Welcome Back AMD

[Pixelated Tech]

Welcome back AMD. Oh how we've missed you

 

[phaZed]

We'll see... lots of slides and "information releases" - yet not much hands on testing yet. I've noticed there is practically nothing about single-core processing, just multi threaded stuff. Most games are single-core threads. How about pricing? All I gather is that the ZEN processor will "Compete on price and performance" as compared to current Skylake processors. That sounds suspiciously like "We will have the same price and performance" - or not. Perhaps a few bucks cheaper for a few clocks slower. We'll see.

AMD has to get this right or they are gone for good IMO. Not only does the hardware have to be virtually flaw-free but the software and drivers have to work too (Both of which seem to be AMD weak-points). When I say "flaw-free" I am speaking of performance. No more L3 cache issues, no more microcode updates that decrease performance 10%. No more stupid random BSODS like Bulldozer had or even current AMD processors have. Drivers. Drivers suck. I constantly have issues with Catalyst - or uninstalling/reinstalling it. Had an R9 X390 in about a week ago and if you use the newest drivers performance would drop to 20-40fps - driver pack 2 versions prior, 120-300fps. But can you 'just install' an old version? No, of course not. I have to use a third party tool, DDU. A real friggin PITA to troubleshoot.

AMD has a LOT to get right. Their equipment partners could sink AMD too (MOBO manufacturers) if they get something wrong... like take 8 months to get working drivers/BIOS/Microcode that don't crash.

If they fail at this, it very well may be "Goodbye AMD!".

 

[Digital Micro]

We'll see... lots of slides and "information releases" - yet not much hands on testing yet. I've noticed there is practically nothing about single-core processing, just multi threaded stuff. Most games are single-core threads. How about pricing? All I gather is that the ZEN processor will "Compete on price and performance" as compared to current Skylake processors. That sounds suspiciously like "We will have the same price and performance" - or not. Perhaps a few bucks cheaper for a few clocks slower. We'll see.

AMD has to get this right or they are gone for good IMO. Not only does the hardware have to be virtually flaw-free but the software and drivers have to work too (Both of which seem to be AMD weak-points). When I say "flaw-free" I am speaking of performance. No more L3 cache issues, no more microcode updates that decrease performance 10%. No more stupid random BSODS like Bulldozer had or even current AMD processors have. Drivers. Drivers suck. I constantly have issues with Catalyst - or uninstalling/reinstalling it. Had an R9 X390 in about a week ago and if you use the newest drivers performance would drop to 20-40fps - driver pack 2 versions prior, 120-300fps. But can you 'just install' an old version? No, of course not. I have to use a third party tool, DDU. A real friggin PITA to troubleshoot.

AMD has a LOT to get right. Their equipment partners could sink AMD too (MOBO manufacturers) if they get something wrong... like take 8 months to get working drivers/BIOS/Microcode that don't crash.

If they fail at this, it very well may be "Goodbye AMD!".

I wouldn't call them gone for good. Maybe in the high end segment. They still have the game console market for now. Also we all know OEMs love cheap computers.

I do hope they pull this off. I would like to see them bounce back and compete more with Intel. Although I think they need to look at more than just the cpu like Intel has in the modern area.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I wonder how they'll do. The only AMD rigs I liked...where in the mid Althon years, they had a run called the Palomino...AthlonXP I think were the models, around 1900mHz I think. This was when Intel was not going well with their early P4's...pre-hyperthread days.

The big downfall of AMD back then...were the majority of motherboards were all utter crap...19 dollar junk. SiS and Via chipsets on these el super cheapo motherboards were guaranteed blue screeners. The only motherboard chipset I liked was the nForce ones...built quite a few gaming rigs with those back then.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I think AMD will do well. As opposed to others who say they have quite a bit to get right, on my personal systems, and gaming systems I've sold to folks to, all AMD cpus. No complaints. I've been using their graphics chips as well, very little issues. They had issues before, but they've come a long way too. If they can be at Ivy Bridge to Haswell performance for these new cpu's, I think that's a win, especially if they can push those 8 cores at say 225-250, maybe 300 for higher end stuff and be unlocked for overclocks, and then refine it in the next couple of years.

