AMD will be showing off their Zen CPU Architecture and letting people play with it on December 13th

I really hope this isn't like the Bulldozer release: Bulldozer was slower than Stars in a lot of cases.


Last edited by Breeze on 7 Dec 2016 at 7:52 pm UTC

Can't wait! Really want to upgrade my CPU already.. it will be Zen or Kaby Lake probably. Depends who wins the price/perf ratio and gives me most cores for my money :)


We need the AMD comeback! "Inteldia" is getting very expensive.
Meanwhile in Phoronix: The Rumor Is Back That Future Intel CPUs To Use Radeon Graphics

We need the AMD comeback! "Inteldia" is getting very expensive.
Meanwhile in Phoronix: The Rumor Is Back That Future Intel CPUs To Use Radeon Graphics

Hmmm, apparently so! Interesting times...

They will be letting "eSports & Evil Geniuses legend PPD" put it through its paces, I'm not going to pretend I know who that is, should I know?

Retired DotA 2 Player. Captain of the Evil Geniuses squad that won The International 5.

We need the AMD comeback! "Inteldia" is getting very expensive.
Meanwhile in Phoronix: The Rumor Is Back That Future Intel CPUs To Use Radeon Graphics

This notice stay better explained on techpowerup

Article by courtesy techpowerup

https://www.techpowerup.com/228467/intel-could-license-amd-radeon-igpu-tech-for-future-processors

This is some parts of techpowerup article

Intel and AMD's cross-licensing arrangements could get more equitable in the future, with reports hinting at the possibility of Intel licensing AMD Radeon intellectual property to be used as Intel processors' integrated GPUs.

Rumors of such a deal were first reported by HardOCP this Spring, where it stated that the two companies were negotiating a licensing agreement.

Earlier this week, HardOCP editor Kyle Bennett commented on the site's forums that a licensing agreement has been reached between the two, even though Intel does not want this to be public.

Such an agreement could see AMD sharing designs of its Radeon integrated graphics processors with Intel, which will integrate it into its processor designs, and manufacture them.

Whether the amalgamated graphics solution will continue to be branded "AMD Radeon" or whether it will be marketed under the Intel graphics brands, remains to be seen.

Apparently stay related with intel could use some amd gpu techs (in past them make same thing)

For this reasons intel skylake gpu for example support all DX12 capabilities (thanks them can use some nvidia technologies (previous agreement) and some amd technologies too)

Maybe this new agreement could be announce big changes in vega, some time ago appear information about vega related different design (in vega apparently some units stay deleted for gain better ratio watt/performance) compared to polaris

Only needs wait, however this technologies maybe could visible when intel launch cannonlake with respective gpu (Gen10 ?)

^_^


Last edited by mrdeathjr on 8 Dec 2016 at 1:12 am UTC

I want the return of the old fashion CPUs: A pure CPU only. I don't want to pay for an integrated GPU garbage that I will not use.

I really miss the old AMD days of CPUs with hidden cores.

I want the return of the old fashion CPUs: A pure CPU only. I don't want to pay for an integrated GPU garbage that I will not use.

I really miss the old AMD days of CPUs with hidden cores.

One of the few upsides to integrated GPUs is they usually come with hardware encoders/decoders. They're also a nice, handy backup for when everything decides to break on you.

One of the few upsides to integrated GPUs is they usually come with hardware encoders/decoders.

That's not true. Dedicated GPUs are also equipped with hardware encoders/decoders (VDPAU for decoding and HVENC for encoding in the nVidia's case).

They're also a nice, handy backup for when everything decides to break on you.

A really unneeded backup for our money. And in place of more CPU cores which could be put to use, like, in 3D rendering or CFD. Integrated GPU's are garbage for high-perfomance solutions and sholud be only used in "typewriter-PC" machines for text processors as sole video cards.

One of the reasons i havent bought intel yet. I just dont want the freaking IGP. Don't like it for my Desktop. Why waste all that space? give more cores instead. Yes intel has those without IGP also but much higher priced.

I want the return of the old fashion CPUs: A pure CPU only. I don't want to pay for an integrated GPU garbage that I will not use.

One of the reasons i havent bought intel yet. I just dont want the freaking IGP.

Summit Ridge won't have an integrated GPU AFAIR.

I really miss the old AMD days of CPUs with hidden cores.

Do you mean unlocking those disabled cores of AMD Athlon/Phenom X3 CPUs? That's always been a bit like playing Minesweeper xD

Summit Ridge won't have an integrated GPU AFAIR.

like i said, thatswhy i havent bought intel yet, cause most of their cpus have. only the expensive ones doesnt.
AMD FX series will not have an APU yeah.. so thats all good in my book :)


Last edited by Xpander on 8 Dec 2016 at 1:04 pm UTC

I really miss the old AMD days of CPUs with hidden cores.

