apu "Raven Ridge" APU more details leaked

[themctipers]

Just now, Dackzy said:

That basically comes down to what you do. I would happily pay the premium to get a laptop I know that is going to be able to go to hell and back. Mainly because I move it around a lot and I need a very reliable laptop.

am all about the price / performance, the cooling is decent on the consumer laptop i have, i cant speak about the quality but i guess it feels nice to touch? 

70c under load isn't bad, 45 idle isn't either, too bad the fan is stupidly loud for that rare case that im not listening to music.

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

am all about the price / performance, the cooling is decent on the consumer laptop i have, i cant speak about the quality but i guess it feels nice to touch? 

70c under load isn't bad, 45 idle isn't either, too bad the fan is stupidly loud for that rare case that im not listening to music.

Yeah when it comes to laptops then I don't care much about price/performance. For me it is reliability over everything else.

[themctipers]

Just now, Dackzy said:

Yeah when it comes to laptops then I don't care much about price/performance. For me it is reliability over everything else.

i do because i have a really small budget and i want something that isn't a potato at 768p

 

at a income of $0/yr..  totally wouldn't care about price/performance if i had any income. ^{am kid, 13}

[Dabombinable]

42 minutes ago, Prysin said:

nop. Heat density of VEGA will mean that it wont be a great performer outside of higher end models. Lower end Ultrabooks will have too weak cooling. Throttling/low base clocks will plague this generation for a while.

 

Same reason why we aint seeing "Full 1080" gaming laptops taking off. Just not enough cooling for the 14/16nm density.

 

AMD GPUs, and APUs uses ultra dense "GPU style" liberaries to improve performance (innovation first seen in Carrizo). This provides an improvemen in GPU and APU workloads, but hamper CPU clocks due to the high heat density within the die. It is part of the reason we havent seen Bristol Ridge hit desktop until now. Simply put, they needed a new power efficient node just to make their 28nm design work. Now we are talking an even bigger GPU, which is shown to be just as power hungry as teh Hawaii and Tonga based Kaveri/Carrizo based APUs.

 

We need to wait until Raven Ridges successor/perhaps desktop Raven Ridge, to see full potential. Even high end laptops is going to strongly favor a "dGPU" solution over unleashing the full APU power. dGPU will cost the same cooling wise (bigger heatpipes, more fans etc), but will deliver far more performance.

 

 

It will still be faster than what we've seen previously in APU......

[Dackzy]

3 minutes ago, themctipers said:

i do because i have a really small budget and i want something that isn't a potato at 768p

 

at a income of $0/yr..  totally wouldn't care about price/performance if i had any income. ^{am kid, 13}

Well my income isn't great either, but because I need to "up" all time I basically can't afford to get a not so reliable laptop and with what I do I need to also have one that can take a beating.

 

I think we might see a top end APU in a HP business laptop, since they seem to like APUs a lot.

[themctipers]

Just now, Dackzy said:

Well my income isn't great either, but because I need to "up" all time I basically can't afford to get a not so reliable laptop and with what I do I need to also have one that can take a beating.

 

I think we might see a top end APU in a HP business laptop, since they seem to like APUs a lot.

the device i abuse the most is my phone, the most fragile thing in my posesion

and then my mouse

and then my keyboard

a long list later, then my laptop.

ive spilled more water on my motherboard than on my laptop  

[Dackzy]

Just now, themctipers said:

the device i abuse the most is my phone, the most fragile thing in my posesion

and then my mouse

and then my keyboard

a long list later, then my laptop.

ive spilled more water on my motherboard than on my laptop  

Yeah so for you a business laptop wouldn't make much sense.

I have spilled maybe 3L of water on my laptop and dropped it from 1m all the way up to like 7-8m and it is still working.  Though the CPU is starting to slow down, but it is also 6 years old now.

[themctipers]

Just now, Dackzy said:

Yeah so for you a business laptop wouldn't make much sense.

I have spilled maybe 3L of water on my laptop and dropped it from 1m all the way up to like 7-8m and it is still working.  Though the CPU is starting to slow down, but it is also 6 years old now.

i only considered it because i know i would have to make it last for a long time (~6-8 years?) and maybe business laptops have better price/performance (god no lol)

but with a small budget, god no. not worth at all

you'll get a A6 APU with a 768p TN screen for $200 more 

[Dackzy]

9 minutes ago, themctipers said:

i only considered it because i know i would have to make it last for a long time (~6-8 years?) and maybe business laptops have better price/performance (god no lol)

but with a small budget, god no. not worth at all

you'll get a A6 APU with a 768p TN screen for $200 more 

Well they last longer and you can often find them dirt cheap used. I picked up my t420s when it was a year old for 600$ and new price were 2500$

[themctipers]

Just now, Dackzy said:

Well they last longer and you can often find them dirt cheap used. I picked up my t420s when it was a year old for 600$ and new price were 2500$

buying used is not an option 

my budget of $900 goes down to $650 basically, import and shipping

and at that, you'll get maybe a third gen thinkpad, eh not really worth it to me, as i want a 'ultrabook'

 

before i got my laptop, i really thought that a m3 or a u series would be like really bad, well it is, but not as bad as i thought

look, i can stream 1080p youtube.

