AMD's FX-9800P (Excavator) APU edges out the Core i7 in laptop benchmarks

[patrickjp93]

25 minutes ago, DXMember said:

I believe they have with the very exception of Iris Pro graphics which uses EDRAM which is like cheating or something...

Innovation = Cheating only when Intel does it. Integrating HBM/2 into future APUs should also be cheating then

[zMeul]

13 minutes ago, Darel321 said:

well it's not pathetic.. I said that because I know it can run much better.. but sadly it would melt the laptop xD.. intel its pathetic... they got millions more to spend on their cpu gpu etc... and still amd with their shity apu beat them

who said anything that Intel actually cares about integrate graphics? they put iGPUs in their CPUs because why not - Intel isn't racing anyone and hasn't been since Intel integrated graphics

on the other hand, AMD seeks iGPU performance - and they're not getting it

 

Intel has 70% of total GPU market share (Q4 2015) ... do you get that? AMD and nVidia are fighting for scraps

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch

 

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Seeking Alpha said it best: "race to the bottom"

[crystal6tak]

Meh, not impressed. Mainly cause, uh, Iris Graphics 540 (GT3e, 48 EU) is a thing? And is also in 15 watt chips?

 

i7 6500U uses the HD 520, which only has 24 EU's... 

[Darel321]

15 minutes ago, zMeul said:

who said anything that Intel actually cares about integrate graphics? they put iGPUs in their CPUs because why not - Intel isn't racing anyone and hasn't been since Intel integrated graphics

on the other hand, AMD seeks iGPU performance - and they're not getting it

 

Intel has 70% of total GPU market share (Q4 2015) ... do you get that? AMD and nVidia are fighting for scraps

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch

 

----

 

Seeking Alpha said it best: "race to the bottom"

hahahaha 70% yes yes.. omg.. where did you came from?? a cave?? ohh shiet man :D.. whatever... you're right... I wont fight with you hahahahahah

[Ansau]

15W they say, throttling they hide.

http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/amd-carrizo-fx-8800p-benchmarks-15w/

 

[Tomsen]

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

who said anything that Intel actually cares about integrate graphics? they put iGPUs in their CPUs because why not - Intel isn't racing anyone and hasn't been since Intel integrated graphics

on the other hand, AMD seeks iGPU performance - and they're not getting it

 

Intel has 70% of total GPU market share (Q4 2015) ... do you get that? AMD and nVidia are fighting for scraps

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch

 

----

 

Seeking Alpha said it best: "race to the bottom"

Because why not? That is a lot of die-area for a why-not. Lots of investment for a why-not.

It doesn't really seems like a why-not, so why do you suspect it to be?

 

That marketshare graph is messed up. Remember that Intel is been counted even so if the system has a AMD or Nvidia dGPU present (if using intel processor with iGP).

Also pretty sure it messed up the counting with multiple GP's (integrated, dedicated and mixed) presented in a single system.

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

But how much power and heat are consumed/produced by each?  In a laptop chip, that is a very legitimate and important question.

15 or 35w for the AMD APU.

very likely to be 15w because almost no OEM have made a laptop with 35w chip inside.

[Dackzy]

This seems okay.

[shdowhunt60]

1 hour ago, crystal6tak said:

Meh, not impressed. Mainly cause, uh, Iris Graphics 540 (GT3e, 48 EU) is a thing? And is also in 15 watt chips?

 

i7 6500U uses the HD 520, which only has 24 EU's... 

It's a thing you aren't going to see ever. Intel charges a king's ransom for Iris Pro skus.

 

I'm impressed, because for all intents and purposes, Intel is two generations ahead in manufacturing process. The fact that AMD can still be competitive with a bulk high density process is nothing short of an engineering marvel, and it really begs the question of how it's going to go down once Raven Ridge hits the scene.

[Castdeath97]

47 minutes ago, Ansau said:

15W they say, throttling they hide.

http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/amd-carrizo-fx-8800p-benchmarks-15w/

 

That's a FX-8800p, not a FX-9800p

[Prysin]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Is that actual test data or just what they say on the spec sheet?

AMDs APUs are vicious when it comes to sticking to their TDP limits. i bet that CPU was downclockd from 3GHz+ to 2-2.5GHz in order to compensate for the iGPUs power draw.

 

A Kaveri APU under full iGPU load will downclock the CPU to 3GHz regardless of BIOS settings. Doesnt matter if you have no TDP limit set, C states turned off, power management and "Cool'n'Quiet" disabled. Once iGPU is under heavy loads it will throttle the CPU.

 

hell, i tried to force it to run at 4.5GHz on the CPU by manually OCing it using multiplier. Doesnt work. Still 3GHz.

