AMD Zen Discussion Thread

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 5:12pm #1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQS8s7TOXsE&feature=youtu.be
If this video is somewhat true then Zen could be a good contender for PC Gaming CPUs. What are your thoughts on Zen?
These are mine:
We all know that in Ireland Intel CPUs really are not budget friendly and AMD's current cpus are too old and are lacking in quite a number of things. But Zen might be what finally gives budget gamers hope again. Because sadly buying a €100 FX-6350 and a lackluster motherboard just isn't cutting it anymore. But with Intel, the prices are just too damn high. I have had both Intel and AMD cpus, and I can say that there are certain noticeable differences between both but that all depends on the use case. I see all my friends trying to change to PC and naively they look at all these American Budget PC Builds but when they try to recreate it hear, they realise just how much more expensive it is. Sadly, budget builds in Ireland are basically non existent when it comes to Intel. Yes i know they can be done with intel pentiums or i3 but at that price you may as well go AMD which doesn't exactly result in a much better build. So I would like to see Zen finally change this jus like how the RX 480/470 is making pc gaming on a budget much more appealing.

I know Zen probably won't be as good as AMD is making it out to be but as long as it does much better than current AMD CPUs at a similar price then I will be more than happy. I had an X99 build but sold it months ago and i am now holding for Zen before i build a new pc. I know AMD keep holding it back but I am willing to wait, if they can achieve what I am looking for.

ED E · 18-08-2016 5:35pm

AMDs own promo material is a pretty poor source as they'll cherrypick results(as do the blue and green teams).

Some good analysis here from Linus: (Jump to 4:43)

If it turns out to be a great perf/$ chip great, they'll have a good year maybe 18mo then intel will have spun up manufacturing on all the stuff they've been holding back because they can currently.

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 5:38pm

ED E wrote: »

AMDs own promo material is a pretty poor source as they'll cherrypick results(as do the blue and green teams).

Some good analysis here from Linus: (Jump to 4:43)

If it turns out to be a great perf/$ chip great, they'll have a good year maybe 18mo then intel will have spun up manufacturing on all the stuff they've been holding back because they can currently.

Yeah i saw that livestream. Even if intel improves their technology on the lower end. At least everyone still benefits from it. Well except AMD of course
Because its been years and things like hyperthreading still has not trickled down to the lower end stuff

Serephucus · 18-08-2016 7:06pm

All depends on price. Potentially exciting times in the CPU market ahead though.

(finally)

TerrorFirmer · 18-08-2016 7:54pm

I'm not really sure I agree with all your assertions. Intel aren't the only thing cheaper in the US; whether you were buying an i5, an FX9590, a GTX1070, an RX480, an Xbox One or Playstation 4 - all these things are cheaper in the US.

I don't know how you could say Intel budget builds are non-existant. That is where the i3 comes in. You say 'you might as well go AMD at that point' but that doesn't make sense either. Skylake or Haswell i3 is as fast as the FX in most games, faster in some, is generally more reliable and and has a rock solid upgrade path that will be good for years to come. Going FX gets you a sub par processor now, that is unreliable performance wise, and is a dead end platform.

Also, of course HT hasn't filtered down to Pentium processors, otherwise they'd be i3 processors. Intel don't need to improve their technology in this end. A Skylake G4400 for example at €60 is exceptional performance wise for everything except games, and even at that some games it runs pretty okay. It's not exactly reasonable to except high-end gaming performance from a €60 processor. It does what it's designed to do. The Intel i3 is a €120 CPU that offers an excellent upgrade platform and solid performance. Seems reasonable to me for a budget build?

AMD have 'budget' processors in the €60-100 range and despite being quad cores, four physical cores, they're absolute garbage. Intel has nothing that really demands improvement - AMD is the one that's desperately playing catchup, hence Zen.

To properly challenge Intel, Zen needs to be exceptional - not just 'Hey, sorry, we're four years late but here's Intel performance from us at similar prices!'. It needs to be an excellent all-rounder that can offer a viable alternative to the i-line at a lower price. It doesn't necessarily even need to be as fast, just offer amazing and reliable price per dollar performance. The FX can't do that because IPC is just too bad and the processor is wildly unreliable in games, at no price point does the FX really become attractive unless you found one for pennies second hand.

