AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[juanrga]

Anyone attempting to argue the new APU's will be remotely close to a high end dGPU is deluded. That's just not how CPU's work. The highest end APU will be about equal to the low end dCPU's but with a moderately good GPU bolted on. The entire purpose of an APU isn't to replace dCPU's, it's to do budget / compact computing. SFF and similar use's where power and space are limited and going with an all inclusive solution works out the best.

Anyone attempting to argue that the entire purpose of an APU is to satisfy the budget / compact computing market is deluded.

AMD APUs have been competing as a low-cost alternative in much of the consumer market, because the APU concept had not been still completely developed. Kaveri is the first APU that fulfills that 'ancient' AMD dream that was born with the acquisition of ATI.

It has not still completely developed by two basic reasons: memory bandwidth and software. But the second is a consequence of the former. Once the memory bandwidth problem was solved with the almost ready stacked memory we will see the born of ultra-high-performance APUs

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microns-hybrid-memory-cube-earns-high-praise-in-next-generation-supercomputer-2013-11-07

P.S.: the bandwidth provided by this new RAM technology is superior to the L3 cache in FX chips.

 

[juanrga]

Interesting data about MANTLE disclosed at APU 13.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=2&hl=es&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://www.hardware.fr/news/13445/apu13-amd-mantle-premiers-details.html&usg=ALkJrhgnY37aJJ61I7lorqV5I0j-_HjSSw

A part that caught my attention was that about how AMD would pair a APU with a dGPU. Previously in this tread two options were discussed. In one the iGPU was devoted entirely to compute and the dGPU to graphics. In the second option the iGPU and the dGPU would work in tandem doing compute or graphics or both. This is from the talk:

The application also acquires the ability to take control of the multi-GPU and to decide where to run each command issued. Why AMD has provided in Mantle access CrossFire compositing engine, data transfer between GPU etc.. Will allow multi-GPU modes that go beyond the AFR and adapt better example to use GPU computing in games or asymmetric multi-GPU systems as is the case for APU combined with a GPU. For example it is possible to imagine the GPU load based rendering and APU handle the post processing.

Which is exactly where I've been saying things were moving toward, and how I see this all being applied: The APU handles Physics/Compute/OpenCL, while the dGPU focuses on graphics.

But it is the other possibility ;-) "The application also acquires the ability to take control of the multi-GPU and to decide where to run each command issued". Therefore both iGPU and dGPU work in tandem, as I said, and the workload is split dynamically. In some cases it will make sense the iGPU for compute and the dGPU for graphics, in other cases it will make sense that both iGPU and dGPU execute graphics work, in another case part of the dGPU can assist to the iGPU on compute...

 

[8350rocks]

Anyone attempting to argue the new APU's will be remotely close to a high end dGPU is deluded. That's just not how CPU's work. The highest end APU will be about equal to the low end dCPU's but with a moderately good GPU bolted on. The entire purpose of an APU isn't to replace dCPU's, it's to do budget / compact computing. SFF and similar use's where power and space are limited and going with an all inclusive solution works out the best.

Anyone attempting to argue that the entire purpose of an APU is to satisfy the budget / compact computing market is deluded.

AMD APUs have been competing as a low-cost alternative in much of the consumer market, because the APU concept had not been still completely developed. Kaveri is the first APU that fulfills that 'ancient' AMD dream that was born with the acquisition of ATI.

It has not still completely developed by two basic reasons: memory bandwidth and software. But the second is a consequence of the former. Once the memory bandwidth problem was solved with the almost ready stacked memory we will see the born of ultra-high-performance APUs

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microns-hybrid-memory-cube-earns-high-praise-in-next-generation-supercomputer-2013-11-07

P.S.: the bandwidth provided by this new RAM technology is superior to the L3 cache in FX chips.

HMC is superior to even GDDR5, however, that technology is years away from wide spread adoption in consumer PCs. Sure, super computers costing millions and millions of dollars use it...however, there isn't even a standard for a way to integrate it into the motherboard yet...

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

^^

you are quite literally twisting the facts here. it's not the apu's(6790k's in that promo slide) performance of apu that increases.

Is that what he's been going on about? The fact that they benched the new APU vs a dCPU with a 630 in it? All that did was show that the APU's iGPU is better then a 630, which I would hope it to be considering how cheap those 630's are.

I should do a bench of my 8350 @4.8 and dual 780 Hydros. Then point at it and say the APU is useless because it can't keep up.

no not that one with kaveri vs 4770k +gt 630.
juanrga keeps bringing up a slide #13 from richland a10 6790k introduction event where a bf4 single player benchmark was shown as the a10 6790k having similar perf to 6+ core fx cpus. then he kept repeatedly bringing it up saying that benchmark is the reason amd cancelled higher core SR-FX cpus and apparently that's what amd 'told' oem representatives at that event (even thought he failed to provide an audio transcript after repeated asking).

edit: ugh. i don't know why my post got into the middle of the page while it should be at the end... the thread display is messy at my end.

What dGPU were they using for the dCPU's? I ask because it wasn't mentioned and without it the benchmark's are useless. I can make pretty graphs that show a TI86 beating an i7-3770K, doesn't mean it'll be worth a damn.

Except that is was mentioned several times here and it also appears in the slide: a R9 280X.

Are we not supposed to be getting sandy bridge i5 performance???

It should come in approximately where a locked core i5 SB CPU is in single threaded tasks.

Overclockability on these new APUs is suspect to skepticism at this point. I have a feeling we will see Intel-esque variability on a wide scale. (i.e. the odds of hitting the silicon lottery with the new APUs will be significantly lower than they are with Richland).