[Coaxialgamer]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

nop. Heat density of VEGA will mean that it wont be a great performer outside of higher end models. Lower end Ultrabooks will have too weak cooling. Throttling/low base clocks will plague this generation for a while.

 

Same reason why we aint seeing "Full 1080" gaming laptops taking off. Just not enough cooling for the 14/16nm density.

 

AMD GPUs, and APUs uses ultra dense "GPU style" liberaries to improve performance (innovation first seen in Carrizo). This provides an improvemen in GPU and APU workloads, but hamper CPU clocks due to the high heat density within the die. It is part of the reason we havent seen Bristol Ridge hit desktop until now. Simply put, they needed a new power efficient node just to make their 28nm design work. Now we are talking an even bigger GPU, which is shown to be just as power hungry as teh Hawaii and Tonga based Kaveri/Carrizo based APUs.

 

We need to wait until Raven Ridges successor/perhaps desktop Raven Ridge, to see full potential. Even high end laptops is going to strongly favor a "dGPU" solution over unleashing the full APU power. dGPU will cost the same cooling wise (bigger heatpipes, more fans etc), but will deliver far more performance.

 

 

Well, looking at the desktop card, it's pretty clear that vega was pushed out of it's optimal efficiency range to achieve performance parity with the 1080 ( turbo, 1700mhz vega perf is 10% better for 200w extra) 

So by lowering the clocks and voltage to more reasonable levels ( say 1200-1300mhz), it's quite possible power would go WAY down. 

 

Also, ryzen also uses those high density libraries. It's what enables it to pack 5 billion transistors in less than 200mm²

[Prysin]

49 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

It will still be faster than what we've seen previously in APU......

Well, sure. But who cares if it isn't competitive? Steamroller and excavator are quite efficient at low power. Quad core/2 mod products could keep up with ulv i5s, despite massive ipc advantages of skylake. So if ryzen cpu section cannot be drastically faster at equivalent wattage then does it matter? 

 

Yes Ryzen and VEGA have power saving features on a pipeline section level. But that technology stems from bristol Ridge and the excavator architecture. 

[Prysin]

8 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Well, looking at the desktop card, it's pretty clear that vega was pushed out of it's optimal efficiency range to achieve performance parity with the 1080 ( turbo, 1700mhz vega perf is 10% better for 200w extra) 

So by lowering the clocks and voltage to more reasonable levels ( say 1200-1300mhz), it's quite possible power would go WAY down. 

 

Also, ryzen also uses those high density libraries. It's what enables it to pack 5 billion transistors in less than 200mm²

Vega has almost all its architectural features disabled. HBCC, primitive shaders, hbm2 features are disabled. Reviews showing tests of these features are full of shit. Ian Cutress and professional overclockers started  to discover this a couple of days ago. 

 

It's disabled on the driver level. Vega can potentially drop its power draw and increase its performance quite a bit. Time will tell. 

 

And yes. Ryzen as a whole is built on the high density library method. But Ryzen does not have a igpu with 50w-70w glued on the side 

[Guest]

APU technology finally coming into a position where it can hold its own. I am excited for this. 

[Doobeedoo]

These will be quite interesting and a big jump from old gen. Zen+Vega APUs in laptops will awesome and for desktop very good entry really for whatever. 

[MageTank]

11 hours ago, sazrocks said:

Infinity fabric as a CPU-GPU interconnect sounds interesting. Speaking of that, how does an intel CPU communicate with its iGPU? Also make sure to include quotes so this thread doesn't get moved/locked.

All of that is done over the QPI or "QuickPath Interconnect". It allows your CPU to communicate with the uncore subsystem, which includes your IMC, CPU PCIe lanes, and iGPU. 

 

As far as bandwidth goes, QPI is worlds slower than even AMD's older HyperTransport 3.1 (from 2008). QPI's max bandwidth is 38.4GB/s, while HT3.1 had a bandwidth of 51.2GB/s (roughly a 33% difference). To put this into perspective, Ryzen's InfinityFabric at 2666 has a peak theoretical bandwidth of 341.2GB/s using 2666mhz ram at a 512bit width. If they improve upon the IMC to allow for DDR4's 4266 spec to be achieved, then Infinity Fabric's max theoretical bandwidth is 512GB/s. 

