AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[de5_Roy]

Spoiler

If anything Amd should me when their quiet its not a good thing. Every Time they have a product that creams the competition they rush it out and they show benchmarks left and right.

I think just the contrary and love AMD new marketing strategy of being quiet. In the past they were most loudly when lacked more competitive products.

Now AMD remains quiet and next surprises everyone with the announce of the fastest graphic card (HD 7990) on GDC, remains quiet and next surprises everyone with the PS4 bomb, remains quiet and surprises everyone with SoC Kaveri being sold in the embedded market, remains quiet and surprises everyone with Richland mobile being sold to OEMs, remains quiet and surprises everyone with ARM-based Opterons, remains quiet and surprises everyone with the GDDR5 support on kaveri for this year, remains quiet and surprises everyone with hUMA, remains quiet and surprises everyone with the new Radeon 2133 memory, remains quiet and surprises everyone with the A4-4000 being already available on some stores...

Huh? You'd have to be living under a rock to have been surprised by any of those things. Maybe the AMD branded memory was a bit out of left field. And we still don't have details on any of that stuff. Beyond a couple in house benchmarks which are quite meaningless.

all of these were well known for over a year.
if you think about it, radeon ram, ssd weren't that much of a surprise either, considering amd's past as a memory vendor. full disclosure: i didn't know about that until i read about amd's history in an arstechnica article.
amd had laid out their plans in 2011 and had successfully stuck to it till pd cpu release (llano, brazos, zambezi, brazos 2.0, trinity, vishera) except cancelling the lp apus that glofo was supposed to manufacture iirc (that's glofo's fault imo). their real delay came with kaveri release. imo kaveri's (rumored) failure to pass internal evaluation was a bit of a surprise since amd clearly put down their hsa plans and kaveri as well as sr seemed like a sure thing.

corporations are not well-known for their modesty. especially struggling corporations that constantly need to keep investors pleased and interested in them.
if they have something, they will hype it.
if they have something working, they will call a press conference/event and shout at the top of their lungs from the top of the tallest skyscraper (trees are too small).
if they don't have anything, they'll leak the information slowly.
if they don't have anything working, they will go fully silent. amd is somewhere between the last two. a lot like how intel is about the igpu part of their new 22nm atoms. and nvidia with 20nm gpus.
we've seen kabini powered devices, richland laptops. we know a lot about ps4, new xbox. amd themselves have clearly told us about arm-based opterons. for steamroller, we got a year old press event (means they had something at that time) and then nothing. long, long after that the gddr5 leak came out.

 

[sarinaide]

I use AMD/Patriot Radeon Black Edition RAM at 1866 with AMP profiles, its worth about 5FPS minimum over similar priced XMP kit so its free performance, this new RAM is made by another company and the AMP profiles and Latency are lower so I do expect the 20% number mentioned to be possible . Sadly I only get them about 2 months time and they cost about $90 equivalent.

 

[Ranth]

http://www.umpcportal.com/2013/05/amd-temash-a6-1450-performance-acer-aspire-v5/
http://ultrabooknews.com/2013/05/10/acer-aspire-v5-122p-unboxing-amd-temash-a6-1450-first-tests/

Temash review, performance numbers.

 

[jdwii]

If amd Gets rid of traditional CPU's with no L3 cache and so on i'm afraid they might get rid of their mid-range and just make pure low-end processors, it would be mean if anyone wants a gaming CPU people would have to go with intel, Could they possibly ever beat an I7(or a I5) with a APU? i guess its not a complete impossible task even though history has Intel in its favor.

I can see this going a couple of ways. With AMD being so incredibly tight lipped about Steamroller it seems like its either going to be incredibly good or they are having problems they don't want anyone to know about. AMD after going head on against Intel for so long may be happy with making lower midgrade and low end processors. It is possible they figure its their nitche. Howerver if test Kaveri APUs are going toe to toe with Ivy Bridge or Haswell i5 or even rivaling i7 then AMDs decision to phase out FX and go with APU only is a good one. Why spend the resources on two separate lines if APUs are performing that well.