First, it was fear about AMD going bulk, then it was skepticism about clocks (your why-did-they-only-tested-1.8GHz argument). Now we know it clocks at high frequency of 3.7GHz, you have bad feelings about OC. What will be next?

 

[juanrga]

Oh ! So mantle doesn't actually improve game performance, fps etc, it just makes games easier to make for developers.

Still good though.

No. MANTLE improves game performance thanks to eliminating the overhead in Microsoft DirectX API.

In consoles avoiding the DirectX overhead allows for about 2x more performance on the same hardware. I think we don't will see that in the PC, but 30%--50% increase in performance seems feasible.

Dice developers have said that Radeon + MANTLE enabled version of BF4 will ridicule Nvidia Titan. We will see.

 

[8350rocks]

Spoiler

^^

you are quite literally twisting the facts here. it's not the apu's(6790k's in that promo slide) performance of apu that increases.

Is that what he's been going on about? The fact that they benched the new APU vs a dCPU with a 630 in it? All that did was show that the APU's iGPU is better then a 630, which I would hope it to be considering how cheap those 630's are.

I should do a bench of my 8350 @4.8 and dual 780 Hydros. Then point at it and say the APU is useless because it can't keep up.

no not that one with kaveri vs 4770k +gt 630.
juanrga keeps bringing up a slide #13 from richland a10 6790k introduction event where a bf4 single player benchmark was shown as the a10 6790k having similar perf to 6+ core fx cpus. then he kept repeatedly bringing it up saying that benchmark is the reason amd cancelled higher core SR-FX cpus and apparently that's what amd 'told' oem representatives at that event (even thought he failed to provide an audio transcript after repeated asking).

edit: ugh. i don't know why my post got into the middle of the page while it should be at the end... the thread display is messy at my end.

What dGPU were they using for the dCPU's? I ask because it wasn't mentioned and without it the benchmark's are useless. I can make pretty graphs that show a TI86 beating an i7-3770K, doesn't mean it'll be worth a damn.

Except that is was mentioned several times here and it also appears in the slide: a R9 280X.

Are we not supposed to be getting sandy bridge i5 performance???

It should come in approximately where a locked core i5 SB CPU is in single threaded tasks.

Overclockability on these new APUs is suspect to skepticism at this point. I have a feeling we will see Intel-esque variability on a wide scale. (i.e. the odds of hitting the silicon lottery with the new APUs will be significantly lower than they are with Richland).

First, it was fear about AMD going bulk, then it was skepticism about clocks (your why-did-they-only-tested-1.8GHz argument). Now we know it clocks at high frequency of 3.7GHz, you have bad feelings about OC. What will be next?

Well, let's break that down shall we...?

1. BECAUSE AMD WENT BULK the clocks are not even what they achieved in Trinity (3.8 GHz + Turbo) much less Richland. Which means I was right, and my assessment was correct. Clock speeds decreased in Kaveri. I told you they would not even break 4.0 GHz in stock configuration, and here I am proven right.

2. Why would AMD not at least put the flagship part at the SAME clockspeed as the flagship Richland unless they had difficulties with performance? If AMD is not getting the performance they want, then that means the headroom must be quite a bit less for them to be at a 400 MHz clockspeed disadvantage to start. AMD has historically pushed clockspeeds to the limits, this time we see a regression. The OC tests will tell the tale.

Why would they lose 9% clockspeed unless they had to? Especially when the architecture gains are roughly ~20% from what we know. That means flagship Kaveri is only a ~11% improvement over Richland as near as we can tell currently. It may end up being less once the cherry picked benchmarks are tested against the more rigorous benchmarks for CPU performance.

In short...they're losing HALF their performance gain by giving up that much clockspeed. THAT is what going to bulk gets you.

Had it been FD-SOI, then it would really be a flat out ~20% gain we would be testing against other benchmarks to determine the range of improvement. As it sits, this generation is likely to see something on the order of a 1-15% improvement because they gave up too much clockspeed going bulk...all when it could have been 10-25% improvement had they been able to keep the clockspeed and make the uarch improvements.

Who was wrong and who was right?

This generation, in tests where the flagship Kaveri is really 10% better in efficiency versus Richland, it will be 1% better due to loss of clockspeed.

They should have gone FD-SOI, as I said all along.

 

[Cazalan]

Its not hate per say, its the fact that IF AMD spends all their time/money/effort to push software to fix their hardware problem, where does that leave the if it fails?

AMD could end up spending every last penny they have trying to push this software solution only to watch Intel pay more to stop it.

The sad fact is there is a lack of electrical engineers. The tools are expensive, complex and more difficult to self teach. You can't just compile and run stuff in your apartment like you can with software. They require fabs and expensive oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.

Go to any college university and the ratio of computer science to electrical engineers is likely 5:1 or higher. Of my EE peers that I still keep in touch with only 1 (me) out of 10 still deals with hardware at all. The rest all switched from hardware to software.

So pushing software more may just be their only option. At least they're doing it through foundations and open source and not going it alone.

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

But Juan that is a single case out of many, okay so in the BF4 it won't be 50%, what about the million other applications (Which I btw doesn't think is right either, 10-25% is more likely).

"It's not reflected" in a canned benchmark by AMD who is trying to sell APU's. Would it not be odd if AMD choose a benchmark where the richland would perform poorly? That would be terrible marketing. And before you go claim that "this is how it's going to be" , you have to have more of the picture. Meaning more than one benchmark.

Of course it is only a single case, but I recall that when I started my discussion of this, I clearly said that AMD was taking it as "prototype" for the "next gen" games.

Yes, it is picked benchmark by AMD who is trying to sell APU's at the expense of the FX chips. They could compare Richland to an Intel chip, but they compared to its own FX chips. The FX-4350 was not even mentioned.

