[Rumour] New AMD Zen ES Base/Boost Clock Frequencies Leaked

[HKZeroFive]

Here's our weekly tidbit of AMD Zen news...

 

Now, it's no surprise that AMD has been rather hush-hush when it came to clockspeeds for Zen... In fact, many people thought they had something to hide when they downclocked the i7 6900K to 3.0GHz to match their Zen ES' clocks for that Blender benchmark. People remained skeptical... and let's be honest, who wouldn't be?

 

So, the AnandTech forum member, who goes by the apt name of 'AMD Polaris', claims to know the boost/base clock frequencies of the new AMD engineering sample and has generously shared it with the rest of the internet. Now, before you go off and immediately call the source fake, please keep in mind that this same user posted accurate details about the previous Summit Ridge engineering sample before it was seen anywhere else, along with extremely plausible Naples engineering sample numbers. The widely prominent tech blogger 'dresdenboy' seems to have supported this claim so it definitely holds some sort of weight. But that doesn't make it true until AMD themselves confirms it. After all, it's still a rumour and we're still in the 'waiting for the benchmarks' phase.

 

Right. Enough chatting. Let's get right into the ne-... I mean numbers.

 

AMD ZEN EIGHT CORE PROCESSOR (8 CORES/16 THREADS)

Quote

The first one is an 8-core design with AMD's HT implementation and it's got a 3150 MHz base clock, it's all-core turbo is 3300 MHz and the max turbo for 1 core is 3600 Mhz. Yes, here are some improvements regarding the previous 8-core SKU under the same TDP envelope.

AMD ZEN FOUR CORE PROCESSOR (4 CORES/8 THREADS)

Quote

The second SKU is a 4-core one with AMD's HT. It's got a 65W TDP and the base clock is still 2900 MHz. All-core turbo is 3100 MHz, max turbo is 3400 MHz. I don't know if it's only an SKU for testing mainboards or something is not okay with the clock-wattage correlation. I mean on higher clocks the 4-core SKU steps into the 95W TDP envelope, AMD can't keep the wattage low. Maybe GloFo's 14nm process needs some maturing... Frankly I don't have a clue what's in the background.

'AMD Polaris' also had this to say...

Quote

Retail AM4 mainboards are under production. The whole platform will be ready to have a paper-launch at the end of the year with a real availability in February of 2017. Performance wise the Zen uarch will be around Haswell and Broadwell (except for FMA), it seems it won't catch Skylake clock for clock. It's not a big deal, but if the clocks can't go higher until the start it won't fulfill the expectations. And we all know that expectations in this case are very high...

And here's a table that displays their base/boost clocks and shows how they stack up against Intel's current and past architectures (courtesy of /u/DSShadowRaven on Reddit):

Processor	Architecture	Core Count / Thread Count	Base Clock	Boost Clock / Single Core Boost
Intel Core i7-2700K	Sandy Bridge	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-3770K	Ivy Bridge	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-4770K	Haswell	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-5960X	Haswell-E	8C/16T	3.0GHz	3.5GHz
Intel Core i7-6700K	Skylake	4C/8T	4.0GHz	4.2GHz
Intel Core i7-6900K	Broadwell-E	8C/16T	3.2GHz	3.7GHz/4.0GHz
Zen 4 Core	Zen	4C/8T	2.9GHz	3.1GHz/3.4GHz
Zen 8 Core	Zen	8C/16T	3.15GHz	3.3GHz/3.6GHz

 

Okay, I could probably now go into a long-winded discussion that wouldn't take us anywhere at all. So I'll try to answer the one question that is bound to be everyone's mind...

 

Is. It. Good?

 

As of now, the clocks for the eight core CPU are what I'd consider to be quite good... Considering this is an A0 stepping, it means that AMD still can mess with the power and clock management before the retail version releases and we may end up with an even better product. If it turns out to be a good overclocker and AMD prices them right... we might have a real winner on our hands.

 

Now, the quad core has been garnering quite a bit of controversy over on Reddit... the clocks aren't what I'd consider the best and when you stack it up against the rumoured 4.2GHz clocks of the i7 7700K, you can see where it falls flat. Even worse, it looks to be quite a power-hungry monster according to the AnandTech post. I'm going to remain optimistic and say AMD still has time to do something about their quad core but at the moment, if I were to get a CPU with the sole intention to game... I'd be leaning towards the Blue team. But perhaps I expect too much from AMD since I don't think they can top Kaby Lake (which is fair enough).