Another thing to consider is if Steamroller APUs and Steamroller FX come out of the gate rivaling i5 and i7 Haswell, or even besting them at a lower price, you may see a renewed AMD. AMD announced the end of the FX line when they were in deep financial trouble, their situation has improved somewhat, and if Steamroller FX is a resounding success they may just continue the line. You may see a renewed AMD featuring Excavator FX in the future, if Steamroller is a resounding success vs Intel.

This makes sense why continue something if its not making them money but i feel it is making them a small amount of money kinda of like penny stocks.

 

[cowboy44mag]

This makes sense why continue something if its not making them money but i feel it is making them a small amount of money kinda of like penny stocks.
[/quotemsg]

I'm going on very little sleep, but I think we are on the same page. Bulldozer FX was such a disappointment when it come out that people were urged to keep their older Phenom II processors as they were more powerful in single threaded applications. Bulldozer gave FX a "black eye" and was not making the profit margins desired ---> AMD announces end of FX series after Steamroller. Piledriver was more of a success, but still lagged behind i5 and i7 somewhat, however Piledriver did manage to vindicate the FX line somewhat. Now if Steamroller FX is able to close the gap significantly in single core execution and further the gap in mulit core execution (at better prices) then the FX line is not only viable again, but profitable too. If Steamroller FX is a success I can't see AMD dropping the axe on something that is making a good profit.

 

[butremor]

Ooh, imagine if bulldozer wasn't such a bust, but rather successful, and piledriver would've been even better. AMD cpu probably gotten to first tier of hierarchy chart.
Oh, well...

 

[cowboy44mag]

Ooh, imagine if bulldozer wasn't such a bust, but rather successful, and piledriver would've been even better. AMD cpu probably gotten to first tier of hierarchy chart.
Oh, well...

Whats done is done, but all it takes is one "generation" to turn things around. All it would take is Intel to drop the ball (*cough* Haswell) and for AMD to release a Steamroller that lives up to expectations. Technically AMD doesn't even have to "get first tier of hierarchy chart", all they have to do is come very close to equaling i7 Haswell and they have already won as AMD prices their hardware much better than their competition.

 

[wh3resmycar]

Technically AMD doesn't even have to "get first tier of hierarchy chart", all they have to do is come very close to equaling i7 Haswell and they have already won as AMD prices their hardware much better than their competition.

pipe dream.. amd prices their hardware much better because it doesnt perform as good as their competition.

an amd chip "close to equaling i7 Haswell" would be priced close to equaling an i7 haswell.

amd is cheap because they suck. i still can't justify a quad-core AMD APU build when an IB celeron + 7750 would run circles around it.

 

[griptwister]

Technically AMD doesn't even have to "get first tier of hierarchy chart", all they have to do is come very close to equaling i7 Haswell and they have already won as AMD prices their hardware much better than their competition.

pipe dream.. amd prices their hardware much better because it doesnt perform as good as their competition.

an amd chip "close to equaling i7 Haswell" would be priced close to equaling an i7 haswell.

amd is cheap because they suck. i still can't justify a quad-core AMD APU build when an IB celeron + 7750 would run circles around it.

You say AMD Sucks, but find the Nvidia GPU that prices the same and you'd be wrong. And Celeron? What are you? Are you a fanboy or on crack?

 

[wh3resmycar]

You say AMD Sucks, but find the Nvidia GPU that prices the same and you'd be wrong. And Celeron? What are you? Are you a fanboy or on crack?

yeah celeron. it's faster than any crap AMD have at that segment. name an AMD dual core at the same price that can perform the same..

thank you.. you can't..

 

[Ranth]

You say AMD Sucks, but find the Nvidia GPU that prices the same and you'd be wrong. And Celeron? What are you? Are you a fanboy or on crack?

yeah celeron. it's faster than any crap AMD have at that segment. name an AMD dual core at the same price that can perform the same..

thank you.. you can't..

