AMD Computex Event-Polaris, Bristol Ridge, and ZEN!!!

[MattBoxer]

3 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I don't think anyone will see this post since no one is following this besides me :/, but if any of you do see this, please review the Zen CPU shot at 1:10:37. I cannot tell for sure on my 720p panel right now but it looks to me like the back of the CPU doesn't seem to have pins, and instead uses an LGA design. I can't say for certain but it seems a little bit like that to me. Can someone with a 1080p panel please confirm?

It's still really hard to see, but she holds it in a way where she tries to hide it but it does look like they are missing though. Also it depends on the render as they may have not bothered to put them on there due to its extra effort.

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, Mattboxer2000 said:

It's still really hard to see, but she holds it in a way where she tries to hide it but it does look like they are missing though. Also it depends on the render as they may have not bothered to put them on there due to its extra effort.

I just found this: http://www.jagatreview.com/2016/06/computex-2016-amd-pamerkan-wujud-prosesor-zen/

Looks like I am wrong, it does have pins on the back.

[MattBoxer]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

I just found this: http://www.jagatreview.com/2016/06/computex-2016-amd-pamerkan-wujud-prosesor-zen/

Looks like I am wrong, it does have pins on the back.

It was still quite hard to see though as the video was quite soft and that photo had a lot of sharpening to see the pins.

[DocSwag]

1 minute ago, Mattboxer2000 said:

It was still quite hard to see though as the video was quite soft and that photo had a lot of sharpening to see the pins.

Well it does seem to confirm it is pins.

One thing I am wondering... Could that pic give us a good approximation of the CPU die size? Generally the die is slightly smaller than the cut out in the back where there are no pins...

[MattBoxer]

5 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Well it does seem to confirm it is pins.

One thing I am wondering... Could that pic give us a good approximation of the CPU die size? Generally the die is slightly smaller than the cut out in the back where there are no pins...

Well for AMD it is quite a hard chore because all the other CPU's they have don'y have a gap on the bottom.

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, Mattboxer2000 said:

Well for AMD it is quite a hard chore because all the other CPU's they have don'y have a gap on the bottom.

oh didn't realize that....

However it is true of Intel CPUs, so I'm assuming that may be true.

 

EDIT: Just searched it and realized a lot of the Haswell die covers an area that has connections. Nevermind about that idea then

[goodtofufriday]

20 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I just found this: http://www.jagatreview.com/2016/06/computex-2016-amd-pamerkan-wujud-prosesor-zen/

Looks like I am wrong, it does have pins on the back.

Why does it still have pins!

[brollybg]

Tbh I am kinda disappointed from AMD. The only thing I saw from them was " We did this with these guys, so now let them talk how awesome we are and working with us is ". They showed a few games with their new GPU and APU, but they didn't even show the FPS, and not to mention that the resolution of the LoL footage was so small that I didn't even see what kind of diffrence the new APU gives for LoL. The same goes for the DOOM footage - didn't show any fps.

I also didn't like how they were talking about the RX 480 being the cheapest solution to VR. But they didn't even show any examples. How can you advertise a product without even showing some examples? Should I expect max 30fps from the card? Should I expect 60? Or should I expect more?

And why is the RX 480 advertised for only VR? Is VR the new thing these days? What about those people who don't want and are not planning to buy VR?

[IGJoe2192]

47 minutes ago, brollybg said:

Tbh I am kinda disappointed from AMD. The only thing I saw from them was " We did this with these guys, so now let them talk how awesome we are and working with us is ". They showed a few games with their new GPU and APU, but they didn't even show the FPS, and not to mention that the resolution of the LoL footage was so small that I didn't even see what kind of diffrence the new APU gives for LoL. The same goes for the DOOM footage - didn't show any fps.

I also didn't like how they were talking about the RX 480 being the cheapest solution to VR. But they didn't even show any examples. How can you advertise a product without even showing some examples? Should I expect max 30fps from the card? Should I expect 60? Or should I expect more?