 

[cypress]

I am rooting for AMD, I have always liked them and my personal rig and the ones I have built have always been AMD.

 

[phaZed]

Just to be clear on my previous post... I want AMD to survive as well, however, my views on the issue are based on fact and not feelings.

I wouldn't call them gone for good. Maybe in the high end segment. They still have the game console market for now. Also we all know OEMs love cheap computers.

And yet...

A good read and following quotes: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/26/can-advanced-micro-devices-inc-survive-in-2016.aspx

According to PassMark Software, AMD's market share in x86 chips fell from 48.4% in the first quarter of 2006 to 20.5% at the end of 2015. During that decade, Intel's share rose from 51.6% to nearly 79.4%. As for add-in graphics boards, research firm JPR claims that AMD's share slipped from 28.4% to 18.8% between the third quarters of 2014 and 2015, while Nvidia's share grew from 71.5% to 81.1%.

Due to those market declines and the weakness of the global PC market, AMD's Computing and Graphics revenue, which accounted for nearly half its top line, fell 29% annually to $470 million last quarter. The business posted an operating loss of $99 million, compared to a loss of $56 million a year earlier.

and

Instead of competing more aggressively against Intel and Nvidia, AMD has been counting on its EESC (Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom) unit to offset those losses. That division produces SoCs for gaming consoles, servers, and other embedded devices. Unfortunately, revenue at that unit fell 15% annually to $488 million last quarter, while its operating income plummeted 46% to $59 million. AMD's guidance indicates that growth likely won't bounce back unless console sales accelerate

Last year, Kerrisdale Capital Investment boldly claimed that AMD would go bankrupt by 2020. The firm declared that AMD's dependence on the stagnant PC market, where it has repeatedly been marginalized by Intel and Nvidia, would doom the company.

So yes, to me it the situation seems very dire and even AMD has said that ZEN is going to be the make or break move, denoting that even they have doubts that they can regain market share.

If they can be at Ivy Bridge to Haswell performance for these new cpu's, I think that's a win, especially if they can push those 8 cores at say 225-250, maybe 300 for higher end stuff...

From the AMD tech demo and other sources pontificating on the issue it is fairly clear to see that the Zen is not going to edge out the 6900K (Which they crippled at 3GHz in the demo) but will be more on par with a 6700K(Of which is only 10-13% slower than the 6900K) - if that.

So riddle me this, why would I take a chance on ZEN for $300 when the proven Intel at the same or better speed is already $300? AMD can produce a processor just as good as Intel at the same price.. and still lose. They're not going to win by leading from behind. Time will tell.

 

[sapphirescales]

Custom built AMD desktops are really good for mid range systems. The FX-8320 is faster than the i5-6500 at about 1/2 the price. Granted AMD can't touch Intel when it comes to their highest end chips, but most people aren't looking for the highest end.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I was going more off the price of the 6900K, which I think the extreme edition that they compared against was 1000. The 6700K is on newegg for 349. And of course we don't know how the numbers will shake out. But if I can buy say Ivy Bridge level performance at 225 to 250 a chip, and an AM4 board for same money as I'm paying for just the Intel CPU, that's where my money will be. You say why take a chance. Here's rough performance of an i7 3770K vs an i7 6700K according to CPU Boss.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770K

So lets say my AMD cpu is 250, but is unlocked to overclock with, i7 6700K is 350, unlocked also I'm assuming. I'm saving 100 dollars to be within 10-15% of the performance. Plus I can overclock and may not see much difference. Also, that extra hundred dollars, look at GPU's right now if you are a gamer. The Nvidia GTX 1060 is about 250, performance around the GTX 980 which was a 500 dollar card last year. Or if you are an AMD gpu person, an RX 480 is 200-230. Not much less performance than the 1060. Add a 100 dollar board to the mix of the AMD. If you are building a poor man's gaming system, that 100 bucks saved is going a long way toward getting a better gpu especially at current prices.