Sorry I couldn't find(too lazy, sorry :d) any benchmark comparisons between an AMD Athlon II X2 340/a4-5300 and a celeron g540 but I assume it will be quite even. (Though the a4 will probably beat the shit out of celeron in games with the internal gpu)

If we look at the fx-4300 vs. the i3-3220 they perform almost the same...
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/700?vs=677

 

[jdwii]

You say AMD Sucks, but find the Nvidia GPU that prices the same and you'd be wrong. And Celeron? What are you? Are you a fanboy or on crack?

yeah celeron. it's faster than any crap AMD have at that segment. name an AMD dual core at the same price that can perform the same..

thank you.. you can't..

For 1 who buys a celeron? someone who is using onboard graphics and then this argument gets WAY too easy. 2 Amd just came out with this CPU AMD A4-4000 which everyone would most likely want when you don't have a video card even normal people that play minecraft, or hell even watches videos.

However from a Pure CPU perspective that's a pretty good CPU there's no denying that looking at benchmarks i'm actually impressed and the fact that Amd made this new A4 at that price bracket at launch pretty much means they probably did know that area in their line-up was weak.


Anyways your claim is true from a gamers perspective that CPU is only 10% slower than the pentium which indeed is just an I3 with no HT. For an all around CPU(APU since technology the celeron is an APU) at this price point give me a A4 richfield any day of the week.

 

[jdwii]

Ranth although i did not find any reviews on the new IVY that Sandy did get some pretty good benchmarks and its only around 10% slower then the pentium.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/celeron-g540-g440.html

Although i hate xbits almost if not more than anandtech.

 

[wh3resmycar]

Sorry I couldn't find(too lazy, sorry ) any benchmark comparisons between an AMD Athlon II X2 340/a4-5300 and a celeron g540 but I assume it will be quite even. (Though the a4 will probably beat the shit out of celeron in games with the internal gpu)

even you say?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge.html

that's night and day in terms of compute performance. and yes it does win in the on chip gpu department but that's meaningless because:

1. the visual fidelity is severely compromised. and the fps reading is downright unplayable on both chips (a4-5300 vs celeron)
2. once you put a discrete gpu in the picture, guess who'll come out on top...

For 1 who buys a celeron? someone who is using onboard graphics and then this argument gets WAY too easy. 2 Amd just came out with this CPU AMD A4-4000 which everyone would most likely want when you don't have a video card even normal people that play minecraft, or hell even watches videos.

i actually own a celeron g550 at the moment. because:

1. at that time (nov 2012) the previous generation APUs (fm1) sucked so much and a change of socket killed that platform instantly.
2. i needed something that'll play dota 1 (frozen throne) without breaking the bank and keeping thermal/power envelop low.
3. my motherboard has a PCIE slot, in fact all motherboards has a pcie slot.
4.it's not like similarly priced APUs would give you "enjoyable" gaming experience. because they won't. and again if you would like to actually game apus just don't cut it. and when you find that the platform you chose is not pushing it anymore it'll be more expensive and troublesome.
5. putting in a 7750 is more efficient both power and economic wise.
6. 7750
7. 7750
8. 7750

here's the deal. the moment you put a mid-range graphics card in an APU setup, which is very very doable (and would be necessary when the time comes), you've already defeated the purpose of buying an APU setup.


about the a4-4000, my retailer has this posted but it doesn't have an integrated graphics... i'm confused. but everywhere it says it has a 7480d..

and again. an IB celeron + 7750 > AMD A10 (lets go for the top of the line)... more power efficient too.

 

[amdfangirl]

I actually want one of the new Celerons.

Would be a nice power efficient sidegrade for me.

Think about it though, you'd be pretty desperate to want to game on a Celeron/AMD A4.

If I was a gamer who wanted to play Minecraft, I'd get a dual-module A6 or a Celeron with a discrete card. The A4 is simply too big of a CPU performance sacrifice.

 

[sarinaide]

I am thoroughly pleased with my A10, albeit I do have a DDR3 2800 kit in it that no budget builder would buy, but I can play BF3 @ 1600x900 with Medium textures albeit I prefer to play with Low textures, max Meshing and 80 FOV then I go own the noobs and their Titans and laugh at them.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Next we will raving about single core chips?
Go VIA?