And why is the RX 480 advertised for only VR? Is VR the new thing these days? What about those people who don't want and are not planning to buy VR?

I had to watch the announcement again today. It was better the second time because I was cooking dinner during the event yesterday. They did show FPS in Doom and it ranged from 60-90fps from what I saw in the upper right hand corner. It is kind of hard to see because there is a dark overlay in the way but still very legible. I for one am really excited for the RX 480 because of its performance to price ratio, with DX12 and Vulkan we should see even better performance. Also what really gets me excited is the fact that this isn't using anything special to achieve its performance goals, no G5X or HBM, just a good solid architecture and I am sure it is ready for years of gaming. This will be a very good interim upgrade for me while I wait for Vega. My current card (Sapphire HD7970 Ghz Vapor-X) is doing well at 1440P but with some low dips at times that kind of ruins the experience and it lacks freesync which my display (Asus MG279Q) supports. 

[DocSwag]

1 hour ago, goodtofufriday said:

Why does it still have pins!

Because pins are cheaper than connections (I think)

Pretty sure that's the main reason.

[KWelz]

Very sad to see this news.   I am very worried we are heading towards a disaster here.   AMD needs to remain competitive and they have no idea how to do it.  The show today left no doubt of that.  Lots of engineers and insubstantial info.   Nothing showing anything that can compete with the new high end lineup on the GPU side.   

 

And for the CPU....   I already have a bad feeling about this.  Still using PGA instead of LGA?   Still focusing on the brute power approach.  We need AMD to compete in the high end market as well as the mid and low tiers.   At this rate I don't think they are going to be able too.  

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, KWelz said:

Very sad to see this news.   I am very worried we are heading towards a disaster here.   AMD needs to remain competitive and they have no idea how to do it.  The show today left no doubt of that.  Lots of engineers and insubstantial info.   Nothing showing anything that can compete with the new high end lineup on the GPU side.   

 

And for the CPU....   I already have a bad feeling about this.  Still using PGA instead of LGA?   Still focusing on the brute power approach.  We need AMD to compete in the high end market as well as the mid and low tiers.   At this rate I don't think they are going to be able too.  

Zen looks promising if you ask me... And what's wrong with PGA?

[KWelz]

Just now, DocSwag said:

Zen looks promising if you ask me... And what's wrong with PGA?

The single biggest problem is the density of pins.  You are limited to far fewer pins than you would have on a LGA socket.  It wasn't a huge problem years ago but it is becoming more and more of a limiting factor.  More pins = more data able to be transferred at a given time.   And yes I know that is a gross oversimplification.  

[DocSwag]

14 minutes ago, KWelz said:

The single biggest problem is the density of pins.  You are limited to far fewer pins than you would have on a LGA socket.  It wasn't a huge problem years ago but it is becoming more and more of a limiting factor.  More pins = more data able to be transferred at a given time.   And yes I know that is a gross oversimplification.  

Ok I forgot about that problem

I remember hearing a little while back that Zen will use some new pins that are a lot thinner. Problem: That makes them breaking or bending even easier.

 

Hopefully AMD will soon switch to LGA... PGA really is just dying.

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, IGJoe2192 said:

They did show FPS in Doom and it ranged from 60-90fps from what I saw in the upper right hand corner. It is kind of hard to see because there is a dark overlay in the way but still very legible.

so GTX 980 level performance then on the rx 480.

[lonewolf5460]

I was going to switch to intel next year but even if zen a polaris are not top teir products they will be good enough for high end 1440p gaming. I am going to support them I hope enogh of the community does because intel is taking advantage so little improvement with there new chips and a 1500 dollar top end sku that is only a little fater than the 1000 chip. 50% more money and 20% more performance they are miking the market hard now we need to vote with our wallets.

[DocSwag]

46 minutes ago, lonewolf5460 said:

I was going to switch to intel next year but even if zen a polaris are not top teir products they will be good enough for high end 1440p gaming. I am going to support them I hope enogh of the comunity does because intel is taking advantage so little improvment with there new chips and a 1500 dollar top end sku that is only a little fater than the 1000 chip. 50% more money and 20% more performance they are miking the market hard now we need to vote with our wallets.

