AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[cemerian]

I was also expecting AMD to release another Piledriver, but i was expecting lower TDP and little higher clocks, but daaamn AMD, DAAAMN... you shame yourself with this horrible offer.

I was expecting higher TDPs of ~240--250W, but in any case I agree.

People expecting more than the FX9590 don't really seem to get that even that cpu was binned so hard it had to release at $1000 and AMD couldn't even afford to sell it by itself until months later. Piledriver has been pushed to its limits and AMD will have nothing for high end for a long time.

With water cooling a 9590 can be pushed above the 5GHz barrier. This is why I was expecting a '9990' with 300MHz higher clocks.

yes but not with a 120mm rad, i dare anyone to run prime on that thing, it will shut down long before you be able to ses if its even stable
my 8350 @1,49v 5ghz can barely be cooled by my custom loop with a slim 360 mm rad and 45mm thick 240mm rad, and during prime/ ibt i get to about 5-10 c until tjmax, or in other words around 55c(and @ 62 fx's start to throttle, 80c shut down)

 

[logainofhades]

If you were going to do that....get the A10-6800k and save money, and actually be able to play games...

Intel iGPU does not even get playable frames on most games @ 1080p. At least the AMD solutions can do that...regardless of what you think of one company's cores over the other, the total package favors AMD.

I'd rather spend the extra $10 for a better upgrade path and get a haswell pentium with a GDDR5 equipped R7 240. I like the concept of the APU, but they are just not where they need to be yet for me to consider one for anything other than an HTPC, which would have me looking at a Kabini setup. I have been kicking around the idea of getting a mini-itx kabini setup for an HTPC for awhile now, just really don't need it. I spend most of my time at my desktop with its dual 24" Samsungs.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Diamond Radeon R7 240 1GB Video Card ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $138.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-6800K 4.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($129.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $129.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD lauds Mantle gains in Plants vs. Zombies
http://techreport.com/news/26709/amd-lauds-mantle-gains-in-plants-vs-zombies
fx8350 marginally outpaces core i7 4960x at ultra settings at 3 different resolutions.
this is what they all do, whenever they have favorable results, they loudly shout it out off the top of the internet..building....thingie.

 

[logainofhades]

Even going with the cheapest board for both on PCpartpicker, it is only a $14 difference. I prefer the H81 board I chose because it has multicore enhancement and I wouldn't want a cheapo MSI board either for the AMD. So still only $10 different.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-6800K 4.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($129.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A55M-VG3+ Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($44.99 @ TigerDirect)
Total: $174.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($48.38 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Diamond Radeon R7 240 1GB Video Card ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $187.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

 

[iron8orn]

If you were going to do that....get the A10-6800k and save money, and actually be able to play games...

Intel iGPU does not even get playable frames on most games @ 1080p. At least the AMD solutions can do that...regardless of what you think of one company's cores over the other, the total package favors AMD.

I'd rather spend the extra $10 for a better upgrade path and get a haswell pentium with a GDDR5 equipped R7 240. I like the concept of the APU, but they are just not where they need to be yet for me to consider one for anything other than an HTPC, which would have me looking at a Kabini setup. I have been kicking around the idea of getting a mini-itx kabini setup for an HTPC for awhile now, just really don't need it. I spend most of my time at my desktop with its dual 24" Samsungs.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Diamond Radeon R7 240 1GB Video Card ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $138.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-6800K 4.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($129.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $129.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

eh, they both pretty much suck.. but you can upgrade to a nice i5,i7,Xeon cpu with Intel that should not have a problem with a new dx12 gpu when that comes around and i can not say i would have the same faith for any current AMD cpu being a good match.