Hopefully it will turn out to be decent because it's good for consumers to have two healthy competitors. But I don't get the 'it will give budget gamers hope', the i3 is an excellent processor for budget gamers and somehow I can't see AMD coming out with a sub 99 processor that beats the i3.

thegreenbean · 18-08-2016 8:45pm

The problem with Zen for me is, it's going to just about match haswell/broadwell cpu's. Which is a good thing for budget builders but it's going to be fast outdated by intel's next part. Chances are it will blow it out of the water. I want a monster AMD cpu to challenge Intel's X99 series but it won't happen. I hope AMD are serious about the enthusiast market in the future

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 9:08pm

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I'm not really sure I agree with all your assertions. Intel aren't the only thing cheaper in the US; whether you were buying an i5, an FX9590, a GTX1070, an RX480, an Xbox One or Playstation 4 - all these things are cheaper in the US.

I never said that only intel things are cheaper in the US. I meant that with all parts being cheaper in the US, some people see budget builds and try to recreate them but realise the parts are mich more expensive to buy in Ireland. I didn't single out Intel alone as the only thing that is cheaper in the US.

ED E · 18-08-2016 9:09pm

thegreenbean wrote: »

The problem with Zen for me is, it's going to just about match haswell/broadwell cpu's. Which is a good thing for budget builders but it's going to be fast outdated by intel's next part. Chances are it will blow it out of the water. I want a monster AMD cpu to challenge Intel's X99 series but it won't happen. I hope AMD are serious about the enthusiast market in the future

Depends on how much effective corporate espionage Intel had going on. Next generations fabs were built months ago so if Intel bet on Zen being meh we'll see a normal tic/toc(?) but if they've anticipated a real contender then we'll hopefully see more than the normal 5% IPC improvements.

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 9:14pm

ED E wrote: »

Depends on how much effective corporate espionage Intel had going on. Next generations fabs were built months ago so if Intel bet on Zen being meh we'll see a normal tic/toc(?) but if they've anticipated a real contender then we'll hopefully see more than the normal 5% IPC improvements.

Intel have killed tic toc so beginning with skylake they are doing Process-Architecture-Optimization now so we wouldn't even see anything new from them until 2018 and by then we don't know what AMD might have done

ED E · 18-08-2016 9:29pm

Ooops, of course. Do we have figures as to how much Intel could slash pricing for Cannonlake as a retort? They obviously dont want to cannibalize sales of enthusiast and enterprise parts too much but dropping the mainstream pricing by a large mark would hurt any Zen gains.

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 9:40pm

AMD say that the pricing of their new Zen CPU's should be similar to the pricing of their current CPUs. Considering an i5 6600k is about €250 and an fx 8350 is about €155. If AMDs Zen cpu can match the i5 6600k at the price of an fx 8350 then Intel would have to reduce the price of the i5 6600k by 36% which is no small drop.

TerrorFirmer · 18-08-2016 10:13pm

Samurai12 wrote: »

I never said that only intel things are cheaper in the US. I meant that with all parts being cheaper in the US, some people see budget builds and try to recreate them but realise the parts are mich more expensive to buy in Ireland. I didn't single out Intel alone as the only thing that is cheaper in the US.

No, but you said Intel is not budget friendly in Ireland and budget builds are non-existant in Ireland. Neither of which is really true at all. It doesn't matter if you're creating a budget build, a mid-range build, enthusiast build or ultra high-end rig, it will always be cheaper in the US, so there's no point in singling out the 'budget' market.

Considering an i5 6600k is about €250 and an fx 8350 is about €155.

That's a strange comparison. The i5-6500 or 6600 non-k is light years ahead of the FX-8350 and is around €190 for the former or €210 for the latter. It's the i3-6100, i5-6500 and i7-6700 or similar segments that AMD need to target hard, not enthusiast K series CPUs.

I still don't get why you think the budget market is non-existant. An i3-6100 is €120. An RX460 is €120. The only cheaper CPU's are a) intel pentiums which are not designed for high-end gaming and never were/or will be or b) AMD budget quads, which are terrible for games. It's not realistic to expect CPU's in the 50-100 range to excel at all the latest games. It wouldn't make sense for AMD or Intel to release such a CPU.

