AMD Zen CPUs will have PGA mounting systems

[spartaman64]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

Than AMD's own lack luster chips which are now a good 20% or worst behind Intel in ICP today? 

 

Meaning that after the usual hype BS of cherry picked tests and such and consider the would compete with not current but future Intel chips, suddenly it's about the same performance if not a little worst than Intel. 

 

You can quote me as predicting Zen will, as usual, only have a price to performance edge but not actually better or equal to high end Intel. 

well intel only increases by like 10% at most so being 10% behind isnt too bad

[Dabombinable]

4 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Given that I store multiple AMD and pre-LGA CPUs in a box without any protection, and I have legitimately thrown the box across my room with no casualties, I think my point still stands.

 

And given just how much I handle PGA CPUs comapred to your barely-if-any (more than likely), I think that only re-enforces my answer.

All I can say is that my 486 DX100, 386 DX40, all 4 of my Pentium III and both Celeron have all had their pins bent badly at some point (though luckily never the same ones) and to this day they all work as normal. Can't remember if I bent the pins on my K6-2 however, it wasn't in use for long before it got replaced by my Celeron 300A which only needed its FSB set to 100MHz.

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

well intel only increases by like 10% at most so being 10% behind isnt too bad

True, yet I honestly think they're holding back to slow down the market and profit. If AMD truly delivers with Zen something tells me they could easily come down with both price cuts and better performing chips. 

[spartaman64]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

True, yet I honestly think they're holding back to slow down the market and profit. If AMD truly delivers with Zen something tells me they could easily come down with both price cuts and better performing chips. 

good thing for us not so good for amd

[TidaLWaveZ]

I think I like LGA better, but I'm not removing my CPU enough to dismiss a good PGA if it comes along. 

 

It'd be awesome to see a really powerful CPU at a great price.

[othertomperson]

12 hours ago, iiNNeX said:

6950x $1700!!!

Linus's point about them not wanting to cannibalise Xeon sales makes sense to me. An overclockable 10-core for ~£700 would make a tonne of their workstation hardware irrelevant. As it is, it's not like that workstation hardware doesn't still exist and can't still be bought instead of the 6950X, so I don't really see the issue beyond the obvious fact that they are milking gamers. On the other hand, I think gamers buying this are pretty stupid in the first place.

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Linus's point about them not wanting to cannibalise Xeon sales makes sense to me. An overclockable 10-core for ~£700 would make a tonne of their workstation hardware irrelevant. As it is, it's not like that workstation hardware doesn't still exist and can't still be bought instead of the 6950X, so I don't really see the issue beyond the obvious fact that they are milking gamers. On the other hand, I think gamers buying this are pretty stupid in the first place.

Remember, some people fall under the category "enthusiast" for a reason. They can afford to buy things that most people would consider stupidly overpriced.

[potoooooooo]

I'd have preferred LGA but i don't really care.

 

I prefer risking damaging a motherboard, which is generally cheaper than most CPUs

[othertomperson]

5 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Remember, some people fall under the category "enthusiast" for a reason. They can afford to buy things that most people would consider stupidly overpriced.

Um no, buying something that is overpriced when the same company who makes it has a nearly identical product for hundreds of pounds less that is not "enthusiast", that is "stupid". An enthusiast who wants 10 cores should have a look at the Xeons instead.

 

For example, a 1080 is enthusiast because it's the best card available right now. A 1080 Founders Edition is stupid because it's a more expensive variant of a superior product.

[patrickjp93]

46 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

True, yet I honestly think they're holding back to slow down the market and profit. If AMD truly delivers with Zen something tells me they could easily come down with both price cuts and better performing chips. 

They aren't. Check out the Agner Fog x86 instruction latency tables. Intel can't push IPC much if any farther apart from some integer division and compound instructions. All Intel can really do is improve the overall pipeline, but even that is hugely limited due to the structure of code having a branch on average every 7 lines. Code has to be modernized, period. The age of SISD is over. The only programmers who don't understand that work in video games and lesser consumer software.

[patrickjp93]

18 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Um no, buying something that is overpriced when the same company who makes it has a nearly identical product for hundreds of pounds less that is not "enthusiast", that is "stupid". An enthusiast who wants 10 cores should have a look at the Xeons instead.

 

For example, a 1080 is enthusiast because it's the best card available right now. A 1080 Founders Edition is stupid because it's a more expensive variant of a superior product.

It's not overpriced if it sells -Microeconomics. Xeons do not overclock for a reason: guaranteed condition and stability. Enthusiast chips do for a reason: enthusiasts like to tinker. That difference in qualities is worth it for some consumers. Get over it. No one person determines if products are overpriced or not. The market as a whole does.

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, othertomperson said:

Um no, buying something that is overpriced when the same company who makes it has a nearly identical product for hundreds of pounds less that is not "enthusiast", that is "stupid". An enthusiast who wants 10 cores should have a look at the Xeons instead.

 

For example, a 1080 is enthusiast because it's the best card available right now. A 1080 Founders Edition is stupid because it's a more expensive variant of a superior product.

