AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

de5_Roy · Mar 17, 2013

Richland Desktop still scheduled for June 2013
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30779-richland-desktop-still-scheduled-for-june-2013

anubis44 · Mar 17, 2013

"general usage" is different for different people. And playing Crysis3 is not "general usage". General usage is browsing, office apps, music, movies, simple games. I am surprised you feel that much difference here. I myself cant find any "subjective" difference.
Except in using single threaded browsers like Firefox, where raw CPU power is noticable. But then again, you can say FF is a "legacy" application.

FF uses GPU acceleration anyhow, so the fact that it is not multi-thread aware is not that big a deal. However, newer compilers are optimizing software for multiple cores/threads. It's inevitable that software will be taking advantage of multiple cores, even 'mundane' programs like web browsers. So an 8 core AMD CPU, even a Bulldozer, will only get noticeably faster and faster as programs are re-compiled for multiple cores, whereas dual or even non-hyperthreading quad core CPUs like the 3570K will never be any faster than they are now. It's like a built-in upgrade for AMD 6 and 8 core CPUs down the road that only Intel quad or 6 core+hyperthreading CPUs have, and they are > $300+, while a flagship AMD Vishera 8350 is ~$199.

anubis44 · Mar 17, 2013

Intel could do with a few GPU making company acquisitions.... But who is big wnough now? Nvidia only. And they sure as hell arent inetrested in being acquisitions. In the hypothetical case this happens, i think AMD will be in big trouble.

Are you kidding? Jen Hsun would cream his pants if Intel made a reasonable offer for a buyout of nVidia. Why do you think he's been hoarding cash and fluffing up the company with dividends? He's grooming the company for a sale, as he must see that over time, nVidia cannot fight Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung in the ARM arena. The stupidity is that nVidia and AMD don't merge. After all, it would make too much sense: AMD has an x86 license, more APU (CPU+GPU) integration experience of any company in the world, and Jim Keller (brought over from Apple after he designed the A5 and A6 ARM chips). nVidia has exactly the complimentary product lineup to AMD's - one of the best current ARM designs in Tegra 4, and together, they would have a lock on the GPU market. Finally, nVidia has $3.8 billion cash, which would allow the combined AMD/nVidia company to become the dominant x86 CPU/APU and ARM and GPU company on the planet. All would bow before the engineering might of this combined company, but since it would make so much sense, it won't happen.

noob2222 · Mar 17, 2013

I wonder how well gpus will handle the upcoming 4k.

Im wondering if this is part of the reason for moving some workload off of the gpu. This is only 6.2MP, 4k is 8.3MP. GPUs may be increasing processing power quickly, but 4k is going to put the hurt on them big time.

Interesting enough, IBM had one of the first 4k monitors available ... in 2001. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1180.wss
Funny, 40lbs, and draws 135Watts with an impressive refresh rate of 41 hz ...

anxiousinfusion · Mar 17, 2013

anubis44 :

Intel could do with a few GPU making company acquisitions.... But who is big wnough now? Nvidia only. And they sure as hell arent inetrested in being acquisitions. In the hypothetical case this happens, i think AMD will be in big trouble.

Are you kidding? Jen Hsun would cream his pants if Intel made a reasonable offer for a buyout of nVidia. Why do you think he's been hoarding cash and fluffing up the company with dividends? He's grooming the company for a sale, as he must see that over time, nVidia cannot fight Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung in the ARM arena. The stupidity is that nVidia and AMD don't merge. After all, it would make too much sense: AMD has an x86 license, more APU (CPU+GPU) integration experience of any company in the world, and Jim Keller (brought over from Apple after he designed the A5 and A6 ARM chips). nVidia has exactly the complimentary product lineup to AMD's - one of the best current ARM designs in Tegra 4, and together, they would have a lock on the GPU market. Finally, nVidia has $3.8 billion cash, which would allow the combined AMD/nVidia company to become the dominant x86 CPU/APU and ARM and GPU company on the planet. All would bow before the engineering might of this combined company, but since it would make so much sense, it won't happen.

And who would compete with this hypothetical company? Their products would become expensive very quickly.

ericjohn004 · Mar 17, 2013

AMD's 8350's per core performance isn't even close to Intel's per core performance. AMD's per core performance is half that of Intels. So it's just not even close no matter what AMD fans say. AMD will never come close to Intel as long as this is the case. Maybe one day all programs will need 8 cores to run at maximum performance. But by then Intel will have an 8 core part with great per core performance while AMD will still be lacking the way they make it seem like per core performance just isn't their thing. Why stop trying at something just cause your losing at it?