Serephucus · 18-08-2016 10:25pm

thegreenbean wrote: »

The problem with Zen for me is, it's going to just about match haswell/broadwell cpu's. Which is a good thing for budget builders but it's going to be fast outdated by intel's next part. Chances are it will blow it out of the water. I want a monster AMD cpu to challenge Intel's X99 series but it won't happen. I hope AMD are serious about the enthusiast market in the future

You're forgetting scalability here.

By the looks of things, there'll be a 32C/64T part, at the highest end. Also an 8C/16T part on the desktop. If performance is on par with Broadwell/Skylake, then it'll see Intel slash prices on not only their 1151 (I think that's what Skylake is?) stuff, but the 2011-3 chips too.

thegreenbean · 18-08-2016 10:31pm

Serephucus wrote: »

You're forgetting scalability here.

By the looks of things, there'll be a 32C/64T part, at the highest end. Also an 8C/16T part on the desktop. If performance is on par with Broadwell/Skylake, then it'll see Intel slash prices on not only their 1151 (I think that's what Skylake is?) stuff, but the 2011-3 chips too.

Hehe, 32 cores :eek:
PC-Per has a nice review from Ryan. It's looking ok for now. Intel need a good kick in the ass so it's going to be exciting win or fail
link

satguy · 18-08-2016 10:31pm

Paul's Hardware has just posted a video..

AMD Zen - A First Look

Looks Good..

Serephucus · 18-08-2016 10:32pm

thegreenbean wrote: »

Hehe, 32 cores :eek:
PC-Per has a nice review from Ryan. It's looking ok for now. Intel need a good kick in the ass so it's going to be exciting win or fail
link

Exactly. At the very least, it'll be a kick in the sack for Intel. Something they have been in dire need of for years.

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 10:32pm

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

No, but you said Intel is not budget friendly in Ireland and budget builds are non-existant in Ireland. Neither of which is really true at all. It doesn't matter if you're creating a budget build, a mid-range build, enthusiast build or ultra high-end rig, it will always be cheaper in the US, so there's no point in singling out the 'budget' market.

That's a strange comparison. The i5-6500 or 6600 non-k is light years ahead of the FX-8350 and is around €190 for the former or €210 for the latter. It's the i3-6100, i5-6500 and i7-6700 or similar segments that AMD need to target hard, not enthusiast K series CPUs.

I still don't get why you think the budget market is non-existant. An i3-6100 is €120. An RX460 is €120. The only cheaper CPU's are a) intel pentiums which are not designed for high-end gaming and never were/or will be or b) AMD budget quads, which are terrible for games. It's not realistic to expect CPU's in the 50-100 range to excel at all the latest games. It wouldn't make sense for AMD or Intel to release such a CPU.

I am not trying to compare the FX-8350 with the Core i5 6600k. I am saying that AMD's Zen CPU that will be similar in price to the FX-8350 is said to be on par with the i5 6600k. Which is why I used the FX-8350 price as a reference.

I said that I think that the budget market is basically non existent when it comes to Intel. My first build was a budget build with a Radeon 6850 and an FX-6100 so I definitely know that budget builds are possible. I also didn't single out budget builds as the only ones that are cheaper in the US. I just used them as an example.

ED E · 18-08-2016 11:15pm

The OP is a school leaver so to be clear what he calls budget and what a FT salary earner calls budget might be quite different.

Samurai12 · 18-08-2016 11:19pm

ED E wrote: »

The OP is a school leaver so to be clear what he calls budget and what a FT salary earner calls budget might be quite different.

Haha yeah I should have probably clarified that. By budget I meant like €500 - €600. My first pc was within that price range but luckily I got a job about 2 years back and was able to save up to build a nice X99 build but I sold that a couple of months ago and somehow broke even.

TerrorFirmer · 19-08-2016 9:47am

The OP is a school leaver so to be clear what he calls budget and what a FT salary earner calls budget might be quite different.

I don't think that's true, a budget build is a budget build, and we all understand what it means really, it's one of the most requested builds in the B&U forum. To me a budget build is universally recognised as sub €600, which would get you a Skylake i3, rX460, and SSD based system with a solid case and power supply. That's pretty bullet proof.

