AMD Zen Discussion Thread

AlmightyCushion · 17-02-2017 11:48am

Does all this talk about Zen remind anyone of when Intel launched Conroe. Before Conroe Intel were the ones releasing poor performing chips that used too much power and produced too much heat whereas AMD chips were the better chips in pretty much every metric and benchmark. Then Intel hyped Conroe and the benchmarks and figures released/leaked looked way too good to be true. Turned out Conroe lived up to if not exceeded the hype. Hopefully, we see something similar from AMD with Zen.

smacl · 17-02-2017 1:31pm

BloodBath wrote: »

8 real cores are going to be better than 4 with SMT though but I doubt many games use anything past 4 cores heavily. The SMT on the 8/16's is not gonna do much for gaming.

Depends whether you're talking about last years games, or those coming out this year or next year. FWIW, I'm a full time developer involved in high performance geospatial apps (not gaming), and more and more of the libraries and algorithms on which 3d modelling are based are moving from single threaded to multi-threaded for performance gains. To be fair, a lot are also moving to the GPU, but my feeling is going forward high performance applications will be using all the available power from GPU and CPU. Also worth remembering that as 4k becomes mainstream the poor old GPU has its hands full dealing with ~8.3 megapixels where it previously only has ~2.1 on 1080p, which leave's it with little surplus processing power. Just my opinion, but going forward CPU performance gains will be based more number of cores than performance per core.

Cuddlesworth · 17-02-2017 2:26pm

Looking more likely to happen in the next few years. Quite of a few of the AAA titles this year have shown good multi-threaded performance, the Division being a shining example of it. Far Cry even demanding four threads just to to run.

Unfortunately for AMD, they bet on that happening a long time before this and lost.

smacl · 17-02-2017 2:33pm

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Unfortunately for AMD, they bet on that happening a long time before this and lost.

They weren't the only ones. Anyone else here old enough to remember the transputer when it first came out, and how computing would never be the same again?

BloodBath · 17-02-2017 4:33pm

smacl wrote: »

Depends whether you're talking about last years games, or those coming out this year or next year. FWIW, I'm a full time developer involved in high performance geospatial apps (not gaming), and more and more of the libraries and algorithms on which 3d modelling are based are moving from single threaded to multi-threaded for performance gains. To be fair, a lot are also moving to the GPU, but my feeling is going forward high performance applications will be using all the available power from GPU and CPU. Also worth remembering that as 4k becomes mainstream the poor old GPU has its hands full dealing with ~8.3 megapixels where it previously only has ~2.1 on 1080p, which leave's it with little surplus processing power. Just my opinion, but going forward CPU performance gains will be based more number of cores than performance per core.

That may be true but in terms of gaming it usually boils down to the lowest common denominator which is consoles and whatever the rough average core count is in PC gaming which is still under 4 cores.

You will not see any games utilize more than 8 threads for at least another 5 years imo. The ones that use 8 currently only use 4 heavily.

smacl · 17-02-2017 5:02pm

BloodBath wrote: »

That may be true but in terms of gaming it usually boils down to the lowest common denominator which is consoles and whatever the rough average core count is in PC gaming which is still under 4 cores.

You will not see any games utilize more than 8 threads for at least another 5 years imo. The ones that use 8 currently only use 4 heavily.

Not so. Multi-threading can be applied in two different ways, the first is where you have different threads doing different things (e.g. a thread handling UI, another handling culling, another handling I/O etc...) in which case what you say is true. The other case is where multi-threading is applied to a parallel algorithm or library, e.g. parallel meshing, where you have a number of threads sharing the workload for a single task. In this case, the program will use as many threads as are available, quite often using a multiple of the number of physically available threads in order to balance the load. In this case, a program originally written for a four core processor will be much faster on a CPU with eight cores. The focus of most multi-threaded development today is in parallelization of algorithms which then scale to the number of available processors / cores / threads.

BloodBath · 17-02-2017 5:28pm

smacl wrote: »

Not so. Multi-threading can be applied in two different ways, the first is where you have different threads doing different things (e.g. a thread handling UI, another handling culling, another handling I/O etc...) in which case what you say is true. The other case is where multi-threading is applied to a parallel algorithm or library, e.g. parallel meshing, where you have a number of threads sharing the workload for a single task. In this case, the program will use as many threads as are available, quite often using a multiple of the number of physically available threads in order to balance the load. In this case, a program originally written for a four core processor will be much faster on a CPU with eight cores. The focus of most multi-threaded development today is in parallelization of algorithms which then scale to the number of available processors / cores / threads.

