AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[noob2222]

I think just the contrary. Intel is at the peak of the x86, whereas ARM is starting to release its true potential. Look at AMD, they have benchmarked the new A57 core and found it is better than its own jaguar core, which was already an optimal peak in x86 _64 bit_ space.

Better at what? On what software? Maybe the X86 code is REALLY unoptimized compared to the ARM code. Etc, etc, etc.

Again people: X86 isn't going anywhere because of the 20 years worth of software. So please, this whole "ARM is going to take over" is just nonsense.

Better at raw performance and performance per watt. I have no reason to believe that x86 code is not optimized.

ARM and Apple will be switching to an ARM world. Nvidia is preparing an entire range of ARM-based products from phone to supercomputers, including servers, tablets, desktops... and several of us are convinced than next gen game consoles will be ARM based. This gen was close to being it.

Ive already proven to you that ARM is no where near raw performance of X86 and now your back at it again, except this time its both raw and PPW?!

just admit your wrong and leave it at that. Oh, thats right, you can't, you know more than anyone working for AMD and Intel combined.

ARM ~= Atom << Ivy.

As for Nvidia's supercomputer, the ARM core is only there to turn on the quaddro gpus so they can do ALL the work. ARM is aimed to take on microservers, thats hardly considered supercomputers.

 

[noob2222]

IF in 5, 10 or 20 years everything goes cloud it will make little difference if you have x86 or ARM or something else but in the short term why would ARM bother trying to compete in desktops when its a shrinking market everyone else is moving away from. It does compete in the netbook side of the market.

Cloud Computing is getting pushed hard so that companies can make money by charging you to use their servers. Its a novel concept to be certain, but I question the security of it all.

http://www.adobe.com/products/cs6.html?promoid=JOLIS

While Adobe Creative Suite® 6 products will continue to be available for purchase, Adobe has no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products.

ouch. Kinda makes AMD's OpenCL on Photoshop effort pointless.

The problems ... No internet, no software. What if you want to take a vacation to a remote cabin and enjoy the peace and quiet for some "inspriation", well you have no software to edit that inspirational moment.

And what about privacy? Our great and powerful government already wants to spy on everyone, CC makes this easier since they just have to go to the source (adobe, google, ect), and you won't even know they looked at or stole your information.

Then there are the "hackers". you can always protect your private information by keeping a system offline, not possible with CC.

The good part about CC is the fact that the software is ran on remote servers. You could use any device that has enough graphics power for what your working on. <-- this is another reason why companies are pushing low end CPU with high end graphics. However, they still need high end servers for CC to work.

Depending on how hard CC is embraced, it could reshape the entire industry. You would never own any software, just some server login. This could also be another negative. 50 software purchases = 50 separate logins ... nasty.

VV @gk, might want to rethink that, Adobe is going 100% CC. But you do have a valid point. How well is this going to work when Adobe has 10,000 CC users.

 

[gamerk316]

IF in 5, 10 or 20 years everything goes cloud it will make little difference if you have x86 or ARM or something else but in the short term why would ARM bother trying to compete in desktops when its a shrinking market everyone else is moving away from. It does compete in the netbook side of the market.

The cloud is never going to offload significant amounts of processing, simply due to bandwidth. Even reading off external media is orders of magnitudes faster then what you get connecting to the cloud.

What ARM is trying to do is get into the server market, which is VERY high margin. Don't have to be a major player, market share wise as a result. Essentially, they wouldn't mind knocking out MIPS and taking their spot in that market. I understand this line of thinking, but disagree with it. ARM should compete with PPC/MIPS at the low end, and aim for taking over that segment.

 

[-Fran-]

Why the hate on ARM being faster?

I agree with juanrga on one specific point: currently, all ARM CPUs are targeted for ridiculously low power envelopes, so you can't compare them to any CPU from tablets and up. I remember the Xolo 900 from Lenovo which had an Atom in it and was on par (albeit with a tad higher power consumption) with ARM9 cores (ARMv7 ISA?), but we haven't seen anything comparing (that I recall) ARM15 and the Xolo 900, or their big brothers using ARMv8 (64bit pointers?). I remember PowerPC having 128bit registers back in the day.

Anyway, don't discard so easy what a full blown RISC CPU can do against the X86+ ISA. This is the same old conclusion we always reach here: the right tool for the job makes the difference.

Cheers!

