AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[Cazalan]

And by the way, how does the G3220 compares to Kaveri? Anyone has tested that?

I couldn't see gaming on a straight dual core. I have an Ivy Pentium ( backup backup rig) and it's fine for web browsing and light office tasks, but the system is not the most responsive. Complex web pages can make the UI freeze/stutter briefly. The HT on the i3 goes a long way for smoothing out the user interface keeping the cores fed.

 

[logainofhades]

You could even go with a 750k and an HD 7790 and be close in price to a 7850k. No matter how you slice it, the 7850k is just not very impressive, given its price.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 750K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($79.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus Radeon HD 7790 1GB Video Card ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $194.97
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-21 12:28 EST-0500)

 

[-Fran-]

I have 2 constraints though:

The PSU is only 270W (TSX) and the case is low profile (Thermaltake SD200) making space just for mATX boards (not even ITX AFAIK, since its old).

So, putting priority to the sound (at least Realtek ALC892, 1150 hopefully), the price with Intel jumps sky high. The difference in price between DDR3 1333 and 2400 is not THAT high to justify one or the other right away. And what about the FX4300 + R7-250 for HTPC? Should be cheaper, right? Problem is finding an AM3+ MoBo with decent sound, haha.

Cheers!

 

[logainofhades]

I am not much of an audiophile, so sound quality usually doesn't bother me much. I use a cheap bluetooth headset I bought @ Microcenter for $32 more often than not. :lol:

 

[-Fran-]

I use 2 Studio Monitor speakers (active ones, 65W each) besides the TV, so a crappy sound card will put a lot of noise into them, making it really un-pleasant. I have already tested it with notebooks and other PCs, and you can listen the crappy sound cards make a lot of signal noise through the speakers. I also double checked the ground connection and it's fine. My GF can play her guitar through them just fine with no noise.

That's why I want a good MoBo, so the circuit noise is very low. But yeah, I consider myself an audiophile, somewhat

And no, HT systems suck IMO. Except those sweet Onkyo and Yamaha HTs. So expensive, yet so sexy, haha.

Cheers!

 

[logainofhades]

My Z77 extreme4 has decent onboard audio with THX true studio support. I only use 2.1 Creative Labs speakers with it when not using my headset, though. I do agree, if you want to have good onboard audio, you have to generally pay more. My PhII rig used to feed into a 100w Sony tuner and into 2x 200w Technics. It was a cheap but effective setup. :lol:

 

[blackkstar]

I really wish people would stop calling Windows close sourced benchmarks compiled with unknown settings "absolute performance."

In my opinion, that's simply how well the chip performs in Windows in given workloads.

I real test of gross CPU performance would be to compare chips with compilers the CPU manufacturer has optimized (or made commits to if it's FLOSS), or created, in the most ideal environment.

I'm gonna get an A4-5000 subnotebook here pretty soon, and I plan on spending as little time on Windows as possible and as much in Gentoo with btver2 enabled in GCC as possible.

I saw a more than 2x speedup in Windows compared to Gentoo in Blender. A4-5000 scores 1.5 in Cinebench r11.5. In gentoo, that'd be the same as bumping my A4 5000 score to 3. Which actually makes it better than an i5.

So, I'd really appreciate it if we'd stop using precompiled close sourced benchmarks in Windows as absolute measure of CPU performance. It's Windows performance running on unknown compilers. Even if you are aware of what compiler a benchmark is compiled with, it's still going to call DLLs and do all sorts of stuff.

Disassembling Cinebench r11.5 has been a treat. I think I find the anti-AMD code and then I find that there's more DLLs files and stuff not playing fair that needs to be looked at.