 

[con635]

Even going with the cheapest board for both on PCpartpicker, it is only a $14 difference. I prefer the H81 board I chose because it has multicore enhancement and I wouldn't want a cheapo MSI board either for the AMD. So still only $10 different.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-6800K 4.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($129.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A55M-VG3+ Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($44.99 @ TigerDirect)
Total: $174.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($48.38 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Diamond Radeon R7 240 1GB Video Card ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $187.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Interesting that most comparisons I see use the most expensive top model apu, I have 5600k a8, with good dc ram and very small multi/voltage tweaks on cpu, nb, gpu I reach the average of the a10 passmark score. So for 90% of the performance when set up properly I prefer the a8 and now I have a dgpu I have the same as a10 cpu performance and better binned cpu than 750k. All power saving features off I still got 45w idle, 65w browsing/light use at wall for whole tower before dgpu.
https://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-ad560kwohjbox
https://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaf2a55mhd2
Around price of a10 richland alone

 

[Kulasko]

eh, they both pretty much suck.. but you can upgrade to a nice i5,i7,Xeon cpu with Intel that should not have a problem with a new dx12 gpu when that comes around and i can not say i would have the same faith for any current AMD cpu being a good match.

That's the better upgrade path he mentioned.
But for a really more powerful PC, he would have to replace the GPU and the PSU anyway...

I would go with the APU since even if the graphics performance is slightly lower, the 6800k has more CPU performance and with a decent power supply, I still can go for a 260X and have a small budget gaming build.

 

[blackkstar]

I'm not too fond of AMD APUs at the moment. They don't have a strong enough upgrade path. If the AM and FM platforms were united, I think they'd be absolutely killer entry level systems, but they're not.

Intel lower end is not much better. You end up with some artificially gimped chipset.

AMD will look at lot better when you can buy a cheap APU and motherboard, while having the ability to put a 16 core dCPU in that same motherboard.

The problem with Intel and trying to look to future upgrades is that they go through sockets so fast, that you're not helping yourself by thinking you're going to upgrade to a new CPU. Once that new socket comes out, the older chips start to rise in price (usually).

I pretty much tell people that if they can't afford GTX 760 or R9 280 with an FX 6300 that there's no point in building a gaming PC until you can afford that.

I've done the upgrade crawl before from low end and it's pretty annoying when new games come out and you don't meet minimum requirements anymore (Pentium Gs and some APUs fall into this category). It's just not worth it. You end up buying the cheap CPU + more expensive CPU instead of just the more expensive CPU. And most of the time you also need a new motherboard.

We really need 3m/6c APUs for them to be viable gaming machines.

 

[logainofhades]

I'm not too fond of AMD APUs at the moment. They don't have a strong enough upgrade path. If the AM and FM platforms were united, I think they'd be absolutely killer entry level systems, but they're not.

Intel lower end is not much better. You end up with some artificially gimped chipset.

AMD will look at lot better when you can buy a cheap APU and motherboard, while having the ability to put a 16 core dCPU in that same motherboard.

The problem with Intel and trying to look to future upgrades is that they go through sockets so fast, that you're not helping yourself by thinking you're going to upgrade to a new CPU. Once that new socket comes out, the older chips start to rise in price (usually).

I pretty much tell people that if they can't afford GTX 760 or R9 280 with an FX 6300 that there's no point in building a gaming PC until you can afford that.

I've done the upgrade crawl before from low end and it's pretty annoying when new games come out and you don't meet minimum requirements anymore (Pentium Gs and some APUs fall into this category). It's just not worth it. You end up buying the cheap CPU + more expensive CPU instead of just the more expensive CPU. And most of the time you also need a new motherboard.

We really need 3m/6c APUs for them to be viable gaming machines.

You can still go entry level on Intel without being overly gimped. You can pair up a pentium G 3258, with an H97 pro4, and still overclock it. Hell even the ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 has non Z overclock feature. Probably wouldn't want to overclock much at all with that board, but the feature is there. Don't really need to overclock Intel all that much though. They are already pretty strong right out of the box.

 

[esrever]

AMD lauds Mantle gains in Plants vs. Zombies
http://techreport.com/news/26709/amd-lauds-mantle-gains-in-plants-vs-zombies
fx8350 marginally outpaces core i7 4960x at ultra settings at 3 different resolutions.
this is what they all do, whenever they have favorable results, they loudly shout it out off the top of the internet..building....thingie.

Seems like they are just releasing some basic data that they have for a game they are supporting. I have no idea where they "shouted from the roof tops". If they were all over twitter than I guess that might be true but if its just a simple press release then what ever.

