AMD Cuts All GPU Prices Including R9 Fury X, Fury And Nano – Down To As Low As $569, $499 And $549 Respectively

[Dabombinable]

I strongly believe that Zen will help AMD's finances. 

And I strongly believe you don't like it when people tell the truth about AMD.

[patrickjp93]

They're betting heavy on Zen and future GPUs. You're right that in an of itself it's not a sustainable model, but I never said that it was their only strategy. I was only talking short term they need to get cash in and bet they can recover with future products and such. 

Not saying Zen will save them, but I remember using AMD processors since the late 90s when the K6-II was just a poor's man Pentium III but they eventually caught up and surpassed intel. That kind of thing resonates and as a company they're likely more than a little inclined to think they can do it again and also do it to Nvidia.

Surpassing Nvidia, frankly, is much easier than surpassing Intel. Code that runs on GPUs and CPUs is fundamentally different, and even beyond that, the style of programming used in consumer computing (SISD) has an asymptotic performance limit locked to clock speeds. There's only so much instruction-level parallelism you can usefully draw from a program mid-execution. Once that limit is hit, it's a matter of the instruction latencies. Well, most of x86's instructions are very near their theoretical low limit latencies. That leaves clock speed. Well, we've been in the 4-4.4 GHz range for a while. FinFET obviously ravaged some of that, and AMD will run into that as well (you're not going to see a 4.x GHz 8-core Zen FX in a 95W TDP. I'm sorry but you just aren't). And of all the foundries positioned to make a material change that could unlock higher frequencies, Intel's ahead of the rest by 2 years at least with 7nm on a new material already in initial testing.

 

AMD could win on core count for the price, true, but without the software to scale well and leverage that, it's a bit of a dead end there too. AMD can sell cheaper than Intel even with lower performance and scrape by, but if it actually begins to put the slightest dent in Intel's sales, a price war will begin and will leave AMD hanging by a thread at the end where only its GPU sales would be keeping it afloat. If the R&D for Zen doesn't come back in enough revenues, it's going to be another pool of red ink AMD's books will have to swim in.

[SurvivorNVL]

And I strongly believe you don't like it when people tell the truth about AMD.

I strongly believe in this apple pie I am consuming.  @TechGod As for Zen - it's a hope.  If it ends up at Haswell IPC - it'll be contending against Kaby-lake and Broadwell-E at the time of its release.  Skylake-E right around the corner from then and then Cannonlake being down the road after that.  They also don't want to be the cheap option anymore, but they're going to need a lot of features, and under-cutting the prices of their CPU's and boards to be better compared to Kaby and Broadwell-E.  They'll likely not be the same level of performance, but hopefully better price to performance.  I want to wait for Zen vs Kaby / Broadwell-E, but god I need to upgrade soon.  WHY CAN'T IT BE SOONER!

[TechGod]

And I strongly believe you don't like it when people tell the truth about AMD.

And I strongly believe you're trolling:D

 

I only have a rMBP lol. I do like AMD more however because they don't trap people into an ecosystem unlike nvidia. 

[TechGod]

I strongly believe in this apple pie I am consuming.  @TechGod As for Zen - it's a hope.  If it ends up at Haswell IPC - it'll be contending against Kaby-lake and Broadwell-E at the time of its release.  Skylake-E right around the corner from then and then Cannonlake being down the road after that.  They also don't want to be the cheap option anymore, but they're going to need a lot of features, and under-cutting the prices of their CPU's and boards to be better compared to Kaby and Broadwell-E.  They'll likely not be the same level of performance, but hopefully better price to performance.  I want to wait for Zen vs Kaby / Broadwell-E, but god I need to upgrade soon.  WHY CAN'T IT BE SOONER!

They can actually get slightly better than Haswell IPC and the manufacturing process GloFo licenced from Sammy(I believe??) may actually be better than Intel's current manufacturing process for 14nm. 

 

And what features you ask? OCing on all CPUs by default and a unified socket. Unlike how Intel has a mainstream Zxx and the X99, AMD could unify enthusiast and mainstream. In fact, I bet that they're counting on it.  

[SurvivorNVL]

They can actually get slightly better than Haswell IPC and the manufacturing process GloFo licenced from Sammy(I believe??) may actually be better than Intel's current manufacturing process for 14nm. 

 

And what features you ask? OCing on all CPUs by default and a unified socket. Unlike how Intel has a mainstream Zxx and the X99, AMD could unify enthusiast and mainstream. In fact, I bet that they're counting on it.  

Yeah, the unified socket is definitely a bonus, but feature-sets including U.2 native support, NVDIMM, hell - maybe it is releasing at the end of 2016 because of the PCIE 4.0 finalization around that time.  If Zen dropped with some boards sporting 4.0 support - that'd be a bit plus, but I am sure the manufacturing process isn't better than Intel's.  @patrickjp93 will probably pop in to explain that at some point.  I do look forward to seeing Zen, though.  Can't wait honestly.  I need to upgrade ;-; Got the itch.

[TechGod]

Yeah, the unified socket is definitely a bonus, but feature-sets including U.2 native support, NVDIMM, hell - maybe it is releasing at the end of 2016 because of the PCIE 4.0 finalization around that time. If Zen dropped with some boards sporting 4.0 support - that'd be a bit plus, but I am sure the manufacturing process isn't better than Intel's. @patrickjp93 will probably pop in to explain that at some point. I do look forward to seeing Zen, though. Can't wait honestly. I need to upgrade ;-; Got the itch.

It actually is. Numbers released from GloFlo and (it's TMSC) actually CONFIRM this.