 

[juanrga]

I am merely mentioning benchmarks of Steamroller/Kaveri when they are appearing online and then comparing them to predictions made in this same thread. This must disagree to people who claimed that the numbers were fake or to people who did failed predictions and is now trying to hide them. It must be also disagree to people like you who either post off-topic stuff or personal attacks as this recent one.

aww, do you really think we're blind? even after being told to stop linking to your website, you found(!) a workaround(!!) by linking to the same stuff on bsn website (which links to...wait..for it... here it comes...it's just that obvious... your website). imo, that's called 'gaming the system', not discussion. that's long before we argue the validity and credibility of your uh... whatever you call it.
i can assure you neither this post and the post before where i mentioned you is off-topic. in the previous post, i was stating how you use stamroller rumors (for example, among many others) to incite certain events for personal satisfaction rather than healthy discussion or argument. if you take that as a personal attack, i can't help you there. i have noticed that any time any one (even mods, lol) argues with you, or presents a valid counter-argument, you cry "personal attack". as for off-topic, i've posted since this thread started, and can safely claim that i post on-topic almost all the time. when i don't, i don't deviate too far, even if i am writing against amd's favor/bias.

Double standards coming again. There is an author here who is promoting his own website but you don't care. You only care about an article about Steamroller in another website.

The rest of your post doesn't even deserves a reply. I will use the rest of the post to link to this

http://www.legitreviews.com/asrock-ships-amd-fm2-kaveri-motherboards-ready-2400mhz-memory-kits_133750

 

[juanrga]

I really wish people would stop calling Windows close sourced benchmarks compiled with unknown settings "absolute performance."

In my opinion, that's simply how well the chip performs in Windows in given workloads.

I real test of gross CPU performance would be to compare chips with compilers the CPU manufacturer has optimized (or made commits to if it's FLOSS), or created, in the most ideal environment.

I'm gonna get an A4-5000 subnotebook here pretty soon, and I plan on spending as little time on Windows as possible and as much in Gentoo with btver2 enabled in GCC as possible.

I saw a more than 2x speedup in Windows compared to Gentoo in Blender. A4-5000 scores 1.5 in Cinebench r11.5. In gentoo, that'd be the same as bumping my A4 5000 score to 3. Which actually makes it better than an i5.

So, I'd really appreciate it if we'd stop using precompiled close sourced benchmarks in Windows as absolute measure of CPU performance. It's Windows performance running on unknown compilers. Even if you are aware of what compiler a benchmark is compiled with, it's still going to call DLLs and do all sorts of stuff.

Disassembling Cinebench r11.5 has been a treat. I think I find the anti-AMD code and then I find that there's more DLLs files and stuff not playing fair that needs to be looked at.

Agree 100%.

It is evident that many 'professional' reviews of Kaveri were biased. Several sites used W7 (optimized for Intel) instead W8.1 (with better CMT support) or Linux (SteamOS is coming).

HSA software was ready but ignored by most sites.

One of the review sites used an x264 binary which is optimized for Haswell chips. Then they compared Kaveri to i3/i5 Haswell using that binary. They didn't add any Sandy/Ivy chip to the comparison because Kaveri would be competitive. Of course Kaveri had difficulties to match a Haswell i3 when running that binary optimized for Haswell. To put thing in perspective, the new x264 binary that they used in their review runs up to 45% faster than the older x264 binary in a Haswell chip.

I predicted that Kaveri would be at the SB i5 level and openbenchmarking tests show Kaveri is at that level. But some few people don't accept it because open/verifiable results don't agree with closed/inverifiable results from 'professional' sites. Of course, if one underclocks the Kaveri 2400MHz memory to 1600MHz (as one site did) drops W8.1/Linux by W7 (as many did), and run binaries exclusively optimized for Intel then Kaveri will be far from Intel.

And there are other tricks often used in the 'professional' reviews. E.g. if you are measuring power consumption, select one of the more power hungry mobos for AMD and one of the more powersaving mobos for Intel. Some 'professional' review of Kaveri selected a Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI which consumes near 50W more than the Asus A88X-Pro with the same A10 APU under Cinebench (another Intel optimized bench). Imagine what mobo was selected for Intel: yes, a AsRock Z87E-ITX, which is one of the more efficient mobos for Intel. The same site (it is not Anand) used different PSUs, with the Intel system receiving the more efficient PSU (subtract another 5-10% to power consumption measurement).