You could go even cheaper but the price to performance ratio falls off a cliff with the likes of the G4400 on Intel's side and the 860K on AMD's part - even though the G4400 is a way better purchase for broad performance and upgrade potential.

At stock speed the 6600K is no faster than the regular variants like i5-6500 and i5-6600, which are the €190-210 price range. You can't compare an FX-8350 to a 6600K with any sort of standardization, it's not a valid comparison. A more accurate comparison would be the FX8350 v. i5-6600 non-k or i5-6500.

I said that I think that the budget market is basically non existent when it comes to Intel.

But why? Is a Skylake i3-6100 not an exceptional budget gaming CPU @ €120? What are the AMD alternatives? There are none....the FX8350 is €160 and is unreliable performance wise and a dead end platform.

If anything, the budget market is healthy when it comes to Intel and totally non-existent when it comes to AMD.

Cuddlesworth · 19-08-2016 10:42am

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

But why? Is a Skylake i3-6100 not an exceptional budget gaming CPU @ €120? What are the AMD alternatives? There are none....the FX8350 is €160 and is unreliable performance wise and a dead end platform.

If anything, the budget market is healthy when it comes to Intel and totally non-existent when it comes to AMD.

Fx6300 is still quite a good cpu and would more be the equivalent. The new skylake I3 performs better in cpu heavy games though.

I would like to see Zen do well, but I have a feeling that it will fall slightly short both in IPC and clock speed compared to current Intel CPU's. It might end up where AMD just try to aim for high volume low price, similar to their pricing strategy for the 4xx series.

TerrorFirmer · 19-08-2016 11:08am

It's OK in games that are primarily GPU heavy but in CPU heavy titles it falls down, so I don't think it would make sense to recommend any FX processor over an i3 in any scenario in a new build (unless you were solely rendering or editing to take advantage of all six cores, of course).

I agree completely that Zen needs to offer solid reliable performance, not necessarily on-par with Intel, but with a more attractive performance per euro. We're at a situation now where it's your average graphics card bottlenecks your i5 and not vice versa, so plenty of scope for a lower performing, cheaper CPU that still keeps pace with mainstream cards reliably across all titles.

K.O.Kiki · 19-08-2016 11:25am

I was actually pricing up a build for my dad's friend, and since he doesn't play games anymore (but wants to have a very good Photoshop machine) I recommended him an i5 mATX build.

TerrorFirmer · 19-08-2016 12:00pm

Definitely if it's within your budget, it makes sense to go i5. The longevity of Intel processors is incredible. My parents are still using a Q6600 with an SSD, it's not really much different than my own PC for the sort of things they use it for. If I sold the whole machine now it wouldn't even cover the cost of an i3 processor!

ShadowHearth · 20-08-2016 3:35pm

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I don't think that's true, a budget build is a budget build, and we all understand what it means really, it's one of the most requested builds in the B&U forum. To me a budget build is universally recognised as sub €600, which would get you a Skylake i3, rX460, and SSD based system with a solid case and power supply. That's pretty bullet proof.

You could go even cheaper but the price to performance ratio falls off a cliff with the likes of the G4400 on Intel's side and the 860K on AMD's part - even though the G4400 is a way better purchase for broad performance and upgrade potential.

At stock speed the 6600K is no faster than the regular variants like i5-6500 and i5-6600, which are the €190-210 price range. You can't compare an FX-8350 to a 6600K with any sort of standardization, it's not a valid comparison. A more accurate comparison would be the FX8350 v. i5-6600 non-k or i5-6500.

But why? Is a Skylake i3-6100 not an exceptional budget gaming CPU @ €120? What are the AMD alternatives? There are none....the FX8350 is €160 and is unreliable performance wise and a dead end platform.

If anything, the budget market is healthy when it comes to Intel and totally non-existent when it comes to AMD.

Okay, I am no expert, but i think what he ment was:

If you get same performance as i5 6600k for the price of Fx8350 ( which is cheaper), then new zens will definitely be a power that Intel will need to deal with.
These days fanboysism is still around, but not as strong as used to be. Gamers these days mostly go for best bang for the money. And if zen will give same performance for lower price then gamers will buy it. At very least it will be a good kick to Intel to be competitive and drop prices.

