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Obviously as much as id like to wait for zen and as much as im sure its going to be a pretty decent chip, and especially as much as i cant stand some of the anti consumer business practices Intel has engaged in. I really dont feel like waiting 3 to 4 months for a new CPU, especially not with starting a new pretty decent paying job in a week. So ive got to ask, and this probably is the worst place to ask considering the massive intel bias here, but ill ask anyways. Should i cave and get a 6700k now and pay a hefty price for it (in canada, tech is way to expensive) or just keep waiting for Zen. Id say im pretty content as is, aside from a few single core heavy games, gta v being one that just doesnt play nice with my current chip, battlefield 4 sometimes also has a few drops but none that go below 60 fps so that doesnt bother me as much. But i can for sure feel my 390 being held back in a few titles. If from what we know now, there is no way zen will be on par or better than a 6700k than ill just go for it, but there is always the chance that it could be, especially considering Jim Keller was the lead. 8350 served me well, but its pushing 3 years old, and its time to move on, sadly zen is taking FOREVER to release. We dont even have an actual product name, no solid specs either really. And AMD themselves have said it wont be a "cheap" chip anyways, so whats the harm in spending now?

I'm in the process of changing my Dell Inspiron 570 (4GB Edition) to a budget gaming PC. I'm having a hard time decided whether I should wait till it comes out, and have a big budget of $300 to upgrade the Case, Motherboard, Memory, and CPU. I also could get those items during September, with a budget of $200.. I know that most people would say : "Wait till zen comes out" but I've been stuck with this potato PC for a long time. So, the question is, is Zen worth the wait, or should I go with $200 and get a better PC... I already have an R7 250, and I'm getting a EVGA 500B Power Supply soon. Thanks in advance!

AMD has spill some info with their server cpus based on the Zen architecture. Code name Naples, these cpus will have up to 32 cores and 64 threads. It shares a 8MB pool of L3 cache, with it pegged at 64MB, and it's capable of executing 64 threads as long as it's within the 180w TDP range. The 32 cores is made up of 2x 16 core dies, and runs on socket LGA SP3. These cpus mightcome in a variety of core configurations, from the entry level dual core to quad, octo, and high-end 32 cores. It also said to support 16x 10Gbe controllers, 8 independent memory channels, and 128 PCIe Express Gen 3 lanes. http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/40888-amd-naples-zen-has-32-cores http://hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-processor-code-named-naples-features-32-cores

hi so i recently sold my dual xeon workstation and now im using my backup PC and the PC is much older than my dual xeon rig as it has a Phenom ii x6 1055t 8gb DDR2 and a GTX 760. when playing battlefield 4 at 1080p on high settings i noticed a slight bottleneck as the GPU wasn't pinned at 99% use and the CPU was bouncing between 70 80% use. though my FPS never dipped down below 40 FPS i know this rig is showing signs of it old age already. so i decided to wait until AMD releases Zen and Vega and im going to do a complete system upgrade from there. now i was wondering will the AM3 coolers work on the AM4 motherboard? or would i have to buy a new one. thanks

Hopefully this isnt true, but it seems both amd and intel are facing issues with lithography. Source:http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/cpu_mainboard/amd_s_zen_and_intel_kaby_lake_cpus_are_reportedly_delayed/1

At Computex 2016, AMD showcased their Zen CPUs, people were unable to capture the backside of the CPUs to find out whether it'll have the Pins or not. Jagareview (Indonesian Tech website) released the pictures of rear side of CPU. Surprisingly it'll continue to have the traditional PGA sockets. That means it'll continue to have pins on it's back. Not really a big deal. I mean we're not gonna look at those CPUs everyday. Images: Source: OC3D, JagaReview.

Okay, someone on Reddit got this off a Balkan AMD Facebook page where they said this (with awful Google translate below it): So maybe they're showing off a Zen + Polaris setup at E3. What will be interesting is how much we'll actually see besides just showing a Zen CPU running an actual game. Will we see a CPU-Z (or similar) spec sheet? Will we see core count, clock speed etc? FPS numbers? Probably only FPS at best. I don't think AMD will go public with the rest this early. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4nv19v/amd_showcasing_zen_cpu_running_doom_today_on_pc/ Just as I'm about to hit submit. It seems that the Facebook post linked has been taken down. So make of that what you will. Probably that an overly eager employee leaked the info early.