Don't misinterpret me. The same open benchmarks show that AMD quad-core Steamroller is still far from Haswell i5 performance in average (only in one of the test Kaveri was faster than i5-4670), but Kaveri clearly outperforms Haswell i3 and competes with SB i5.

 

[beyondlogic]

I really wish people would stop calling Windows close sourced benchmarks compiled with unknown settings "absolute performance."

In my opinion, that's simply how well the chip performs in Windows in given workloads.

I real test of gross CPU performance would be to compare chips with compilers the CPU manufacturer has optimized (or made commits to if it's FLOSS), or created, in the most ideal environment.

I'm gonna get an A4-5000 subnotebook here pretty soon, and I plan on spending as little time on Windows as possible and as much in Gentoo with btver2 enabled in GCC as possible.

I saw a more than 2x speedup in Windows compared to Gentoo in Blender. A4-5000 scores 1.5 in Cinebench r11.5. In gentoo, that'd be the same as bumping my A4 5000 score to 3. Which actually makes it better than an i5.

So, I'd really appreciate it if we'd stop using precompiled close sourced benchmarks in Windows as absolute measure of CPU performance. It's Windows performance running on unknown compilers. Even if you are aware of what compiler a benchmark is compiled with, it's still going to call DLLs and do all sorts of stuff.

Disassembling Cinebench r11.5 has been a treat. I think I find the anti-AMD code and then I find that there's more DLLs files and stuff not playing fair that needs to be looked at.

Agree 100%.

It is evident that many 'professional' reviews of Kaveri were biased. Several sites used W7 (optimized for Intel) instead W8.1 (with better CMT support) or Linux (SteamOS is coming).

HSA software was ready but ignored by most sites.

One of the review sites used an x264 binary which is optimized for Haswell chips. Then they compared Kaveri to i3/i5 Haswell using that binary. They didn't add any Sandy/Ivy chip to the comparison because Kaveri would be competitive. Of course Kaveri had difficulties to match a Haswell i3 when running that binary optimized for Haswell. To put thing in perspective, the new x264 binary that they used in their review runs up to 45% faster than the older x264 binary in a Haswell chip.

I predicted that Kaveri would be at the SB i5 level and openbenchmarking tests show Kaveri is at that level. But some few people don't accept it because open/verifiable results don't agree with closed/inverifiable results from 'professional' sites. Of course, if one underclocks the Kaveri 2400MHz memory to 1600MHz (as one site did) drops W8.1/Linux by W7 (as many did), and run binaries exclusively optimized for Intel then Kaveri will be far from Intel.

And there are other tricks often used in the 'professional' reviews. E.g. if you are measuring power consumption, select one of the more power hungry mobos for AMD and one of the more powersaving mobos for Intel. Some 'professional' review of Kaveri selected a Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI which consumes near 50W more than the Asus A88X-Pro with the same A10 APU under Cinebench (another Intel optimized bench). Imagine what mobo was selected for Intel: yes, a AsRock Z87E-ITX, which is one of the more efficient mobos for Intel. The same site (it is not Anand) used different PSUs, with the Intel system receiving the more efficient PSU (subtract another 5-10% to power consumption measurement).

Don't misinterpret me. The same open benchmarks show that AMD quad-core Steamroller is still far from Haswell i5 performance in average (only in one of the test Kaveri was faster than i5-4670), but Kaveri clearly outperforms Haswell i3 and competes with SB i5.

personally i like kaveri in the uk it isnt half bad granted i could get cheaper i3 and a 7750 and have best of both worlds but these tests are done without amds mantle drivers which are delayed ( amds habit unfortunately)

people forget that kaveri isnt really aimed at gamers and they dont really control the prices either newegg etc can sell it for whatever personally to make it competive i uk its just got to drop its 95w power consumption down to 65w which a10 7800 if it comes out will. which is usually same performance just not unlocked.

plus the prices will go down eventually once they retailers notice not many are buying them.

