowest settings while my GPU was RMA.
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Caporegime
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If anything, just adding more to how good the Phenom II line up was with their respective price/performance and the performance they can still offer now relative to the new AMD flagship almost 4 years on in gaming.
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Yup, http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23273016&postcount=306
My x6 is now just able to hold ~60 FPS Avg, actually on 1.7, with more gaming than the bench it does drop to about ~50 at time but its still perfectly good.
@ Martini...
The FX-8350 does improve those games that don't do as well on AMD's by quite away compared with the x6.
Its a move in the right direction, one can say with absolute certainty the PD chip is a move up from Thuban, a significant one at that, performance is up almost right across the board, sometimes a lot.
No one could say that about Bulldozer.
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Caporegime
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Firstly most people with a brain said Bulldozer will offer improvements, and potentially be meh elsewhere. Braindead people went "new equals instantly better always therefore bulldozer will wipe the floor with everything", it didn't and those same people went "its crap because it doesn't win super pi, zomg, lame".
It gained what, beyond 10% simply from a windows scheduler update, it gains more than that from proper optimisation. Software completely unoptimised for ANY chip will run like absolute turd vs software completely or even a little bit optimised for it.
Bulldozer is still no where near as bad as people say, there were still 4-5 area's it DID beat sandybridge, and other area's it lost(marginally) to a hex core Phenom 2, boo hoo.
I said as did many others, first chip in a new architecture will be the worst chip you'll see for 5-10 years depending on how long said architecture lasts. It is the least optimised chip in terms of layout, design AND support from software, OS. The second gen both had, an updated scheduler on OS's before its release, more software aware of optimisations for it(but still the vast vast majority run on Intel compilers that do very little to help run on AMD chips at all well), and fixed literally dozens of smaller problems, but it was also WITHIN A YEAR of the previous chip and MAJOR fixes were NEVER going to be in a chip that close. Here's a hint, GPU's take 7-8 months to tape out, so for instance if the 5870 came out, and there needed to be a massive beast of a change in the 6970 it would need to be tested post 5870 release essentially, found, fixed, tested, redesigned in multiple stages, improved, then be ready to go in the final product within 3 months to be ready to tape out for a year later.
CPU's take 18months + to tape out usually, you do not generally get major "fixes" from one iteration to another, think tick tock for Intel. Small changes, bug fixes, minor improvements after a year, after two years, big changes.
This is no different, anyone with any sense who doesn't go "new therefore instantly perfect" knew bulldozer would be a step forward in some area's, compete bettere with Sandy in some area's, and be worse in some area's, and certainly have a problem or two that needs fixing. It was also plain as day that some of these would(and did) get fixed in PIledriver and bigger fixes would be coming in Steamroller.
These things were OBVIOUS to a sensible person 3-4 years ago, because every COMPLETELY NEW architecture has the SAME issue, its always the worst and always has the most to be gained essentially on a long line of upgrades to the architecture. Its also not disimilar to the design process for almost everything made in the world.
Ipad, ipad 2 ipad 3, (okay I don't follow apple so the order or numbers might be off but) simple basic flawed version, followed by version with a number of fixes and small easy improvements, then a version with a completely new chip, vastly more power, loads of the kinks worked out, smoother this and that, streamlined something else, etc, etc.
You don't go into a workshop, design a chip, 3 months later its finish, 3 months after that ready for sale and a year later you can have a completely reworked chip ready, Intel can't do this with billions upon billions at their disposal, ARM chip makers STILL haven't all got A15's out, no a15 quad cores, and theoretically they could have been made the second 28nm was up and running which was well over a year ago. Chip design, even when half the companies use a basically already existing design with minor tweaks, take a ruddy long time.
Only people who were disappointed with Bulldozer were those who can't read benchmarks(it beat Sandy in places the X6 couldn't touch it), and those who for no apparent reason expected the second coming of jesus.
It was a tiny bit slower than I expected on launch, but with scheduler updates, and when software was recompiled for it, you could see how fast it could be, much closer to sandy than Phenom in the vast majority of cases, as it should have been.
If i had to part with all my AMD chips bar one, it would be the 1090T that i would keep.
Caporegime
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I don't really understand why everything v2, when they're different names, and then we get v2 of the new chip (Which ends up being a new chip itself)
But the desktop AM3+ successor AFAIK is Steamroller, which as far as it goes is looking 2014.
Caporegime
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Could be a few very minor fixes, or a process style fix which lets it hit lower voltages/power levels, like a Q6600 G0 version, or even process shrink. AMD GPU side have often tested a new process with something relatively low volume and easy, 4770 type deal. Maybe we'll get a few 28nm replacement Piledriver parts before they ramp up volume of 28nm CPU's with Steamroller.
Well I'm running Skyrim on an 8320 with a 7850 gfx card at 1080P on ultra, have not had one hint of slowdown at all even in some of the busiest graphical areas. And as for productivity tasks....It's running like a dream. 1080p Handbrake encodes from blurays absolutely fly. And Steamroller should continue the refinement of this particular architecture.