I know. Every time they bring out new CPUs that are 10% more powerful, they are 10% more expensive. That's not how the market should work. Every generation should be able to pay less for the same performance, not pay the same price.

 

We need competition. This is why anyone who doesn't want Zen to succeed is either an idiot or works for Intel.

[Michael McAllister]

19 hours ago, ivan134 said:

Dx11 is not the future. Nvidia can revel in the past all they want while the industry moves forward. Just as suspected, BF1 is dx 12 with async compute.  Mass effect Andromeda is next since it uses this engine too. Watch dogs 2 confirmed to be working with amd.  Deus ex? Even doom devs just took a shit on Nvidia. I'm not a fan of sli or xfire,  but a 1080 getting shit by $400 worth of graphics cards in an API of the future is pathetic. It's a good thing they released gp104 now to make as much money as possible, because vega is going to make the 1080 and 1070 look like a joke. 

 

Even if Nvidia does terrible in DirectX 12 with Pascal, that API is still relatively new.  DirectX 11 still is the primary focus for now.  By the time Nvidia's next GPU is released, DirectX 12 will have a much stronger foothold.  I don't think Nvidia has to worry about it right now honestly.

[ivan134]

11 minutes ago, Michael McAllister said:

 

Even if Nvidia does terrible in DirectX 12 with Pascal, that API is still relatively new.  DirectX 11 still is the primary focus for now.  By the time Nvidia's next GPU is released, DirectX 12 will have a much stronger foothold.  I don't think Nvidia has to worry about it right now honestly.

LOL ok. 

Deus ex mankind divided? Watch dogs 2?  Bf1? Mass effect andromeda? Yea,  dx11 is definitely the focus. The age of the API is not going to change the fact that pascal still doesn't have asynchronous shaders.  Yea,  let's hope and pray that the industry stagnates until Nvidia is ready in 2018 to catch up to something AMD has had since 2012. And people blame consoles for lack of progression on PC. 

[Michael McAllister]

3 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

LOL ok. 

Deus ex mankind divided? Watch dogs 2?  Bf1? Mass effect andromeda? Yea,  dx11 is definitely the focus. The age of the API is not going to change the fact that pascal still doesn't have asynchronous shaders.  Yea,  let's hope and pray that the industry stagnates until Nvidia is ready in 2018 to catch up to something AMD has had since 2012. And people blame consoles for lack of progression on PC. 

Four games is hardly something to write home about.  Will have to wait and see benchmarks from AMD to see if there is any real difference.  If AMD does really well, we'll see Nvidia answer sooner rather than later.

[nj4ck]

2 hours ago, KWelz said:

Very sad to see this news.   I am very worried we are heading towards a disaster here.   AMD needs to remain competitive and they have no idea how to do it.  The show today left no doubt of that.  Lots of engineers and insubstantial info.   Nothing showing anything that can compete with the new high end lineup on the GPU side.   

 

And for the CPU....   I already have a bad feeling about this.  Still using PGA instead of LGA?   Still focusing on the brute power approach.  We need AMD to compete in the high end market as well as the mid and low tiers.   At this rate I don't think they are going to be able too.  

You're taking an extremely simplistic, if not fatalistic approach here. First off, Polaris was never meant to compete with the 1080 or 1070, AMD has Vega in the works for that. More importantly, the market share of super high-end cards like the 1080 is TINY. If you look at the statistics on Steam, people using cards like the 980 and above don't even make the 5% mark. While there's always a lot of news and hype about the high-end cards, very few people actually buy them. Polaris may not be the sensational megachip you were hoping for, but it's got all the characteristics of an excellent money maker.

 

Secondly, PGA/LGA is completely irrelevant once you've installed the chip on your motherboard. It has no effect on the performance of the CPU. And what do you mean by "brute power approach"? What other approach is there for CPUs? Is Zen supposed to be slow but super-efficient? That wouldn't help. We've already seen it will have both significantly improved IPC and power efficiency, and a high core and thread count are hardly indicators of a chip you should be having "bad feelings" about.

