AMD's 'RYZEN' Detailed - Octacore, 3.4GHz + & Dynamic Overclocking

[HKZeroFive]

So when I first saw this on Reddit, I thought, 'How are you supposed to pronounce that? Is it "Rye-zen" or is it "Ri-zen"?'. It's a rather weird name choice in my honest opinion but it could've been far, far worse. And yes AMD, I saw what you did there.

 

With that out of the way, it's another week so that automatically means more AMD Zen news whether you like it or not. This time, AMD has highlighted a few vital pieces of information about their octacore CPU that I'll outline in this thread. It'll be a similar format to the Crimson ReLive one I did the other day which seemed to well-received. Hope this one helps you guys as well.

 

 

OCTACORE - 8 CORES, 16 THREADS

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's been long known that AMD is preparing to tackle Intel's enthusiast lineup, specifically the i7 5960X/6900K. IPC gains were previously shown off in a not-so trustworthy Blender benchmark but it's clear that it's a good gain from their previous products. How it stacks up to the Blue Team... well, that remains to be seen in reputable and neutral benchmarks.

 

3.4GHz+

Okay, so here's where it starts to get iffy. Is 3.4GHz is the base clock or the boost clock? If it's the former, obviously it would be better and put it above the i7 6900K I believe when it comes to clockspeeds. That '+' sign just throws everyone off.

 

 

SMART PREFETCH

Sounds like Intel's 'Smart Cache' does it not? It does emphasise elements of 'learning' which remain somewhat ambiguous.

 

20MB COMBINED L2+L3 CACHE

Practically the same as the i7 5960X and i7 6900K IIRC.

 

 

XFR - EXTENDED FREQUENCY RANGE

Something new. It seems to work similarly to NVIDIA's GPU Boost in the sense that it will see any temperature overhead and automatically 'boost' or overclock the CPU in accordance with that. It's not quite the same as Intel's Turbo Boost although it's similar. It's a cool feature although irrelevant for enthusiasts or gamers who want to overclock their Zen CPUs themselves.

 

 

PURE POWER & PRECISION BOOST

From what I'm getting, this seems to be some sort of overclocking software? 'Pure Power' seems to target the lowest amount of voltage for a certain level of performance. It seems the 'Distributed Embedded Sensors" monitor temps, voltage and frequency and send that info to what AMD calls "Infinity Control Fabric". 'Precision Boost' on the other hand seems to maintain the highest possible frequencies at a given voltage.

 

THOUGHTS

AMD's 'RYZEN' seems promising but it's honestly just trying to pick at the meat on the bones at this point. Fingers crossed for something to come out of the Q&A with the journos tomorrow but don't expect much to be coming out of the event itself. Launch dates, clockspeeds and most importantly, prices, remain to be seen. Ugh.

 

And remember... keep your expectations reasonable and don't get hyped. I'd hate to see people get disappointed that Zen didn't live up to their high expectations (although I might find some entertainment in that).

 

Source: http://videocardz.com/64741/ryzen

[DocSwag]

Hmm... Seems pretty good. Not much that I wasn't expecting, though. I'll wait for tomorrow for some official info  

[ivan134]

So what you're saying is this will beat Skylake X for $200? Nice

[Guest lilbman]

I'd imagine that the 3.4 Ghz is the boost clock.

 

For AMD this seems too good to be true, like a mirage.

[MrTiC]

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

So what you're saying is this will beat Skylake X for $200? Nice

Yeah right lel 

[Notional]

7 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

XFR - EXTENDED FREQUENCY RANGE

Sounds like it works quite like NVidia's GPU boost, where it will overclock the chip until it reaches power and/or thermal limits. That's very interesting.

 

Either way, this chip seems damn impressive. Impressive enough to call AMD back in the game. Now price is the discerning factor.

[Energycore]

2 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

So what you're saying is this will beat Skylake X for $200? Nice

Actually it will beat Coffee Lake-Omega for $45 for the 8-core and $20 for the 4-core.

 

Lol on topic, Adaptive Boost for their CPUs is probably going to give us more performance but I'm afraid it will make overclocking very trivial (or it may make it more fun )

 

1 minute ago, lilbman said:

I'd imagine that the 3.4 Ghz is the boost clock.

 

For AMD this seems too good to be true, like a mirage.

3.4Ghz too good to be true? We're talking about a clockspeed that became standard back in 2011 with Sandy Bridge and to a lesser extent Bulldozer. If anything I'm frustrated that we're not hitting higher clocks at all.

 

What would be too good to be true is it beating a 6900K out of the gate. But I bet it comes much closer to that than to an FX-8300 lol

[Masada02]

Seems neat. I've enjoyed their Wattman tool for GPU overclocking so hopefully this stuff for Zen is similar and just as detailed.

[ivan134]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Actually it will beat Coffee Lake-Omega for $45 for the 8-core and $20 for the 4-core.

 

Lol on topic, Adaptive Boost for their CPUs is probably going to give us more performance but I'm afraid it will make overclocking very trivial (or it may make it more fun )

 

3.4Ghz too good to be true? We're talking about a clockspeed that became standard back in 2011 with Sandy Bridge and to a lesser extent Bulldozer. If anything I'm frustrated that we're not hitting higher clocks at all.

 

What would be too good to be true is it beating a 6900K out of the gate. But I bet it comes much closer to that than to an FX-8300 lol

This just keeps getting better and better.