 

[iron8orn]

Ya.. The only AMD apu i would recommend to anyone is the Kaveri but as logain has mentioned AMD quikly loses value when you go to the highest end chips with power consumption, upgrade ability, performance per dollar, dx12 gpu support and out of box performance... really everything.
The lga 1150 will not really be outdated for several years after the new gpu's come and most people wont even need to to put a Broadwell on it.
I wish i had logain to get me into Intel a few years ago..
Honestly with all points considered.. no one should really be recommending any AMD cpu on the forums to anyone doing more than less intensive office work, watching movies and surfing the internet.

 

[lilcinw]

Don't gotta explain to me basic overclocking and prices involved. Ego cough cough.
Not officially supporting overclocking is all a game of liability, lawyers and paper work when they could do right by people are give a real guide that would get them off the hook the same.

The new integrated graphics of Intel are perfectly fine with some high speed ram for someone who is smart enough to save for a nice video card and better than some of the junk old card's that Tom's would have a noob use for a budget gaming build that need to be overclocked for any kind of decent gaming performance. Same for the cpu's just garbage.

My friend with true genius for technology warned me not to come to Tom's for discussions because of ego and right wing bs. cough cough again!

I will still help noobs on the forums but I am out of this petty game.

It is amusing that you accuse me of being egotistical. I was only responding to what I have seen you post.

You started by essentially spamming for people to comment on a thread you created when even a cursory look at any of the past few pages would have let you know that 'speculation on the latest AMD architecture and HSA' is precisely what this thread covers.

Reading the referenced thread and any of your posts since reveals at worst a serious lack of understanding of the topics you are wildly speculating on or at best a far different interpretation of the available information. Another interpretation is fine if you are willing to debate it with outside evidence to show how you arrived at that interpretation. Otherwise you just look like a self-important ass who expects people to take your word as gospel.

Judging by the rig in your signature I don't need to explain overclocking to you and yet you act like it is some kind of monumental task that is only achievable by 1337 H@X0RZZZ!!!!11!1! when you know it is not that difficult.

Those crap parts that Tom's recommends would crush an iGPU and are perfectly suited to what they are recommended for; very low budget builds.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'right wing bs' but I suggest you leave those comments out of a tech discussion.

 

[iron8orn]

Hey, I never claimed to be an expert and I tried to start my own thread to gain higher understanding without involving myself on a thread that says expert. Yet it does seem that i know a lot compared to a lot of people that come here for help and I have no problem passing off a issue when I am stumped and admitting so.
Honestly sorry... I like Tom's for everything I have learned from articles.
I had some rough days and was letting things get to me easy.

 

[lilcinw]

The term 'expert' is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the amateur CPU engineers that have stalked the various incarnations of this thread (Bulldozer>Piledriver>current thread). There are a few here that have a quite a bit of knowledge in the discussed topics but I would say the majority are interested enthusiasts who are just trying to keep up with what AMD is doing.

Don't worry about it. My forum OCD forces me to read every single post before commenting. That generally causes me to look at boisterous newcomers very critically. Then again I probably wouldn't even have attempted to comb through all of a 280 page thread.

 

[jdwii]

AMD lauds Mantle gains in Plants vs. Zombies
http://techreport.com/news/26709/amd-lauds-mantle-gains-in-plants-vs-zombies
fx8350 marginally outpaces core i7 4960x at ultra settings at 3 different resolutions.
this is what they all do, whenever they have favorable results, they loudly shout it out off the top of the internet..building....thingie.

Weird seems like with Mantle its really taking advantage of all cores. Starting to be happier that i picked my 8350fx over a I5 more and more(although i had little choice since i already had a 200$ Amd board)

 

[Cazalan]

Plants vs. Zombies counts as a game these days? God help us!

 

[iron8orn]

Plants vs. Zombies counts as a game these days? God help us!

Hey if you really wanna get hardcore Steam has your back.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2198312/donate-rock-simulator-2014-free-rocks.html

 

[esrever]

Plants vs. Zombies counts as a game these days? God help us!

Don't diss a fun game.