As for my own point of view:
I want amd to do something similar what they did with rx480. I don't want to see something stupidly fast and stupidly expensive, just because they are too dogs and I can charge what they want ( nvidia 1070 and 1080 situation).
Do a very solid cpu that us great bang for the money. Solid performance for decent money. Makes us 90% of average ePenis holders happy and the rest of market that can drop a lot of money on a build can have their Intel with a premium price tag.

TerrorFirmer · 20-08-2016 4:20pm

Well yes I did make that same point, that AMD don't need to be as fast as Intel they just need to offer solid reliable performance at a lower price point. But the thing is, say they introduce a new Zen CPU at €150 that's sort of i5-6400 performance level - all Intel have to do is drop prices and match them. AMD really have an uphill battle.

Also you can't really say '6600K performance' because there is no standard performance. It would be more accurate to use i5-6500 or i5-6600 non-k which are the same performance at stock. €50 of the 6600K's cost is the overclocking ability. Unless of course Zen CPU's turn out to be excellent overclockers, then of course we could compare directly with 6600k but for now at stock speeds we should be comparing to non-K cpus.

I think it's good for us because it means prices will drop on Intel parts, but I'm just not convinced AMD can do enough to get back a solid foothold. If Zen performs well, Intel will just drop prices on skylake to compete, and then in a year or two will release another killer CPU line that will be much faster, again, most likely.

I agree Nvidia pricing is crazy but Intel pricing is really not bad at all at the moment. i3 is €120, i5 is €180, those are not bad prices considering they are way faster and far more future-proof than AM3+, which is still €100 for Fx6300 and €160 for Fx8350. I don't quite understand how people are acting like Intel are price gouging.

More competition is good for everyone but Intel offer good value for money even now, they more or less always have since Core2Duo came out in 2006.

ShadowHearth · 20-08-2016 5:00pm

I think we all know what we mean when we compare it to 6600k and not with non K cpu. We want an overclocker like K series, but cheaper. As we presume now zen will have overclocking model and thats the one most people pay attention now. I personally compare to 6600k, maybe you want to compare it to other cpu. At the moment is just everyone's personal opinion and guessing.
As for prices: we used to pay that money, because we don't know any better. And the reason we pay that much not because Intel giving us a good deal, it's because Intel has no competition and can charge what they want. I bet you if in last few years there would have been competitive side to cpu world, we would talk about cpu prices being normal not 120 and 150, but 80 and 120 for example.

Digital Solitude · 20-08-2016 5:23pm

Highly doubt i5s would be much lower to be fair, they trounce 8350s despite being only €30 dearer. If Intel could match the price or even go below what an 8350 costs they'd make a total laughing stock of AMD.

FX CPUs are close to the bottom of what AMD can afford I would imagine seeing as they're desperate for a piece of the market share back, and i3s and i5s are pretty close to them in price.

TerrorFirmer · 20-08-2016 6:05pm

ShadowHearth wrote: »

As for prices: we used to pay that money, because we don't know any better. And the reason we pay that much not because Intel giving us a good deal, it's because Intel has no competition and can charge what they want. I bet you if in last few years there would have been competitive side to cpu world, we would talk about cpu prices being normal not 120 and 150, but 80 and 120 for example.

I don't think this is true. Intel could get away with raising the prices on i3, i5 and i7 because they have no competition at the moment, and they destroy the FX line despite only being a little bit more expensive as Digital as outlined above.

Intel could pull an 'Nvidia' and start charging more - people would still buy, because the FX line is so sub-standard at this point.

An FX8350 is only €20 cheaper than an i5-6400. For that €20 saving you get a way worse performer, a dead end socket, and higher power consumption.

Can we really claim Intel are overcharging people?

If anything they've keep pricing competitive to further drive people away from AMD.

CPU prices as they are now are relatively quite normal compared to how they've always been over the past decade.

K.O.Kiki · 01-02-2017 2:36pm

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3163500/components/amd-confirms-its-ryzen-cpu-will-launch-in-early-march-followed-by-the-vega-gpu.html

AMD Zen (Ryzen) confirmed for early March 2017 launch.

