Speculation on AMD "Zen"

[Sedorian]

I've been discussing with some friends the possibility of the new AMD Zen processor, will it hold up to the hype? Is there going to be some fatal flaw? Or is this possible the Intel killer, thus bringing back AMD to the top of the throne. What does everyone think, I'm interested to know. Leave what you think down below and discuss with others too.

[Guest]

No way an Intel killer. Even if they do somehow kill it there are still people who still love 6700k, 6800k ...

[GDRRiley]

it may be a close competitor but not a killer 

[anybodykek]

Nope. Zen is kind of a rehash, but with a better process. As of now, AMD has no quad-core i5 competitor, or a dual-core i3 competitor, for that matter. That kind of puts you off, don't you think?

[Stevoisboss]

I don't think it will be better than most broadwell-e chips but It really just depends on competitive pricing for me to want to buy it. It brings much needed competition which is the most important part.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, anybodykek said:

Nope. Zen is kind of a rehash, but with a better process. As of now, AMD has no quad-core i5 competitor, or a dual-core i3 competitor, for that matter. That kind of puts you off, don't you think?

fx 8350 is better than i3 6100

 

but most of the time yeah they don't. they have to compete with both Nvidia and Intel, give them a break

[Sedorian]

Personally, I prefer Intel for the reliability and performance, albeit a bit expensive at times. AMD provides very good budget processors, it would be very nice to see a high performance one that can compete with Intel too. Only time will tell really.  

[anybodykek]

2 minutes ago, dexxterlab97 said:

fx 8350 is better than i3 6100

 

but most of the time yeah they don't. they have to compete with both Nvidia and Intel, give them a break

Yeah.. I feel they do better at GPUs than they do CPUs. I mean, they needed an 8-core 4GHz CPU to beat the i3 6100.

[BuckGup]

They are aiming for mass production of a few chips that cater to a wide audience. Maybe not the 6950X audience but doing this will allow cheaper prices and more sales. Even if it is just a more efficient bull dozer it would be acceptable  

[incarnate]

17 minutes ago, anybodykek said:

Nope. Zen is kind of a rehash, but with a better process. As of now, AMD has no quad-core i5 competitor, or a dual-core i3 competitor, for that matter. That kind of puts you off, don't you think?

A rehash of what exactly? And what does AMD's current line up have to do with an entirely new line of cpus?

[ARikozuM]

They're pointing the chips towards Haswell performance and if they can undercut Intel with an i5-equivalent for $200 vs Intel's $240, it's a very good chunk of change that AMD can put back into R&D.

[anybodykek]

4 minutes ago, incarnate said:

A rehash of what exactly? And what does AMD's current line up have to do with an entirely new line of cpus?

I kind of worded that poorly. I meant that, year-after-year, AMD has released 5GHz 8-core CPUs but not much in the way of single-core performance. And AMD is doing the same thing as Intel, gradual increases in performance and efficiency. They have an inability to play the catch-up game with Intel because Intel is a year or two ahead, ever since the Core 2 lineup. Have you seen a Phenom that competes with a Core 2 Quad? Or a quad-core Athlon matching up to an i5?

[os2wiz]

1 hour ago, Sedorian said:

I've been discussing with some friends the possibility of the new AMD Zen processor, will it hold up to the hype? Is there going to be some fatal flaw? Or is this possible the Intel killer, thus bringing back AMD to the top of the throne. What does everyone think, I'm interested to know. Leave what you think down below and discuss with others too.

 

1 hour ago, Sedorian said:

I've been discussing with some friends the possibility of the new AMD Zen processor, will it hold up to the hype? Is there going to be some fatal flaw? Or is this possible the Intel killer, thus bringing back AMD to the top of the throne. What does everyone think, I'm interested to know. Leave what you think down below and discuss with others too.

It will most likely have an IPC slightly better than Haswell chips but an 8 core version for about $329  would be a steal. I am only guessing about pricing, but I have to believe it will be considerablu less than Intel in order to win market share. I am definitely buying the octacore Zen if below $350.

[Amagh]

Isint Zen rumoured to be trading blows with Broadwell-E, rather than Haswell? I mean that single Blender benchmark is all but reliable, and everything being said right now should be taken with a grain of salt. Personally I think Zen will slot itself just above Haswell, slightly below Broadwell-E and Skylake

 

Still, even if Broadwell-E is a bit out of Zen's reach. It's ability to compete with Haswell (Which shouldnt be much more than 10% below Skylake (Kaby Lake is still an enigma) at a more reasonable price than the Haswell lineup is a fantastic thing. Right now AMD does not need to compete with Intel's enthousiast grade stuff, because the money is in the more reasonable, consumer grade stuff. We saw that exact same thing with Polaris.the RX-480 was never ment to compete with the 1080, or even the 1070.