Do you mean unlocking those disabled cores of AMD Athlon/Phenom X3 CPUs? That's always been a bit like playing Minesweeper xD

Exactly that!
I have a Sempron 140 with the additional core fully functional....
and a Phenom II x2 550 with the two functional additional cores.. 4 cores for the price of 2 :)

I really miss that feature...

The FX 6300 indeed is an FX 8320 with a module that is laser cut.. ¬¬

Even when they have an iGPU, I switched from AMD to Intel because they have low power consumption and a good singlecore performance...

I would like to use AMD again if they get rid of the piledriver tech fiasco.... I want true cores with low power consumption and high IPC per core and combo is only available at Intel... for now.

like i said, thatswhy i havent bought intel yet, cause most of their cpus have. only the expensive ones doesnt.
AMD FX series will not have an APU yeah.. so thats all good in my book :)

Ahh, okay. I might have been a bit under-caffeinated this morning :D

Even when they have an iGPU, I switched from AMD to Intel because they have low power consumption and a good singlecore performance...

I would like to use AMD again if they get rid of the piledriver tech fiasco.... I want true cores with low power consumption and high IPC per core and combo is only available at Intel... for now.

Yeah, that's totally understandable. I hope Zen helps to get rid of that fiasco that held me back from upgrading to anything else than a Phenom II in my main machine. I made an exception for my HTPC which got a Piledriver-based APU. At least the ones with less power-consumption are quite suitable for this niche.

Won't buy a new x86-CPU until they remove their microcode.

Why exactly? CPUs have had microcode basically forever and you've been able to upload new revisions for a long, long time.

Yeah, that's totally understandable. I hope Zen helps to get rid of that fiasco that held me back from upgrading to anything else than a Phenom II in my main machine. I made an exception for my HTPC which got a Piledriver-based APU. At least the ones with less power-consumption are quite suitable for this niche.

I can accept an iGPU if the integrated memory controller is 6 channel DDR4 memory; 2 for the CPU part and 4 for the GPU part... Or at least 4 channel DDR4 memory; 2 for the CPU and 2 for the GPU part..
The only APU close to those details is the PS4 APU...

Sadly, the fact that the best APU that AMD made wasn't made for PC, is the evidence that they don't care much about the desktop market.

Off topic: I would like to see motherboards with two or more sockets for the desktop market...
It will be interesting to run the system processes in one processor, the game process in the other processor and physics in other...
I think the PS4 do something like that... And I think that is the way to go for the Steam Machines... Imagine SteamOS optimized for a hardware config like PS4...

Excited to see some actual benchmarks, but I highly doubt they can compete in single core performance with those clockspeeds littered around the place. I really hope they have some higher clocked CPUs up their sleeves...

I would like to use AMD again if they get rid of the piledriver tech fiasco...

The real fiasco wasn't Piledriver. It was AMD's descision to cripple FX line in favor of AXX APU's.

After initial Piledriver flop due to lower per-core perfomance AMD got "brilliant" idea of heterogenous architecture. They thought that despite lower perfomance those GPU cores could double as auxiliary CPU cores thus "making" mighty GPU and 8-core CPU at the same time for the price of 4-core Intel CPU. They heavily gambled on this, up to not upgrading FX line to Steamroller and Excavator cores (every production line was refitted for AXX APUs).

Good idea!... Not!

This strategy had heavily relied on fancy compilers and application optimization, which simply did not come to reality. No one hurried recompiling their apps for CPU line with only 20% market share and the most popular compiler (Intel's) did everything it could to produce AMD-unsuitable code. Even now outdated FX-8320 CPU is more efficient (and cheaper) than any A12 chip. :-(

One of the few upsides to integrated GPUs is they usually come with hardware encoders/decoders.

That's not true. Dedicated GPUs are also equipped with hardware encoders/decoders (VDPAU for decoding and HVENC for encoding in the nVidia's case).

They're also a nice, handy backup for when everything decides to break on you.

A really unneeded backup for our money. And in place of more CPU cores which could be put to use, like, in 3D rendering or CFD. Integrated GPU's are garbage for high-perfomance solutions and sholud be only used in "typewriter-PC" machines for text processors as sole video cards.

Unneeded backup for our money? And exactly how much of the price jump for Intel CPUs in the past decade came about because of their iGPU? I'll give you a hint, almost all of their price jump has been from a lack of proper competition in the marketplace. The presence of an iGPU doesn't tack much on to the price, but the benefit is a permanent backup in case of any number of issues that can arise with discrete GPUs.

Also, as much as NVENC and AMF aren't supposed to cause any sort of extra load on the GPU while encoding, I've had performance issues in the past based on using them. Offloading encoding to the iGPU instead allowed me to keep all of my performance in those instances, at the cost of the stream looking slightly worse. But hey, that's life.