AMD x86 16-core Zen APU detailed

[Aniallation]

Hopefully final design will be backwards compatible with DDR3. They've done this before with the Phenom chips that supported both DDR2 and then-emerging DDR3. It's too early to release a "mainstream" APU that only supports DDR4. 

[patrickjp93]

Hopefully final design will be backwards compatible with DDR3. They've done this before with the Phenom chips that supported both DDR2 and then-emerging DDR3. It's too early to release a "mainstream" APU that only supports DDR4.

No it isn't. DDR4 is as cheap now as DDR3 was 6 months ago. I say make a clean break. By 2016 DDR4 will be even more economical.

[Notional]

No it isn't. DDR4 is as cheap now as DDR3 was 6 months ago. I say make a clean break. By 2016 DDR4 will be even more economical.

 

Agreed, 6 months is still far away, and when not just 2011-3 platform supports it, certainly, prices will drop more.

[Briggsy]

Simultaneous Multi-threading was created by IBM and Intel eventually adopted it decades later. About freakin time AMD got on board too... on a 16 core processor no less  B)

 

While multithreading CPUs have been around since the 1950s, simultaneous multithreading was first researched by IBM in 1968 as part of the ACS-360 project.[1] The first major commercial microprocessor developed with SMT was the Alpha 21464 (EV8). This microprocessor was developed by DEC in coordination with Dean Tullsen of the University of California, San Diego, and Susan Eggers and Henry Levy of the University of Washington. The microprocessor was never released, since the Alpha line of microprocessors was discontinued shortly before HP acquired Compaq which had in turn acquired DEC. Dean Tullsen's work was also used to develop the Hyper-threading (Hyper-threading technology or HTT) versions of the Intel Pentium 4 microprocessors, such as the "Northwood" and "Prescott".

[AnnoyedShelf]

Please let this be good.

[linuxfan66]

I for one welcome our new APU overlords..

 

Though seriously this looks awesome and i will be glad to see the end of ddr3....

[Opcode]

It'll be interesting to see how things change as AMD and Intel both put their iGPU tech on quad-channel motherboards.

I'm looking forward to seeing AMD's chips no longer memory constrained as bad as they are right now. Richland even suffers a massive bottleneck due to memory bandwidth with just 384 TeraScale 3 SP's. The 2016 APU war will be quite interesting especially for the red team. Their all new GCN 2.0 debuts next year as an actual next generation GCN architecture. With Zen boosting 40% IPC and GCN dropping down to 2x the power efficiency I think we'll be seeing 45-65w APU's that easily beat out entry tier discrete cards. The only problem I see is DDR4 is going to be another bottleneck for APU's. AMD needs to just throw 1GB of HBM (128 GB/s) at the problem and be done with it.

[AxelRantila]

Hopefully final design will be backwards compatible with DDR3. They've done this before with the Phenom chips that supported both DDR2 and then-emerging DDR3. It's too early to release a "mainstream" APU that only supports DDR4. 

The reason why DDR4 is currently expensive is mostly because of the low demand. As more and more platform starts using it, prices will go down

[sgloux3470]

sorry the better word was redeem themselves

 

the APU was to replace the FX

 

The APU's were never meant to replace FX.

 

FX is considered their PC performance line until Zen comes out.

 

 

I was almost excited and sold,when i saw graphics and APU ... are you fucking kidding me? tell me this is the APU version and not the dedicated desktop CPU..

What the actual fuck...How is this a 16 core 32 threads if its 12 core gpu and 4 core cpu makes no fucking sense.

Someone clear this for me cause i dont understand is this actually the CPU we've been waiting for with up to 16 x86 physical cores with "hyperthreading" apart from graphics?

 

It's a 16 core CPU.

[cesrai]

I did some benchmarking on the iGPU when I got it. I messed around with memory frequency and all of that good stuff. Then I got the HD 5870 given to me so I of course stuffed it into the machine. It's old but the boy will still hold BF3 multiple player in 64 player map above 50 FPS @ FHD on high settings.

What is your MSAA or any AA setting ?

[patrickjp93]

I'm looking forward to seeing AMD's chips no longer memory constrained as bad as they are right now. Richland even suffers a massive bottleneck due to memory bandwidth with just 384 TeraScale 3 SP's. The 2016 APU war will be quite interesting especially for the red team. Their all new GCN 2.0 debuts next year as an actual next generation GCN architecture. With Zen boosting 40% IPC and GCN dropping down to 2x the power efficiency I think we'll be seeing 45-65w APU's that easily beat out entry tier discrete cards. The only problem I see is DDR4 is going to be another bottleneck for APU's. AMD needs to just throw 1GB of HBM (128 GB/s) at the problem and be done with it.

You still have to fill up the HBM in the first place. The real solution is for Micron to get board makers to support HMC modules, or for motherboard makers to convince Samsung, Hynix, Elpida, and Micron to make HBM "sticks."

[patrickjp93]

The APU's were never meant to replace FX.

 

FX is considered their PC performance line until Zen comes out.

 

 

 

It's a 16 core CPU.

No, it's a 16-CPU-Core APU. 16 Zen cores, 1024 Stream Processors, and some amount of HBM cache which hasn't been set yet. We've had the diagram for it for a while. The top pure CPU SKU is 8 cores at this time, ad frankly the consumer space doesn't need more.

[MuffinTopMike]

Cores really mean nothing, knowing AMD recently an Intel i3 will probably be able to beat it...