The Past: AMD's Computex event is happening today. It is already official that Bristol Ridge will be announced at the event, along with us getting some "Polaris updates." This probably means that for the first time since CES, we will be getting some information that is actually useful about Polaris. Unfortunately, this isn't a launch for Polaris but it's definitely almost as good as one! If we are very lucky, AMD may even talk about Vega too! And if we are very, very lucky maybe, just maybe, we will even get something about Zen! Chances are against that though, so don't count on it. I will be updating this thread with stuff we learn from the event while it's happening. If you hate my writing skillz, want some great pictures to stare at, or don't want to keep having to refresh the page, Anandtech will probably have a live blog on their site once the event is almost starting. I will post the link to that article once it appears here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10390/computex-2016-amd-press-conference-live-blog If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out my earlier post about the event: Or, if you absolutely hate my writing skillz and are gonna get eye cancer trying to read my article, here's an article for you to read that won't give you eye cancer (I hope) : http://www.anandtech.com/show/10341/amd-announces-computex-2016-webcast The video of the stream is here: I will (luckily) be able to watch the event while it's happening. I will post all information that we learn right down here: [Last Updated: Past 7 P.M. Pacific Time]-Event has started! Also, here's a countdown @Energycore made! http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?msg=AMD's Thingy&p0=241&year=2016&month=6&day=1&hour=10&min=0&sec=0So here is everything announced at the event: Polaris Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10389/amd-teases-radeon-rx-480-launching-june-29th-for-199 At the Computex event, Raja Koduri gave us some new info about Polaris. He talked about the new rx 480, which has been rumored about in the past few days. The rx 480 is based on Polaris 10 and contains 36 CUs presumably with 64 SPs per CU, giving a total of 2304 SPs. It has over 5 TFLOPs of compute power and is powered by a 256 bit memory bus with the memory clocked at 8 gbps, delivering 256 GB/S of memory bandwidth. AMD hasn't provided us with any other information, but based on the compute power it is probably between 1.08 ghz and 1.3 ghz. Information ROP count and TMU count was not given. The TDP is 150 watts. The card will be launching on June 29th for 199 dollars. Estimations put the performance around the 390/x level, though we can't be sure of anything as AMD has told us anything about IPC gains. However, it was said it will run DOOM very well on Vulkan. We only got one demo, which was of two rx 480s compared to a gtx 1080 in Ashes of the Singularity. The dual rx 480s beat out the 1080 by around 4 fps (around 58 fps vs 62). Raja stated that the 1080 was a 700 dollar card while the dual rx 480s was only 500. Because a 480 is only 200 dollars, my assumption is that this was a dual rx 480 card that was compared and that that will be launching a little after the rx 480. As well, it was said the 1080 was near 100% utilization, while the 480s only around 50%. I'm not sure what to take from this, but it obviously means more performance could be unlocked in the future through better drivers. This is interesting but also worrying for me. The card has the same TDP as the 1070, but presumably offers much lower performance judging from the price tag. This would, again, but Nvidia in a lead in the performance/watt game, again. However, this could be a very interesting card regardless. If it can deliver r9 fury level performance for only 200 dollars, I would find that to be a 1070 killer. It would offer 80-90% of the performance of the 1070 for only a little more than half the price. Two 480s could destroy the 1070. Polaris seems to be a little worse than Pascal from a performance/watt standpoint, but it might be a killer from the performance/dollar standpoint. We don't know how well it will overclock, though. If Polaris offers good overclocking, however, it may be a real killer. If not, I don't know. I guess we can wait until reviews come out to decided for certain. That's all for Polaris! Bristol Ridge Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10362/amd-7th-generation-apu-bristol-ridge-stoney-ridge-for-notebooks There's not much to say about Bristol Ridge. It's basically just Carrizo with DDR4 and slightly higher clock speeds. That's it. A few new HP and Dell laptops will be featuring it, but it really isn't that interesting IMO. This is only a mobile launch, so no desktop parts. Nothing about AM4. Still pretty crap in my opinion and I still think Zen is the only real interesting CPU architecture from AMD. And now for what you've all been waiting for..... ZEN!!! Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10391/amd-briefly-shows-off-zen-summit-ridge-silicon AMD has now officially confirmed Zen is working and being tested in labs. Along with that, AMD showed a video that was completely created, edited, and rendered on a Zen CPU. Along with that, Dr. Su took out an 8 core 16 thread Zen CPU. Unfortunately, we couldn't see the die as the heat spreader was over it, but it was still an interesting announcement. The 40% IPC is still confirmed, and Dr. Su continued to say how Zen will be scaled across all platforms-embedded, mobile, desktop, and server. Dr. Su again emphasized how Zen will be AMD's return the high end. Unfortunately, we didn't get any benchmarks or anything, but it is still quite interesting. However, AMD did mention they will begin sampling Zen in a few weeks, and wide sampling will commence in q3. Perhaps benchmarks soon.... I am definitely hoping that AMD will be able to make a comeback with Zen. The CPU market really needs some competition. At this point it is obvious Intel is taking advantage of the situation my pricing their products very high and slowing down improvements. Broadwell-E is 5-10% faster than Haswell-E.... and it's more expensive. That's not how the market should work. When a new generation of products comes out that's better than the old ones, it's supposed to replace them, not be priced higher than them. At this rate the cost of CPUs will only increase slowly but surely, which is why we need AMD to help sort this out. This event was quite interesting, even if we didn't learn that much. Hopefully we will get even more info on Polaris (maybe reviews) in the next few weeks!

