AMD Adjusts Shifts Gears To Power-First Architecture,, Shows Improvements At HotChips, Talks Up Zen+

[It's me!]

AMD is certainly switching gears, but we really dont know if they are grinding the gears or not. I think some of the hype may hurt AMD. 

 

Quote

During his presentation, Clark's illuminating ruminations on the design process added color to the fundamental concepts behind the Zen architecture. Clark has serious chops; he's worked on every in-house x86 processor AMD has designed, and as the lead Zen architect, he had the pleasure of naming the chip. He chose "Zen" in homage to the delicate balance the company had to strike among a multitude of factors to provide a 40% increase in performance while keeping power in check.

AMD executives repeated the "Zen is not a destination; it's a starting point" mantra during both of the Zen presentations in an obvious ploy to tease the forthcoming Zen+. I hope that the Zen+ refrain isn't a preemptive ploy to defray possible disappointment with the first Zen generation. Designing one microarchitecture to address all market segments is a risky proposition, and AMD has to be careful with our heightened expectations; yet another disappointment could serve it a crushing blow. 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-zen-cpu-microarchitecture,32540.html

 

 

[themctipers]

as long as it uses solder tim.  

and has atleast haswell ipc (hopefully skylake/kaby lake ipc)

and is cheap as fuck

Edited August 25, 2016 by themctipers

[Deletist_Jerk]

Very nice copy and paste of OCN news thread.

[FratStar]

12 minutes ago, themctipers said:

as long as it uses solder tim.  

and has atleast haswell ipc (hopefully skylake/kaby lake ipc)

and is cheap as fuck

Well sorry to break it to you. It's not going to be cheap as fuck if it is competitive with it's intel counterpart. It may be cheaper but it'll be priced similarly.

Edited August 25, 2016 by FratStar
Grammar

[themctipers]

Just now, FratStar said:

Well sorry to break it to you. It's not going to be cheap as fuck it is competitive with it's intel counterpart. It may be cheaper but it'll be priced similarly.

well

cheaper than intels $550 i7 6700k.

 

[Matu20]

1 hour ago, themctipers said:

well

cheaper than intels $550 i7 6700k.

 

6700k is $320 currently at Newegg, you buying some crack with your CPUs?

[themctipers]

7 minutes ago, Matu20 said:

6700k is $320 currently at Newegg, you buying some crack with your CPUs?

Canada. 

[GlassBomb]

Isn't this post of stuff that we pretty much known everything of?

 

TL;DR Zen has (from what we have been shown/told) pretty decent IPC and overall efficiency. And they want Zen+ to improve performance to Watt even further.

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

Canada. 

Last I checked they cost around $430-ish CAD. Which is still pretty high.

 

And we have no real idea where AMD will price their top-tier chips. Just know that most people price their products accordingly to the competition. "Does it perform like a $300 product from this brand? Then lets price ours in a similar price bracket."

[Matu20]

5 minutes ago, themctipers said:

Canada. 

Next time you should imply it then. Most of us don't aren't Canadian nor care about the pricing over there.

 

And even in Canada, it is $430 CAD. And that is almost the same when two currencies are converted.

[Doobeedoo]

I really wonder how much 4-core and 8-core will differ in clock speeds.

[ZestyJalapeno]

2 hours ago, themctipers said:

as long as it uses solder tim.  

and has atleast haswell ipc (hopefully skylake/kaby lake ipc)

and is cheap as fuck

You're setting yourself up for disappointment when you hope for Intel-burning perf and low prices. AMD isn't a charity. They said 40% improvement over Excavator, that's it. 

[Ryujin2003]

If that picture is of a real Zen chip, I hope the sharpie comes off....

But seriously, why can't you guys just wait and see. Just because performance may be in competition with certain Intel CPUs doesn't mean that the price will be the same. I expect it to be much higher than an FX, but if AMD is able to undercut Intel, then they can make a lot of money with sheer volume instead of per unit cost.

[AresKrieger]

Repost

[grayperview]

Anyone else seeing piledriver / bulldozer mark 2, when i comes to Zen?

 

Probably can't be as disappointing, but i just don't think these chips are going to anything like what we hope they are going to be.

 

Hope i am wrong. We need to them to be at least half decent, Intel chips are becoming insanely expensive.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I'd really like to see AMD cause Intel to drop their prices.  Some time ago I was looking on cpu-world (for some reason I get 403 forbidden now when I try to access it), and on the Q6600 page, they had a chart showing prices over time.  I think it started around $850 or so at launch, then after a while (I forget how long but it was well within the time it was still available new at retail according to the chart) it had dropped I think below $200.  There were other CPUs that had their prices slashed over time like that too, I just happened to think of the Q6600.  I'd like to see the same thing happen with the current i5's and i7's - their prices get slashed by a similar percentage (~80% or so).  Hopefully Zen will be priced in such a way to force Intel to do that.