The trick is if these cpus are that good, and if in say late 2017-2018 they can start on a tick tock cycle and push performance up say another 10%. If they can do that and out price intel, or be competitive, they may not be the fastest, but if your power consumption is the same, and price/performance is a better bang for the buck, most folks won't know the difference.

 

[phaZed]

Custom built AMD desktops are really good for mid range systems. The FX-8320 is faster than the i5-6500 at about 1/2 the price. Granted AMD can't touch Intel when it comes to their highest end chips, but most people aren't looking for the highest end.

Not true. The i5-6500 beats that processor in terms of speed in almost every test.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-6500-vs-AMD-FX-8320

Prices are $135 for the AMD and $205 for the intel, a $70 difference - so the AMD is 2/3 the cost for roughly 2/3 the performance of the Intel.

If you want to have an equivalent Intel for the FX-8320, look at the 2010 Xeon X5670 which is slightly faster still than the AMD and only costs $110 as seen here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1782&cmp[]=1307

 

[phaZed]

I was going more off the price of the 6900K, which I think the extreme edition that they compared against was 1000. The 6700K is on newegg for 349.

Yeah, but they crippled the 6900K at 3GHz. All of us should know that this is more than just a "clock speed" - they're also bottlenecking the memory controller and data buses, PCIe. In the same way that overclocking begins to have diminishing returns - underclocking i-series chips has a compounding effect, it is not linear. Therefor their test is fundamentally flawed to produce the result they wanted on stage.

If AMD wants to impress me.. let's see what processor, un-gimped, the ZEN compares to. To underclock the 6900K and claim that "we wanted an apples-to-apples comparison" is disingenuous at best.

The 6700K is going regularly for $300:
Ebay-Monoprice

It has even been as low as $289 at Microcenter in July, but has been trending at $300 for at least 4 months now:
http://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?src=SearchBarV2&q=core+i7-6700K&searcharea=deals&searchin=first

So, now we're talking a $40-50 difference in price.

As a further exercise of futility - assuming under clocking is linear:
So if percentages were linear, AMD changed the clock speed of their demo 6900K to 3GHz from 3.7GHz Turboboost (3.2GHz Stock). I'm going to use the 3.7GHz figure for this exercise since the workload they did rendering would have been a prime example/use for Turboboosting.

The 6900K is approx. 10-13% faster than the 6700K - CPUBoss, Userbenchmark

a 700MHz reduction in clock speed is almost a 19% drop from 3.7GHz. So, let's assume the Zen is going to be 19% slower.

All things being equal, that would put the Zen in i5-6500K ($209) territory, ouch.

In the real world, speaking on non-linearity, the Zen is possibly more than 19% slower than the 6900K, possibly in the 20-25% slower range.


I wish nothing more to be wrong, here. I will be pleasantly surprised to have the Zen processor blow away the competition.. but if that were the case.. why is AMD being so secretive? They would be shouting from the rooftops the numbers and figures and demoing the hell out of this thing, raising stock prices, yet, we don't see that. Instead, we have a controlled, slow trickle of press releases and virtually no real-world tests. Is it just being hyped up while it can be? Again, I would love to be wrong.

 

[phaZed]

To add further to my worries, I found this:
AMD Zen Based Naples SOC Benchmarks Revealed – Dual Socket Featuring 32 Core Zen Chips, Clocked at 1.4 GHz Base and 2.9 GHz Boost

An actual benchmark!

Geekbench results: SC = 1141, MC = 15620

That's an equivalent to the 4 year old Xeon E5-2600 series CPU's which can be had for as low as $80 on Amazon.

Am I missing something?

EDIT:
Also found this new bit of news:
AMD Officially Launches Bristol Ridge Processors And Zen-Ready AM4 Platform

... Which seems to confirm my suspicions in the post I made above about clock speeds/etc...