If I read this correctly the chipset has been moved to the CPU die. So this could mean that each SKU of "Summit Ridge" and "Bristol Ridge" could have different types and amounts of connectivity. I don't know if this is a good choice or a poor choice, but we will have to wait. Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/223086/amd-confirms-key-summit-ridge-specs

I'm gonna make a build some time towards the end of this year and I initially thought I would go for an Intel + NVIDIA setup but my budget won't allow that. This build will be used for 4k 60fps gaming and game development. I'll take a zen, I guess. Should I wait for Vega or go with a dual crossfire polaris? Or should I buy one Vega (if it is released this year) and then install a navi later for a crossfire?

if i have an MSI 970 gaming motherboard which has an AM3+/AM3 CPU socket, and zen has been confirmed to have a new AM4 socket will i have to upgradeto a motherboard with an AM4 socket?

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10413/amd-teases-future-radeon-rx-470-radeon-rx-460-cards At E3, AMD has announced the rx 470 and 460. Unfortunately, no details were provided except that the 460 was below 75 watts (I don't remember for sure but I think they said below 75 watts, Lisa might have said 75 watts). The 470 seems to be a mainstream gaming card while the 460 will be targeted at esports. My guess is the 470 will offer around 380x performance while the 460 will be somewhere around the r7 370 and GTX 950. My guess is that the card that AMD showed off at CES was the 460. Nothing else about Polaris was mentioned; we weren't given any benchmarks, though it is possible we could see some by the end of e3. I currently cant can't find any article that reported on this, but AMD also mentioned Zen. We didn't get any benchmarks for Zen, either, though it was said that Zen is currently capable of running DOOM. Well that's all for now folks! Hopefully we'll be seeing some more stuff before the end of e3 as this really isn't that much info! EDIT: Didnt see this, but found this on Anandtech's article: This seems to be saying that AMD may make a press release soon with more info on Polaris..... Interesting.....

New and exciting news came to us my friends. Apparently, there have been some dieshots of the new AMD ZEN architecture floating around. http://semiaccurate.com/2016/05/22/38688/ http://dresdenboy.blogspot.cz/2016/05/first-amd-summit-ridge-wafer-spotted.html There have even been some performance estimations regarding the IPC of the new architecture and it looks nice. It should be around IVY BRIDGE level of performance (according to a Czech website called pctuning.cz ) and as to the progress (or should I say...stagnation) of the blue team, Zen should be very competitive. There has been like a 15% Difference in IPC going from IVY to Skylake and with DDR4 things could get interesting.

[...] AMD seems to be making quite the comeback. I'm interested to see whether the Zen chips will make buying an AMD chip for a higher-end machine will be worth it again. Source

Hi so I have my current rig and its a bit old but it can still play games at decent setting but i think that this rig is going to kick the bucket soon so im deciding what to upgrade in it. im willing to wait until AMD releases their Zen CPUs and also their Polaris/Vega GPUs. my currenty rig has a phenom ii x6 1055t 8gb of DDR2 667mhz ram an AM2+ motherboard that i bios flashed to support the AM3 cpu. and a GTX 760 2gb. when i play battlefield 4 i mostly get 60 fps on ultra at 1080p. but in some maps or times my fps would drop to 20 or 15. i think that the old platform is the culprit here but i dont know for sure. so i ask you guys what do you think of this? is it my aging platform that is causing the FPS drops or is it the older Kepler GPU that is the cause of this, also what would you recommend upgrade the platform to AM4 when it comes out or upgrade the GPU when the polaris/vega GPUs release. I will leave a poll to see what i should do here.

Hi, I currently have a laptop that runs on a i7-4500U@ 1.8GHz and turbo to 2.7GHz. I'm a uni student and do 3D designing, progamming and gaming. My laptop doesn't seem to be able to support my apps that I run anymore and giving lots of problems. Hence, I plan on getting a desktop. Since GTX 1070 is coming out soon at a really cheap price I plan on getting that. However, I still can't decide on my motherboard and CPU. Firstly, should I wait for Zen and Kaby Lake (If it comes out in Q3 2016) and hoping the price of skylake will drop or should i just get a skylake now probably i5-6600. Secondly, since this is my first build so I don't really plan on overclocking, should I get a cheaper motherboard. I was thinking of the MSI B150M Night Elf. Its pretty cheap and has plenty of IO and a bonus that it looks nice. So is B150 chipset good enough for my usage? Any reply is much appreciated. Thank you very much!

As we all know the AMD3+ socket is really old compared to Intel's line up. I was wondering if everyone who has a AMD3+ socket would be able to get a socket converter so they won't need a new motherboard. I thought this would be cool because most AMD users have the FX lin up cpus so this would be easy on us.