To me though im a eco freak so i like to limit myself delibrately

if the a10 can merge with a 7750 or low end r7 card thats fine for me.

memory costs of 2133 and 2400 arent that much diffrent in uk though memory has gone up in uk quite a bit

e.g bought my vengence for round 45 pounds for 8gb of 1600mhz
now the price is 65

point is hsa may take off and if mantle driver works better it will benefit apu kaveri as well.

personally steamroller has issues due to the cpu cores are crammed in there with 50 percent of the die practically for the gpu ( which is a great feat) unfortunately its the manufacturing process that reduced the clock speed so i expected a performance hit. and i dont believe it ocs well you really cant compared steamroller kaveri to fx chip as its not really designed to be no more then a media part.

though i say its above a i3 and is between i3 and i5

if retailers dropped the horrific tag in usa and uk dropped it by 10-20 it look more attractive

 

[jdwii]

Thuban is actually a bigger die then Bulldozer and about the same energy consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenom_II

Die size: 346 mm²
TDP: 125W

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_FX_microprocessors
FX8150
Die size: 319 mm2
TDP: 125W

Many people confuse it with Deneb (980BE) which was a four core design from the start, which again has the same TDP as BD.

Die size: 258 mm²
TDP: 125W

What makes BD "power hungry" is overclocking it. Where as K10 slams into a wall and simply won't go much higher, BD and PD both can clock significantly higher then their TDP allows for but ends up with massive energy consumption. BD is about 4.4~4.5Ghz and PD is 4.8ghz when it hits that massive curve, K10's wall is 4Ghz. I know these numbers intimately as I built a custom WC kit for my 980 that I used on my fx8350.

don't go by that go by transistors the rest has to do with fabrication.

 

[jdwii]

A new score has been submitted to Passmark

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A10-7850K+APU+with+Radeon+R7+Graphics&id=2133

Now the average is 5865. This is now a 98% of the predicted value. The error between prediction and measurement has reduced to 2%. It seems like if someone submitted some bad chip score initially and that all the news submission are increasing the average. I expect the score to continue increasing in next months with more submissions of normal chips.

Although their review of Kaveri was rather bad, I am rather sympathetic to this

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174980-its-time-for-amd-to-take-a-page-from-intel-and-dump-steamroller

Finally Steamroller is more efficient than Kabini (Jaguar) but I agree that big cores are not the future. In particular the article agrees with my early prediction that near future is towards lower clocked designs. In fact, I expect Excavator to introduce another clock regression, but this is better left for the Excavator thread... haha

Passmark is not even a accurate benchmark

 

[jdwii]

I use 2 Studio Monitor speakers (active ones, 65W each) besides the TV, so a crappy sound card will put a lot of noise into them, making it really un-pleasant. I have already tested it with notebooks and other PCs, and you can listen the crappy sound cards make a lot of signal noise through the speakers. I also double checked the ground connection and it's fine. My GF can play her guitar through them just fine with no noise.

That's why I want a good MoBo, so the circuit noise is very low. But yeah, I consider myself an audiophile, somewhat

And no, HT systems suck IMO. Except those sweet Onkyo and Yamaha HTs. So expensive, yet so sexy, haha.

Cheers!

I love polk audio i use monitor 70's for my front CS2 center and monitor 30's for my back speakers with a Bic F12 sub. Also i use my polk ultrafocus 8000's for gaming most of the time they sound amazing. Actually their the reasonn why i did not buy a 8350fx or 280x.

 

[wh3resmycar]

i hope nobody's recommending an a10 chip for gaming, that's fraud. funny how i got bashed for suggesting a low-end CPU + midrange gpu a few pages back but now people are actually looking at the lowest range haswell chip.. jolly good.

 

[logainofhades]

i hope nobody's recommending an a10 chip for gaming, that's fraud. funny how i got bashed for suggesting a low-end CPU + midrange gpu a few pages back but now people are actually looking at the lowest range haswell chip.. jolly good.

I have been recommending a 750k and 7750 over a 6800k for months now. Kaveri, imo, is a letdown for desktop. The graphics performance still isn't there, and probably won't be till we can get away from DDR3.

