AMD Zen 8 core engineering sample runs at 3GHz

[The Benjamins]

26 minutes ago, SparkyRain said:

Zen is gonna be outdated at release not haswell. You have trouble with reading? Benchmarks will be held against skylake, we can can already predict amd will be behind - as always. Not excited for this line up. They better focus on gpu's instead crippling behind intel for taking too long with their releases. 

5960x is what the 8 core Zen should be like. they are set to release broadwell soon but skylake is at least a year away.

[SurvivorNVL]

24 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

5960x is what the 8 core Zen should be like. they are set to release broadwell soon but skylake is at least a year away.

Around when Zen releases - Skylake-E will be not too far away as well.  Broadwell-E is around April right now.  Skylake-E is supposedly set late Q1 2017.

[shdowhunt60]

Zen will be competing with Kaby Lake and Broadwell-E then. And I think it will offer better cost competitiveness over Broadwell-E and better scaling and expandabilty over Kaby Lake. So, I think there'll definitely be a market for the Zen family, and I think it will come largely from AMD challenging Intel's heavy segmentation of the consumer market (e.g. certain skus arbitrarily having locked multipliers, hyperthreading, and needing an entirely separate platform to have more than 4 CPU cores) rather than raw performance.

[Rune]

I want Intel to have a reason to innovate outside of mobile again.

My wish is not looking too good.

[SurvivorNVL]

15 minutes ago, Rune said:

I want Intel to have a reason to innovate outside of mobile again.

My wish is not looking too good.

I'm sure @patrickjp93 will pop in on this comment, but Intel does innovate a lot, and it's almost all in their Enterprise and Data-Center offerings, and that ends up trickling down to the consumer platform after it gets a run or two in the Enthusiast lines.  They're coming out with six-channel memory for Skylake-E as well as larger PCIE lane configurations.  Intel Optane for storage innovation, NVDIMM, support for Freesync, more powerful iGPU solutions in both consumer and their Xeon lines.  They're tightening latency even the tiniest of bits in their pipelines and refining most everything they can on all levels.  Not to mention while creating and paving the way for the breakthroughs of 10nm, 7nm, which really will be incredible on Silicone if they manage it, but I hope they'll have a fusion of Germanium or something.

They're innovating a lot, in short.  We have AVX2-512 coming along with Skylake-E, more L4 cache enhancements in the future, and eventually inverse multi-threading, as well as 4-way SMT.  AVX512 and 4-way SMT would be the biggest boons.  Theoretical doubling of IPC, L4 cache with a turned off iGPU to further enhance the system cache in all areas, and then a 4-core with sixteen threads--that'd be pretty perfect.

[Rune]

8 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

I'm sure @patrickjp93 will pop in on this comment, but Intel does innovate a lot, and it's almost all in their Enterprise and Data-Center offerings, and that ends up trickling down to the consumer platform after it gets a run or two in the Enthusiast lines.  They're coming out with six-channel memory for Skylake-E as well as larger PCIE lane configurations.  Intel Optane for storage innovation, NVDIMM, support for Freesync, more powerful iGPU solutions in both consumer and their Xeon lines.  They're tightening latency even the tiniest of bits in their pipelines and refining most everything they can on all levels.  Not to mention while creating and paving the way for the breakthroughs of 10nm, 7nm, which really will be incredible on Silicone if they manage it, but I hope they'll have a fusion of Germanium or something.

They're innovating a lot, in short.  We have AVX2-512 coming along with Skylake-E, more L4 cache enhancements in the future, and eventually inverse multi-threading, as well as 4-way SMT.  AVX512 and 4-way SMT would be the biggest boons.  Theoretical doubling of IPC, L4 cache with a turned off iGPU to further enhance the system cache in all areas, and then a 4-core with sixteen threads--that'd be pretty perfect.