Of course, look at the die sizes on the APUs...where do you think the margins are better? That 315mm^2 die on the FX series makes them money, but APUs selling for ~70% of the cost, with 60% of the die size makes tons of sense. They can get better yields out of the product because they don't need the big dies like they have in FX.

Now, that of course precludes the fact that FX is still a better CPU when you need the raw horsepower, and so I anticipate they will still sell them by the truck load to boutique builders and DIY PC builders.

You talked about FX 8 cores being 0.4% of steam hardware survey, I think it was, and when you consider that's 50 mil people on Steam, most of them on mobile solutions, I would think you would see something along those lines...that's still 200k machines with FX 8 cores using steam. Considering that there are many people who do not have steam (myself included), I think that the prediction those numbers give is likely only 10-15% of the likely number of people running such systems in the US. You are also neglecting the very prevalent productivity types with that figure, and I think that plays a large part in the small representation of that sample.

If the demand for FX-8350 CPUs was higher than it is, AMD margin would be better. Look at the 9000 series. They were overpriced, nobody was purchasing them and recently their prices dropped by giant amounts. It is the always the same: lack of demand.

I consider that steam statistics must be pretty accurate from my knowledge of the local market, but look at own AMD numbers: the FX 8-core represents like a 2% of the total revenue generated by both APUs and CPUs. Now try to compute the percentage of the total revenue.

Spoiler

then he kept repeatedly bringing it up saying that benchmark is the reason amd cancelled higher core SR-FX cpus and apparently that's what amd 'told' oem representatives at that event (even thought he failed to provide an audio transcript after repeated asking).

This is pure and simply false (*). The reasons why AMD is not releasing SR FX line are multiple and I explained them here before: transition to APU, reorganization of server plans, and lack of demand. I gave details and further explanations for each one.

What I said about that October talk slide was that it clearly reflect AMD plans about migrating to an APU strategy and guess what Lisa Su (AMD vicepresident) confirmed my thoughts, this week during the opening keynotes:

Lisa Su, Senior VP & GM of Global Business Units at AMD, delivered the opening keynote and the message was clear: AMD is positioning its Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) -- which combine traditional multi-core CPUs and a discrete multi-core graphics processing unit on a single chip -- to dominate the market from smartphones to servers.

(*) Like when you said that I never wrote the PFs for the slide but I did in one of my posts in this thread.

LOL...When did AMD say, specifically, that they were not putting out a new FX successor? Without you reading between the lines and interpreting...

I will have word from AMD about future FX successor within the next week. So don't go counting chickens before they hatch again...

And where in AMD vice-president words says that they will release a FX successor?

What if I already have in my hands the official desktop roadmap for 2014?

Spoiler

Anyone attempting to argue the new APU's will be remotely close to a high end dGPU is deluded. That's just not how CPU's work. The highest end APU will be about equal to the low end dCPU's but with a moderately good GPU bolted on. The entire purpose of an APU isn't to replace dCPU's, it's to do budget / compact computing. SFF and similar use's where power and space are limited and going with an all inclusive solution works out the best.

Anyone attempting to argue that the entire purpose of an APU is to satisfy the budget / compact computing market is deluded.

AMD APUs have been competing as a low-cost alternative in much of the consumer market, because the APU concept had not been still completely developed. Kaveri is the first APU that fulfills that 'ancient' AMD dream that was born with the acquisition of ATI.

It has not still completely developed by two basic reasons: memory bandwidth and software. But the second is a consequence of the former. Once the memory bandwidth problem was solved with the almost ready stacked memory we will see the born of ultra-high-performance APUs

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microns-hybrid-memory-cube-earns-high-praise-in-next-generation-supercomputer-2013-11-07

P.S.: the bandwidth provided by this new RAM technology is superior to the L3 cache in FX chips.

HMC is superior to even GDDR5, however, that technology is years away from wide spread adoption in consumer PCs. Sure, super computers costing millions and millions of dollars use it...however, there isn't even a standard for a way to integrate it into the motherboard yet...

I didn't mean this to be happening tomorrow. Kaveri is a 2014 product and uses DDR3. Carrizo successor comes in 2015 and uses DD3/4. The new high-bandwidth memory technology is something for 2016/17. Then we will start to see ultra-high-end performance APUs (which not will be mainstream). Nvidia is developing an APU with cube memory that is projected to give 10x the performance of the GTX Titan.

 

[noob2222]

Spoiler

Disagreeing is fine, but he writing "to save their ass", "a crappy cpu", "and an idle IGP", "weak ass cores"... clearly denotes hate.

Specially when he is plain wrong. As shown in my article about Kaveri a 3.7GHz SR CPU perform like a SB/IB i5 with ordinary CPU workloads, loosing in the FP intensive ones but outperforming in the integer workloads. There I assumed 20% IPC over PD, but some late leaks suggest that the final improvement is >30%. Therefore add to the scores I published if the leak is true.

you want to claim I am wrong yet you only offer your opinion. APU cores are weak, always have been.

Spoiler

the lowly fx-4100 is 46% faster than the A10 5700 and clocked slower. The fx-4320 is 58% faster and the fx-8350 and the I5 3470 is 73% faster. good luck catching that i5.

This is the same architecture. Id call that a weak ass core any day.

again, 4320 = 40% faster, 8350 = 56% faster, I5 3470 = 73% faster.

4320 - 52% , 8320 - 83%,I5 3470 - 89%

4320 - 33%, 8320 - 50%, i5 3470 - 62%

... there is plenty more where these came from

now tell me using these RL results how removing the L3 cache in favor of making the cpu weaker and adding an IGP is such a great thing to ever happen to the computing industry?

How is kaveri going to catch the I5? 8350? ... heck even the 4320 ...