 

The only way to make a desktop AMD APU run over 3GHz on the CPU when the iGPU is in use is to baseclock OC the crap out of it. However you'd be lucky to break 108 on Baseclock without running the whole system in IDE mode and with phase cooling. The float units appear to have their own clock, and it does NOT enjoy baseclock OC.

[Ansau]

34 minutes ago, Castdeath97 said:

That's a FX-8800p, not a FX-9800p

Both are based on Carrizo. In fact, the FX-9800P is just a  FX-8800P with different frequencies.

 

FX-8800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.1/3.4GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 800MHz.

FX-9800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.7/3.6GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 758MHz.

 

Btw, Intel created Iris Pro for more gaming oriented solutions, while those cpus with the normal HD 520 are targeted towards more office-multimedia tasks requirements.

It is a bit unfair to compare one of your gaming solutions against an office-multimedia solution from the competition, and leave the room saying yours wins in gaming. Of course it will...

[patrickjp93]

44 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

It's a thing you aren't going to see ever. Intel charges a king's ransom for Iris Pro skus.

 

I'm impressed, because for all intents and purposes, Intel is two generations ahead in manufacturing process. The fact that AMD can still be competitive with a bulk high density process is nothing short of an engineering marvel, and it really begs the question of how it's going to go down once Raven Ridge hits the scene.

It's really not a marvel at all. Intel is going at AMD with 1/2 or less the SP count. AMD is only beating smaller SKUs.

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, Ansau said:

Both are based on Carrizo. In fact, the FX-9800P is just a  FX-8800P with different frequencies.

 

FX-8800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.1/3.4GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 800MHz.

FX-9800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.7/3.6GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 758MHz.

 

Btw, Intel created Iris Pro for more gaming oriented solutions, while those cpus with the normal HD 520 are targeted towards more office-multimedia tasks requirements.

It is a bit unfair to compare one of your gaming solutions against an office-multimedia solution from the competition, and leave the room saying yours wins in gaming. Of course it will...

Both are based on Excavator but are clearly different (Carrizo is a codename for the product platform and does not equal Bristol Ridge). Bristol Ridge is basically Excavator v2 - a more refined product and some tweaks and improvements such as DDR4 support being a big one.

AMD has listed the improvements made although they do seem to prefer to compare it to Kaveri because the gains are bigger, however there are improvements versus Carrizo as well.

[Citadelen]

1 hour ago, Ansau said:

-snip-

Correction, both chips are based on Excavator, with this latest generation AMD has had a power efficiency boost of 35%, not to mention the multimedia improvements, these APUs are designed for home cinema, family laptops ect. Where improvements like this matter.

[Ansau]

58 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Both are based on Excavator but are clearly different (Carrizo is a codename for the product platform and does not equal Bristol Ridge). Bristol Ridge is basically Excavator v2 - a more refined product and some tweaks and improvements such as DDR4 support being a big one.

AMD has listed the improvements made although they do seem to prefer to compare it to Kaveri because the gains are bigger, however there are improvements versus Carrizo as well.

They aren't that different. Same lithography, same amount of transistors, same specs, similar clock range...

The only differences introduced are improved I/O capabilities (which have nothing to do with heat output), and improvements in terms of voltage regulator and adaptive frequency-voltage curve, but only allow a 10% improvement of frequency/voltage ratio over Carrizo 1.0.

But more importantly, Carrizo was seeing throttling in the cpu of 1.3GHz from a base of 2.1GHz, and gpu of 300MHz from a maximum of 800MHz. These aren't tiny throttling that can be fixed with some tweaks that bring only a 10% improvement, also the new 9800P has high cpu clocks, and let's not forget that throttling is experimented in actual implementations, rather that theoretical values provided by AMD in a laboratory/ideal situation.

 

16 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Correction, both chips are based on Excavator, with this latest generation AMD has had a power efficiency boost of 35%, not to mention the multimedia improvements, these APUs are designed for home cinema, family laptops ect. Where improvements like this matter.

I already said both are based on Excavator. The power efficiency boost is only a 10% over Carrizo, not 35%. And sorry, but APUs have always been targeted at gaming in the entry level market. As a matter of fact, the comparison they make against the i7 6500u is exclusively at gaming.

[WereCat]

4 hours ago, crystal6tak said:

Meh, not impressed. Mainly cause, uh, Iris Graphics 540 (GT3e, 48 EU) is a thing? And is also in 15 watt chips?

 

i7 6500U uses the HD 520, which only has 24 EU's... 

And how much do chips with eDRAM cost? Iris Graphics are not cheap and you cant really compare them with other 15W chips that cost twice as less.