We're not talking about other programs that can do that though are we? We're talking about games here. Show me an example in a game that can dynamically shift the load between cores like this.

There is a reason why IPC and clock speeds are still king in the world of gaming.

smacl · 17-02-2017 6:16pm

BloodBath wrote: »

There is a reason why IPC and clock speeds are still king in the world of gaming.

Not saying they're not, but don't see that being the case going forward. Game engines are already being parallelized, as described in this Intel article for example, and once this happens at the engine level for the next cut of game engines out there, all the games that sit on those engines will benefit. Anybodies guess when exactly this will happen, I'd think sooner rather than later, but then its something I'm already using on other 3d modelling projects. Clock speeds haven't changed much in the last couple of years, and IPCs have improved primarily through vectorization which is really just the programmers passing the buck for parallelization back to the hardware boys. For future performance gains more cores running at full tilt is going to provide a far better return than marginal gains on single core IPC. Given the advent of 4k resolution on larger screens, demand for processing power has jumped and GPUs are struggling.

Venom · 17-02-2017 8:54pm

smacl wrote: »

Not saying they're not, but don't see that being the case going forward. Game engines are already being parallelized, as described in this Intel article for example, and once this happens at the engine level for the next cut of game engines out there, all the games that sit on those engines will benefit. Anybodies guess when exactly this will happen, I'd think sooner rather than later, but then its something I'm already using on other 3d modelling projects. Clock speeds haven't changed much in the last couple of years, and IPCs have improved primarily through vectorization which is really just the programmers passing the buck for parallelization back to the hardware boys. For future performance gains more cores running at full tilt is going to provide a far better return than marginal gains on single core IPC. Given the advent of 4k resolution on larger screens, demand for processing power has jumped and GPUs are struggling.

That's all well and good but 4 core+ chips have been around for years and 99% of games still don't make use of the extra cores. AMD offering 6/8/12 cores even at a lower price to Intel, is not going to change that.

smacl · 18-02-2017 7:17am

Venom wrote: »

That's all well and good but 4 core+ chips have been around for years and 99% of games still don't make use of the extra cores. AMD offering 6/8/12 cores even at a lower price to Intel, is not going to change that.

True, but the main reason is programmers struggling to get to grips with developing robust and effective multi-threaded code which is not easy. This is changing as the libraries and game engines they use become multi-threaded, so basically for games programmers most of the hard work is done for them and these techniques become better understood. For example, the following discussion on multi-threading in the Unreal engine exhibits a difference of 90fps versus 40fps for single threaded vs multithreaded versions of the same sample code. Also the gains are linearly proportional to the number of threads minus a bit for synchronisation costs. What this means is that multi-threaded routine on a CPU with 16 threads could run close on 16 times faster than the single threaded version, which is not a performance gain that can be easily ignored if the CPU is competitively priced.

z0oT · 18-02-2017 11:30am

I'm having a hard time believing that AMD's new processors will be extremely competitive with Intel's in a significantly lower power envelope (140W vs 95W) at a much lower price point.

However the leaks are coming fast and strong now and have been originating from several sources so it certainly looks as if that is the case.

I won't believe until I see benchmarks though. :P

Serephucus · 18-02-2017 12:31pm

To be fair TDP (especially from Intel), means feck-all.

Take the 6950X. This 10 core, 20 thread 3.5GHz monster has a TDP of 140W despite the 6800K (a 6/12 CPU with similar clock speed) having the exact same TDP.

I'd imagine it'll be similar with AMD; "They're more what'cha call guidelines anyway".

smacl · 18-02-2017 12:45pm

Serephucus wrote: »

I'd imagine it'll be similar with AMD; "They're more what'cha call guidelines anyway".

Hopefully better than FX-8350 which runs hot and isn't up to sustained load with all cores at 100% unless you've an after market cooler.

Cuddlesworth · 18-02-2017 1:21pm

Serephucus wrote: »

To be fair TDP (especially from Intel), means feck-all.

