Search the Community

I was casually looking through my favourite Hardware Comparison Website when i encountered the AMD A6-9500 in the AM4 Socket. It is of course is an APU which was announced back in summer, so called "Bristol Ridge". The specs said: 65 Watt TDP 790 GFLOPS of compute performance (in comparison last gen's top of the line APU the 7890K had 887 GFLOPS) and of course DDR4 memory support What do you guys think about that? Insert other media PS: it costs 80€ right now but we will see how long that actually stays.

So AMD has released their latest line of APUs, the Bristol Ridge series. This included (maybe in seperate releases, I don't remember) the Athlon x4 950. The only difference between the Athlon x4 950 and the A10-9700 is that the A10 has the R7 iGPU. But reading online, I was given to understand that because the X4 lacks the iGPU, you MUST have a VGA card of some sort in order to get ANY kind of video output. But my question is this: Whouldn't the CPU just software render the display? It may be crappy, slow response time, absolutely sh*t for even 2D gaming, and it may task the CPU, but couldn't it, technically? PLEASE NOTE: I'm not asking this question with any intent to buy. I'm just curious about it, from a technical standpoint, not as a customer. I'm not asking for advice on wise spending.

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!

EDIT: I do know that this Thread is a duplicate (in the sense that this news has already been posted), it's an honest mistake and I already reported my own thread with the request that it should be deleted. Discussion on my opinions at the bottom are still welcome though. Scheduled for: - 07:00 PM PST (May 31st) - 10:00 PM EDT (May 31st) - 02:00 AM UTC (June 1st) Livestream -> AMD’s Computex website ______________________________________________________________ - AMD To Deliver Polaris Announcement At Computex - Launch of 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors [APU] - and More - WCCFtech.com - Anandtech.com - WCCFtech.com > Further info on AMD.com < NCIX made already an Episode with these news ______________________________________________________________ I'm myself only interested in the GPU news and not APU. I hope AMD will manage to catch up and compete to at least nVidias mid-range GPUs. Sure nVidia will still lead in the top segment with the recently announced GTX 1080, the coming GTX 1080 Ti and Titan based on Pascal but it's only a small percentage of costumers who are gonna invest in top-range GPUs. Most PC-Gamers aren't running 4K monitors to begin with. The mid-range market with focus on Dollar per FPS is much more interesting and with competition that's where capitalism really shines. Really wanna sew new Console-killer Builds that are also quiet and efficient. What are your expectations from Polaris, are you interested in the to-be-announced 7th Gen APUs at all or only wating for Zen? Are you waiting with an investment for Polaris to be released?

Source: http://wccftech.com/amd-announces-june-1st-press-conference-polaris-7th-gen-apus-computex-2016/ So it looks like AMD is definitely striking right back at Nvidia with this. Chances are we will be getting some real details about Polaris for the first time on June 1st. This year will definitely be an interesting one, and I'm curious to see how AMD will fight back this time. It doesn't seem thought that AMD will release Polaris here-only give us some details, as the title says "Polaris Updates," which implies information rather than a launch. It would make sense if AMD releases Polaris at E3, which is only two weeks after Computex. EDIT: For everyone arguing on blah blah Polaris is gonna only be 390x performance or blah blah Polaris is gonna compete with the GTX 1070 please just shut up. None of us have anything to base these claims off of. The only things we know for sure is Polaris 10 can run Hitman at 1440p 60 fps. Basically it. The 2304 SP rumors are probably true, but we don't know the final clock speeds yet, we don't know how much IPC has changed, and we don't know if there are parts that will go higher than that. So stop arguing about something we know nothing about. Everyone can argue all they want once AMD gives us some real benchmarks to work with but right now, there is so little information that arguing on this subject is pointless. There's my two cents.

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.