 

For an architecture made from scratch, I'd have to applaud AMD. It looks to be quite solid.

 

Just don't expect it to be an Intel killer. If you want real results, don't overhype it and wait for benchmarks.

 

Source: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/new-zen-microarchitecture-details.2465645/page-132#post-38535254

[patrickjp93]

Called it! 4GHz 8-cores in a 95W TDP with Intel-like performance per clock was laughable from the word go.

[patrickjp93]

Just now, Jorgen297 said:

called what?

Editted.

[Citadelen]

I'd say that the eight core's clocks aren't going to be going much higher than that. I'd expect that the four core's clock to push higher before launch. As time goes on, I'd say it's very likely that AMD will release refreshed Zen CPUs with higher clocks as the process matures. 

Edited October 24, 2016 by Citadelen

[patrickjp93]

2 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

I'd say that the octa core's clocks aren't going to be going much higher than that. I'd expect that the quad core's clock to push higher before launch. As time goes on, I'd day it's very likely that AMD will release refreshed Zen CPUs with higher clocks as the process matures.

They won't. According to the poster, a small overclock sent the temps skyrocketing and the TDP well into 95W territory. GloFo's process would appear to scale poorly with volts and clocks after the 3.6GHz range.

 

3 minutes ago, Jorgen297 said:

well we all know an intel skylake 3GHz core will beat out an AMD FX 5GHz core, even without hyperthreading, so core clock doesnt matter much. maybe now it's AMD's time to have the best architecture regardless of clock speed

Dresdenboy's AOTS benchmark suggests that's entirely impossible.

[Citadelen]

12 minutes ago, Jorgen297 said:

-snip-

 

No, AMD will still have an inferior architecture, Intel has been in the lead for too long and plows much MUCH more money into R&D; AMD hasn't had a superior product since 2006. Zen looks to be around Broadwell/Haswell levels, which is still very commendable considering their R&D.

8 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

-snip-

 

Hmm, according to the poster. I'm going to hold my breath until AMD releases Zen, though I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Edited October 24, 2016 by Citadelen
Improved grammatical correctness of sentences.

[Vode]

Interesting. So the 8-core seems pretty good actually. If they seel it for 600-800 bucks it will be quite nice.

 

The 4-core will go against Intel's better i3s and i5s and actually a change of beating them unlike Bulldozer.

 

So in the end Intel remains on the high-end of both enthusiast 6-10 cores and mainstream 4-cores while AMD will probably position right in the sweetspot of of mainstream 4-cores and entry level enthusiast, no longer in the low-end Pentium to i3 range.

 

There wasn't a change of AMD beating Intel to begin with. Even if they matched the architecture, Intel still has the better node, period.

 

All in all I think this will be good for consumers.

[Dackzy]

@Prysin I know you only care about zen 2.0, but i am going to tag you anyways  

[patrickjp93]

24 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

No, AMD will still have an inferior architecture, Intel has been in the lead for too long and plows much MUCH more money into R&D; AMD hasn't had a superior product since 2006. Zen looks to be around Broadwell/Haswell levels, which is still very commendable considering their R&D.

Hmm, according to the poster. I'm going to hold my breath until AMD releases Zen, though I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Contrary to popular belief, Intel does not spend much more money than AMD or Nvidia developing a new CPU architecture. Intel just develops a crap ton more things than AMD and Nvidia, and their primary R&D expense is investments in ASML (the company that makes wafer scanners) and purchase of machinery every year.

[226477_1454181668]

50 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Called it! 4GHz 8-cores in a 95W TDP with Intel-like performance per clock was laughable from the word go.

But its not all about clock-speed, you no evidence to back up any claim about performance or power usage. 

[Morgan MLGman]

49 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Called it! 4GHz 8-cores in a 95W TDP with Intel-like performance per clock was laughable from the word go.

What people did not understand is why AMD downclocked their 6900K to compare IPC with their ES and I said exactly that: AMD couldn't get their CPU to 6900K clock speeds while staying within the rated TDP, or not even at all.