Id say the a10 5700 is a pretty good spot to start with Kaveri figures since they both clock at 3.7 ghz. As you put it "in ordinary cpu workloads" shown above, its starting at negative 40% already just to get to the 4320.

Kaveri is not going to be the answer your hoping it will be. It will not catch the i5 3470 very often (if ever,) it may here and there, but that will take some luck "in ordinary cpu workloads"

Tell me just exactly how I am "just plain wrong"?

I already said this to you. Also you continue using essentially the same logic than in your previous attack to AMD ARM line.

Here you pick very old benchmarks (not optimized for AMD architecture, one of them is a Nvidia sponsored game) and an old 5700 Trinity APU and you claim this is how Kaveri will perform.

You miss the estimation of Kaveri CPU performance in the BSN* article, you miss the leaked benchmarks comparing Kaveri to Bulldozer and Piledriver FX, and you miss the BF4 benchmark given by AMD during October talk, where a Richland APU got the 98% of the performance of a FX-6350 and the 96% of the performance of the FX-8350 (the three using a R9 280X and playing @ 1080p ultra). I think you continue missing the subsequent discussion on multiplayer BF4. And you miss that AMD is in the consoles now, with a CPU based in jaguar cores.

Can you compare the performance of the PS4 CPU to Kaveri CPU? I can.

Maybe you don't still understand this, but game developers will be offloading the consoles CPUs and running the heavy computations on the consoles GPUs. That is why both consoles have GPGPU abilities and HSA support.

You also miss that MANTLE aims to liberate some CPU bottlenecks that exist in current gaming technology. This is from Oxide talk at APU13:

Mantle Unleashed: How Mantle changes the fundamentals of what is possible on a PC. Over the last 5 years, GPUs have become so fast that it has become increasingly difficult for the CPU to utilize them. Developers expend considerable effort reducing CPU overhead and often are forced to make compromises to fully utilize the GPU. This talk will discuss real-world results on how Mantle enables game engines to fully and efficiently utilize all the cores on the CPU, and how it’s efficient architecture can eliminate the problems of being CPU bound once and for all.

get over yourself. Very old benchmarks? I specifically looked for games released in 2013 ... ermago ... thats soo friggin old.

a10 5700 = piledriver without l3 cache
4320 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

whats soo old about the a10 5700? all that richland brought was higher clock speeds over trinity, kaveri brought lower clock speeds. you can't compare the 4.2 ghz richland to the 3.7 ghz kaveri and say its going to be 30% faster on top of being slower clock. 3.7 ghz piledriver vs 3.7 ghz kaveri is a fair comparison.

If anything id describe AMD's APU as a gpu with an integrated cpu while Intel is making cpus with an integrated gpu.

The reason your stuck on this "BF4 ERMAGO BENCHMARK" is because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its a gpu bound benchmark. Thats why it was chosen, its a tactic called marketing.

As for the BSN article, its was pulled from your website.

Agree on that "very old" was an exaggeration from my part, but it was needed to compensate your exaggerated attack on Kaveri APU (I mean that one where you wrote "ass", "crappy", and "ass").

In the same paragraph I also wrote what I mean by "old", (="not optimized for AMD architecture"). Sorry but no, I was not referring to if was released in early 2013 or in late 2009.

I am not discussing marketing, you are. I am discussing technical and economic details behind marketing and execution plans by a company. I am explaining you that the whole master plan (which I have given you some elements) is towards offloading the CPU more and more. As you don't get it, offloading the CPU means you push more work on the GPU. Therefore a GPU bound benchmark is more characteristic of how next gen games will behave than old Intel+Nvidia games.

I note how you avoided my question about the jaguar-based CPU in the consoles...

Spoiler

Spoiler

Juan we do agree that richland and piledriver is basicly the same, expect for powermanagement and the like, right? what does the richland APU have that the fx doesn't? And specifically what is it that makes the APU be the only one recieving performance increases:

The six factors, Except for the piledriver -> steamroller/HSA (Won't help in singlethreaded), doesn't everything else apply to fx and older apu too..?

The APU lacks L3 cache. I don't know if there are other differences which AMD has not disclosed. What I know is what follows.

The BF4 benchmark given at the October talk to OEMs shows a Richland APU performing as well as FX-6350 and FX-8350. The APU gives a 98% and 96% of the performance of each FX respectively.

The 'old' argument that FX is 30--50% faster because has L3 cache doesn't apply here.

The argument that Suez map is single player and not well-multithreaded doesn't mean anything, because a FX-4350 will not be 30--50% faster than the FX-6350 and FX-8350.

meaningless ... really ...

ya, ... multiplayer really favors the APU core in the 750k doesn't it.

Just to clarify,
750k = piledriver without l3 cache and no IGP.
4350 = piledriver fx
6300 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

lets compare the 4.5 ghz piledriver 750k to the 4.7 ghz fx. That only accounts for a 4.5% difference in clock speed, if perfect scaling (wich its not) then subtract 4.5% from the results.

4350 = 18% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
6300 = 47% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
8350 = 76% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core

How many times do you have to be proven wrong? Single player benchmark is meaningless because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its strictly a gpu benchmark until you drop below 3.0 ghz.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/734/bench/CPU_01.png

More of the same. Here you pick again the same benchmark that I commented before in a reply to you, when you linked it by the first time. And then you repeat the same without reading what was said to you. So typical.

And you always change the story. You stated that kaveri will =i5 in ordinary cpus workloads. When proven wrong now it's only in apu specialized software.

You may be happy with weaker cores coupled with a software solution, it will not go over well when the reviews come out.

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

Spoiler

Disagreeing is fine, but he writing "to save their ass", "a crappy cpu", "and an idle IGP", "weak ass cores"... clearly denotes hate.

