AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[blackkstar]

Apologies if it's already been stated earlier in the thread (it's a lot to read through), but does anyone know if AMD plans to continue production of their FX chips (that is, desktop non-APU CPUs)? Or if it's even a possibility? Steamroller, if I understood correctly, gained a respectable IPC increase over Piledriver, so is there a chance that AMD could produce some Steamroller CPUs? Or Excavator? I understand that HSA is certainly more efficient, but the point remains that you can only fit so much into one chip - as much as I would love to have an AMD Steamroller 8-CPU-core-290X-level-GPU APU, it isn't happening anytime soon.

On another note, does anyone know how much mantle affects Dual Graphics performance? The reason Dual Graphics wouldn't normally work very well is that, by design, the APU should have a balance of CPU and GPU so that neither of them bottleneck the other. Doubling the net GPU computing power would cause a bottleneck. But where Mantle, as far as I have read, shines the most is where the CPU is the limiting factor - which sounds like Dual Graphics to me!

some games yes some no
http://www.hardcoreware.net/radeon-dual-graphics-performance-kaveri/4/

I see. But the line (last page) that I noticed the most was "Seems to be a "best case scenario" for Dual Graphics, but Mantle doesn't work yet.", describing Battlefield 4 at the time. I suppose the ideal test would be to test Dual Graphics on BF4 without Mantle and then with Mantle. Are there any other, more recent statistics I could look at (that you know of)?

Additionally, I imagine that with the newer drivers available now, perhaps we will see more gains in other games?

Dual graphics, from an HSA perspective, really doesn't make any sense. You either have the APU being starved due to the memory bandwidth bottleneck, or the discrete GPU being starved due to the latency involved in copying data across the PCI-E bus. That's why you don't see the same scaling you do with SLI or CF.

Mantle does NOTHING to address this issue. Mantle is simply a way of reducing the CPU bottleneck in games, so when in a situation where the GPU has headroom, you get an increase in FPS based on the added performance the CPU has to perform.

He needed to overclock the CPU_NB, otherwise your going to get poor performance with AIDA64. Don't ask me why but AMD has the CPU_NB running at a much lower clock speed then it's capable of, and the IMC and prefetch system run inside there. My fx8350 has it's NB clocked at 2.6Ghz and gets numbers much higher then what he posted, same with my 6800K (2.2 or 2.4Ghz can't remember). Kaveri comes with the CPU_NB clocked at something piss poor 1.8, pretty much every OC guide recommends clocking it to 2.0 ~ 2.1Ghz. This was the only weakness I could find in the 7600, it doesn't let you change the CPU_NB.

I remember running some AIDA tests on my different chips and the CPU_NB speed had a very large effect on the results.

Personally, I have a release FX 8350 and the CPU_NB does not like to be OCed at all. It takes a lot of voltage and gets really hot really quick.

I remember back when we were all figuring out these chips, CPU_NB was a struggle to OC for a lot of people besides me. Now it seems a lot easier to crank it up. I don't think AMD has changed spec for them yet on the newer chips. Which is sort of a shame. They could have sold FX 9000 series with faster CPU_NB speeds out of the gate and really helped performance and benchmark scores.

Looking at what the new Vishera dies do compared to what I have, I think GloFo 32nm has come a long way.

 

[-Fran-]

Intel has posted some impressive numbers, and prempted AMD by saying PC sales are up. Lisa Su could be in for a baptism of fire tomorrow.

Yeah i was just reading that. Probably has to do with back to school sales and more school's are forcing kids to have laptops and such and they are making the parents buy them. Also PC gaming is once again big and beating console software sales.
Edit i actually think this is scaring Microsoft and Sony
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/report-microsoft-sony-pressuring-ubisoft-for-30fps-on-pc/

Gabe is our Holy Savior.

But seriously, what the F'ing F. It's not like MS or Sony had a gun to their respective management heads to pick the current gen hardware. They could have asked for something better and not have these stupid performance issues and then piggyback PC gamers (which ironically are mostly in Windows).

Man, this really makes me pray/hope for SteamOS to gain traction.

Cheers!

 

[Reepca]

The 7850K is horribly priced for it's performance level. The 7700K would be a better purchase, then pair it with good quality 2133 memory. You can get a 7850K with 2400 memory but the costs would exceed an 860K with a 1GB GDDR5 dGPU.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121800&cm_re=Radeon_250-_-14-121-800-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150711&cm_re=Radeon_250-_-14-150-711-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150676&cm_re=Radeon_250-_-14-150-676-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113379&cm_re=860K-_-19-113-379-_-Product

The existence of 80~100 USD GDDR5 dGPU's and good 80~90 USD CPU's place a practical limit on APU's. It's why I still view the A8-7600 and A8-6800K as the most value orientated purchases. Pair them both with cheap two sticks of 2133 memory and you got a solid platform that will meet 90% of what people need done.