 

[juanrga]

Weird seems like with Mantle its really taking advantage of all cores. Starting to be happier that i picked my 8350fx over a I5 more and more(although i had little choice since i already had a 200$ Amd board)

As I mentioned during months the new consoles would push FX-8350 for gaming, because developers would not rely on two/three threads. I also gave a link to a poll among game developers, where all of them agreed on that 8350 was more future gaming proof than an IB i5. I did repeat the link to the poll several times.

Moreover, one of the aims of MANTLE is to eliminate the DX11 barriers that impeded an effective use of 8 cores.

Since MANTLE announcement, we have seen benchmarks of new games where the FX-8350 hits i7s.

AMD is extending desktop Piledriver CPUs to 2015, because hexa-cores and octo-cores will be competitive up to new x86 arch is ready.

Where is the surprise?

 

[blackkstar]

I'm not too fond of AMD APUs at the moment. They don't have a strong enough upgrade path. If the AM and FM platforms were united, I think they'd be absolutely killer entry level systems, but they're not.

Intel lower end is not much better. You end up with some artificially gimped chipset.

AMD will look at lot better when you can buy a cheap APU and motherboard, while having the ability to put a 16 core dCPU in that same motherboard.

The problem with Intel and trying to look to future upgrades is that they go through sockets so fast, that you're not helping yourself by thinking you're going to upgrade to a new CPU. Once that new socket comes out, the older chips start to rise in price (usually).

I pretty much tell people that if they can't afford GTX 760 or R9 280 with an FX 6300 that there's no point in building a gaming PC until you can afford that.

I've done the upgrade crawl before from low end and it's pretty annoying when new games come out and you don't meet minimum requirements anymore (Pentium Gs and some APUs fall into this category). It's just not worth it. You end up buying the cheap CPU + more expensive CPU instead of just the more expensive CPU. And most of the time you also need a new motherboard.

We really need 3m/6c APUs for them to be viable gaming machines.

You can still go entry level on Intel without being overly gimped. You can pair up a pentium G 3258, with an H97 pro4, and still overclock it. Hell even the ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 has non Z overclock feature. Probably wouldn't want to overclock much at all with that board, but the feature is there. Don't really need to overclock Intel all that much though. They are already pretty strong right out of the box.

Did you miss the part of my post where I stated that Pentium G won't even make minimum requirements of some new games that have been released?

My entire point was that if you're going to spend $500 on a low end gaming PC that can't even play all the new games that come out, you might as well buy a console instead.

Unlocked Pentium G is a bait and switch. "buy Intel you can overclock this cheap CPU!" "wow this CPU can't even play any games, I better upgrade to a more expensive Intel CPU, I already have the motherboard!"

And then of course, you have Intel halo marketing effect, where people look at 4770k and higher beating on AMD and then think that a low end Intel is better than anything else too.

Look at the pentium listed earlier. 3.0ghz compared to 4.1ghz. That's a 37% increase in clock speed. The two are a lot closer in single thread than you think. You are just used to seeing high end Intel turbo boost to 4ghz in reviews, comparing base speeds, and then going "wow, AMD is 60% slower IPC! The stock speed of 8350 is 4ghz and the 4770k is 3.5ghz, HORRIBLE IPC AMD!"

When in fact they are running at same clock speed thanks to AMD turbo being broken and Intel turbo working very well, specially on a test bench.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/7

Look at the frame rates. Now look at the frame times. Now look at time spent beyond 16.7ms. I don't get how "empty frame rate" is such a massive criticism against AMD hardware, yet when Intel has the same issue, no one cares.

 

[8350rocks]

I'm not too fond of AMD APUs at the moment. They don't have a strong enough upgrade path. If the AM and FM platforms were united, I think they'd be absolutely killer entry level systems, but they're not.

Intel lower end is not much better. You end up with some artificially gimped chipset.

AMD will look at lot better when you can buy a cheap APU and motherboard, while having the ability to put a 16 core dCPU in that same motherboard.

The problem with Intel and trying to look to future upgrades is that they go through sockets so fast, that you're not helping yourself by thinking you're going to upgrade to a new CPU. Once that new socket comes out, the older chips start to rise in price (usually).

I pretty much tell people that if they can't afford GTX 760 or R9 280 with an FX 6300 that there's no point in building a gaming PC until you can afford that.