 

Placing Zen where the market is the biggest is a brilliant call from AMD. Now all they need to do is have the new architecture deliver with the performance. Ideally on par with Broadwell-E like we saw in that Blender benchmark.

[os2wiz]

1 hour ago, anybodykek said:

Nope. Zen is kind of a rehash, but with a better process. As of now, AMD has no quad-core i5 competitor, or a dual-core i3 competitor, for that matter. That kind of puts you off, don't you think?

That is patently false. Zen is not bulldozer on a better process. Zen is a completely revamped design with im[proved cache, a decoder for each core, no shared resources between cores, a much better process, improved fpu, better branch predictability etc. This design closes most of the gap with Intel cpus. Zen + in 2019 will put AMD on a par or better than Intel chips. Zen itself is close enough that in 99% of games  and applications you would not be able to notice any significant performance gap. Of course it takes a few months for developers to optimize their appications when a new processor comes out. So things may be better than what I see now.

[os2wiz]

1 hour ago, anybodykek said:

I kind of worded that poorly. I meant that, year-after-year, AMD has released 5GHz 8-core CPUs but not much in the way of single-core performance. And AMD is doing the same thing as Intel, gradual increases in performance and efficiency. They have an inability to play the catch-up game with Intel because Intel is a year or two ahead, ever since the Core 2 lineup. Have you seen a Phenom that competes with a Core 2 Quad? Or a quad-core Athlon matching up to an i5?

How is a 40% increase of Zen over their previous Excavator core count as a graduakl increase?? It is revolutionary.

[Amagh]

Actually I think you mean that the 40% increase in IPC (Instructions Per Clock) Not the actual core count. The consumer grade Zen chips will be 8-cores with Hyperthreading. Just like the FX-8350 is an 8-core (Though it lacks Hyperthreading. Or SMT - Simultanious Multithreading, as AMD calls it. But on paper it's the exact same thing as Hyperthreading on Intel chips)

[incarnate]

1 hour ago, anybodykek said:

I kind of worded that poorly. I meant that, year-after-year, AMD has released 5GHz 8-core CPUs but not much in the way of single-core performance. And AMD is doing the same thing as Intel, gradual increases in performance and efficiency. They have an inability to play the catch-up game with Intel because Intel is a year or two ahead, ever since the Core 2 lineup. Have you seen a Phenom that competes with a Core 2 Quad? Or a quad-core Athlon matching up to an i5?

And again, what does amd's previous offerings have to do with an unreleased product stack?

 

Personally I don't think it will catch up to intel in one giant leap, intel is more than a year or two ahead at this point, but if you want to drag amd's past into this, let's look at the last cpu that amd had jim keller work on, you know the last time intel fell behind amd? That's about as relevant as how the phenom line compared to c2 line.

 

I for one am going to wait until it is released and judge it on its own merits.

[anybodykek]

15 hours ago, os2wiz said:

How is a 40% increase of Zen over their previous Excavator core count as a graduakl increase?? It is revolutionary.

Core count? I'm talking about IPC and Clock speeds.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, anybodykek said:

Core count? I'm talking about IPC and Clock speeds.

He means "Excavator core", not "core count".

[anybodykek]

14 hours ago, incarnate said:

And again, what does amd's previous offerings have to do with an unreleased product stack?

 

Personally I don't think it will catch up to intel in one giant leap, intel is more than a year or two ahead at this point, but if you want to drag amd's past into this, let's look at the last cpu that amd had jim keller work on, you know the last time intel fell behind amd? That's about as relevant as how the phenom line compared to c2 line.

 

I for one am going to wait until it is released and judge it on its own merits.

What do previous offerings have to do with an unreleased product stack? What, do you think AMD is going to switch to quantum computing in the span of 2 years? I doubt Zen is a groundbreaking innovation, like AMD64 and the Athlon II.

 

And the last time AMD was ahead of Intel was because of good business decisions. A golden age for AMD. I'm saying Intel pushed back with C2 and it's been the same ever since. I don't expect much change with Zen.

 

And for that last remark, I've seen Zen benchmarks. I'm not basing my full opinion right now. The thread is SPECULATION on Zen.

[anybodykek]

4 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

He means "Excavator core", not "core count".

I'm sorry, I can't read a conglomerate of 2 phrases. My interpretation .