Had a longer post typed up, but chrome's memory leakage finally got to my 2GB potato laptop's RAM.

Is there any case where the a10-7850k wouldn't be bottlenecked by system memory bandwidth - that is, all 512 GCN cores could realize their full potential?

Also, the a8-7600 is, if I remember correctly, slightly ahead of the a10-5800k in performance, and at the same price. Power savings are nice and all, but I guess I was looking for an upgrade that noticeably increased performance.

Although, if Carrizo is going to be compatible with fm2+ motherboards, it just might work out - my primary reason for upgrading is so that I can recycle the old(er) core components to beef up some family members' ridiculously-old-ridiculously-weak computers for Christmas. I suppose that I could live with similar performance to my a10-5800k, plus mantle, trueaudio, and much lower power consumption. If I really want to go for a higher-end APU option (when, with Carrizo, they hopefully will be more economically viable), as long as it's compatible with the FM2+ platform, I should be able to. And if it's not more economically viable... well, that's what throwing in an R7 240 or 250 is for.

Glad we had this conversation, saved me $70. Although, one more thought... with the possibility of upgrading to Carrizo in the future, should I invest in 2400-speed-rated RAM (and run it at 2133 with the a8 7600), or just save myself $5 and go for 2133? I assume that with the higher-end, newer APUs, more memory bandwidth would be demanded?

 

[gamerk316]

Intel has posted some impressive numbers, and prempted AMD by saying PC sales are up. Lisa Su could be in for a baptism of fire tomorrow.

Yeah i was just reading that. Probably has to do with back to school sales and more school's are forcing kids to have laptops and such and they are making the parents buy them. Also PC gaming is once again big and beating console software sales.
Edit i actually think this is scaring Microsoft and Sony
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/report-microsoft-sony-pressuring-ubisoft-for-30fps-on-pc/

Gabe is our Holy Savior.

But seriously, what the F'ing F. It's not like MS or Sony had a gun to their respective management heads to pick the current gen hardware. They could have asked for something better and not have these stupid performance issues and then piggyback PC gamers (which ironically are mostly in Windows).

Man, this really makes me pray/hope for SteamOS to gain traction.

Cheers!

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

 

[jdwii]

Next gen Amd products
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/10/amd-shows-next-gen-x86-64-bit-arm-side-side
New CEO yearly salary
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/techflash/2014/10/amd-sets-salary-for-new-ceo.html

 

[-Fran-]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

The major problem is how the new approach to hardware made almost all current tools the devs use pretty much obsolete. Now they require to rewrite most of their internal frameworks for this console gen, a cost they seem not to be willing to take in. So, the cheap way out is to cap quality and framerate to a lower standard than theoretically possible. MS and Sony are scumbags for doing that, but Devs with old tools are to blame as well.

In any case, I see MS with the bigger issues. I know the PS4 has more room to spare.

Cheers!

 

[gamerk316]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

The major problem is how the new approach to hardware made almost all current tools the devs use pretty much obsolete. Now they require to rewrite most of their internal frameworks for this console gen, a cost they seem not to be willing to take in. So, the cheap way out is to cap quality and framerate to a lower standard than theoretically possible. MS and Sony are scumbags for doing that, but Devs with old tools are to blame as well.

In any case, I see MS with the bigger issues. I know the PS4 has more room to spare.

Cheers!

Graphically, yes. CPU side? Not really. The CPUs this gen are cripples, and more and more Devs are starting to complain about it.

 

[szatkus]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

 

[logainofhades]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

The original Xbox had a pentium 3, iirc. Compared to the PC's at the time, it was actually not that far behind.

 

[jdwii]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

Plus you have to remember back then they were more console like meaning way different then PC's now this time around its simply a 8 core atom(oh i mean jaguar) with a 7790-7870 GPU with slow DDR3 ram or GDDR5 memory which is also slow for today's standards. Its the CPU really and the slow DDR3 memory for graphics(what is this 2007).

So the optimization people keep talking about isn't happening anymore(at least not as much) on consoles since its to much like a PC. So instead people will say look this PC from 2013 can't play BF7 but the PS4 can and its over optimization when in reality it would be over Vram requirements since the horrible CPU in the consoles can't compress the textures fast enough for the GPU so they have to store the whole entire thing in the Vram.