At the top end AMD has the (65W) quad core A12-9800 running at 3.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz boost paired with GCN 3.0-based Radeon R7 graphics

Specifically, in 3DMark 11 Performance the A12-9800's score of 3,521.25 is quite a bit better than the Intel i5-6500's 1,765.75 result. However, in the more CPU focused PCMark 8 Home Accelerated benchmark the Intel comes out ahead with a score of 3,702 versus the AMD A12-9800's score of 3,483.25.

I'm disregarding the R7 3DMark scores vs Intel Graphics here. Pure CPU, the fastest in the AMD Pro-sumer lineup is about just what I deduced in my previous post.. on par or a bit slower than an i5-6500 (~$200, lowest price at Fry's @ $169). There's not a lot of margin to compete on price there and still turn a profit, IMO.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Keep in mind though, from amd's perspective, you don't want to give away what the clock speeds will be at release. So clock for clock might have been a fairer way. But you don't want to show Intel a final product spec. Also, I'll be buying amd still. Was a story about I think it was 10k Intel employees getting laid of and them applying for a lot of visas to bring in outside workers. If that's true, not a company I want to support.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...king-import-11600-foreign-workers-since-2010/

 

[phaZed]

I agree completely.

 

[sapphirescales]

Not true. The i5-6500 beats that processor in terms of speed in almost every test.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-6500-vs-AMD-FX-8320

Prices are $135 for the AMD and $205 for the intel, a $70 difference - so the AMD is 2/3 the cost for roughly 2/3 the performance of the Intel.

If you want to have an equivalent Intel for the FX-8320, look at the 2010 Xeon X5670 which is slightly faster still than the AMD and only costs $110 as seen here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1782&cmp[]=1307

CPUBoss is a BS site. They use weird factors like price in their scores and all they care about is trying to get you to buy processors through their affiliate links. Look no further than the Passmark scores:

Intel:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-6500+@+3.20GHz

AMD:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8320+Eight-Core

I look at overall performance, not per core or graphics or other BS. On top of that, the AMD is 3 YEARS OLDER than the i5. When it comes to true performance, AMD dominates Intel until you get into the higher end i7's.

And at Microcenter, the 8320 is only $90 when you bundle with a motherboard.

And it's not fair to compare a SERVER processor, that no regular consumer would ever use to a consumer based processor. Of course server based stuff is going to dominate. But it was never designed for consumer use.

I can buy an 8320 processor, a nice gaming motherboard (not the lowest end mATX on the market but a full size ATX board), and 16GB of Corsiar memory for $225....less than the cost of just the i5 processor which is slower to begin with. Intel has a better reputation, but AMD has a much better bang for the buck.

 

[Galdorf]

Best upgrade path i find is intel G4400 + Gigabyte GA-H110M-A you can put a 6th gen i3,i5,i7
G4400 -$75
Gigabyte GA-H110M-A $72

I use to build mostly AMD but this upgrade path allows for more options and price ranges.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I think once Zen is out though, it will give you something to think on. I believe they are talking about APU's etc being on a unified socket. If that is the case, that would be what they need, especially if you can start on a dual core APU and go up to a 16 core or something like that.

 

[Your PCMD]

I hope AMD gets this right at launch. I would love to give them another shot. As it currently stands, all my builds thus far since the beginning of the year have been locked at Intel. I rarely have an ounce of issue with Intel and if I do, its a quick and easy fix where with AMD, oh dont get me started. I'd need meds for the headache that would ensue.

 

[MDD1963]

AMD has pretty much sucked on an IPC basis since early 2006...(I had a Athlon64/3500+ back in 2005, which at 2.0 GHz did indeed 'school' assorted Pentium P4s in gaming benchmarks despite the former's 1 GHz clock deficits)

The current gen of AMD processors need to run at 4.8 GHZ to keep up with even an i3 in a lot of gaming/productivity benchmarks, which is very... pathetic.

I wish them well with Zen, perhaps this will make Intel quickly rethink their pompous pricing of flagship $1700+ enthusiast 8/10 core CPU prices!