Let me rephrase then: I care less about features and more about IPC improvements I suppose. Native usb c and more pci-e lanes for stuff like m.2 are nice, but I won't be upgrading my 4770k for them. Perhaps I am just impatient and am hoping AMD pushes them into releasing things faster

 

Edit: In addition, Intel engineers are still godly tier. I just don't like the direction they are being pushed

[SurvivorNVL]

Just now, Rune said:

Let me rephrase then: I care less about features and more about IPC improvements I suppose. Native usb c and more pci-e lanes for stuff like m.2 are nice, but I won't be upgrading my 4770k for them. Perhaps I am just impatient and am hoping AMD pushes them into releasing things faster

Oh.  In terms of IPC we're pretty much hitting the wall.  We probably have 35%(at best) remaining in pure IPC with silicon.  Without pipeline and coding optimization through cache and instruction sets--it's just 35% at best, but with AVX512 and proper coding--we could have a doubling in IPC or more as optimization for threads / cache starts to take effect, but yeah.  That 4770k is pretty much your main CPU for the next five years.  It'll likely last well unless multi-threaded coding becomes huge.

[zMeul]

eTeknix calls is "a leak", Bits&Chips calls it "speculation" - yay for journalism, NOT! 

[SparkyRain]

11 minutes ago, zMeul said:

eTeknix calls is "a leak", Bits&Chips calls it "speculation" - yay for journalism, NOT! 

Chips and cola

 

[patrickjp93]

2 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Since when was Haswell outdated? I mean, shit, still plenty of people out there doing just fine on Phenom II's and Bulldozer, so I definitely fail to see how Haswell is outdated.

Of course you fail to see it. You aren't a true member of the PC Master Race that already has Cannonlake Engineering Samples. Haswell and Zen are already obsolete. Oh, and #AMDeadConfirmed.

 

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Zen will be competing with Kaby Lake and Broadwell-E then. And I think it will offer better cost competitiveness over Broadwell-E and better scaling and expandabilty over Kaby Lake. So, I think there'll definitely be a market for the Zen family, and I think it will come largely from AMD challenging Intel's heavy segmentation of the consumer market (e.g. certain skus arbitrarily having locked multipliers, hyperthreading, and needing an entirely separate platform to have more than 4 CPU cores) rather than raw performance.

AMD doesn't allow all SKUs to be overclocked either. In fact most of them outside the FX series are locked.

 

47 minutes ago, Rune said:

I want Intel to have a reason to innovate outside of mobile again.

My wish is not looking too good.

As if to say IBM Power 8 and Oracle Sparc M7 aren't pressuring it from the HPC arena (which does trickle down to consumer space btw).

2 minutes ago, SparkyRain said:

Chips and cola

(snip_

AMD Being barely above Ivy Bridge with lesser MT scaling? Sounds about right. Theoretically the best they could do was 3-4% above Haswell.

[zMeul]

47 minutes ago, SparkyRain said:

Chips and cola

and?!

that screenshot is nowhere mentioned in either the source (Bits&Chips speculation) not in eTeknix's crap article - doesn't make eTeknix shitpost less shitty because that image exists

[Prysin]

49 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

.

AMD Being barely above Ivy Bridge with lesser MT scaling? Sounds about right. Theoretically the best they could do was 3-4% above Haswell.

lol, if nothing else the Zen chip is 2.2 times the FX 8350. So atleast some progress has been made.

Still though, remains to see how well it does in gaming. Sure it may lose in this test but that doesnt translate into how it performs in games, which will be the most important market for AMD in the beginning.

[Big-G]

Only going to be Zen... not Now

[skyler_mertz]

Everyone crying about this chip not being fast enough and not taking into account that this in an 8-core chip with better IPC than Haswell. That effectively makes it better than 5960X and directly competing with Broadwell-E, all on a consumer chip. So quit crying that a company, with a fraction of the budget of Intel, is still able to make CPU's that can directly compete with it. Im rooting for the underdog and some real competition.   

[The Benjamins]

3 hours ago, SurvivorNVL said:

Around when Zen releases - Skylake-E will be not too far away as well.  Broadwell-E is around April right now.  Skylake-E is supposedly set late Q1 2017.