Your forgetting key facts: Xeons are meant for 24/7 use and therefore reliability+efficiency+low temps. The X*9 platform i7 however are designed to be overclocked+run at higher stock clocks meaning that they are perfect for use outside of servers as they don't have the limitations of the server chips-which is why people buy them and they exist in the first place.

[cayphed]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I'm curious, can you come up with any use case scenarios for multi-layered VM setups? Why would you need to run a VM inside a VM, instead of say, beside the VM in the same Host?

In actual fact, running VM's has become a standard for the industry a little while back, however I have noticed some companies are now trying to run cloud based apps with their own VM environment inside again, a whole VM system, though it still seems buggy at best.

The potential benefits of isolating environments within a VM are endless and the primary VM environment can benefit from the same pros when the applications are held in their own VM environment.

I'm not saying "everyone needs this", I simply said, I'd like to see it done and done right.

[dalekphalm]

13 minutes ago, cayphed said:

In actual fact, running VM's has become a standard for the industry a little while back, however I have noticed some companies are now trying to run cloud based apps with their own VM environment inside again, a whole VM system, though it still seems buggy at best.

The potential benefits of isolating environments within a VM are endless and the primary VM environment can benefit from the same pros when the applications are held in their own VM environment.

I'm not saying "everyone needs this", I simply said, I'd like to see it done and done right.

That's a rather unique use case, but fair enough. VM's are very common of course. We are in the process of upgrading our servers at work to a virtualized environment. We're using 2 hosts in a cluster with VMWare. We'll be running 10-12 VM's on the system after we're done, but that number could increase significantly over time.

[Eroda]

On 6/8/2016 at 7:43 PM, Sauron said:

Sad but expected.

Having the pins on the cpu makes it more likely to break. Would you rather break your 120$ motherboard or your 350$ cpu?

ive straightened pins before its no big deal i remember dropping a brand new Axp 3200+ on the floor luckily it was for a work PC not a customers so i just straightened the pins and got it to fit in the socket no problems ever 

[Djole123]

PGA will exist for a long time. I don't think AMD has plans to implement LGA sockets (at least for consumers, because the AMD G34 is an LGA socket)

[samcool55]

Well tbh i prefer PGA, you have a much bigger chance to fix that if it goes wrong.

Pin a bit bent? No problem just carefully push it back.

Compared to intel's 2011, pin bent? Oh wel bad luck that's RMA'ing the board and paying for it because it's probably not convered by warranty, or get a brand new board.

Push the pin back into position? Lol k good luck  if it's one on the size, maybe, but anywhere else and you are screwed.

 

Pin broken? With PGA you have some hope of fixing it with a solid piece of wire. With LGA, no chance m8, no chance at all.

 

That's keeping in mind the pin is actually needed and isn't a simple ground pin or something because it has been proven cpu's can work with a broken pin.

[Sauron]

21 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Unless you like to chuck your CPU at a wall while building your PC, you're not going to fuck the pins up. They are fairly retard-proof.

They still make the cpu significantly more delicate, it's not that uncommon for people to bend them - besides, some people manage to bend the pins in motherboards too. It's not the end of the world, but lga is still better.

[Sauron]

28 minutes ago, Eroda said:

ive straightened pins before its no big deal i remember dropping a brand new Axp 3200+ on the floor luckily it was for a work PC not a customers so i just straightened the pins and got it to fit in the socket no problems ever 

Except sometimes they come right off while trying to straighten them.

[Humbug]

20 hours ago, byalexandr said:

They said it has a 40% higher IPC in comparison to the current line of FX chips. That combined with 8 cores 16 threads I think it should be able to compete with Intel's chips.

everybody touts this 40% ipc boost claim without talking about clockspeeds.

we don't know how well zen will clock. If it doesn't clock well then the ipc gains will be negated.

 

[DevilishBooster]

 

19 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Given that I store multiple AMD and pre-LGA CPUs in a box without any protection, and I have legitimately thrown the box across my room with no casualties, I think my point still stands.

 

And given just how much I handle PGA CPUs comapred to your barely-if-any (more than likely), I think that only re-enforces my answer.

22 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

But the risk is there. More over there is no significant advantage to PGA all I've seen here is "no big deal" comments like this. 

There may be no significant advantage to PGA, but there is also no intrinsic disadvantage to it either, so that argument is invalid.

 

I have assembled and disassembled more systems that I could possibly count, with components ranging from all the way back in the i386 days up to modern tech - AM3+ and LGA2011v3, and I have literally never bent a pin because any time I am handling components like the CPU or mobo (in either case) I make sure to take an extra 10 seconds to be careful and not damage anything. I've fixed other peoples' screw-ups and I would much rather have to fix the pins on a CPU than on a motherboard. The risk is there no matter which design you are using, yes, but if anyone has two brain cells to bash together they should be capable of realizing they need to be careful. If they damage anything either a) they are being careless and have no one to blame but themselves (certainly not the manufacturer of the component), or b) they really don't know what they are doing and should learn before attempting to build a system. Finally, component damage is part of the risk everyone takes when they decide to build a PC. If you're not willing to take that risk, don't build a PC. It's that simple. 