Take the 6950X. This 10 core, 20 thread 3.5GHz monster has a TDP of 140W despite the 6800K (a 6/12 CPU with similar clock speed) having the exact same TDP.

I'd imagine it'll be similar with AMD; "They're more what'cha call guidelines anyway".

Power is complicated, it scales with frequency and is squared with voltage I think.

But I'm pretty sure they are the exact same chip, just that one has 6 working cores and 1 has 10. They don't go into the process saying we are going to make a x core chip. They come away from the binning testing to see how many chips have working cores.

Serephucus · 18-02-2017 1:25pm

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Power is complicated, it scales with frequency and is squared with voltage I think.

But I'm pretty sure they are the exact same chip, just that one has 6 working cores and 1 has 10. They don't go into the process saying we are going to make a x core chip. They come away from the binning testing to see how many chips have working cores.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they couldn't give a slightly more accurate TDP figure for whatever chips come out of the binning process.

BloodBath · 19-02-2017 8:28pm

Some gaming benchmarks have been leaked. These were on the low clocked 8/16 engineering samples at 3.15ghz base and 3.4ghz boost which is well below what the final clocks will be. They are supposed to overclock to 4.3 - 4.5Ghz easily on air on all cores as well.

Clock for clock it's looking like it really is close to being on par with the 6900k. The 3.6/4ghz top end model should beat out the 6900k out of the box at half the price coming with a far superior and much better looking cooler.

http://www.techradar.com/news/amds-ryzen-benchmarks-get-leaked-and-theyre-jaw-dropping

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 12:20pm

maybe im just not getting it but from that graph it looks pretty bad, 300mhz behind the 6900k and 10% slower, worse than a i5 6600???

Serephucus · 20-02-2017 12:22pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

maybe im just not getting it but from that graph it looks pretty bad, 300mhz behind the 6900k and 10% slower, worse than a i5 6600???

It's about 10% slower in performance vs 6900K, but it's also about 10% slower in clock speed too, so this is about what's expected. As for being slower than the i5? Something something threaded optimisation.

Xenoronin · 20-02-2017 12:23pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

maybe im just not getting it but from that graph it looks pretty bad, 300mhz behind the 6900k and 10% slower, worse than a i5 6600???

Look at it this way instead, 10% off a 6900K while being half the price and underclocked quite significantly, and being an engineering sample.

Edit: Also, the graph is an average of 7 different games, so it's not that great a graph other than to average it as a gaming chip. So in this case, it is among the top intel chips, while applying the brakes, and with an unoptimised environment (early bios).

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 12:30pm

guess i was hoping they would match intel ipc performance, but from that my 6700k @ 4.4 will be much better for gaming. but as ye said it was an engineering sample with lower clocks, maybe the memory was crappy, maybe turbo/xfc wasnt working right. Guess we wont know until the actual benchmarks are out. Just shocking to see a graph where intel have the top 6 out of 11 cpu's after all this hype

Serephucus · 20-02-2017 12:35pm

But you said it yourself:

Lower clocks
Engineering sample
Doesn't beat your CPU at 4.4GHz?

K.O.Kiki · 20-02-2017 1:01pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

guess i was hoping they would match intel ipc performance, but from that my 6700k @ 4.4 will be much better for gaming. but as ye said it was an engineering sample with lower clocks, maybe the memory was crappy, maybe turbo/xfc wasnt working right. Guess we wont know until the actual benchmarks are out. Just shocking to see a graph where intel have the top 6 out of 11 cpu's after all this hype

Ya need to stop basing your reaction on leaked engineering samples.

...
But Zen will still win :pac:

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 1:13pm

Serephucus wrote: »

But you said it yourself:

Lower clocks
Engineering sample
Doesn't beat your CPU at 4.4GHz?

ah im not expecting it to stand toe to toe (at least at stock frequencies) with an overclocked skylake on the ipc front

im trying to justify buying ryzen haha,
that and i just really want intel to take a good massive boot up the arse

EoinHef · 20-02-2017 1:33pm

No real interest in that particular chips gaming performance,8c/16t is pointless for gaming currently. Its the 4c/8t 6c/12t chips that are most likely going to be the sweet spot for gaming. Hopefully over clock a bit better too due to the lower core count.