[themctipers]

1 hour ago, Dogeystyle said:

You're setting yourself up for disappointment when you hope for Intel-burning perf and low prices. AMD isn't a charity. They said 40% improvement over Excavator, that's it. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not really hyped. More like I want to see results. 

[TorqueS]

If AMD prices equal or better perf CPUs like intel's counterparts, then intel might be forced to drop prices. If that happen, AMD will do too most likely. COMPETITION, it's a very good notion for consumers.

[Misanthrope]

39 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'd really like to see AMD cause Intel to drop their prices.  Some time ago I was looking on cpu-world (for some reason I get 403 forbidden now when I try to access it), and on the Q6600 page, they had a chart showing prices over time.  I think it started around $850 or so at launch, then after a while (I forget how long but it was well within the time it was still available new at retail according to the chart) it had dropped I think below $200.  There were other CPUs that had their prices slashed over time like that too, I just happened to think of the Q6600.  I'd like to see the same thing happen with the current i5's and i7's - their prices get slashed by a similar percentage (~80% or so).  Hopefully Zen will be priced in such a way to force Intel to do that.

You know what else I would like? 100 million dollars in my bank account.

 

About the same chances of happening as another 80% price drop on intel products: Zen is not fucking made out of magic fabricated by elves in the north pole. It's just a chip, 40% ICP increase from their already really shitty previous ICP. This will just bring them back to normal along with normal a.k.a. very similar prices to intel.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

5 hours ago, TorqueS said:

If AMD prices equal or better perf CPUs like intel's counterparts, then intel might be forced to drop prices. If that happen, AMD will do too most likely. COMPETITION, it's a very good notion for consumers.

Also what I'd really like to see is them all, from both brands, be able to go in the same socket & chipset, from the cheap entry-level HTPC systems (like what an AM1 Sempron might be now) all the way up to high-end servers (like the Xeon E7-8xxx).  I think after LGA775, Intel split their mainstream and enthusiast/server CPUs to different sockets, but I also kind-of remember a long time ago (way before LGA775) when AMD and Intel CPUs could go in the same board/socket.

 

That, and don't change sockets so often.  In order to change to a new socket, all of the following should simultaneously be true:

• Upgrade the PCI-Express generation (like 3.0 to 4.0)
• Upgrade the DDR generation (like DDR4 to DDR5)
• Upgrade peripheral generations, like USB 3.0 to 3.1 type C, Thunderbolt 2 to 3, etc
• Upgrade storage generation (like SATA 2 to 3, or 3 to NVMe, etc)
• Have at least 2 - 2.5 times, preferably 3-4 times improvement in IPC compared to the first generation on the outgoing socket.

I want to be able to upgrade the CPU a few times (at the same price point) every few years without having to replace the board (which would mean I'd have to uninstall and reinstall everything anyway so may as well rebuild the entire system).

[Rune]

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

That, and don't change sockets so often.  In order to change to a new socket, all of the following should simultaneously be true:

• Upgrade the PCI-Express generation (like 3.0 to 4.0)
• Upgrade the DDR generation (like DDR4 to DDR5)
• Upgrade peripheral generations, like USB 3.0 to 3.1 type C, Thunderbolt 2 to 3, etc
• Upgrade storage generation (like SATA 2 to 3, or 3 to NVMe, etc)
• Have at least 2 - 2.5 times, preferably 3-4 times improvement in IPC compared to the first generation on the outgoing socket.

I want to be able to upgrade the CPU a few times (at the same price point) every few years without having to replace the board (which would mean I'd have to uninstall and reinstall everything anyway so may as well rebuild the entire system).

Buy a console. Having progress slowed down or delayed because its "too hard" to keep up is garbage.

[BuckGup]

So basically it will be better then there current stuff which is good but will perform not as good as people hype it to be. Well if they cost $400-$200 I see a win as a fx6300 is a decent CPU for $50 used.

[Energycore]

8 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

You know what else I would like? 100 million dollars in my bank account.

 

About the same chances of happening as another 80% price drop on intel products: Zen is not fucking made out of magic fabricated by elves in the north pole. It's just a chip, 40% ICP increase from their already really shitty previous ICP. This will just bring them back to normal along with normal a.k.a. very similar prices to intel.

I'm hoping for similar stuff to K10 vs Nehalem where prices will hictate the better choice and that AMD can have a double digit market share

[iamdarkyoshi]

12 hours ago, Matu20 said:

6700k is $320 currently at Newegg, you buying some crack with your CPUs?

12 hours ago, themctipers said:

Canada. 

Same thing.

[Phoenix721]

I expect Zen to be a bit faster than the 4690k and a bit slower than the 6600k with a much better price (could perform better in some games/loads) and Zen+ to outperform Skylake but be behind kabylake/whatever intel has at that time period.

[Citadelen]

17 hours ago, themctipers said:

as long as it uses solder tim.

 

and has atleast haswell ipc (hopefully skylake/kaby lake ipc)

 

and is cheap as fuck

You must be fun at Christmas...