 

[de5_Roy]

Spoiler

IF in 5, 10 or 20 years everything goes cloud it will make little difference if you have x86 or ARM or something else but in the short term why would ARM bother trying to compete in desktops when its a shrinking market everyone else is moving away from. It does compete in the netbook side of the market.

Cloud Computing is getting pushed hard so that companies can make money by charging you to use their servers. Its a novel concept to be certain, but I question the security of it all.

http://www.adobe.com/products/cs6.html?promoid=JOLIS

While Adobe Creative Suite® 6 products will continue to be available for purchase, Adobe has no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products.

ouch. Kinda makes AMD's OpenCL on Photoshop effort pointless.

The problems ... No internet, no software. What if you want to take a vacation to a remote cabin and enjoy the peace and quiet for some "inspriation", well you have no software to edit that inspirational moment.

And what about privacy? Our great and powerful government already wants to spy on everyone, CC makes this easier since they just have to go to the source (adobe, google, ect), and you won't even know they looked at or stole your information.

Then there are the "hackers". you can always protect your private information by keeping a system offline, not possible with CC.

The good part about CC is the fact that the software is ran on remote servers. You could use any device that has enough graphics power for what your working on. <-- this is another reason why companies are pushing low end CPU with high end graphics. However, they still need high end servers for CC to work.

Depending on how hard CC is embraced, it could reshape the entire industry. You would never own any software, just some server login. This could also be another negative. 50 software purchases = 50 separate logins ... nasty.

hardware failures are also problems. if the could servers fail (component failure, cyber attack etc.), everyone who subscribes to the cloud services are blocked out. same with maintenance. worse, if the cloud services implement mechanisms to lock users out of their offline data if they're not logged in to the cloud user account.

 

[juanrga]

You cannot compare Kaveri bandwidth on site A to Richland bandwidth on site B.

why not? raw memory bandwidth isn't software dependent. despite that, it's the same benching software and same test, even.

You have to compare Kaveri bandwidth on site A to Richland bandwidth on site A.

If the benchmark on site A are right. Kaveri comes with a ~33% better memory subsystem than Richland.

Now go to toms and multiply _their_ Richland bandwidth numbers by a ~33% and that must be close to what Kaveri will hit when was benchmarked by toms.

i'd rather not multiply tom's richland bw measurement. multiplying doesn't even make sense. 85~ GB/s is gddr5 level memory bandwidth (using max. 16 GB/s as baseline). that's how much bw the igpu actually deserves, to flex it's muscle.
i can't use linear improvement either, because that makes kaveri's memory bw look worse for the igpu it's fitted with.
using toms' hsw/richland memory article as a reference, if i add (assuming linear 33% improvement) to maximum measured 16GB/s (with ddr3 2133 ram) figure i get roughly 22 GB/s - not very encouraging considering what the competition gets out of the same spec. still, amd's shaders are so starved for bw, at 22 GB/s they'll fill 'em with higher performance. not the performance they should be able to deliver, though.

Memory bandwidth score, as any other synthetic benchmark, is software dependent.

16GB/s + 33% = 21GB/s.

Also the A10 is not a natural competitor for an i7-4770k. Toms would have chosen an i3 or an i5 for a fair comparison and repeat the test with an AMD mobo/BIOS that doesn't fail at highest memory profiles.

Better at raw performance and performance per watt. I have no reason to believe that x86 code is not optimized.

But my point is this: You aren't running the same code. You are running the ARM compiled version of the SW, running an on ARM OS, against the X86 version of the SW, running on an X86 OS (likely Windows).

So saying "ARM is getting more performance" is a "little" bit disingenuous. You'd have to figure a good 10% or so margin of error in results simply due to the different SW and platforms being run on.

The DT Os have existed for years. When more and more people switch to ARM for desktop, server... more options will exist of course. The only who believes that MS will play some role is Nvidia.

OS's without non-exclusive X86 support for the Desktop comprise <2% of the market.

I rest my case. This is no different then the argument that PPC would replace X86 over two decades ago. Apple moving the PPC was "proof" that X86 was going to die. Funny how that worked out, isn't it?

There is interest in ARM simply because X86 does not scale downward particularly well. This is nothing new. That being said, Windows itself doesn't scale downward very well either. X86/Windows is going to remain the desktop platform of choice, and ARM/Android will remain the mobile platform of choice. The end.