K.O.Kiki · 02-02-2017 1:31pm

AMD will provide Windows 7 drivers.

wotzgoingon · 02-02-2017 2:21pm

Good video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVOQ5W3SUxg

Gehad_JoyRider · 02-02-2017 2:22pm

Samurai12 wrote: »

I am not trying to compare the FX-8350 with the Core i5 6600k. I am saying that AMD's Zen CPU that will be similar in price to the FX-8350 is said to be on par with the i5 6600k. Which is why I used the FX-8350 price as a reference.

I said that I think that the budget market is basically non existent when it comes to Intel. My first build was a budget build with a Radeon 6850 and an FX-6100 so I definitely know that budget builds are possible. I also didn't single out budget builds as the only ones that are cheaper in the US. I just used them as an example.

So you think that now AMD are back, they will forget about budget pc builders. how would that make sense, company's need to sell CPUs, not hold on to them.
There has to be a budget line it makes no sense not to have one.

Slutmonkey57b · 07-02-2017 9:41am

I'm not encouraged by the time slips, and the big gap between the initial launch and apu release. Zen was originally due last year, and even up to summer they were claiming late December. Then it was q1, and they'll barely make that with their hand picked halo parts. AMD's whole strategy was supposed to revolve around ditching the cpu and transitioning solely to an apu; failing to get the apu out until the second half of the year, with still very vague timelines, is not at all a good sign.

Hopefully I'm wrong but I'm not getting a fuzzy feeling here.

BloodBath · 07-02-2017 7:56pm

I'd imagine we will see the 2/4 core cpus when the apu line launches as there will be 4/8 and 2/4 apu's. This will obviously be a different manufacturing process so they don't have to cut down an 8/16 processor to make a 2/4 like they would with the current Ryzen cpu's. The budget cpu's will be apu's.

TerrorFirmer · 07-02-2017 7:57pm

BloodBath · 07-02-2017 8:08pm

Yeah that pretty confirms that you will have to wait for the APU's for the budget 2/4 parts although the base 4/4 Ryzen R3 Pro 1100 would probably be around the same price of €100.

I wish AMD used the clock speed for the naming conventions last number for good clear branding but they always have to be awkward. It's quite clear from their branding which products are competing with intels counterparts though. R3, R5 and R7 are obviously competing with i3, i5 and i7 so they should be priced in that neck of the woods.

That top 1800x part is already confirmed to be at least 3.6ghz base and 4ghz boost.

It's also confirmed that single cores overclock as high as 5ghz on air so there's no problem with the architecture going that high. It's just a matter of cooling and silicon lottery.

As soon as these hit the market it will make 0 sense to get an Intel CPU unless you really want marginally better IPC at the cost of losing 2-4 cores.

Icyseanfitz · 07-02-2017 8:47pm

Depending on the price of the top 8core/16thread CPU I might switch over from my 6700k and build herself something around that. All depends on price and IPC performance though

Slutmonkey57b · 07-02-2017 8:59pm

BloodBath wrote: »

I'd imagine we will see the 2/4 core cpus when the apu line launches as there will be 4/8 and 2/4 apu's. This will obviously be a different manufacturing process so they don't have to cut down an 8/16 processor to make a 2/4 like they would with the current Ryzen cpu's. The budget cpu's will be apu's.

Which definitely shows that the apu strategy has either failed and is being mothballed, or AMD can't get it working with any decent ipc. Either way, the fallout from bulldozer is still killing them.

BloodBath · 07-02-2017 9:00pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

Depending on the price of the top 8core/16thread CPU I might switch over from my 6700k and build herself something around that. All depends on price and IPC performance though

That top one is gonna be around €500-600. It's pretty much on par with the €1100 i7 6900k.

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Which definitely shows that the apu strategy has either failed and is being mothballed, or AMD can't get it working with any decent ipc. Either way, the fallout from bulldozer is still killing them.

I wouldn't say failed. Maybe they just haven't got the manufacturing sorted on them yet and they aren't the top priority. These APU's are going to be using Vega GPU's as well so maybe that's causing the hold up.

Icyseanfitz · 07-02-2017 10:21pm

Ah I'll have to see proper hands on reviews before I believe its on par with 6900k, I'm hoping for all our sakes it blows Intel out of the water but I don't jump on hype trains

Xenoronin · 08-02-2017 10:42am

I hate the naming... I'm assuming "Pro" supports additional PCI-E lanes?