[nj4ck]

3 hours ago, KWelz said:

The single biggest problem is the density of pins.  You are limited to far fewer pins than you would have on a LGA socket.  It wasn't a huge problem years ago but it is becoming more and more of a limiting factor.  More pins = more data able to be transferred at a given time.   And yes I know that is a gross oversimplification.  

LGA 1151 socket: 1151 contacts

 AM4 socket: 1331 contacts

 

Also, all you would need to do to increase pin count is increase the package size. 

[ivan134]

25 minutes ago, Michael McAllister said:

Four games is hardly something to write home about.  Will have to wait and see benchmarks from AMD to see if there is any real difference.  If AMD does really well, we'll see Nvidia answer sooner rather than later.

Four? Nvidia is also losing in aots,  hitman,  quantum break and total war: warhammer. That's 4 games already out and 6 announced including battlezone and star citizen. Obviously there are still unannounced games.  I'm confused as to how you came to the conclusion that dx 11 is still the focus when most of the big name titles coming are dx 12 or vulkan. 

[Michael McAllister]

3 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Four? Nvidia is also losing in aots,  hitman,  quantum break and total war: warhammer. That's 4 games already out and 6 announced including battlezone and star citizen. Obviously there are still unannounced games.  I'm confused as to how you came to the conclusion that dx 11 is still the focus when most of the big name titles coming are dx 12 or vulkan. 

 

Pascal just came out and it still performs much better with asynchronous compute than Maxwell.  There will be driver improvements.  A huge portion of the market will still be on an older OS.  Again, DirectX 12 is in its infancy.  All I'm saying is that people are making hay out of the new 480 as if it has already beaten Nvidia's offering.  Benchmarks will tell that story.  If it does, that's a good thing!  That will force Nvidia to be much more aggressive in pricing.  That only benefits the consumer.

[DocSwag]

57 minutes ago, Michael McAllister said:

 

Even if Nvidia does terrible in DirectX 12 with Pascal, that API is still relatively new.  DirectX 11 still is the primary focus for now.  By the time Nvidia's next GPU is released, DirectX 12 will have a much stronger foothold.  I don't think Nvidia has to worry about it right now honestly.

It may be the focus on current big games, but 90% of new releases at this point will probably be DX12. Just look at all the games released in the past few months. Nearly all (if not all) support DX12.

The main problem that I think DX 12 will have is, as the developers of Ashes have stated, memory management. If you recall one of Jayztwocents video on the 1080 where he compared it to other top end cards, I recall him using Rise of the Tomb Raider in DX12 as a comparison to the Fury X, which ran horribly. Why? He then told us that all the cards had their memory usage maxed out, except for the Titan X. The Titan X was at 9 GB. That's absolutely horrible, and shouldn't be acceptable. The game ran worse on DX12 than in DX11 on all the cards (I think).

 

AMD has the advantage in DX12. All the games (that I know of) that are DX12 either run better on AMD or have severe issues like memory usage or visual corruption (for Gears of War). Unfortunately, that may be a reason that DX12 games will slow down. Because of poor memory management many game makers may not bother with DX12 or will have poor implementations of it, stalling its entry into the market. Which honestly sucks for AMD and rocks for Nvidia.

 

I don't know what direction it will take. Will games adopt DX12 and start having better memory management? Will memory management stall DX12's entry into games? I don't know, and I don't think most of us do either.

 

My guess is that in the next year or so we will have a split. There will be some games that use DX12, have good memory management, and will end up running good on AMD cards. There will be some games with horrible DX12 memory management and everyone will be running them on DX11. Then there may be a few games that don't support DX12 at all.

 

My opinion is DX11 won't die until 2018 or 2019. Meanwhile DX12 will slowly but surely win its way into games.

 

There's my two cents. I hope it wasn't too long!