 

[-Fran-]

i hope nobody's recommending an a10 chip for gaming, that's fraud. funny how i got bashed for suggesting a low-end CPU + midrange gpu a few pages back but now people are actually looking at the lowest range haswell chip.. jolly good.

I think we all know there are "other" configs out there for HTPCs and cheap gaming PCs, so making it an exercise to see how good Kaveri is positioned doesn't mean we're neglecting Intel offerings in our minds.

Personally, my driver is form factor and sound (audio + silence). Intel is more expensive in that end than AMD in terms of MoBos from what I've seen, and Intel sucks for HTPC with no discrete solution (close to fact). Kaveri needs high speed DDR3 to work, Intel doesn't. So, making this exercise is pretty realistic, I'd say.

Anyway... Sound + mATX, lol.

Cheers!

 

[palladin9479]

Well, I was looking around and a G3220+R7250 GDDR5 is around the same price, so I'm really wondering now about trades from both approaches.

The MoBo with a decent SPU (sound asdadasd unit) is VERY expensive for socket 1150, but I won't be needing expensive RAM for the Pentium. The exercise is quite cool, so AMD better put pressure to Intel there.

And by the way, how does the G3220 compares to Kaveri? Anyone has tested that?

Cheers!

i3's are horrible for gaming on an actual computer. The one issue I have with reviewer benchmarks is that they disable everything else on the system to reduce the noise of their performance metrics. That's fine for debating the theoretical merits of a particular hardware item but not indicative of real world performance. Background services tend to be left on, firewalls, antivirus and other security software tends to be left running, most people keep their web browser open in the background with multiple tabs, even stuff like ventrillo, teamspeak, mumble or various other external software is running. Those programs, while not a huge burden in and of themselves, do use up CPU power. That would have a large impact on the actual experience if your system only had two cores. For awhile now I've been recommending people get a true quad core at a minimum, the fx4 brand ~barely~ makes the cut but the low end i3's are definitely not a good idea.

I would also never recommend APU's for pure gaming rigs, their for low power / SFF box's where power and space are at a premium. So really your talking about the fx6 and the i5 as the real budget / value choices. And yes the 7850K is horribly overpriced right now, it would be acceptable at $150~160 USD but for now it looks like the 7600 is the real value part. Ohh and the thing to keep in mind is power usage, that 65W APU can be run on a 120~150W picoPSU which makes it ideal for ridiculously small builds.

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD's console business pays off handsomely and profitably (q4 and annual results)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089881/amds-console-business-pays-off-handsomely-and-profitably.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/197099/amd-reports-2013-fourth-quarter-and-annual-results.html

 

[Cazalan]

AMD meets Q4 expectations; shares slip anyway.
http://www.zdnet.com/amd-meets-q4-expectations-shares-slip-anyway-7000025405/

Is the glass half empty or half full

Stocks aren't purchased based on how they're currently doing, it's based on how they're expected to do in the future.

"The company said that it expects revenue for the current first quarter to decrease 16 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially. "

Making analysts expect a small operating loss in Q1.

"Analysts expect a loss of a penny per share in the coming quarter."

Which means AMD needs another round of layoffs or they'll be in the red again after 2 brief quarters in the black.

 

[juanrga]

personally i like kaveri in the uk it isnt half bad granted i could get cheaper i3 and a 7750 and have best of both worlds but these tests are done without amds mantle drivers which are delayed ( amds habit unfortunately)

people forget that kaveri isnt really aimed at gamers and they dont really control the prices either newegg etc can sell it for whatever personally to make it competive i uk its just got to drop its 95w power consumption down to 65w which a10 7800 if it comes out will. which is usually same performance just not unlocked.

plus the prices will go down eventually once they retailers notice not many are buying them.