Specially when he is plain wrong. As shown in my article about Kaveri a 3.7GHz SR CPU perform like a SB/IB i5 with ordinary CPU workloads, loosing in the FP intensive ones but outperforming in the integer workloads. There I assumed 20% IPC over PD, but some late leaks suggest that the final improvement is >30%. Therefore add to the scores I published if the leak is true.

you want to claim I am wrong yet you only offer your opinion. APU cores are weak, always have been.

Spoiler

the lowly fx-4100 is 46% faster than the A10 5700 and clocked slower. The fx-4320 is 58% faster and the fx-8350 and the I5 3470 is 73% faster. good luck catching that i5.

This is the same architecture. Id call that a weak ass core any day.

again, 4320 = 40% faster, 8350 = 56% faster, I5 3470 = 73% faster.

4320 - 52% , 8320 - 83%,I5 3470 - 89%

4320 - 33%, 8320 - 50%, i5 3470 - 62%

... there is plenty more where these came from

now tell me using these RL results how removing the L3 cache in favor of making the cpu weaker and adding an IGP is such a great thing to ever happen to the computing industry?

How is kaveri going to catch the I5? 8350? ... heck even the 4320 ...

Id say the a10 5700 is a pretty good spot to start with Kaveri figures since they both clock at 3.7 ghz. As you put it "in ordinary cpu workloads" shown above, its starting at negative 40% already just to get to the 4320.

Kaveri is not going to be the answer your hoping it will be. It will not catch the i5 3470 very often (if ever,) it may here and there, but that will take some luck "in ordinary cpu workloads"

Tell me just exactly how I am "just plain wrong"?

I already said this to you. Also you continue using essentially the same logic than in your previous attack to AMD ARM line.

Here you pick very old benchmarks (not optimized for AMD architecture, one of them is a Nvidia sponsored game) and an old 5700 Trinity APU and you claim this is how Kaveri will perform.

You miss the estimation of Kaveri CPU performance in the BSN* article, you miss the leaked benchmarks comparing Kaveri to Bulldozer and Piledriver FX, and you miss the BF4 benchmark given by AMD during October talk, where a Richland APU got the 98% of the performance of a FX-6350 and the 96% of the performance of the FX-8350 (the three using a R9 280X and playing @ 1080p ultra). I think you continue missing the subsequent discussion on multiplayer BF4. And you miss that AMD is in the consoles now, with a CPU based in jaguar cores.

Can you compare the performance of the PS4 CPU to Kaveri CPU? I can.

Maybe you don't still understand this, but game developers will be offloading the consoles CPUs and running the heavy computations on the consoles GPUs. That is why both consoles have GPGPU abilities and HSA support.

You also miss that MANTLE aims to liberate some CPU bottlenecks that exist in current gaming technology. This is from Oxide talk at APU13:

Mantle Unleashed: How Mantle changes the fundamentals of what is possible on a PC. Over the last 5 years, GPUs have become so fast that it has become increasingly difficult for the CPU to utilize them. Developers expend considerable effort reducing CPU overhead and often are forced to make compromises to fully utilize the GPU. This talk will discuss real-world results on how Mantle enables game engines to fully and efficiently utilize all the cores on the CPU, and how it’s efficient architecture can eliminate the problems of being CPU bound once and for all.

get over yourself. Very old benchmarks? I specifically looked for games released in 2013 ... ermago ... thats soo friggin old.

a10 5700 = piledriver without l3 cache
4320 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

whats soo old about the a10 5700? all that richland brought was higher clock speeds over trinity, kaveri brought lower clock speeds. you can't compare the 4.2 ghz richland to the 3.7 ghz kaveri and say its going to be 30% faster on top of being slower clock. 3.7 ghz piledriver vs 3.7 ghz kaveri is a fair comparison.

If anything id describe AMD's APU as a gpu with an integrated cpu while Intel is making cpus with an integrated gpu.

The reason your stuck on this "BF4 ERMAGO BENCHMARK" is because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its a gpu bound benchmark. Thats why it was chosen, its a tactic called marketing.

As for the BSN article, its was pulled from your website.

Agree on that "very old" was an exaggeration from my part, but it was needed to compensate your exaggerated attack on Kaveri APU (I mean that one where you wrote "ass", "crappy", and "ass").

In the same paragraph I also wrote what I mean by "old", (="not optimized for AMD architecture"). Sorry but no, I was not referring to if was released in early 2013 or in late 2009.

I am not discussing marketing, you are. I am discussing technical and economic details behind marketing and execution plans by a company. I am explaining you that the whole master plan (which I have given you some elements) is towards offloading the CPU more and more. As you don't get it, offloading the CPU means you push more work on the GPU. Therefore a GPU bound benchmark is more characteristic of how next gen games will behave than old Intel+Nvidia games.

I note how you avoided my question about the jaguar-based CPU in the consoles...

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Spoiler

Juan we do agree that richland and piledriver is basicly the same, expect for powermanagement and the like, right? what does the richland APU have that the fx doesn't? And specifically what is it that makes the APU be the only one recieving performance increases:

The six factors, Except for the piledriver -> steamroller/HSA (Won't help in singlethreaded), doesn't everything else apply to fx and older apu too..?

The APU lacks L3 cache. I don't know if there are other differences which AMD has not disclosed. What I know is what follows.

The BF4 benchmark given at the October talk to OEMs shows a Richland APU performing as well as FX-6350 and FX-8350. The APU gives a 98% and 96% of the performance of each FX respectively.

The 'old' argument that FX is 30--50% faster because has L3 cache doesn't apply here.

The argument that Suez map is single player and not well-multithreaded doesn't mean anything, because a FX-4350 will not be 30--50% faster than the FX-6350 and FX-8350.

meaningless ... really ...

ya, ... multiplayer really favors the APU core in the 750k doesn't it.