Irrelevant because you are never running exactly the same code even when comparing AMD to Intel (all x86). E.g. the OS can have fixes that only run on the AMD chip. The video encoder can be executing special instructions only available to a Haswell chip, the Cinebench benchmark can be using two difference codes, one fast for GenuineIntel other slow for the rest, thanks to a unfair cpu dispatcher....

Do you really believe that AMD chose ARM over its own jaguar design because benchmarks were giving less than a 10% advantage? Do you believe AMD engineers don't know margin of errors?

Those current market shares (even if they are right, I doubt very much) don't count. Today the number of ARM server is virtually zero. Still every analyst in the industry predict ARM servers market share will be around a 20% in some few years. Lots of companies are preparing ARM servers, including companies such as HP and Dell.

The "they said so" is not an argument, because also works in the other way. Also I never said x86 will die. I said something different.

The interest in ARM for phones/tablets is because x86 doesn't scale well downward. The interest in ARM for servers/supercomputers is because x86 doesn't scale well upwards.

Once you have ARM dominating servers, supercomputers, workstations, tablets, and phones, the weird thing would be to retain x86/windows in the desktop. That will only work for legacy workloads or for people who is slow at changes. x86/windows will remain as a niche.

 

[griptwister]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

 

[esrever]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

why would I ever dual boot an OS that offers nothing?

 

[griptwister]

Considering Windows 8 BLOWS and this is an OS optimized for gaming. I'm happy with it. It would allow me to unclutter my desktop and use it for programs that support windows while I can have another large drive filled with games... who knows, they might even work a better cache system into there.

 

[etayorius]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

For F sake AMD... they keept constantly posting about how excited they were and they could not wait for the 23.

2 days before the 23 they posted on twitter that only 2 days, and the next day they keep posting only one day and AMD on facebook said to keep our eyes on AMDFX twitter and to check their previous posts, they totally made it sound like they were going to announce something... what a bunch of F----- A-- Holes.

 

[blackkstar]

Woah you guys. You're forgetting that A7/A57/ARMv8 is not as good as you're thinking.

Yeah A7 is fast compared to older ARM chips, but it is upward of 1 billion transistors. Even if it has GPU, FX 8350 is 1.2 billion transistors and IB 4C with GPU is 1.2 billion transistors. Haswell ULT GT3 2C is 1.3 billion transistors.

A7 is around one billion transistors. How much do you want to bet that A7 will not come close to Haswell ULT GT3 2C performance?

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

For F sake AMD... they keept constantly posting about how excited they were and they could not wait for the 23.

2 days before the 23 they posted on twitter that only 2 days, and the next day they keep posting only one day and AMD on facebook said to keep our eyes on AMDFX twitter and to check their previous posts, they totally made it sound like they were going to announce something... what a bunch of F----- A-- Holes.

We still have the rest of the day, just stay calm alright,

 

[blackkstar]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

For F sake AMD... they keept constantly posting about how excited they were and they could not wait for the 23.

2 days before the 23 they posted on twitter that only 2 days, and the next day they keep posting only one day and AMD on facebook said to keep our eyes on AMDFX twitter and to check their previous posts, they totally made it sound like they were going to announce something... what a bunch of F----- A-- Holes.

We still have the rest of the day, just stay calm alright,

They are updating their products page, I'm getting an error right now trying to go to it:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx.aspx

Spoiler

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx.aspx
Line Number 144, Column 71: src="http://metrics.amd.com/b/ss/amdvglobal/1/H.20.3--NS/0?[AQB]&cdp=3&[AQE]"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

Kind of rash to be updating product page without announcing anything if you ask me. No idea what's happening.

EDIT: they deleted the tweet linking to the products page. Something is going on... Probably disappointment as social media noise is usually nothing enthusiasts want to hear about.

 

[esrever]

Considering Windows 8 BLOWS and this is an OS optimized for gaming. I'm happy with it. It would allow me to unclutter my desktop and use it for programs that support windows while I can have another large drive filled with games... who knows, they might even work a better cache system into there.

So you will reboot every time you run a game when you don't have to? Currently they don't seem to offer anything extra.

What do you have against windows 8 besides the tiles? The OS is perfectly functional and runs more than steamOS ever will. Will probably run most games better than steamOS since most PC devs don't use openGL and will be supporting windows as the main platform due to accessibility.

 

[blackkstar]

Considering Windows 8 BLOWS and this is an OS optimized for gaming. I'm happy with it. It would allow me to unclutter my desktop and use it for programs that support windows while I can have another large drive filled with games... who knows, they might even work a better cache system into there.