I dont think skylake will be out till 2018, and it also some down to pricing all that matters is if AMD sells a part that can compete or be better in its given price tiers. also zens server parts go to 32 cores if i remember correctly which should be awesome. intel is just releaseing 22 core CPU's

[CyberneticTitan]

The hype for Zen will become AMD's downfall if it doesn't live up to it. Good luck.

[Dabombinable]

17 hours ago, Sakkura said:

The fastest 8-core Broadwell-EP chip has a base clock of 2.6 GHz (on a 135W TDP). You can't compare with the FX CPUs since they use CMT rather than SMT, and have far lower IPC.

Also, the FX series has a long pipeline, which is why it clocks so high and one of the reasons for its IPC blowing so bad.

[Dabombinable]

13 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

That's only when those few powerful players cooperate. Intel and Nvidia hate each other and would try their damn hardest to rip each other to pieces.

 

And it's the best thing for the industry. Intel releases tons of its patents every year. AMD and Nvidia don't. That's one huge reason the GPU market is so closed up. They're both incredible patent trolls. When was the last time you heard of Intel suing someone for the design of an instruction or circuit? It would be best for the market for AMD to step aside rather than just struggling along (which will continue in spite of any fan's delusions).

In the era where software isn't evolving and SISD instructions are already optimized near to their theoretical lowest possible latencies, rating by GHz is MORE accurate than it was in the old days. If software starts evolving again, then sure, it goes away.

Intel themselves are actually the reason AMD even started making CPU at all, and in fact, all of the other CPU manufacturers from the 90's were able to use the same/similar designs, leading to multiple companies making 386 and 486 processors. Including Texas Instruments (mentioned specifically because I have one of their 486 DX 100 with its stock cooler, and who still use the old Zlog 80 in their calculators).

[Eroda]

9 hours ago, SparkyRain said:

Zen is gonna be outdated at release not haswell. You have trouble with reading? Benchmarks will be held against skylake, we can can already predict amd will be behind - as always. Not excited for this line up. They better focus on gpu's instead crippling behind intel for taking too long with their releases. 

so where did you buy your 8 core Skylake CPU  and motherboard?  because if i was interested n 4 cores id be all over intel but i want 6-8 cores at a minimum which is why im waiting  if they can outperform haswellE but offer me the features of the bdw-e boards at a price that is slightly lower im happy

[porina]

There is a lot of speculation going on, and to be realistic we don't have the info to reliably predict where Zen might end up. We throw around IPC like it sums up a whole CPU. In reality, different areas will have different strengths and weaknesses. Arguing over if it should be compared to Haswell or Skylake is not too critical, due to the relatively small IPC difference between them.

 

From my personal perspective, I'm most interested in FPU IPC, and current indicators are that each "core" will be about half that of an Intel, which is still a lot better than what you can get from AMD today. For me, a hypothetical 8 core Zen might only perform as well as a current Intel quad. It could well be, in other instructions they are much more IPC per core competitive, and in those areas they'll go beyond Intel quads. When looking at reviews we will have to see how it performs in different tasks.

 

HT will be another unknown. In the best case I've seen, an Intel HT core is worth about 50% of a "real" core e.g. in best case today, a 4 core with HT might perform like a similar 6 core without HT. How AMD's implementation will scale is a total unknown to us.

[SparkyRain]

42 minutes ago, Eroda said:

so where did you buy your 8 core Skylake CPU  and motherboard?  because if i was interested n 4 cores id be all over intel but i want 6-8 cores at a minimum which is why im waiting  if they can outperform haswellE but offer me the features of the bdw-e boards at a price that is slightly lower im happy

Good for you?? I don't see your build decisions being relevant to me. 

[Prysin]

15 hours ago, Ren said:

"Then came the 9xxx series, for overclockers, which was kinda a mistake.  The 8320=9370 & 8350=9590 just factory OCed."

