AMD could be back in the CPU performance game with Zen

I guess AMD strategy will be to make a pure powerful CPU without spending allot of silicon making space for a GPU most people wont use in their desktop machine like intel.

Does this affect us?
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/microsoft-officially-to-support-new-processors-only-on-windows-10/95333/12

edit: https://forum.teksyndicate.com/uploads/default/original/3X/d/8/d8b6ff40f69d106300b7f70ac439134fe9fc1419.png


Last edited by Nyap on 13 March 2016 at 11:11 pm UTC

...

... and you'll see kernel drivers come online at ...

AMD has send patches to the Linux Kernel:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/1/29/78

I'll believe it when I see it, but I hope they do pull a miracle out of their ass. AMD has been a complete non-factor in the mid-high end desktop market for half a decade+ now. It's about time Intel had some competition.

As an aside, why compare to Broadwell when Skylake is out?

As an aside, why compare to Broadwell when Skylake is out?

Dunno, but even Skylake isn't really a relevant point of comparison as Kaby Lake will be out the same time as Zen.

AMD has been a complete non-factor in the mid-high end desktop market for half a decade+ now. It's about time Intel had some competition.

You know, people say stuff like this, but I've been using AMD CPUs for well over a decade, and I've never been unhappy with the performance of my systems. Are Intel CPUs theoretically faster? Sure. But they're also a hell of a lot more expensive. In terms of cost per performance, AMD has always been hard to beat.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 14 March 2016 at 3:07 am UTC

In terms of cost per performance, AMD has always been hard to beat.

I'll make my next build completely AMD-based if they can get their GPU situation sorted out. And I don't mean "I can play most games fine with their most expensive card at a lower framerate than NVIDIA GPUs from many generations earlier." I mean, get it at least close to on par with NVIDIA's quality and performance, support all the games, and I'm in.

Until then, I'll stick to Intel and NVIDIA.

For CPUs, it would be great if they finally caught up. (though I'll believe it when I see it.)
Regardless of how good their GPU hardware is, that simply isn't enough. Their Linux drivers are years behind Nvidia.

I would like a AMD CPU for my next upgrade, I even had a 6 core 8370E CPU while back, moved to a Intel 6core cpu and felt it was a huge waste of money except for the benefit of PCIe3.0 which did help with 4k content. I didn't see a massive jump in general desktop/gaming performance going from the 8370e to the intel 6 core I have today, definitely not the $500odd I paid for the Intel CPU.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 14 March 2016 at 5:12 am UTC

My gaming rig is now 3 years old, but since it still runs a GTX770, I don't have plans to replace it just too soon (most titles run "good enough" for my taste, so I'm planning to give my rig until christmas).

I really hope Zen, new graphics drivers and a now faster evolving mesa will shake it up a bit. Though, I don't get my hopes up too much, but I'm willing to give them a shot again on my next buy if things improve.

Now if only AMD managed to get a functional GPU driver for Linux together...

I guess AMD strategy will be to make a pure powerful CPU without spending allot of silicon making space for a GPU most people wont use in their desktop machine like intel.

With the 14nm of Global foundries & Samsung that will be used to make the ZEN CPUs AMD could actually combine a powerful CPU with a very decent graphic part, I mean, decent for gaming.
The max quantity of transistors with the actual 28nm process is almost reached by the fidjii GPU(7,9 Billion if I remember accuratly ...).
Actual FX vishera 8300 series(and so the 9000) count only 1,2 billion transistors.

AMD could make some big APUs with 4 or 6 cores(physical, twice logicals with their own HT that ZEN will introduce) and 2048 Radeon cores(as in a 7970, but with a brand new arcitecture) in a power package that's not above 100 watt TDP.
The integration in small form factor like laptops or mini-itx rigs could be very interesting.
If this would come with HBM(2) it would be super energy efficient and powerful enough for gaming in good condition, presets high, good framerate ...
Also with vulkan( and DX12 but we do not give a single fuck, right ?) the integrated graphics can easily and substantially help the discret GPU ...

Their actual plateforme FM2+ got pins physically dedicated on the CPU part, and the rest for the GPU part, so the best they can make on it as pure processor are what they call Athlon, that does not use the pins dedicated for GPU on the motherboard.
Their new plateform, FM4, could not have this problem. In this case they can make some strong APUs as mentionned above, and also very big pure CPUs reusing the pins that are used by the graphical part when you put an APU on your motherboard, with twice the physicals cores(8 ? 12 ? 16 ?) ...
But this last idea is pure speculation.

*edit : The maximum transistor count with the 14nm process is around 15 Billion.
We won't see any chip with that count at the launch of the process, but at the end of his cycle we should be seeing some monster GPU reaching it, as it happenned with the 28nm process.


Last edited by Armand Raynal on 14 March 2016 at 5:50 pm UTC

Well, just another AMD-bla bla bla. IMHO AMD should be better get stuff going instead of talking about it.

Well, just another AMD-bla bla bla. IMHO AMD should be better get stuff going instead of talking about it.

ZEN is done for a little while now, but AMD is fabless. They have to wait for Global foundries and Samsung to make ready their 14nm production line.

It seems like we didn't see GPUs in 20nm because Apple was prioritary(understand bigger economically) and needed all the production lines of TSMC, you know, for their new shitphone. Yep, we could have had new GFX cards in 2015. But it is not the fault of the chip designers.

I think the gaming enthusiast dedicated market could be dying for CPUs. Not to say you won't have high end CPUs in the future, but with Vulkan coming out, it makes sense to get a lot of cores and you can get 12 cores by investing in used Xeons and it will cost only $140. I know of a guy that invested in a dual xeon rig.

Does this affect us?
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/microsoft-officially-to-support-new-processors-only-on-windows-10/95333/12
edit: https://forum.teksyndicate.com/uploads/default/original/3X/d/8/d8b6ff40f69d106300b7f70ac439134fe9fc1419.png

Nope. Linux is a giant in the server and embedded worlds. Its functionality will not be limited on future CPU generations. Not in a hundred years.
Those articles just say that if you want to use Windows, you have to use Win10.

I really hope for AMD that they really pull out something very good. I always loved these guys, and their recent openness and dedication to FOSS just makes me wanna support these guys. But as they still can't deliver the same experience than Intel+NVidia my choice remains settled.
Maybe this will change with ZEN and beyond

Those articles and notes is MS PR BS as they want everyone to force to upgrade to Windows 10. Their previous Windows versions have turned out strong competition against themselves. All their plans are tied up everyone running Windows 10.

Nice to see AMD come back swinging. Yes, careful to be very optimistic but at least they move in right direction.

I hope AMD's new CPUs are really good in performance and heat. We need competition on prices to be able to make a really good powerfull commercial rig (Steam Machine cof cof... ) at a breaking (console like) price.
We are stuck in the Intel CPUs because the temps. The i 6XXX CPUs are much cooler than the AMD counterpart... and this is critical for a small form factor case.

I've never had an Intel CPU in all my years of post-Amiga computing; I currently have an 8320E which seems to fill my needs pretty well.