 

2 minutes ago, 226477_1454181668 said:

But its not all about clock-speed, you no evidence to back up any claim about performance or power usage. 

Clock speeds do matter when we're talking about TDP. Clock speeds + the amount of cores + the architecture = rated TDP when measured temps+power consumption

[imreloadin]

At least AMD purists will finally be able to get off the god-awful Bulldozer platform...

[patrickjp93]

11 minutes ago, 226477_1454181668 said:

But its not all about clock-speed, you no evidence to back up any claim about performance or power usage. 

I have plenty. The AOTS Zen Benchmarks from Dresdenboy show Zen is well behind a 5960X at the same clocks. For power usage, you seriously expect AMD to beat Intel at this? SERIOUSLY?! Intel just got done beating ARM at this game in datacenter with Avoton and Xeon D. Qualcomm has officially given up, and Cavium is still reeling from losing Google's contract to Intel's Xeon D.

[Crafting]

1 hour ago, HKZeroFive said:

Here's our weekly tidbit of AMD Zen news...

 

Now, it's no surprise that AMD has been rather hush-hush when it came to clockspeeds for Zen... In fact, many people thought they had something to hide when they downclocked the i7 6900K to 3.0GHz to match their Zen ES' clocks for that Blender benchmark. People remained skeptical... and let's be honest, who wouldn't be?

 

 

I don't know about you guys, but I've wanted to wait to upgrade my pc until AMD Zen comes out. But I don't know if i should just try to get the current Intel when it goes cheaper sometimes (maybe even Black Friday) instead of waiting for Zen. What about you? What do you guys think?

 

-Crafting

[Citadelen]

27 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

-snip-

 

Hmm, I didn't know that, any exact figures? AMD spends around $250 million a quarter on R&D, and that's spread out among but not limited to K12, Zen, Zen +, Vega and Navi. I may be wrong but that is a lot of projects to work on with such a small amount of money. Intel spends around $3 billion in comparison.

[AlTech]

9 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

I have plenty. The AOTS Zen Benchmarks from Dresdenboy show Zen is well behind a 5960X at the same clocks. For power usage, you seriously expect AMD to beat Intel at this? SERIOUSLY?! Intel just got done beating ARM at this game in datacenter with Avoton and Xeon D. Qualcomm has officially given up, and Cavium is still reeling from losing Google's contract to Intel's Xeon D.

That's funny cos I heard Google would be glad to be ridden of Intel's Server side CPUs......... I heard they were interested in new ARM CPUs.

[meenmeen1103]

9 minutes ago, Crafting said:

I don't know about you guys, but I've wanted to wait to upgrade my pc until AMD Zen comes out. But I don't know if i should just try to get the current Intel when it goes cheaper sometimes (maybe even Black Friday) instead of waiting for Zen. What about you? What do you guys think?

 

-Crafting

If you really want/need an upgrade, but are patient enough to be budget minded, I think there's a chance for pricing to change a bit once the new products release, but could be about the same as what could be had in upcoming sales before the end of the year. I don't feel an urgent need to upgrade so I'm more interested to see how things settle first half of next year. If anyone is already dissatisfied with their PC performance, I'd say there's no need to wait.

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, Citadelen said:

Hmm, I didn't know that, any exact figures? AMD spends around $250 million a quarter on R&D, and that's spread out among but not limited to K12, Zen, Zen +, Vega and Navi. I may be wrong but that is a lot of projects to work on with such a small amount of money. Intel spends around $3 billion in comparison.

1.2 billion of that is ASML investments and scanner purchases every year.

 

On top of the mainstream architecture (Kaby Lake, Zen) Intel researches a low-power architecture (Airmont, Puma), a GPU architecture (Gen 10, GCN 4), a many-integrated-core (Knight's series), Ethernet controllers (currently working on the 400GbE standard), WiFi cards, Infiniband (copper and optical), Omnipath (optical), Omniscale (heterogeneous motherboard fabric just like OpenCAPI), analog modems (Intel has some in the iPhone 7), FPGAs (Altera's research budget is included in this now), DRAM (Crystalwell had to be researched), Flash (750 SSDs and more), Hybrid Memory Cube, MCDRAM, 3DXPoint, and then niche products like Quark, Curie, etc.. And then there's all the software research (the Intel Parallel Studio toolchain including compiler, MPI runtime, OpenMP runtime, CilkPlus runtime, Thread Building Blocks Runtime, OpenCL Runtime, OpenACC runtime, VTune, and much more) which extends into AI (Edison), visual tracking/recognition (Realsense), wearables (Intel fashion week), and a crap ton more that AMD just does not do.