[MrDynamicMan]

Addendum: My IGPU on my 4690k, ran games better than AMD's A10 5700(nonK) FM2 APU, even with a gtx 660.

*facepalm*

Wow... Just. . NO.

WHAT?

[Trik'Stari]

*facepalm*

Wow... Just. . NO.

WHAT?

That APU was nothing but a bottleneck. BF4 would stutter for me constantly on any setting. Even using the 660. The IGPU on the 4690k isn't extremely powerful or anything, but it ran bf4 better than the igpu part of the a10-5700

 

Edit: it is perfectly plausible that I may have had something setup incorrectly, that was my first build, and at one point I had CCC, Mantle, and Nvidia GeForce Experience all running at once.... I know, I know "lol teh noob!"

[MrDynamicMan]

That APU was nothing but a bottleneck. BF4 would stutter for me constantly on any setting. Even using the 660. The IGPU on the 4690k isn't extremely powerful or anything, but it ran bf4 better than the igpu part of the a10-5700

Edit: it is perfectly plausible that I may have had something setup incorrectly, that was my first build, and at one point I had CCC, Mantle, and Nvidia GeForce Experience all running at once.... I know, I know "lol teh noob!"

But the cpu part of the APU was the bottleneck, the iGPU wasn't doing anything because (I'm assuming) you were running off your 660. And did u use the Intel iGPU without a discrete card?

[patrickjp93]

But the cpu part of the APU was the bottleneck, the iGPU wasn't doing anything because (I'm assuming) you were running off your 660. And did u use the Intel iGPU without a discrete card?

I believe it. Intel's not nearly as far behind as people like to claim.

[Trik'Stari]

But the cpu part of the APU was the bottleneck, the iGPU wasn't doing anything because (I'm assuming) you were running off your 660. And did u use the Intel iGPU without a discrete card?

I have used the iGPU on the 4690k, it performs rather admirably with battlefield. Nothing amazing, but certainly better than the APU did with it's iGPU or the 660. I think that bf4 might just have been too much for it to handle. Other games like SWTOR I could run on high no problem.

 

Suffice to say, I will be sticking with intel for a good while. If AMD brings out something spectacular with APU's, with updated motherboards with modern stuff (M.2, Sata-E, that new NVME stuff, pci-e 3.0) I would maybe consider them whenever I build a new rig, which is not likely to be any time soon. (building a new rig, that is)

[dalekphalm]

Hopefully final design will be backwards compatible with DDR3. They've done this before with the Phenom chips that supported both DDR2 and then-emerging DDR3. It's too early to release a "mainstream" APU that only supports DDR4. 

That will be done via the chipset. The same way that LGA775 boards can now be purchased with DDR3 support. Plus, the "mainstream" and lower tier Zen SKU's have been listed as having both DDR3/4 support. It's only the "Performance" tier that was listed as exclusively DDR4.

 

Which, is not a problem. As others have stated, DDR4 is already coming down in price, and it will only drop faster as the adoption rate grows.

 

No it isn't. DDR4 is as cheap now as DDR3 was 6 months ago. I say make a clean break. By 2016 DDR4 will be even more economical.

This^

[MrDynamicMan]

I have used the iGPU on the 4690k, it performs rather admirably with battlefield. Nothing amazing, but certainly better than the APU did with it's iGPU or the 660. I think that bf4 might just have been too much for it to handle. Other games like SWTOR I could run on high no problem.

Suffice to say, I will be sticking with intel for a good while. If AMD brings out something spectacular with APU's, with updated motherboards with modern stuff (M.2, Sata-E, that new NVME stuff, pci-e 3.0) I would maybe consider them whenever I build a new rig, which is not likely to be any time soon. (building a new rig, that is)

Yeah me too. I'm starting to board the Zen hype train though, not because I will get one but because we need AMD to make good cpus again. Don't care much for stuff like NVME though, and will probably be sticking to my 4690k and 970 till 490x and the gen after Zen.

[Trik'Stari]

Yeah me too. I'm starting to board the Zen hype train though, not because I will get one but because we need AMD to make good cpus again. Don't care much for stuff like NVME though, and will probably be sticking to my 4690k and 970 till 490x and the gen after Zen.

I'd just like to see them come out with an up to date chipset. Their boards just look old as dirt at this point. That might be a bit shallow, but still, they need to keep up.

[Opcode]

What is your MSAA or any AA setting ?

I believe I turned AA down as it's not needed. Everything else was on High.

 

You still have to fill up the HBM in the first place. The real solution is for Micron to get board makers to support HMC modules, or for motherboard makers to convince Samsung, Hynix, Elpida, and Micron to make HBM "sticks."

1GB is more than enough to accommodate 512+ SP's. Being on package also cuts out latency as well (like it does on Fiji).

[patrickjp93]

I believe I turned AA down as it's not needed. Everything else was on High.

1GB is more than enough to accommodate 512+ SP's. Being on package also cuts out latency as well (like it does on Fiji).

Until you get a cache miss and have to hit system RAM for the data. Then stutter Hell is upon you.

[Opcode]

Until you get a cache miss and have to hit system RAM for the data. Then stutter Hell is upon you.

Not if the iGPU never has to access system memory (HBM as dedicated linked VRAM for gaming and HPC).

[patrickjp93]

Not if the iGPU never has to access system memory (HBM as dedicated linked VRAM for gaming and HPC).

With only 1 GB in modern gaming even for 1080p? Probabilistically you're up shit creek on that one.