 

[szatkus]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

Plus you have to remember back then they were more console like meaning way different then PC's now this time around its simply a 8 core atom(oh i mean jaguar) with a 7790-7870 GPU with slow DDR3 ram or GDDR5 memory which is also slow for today's standards. Its the CPU really and the slow DDR3 memory for graphics(what is this 2007).

So the optimization people keep talking about isn't happening anymore(at least not as much) on consoles since its to much like a PC. So instead people will say look this PC from 2013 can't play BF7 but the PS4 can and its over optimization when in reality it would be over Vram requirements since the horrible CPU in the consoles can't compress the textures fast enough for the GPU so they have to store the whole entire thing in the Vram.

And which modern PC has CPU-GPU with GDDR5 shared memory?
PS4 isn't much different in comparision with PC than PS2, it's just easier because we have similar components in our rigs. And as long as Mantle, DX12 and OpenGL Next aren't widely used PS4 has more efficient API.

 

[szatkus]

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

The original Xbox had a pentium 3, iirc. Compared to the PC's at the time, it was actually not that far behind.

You could buy Athlon XP 1500+ for $155 at the time.

 

[logainofhades]

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

 

[szatkus]

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

1500+ was over 2 times faster than that PIII. Even i5 (at stock clocks) isn't 2 times faster than PS4 CPU.

 

[logainofhades]

I would say an i5 is easily twice as fast as jaguar. Kabini is jaguar based and loses to even a Pentium G, in cpu related benches.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7933/the-desktop-kabini-review-part-1-athlon-5350-am1/4

 

[cdrkf]

I would say an i5 is easily twice as fast as jaguar. Kabini is jaguar based and loses to even a Pentium G, in cpu related benches.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7933/the-desktop-kabini-review-part-1-athlon-5350-am1/4

Well if you read those benchmarks you need to double / halve everything (in the MT tests at least) for the Athalon 5350 as PS4 has 8 cores rather than 4 (at similar speeds). On that basis in a proper MT enviroment the PS4 apu probably isn't too bad.

The problem is it has *ah heck all* single core perf...

 

[jdwii]

Spoiler

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

Plus you have to remember back then they were more console like meaning way different then PC's now this time around its simply a 8 core atom(oh i mean jaguar) with a 7790-7870 GPU with slow DDR3 ram or GDDR5 memory which is also slow for today's standards. Its the CPU really and the slow DDR3 memory for graphics(what is this 2007).

So the optimization people keep talking about isn't happening anymore(at least not as much) on consoles since its to much like a PC. So instead people will say look this PC from 2013 can't play BF7 but the PS4 can and its over optimization when in reality it would be over Vram requirements since the horrible CPU in the consoles can't compress the textures fast enough for the GPU so they have to store the whole entire thing in the Vram.

And which modern PC has CPU-GPU with GDDR5 shared memory?
PS4 isn't much different in comparision with PC than PS2, it's just easier because we have similar components in our rigs. And as long as Mantle, DX12 and OpenGL Next aren't widely used PS4 has more efficient API.

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

1500+ was over 2 times faster than that PIII. Even i5 (at stock clocks) isn't 2 times faster than PS4 CPU.

What? The 8 core jaguar is probably around a I3 at best. Hell even a 8350fx clocked at 1.8Ghz is slow compared to a I5 probably weaker then a I3. I'll do test's actually to see. I5 is without a single doubt in my mind twice as fast compared to jaguar hell i bet Nintendo's own CPU has a higher IPC compared to jaguar or at least very close. Even dev's know the CPU is a major bottleneck.

 

[szatkus]

Spoiler

Didn't I warn everyone months ago this would happen? This generation of consoles, compared historically, are cripples. This is honestly one of the weakest generation of consoles, relative to PC horsepower. And we're now shocked games are running 30 FPS at less then 1080p, and Sony/MSFT are pressuring devs to limit the PC releases to match consoles?

One of the weakest? PS2? Xbox?

Plus you have to remember back then they were more console like meaning way different then PC's now this time around its simply a 8 core atom(oh i mean jaguar) with a 7790-7870 GPU with slow DDR3 ram or GDDR5 memory which is also slow for today's standards. Its the CPU really and the slow DDR3 memory for graphics(what is this 2007).

So the optimization people keep talking about isn't happening anymore(at least not as much) on consoles since its to much like a PC. So instead people will say look this PC from 2013 can't play BF7 but the PS4 can and its over optimization when in reality it would be over Vram requirements since the horrible CPU in the consoles can't compress the textures fast enough for the GPU so they have to store the whole entire thing in the Vram.