[patrickjp93]

It actually is. Numbers released from GloFlo and (it's TMSC) actually CONFIRM this.

What they are are low-power nodes. Intel's nodes really only come in 1 flavor: high performance. Intel also still has advantages in metal pitch and gate pitch. While Samsung and TSMC can pack more in, it's only by use of high density libraries, designs which limit clock ranges as exhibited by AMD's GPUs and Carrizo. We really can't compare until we have a high-performance Zen SKU to put up against Broadwell-E or Skylake-E.

[TechGod]

What they are are low-power nodes. Intel's nodes really only come in 1 flavor: high performance. Intel also still has advantages in metal pitch and gate pitch. While Samsung and TSMC can pack more in, it's only by use of high density libraries, designs which limit clock ranges as exhibited by AMD's GPUs and Carrizo. We really can't compare until we have a high-performance Zen SKU to put up against Broadwell-E or Skylake-E.

TSMC is using a revised LPP 14nm to hit higher clock speeds and still maintain efficiency. But yes. Al this is just speculation and we have to wait to see the high end SKU of Zen and see how it stacks up.

[patrickjp93]

TSMC is using a revised LPP 14nm to hit higher clock speeds and still maintain efficiency. But yes. Al this is just speculation and we have to wait to see the high end SKU of Zen and see how it stacks up.

And for instance, if you compare the density of a dGPU to a CPU, you'll find GPUs on 28nm way outstrip Intel's density at 14nmFF, however, what that figure does not tell you is why or how. Is Intel lying about its specs? Answer: no. Intel's transistors are superior across the board. That said, double-pumped transistors controlling out of order logic get way hotter way faster than anything else on a CPU/SOC today other than the dense floating point vector units themselves. Intel has to space out its components and be careful about where it positions hot components in proximity to each other. Intel also has multiple branch predictors per core that are also electrically and thermally expensive. GPUs don't have the same design constraints, and they certainly don't have a separate memory controller per CUDA core or Stream Processor. When you strip out the complexity of a modern serial processing core, it's suddenly cool as a cucumber and easy to pack in tightly. For GPU SMMs the SPs are very tightly packed, but the TMUs are not. The ROPs are also super densely packed because basically what they do is attach 4 bytes to an out address and pass it along. That's not difficult work.

This is one big reason Intel uses Atom cores for its Xeon Phi instead of full-blown desktop cores. To get in the compute performance, strip out much of what is useless to a massively parallel processor. What is left behind is what makes the Xeon Phi incredible for AI or ray tracing, but I think we can all agree it's a fine compromise to make.

We can't compare until we have 2 very similar chips on similar nodes. Assuming we get pure CPUs from AMD and none of them have a disabled GPU (skews the results), we will be able to make a direct comparison at that point.

[Kamina]

The price of the R9 380. 

[Prysin]

And I strongly believe you don't like it when people tell the truth about AMD.

And i strongly believe you reject the truth if it doesnt fit your ideals

[patrickjp93]

And i strongly believe you reject the truth if it doesnt fit your ideals

Now now, we all know that's Trik'Stari's job

[don_svetlio]

Now now, we all know that's Trik'Stari's job

 

And i strongly believe you reject the truth if it doesnt fit your ideals

Yep - Patrick simply makes up facts claiming he's omniscient and paints a victory for AMD to look like a defeat.

[Prysin]

Yep - Patrick simply makes up facts claiming he's omniscient and paints a victory for AMD to look like a defeat.

i wasnt talkin about patric this time

-10 points for gryffindor

[don_svetlio]

i wasnt talkin about patric this time

-10 points for gryffindor

I thought you quoted him

[TOMPPIX]

This is why i can't sleep at night http://www.jimms.fi/fi/Product/Show/112107/r9furyx-4g/asus-amd-r9-fury-x-4gb-hbm-hdmi-3xdp-pci-e cheapest fury x i can find in finland.

[Prysin]

I thought you quoted him

no... Read -> then post

[patrickjp93]

I thought you quoted him

 

no... Read -> then post

AND THE DON, GOES, DOOOOWN RRAAAAAAAAAH!!!

[Prysin]

AND THE DON, GOES, DOOOOWN RRAAAAAAAAAH!!!

now now... don't get all excited now.... or you'll get marmite for breakfast

[patrickjp93]

now now... don't get all excited now.... or you'll get marmite for breakfast

I don't understand why people dislike marmite. I'm a foody who only cooks organic, locally-sourced ingredients into chicken picatta, fish saag, portobello-hummus sandwiches, etc., and I don't find marmite that bad. Also, I have a job waiting for me at Suncorp in Australia, so I'll have to get used to it anyway.

[Prysin]

I don't understand why people dislike marmite. I'm a foody who only cooks organic, locally-sourced ingredients into chicken picatta, fish saag, portobello-hummus sandwiches, etc., and I don't find marmite that bad. Also, I have a job waiting for me at Suncorp in Australia, so I'll have to get used to it anyway.

so now you're suicidal too.... oh my... you're really everything aint you?

[patrickjp93]

so now you're suicidal too.... oh my... you're really everything aint you?

I will eat most anything (apart from scrapple, french-onion soup, and some quiches), but marmite to me is neither bad nor good.

[Prysin]

I will eat most anything (apart from scrapple, french-onion soup, and some quiches), but marmite to me is neither bad nor good.

was referring to "willingly going to 'stralia"

[patrickjp93]

was referring to "willingly going to 'stralia"

What? Aussies are awesome. They're so fun and yet so intense. And in the big cities the deadly wildlife is much more difficult to run into. I just have to watch where I swim when I decide to get a scuba license and go to the Great Barrier Reef.