[Citadelen]

3 minutes ago, Ansau said:

-snip-

So we've go from 'same but different clock speed' to 'then improved voltage regulation and other stuff', oh and the throttling isn't AMDs fault, OEMs don't like putting adequate cooling on them, thus throttling. Ah yes I appear to have missed out that they're also heard towards entry gaming. But, they also have good multimedia capabilities.

[Humbug]

wasn't it already known that AMD generally beats intel at integrated graphics?

it's in the raw CPU stuff that intel has the lead.

[Castdeath97]

2 hours ago, Ansau said:

Both are based on Carrizo. In fact, the FX-9800P is just a  FX-8800P with different frequencies.

 

FX-8800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.1/3.4GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 800MHz.

FX-9800P: 28nm 2m/4t Excavator at 2.7/3.6GHz. R7 gpu with 512 shader cores at up to 758MHz.

 

Btw, Intel created Iris Pro for more gaming oriented solutions, while those cpus with the normal HD 520 are targeted towards more office-multimedia tasks requirements.

It is a bit unfair to compare one of your gaming solutions against an office-multimedia solution from the competition, and leave the room saying yours wins in gaming. Of course it will...

Iris Pro is a expensive as it gets and barely exists within the market.

[Trixanity]

33 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

So we've go from 'same but different clock speed' to 'then improved voltage regulation and other stuff', oh and the throttling isn't AMDs fault, OEMs don't like putting adequate cooling on them, thus throttling. Ah yes I appear to have missed out that they're also heard towards entry gaming. But, they also have good multimedia capabilities.

Yeah, a bit strange. He's essentially saying the engine is the same, therefore the car is the same even though the chassis is different.

AMD has even said that they only call it 7th generation because enough has changed between Carrizo and Bristol/Stony Ridge to warrant a switch. They praise GloFo for delivering a very refined 28nm product and AMD has worked on a bunch of tweaks to improve the performance without altering the 'engine' (so to speak). 

 

While we're all eagerly awaiting Zen, I actually think it's quite remarkable what AMD has been able to do with 28nm in both CPUs and GPUs but also how far they've managed to take Bulldozer despite it being a very obvious dud and how they've worked around the problem until they could make something new from scratch. 

[Ansau]

32 minutes ago, WereCat said:

And how much do chips with eDRAM cost? Iris Graphics are not cheap and you cant really compare them with other 15W chips that cost twice as less.

2 minutes ago, Castdeath97 said:

Iris Pro is a expensive as it gets and barely exists within the market.

i7 6650U only cost 22$ more than the i7 6500U, and then you have the i5 6260U that costs 89$ less,  both having the HD 540, which twice the amount of EUs and EDRAM.

 

28 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

So we've go from 'same but different clock speed' to 'then improved voltage regulation and other stuff', oh and the throttling isn't AMDs fault, OEMs don't like putting adequate cooling on them, thus throttling. Ah yes I appear to have missed out that they're also heard towards entry gaming. But, they also have good multimedia capabilities.

It is well known that the issue doesn't come from bad cooling solutions, but the fact that when the cpu and gpu are both working at the same time, they throw more than just 15W, so if configurated at that TDP the APU downclocks.

Prime95 doesn't show throttling issues.

[DocSwag]

It ain't really a surprise....

AMD has always beaten Intel in the iGPU arena. It was only recently with Crystal Well that Intel, with the aid of two process node jumps, finfet, a superior process compared to other foundries, and edram put on the same substrate as the CPU die that they could even edge out AMDs old 1-2 year old iGPUs.

 

The 6500u only has Intel HD Graphics 520. That's not even near the top of their line.

[Castdeath97]

2 minutes ago, Ansau said:

i7 6650U only cost 22$ more than the i7 6500U, and then you have the i5 6260U that costs 89$ less,  both having the HD 540, which twice the amount of EUs and EDRAM.

 

It is well known that the issue doesn't come from bad cooling solutions, but the fact that when the cpu and gpu are both working at the same time, they throw more than just 15W, so if configurated at that TDP the APU downclocks.

Prime95 doesn't show throttling issues.

The problem isn't with the actual cost of the chip but with the laptops that contain them, which are very few. Iris Pro is a rare find.

[Trixanity]

As for iGPUs: eDRAM is obviously a large performance boost that provides an otherwise memory-starved GPU what it needs to perform. Even DDR4 is not enough. AMD needs to increase SP count and find a way to add a healthy quantity of L4 cache for the SoC/iGPU one way or another. Whether that's HBM2, eDRAM or a third solution. That way they can comfortable reclaim the iGPU throne.

 

And if whatever throttling there is isn't thermal throttling, the solution would be to have power profiles that allow exceeding the rated TDP. Say if plugged in, the increased power consumption should be a non-issue as long as the excess doesn't cause thermal issues. However, so far many of the laptop solutions have been awful and not only in cooling.