So I think for AMD to start competing they need to change their strategy and start with the IPC improvement and ditch this idea that they have of all those weeker cores working together. Even programs that you the maximum amount of cores perfer a 3770k over an 8350. Hell some of those same programs perfer a 3570k over an 8350. So I think AMD needs to wake up and make some significant changes. And I know AMD's 8350 only costs 189.99. And I think it's a great deal. But it'll always be compared to a 3770k or at least a 3570k.

Don't get me wrong, I like me some AMD CPUs and AMD video cards. I really like the price point of the FX 6300. To me the FX 6300 is the best CPU you can get for your money at the 129.99 price point. You just can't beat it. But at the 200$ price point none of AMD solutions really come that close with the 3570k when it comes to x86 and single core performance. And the 8350 even loses in about half of the multithreaded benchmarks for some reason. Maybe if everything was perfectly optimized to use an AMD like it's suppose to be used. But when will that every happen? If it ever happens. To me, great per core performance will always be important no matter how you slice it. Because if you have great per core performance, no matter how many cores you have, you'll always have great performance. Why doesn't AMD think like this. I know Intel does.

And that's my opinion.

noob2222 · Mar 17, 2013

rofl, gotta love these random rants with exaggerated claims ... half as fast ... most of the benchmarks out there that show intel having a huge advantage, is only by about 20% on average.

By your rant, I can tell you haven't even looked at the steamroller arch changes.

griptwister · Mar 17, 2013

Once Intel makes a 8 core CPU for $200 and a 6 core for $140, then I'll be impressed... Have you even used a gosh darned FX 8350?

@noob2222, Lol! Exactly.

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 17, 2013

I have, and its gosh darned fast too.
If AMD had good marketing, and the dollars that costs, and a few other things wrapped up, this would never happen

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 17, 2013

anubis44 :

.

GPU acceleration is limited to only a very few things. More than 90% of the work is done on the CPU, and that too on a single thread.

However, newer compilers are optimizing software for multiple cores/threads.

And they do a shitty job of it on most code. Compilers are not magic. They need specially written software to get better parallelize. And compilers usually dont parallelize. They vectorize.

It's inevitable that software will be taking advantage of multiple cores, even 'mundane' programs like web browsers.

Yeah, it is so inevitable that every browser we have has parallel rendering and Javascript

/sarcasm

So an 8 core AMD CPU, even a Bulldozer, will only get noticeably faster and faster as programs are re-compiled for multiple cores, whereas dual or even non-hyperthreading quad core CPUs like the 3570K will never be any faster than they are now. It's like a built-in upgrade for AMD 6 and 8 core CPUs down the road that only Intel quad or 6 core+hyperthreading CPUs have, and they are > $300+, while a flagship AMD Vishera 8350 is ~$199.

If you take BD as an example, then what if the workload is Floating Point based ? Your BD just got kicked in the nuts.

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 17, 2013

noob2222 :

No this is not the reason. An 8 core CPU is just enough for providing 2D composition for windowing systems. It cant do much 3D content. If you do a test between and 3770K and 8350 to play Crysis3 with WARP, getting 5FPS Vs 5.2FPS isnt much of a comparison.
You might as well try to play Crysis3 on your Networking adapter.

This is only 6.2MP, 4k is 8.3MP. GPUs may be increasing processing power quickly, but 4k is going to put the hurt on them big time.

Yeah. i dont think that even with the next generation, 20nm GPU's will be enough for 4K gaming.

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

Interesting comment from CharlieD :

Charlie, what are your general thoughts or "gut feeling" (if you will) when it comes to Kaveri? Do you see it as an important product(or core for that matter) in their lineup? Or will it be Kabini(Jag. derivatives) all the way when it comes to making some money ?

It should have been out last Q, 3Q from now is borderline pointless.