Lets not look back too much here

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

I am thoroughly pleased with my A10, albeit I do have a DDR3 2800 kit in it that no budget builder would buy, but I can play BF3 @ 1600x900 with Medium textures albeit I prefer to play with Low textures, max Meshing and 80 FOV then I go own the noobs and their Titans and laugh at them.

Tip: go FOV @100 and hear them scream. Although it is better to use an 8800GTX@1280x720@High and own the noobs running GTX TITANs in Quad-SLI across three monitors .

 

[truegenius]

haswell's bclk overclocking will blow away these apus for gaming (provided that celerons/pentiums/i3s (if any) will support it)
specialy if haswell can overclock well with low voltages then it will be further salt on the scratch (hope its not over hype )

also ram is getting expensive
(atleast in my area, because i bought my gskill sniper 1600cl9 4GB for ~30$ and now it costs ~45$, and higher clocked ram are not easy to
find and they cost too much (2133mhz 4GB ram costs ~60$)
and not to mention that a10 costs equal to phenom 1090t )

apus in my area are waste
only viable apu are fm1 setup like 8-3870k and lower


i am waiting for overclockable i3 and then i will sell my 1090t and will get i3 and clock it to >5GHz


btw @sarinaide do you have any info about haswell's bclk overclocking

i am too mich excited about it
indeed i am planing to sell my 1090t right now but i am waiting for reviews

(btw now i am becoming intel fan because intel is launching very afordable and great mobiles at very cheap price like xolo x910 , and their cpus are also cheaper than amd apu (though amd fx is cheap too if you can find them))

 

[de5_Roy]

@truegenius: core i3 likely won't launch in june. iirc core i3 and pentiums come out a few months after core i5 and i7 launches.

going from 6 core to dual core (despite htt and/or bclk oc) is downgrade. i think i've said this before....

you can't do anything about ram prices, the manufacturers are doing it. hope that they don't rise too fast before new cpus come out.

if amd's too costly, then keep saving money and aim for a core i5, at least. ask around how open box/tray cpus perform and last, and try getting one of those. those should be slightly cheaper than boxed ones.

although, i'd hold out till steamroller fx. by then haswell supply should ramp up, glitch-free mobos should be out and prices should stabilize. intel will roll out slowly due to the usb 3.0 glitch and current market conditions, so early prices may be too high for budget builders. on the flip side, fx cpus might see another round of price drop in nothing new comes out from amd.

intel only seems affordable. that's because they couldn't expand into tablet and mobile well enough, so they're trying to take away amd's marketshare.

fx may be cheap, but you must have a discreet gfx solution or one of the ye olde chipsets with on-board gfx. otherwise...... :lol:

 

[montosaurous]

Ooh, imagine if bulldozer wasn't such a bust, but rather successful, and piledriver would've been even better. AMD cpu probably gotten to first tier of hierarchy chart.
Oh, well...

Whats done is done, but all it takes is one "generation" to turn things around. All it would take is Intel to drop the ball (*cough* Haswell) and for AMD to release a Steamroller that lives up to expectations. Technically AMD doesn't even have to "get first tier of hierarchy chart", all they have to do is come very close to equaling i7 Haswell and they have already won as AMD prices their hardware much better than their competition.

AMD prices their chips relative to how close they perform to Intel. Since PD is nowhere close to Intel's i5/i7 chips it is cheaper. The Phenom II's on the other hand could compete very well with Nehalem so were priced similarly to them. Maybe AMD will come out with Steamroller and get back into the game. I don't know. I would really hate to see AMD go under and be forced with an Intel monopoly, but it is a possibility. Things are starting to look good for AMD, let's just hope it stays that way.

 

[jdwii]

My favorite thing that you said was number 3, now please there's plenty of people here who are drinking next to their PC please stop trying to make them spit liquid on their screen.

Also if Intel did allow their lower-end CPU's to overclock easier this would be a win situation for them i can't even imangne what Amd would do with a 5.0Ghz I3 which might be possible. Knowing Intel CPU's though an I3 is probably just a locked I7 Lol.