TerrorFirmer · 20-02-2017 1:44pm

I'm not wildly convinced by the games used, many of which are not that CPU heavy at all - although ARMA 3 is a good indication of IPC as it doesn't scale well across cores, but hard to see how good it performs in that title given it's an average fps across all titles.

Would like to see benchmarks of titles like Warhammer TW, GTA V, Battlefield 1 online, ARK, etc to show real raw CPU performance. Arma 3 is a good one as mentioned for IPC also, so I'd love to see individual figures.

smacl · 20-02-2017 2:20pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

guess i was hoping they would match intel ipc performance, but from that my 6700k @ 4.4 will be much better for gaming.

IPC (i.e instructions per cycle) as a metric is independent of clock speed (i.e. cycles per second). My take from Bloodbath's post was that the AMD chip was getting a 97.3 score running at 3.15/3.4ghz versus 107.4 for the i7 6900k. So if the production version of the AMD chip is actually 4.0/4.3ghz it should be about 22% faster thus that 97.3 score would jump to 118.7 leaving it top of the table. That's assuming the benchmark in question scales linearly with CPU clock speed, which may or may not be the case, often as you improve performance on one component the bottleneck moves to the next one.

wotzgoingon · 20-02-2017 2:25pm

Ryzen 5 1600X Cinebench scores and CPU-Z bench scores. At stock Clocks so when overclocked should score more.

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-1600x-cinebench-r15-performance-confirmed/

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5-1600x-processor-benchmark-cinebench-leak/

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 2:25pm

smacl wrote: »

IPC (i.e instructions per cycle) as a metric is independent of clock speed (i.e. cycles per second). My take from Bloodbath's post was that the AMD chip was getting a 97.3 score running at 3.15/2.4ghz versus 107.4 for the i7 6900k. So if the production version of the AMD chip is actually 4.0/4.3ghz it should be about 22% faster thus that 97.3 score would jump to 118.7 leaving it top of the table. That's assuming the benchmark in question scales linearly with CPU clock speed, which may or may not be the case, often as you improve performance on one component the bottleneck moves to the next one.

as far as ive heard the 1800x (top chip) is 3.6/4ghz so about 11% faster, pretty much on par with the 6900k i suppose, if it comes out at 500euro or so it will be a fantastic deal

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 2:28pm

wotzgoingon wrote: »

Ryzen R 1600X Cinebench scores and CPU-Z bench scores. At stock Clocks so when overclocked should score more.

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-1600x-cinebench-r15-performance-confirmed/

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5-1600x-processor-benchmark-cinebench-leak/

that 1600x is looking mighty impressive

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 2:31pm

:P strange to have hype for a cpu release, must be back in the amd phenom 2 days that amd where last competitive in the desktop space

wotzgoingon · 20-02-2017 2:36pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

that 1600x is looking mighty impressive

I know it beats out my current CPU anyway.

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 2:42pm

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I know it beats out my current CPU anyway.

multi threaded it would beat mine at stock too, i wonder will there be much overclocking headroom on these, if they overclock well to 4-4.5ghz herself will be getting an i7 6700k build for microsoft office

Digital Solitude · 20-02-2017 2:45pm

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I know it beats out my current CPU anyway.

You're a 4460 too aren't you?

I must say, I'm going to be sorely tempted to upgrade if these scale well down the chips

wotzgoingon · 20-02-2017 2:49pm

Digital Solitude wrote: »

You're a 4460 too aren't you?

I must say, I'm going to be sorely tempted to upgrade if these scale well down the chips

No a Hexa core Xeon X5660 @ 4.2 GHz.

It's on the ancient X58 platform. I'm not fully sure if I will upgrade yet as my system plays all my games brilliantly. But once final prices are out and I see what the reviewers say, I may upgrade. Time will tell.

BloodBath · 20-02-2017 6:04pm

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

as far as ive heard the 1800x (top chip) is 3.6/4ghz so about 11% faster, pretty much on par with the 6900k i suppose, if it comes out at 500euro or so it will be a fantastic deal

It should be roughly 20% faster than the results shown which would push it well ahead of the 6900k. XFR was disabled for these benchmarks as well afaik which may push results even higher if you're on good cooling.

The 1600x is the one I'm most interested in as it will be around €300. The 1800x is going to be €600 which is too much for me.