So you will reboot every time you run a game when you don't have to? Currently they don't seem to offer anything extra.

What do you have against windows 8 besides the tiles? The OS is perfectly functional and runs more than steamOS ever will. Will probably run most games better than steamOS since most PC devs don't use openGL and will be supporting windows as the main platform due to accessibility.

I don't think you really understand Linux performance. My Core 2 Duo 1.66ghz laptop with x1600 mobility chip runs Windows 7 horribly. I have Gentoo on it and tons of eye candy and it's fantastic.

 

[esrever]

Considering Windows 8 BLOWS and this is an OS optimized for gaming. I'm happy with it. It would allow me to unclutter my desktop and use it for programs that support windows while I can have another large drive filled with games... who knows, they might even work a better cache system into there.

So you will reboot every time you run a game when you don't have to? Currently they don't seem to offer anything extra.

What do you have against windows 8 besides the tiles? The OS is perfectly functional and runs more than steamOS ever will. Will probably run most games better than steamOS since most PC devs don't use openGL and will be supporting windows as the main platform due to accessibility.

I don't think you really understand Linux performance. My Core 2 Duo 1.66ghz laptop with x1600 mobility chip runs Windows 7 horribly. I have Gentoo on it and tons of eye candy and it's fantastic.

what does that have to do with games which run in runtimes like openGL which no dev is going to optimize for except for valve.

 

[simon12]

Steam OS could be the biggest gaming news in a long time especially if this bit is true “In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases” or it could be a non-starter no one remembers in 6 months. Is it to compete with next gen consoles, windows or both?

 

[juanrga]

I think just the contrary. Intel is at the peak of the x86, whereas ARM is starting to release its true potential. Look at AMD, they have benchmarked the new A57 core and found it is better than its own jaguar core, which was already an optimal peak in x86 _64 bit_ space.

Better at what? On what software? Maybe the X86 code is REALLY unoptimized compared to the ARM code. Etc, etc, etc.

Again people: X86 isn't going anywhere because of the 20 years worth of software. So please, this whole "ARM is going to take over" is just nonsense.

Better at raw performance and performance per watt. I have no reason to believe that x86 code is not optimized.

ARM and Apple will be switching to an ARM world. Nvidia is preparing an entire range of ARM-based products from phone to supercomputers, including servers, tablets, desktops... and several of us are convinced than next gen game consoles will be ARM based. This gen was close to being it.

Let's get a few things straight here:

1.) ARM != better raw performance. You can't scale ARM upwardly as well as x86. It also does not run the same density of code...x86 can run some *very* dense code. ARM does not have the means to do all of that yet. Which leads to my next point...

2.) It is better P/W right now up to a certain threshold. Once they start adding the things that x86 has as advantages, the P/W is going to go down the toilet. Because the hardware will start to become bloated, much like the hardware for the very mature x86 has now. It's all necessary in this day and age, but it's not conducive to good P/W.

Recall back when GPUs didn't need an extra power connector in a PC? They do now...

Recall back when a DT chip worked in a Laptop? They don't now...

There are reasons for this. Power consumption grows rapidly as you start adding things like quad channel memory controllers, and other features that ARM doesn't have, but x86 can/does. When ARM has those features, it will not longer be an attractive low power option because of the complexity and increased power draw.

1) There is nothing on ARM incompatible with raw performance. There is nothing on ARM impeding scaling upward. The same cannot be said of x86, which cannot be well scaled.

Density of code means little, because those complex instructions usually take much more time to execute.

2) The new A57 core has shown how one can increase performance over the previous generation whereas increasing efficiency as well. I don't wait that ARM can be scaled up forever without compromising efficiency at some point, there is no free lunch; but thanks to the greater initial efficiency advantage, the fastest ARM cores will continue consuming only a fraction of the power of a similar performance x86 chip.

That is why ARM has been selected by Mont Blanc project (and similar others) for next gen supercomputing.

Your example of the GPU is very good because illustrates my point nicely. Current high-end GPUs consume much more power than years ago, but the increase in performance has been much greater and, as a consequence, GPUs efficiency is much higher than for CPUs. There is no way you can scale up a x86 CPU to consume some given power figure whereas providing the same performance than a GPU. That is why top supercomputers are hybrid designs with GPUs for compute. Those GPUs consume lots of power, but offer much much more performance than a bunch of CPUs consuming the same power.