Cuddlesworth · 08-02-2017 11:35am

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Which definitely shows that the apu strategy has either failed and is being mothballed, or AMD can't get it working with any decent ipc. Either way, the fallout from bulldozer is still killing them.

AMD have had a sizeable IPC increase in their APU's generation to generation but more notably they have had huge efficiency gains. In the low end of the laptop market, they have been killing it. And their APU's are seriously good in that budget range for the price/performance.

On the top end, I know everybody loves their I3's but a FX-9800P is a 4 core chip with a much better onboard gpu which is to me way better then a dual core chip with a crap onboard gpu and better IPC. Day to day on a laptop like that, I prefer more threads over IPC.

A fair number of newer high DPI notebooks chug playing 4K video because the skylake chips can't keep up.

Slutmonkey57b · 08-02-2017 2:26pm

In a laptop, battery life and heat trump almost everything else. People with 4k screens tend to move from one plug socket to the next, but AMD has years of crappy corner cutting laptops (many still on the shelves of the stores) to overcome.

It's telling that they didn't release Bristol ridge laptops and desktops to review sites; if there was good news to shout about for the a 9000 series you can bet they would have done it. Instead, no launches, no information, nothing.

K.O.Kiki · 08-02-2017 3:26pm

You know it's serious when I'm considering walking into a shop & buying a magazine for the benchmarks.

Cuddlesworth · 08-02-2017 4:14pm

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

In a laptop, battery life and heat trump almost everything else. People with 4k screens tend to move from one plug socket to the next, but AMD has years of crappy corner cutting laptops (many still on the shelves of the stores) to overcome.

It's telling that they didn't release Bristol ridge laptops and desktops to review sites; if there was good news to shout about for the a 9000 series you can bet they would have done it. Instead, no launches, no information, nothing.

The market for in depth reviews of what are effectively huge variants of OEM chips is dead. What they review now is the top end Surface, Macbook, X720 spinning phablet and say how pretty it looks.

Its rare to find a review of the model laptop you want, with the chip in it you can afford(they almost always have the most expensive models). The few reviewers I have seen that compare models can at times remark that performance on even the same chips varies greatly due to the differing thermal and power limitations the system has, especially on the netbook style devices. And all of that is expected, because for most use cases the lowest end CPU's work perfectly for what most users want. Very very few people need a 62 watt I7 over a 15 watt core m/y variant or care if a image render is 3 seconds faster on one model over another. They use office applications, web based applications and watch videos/listen to music. And laptops from 8 years ago do that well, laptops with new chips excel at that.

K.O.Kiki · 08-02-2017 6:09pm

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

The market for in depth reviews of what are effectively huge variants of OEM chips is dead. What they review now is the top end Surface, Macbook, X720 spinning phablet and say how pretty it looks.

Its rare to find a review of the model laptop you want, with the chip in it you can afford(they almost always have the most expensive models). The few reviewers I have seen that compare models can at times remark that performance on even the same chips varies greatly due to the differing thermal and power limitations the system has, especially on the netbook style devices. And all of that is expected, because for most use cases the lowest end CPU's work perfectly for what most users want. Very very few people need a 62 watt I7 over a 15 watt core m/y variant or care if a image render is 3 seconds faster on one model over another. They use office applications, web based applications and watch videos/listen to music. And laptops from 8 years ago do that well, laptops with new chips excel at that.

IDK about low-power chips, my laptop's i7-5500U has a weird tendency to stutter during simple multitasking.

Cuddlesworth · 08-02-2017 11:16pm

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

IDK about low-power chips, my laptop's i7-5500U has a weird tendency to stutter during simple multitasking.

You ever checked a tool like latencymon to see if its a dodgy driver locking it up?

Skerries · 09-02-2017 1:42am

possible pricing

will56 · 09-02-2017 9:52am

US pricing indications:
http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-lineup-pricing-confirmed-8-cores-low-320/

Slutmonkey57b · 09-02-2017 2:22pm

That's some incredible pre-availability, pre-conducting-any-tests assumptions about performance going on there!

However for all our sakes let's hope it's at least competitive at a lower price.

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