The i7 7700k is probably still going to be the better gaming processor with slightly better IPC and overclock speeds but I'll take an extra 2 cores and 4 threads and €100 cheaper.

I'm thinking of doing a full AMD build with Ryzen and Vega with a red and black color scheme in a red and black NZXT H440.

EoinHef · 20-02-2017 6:11pm

I reckon the 1600X is about where i would be looking at too out of the line up. Extra 2 physical cores and extra 6 threads compared to my current 3570k,all i really need to know now is how well they overclock. If can get 4 - 4.5Ghz on air i reckon id be sold.

BloodBath · 20-02-2017 6:53pm

Budgeting around €650 for a Ryzen upgrade.

1600x is going to be roughly €320. Mid range board €140. Stupid ddr4 has nearly doubled in price so 16gb will be around €120 and a Noctua NH-D15 to cool it at €80.

Should get around €200-250 for my i5 3570k + 212 evo, 8gb ddr3 and an asrock z77 pro4 board so overall a fairly cheap upgrade. It's going to be a good time for people looking for quad core intel bargains on the second hand market.

Icyseanfitz · 20-02-2017 10:25pm

lol

:pac:

Gehad_JoyRider · 21-02-2017 2:46pm

Spare a thought for those who are getting married and won't be getting a new system till September.

Redfox25 · 21-02-2017 5:03pm

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Spare a thought for those who are getting married and won't be getting a new system till September.

September of which year though as whats yours is hers and whats hers is hers also.
You might find that money being invested in other things first....

K.O.Kiki · 21-02-2017 5:16pm

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Spare a thought for those who are getting married and won't be getting a new system till September.

My Xmas bonus this year was abysmal.

...but then again, my system is barely a year old.

Icyseanfitz · 21-02-2017 5:24pm

Redfox25 wrote: »

September of which year though as whats yours is hers and whats hers is hers also.
You might find that money being invested in other things first....

aint that the truth

cherryghost · 22-02-2017 3:17pm

Preorders starting today on some sites:
The final summary points are:

Ryzen 7 is 8 cores, 16 threads for the 3 SKUs.
Rated clock speeds range across the 3GHz spectrum and push into 4.1GHz for the flagship 1800X.
Pricing is significantly lower than performance-comparable Intel chips, based on AMD’s performance numbers – Ryzen 7 1800X (3.6/4.0GHz, XFR) is $499, Ryzen 7 1700X (3.4/3.8GHz, XFR) is $399, Ryzen 7 1700 (3.0/3.7GHz, 65W TDP) is $329.
Pre-orders start February 22nd 6PM UK time with the official release date being March 2nd (likely to be March 3rd delivery date for pre-orders).
The new RGB AMD Wraith cooler will be bundled with Ryzen chips (but not all SKUs and not the highest-end ones).

The cheapest Ryzen on offer today outperforms the 7700k in multithreaded benchmarks, the middle and top ones beat out intels top i7 extreme in same benches.

Icyseanfitz · 22-02-2017 3:20pm

Serephucus · 22-02-2017 3:51pm

Gonna be waiting for benchmarks, but I might be moving to Ryzen.

Just... because.

will56 · 22-02-2017 3:57pm

Does anyone know which/if/when UK/EU sites will be taking pre-orders ?

cherryghost · 22-02-2017 3:59pm

will56 wrote: »

Does anyone know which/if/when UK/EU sites will be taking pre-orders ?

Overclockers apparently but I havent seen anything on their site yet. Their affiliates caseking would be too.

K.O.Kiki · 22-02-2017 4:00pm

Yeah, same.

Upgrade to 1600x or 1700 for me around July or September I'd say.

Redfox25 · 22-02-2017 4:52pm

Any point in jumping from a i5 4690K at 4.5 to a ryzen chip for gaming purposes?

Faster ram and cpu might make a difference but would it be worth the cost for a jump?

cherryghost · 22-02-2017 5:11pm

Redfox25 wrote: »

Any point in jumping from a i5 4690K at 4.5 to a ryzen chip for gaming purposes?

Faster ram and cpu might make a difference but would it be worth the cost for a jump?

If your aim is 60fps gaming with a high-end graphics card, then no. The 4690k is more than capable of that in modern and upcoming games.

AMD Zen Discussion Thread

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