And which modern PC has CPU-GPU with GDDR5 shared memory?
PS4 isn't much different in comparision with PC than PS2, it's just easier because we have similar components in our rigs. And as long as Mantle, DX12 and OpenGL Next aren't widely used PS4 has more efficient API.

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

1500+ was over 2 times faster than that PIII. Even i5 (at stock clocks) isn't 2 times faster than PS4 CPU.

What? The 8 core jaguar is probably around a I3 at best. Hell even a 8350fx clocked at 1.8Ghz is slow compared to a I5 probably weaker then a I3. I'll do test's actually to see. I5 is without a single doubt in my mind twice as fast compared to jaguar hell i bet Nintendo's own CPU has a higher IPC compared to jaguar or at least very close. Even dev's know the CPU is a major bottleneck.

8 Jaguar cores > 8 Bulldozer "cores" (and it has only 4 FPUs)

i5 should be at best 80% better than PS4 CPU.

And Nintendo... 1.24 GHz Tri-Core IBM PowerPC, not even close.

 

[jdwii]

Having only 4 FP units means nothing for integer based tasks which is the majority also jaguar only features a 128 bit FPU where Bulldozer has a 256bit FPU. I would like to hear your side to the story though and why you think a 8 core jaguar is even worth talking about its IPC is on level with Piledriver while being clocked at an extremely low clock speed.

Since jaguar is clocked at such as low clock speed 1.8Ghz vs 4.0Ghz for the 8350 it would have to have over twice the IPC of Bulldozer something it clearly doesn't have. So in reality its 8 Bulldozer cores>8 Jaguar cores.

However those parts are not even comparable anyways since its a different power envelope

 

[jdwii]

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

1500+ was over 2 times faster than that PIII. Even i5 (at stock clocks) isn't 2 times faster than PS4 CPU.

Even when you are nice and double the scores(scaling doesn't work that way) it still comes behind the I5 again when all cores are used on jaguar on the consoles its probably around a I3.

 

[szatkus]

Having only 4 FP units means nothing for integer based tasks which is the majority also jaguar only features a 128 bit FPU where Bulldozer has a 256bit FPU. I would like to hear your side to the story though and why you think a 8 core jaguar is even worth talking about its IPC is on level with Piledriver while being clocked at an extremely low clock speed.

Since jaguar is clocked at such as low clock speed 1.8Ghz vs 4.0Ghz for the 8350 it would have to have over twice the IPC of Bulldozer something it clearly doesn't have. So in reality its 8 Bulldozer cores>8 Jaguar cores.

However those parts are not even comparable anyways since its a different power envelope

I meant only IPC. Of course Jaguars can't be clocked as high as Bulldozers.

 

[szatkus]

Xbox had a custom 733 PIII in it. Given that P3 was faster than P4, clock for clock, it wasn't really too terribly behind many of the available CPU's at the time. I was using a Duron 700 back when it was released. Today's consoles are using CPU's that are even slower than a PhII X6. The gap is bigger than current PC hardware, vs console this go around.

1500+ was over 2 times faster than that PIII. Even i5 (at stock clocks) isn't 2 times faster than PS4 CPU.

Even when you are nice and double the scores(scaling doesn't work that way) it still comes behind the I5 again when all cores are used on jaguar on the consoles its probably around a I3.

Oh, it's another aspect - optimization. It's after midnight and that topic is much more complicated than just comparing cores.

Example: low-IPC CPU from Xbox 360 in practice is more less at level of Windows binary on Core 2 Quad.

 

[jdwii]

Any optimizations done on jaguar will be seen on the PC as well(over X86 making the point of optimizations a moot point) making this gen different then the rest.

Pretty sure the main reason why the xbox took so long to get many games after the PS2 is over them picking CISC over RISC.

 

[esrever]

Any optimizations done on jaguar will be seen on the PC as well(over X86 making the point of optimizations a moot point) making this gen different then the rest.

Pretty sure the main reason why the xbox took so long to get many games after the PS2 is over them picking CISC over RISC.

They rewrite everything in directx to port to xbox, there wasn't much financial motivation for a lot of devs for a long time.

Optimization in consoles will be focused on memory access, multicore scaling and gpu communication I would assume.

 

[palladin9479]

Personally, I have a release FX 8350 and the CPU_NB does not like to be OCed at all. It takes a lot of voltage and gets really hot really quick.

It's your motherboard. I have an Asus Sabertooth and OCing my NB was as easy as changing the multiplier. Didn't even have to increase the voltage by much. The NB on the APU's was similarly easy to change, except for the 7600 which is locked.

Seriously overclocking the CPU_NB on all the AMD chips is piss easy, no idea where you got the idea that it was hard or created lots of heat (it doesn't).