Just to clarify,
750k = piledriver without l3 cache and no IGP.
4350 = piledriver fx
6300 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

lets compare the 4.5 ghz piledriver 750k to the 4.7 ghz fx. That only accounts for a 4.5% difference in clock speed, if perfect scaling (wich its not) then subtract 4.5% from the results.

4350 = 18% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
6300 = 47% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
8350 = 76% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core

How many times do you have to be proven wrong? Single player benchmark is meaningless because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its strictly a gpu benchmark until you drop below 3.0 ghz.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/734/bench/CPU_01.png

More of the same. Here you pick again the same benchmark that I commented before in a reply to you, when you linked it by the first time. And then you repeat the same without reading what was said to you. So typical.

And you always change the story. You stated that kaveri will =i5 in ordinary cpus workloads. When proven wrong now it's only in apu specialized software.

You may be happy with weaker cores coupled with a software solution, it will not go over well when the reviews come out.

And unsurprisingly you come with the same misunderstanding again, one that I corrected before and before...

In my BSN* article, which evidently you didn't read, I show how kaveri performs as an i5 using ordinary cpu workloads. I am not using "apu specialized software" as you pretend.

Finally, I am happy with the idea of software using my hardware. All my hardware (or most of it) and not only one half or one third of it. There is another person here with similar ideas to me. He compiled a program for his hardware and now it runs 2x faster or said in another way the former unoptimized program was using only a 50% of the performance of his hardware.

You seem to prefer the other way. If the software only uses a 50% of the hardware you update to a 2x more powerful hardware for that the same software can now ignore the 50% of more.

 

[blackkstar]

I personally don't trust Steam Hardware Survey, it never asks to test my FX 8350 but it always asks to test my Core 2 Duo Laptop running Gentoo.

Can anyone answer my question about 22nm SOI that GloFo was working on?

 

[kansasboy001]

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But Juan that is a single case out of many, okay so in the BF4 it won't be 50%, what about the million other applications (Which I btw doesn't think is right either, 10-25% is more likely).

"It's not reflected" in a canned benchmark by AMD who is trying to sell APU's. Would it not be odd if AMD choose a benchmark where the richland would perform poorly? That would be terrible marketing. And before you go claim that "this is how it's going to be" , you have to have more of the picture. Meaning more than one benchmark.

Of course it is only a single case, but I recall that when I started my discussion of this, I clearly said that AMD was taking it as "prototype" for the "next gen" games.

Yes, it is picked benchmark by AMD who is trying to sell APU's at the expense of the FX chips. They could compare Richland to an Intel chip, but they compared to its own FX chips. The FX-4350 was not even mentioned.

Of course, look at the die sizes on the APUs...where do you think the margins are better? That 315mm^2 die on the FX series makes them money, but APUs selling for ~70% of the cost, with 60% of the die size makes tons of sense. They can get better yields out of the product because they don't need the big dies like they have in FX.

Now, that of course precludes the fact that FX is still a better CPU when you need the raw horsepower, and so I anticipate they will still sell them by the truck load to boutique builders and DIY PC builders.

You talked about FX 8 cores being 0.4% of steam hardware survey, I think it was, and when you consider that's 50 mil people on Steam, most of them on mobile solutions, I would think you would see something along those lines...that's still 200k machines with FX 8 cores using steam. Considering that there are many people who do not have steam (myself included), I think that the prediction those numbers give is likely only 10-15% of the likely number of people running such systems in the US. You are also neglecting the very prevalent productivity types with that figure, and I think that plays a large part in the small representation of that sample.

If the demand for FX-8350 CPUs was higher than it is, AMD margin would be better. Look at the 9000 series. They were overpriced, nobody was purchasing them and recently their prices dropped by giant amounts. It is the always the same: lack of demand.

I consider that steam statistics must be pretty accurate from my knowledge of the local market, but look at own AMD numbers: the FX 8-core represents like a 2% of the total revenue generated by both APUs and CPUs. Now try to compute the percentage of the total revenue.

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then he kept repeatedly bringing it up saying that benchmark is the reason amd cancelled higher core SR-FX cpus and apparently that's what amd 'told' oem representatives at that event (even thought he failed to provide an audio transcript after repeated asking).

This is pure and simply false (*). The reasons why AMD is not releasing SR FX line are multiple and I explained them here before: transition to APU, reorganization of server plans, and lack of demand. I gave details and further explanations for each one.

What I said about that October talk slide was that it clearly reflect AMD plans about migrating to an APU strategy and guess what Lisa Su (AMD vicepresident) confirmed my thoughts, this week during the opening keynotes:

Lisa Su, Senior VP & GM of Global Business Units at AMD, delivered the opening keynote and the message was clear: AMD is positioning its Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) -- which combine traditional multi-core CPUs and a discrete multi-core graphics processing unit on a single chip -- to dominate the market from smartphones to servers.

(*) Like when you said that I never wrote the PFs for the slide but I did in one of my posts in this thread.

LOL...When did AMD say, specifically, that they were not putting out a new FX successor? Without you reading between the lines and interpreting...

I will have word from AMD about future FX successor within the next week. So don't go counting chickens before they hatch again...

And where in AMD vice-president words says that they will release a FX successor?

What if I already have in my hands the official desktop roadmap for 2014?

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Anyone attempting to argue the new APU's will be remotely close to a high end dGPU is deluded. That's just not how CPU's work. The highest end APU will be about equal to the low end dCPU's but with a moderately good GPU bolted on. The entire purpose of an APU isn't to replace dCPU's, it's to do budget / compact computing. SFF and similar use's where power and space are limited and going with an all inclusive solution works out the best.

Anyone attempting to argue that the entire purpose of an APU is to satisfy the budget / compact computing market is deluded.