 

NVLink 2.0 is "only" 150GB/s, and NVLink 1.0 was 80GB/s. If AMD is good for anything, it's making extremely fast interconnects. They've always been ahead in this regard. 

 

EDIT: I should also clarify that QPI is mostly used on Xeons. A lot of your desktop platforms handle iGPU transactions on the PCH (Platform Controller Hub). It speaks directly to your FDI (Flexible Display Interface). It's current interconnect bandwidth is 2.7G/bits per second, or 0.33GB/s. Sorry for not stating this earlier, mind was in another place. 

[The Benjamins]

4 minutes ago, MageTank said:

All of that is done over the QPI or "QuickPath Interconnect". It allows your CPU to communicate with the uncore subsystem, which includes your IMC, CPU PCIe lanes, and iGPU. 

 

As far as bandwidth goes, QPI is worlds slower than even AMD's older HyperTransport 3.1 (from 2008). QPI's max bandwidth is 38.4GB/s, while HT3.1 had a bandwidth of 51.2GB/s (roughly a 33% difference). To put this into perspective, Ryzen's InfinityFabric at 2666 has a peak theoretical bandwidth of 341.2GB/s using 2666mhz ram at a 512bit width. If they improve upon the IMC to allow for DDR4's 4266 spec to be achieved, then Infinity Fabric's max theoretical bandwidth is 512GB/s. 

 

NVLink 2.0 is "only" 150GB/s, and NVLink 1.0 was 80GB/s. If AMD is good for anything, it's making extremely fast interconnects. They've always been ahead in this regard. 

just wanting to know, were did you get the info about Ryzen's IF speed?

[MageTank]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

just wanting to know, were did you get the info about Ryzen's IF speed?

Through math. 512 bit x 2 x (ram frequency) = bandwidth. 512 x 2 x 2666 =2,729Tbits speed in bits. Divide bits by 8 to get bytes, which is 2729 / 8 = 341GB/s. If you are wondering where we get the bit width from, AMD provided that information, though they were very vague in doing so. We still have no confirmation if it's 512 aggregate of both 256 crossbars, or if it's only 256 each way. That would drastically alter the numbers (though in that scenario, it would still be 5x faster than QPI at it's peak). 

 

My point is, you don't need to worry about interconnect bandwidth when it comes to AMD. Worry more about IMC on CPU's, and lack of ROPs on GPU's, lol. 

[HalGameGuru]

[The Benjamins]

15 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Through math. 512 bit x 2 x (ram frequency) = bandwidth. 512 x 2 x 2666 =2,729Tbits speed in bits. Divide bits by 8 to get bytes, which is 2729 / 8 = 341GB/s. If you are wondering where we get the bit width from, AMD provided that information, though they were very vague in doing so. We still have no confirmation if it's 512 aggregate of both 256 crossbars, or if it's only 256 each way. That would drastically alter the numbers (though in that scenario, it would still be 5x faster than QPI at it's peak). 

 

My point is, you don't need to worry about interconnect bandwidth when it comes to AMD. Worry more about IMC on CPU's, and lack of ROPs on GPU's, lol. 

and 512 is the combined width of DDR4?

 

I like how the BIOS updated made ram compatibility better on ryzen. I got a asrock board and a 1600 and it just work at 2933 out of the box with out doing anything.

 

PC is not for me so I didn't mess with it since 2933 is good enough.

[Phate.exe]

8 hours ago, Dackzy said:

Well yeah,  but they are also build world's better.

My Lenovo T440s at work disagrees with this.  My aging Zenbook is built WAY better.  I will give the Lenovo credit for being thick enough to have actual ports on it.

 

I swapped out a battery (unnecessarily) after I killed the charging circuit in my zenbook, so I've got two packs sitting around for this.  I've been bouncing around the idea of making a new bottom plate and stuffing both packs into this thing just to see how much bulkier it would be (still thinner than the T440s), and what the battery life would be like.

 

Aside from bitching about my work machine, I'm interested in what a higher-TDP raven ridge sku would be like.  Could make for some really amazing small form factor console-replacement builds.

[Dackzy]

2 minutes ago, Phate.exe said:

My Lenovo T440s at work disagrees with this.  My aging Zenbook is built WAY better.  I will give the Lenovo credit for being thick enough to have actual ports on it.