-Charlie

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 18, 2013

I have a feeling, instead of leading early, it will be an also ran.
Not meaning it wont be good, but going by how the business runs, all the wins will go to Intel, leaving once again little for AMD, but it will be worth it, and once again, the emerging markets will snap them up, such as India and China

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

JAYDEEJOHN :

In India, 90% of the people dont know what AMD is. Because AMD does no advertisement here. We have Intel ads on TV, but no AMD ads in either TV or newspaper.
I am highly sceptical of people buying AMD APU's here, simply because they dont know it exists. And all the major OEM sites dont have AMD notebooks/desktops on their online ordering page.

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

Haswell disappointed me

Todays Toms story .

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 18, 2013

http://www.lightreading.in/document.asp?doc_id=228568
hipmaker AMD sees India as a big opportunity to take its overall growth to new levels. The company claims that it has grown 12 times in India as compared to the market growth over the last one year.

According to a recent IDC report, the company recorded its highest ever market share of 20.1 per cent in the Q4 FY 12 in India. The company's biggest gains came in the commercial segment, where it clocked market share of 27.1 percent in Q4 FY12. In the commercial desktops, AMD's market share remained at 22.4 percent in Q4 FY12, compared to 20.6 percent in Q3 FY12. The commercial notebook segment saw it capturing around one-third market share at 31.4 percent.

noob2222 · Mar 18, 2013

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-performance,3461-5.html

about where I expected. ~2-8% improvement, well under what some people were claiming (15-20% lol).

Graphics wise, still can't catch trinity, although CA thinks that the gt3 will be unstopable, just didn't mention the $500 price tag.

IMO GT3 is one reason AMD is opting for a gddr5 option, to help counter the L4 eddr on GT3. AMD's Gddr5 option will be considerably cheaper. So you will end up with mobile variants for Intel and AMD this time around, should be interesting.

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

JAYDEEJOHN :

Are they talking about AMD CPU's or AMD GPU's ?
AMD GPU's are on par with Nvidia in desktop. AMD GPU's are slightly higher than Nvidia in notebooks.

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 18, 2013

They mention Intel
They also mention APUs, and smaller form factors.

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

noob2222 :

15% could be possible for specialised code, targeting AVX2 or FMA3. But that will be less than 0.1% of the market.
Overall CPU-wise, 4770K fails harder than i thought it would.

I want to see how much pre-existing source code, compiled with -AVX2 optimisation, will improve perf, as integer calculation is a part of each and every program.
For -AVX, the results were mostly insignificant, some regressions, and only a minor improvements in very very few cases.

noob2222 · Mar 18, 2013

looking at haswell's naming ... wtf ...

I5 4430, I5 4570, I5 4670 ... 3.0 3.2 and 3.4 ghz ...

Interesting enough, one rumor seems to be true, no dual core cpus aside from that I5 4570T (another naming wtf).

The era of 'you just need a dual core' is now ending." -palladin9479

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 18, 2013

This I think is why Charlie isnt excited about Kaveri, its not a why, its more a when.
If AMD had stepped up their game and come out now, it would look totally different.

Haswell....
I really used to look forwards to this chip, but Intel botched it bad.
When it was first announced, around here we all thought it would compete and outdo AMD on the gfx side, and of course hold its lead on the cpu side.
Those days were full of incorrect infos.
If AMD had the die shrink Intel does, even without the trigate, they would simply squash Intel in gfx, and be close in cpu.
Very disappointed here, and the usual suspects havnt been around either, which also says a few things .
I just hope AMD can show some decent growth in perf, they have catching up to do, and are capable, they just need to hit in lockstep.
Also, some have said the console wins arent that big a deal, as AMD already had 2 of the 3 , but that was only gfx, no cpus at all, they just almost tripled their orders

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

This is very bad publicity for Intel.
They had me excited on the CPU in their Haswell reveal. But then we get this crap. And removing TSX from the unlocked K chips is too greedy on Intels part. I would have been much happier with a 100W TDP but better CPU perf.

EDIT : And of course, we have teh USB3.0 bug in teh chipset, because of which the buggy V1 of the existing boards will either be less in number, or being recalled back. In both cases teh price will be higher for the end user.

JAYDEEJOHN · Mar 18, 2013

Which shouldnt be, they should have to eat it.
Set aside money like nVidia did. Even if its coupon/rebates in small amounts

mayankleoboy1 · Mar 18, 2013

The top three features Intel announced at the Reveal were TSX, iGPU, and arch AVX2/FMA3/BMI .

Out of these three, the top chip doesnt have two features. Can intel get more greedy and here ?

AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

Splendid

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Share this page