To me though im a eco freak so i like to limit myself delibrately

if the a10 can merge with a 7750 or low end r7 card thats fine for me.

memory costs of 2133 and 2400 arent that much diffrent in uk though memory has gone up in uk quite a bit

e.g bought my vengence for round 45 pounds for 8gb of 1600mhz
now the price is 65

point is hsa may take off and if mantle driver works better it will benefit apu kaveri as well.

personally steamroller has issues due to the cpu cores are crammed in there with 50 percent of the die practically for the gpu ( which is a great feat) unfortunately its the manufacturing process that reduced the clock speed so i expected a performance hit. and i dont believe it ocs well you really cant compared steamroller kaveri to fx chip as its not really designed to be no more then a media part.

though i say its above a i3 and is between i3 and i5

if retailers dropped the horrific tag in usa and uk dropped it by 10-20 it look more attractive

I agree that CPU is between i3 and i5. In Spain 2133MHz memory is already cheaper than 1600MHz. And the 2400MHz is only a bit more expensive.

Kaveri will not break OC records, but can hit 4.6GHz on air (average), showing better OC than Trinity.

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD Talks Mobile in its Q4 Call
Premium Kaveri Laptops Anyone?
http://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/22/amd-talks-mobile-q4-call/

16-core ''Warsaw'' CPUs added to Opteron lineup
http://techreport.com/news/25946/16-core-warsaw-cpus-added-to-opteron-lineup

Floating point peak performance of Kaveri and other recent AMD and Intel chips
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7711/floating-point-peak-performance-of-kaveri-and-other-recent-amd-and-intel-chips

edit:
Is Nintendo working on a new console already?
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33722-is-nintendo-working-on-a-new-console-already?

i can't read german, but it looks like a ram scaling analysis of kaveri
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/2014/amds-kaveri-und-der-speicher/

 

[Rum]

AMD meets Q4 expectations; shares slip anyway.
http://www.zdnet.com/amd-meets-q4-expectations-shares-slip-anyway-7000025405/

Is the glass half empty or half full

Stocks aren't purchased based on how they're currently doing, it's based on how they're expected to do in the future.

"The company said that it expects revenue for the current first quarter to decrease 16 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially. "

Making analysts expect a small operating loss in Q1.

"Analysts expect a loss of a penny per share in the coming quarter."

Which means AMD needs another round of layoffs or they'll be in the red again after 2 brief quarters in the black.

Well do they do another round of layoffs or do they consolidate their work force and reduce the number of different architectures/ projects they are producing and start to concentrate on sectors that will make money? And no I am not advocating they go strictly APU... They have hired Keller and several other engineers I think it's about time for them to ditch the Ruiz/ Myers fiasco Architecture aka BD - excavator and head in another direction... Easier said than done and I know it takes time but at some point it needs to happen. An unrealistic article but good food for thought http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174980-its-time-for-amd-to-take-a-page-from-intel-and-dump-steamroller .

 

[lilcinw]

i can't read german, but it looks like a ram scaling analysis of kaveri
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/2014/amds-kaveri-und-der-speicher/

Google translate is your friend. The article examines the difference between single and dual rank configurations. It seems that using two dual rank sticks gives the best performance.

 

[noob2222]

@juan

Corrected by someone who never even verified anything isnt correcting, just making up things from thin air isnt correcting.

my tests with cosmology can be 100% verified. You saying "your wrong" cant be verified.

Passmark ... real world ... omg in the same sentence ... rofl. Passmark is 100% synthetic measuring only fpu and alu preformance. It doesnt even test the memory subsystem in a "cpu" benchmark.

Not to mention the submitted "baseline" results arent even at stock clocks.

http://www.passmark.com/baselines/V8/display.php?id=18879541076

Lets at least look at stock speeds.

http://www.passmark.com/baselines/V8/display.php?id=18936243269

wow. Almost 5000 pts, 1000 pts below 6000.

 

[-Fran-]

i can't read german, but it looks like a ram scaling analysis of kaveri
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/2014/amds-kaveri-und-der-speicher/

Google translate is your friend. The article examines the difference between single and dual rank configurations. It seems that using two dual rank sticks gives the best performance.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_kaveri_memory&num=1

In case it wasn't noticed.

Cheers!

EDIT: "2 × DR = Two dual-rank modules" -> Best config. Does this mean we want 2 RAM slots used with chips on both of their sides?