 

'Pretty sure the 9370 and 9590 were sort of equivalent to an Intel i7-5930k in terms of their place on the board', as in their SKU. They are not simply overclocked Bulldozer+ FX-8000 processors. They were sold as prosumer+ chips, like the 5930k and such. And more than just "on average" they have higher IPC than FX-8000/6000/4000. The only chip I know of that can beat them in IPC from AMD are the 860k/7860k+ (most recent 4-core FM2+ Excavators).

no. they do no have "higher IPC"....

 

Here, let me show you

4.8GHz 8320e (Low power binned chip) vs 5GHz 9590

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1403?vs=1289

 

IPC is dictated by Architecture. you do not bin for "higher IPC". The differences between one chip or the other, of the same architecture, in terms of IPC output is marginal. Hell i would dare suggest the difference is within margin of error or most measuring systems.

You bin for lower power and higher frequencies. The FX 9590 is the pinnacle of "most frequency at lowest possible voltage out of the box". And even then it is ridiculously hot.

[DocSwag]

23 hours ago, Ren said:

"Then came the 9xxx series, for overclockers, which was kinda a mistake.  The 8320=9370 & 8350=9590 just factory OCed."

 

'Pretty sure the 9370 and 9590 were sort of equivalent to an Intel i7-5930k in terms of their place on the board', as in their SKU. They are not simply overclocked Bulldozer+ FX-8000 processors. They were sold as prosumer+ chips, like the 5930k and such. And more than just "on average" they have higher IPC than FX-8000/6000/4000. The only chip I know of that can beat them in IPC from AMD are the 860k/7860k+ (most recent 4-core FM2+ Excavators).

There is so much wrong with this statement I don't know where to start, but I guess I'll have to start somewhere....

#1 the fx 9370 and 9590 are Vishera parts. What this means is AMD took the 8300 series and binned them to find the high clocking parts. They are based on vishera not steamroller or excavator and so have the SAME IPC as the 8300 series. They are basically factory overclocked 8300 series CPUs with ridiculously high TDPs.

#2 You are obviously getting your AMD stuff mixed up pretty badly... The 860k and 7860k are not excavator but Godavari, or Kaveri Refresh, and are based on Steamroller, not Excavator. The only chips based on Excavator are AMD's Carrizo mobile CPUs and the Athlon x4 845. 

#3 There are a lot of AMD chips that beat the 9000 series in ipc. All Kaveri chips (Athlon 800 series and 7000 series APUs, there could be more of em) as well as excavator chips beat em, and there are a lot of Kaveri and Carrizo chips out there.

 

Pleade do your research before making blind statements!

[DocSwag]

23 hours ago, Ren said:

Forgot to post that I expect:

 

 

Low voltage and standard parts for desktop.

 

8C/T, 95W, 3.7-4.2ghz turbo. OCing to 4.6+. Pricing at $339.99

8C/T, 65W, 2.9-3.3ghz turbo. Why would you OC? Pricing at $269.99

4-core chips that run at same wattage but higher default clocks, lower turbo. OC probably far more mild. $129.99-$179.99

 

No idea what to expect below $120-$150.

 

I am almost 100% sure AMD plans to try and sell as many low-end and top-end + low voltage parts as possible. The middle-of-the-road shit, i.e. ~i5 territory, they'd probably leave alone. I also expect them to go deep on OEM sales in return for what they will fail to sell to consumers initially. I hope they plan on buying some advertisement on television and such for this event as well..

AMD wouldn't price that aggressively unless Zen is worse than skylake and Broadwell e by a fair margin. If Zen is worse, no one will buy it. If zen is as good, AMD will probably price it just below Intel. If they price it super low Intel will just lower their prices by a lot to compete with AMD, and AMD loses. Chances are the 8 core parts would be 500 bucks and higher if you ask me. Also, remember they will have 16 threads.

I personally think the 6 cores would be the product to get. They would probably be around 300 bucks ish.

[Humbug]

2 hours ago, DocSwag said:

If they price it super low Intel will just lower their prices by a lot to compete with AMD, and AMD loses.

Depends.. if they want AMD to die.