AMD APUs have been competing as a low-cost alternative in much of the consumer market, because the APU concept had not been still completely developed. Kaveri is the first APU that fulfills that 'ancient' AMD dream that was born with the acquisition of ATI.

It has not still completely developed by two basic reasons: memory bandwidth and software. But the second is a consequence of the former. Once the memory bandwidth problem was solved with the almost ready stacked memory we will see the born of ultra-high-performance APUs

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microns-hybrid-memory-cube-earns-high-praise-in-next-generation-supercomputer-2013-11-07

P.S.: the bandwidth provided by this new RAM technology is superior to the L3 cache in FX chips.

HMC is superior to even GDDR5, however, that technology is years away from wide spread adoption in consumer PCs. Sure, super computers costing millions and millions of dollars use it...however, there isn't even a standard for a way to integrate it into the motherboard yet...

I didn't mean this to be happening tomorrow. Kaveri is a 2014 product and uses DDR3. Carrizo successor comes in 2015 and uses DD3/4. The new high-bandwidth memory technology is something for 2016/17. Then we will start to see ultra-high-end performance APUs (which not will be mainstream). Nvidia is developing an APU with cube memory that is projected to give 10x the performance of the GTX Titan.

If you have the roadmap, lets see a pic

 

[blackkstar]

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Disagreeing is fine, but he writing "to save their ass", "a crappy cpu", "and an idle IGP", "weak ass cores"... clearly denotes hate.

Specially when he is plain wrong. As shown in my article about Kaveri a 3.7GHz SR CPU perform like a SB/IB i5 with ordinary CPU workloads, loosing in the FP intensive ones but outperforming in the integer workloads. There I assumed 20% IPC over PD, but some late leaks suggest that the final improvement is >30%. Therefore add to the scores I published if the leak is true.

you want to claim I am wrong yet you only offer your opinion. APU cores are weak, always have been.

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the lowly fx-4100 is 46% faster than the A10 5700 and clocked slower. The fx-4320 is 58% faster and the fx-8350 and the I5 3470 is 73% faster. good luck catching that i5.

This is the same architecture. Id call that a weak ass core any day.

again, 4320 = 40% faster, 8350 = 56% faster, I5 3470 = 73% faster.

4320 - 52% , 8320 - 83%,I5 3470 - 89%

4320 - 33%, 8320 - 50%, i5 3470 - 62%

... there is plenty more where these came from

now tell me using these RL results how removing the L3 cache in favor of making the cpu weaker and adding an IGP is such a great thing to ever happen to the computing industry?

How is kaveri going to catch the I5? 8350? ... heck even the 4320 ...

Id say the a10 5700 is a pretty good spot to start with Kaveri figures since they both clock at 3.7 ghz. As you put it "in ordinary cpu workloads" shown above, its starting at negative 40% already just to get to the 4320.

Kaveri is not going to be the answer your hoping it will be. It will not catch the i5 3470 very often (if ever,) it may here and there, but that will take some luck "in ordinary cpu workloads"

Tell me just exactly how I am "just plain wrong"?

I already said this to you. Also you continue using essentially the same logic than in your previous attack to AMD ARM line.

Here you pick very old benchmarks (not optimized for AMD architecture, one of them is a Nvidia sponsored game) and an old 5700 Trinity APU and you claim this is how Kaveri will perform.

You miss the estimation of Kaveri CPU performance in the BSN* article, you miss the leaked benchmarks comparing Kaveri to Bulldozer and Piledriver FX, and you miss the BF4 benchmark given by AMD during October talk, where a Richland APU got the 98% of the performance of a FX-6350 and the 96% of the performance of the FX-8350 (the three using a R9 280X and playing @ 1080p ultra). I think you continue missing the subsequent discussion on multiplayer BF4. And you miss that AMD is in the consoles now, with a CPU based in jaguar cores.

Can you compare the performance of the PS4 CPU to Kaveri CPU? I can.

Maybe you don't still understand this, but game developers will be offloading the consoles CPUs and running the heavy computations on the consoles GPUs. That is why both consoles have GPGPU abilities and HSA support.

You also miss that MANTLE aims to liberate some CPU bottlenecks that exist in current gaming technology. This is from Oxide talk at APU13:

Mantle Unleashed: How Mantle changes the fundamentals of what is possible on a PC. Over the last 5 years, GPUs have become so fast that it has become increasingly difficult for the CPU to utilize them. Developers expend considerable effort reducing CPU overhead and often are forced to make compromises to fully utilize the GPU. This talk will discuss real-world results on how Mantle enables game engines to fully and efficiently utilize all the cores on the CPU, and how it’s efficient architecture can eliminate the problems of being CPU bound once and for all.

get over yourself. Very old benchmarks? I specifically looked for games released in 2013 ... ermago ... thats soo friggin old.

a10 5700 = piledriver without l3 cache
4320 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

whats soo old about the a10 5700? all that richland brought was higher clock speeds over trinity, kaveri brought lower clock speeds. you can't compare the 4.2 ghz richland to the 3.7 ghz kaveri and say its going to be 30% faster on top of being slower clock. 3.7 ghz piledriver vs 3.7 ghz kaveri is a fair comparison.

If anything id describe AMD's APU as a gpu with an integrated cpu while Intel is making cpus with an integrated gpu.

The reason your stuck on this "BF4 ERMAGO BENCHMARK" is because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its a gpu bound benchmark. Thats why it was chosen, its a tactic called marketing.

As for the BSN article, its was pulled from your website.

Agree on that "very old" was an exaggeration from my part, but it was needed to compensate your exaggerated attack on Kaveri APU (I mean that one where you wrote "ass", "crappy", and "ass").