I've done the upgrade crawl before from low end and it's pretty annoying when new games come out and you don't meet minimum requirements anymore (Pentium Gs and some APUs fall into this category). It's just not worth it. You end up buying the cheap CPU + more expensive CPU instead of just the more expensive CPU. And most of the time you also need a new motherboard.

We really need 3m/6c APUs for them to be viable gaming machines.

Hmm...a unified platform, eh...? Well, something tells me we will get there...

 

[8350rocks]

I'm not too fond of AMD APUs at the moment. They don't have a strong enough upgrade path. If the AM and FM platforms were united, I think they'd be absolutely killer entry level systems, but they're not.

Intel lower end is not much better. You end up with some artificially gimped chipset.

AMD will look at lot better when you can buy a cheap APU and motherboard, while having the ability to put a 16 core dCPU in that same motherboard.

The problem with Intel and trying to look to future upgrades is that they go through sockets so fast, that you're not helping yourself by thinking you're going to upgrade to a new CPU. Once that new socket comes out, the older chips start to rise in price (usually).

I pretty much tell people that if they can't afford GTX 760 or R9 280 with an FX 6300 that there's no point in building a gaming PC until you can afford that.

I've done the upgrade crawl before from low end and it's pretty annoying when new games come out and you don't meet minimum requirements anymore (Pentium Gs and some APUs fall into this category). It's just not worth it. You end up buying the cheap CPU + more expensive CPU instead of just the more expensive CPU. And most of the time you also need a new motherboard.

We really need 3m/6c APUs for them to be viable gaming machines.

You can still go entry level on Intel without being overly gimped. You can pair up a pentium G 3258, with an H97 pro4, and still overclock it. Hell even the ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 has non Z overclock feature. Probably wouldn't want to overclock much at all with that board, but the feature is there. Don't really need to overclock Intel all that much though. They are already pretty strong right out of the box.

Did you miss the part of my post where I stated that Pentium G won't even make minimum requirements of some new games that have been released?

My entire point was that if you're going to spend $500 on a low end gaming PC that can't even play all the new games that come out, you might as well buy a console instead.

Unlocked Pentium G is a bait and switch. "buy Intel you can overclock this cheap CPU!" "wow this CPU can't even play any games, I better upgrade to a more expensive Intel CPU, I already have the motherboard!"

And then of course, you have Intel halo marketing effect, where people look at 4770k and higher beating on AMD and then think that a low end Intel is better than anything else too.

Look at the pentium listed earlier. 3.0ghz compared to 4.1ghz. That's a 37% increase in clock speed. The two are a lot closer in single thread than you think. You are just used to seeing high end Intel turbo boost to 4ghz in reviews, comparing base speeds, and then going "wow, AMD is 60% slower IPC! The stock speed of 8350 is 4ghz and the 4770k is 3.5ghz, HORRIBLE IPC AMD!"

When in fact they are running at same clock speed thanks to AMD turbo being broken and Intel turbo working very well, specially on a test bench.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/7

Look at the frame rates. Now look at the frame times. Now look at time spent beyond 16.7ms. I don't get how "empty frame rate" is such a massive criticism against AMD hardware, yet when Intel has the same issue, no one cares.

+11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

 

[iron8orn]

Who thinks a overclocked 8350/Kaveri at lets say 4.5ghz would bottleneck a dx12/14nm gpu?

 

[de5_Roy]

Who thinks a overclocked 8350/Kaveri at lets say 4.5ghz would bottleneck a dx12/14nm gpu?

fab process has nothing to do with the cpu bottlenecking. if the cpu doesn't have enouugh bandwith it'll bottleneck. dx12/14nm is too broad a range e.g. neither will bottleneck such gpu if dx12 succeeds reducing cpu overhead.

 

[iron8orn]

Who thinks a overclocked 8350/Kaveri at lets say 4.5ghz would bottleneck a dx12/14nm gpu?

fab process has nothing to do with the cpu bottlenecking. if the cpu doesn't have enouugh bandwith it'll bottleneck. dx12/14nm is too broad a range e.g. neither will bottleneck such gpu if dx12 succeeds reducing cpu overhead.

I guess hard to say atm. I hope game devs actually jump on using dx12.