 

I swapped out a battery (unnecessarily) after I killed the charging circuit in my zenbook, so I've got two packs sitting around for this.  I've been bouncing around the idea of making a new bottom plate and stuffing both packs into this thing just to see how much bulkier it would be (still thinner than the T440s), and what the battery life would be like.

 

Aside from bitching about my work machine, I'm interested in what a higher-TDP raven ridge sku would be like.  Could make for some really amazing small form factor console-replacement builds.

The 4th gen was not a good year for ThinkPads, quite a few models had some problems.

Also the feel of your laptop means jackshit, you can just go back to the old business models, in general a lot were made with a plastic shell, that feel/felt kinda bad, but god damn they can take a beating, way more than a MacBook or a ZenBook.

[Phate.exe]

Just now, Dackzy said:

The 4th gen was not a good year for ThinkPads, quite a few models had some problems.

Also the feel of your laptop means jackshit, you can just go back to the old business models, in general a lot were made with a plastic shell, that feel/felt kinda bad, but god damn they can take a beating, way more than a MacBook or a ZenBook.

My zenbook gets kicked around way more than the T-series machines at work.  Seriously the T-series thin and lights are not that stout at all.  They certainly hold up better than your typical Dell/HP back-to-school laptops, but pretty much any metal-chassis consumer laptop will hold up better.

 

My company provides 2015 MBP Retina's running windows, specifically because they hold up so much better.  I'm a contractor, so when I'm on-site I'm not allowed to use the MBP.

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, Phate.exe said:

My zenbook gets kicked around way more than the T-series machines at work.  Seriously the T-series thin and lights are not that stout at all.  They certainly hold up better than your typical Dell/HP back-to-school laptops, but pretty much any metal-chassis consumer laptop will hold up better.

 

My company provides 2015 MBP Retina's running windows, specifically because they hold up so much better.  I'm a contractor, so when I'm on-site I'm not allowed to use the MBP.

No not at all, your metal one might look better, but the T series transfer way less to the internals and you can spill drinks on them without having any big problems. 

I have been working for many different companies and I can tell you right now their MBP and zenbooks last maybe 1½ years before they are beating so badly up that something breaks and basically kill them, while many still had 3rd gen business laptops running strong. I mainly set up gear mostly audio for businesses and I talk to a lot of the engineers and field workers in the given business and basically all have had a MBP or ZenBook at some point, while also have had T, W and P series from ThinkPad plus Precision laptops and none of them are willing to go back to a MBP or a ZenBook. (Denmark is mainly ThinkPad when it comes to business laptops)

 

The only people I have seen not killing MBP and ZenBooks fairly fast are the office people.

[Phate.exe]

2 hours ago, Dackzy said:

No not at all, your metal one might look better, but the T series transfer way less to the internals and you can spill drinks on them without having any big problems. 

I have been working for many different companies and I can tell you right now their MBP and zenbooks last maybe 1½ years before they are beating so badly up that something breaks and basically kill them, while many still had 3rd gen business laptops running strong. I mainly set up gear mostly audio for businesses and I talk to a lot of the engineers and field workers in the given business and basically all have had a MBP or ZenBook at some point, while also have had T, W and P series from ThinkPad plus Precision laptops and none of them are willing to go back to a MBP or a ZenBook. (Denmark is mainly ThinkPad when it comes to business laptops)

 

The only people I have seen not killing MBP and ZenBooks fairly fast are the office people.

 

You're talking to me like I don't literally carry all three of these things around every single day dude.

 

My Zenbook (UX31E-DH52, so fairly ancient running a sandybridge i5) was originally purchased to be a leisure machine, but once my old dell crapped out it now gets thrown in and out of cars to use for tuning and datalogging, it kicks around the garage for checking shop manuals, it gets used heavily in the kitchen, in and out of backpacks whenever I travel, etc.  Basically anything I'd ever need to do with a computer that doesn't require lots of power.  Aside from me killing the charge controller by plugging a USB cable with a floating ground into it (there was a spark), it's been perfect for the 3 years I've had the thing (and I bought it used).

 

Also, BS on macbooks only lasting a year and a half.

 

I'm telling you, the T400's are NOT an especially stout computer at all, and the pile of broken ones in my department (screen damage, glitchy keyboards and trackpads, failing fans, dead ports, etc) would agree with me.  Aside from getting dragged into cleanrooms and wiped down with isopropyl alcohol, they basically have the life of a normal office PC, if not easier.  Maybe the fact 95% of my interaction with thinkpads is with 4th gen's is coloring my judgement, and the newer ones are better, but between these and the X1 Carbons that like to destroy the display cable during normal use I don't see how they're so great.  Oh, and they're a pain to take apart for repairs.