For the sake of comparison, the new Seattle CPU offers (according to information given by AMD) about the same raw performance than a hypothetical Steamroller 8-core chip @ 4GHz but _probably_ consuming less than one half the power. A pair of pages ago it seemed to me that you considered a FX steamroller 8-core as "high performance".

I think just the contrary. Intel is at the peak of the x86, whereas ARM is starting to release its true potential. Look at AMD, they have benchmarked the new A57 core and found it is better than its own jaguar core, which was already an optimal peak in x86 _64 bit_ space.

Better at what? On what software? Maybe the X86 code is REALLY unoptimized compared to the ARM code. Etc, etc, etc.

Again people: X86 isn't going anywhere because of the 20 years worth of software. So please, this whole "ARM is going to take over" is just nonsense.

Better at raw performance and performance per watt. I have no reason to believe that x86 code is not optimized.

ARM and Apple will be switching to an ARM world. Nvidia is preparing an entire range of ARM-based products from phone to supercomputers, including servers, tablets, desktops... and several of us are convinced than next gen game consoles will be ARM based. This gen was close to being it.

Ive already proven to you that ARM is no where near raw performance of X86 and now your back at it again, except this time its both raw and PPW?!

just admit your wrong and leave it at that. Oh, thats right, you can't, you know more than anyone working for AMD and Intel combined.

ARM ~= Atom << Ivy.

As for Nvidia's supercomputer, the ARM core is only there to turn on the quaddro gpus so they can do ALL the work. ARM is aimed to take on microservers, thats hardly considered supercomputers.

Sorry, but you have only proved that you didn't understand anything.

 

[juanrga]

Woah you guys. You're forgetting that A7/A57/ARMv8 is not as good as you're thinking.

Yeah A7 is fast compared to older ARM chips, but it is upward of 1 billion transistors. Even if it has GPU, FX 8350 is 1.2 billion transistors and IB 4C with GPU is 1.2 billion transistors. Haswell ULT GT3 2C is 1.3 billion transistors.

A7 is around one billion transistors. How much do you want to bet that A7 will not come close to Haswell ULT GT3 2C performance?

One can compare ARM to x86 as well. The standard A57 core is at least so fast like the jaguar core. And Apple A7 core is faster than the best and last attempt by Intel: Silvermont.

You are comparing a SoC to CPUs/APUs. Consider that when counting transistors. Apple A7 is a SoC that includes such things as securecore and even an image signal processor for the camera. The ARM CPU occupies only a small part of the SoC die space.

Your comparison of the Apple A7 performance to Haswell performance is also misguided, because the Haswell APU has much more thermal headroom, at least one order of magnitude higher (that is why it cannot be used inside a phone).

If you were to thermal/power constraint the Haswell APU down to the A7 levels you would obtain a very very slow CPU (compared to the A7 CPU). That is why Intel had to release a new optimized architecture: Silvermont.

However Silvermont architecture continue being much slower (at same thermals/power) or hot/power-hungry (at same performance) than Apple A7.

Recall that the ARM A7 with a dual core at 1.3Ghz is able to offer the same raw performance than x86 Bayl Trail as a quad-core at 1.5Ghz (turbo >2Ghz)

Considering Windows 8 BLOWS and this is an OS optimized for gaming. I'm happy with it. It would allow me to unclutter my desktop and use it for programs that support windows while I can have another large drive filled with games... who knows, they might even work a better cache system into there.

So you will reboot every time you run a game when you don't have to? Currently they don't seem to offer anything extra.

What do you have against windows 8 besides the tiles? The OS is perfectly functional and runs more than steamOS ever will. Will probably run most games better than steamOS since most PC devs don't use openGL and will be supporting windows as the main platform due to accessibility.

I have always wondered why some people prefer slow/bloated/outdated/insecure/locked software to faster/efficient/uptodate/secure/open software.

 

[griptwister]

Well, I've currently got a lot of Valve games and I play TF2 competively. For me personally, Having another drive for my games that I need to load fast, it would be nice to have a dual boot with a faster OS. (I'd either buy a SSHD or a 128Gb SSD)

 

[griptwister]

juangra actually kepler cards high end gpus take a lot less power then previous fermi graphics cards. I have downclocked my gtx670 100mhz below base clock and with i5 4430 it takes like 210w and plays the game I want at 60fps. My q9300 and 6850 took on similar game 220w. Heck a gtx780 takes slightly less then a gtx580 to run and its like just over double its performance.