 

You cannot directly compare their research budgets. Intel's scope of products and offerings is just enormous by comparison.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, HKZeroFive said:

 

And here's a table that displays their base/boost clocks and shows how they stack up against Intel's current and past architectures (courtesy of /u/DSShadowRaven on Reddit):

Processor	Architecture	Core Count / Thread Count	Base Clock	Boost Clock / Single Core Boost
Intel Core i7-2700K	Sandy Bridge	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-3770K	Ivy Bridge	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-4770K	Haswell	4C/8T	3.5GHz	3.9GHz
Intel Core i7-5960X	Haswell-E	8C/16T	3.0GHz	3.5GHz
Intel Core i7-6700K	Skylake	4C/8T	4.0GHz	4.2GHz
Intel Core i7-6900K	Broadwell-E	8C/16T	3.2GHz	3.7GHz/4.0GHz
Zen 4 Core	Zen	4C/8T	2.9GHz	3.1GHz/3.4GHz
Zen 8 Core	Zen	8C/16T	3.15GHz	3.3GHz/3.6GHz

 

In the absence of further information, it makes sense to compare the 8-core with the 5960X (the one they should aim for if "Haswell/Broadwell performance" is true) and the 6900K (intel's latest equivalent). However, there is no relevant intel comparison there for the quad-core, as it is said to be a 65W chip, which puts as in non-K territory for Skylake, and S territory for Haswell. Hence, the relevant chips would be the i7-6700 and the i7-4770S or i7-4790S.

Of course, the truly relevant match-up can only be done once we have prices.

[Citadelen]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

-snip-

 

Okayyyy that's a lot. I tried though.  

[patrickjp93]

9 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

That's funny cos I heard Google would be glad to be ridden of Intel's Server side CPUs......... I heard they were interested in new ARM CPUs.

All Google did was make its own code portable to put Intel on notice that it can't use that as leverage in pricing. Google created its own tensor processor for AI acceleration too to be less dependent on outside solutions. Google has an interest in performance and efficiency and cares not for who provides it. Cavium's 48-core ThunderX at 2.7GHz lost to Intel's 16-Core Xeon D at 1.4 GHz, by a huge margin. Anandtech has the comparison if you care to read it.

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, Citadelen said:

Okayyyy that's a lot. I tried though.  

I mean really, did you think Intel got all that money just from server CPUs? Every time you buy Cat5 or Cat6 Ethernet, Intel gets a cut.

[Crafting]

8 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

If you really want/need an upgrade, but are patient enough to be budget minded, I think there's a chance for pricing to change a bit once the new products release, but could be about the same as what could be had in upcoming sales before the end of the year. I don't feel an urgent need to upgrade so I'm more interested to see how things settle first half of next year. If anyone is already dissatisfied with their PC performance, I'd say there's no need to wait.

I see you have a FX processor just like me, what are your thoughts of your rig and the future of it?

 

-Crafting

[AlTech]

2 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

     All Google did was make its own code portable to put Intel on notice that it can't use that as leverage in pricing. Google created its own tensor processor for AI acceleration too to be less dependent on outside solutions. Google has an interest in performance and efficiency and cares not for who provides it. Cavium's 48-core ThunderX at 2.7GHz lost to Intel's 16-Core Xeon D at 1.4 GHz, by a huge margin. Anandtech has the comparison if you care to read it.

If only Apple made a 16 core scaled up A10 . Would Google then use Apple?

 

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

I mean really, did you think Intel got all that money just from server CPUs? Every time you buy Cat5 or Cat6 Ethernet, Intel gets a cut.

So that's why they're so damn expensive .

[Citadelen]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

-snip-

 

Nah, I've been through Intel's quarterly financials. I just couldn't recall the sheer amount of products they develop and sell.