Source: http://wccftech.com/amd-only-fabricating-octa-core-zen-x86-die/ This is somewhat of a surprise. I was personally expecting 8,6, and 4 core Zen CPUs to come initially. Then again, this does kind of make sense, as now AMD only needs one die initially to work from. As well, this probably means AMD's 6 core Zen CPUs will be around 350-400 dollars as if they were priced higher AMD wouldn't have anything to compete with Intel down at the 300 dollar range. Keep in mind to take this with a grain of salt. This rumor was started by a site that cited no sources; they only stated they got this from their sources but said nothing about who or how they got the info. I wouldn't be too surprised if this is false and we will initially get 8,6, and 4 core Zen CPUs.

i cannot wait for all the new AMD stuff coming out this year! it has been far too long since we got a good full set of AMD hardware. the last time we got a good full set of hardware was back in 2012 with the FX 8350 and 7970 ghz. i would love for my next workstation to be all amd once again. right now it has a 5820k and 2x 980 tis. the zen and polaris hardware look like they will both be a lot more efficient and powerful. are you as hyped as i am? what's your standing on an all AMD build becoming a viable high-end option once again? are you blue/green team? *insert The AMD Fanboy Song by Tech Of Tomorrow*

AMD is getting ready to present second generation of Project Quantum. This time they are going all RED with new CPU generation Zen and GPU Vega. We have updated standards (DisplayPort 1.3, HDMI 2.0) that will nicely compliment all new hardware. When the first generation came out there were no VR headsets on the market ready to show off the strength of the hardware packed in this futuristic box. So sadly the time of "Liquid VR" - sign that AMD put right on the cover - was still yet to come. Well, situation is different now and we can hope to see some cool demo of AMD Project Quantum v2 soon. Computex 2016...anyone?!?! I am very excited to watch how will this second generation perform and hope to see this concept turned into a real mass produced computer. I am feeling very optimistic and ready to go all in on RED in 2016. :-) Source: http://diit.cz/clanek/amd-project-quantum-neni-mrtvy

Source: http://wccftech.com/amd-am4-%C2%B5opga-socket-1331/ [UPDATE]: For all of you originally sketchy about it, you can't say so anymore. As you can quite plainly see, the motherboard was also spotted on Zauba. It says Sapphire on it, and since Sapphire manufacturers AMD's PCBs, it makes perfect sense. As well, it has Bristol Ridge quite plainly plastered on the name, indicating it is probably an AM4 motherboard. As well, it states in the second line "AM41331PGA." That AM4 there seems to me pretty obvious that this is an AM4 motherboard. As well, it says "1331PGA," which is perfectly in line with the rumors that the AM4 mobo has 1331 pins. Unfortunately there was no mention about a 140 watt TDP max, but that info probably wouldn't be important enough to be put on the description. However, this has convinced me the 140 watt TDP part is probably true since if bitsandchips got that much accurate chances are the rest is too. [ORIGINAL]: If these rumors are true, this means that the AM4 socket will have 1331 pins and will support CPUs up to 140 watts. If it can support only up to 140 watts, hopefully that means we won't have another 9590 that draws as much power as a premium GPU. As well, with the larger amount of pins, it seems AMD will be using smaller pins on the CPU, which would make them more fragile. More pins is probably a good thing, since it means Zen will be much more powerful. Keep in mind to take this with a grain of salt. The original source, bitsandchips.it, didn't mention anything about where they got the information. This could be true, or it might not, so don't assume this is correct and, as I said, take it with a grain of salt.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/WWKLvK Please don't fanboy out on me, I'm convinced Zen will be great

So as far as engineering samples, they've already been distributed to various partners for testing these chips, which is reasonable since projected release for Zen. AM4 mobos are also sampling obviously. So and 8 core CPU in 95W thermal envelope with base frequency of 3GHz, boost not mentioned yet. As far as 14Nm LPP process, I would expect higher clock for this CPU on it. In article it's also stated that release Zen will certainly clock higher. Look at FX-8300 with 95W TDP clocks 3.3 base, 3.6 full turbo, 4.2 half turbo and it's an 8-core. It's also 32nm part. Therefore expecting Zen to have high frequency is justifiable. Source: http://www.eteknix.com/amd-zen-8core-engineering-sample-leaked/

(Skip to 2:45 for the Zen Part of the video) If AMD can deliver an unlocked ZEN quad core CPU under $100 I can see them dominating the market with Intel's latest statements about not focusing on powerful CPU's. As long as the AM4 motherboards are reasonable priced they could be a great choice for budget gaming.

The title contains the question. What my preference is is MOAR CORES! and MOAR GIGAHERTZ! so shall I wait for AMD's new CPUs or just go Intel now and overclock the 6700k?