 

[cowboy44mag]

Anyone boasting about dual core processors and gaming are living in the past. At the end of this year gaming is going to change a lot. When the PS4 and Xbox whatever come out they are going to running 8 cores. The era of single core power in gaming has had its day and the writing is on the wall for its end. Anyone who thinks they are going to have a serious gaming rig with a dual core processor is diluted. I would also like to point out that "PD is nowhere close to Intel's i5/i7 chips" is just not true. There have been many posts on this topic and its on a benchmark to benchmark basis. The benchmark tests are made to favor Intel, however real world computing PD is just as good as i5 and not worlds away from i7. In truly fair, unbiased benchmarks i5 and i7 don't blow Piledriver away, its very very close. Intel fan boys only look at single core execution and think it is the end all of processing when the truth is there is a lot more to processing power than just single core execution. The future is mulit core execution.

You can live in the past and brag about your Intel dual core's power at single core processes and think you have a real powerhouse, or you can look toward to future and realize dual cores are becoming exceedingly obsolete. The biggest hit is going to be in gaming when games are optimized for the new consoles and optimized to run on 4, 6, 8 cores. Where is a dual core going to be able to game then? They might (big might) be able to still run the new games, but not well and won't compete against a quad, six, or 8 core system. A flintlock will still kill you but there is a reason they aren't used on the battlefield anymore.

 

[8350rocks]

Sorry I couldn't find(too lazy, sorry ) any benchmark comparisons between an AMD Athlon II X2 340/a4-5300 and a celeron g540 but I assume it will be quite even. (Though the a4 will probably beat the shit out of celeron in games with the internal gpu)

even you say?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge.html

that's night and day in terms of compute performance. and yes it does win in the on chip gpu department but that's meaningless because:

1. the visual fidelity is severely compromised. and the fps reading is downright unplayable on both chips (a4-5300 vs celeron)
2. once you put a discrete gpu in the picture, guess who'll come out on top...

For 1 who buys a celeron? someone who is using onboard graphics and then this argument gets WAY too easy. 2 Amd just came out with this CPU AMD A4-4000 which everyone would most likely want when you don't have a video card even normal people that play minecraft, or hell even watches videos.

i actually own a celeron g550 at the moment. because:

1. at that time (nov 2012) the previous generation APUs (fm1) sucked so much and a change of socket killed that platform instantly.
2. i needed something that'll play dota 1 (frozen throne) without breaking the bank and keeping thermal/power envelop low.
3. my motherboard has a PCIE slot, in fact all motherboards has a pcie slot.
4.it's not like similarly priced APUs would give you "enjoyable" gaming experience. because they won't. and again if you would like to actually game apus just don't cut it. and when you find that the platform you chose is not pushing it anymore it'll be more expensive and troublesome.
5. putting in a 7750 is more efficient both power and economic wise.
6. 7750
7. 7750
8. 7750

here's the deal. the moment you put a mid-range graphics card in an APU setup, which is very very doable (and would be necessary when the time comes), you've already defeated the purpose of buying an APU setup.


about the a4-4000, my retailer has this posted but it doesn't have an integrated graphics... i'm confused. but everywhere it says it has a 7480d..

and again. an IB celeron + 7750 > AMD A10 (lets go for the top of the line)... more power efficient too.

Something tells me no benchmark will show a competition between the 2...but the A10-5800k beats the crap out of an i5-3570k in gaming using the intel HD4000.

I highly doubt the Celeron would even compete. Now you're posting garbage.

Your IB Celeron wouldn't run Crysis 3 with framerates into the low 30's...but the A10-5800k did (with integrated GPU).

Do your research.

FYI A10-5800k is also cheaper than IB Celeron + HD 7750, and power efficiency between your CPU and GPU is less than for the A10-5800k.

EDIT: Is this an AMD thread or an intel thread? Just curious...we're getting a few intel fanboys in here lately...not like we go posting in the IB thread talking about "AMD wins benchmarks too, APUs FTW!"

 

[montosaurous]

The i5 destroys FX chips in single threaded performance, and is quite close in terms of multi threaded performance. Every benchmark I've found heavily favors Intel over AMD. The i5 3570k is close to the FX 8350 in terms of multi threaded performance, and no doubt the i5 4670k will beat it in everything, even with just a 10% gain over Ivy. Please, prove me wrong.