[Prysin]

16 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

True, yet I honestly think they're holding back to slow down the market and profit. If AMD truly delivers with Zen something tells me they could easily come down with both price cuts and better performing chips. 

probably not.

 

They are hitting a wall now that they are on much lower nodes. The smaller you go, the more problematic the heat concentration. So digging out performance now will cost them in terms of power efficiency. Intel has mostly focused on keeping power efficiency high, whilst irking out performance where they can.

 

Even if by a miracle ZEN catches up to Skylake. Which is wont. I predict Broadwell single core perf at the very very very best, it would still be competitive. However It is utter madness to think Intel can just suddenly leapfrog AMD by 20-30% performance out of the blue. By doing so, they would no longer be as power efficient, and without power efficiency, they could risk loosing the mobile market. Which is the lions share of computer sales atm.

 

Why?

Because AMDs iGPU and mobile dGPUs are an order of magnitude faster then Intels offerings (despite what Patrick claims). And if AMD is just a few % slower, but within reasonable power limits, it is more tempting to score a "deal" with the near bankrupt AMD (which would wag its tail and oblige right away i bet) to buy their CPUs + dGPUs (at a discount) over intels solutions.

Its hard for a OEM to push Intels prices down, because Intel has the cash and the market share. AMD on the other hand wouldn't be that hard to push in price.

 

 

THAT BEING SAID.

As it currently stand, in mobile applications, AMDs Excavator CPUs (roughly equal to Sandy IPC) are matching even skylake i5u CPUs today, because of their power efficiency allows for much higher clock speeds. It is a bit funny to see AMD doing so well in the laptop segment, whilst being utterly atrocious on the desktop with the same kind of product.

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, Prysin said:

probably not.

 

They are hitting a wall now that they are on much lower nodes. The smaller you go, the more problematic the heat concentration. So digging out performance now will cost them in terms of power efficiency. Intel has mostly focused on keeping power efficiency high, whilst irking out performance where they can.

 

Even if by a miracle ZEN catches up to Skylake. Which is wont. I predict Broadwell single core perf at the very very very best, it would still be competitive. However It is utter madness to think Intel can just suddenly leapfrog AMD by 20-30% performance out of the blue. By doing so, they would no longer be as power efficient, and without power efficiency, they could risk loosing the mobile market. Which is the lions share of computer sales atm.

 

Why?

Because AMDs iGPU and mobile dGPUs are an order of magnitude faster then Intels offerings (despite what Patrick claims). And if AMD is just a few % slower, but within reasonable power limits, it is more tempting to score a "deal" with the near bankrupt AMD (which would wag its tail and oblige right away i bet) to buy their CPUs over intel.

Its hard for a OEM to push Intels prices down, because Intel has the cash and the market share. AMD on the other hand wouldn't be that hard to push in price.

 

 

THAT BEING SAID.

As it currently stand, in mobile applications, AMDs Excavator CPUs (roughly equal to Sandy IPC) are matching even skylake i5u CPUs today, because of their power efficiency allows for much higher clock speeds. It is a bit funny to see AMD doing so well in the laptop segment, whilst being utterly atrocious on the desktop with the same kind of product.

Umm....their APU are still mostly found in fully fledged laptops despite the improvements made since the A8 4555M that's in my current laptop (I just need to remember that its performance is between a dual core Phenom II and a tri core-modules are meant to increase the thread count with minimal cost+die space, AKA most dual and uad module APU/APU compare best against 32nm dual or uad core CPU) as they still have heat problems and after Trinity throttle far too aggressively (with my A8 4555M, due to its temperature sensors being useless I am able to have it running at its default boost speed of 1.8GHz across both modules and with a 250MHz OC on the HD7600G-well and truly exceeding the 19W TDP).

[NuclearPeace]

I don't get why everyone is so focused on whether its easier to fix a LGA socket pin or a PGA pin. Its easier to bend a LGA pin due to the higher gauge but a motherboard in most cases is cheaper to replace than a CPU. Its easier to repair a PGA CPU due to the lower gauge and more space between pins, but then again its also easier to damage the CPU in the first place.

 

LGA allows for higher pen densities that PGA cannot reasonably achieve. This is why AMD uses Socket G34 for server CPUs; a 1,944 pin PGA socket would just make the socket/package take up too much room. This is also how LGA 115X takes up less room than AM3+ with around 200 more pins.

 

I can only really think of two good reasons to remain with PGA. PGA on AM4 means that there is a potential for compatibility with cooling systems designed for AM3+. A switch to LGA would make the socket smaller and thus the mounting holes would have to accomodate, making current AM3+ coolers require adapter plates. PGA also means that AM4 could be physically compatible with AM3+ CPUs. Personally I think the decision is down to option 1 as I don't think AMD would want to acknowledge Bulldozer derived CPUs exist after Zen hits.

[ZeusXI]

On 6/8/2016 at 6:49 AM, cayphed said:

It would be better if the had a set up similar to the LGA, as there would be greater pin density which would in turn open the door to great possibilities...

What if....that processor they show in the pictures, is what the Zen is now, for testing and other stuff, and then upon release, they change it over to LGA and blow everyones minds?