Lol, everyone still remember the GTX 480? Yes? Good, now continue talking about how spectacular Nvidia is.

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

juangra actually kepler cards high end gpus take a lot less power then previous fermi graphics cards. I have downclocked my gtx670 100mhz below base clock and with i5 4430 it takes like 210w and plays the game I want at 60fps. My q9300 and 6850 took on similar game 220w. Heck a gtx780 takes slightly less then a gtx580 to run and its like just over double its performance.

I just realized something, the performance per dollar has really gone to hell with both the Radeon cards and nVidia cards. The 470 (350-380ish) and 5870 (3$90-420ish) had far more performance per dollar than per say today's 680/770 or 7970 at launch. When the Kepler and Southern Islands 680/7970 cards come along after Fermi and Evergreen/Northern Islands, they were at laughable prices ($600 7970 and 4GB 680, I am looking @ YOU!) Even more now, with the 780 and especially the TITAN are such terrible value for money, after all, their predecessor, the GTX 580 was only $500...

 

[palladin9479]

There is interest in ARM simply because X86 does not scale downward particularly well. This is nothing new. That being said, Windows itself doesn't scale downward very well either. X86/Windows is going to remain the desktop platform of choice, and ARM/Android will remain the mobile platform of choice. The end.

This is what I've been trying to tell people. In order to scale up you need to start adding dedicated things to the die that aren't directly related to processing power. Cache / instruction schedulers / branch predictors / ect. Those things consume power and space and thus your cost per performance starts to erode rapidly. ARM doesn't scale up nearly as well as it's proponents say. It's a horizontal architecture, you get high performance by connection dozens of ARM processors to each other and executing a ton of distributed code. Try to close an ARM CPU very high and you slam into the same problems everyone else ran into two decades ago.

As for RISC CPU's being high powered, their have been high performance RISC CPU's for a very long time. RISC is actually much easier to make *fast* due to it's incredibly predictable instruction execution time. SUN even tried making a "Desktop" SPARC machine (Sunblade 100/150), didn't work out too well. Apple was using PPC which worked out better then the Sunblade's but even they switched over to x86 eventually. x86 is just cheaper to design around and already has a huge ecosystem to draw revenue from.

So the entire ARM vs x86 is just some wishful thinking. ARM is amazing at low power (electrical usage) devices that do just enough to be useful. It doesn't scale up nearly as well as the other design's but it's ability to scale down is unmatched.

 

[palladin9479]

juangra actually kepler cards high end gpus take a lot less power then previous fermi graphics cards. I have downclocked my gtx670 100mhz below base clock and with i5 4430 it takes like 210w and plays the game I want at 60fps. My q9300 and 6850 took on similar game 220w. Heck a gtx780 takes slightly less then a gtx580 to run and its like just over double its performance.

I just realized something, the performance per dollar has really gone to hell with both the Radeon cards and nVidia cards. The 470 (350-380ish) and 5870 (3$90-420ish) had far more performance per dollar than per say today's 680/770 or 7970 at launch. When the Kepler and Southern Islands 680/7970 cards come along after Fermi and Evergreen/Northern Islands, they were at laughable prices ($600 7970 and 4GB 680, I am looking @ YOU!) Even more now, with the 780 and especially the TITAN are such terrible value for money, after all, their predecessor, the GTX 580 was only $500...

Yeah I miss the days of the Geforce 4200 Ti or the 7900GS cards. Both companies have become really good at identifying market segments and pegging their prices to that segment. The upper end cards are obscenely priced because there are people who will pay that much for performance.

 

[etayorius]

Thought you guys might wanna hear about this! Finally, something interesting in the Tech world! May not be AMD related yet, but good news none the less.

http://www.techoftomorrow.com/2013/pc/valve-announces-steam-os-hundreds-of-games-coming/

Looks like I'll be going dual boot here soon...

(Also, nothing new about AMD processors, AMD just thanked their fans is all)

For F sake AMD... they keept constantly posting about how excited they were and they could not wait for the 23.

2 days before the 23 they posted on twitter that only 2 days, and the next day they keep posting only one day and AMD on facebook said to keep our eyes on AMDFX twitter and to check their previous posts, they totally made it sound like they were going to announce something... what a bunch of F----- A-- Holes.

We still have the rest of the day, just stay calm alright,

The day is done and still nothing, they were either going to announce something and went back or they were just trying to troll and piss some fans.