[Notional]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

3.4Ghz too good to be true? We're talking about a clockspeed that became standard back in 2011 with Sandy Bridge and to a lesser extent Bulldozer. If anything I'm frustrated that we're not hitting higher clocks at all.

 

Intel Broadwell-E 8 core 6900K is 3.2ghz base though. You will always get lower clicks when you have more cores.

[Energycore]

Just now, Notional said:

Intel Broadwell-E 8 core 6900K is 3.2ghz base though. You will always get lower clicks when you have more cores.

You're right, to an extent. Given the same TDP, more cores mean lower clocks. I'm wondering though, why Broadwell-E can't hit clocks as high as Haswell-E, even given the same core count. That seems backwards.

 

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

This just keeps getting better and better.

I know right? By the time of release it will beat the best Intel from 2020 and AMD will pay you for getting one. And it will overclock to 6GHz on a Hyper 212 EVO.

[ARikozuM]

"Rye-Zen"? Either I'm really craving a reuben right now or I want to play Metal Gear Rising... Probably both.

[BuckGup]

5 minutes ago, Notional said:

Intel Broadwell-E 8 core 6900K is 3.2ghz base though. You will always get lower clicks when you have more cores.

But but but 9590 IS 8 CORES 5GHZ

[Energycore]

Just now, huilun02 said:

Why compare frequency when we don't know the IPC? Hope its good though. Waiting to see the SKU for Zen 4core with HT. 

I would think that smaller transistors would switch faster, perhaps it's because FinFet / Trigate introduces an obstacle to that, but for instance GPU clocks have been steadily creeping up and CPUs haven't. Maybe it's something about the cache not keeping up?

[Guest]

 

Sorry, but I had to.

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Why compare frequency when we don't know the IPC? Hope its good though. Waiting to see the SKU for Zen 4core with HT. 

IPC between Broadwell-E and Zen is set to be roughly the same, with Zen being able to edge out Broadwell-E slightly.

Comparing frequencies, with what we have now, is the best we've got.

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I would think that smaller transistors would switch faster, perhaps it's because FinFet / Trigate introduces an obstacle to that, but for instance GPU clocks have been steadily creeping up and CPUs haven't. Maybe it's something about the cache not keeping up?

Perhaps they are trying to get temps lower by being more efficient but as a drawback they can't flood the CPU with enough voltage to be worth a damn.

[Drak3]

15 minutes ago, lilbman said:

I'd imagine that the 3.4 Ghz is the boost clock.

 

For AMD this seems too good to be true, like a mirage.

It's very likely that 3.4GHz is the base clock. Hard to market 3.4GHz+ as the only number on clockspeed if the base was 3.34GHz or less.

[Energycore]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Perhaps they are trying to get temps lower by being more efficient but as a drawback they can't flood the CPU with enough voltage to be worth a damn.

I suppose temps are a problem as heat loads become more dense. Huh.

 

I wouldn't know, I'm not an engineer

 

Ask me about Markov chains though and I'll mostly have you covered

[MageTank]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

IPC between Broadwell-E and Zen is set to be roughly the same, with Zen being able to edge out Broadwell-E slightly.

Comparing frequencies, with what we have now, is the best we've got.

Where are you getting that information? Last I checked, the rumors were aiming at Haswell IPC. I know there was that one cinebench run, with both clocked at 3ghz, but we didn't know anything about the settings used, or the testing methodology to actually confirm Broadwell-E IPC. Still, Haswell IPC with 8c/16t for less than $1000? That's enough to compel enthusiasts to give it a shot. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

"Rye-Zen"? Either I'm really craving a reuben right now or I want to play Metal Gear Rising... Probably both.

Are you saying AMD name their product after... a food?

[Dietrichw]

I'm  more interested in the rumored cheaper 3.2 Ghz version. $500 vs $350. I'd rather give up 200 Mhz and some cache and save $150

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Where are you getting that information? Last I checked, the rumors were aiming at Haswell IPC. I know there was that one cinebench run, with both clocked at 3ghz, but we didn't know anything about the settings used, or the testing methodology to actually confirm Broadwell-E IPC. Still, Haswell IPC with 8c/16t for less than $1000? That's enough to compel enthusiasts to give it a shot. 

They claimed they achieved slightly better than 40% over Excavator which puts Zen between Haswell and Skylake.

[Guest lilbman]

21 minutes ago, Energycore said:

3.4Ghz too good to be true? We're talking about a clockspeed that became standard back in 2011 with Sandy Bridge and to a lesser extent Bulldozer. If anything I'm frustrated that we're not hitting higher clocks at all.

 

What would be too good to be true is it beating a 6900K out of the gate. But I bet it comes much closer to that than to an FX-8300 lol

I meant for an AMD 8 core.

 

If this beats a 6900K out of the gate Intel will shit itself

[Energycore]

7 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Where are you getting that information? Last I checked, the rumors were aiming at Haswell IPC. I know there was that one cinebench run, with both clocked at 3ghz, but we didn't know anything about the settings used, or the testing methodology to actually confirm Broadwell-E IPC. Still, Haswell IPC with 8c/16t for less than $1000? That's enough to compel enthusiasts to give it a shot. 

Blender not Cinebench.

 

Code in Blender is very optimizable that's why we're all suspicious of that benchmark.