Do you think we'll see them in more laptops than Carrizo? I'm tired of just seeing tens and tens of laptops with ULV Intel chips (5200U and what not) without good dedicated GPUs. Let's hope they are better implemented than Carrizo chips (15W TDP limit on flagship chip intended to run at 35W...), and also, much more present. Here's a reminder for the planned SKUs (they don't have names yet, the names are my prediction): SKU Cores Base/Boost Clock L2 $ GPU CUs GPU SPs GPU Clock Memory TDP/cTDP _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FX-9900P 4 3.0/3.7 GHz 2 MB 8 CUs 512 SPs 900 Mhz DDR4-2400/DDR3-2133 35W/25W FX-9800L 4 2.7/3.6 GHz 2 MB 8 CUs 512 SPs 758 Mhz DDR4-1866/DDR3-1866 15W/12W A10-9700P 4 2.8/3.5 GHz 2 MB 6 CUs 384 SPs 900 Mhz DDR4-2400/DDR3-2133 35W/25W A10-9600L 4 2.5/3.4 GHz 2 MB 6 CUs 384 SPs 758 Mhz DDR4-1866/DDR3-1866 15W/12W A8-9500P 4 2.6/3.2 GHz 2 MB 6 CUs 384 SPs 800 Mhz DDR4-2400/DDR3-2133 35W/25W A8-9400L 4 2.3/3.2 GHz 2 MB 6 CUs 384 SPs 686 Mhz DDR4-1866/DDR3-1866 15W/12W A6-9300L 2 2.3/3.2 GHz 1 MB 4 CUs 256 SPs 800 Mhz DDR4-1866/DDR3-1866 15W/12W Source for specs : http://wccftech.com/amd-bristol-ridge-apu-am4-desktop-fp4-mobility/

Been a while... Eh. I wanted to scratch an itch of not being to build a rig after a year, so here's something for my brother to get come the holidays. It's a $318 usd starter budget build that can beat his old-ass 2007 laptop and can be upgraded further. PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rRqzJV Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rRqzJV/by_merchant/ CPU: AMD - A8-9600 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $64.99) Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($75.98 @ Newegg) Storage: ADATA - SP900 M.2 128GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($63.99 @ Amazon) Storage: PNY - CS1311 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00) Case: Corsair - Carbide Series 88R MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($54.99 @ Amazon) Power Supply: EVGA - 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00) Optical Drive: LG - GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $5.50) Monitor: Acer - S200HQL GBD 19.5" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor Other: Samsung M378A5244CB0-CRC 2X4GB DDR4-2400 Memory (Purchased For $44.50) Other: Corsair Fan AF120L 1300 RPM, 57.13 CFM, 120mm x 25mm Single (Purchased) Other: Corsair Fan AF120L 1300 RPM, 57.13 CFM, 120mm x 25mm Single (Purchased) Other: Corsair Fan AF120L 1300 RPM, 57.13 CFM, 120mm x 25mm Single ($3.99) Other: Corsair Fan AF120L 1300 RPM, 57.13 CFM, 120mm x 25mm Single ($3.99) Total: $317.93 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-12 22:17 EDT-0400 Right, the elephant in the room: this rig does not have a Ryzen CPU. Well, the A8-9600 was on sale last month so I carpe-diemed and bought one at $65. The lack of Ryzen can be rectified by my brother by obtaining more money on his own to upgrade to a 1600 or to next year's Raven Ridge/Pinnacle Ridge processors. I don't know what he'll be interested in doing that requires more than 4 cores/8 threads, so I leave it to him. Based on Buildzoid's tinkering with the AB350M pro4, the 8 core/16 thread CPUs will be avoided. He may come to the bandwagon, eventually. 2nd, any other confirmations that Samsung M378A5244CB0-CRC DRAMs work with ab350m pro4?? I found 3 CPU-Z Validator links on rigs with Asrock mobos+said RAM, but I'd like more feedback on that. 3rd, considering the Carbide 88r's front panel+small crevices for air intake, would it be ideal to use 120mm lower-rpm fans on the front and then set the high-rpm 120mm fans on top?? On that too, which fan hub would be ideal for 5 case fans?? 4th, I'll warn him that the R7 graphics on the A8 won't handle today's games and can suggest sticking with the old Eidos!Core Tomb Raider games, Fallout 1/2, other old games or easy to run games from Steam. I intend to give this build my EVGA GTX 1060 6GB FTW+ as a birthday present next year while I upgrade to a Nvidia Volta/AMD Navi consumer GPU. 5th, will not let go of the CD drive. My brother has his old Tomb Raider game disks on him and my Windows 10 installation media is a CD. Help if possible, don't help because it doesn't have Ryzen, thanks.