In the same paragraph I also wrote what I mean by "old", (="not optimized for AMD architecture"). Sorry but no, I was not referring to if was released in early 2013 or in late 2009.

I am not discussing marketing, you are. I am discussing technical and economic details behind marketing and execution plans by a company. I am explaining you that the whole master plan (which I have given you some elements) is towards offloading the CPU more and more. As you don't get it, offloading the CPU means you push more work on the GPU. Therefore a GPU bound benchmark is more characteristic of how next gen games will behave than old Intel+Nvidia games.

I note how you avoided my question about the jaguar-based CPU in the consoles...

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Juan we do agree that richland and piledriver is basicly the same, expect for powermanagement and the like, right? what does the richland APU have that the fx doesn't? And specifically what is it that makes the APU be the only one recieving performance increases:

The six factors, Except for the piledriver -> steamroller/HSA (Won't help in singlethreaded), doesn't everything else apply to fx and older apu too..?

The APU lacks L3 cache. I don't know if there are other differences which AMD has not disclosed. What I know is what follows.

The BF4 benchmark given at the October talk to OEMs shows a Richland APU performing as well as FX-6350 and FX-8350. The APU gives a 98% and 96% of the performance of each FX respectively.

The 'old' argument that FX is 30--50% faster because has L3 cache doesn't apply here.

The argument that Suez map is single player and not well-multithreaded doesn't mean anything, because a FX-4350 will not be 30--50% faster than the FX-6350 and FX-8350.

meaningless ... really ...

ya, ... multiplayer really favors the APU core in the 750k doesn't it.

Just to clarify,
750k = piledriver without l3 cache and no IGP.
4350 = piledriver fx
6300 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

lets compare the 4.5 ghz piledriver 750k to the 4.7 ghz fx. That only accounts for a 4.5% difference in clock speed, if perfect scaling (wich its not) then subtract 4.5% from the results.

4350 = 18% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
6300 = 47% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
8350 = 76% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core

How many times do you have to be proven wrong? Single player benchmark is meaningless because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its strictly a gpu benchmark until you drop below 3.0 ghz.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/734/bench/CPU_01.png

More of the same. Here you pick again the same benchmark that I commented before in a reply to you, when you linked it by the first time. And then you repeat the same without reading what was said to you. So typical.

And you always change the story. You stated that kaveri will =i5 in ordinary cpus workloads. When proven wrong now it's only in apu specialized software.

You may be happy with weaker cores coupled with a software solution, it will not go over well when the reviews come out.

And unsurprisingly you come with the same misunderstanding again, one that I corrected before and before...

In my BSN* article, which evidently you didn't read, I show how kaveri performs as an i5 using ordinary cpu workloads. I am not using "apu specialized software" as you pretend.

Finally, I am happy with the idea of software using my hardware. All my hardware (or most of it) and not only one half or one third of it. There is another person here with similar ideas to me. He compiled a program for his hardware and now it runs 2x faster or said in another way the former unoptimized program was using only a 50% of the performance of his hardware.

You seem to prefer the other way. If the software only uses a 50% of the hardware you update to a 2x more powerful hardware for that the same software can now ignore the 50% of more.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but the software side of things are very good for AMD right now in regards to gaming.

Remember when FX 8350 first launched? You'd have to dig forever to find good FX 8350 benchmarks and the AMD guys were floating the same few benchmarks which showed it doing well over and over again while there was a bombardment of Skyrim, Shogun 2, Starcraft 2, Warcraft, etc.

Now look at how things have changed. GamerK is trying to disprove the FX and the best he can do is post a few niche examples of modern games that don't run well on FX.

I do think this is why AMD is not in a rush to push SR on HEDT. PD has gone from trailing Intel 3570k by 30% in reviews in all the gaming benchmarks to beating 3770k. Nothing on the chip has changed.

AMD simply has absolutely no reason to even release SR on HEDT. Why release a chip that is 15% faster when you just got 30% improvement out of software increases by nipping the whole "game developers optimizing for Intel" thing right in the butt?

After watching the APU13 keynote on Mantle it's quite clear that AMD is designing Mantle to not only scale where GPU on APU does some other calculation besides rendering, but that this will scale between TWO dGPUs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tDPgJB2x7dQ

Watch the whole thing, I think Johan screwed up. He said you'd see a Mantle situation where one GPU calculated global illumination whilst one just rendered the scene.

Do you know what's missing from that equation?

An APU.

And I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's quite clear AM3+ is completely incapable of HSA.

Yet at the same time running two dGPUs on APU platform is a complete waste because of the PCIe lanes available.

So why talk about Mantle using two dGPUs? AMD doesn't have a publicly available platform that supports everything required for Mantle to use two dGPUs.

Johan dun goofed.

 

[esrever]

anyone know how they did 2x the performance per watt while still being on 28nm? They should be competitive with baytrail with numbers like this if true.

 

[palladin9479]

Got a lead on AMD's next year dGPU, the R299x. They went with a modular design that lets you expand the card's capabilities as needed.

R9 299x Image Leaked

 

[de5_Roy]

What dGPU were they using for the dCPU's? I ask because it wasn't mentioned and without it the benchmark's are useless. I can make pretty graphs that show a TI86 beating an i7-3770K, doesn't mean it'll be worth a damn.

the said bench was done with an a10 6790k, fx6350, and fx8350 (all stock) with 64 bit windows 8.1, 16 GB (may be, i don't remember precisely) ddr3 2133 ram, radeon R9 280X. the benchmark was BF4 suez map, at 1080p at ultra settings. strangely, the apu delivered over 50 fp/s (average, not minimum), quite close to the other two with minimal variance, very, very strongly suggesting it was a scripted, offline, single player, gpu-bound benchmark. as a cmparison, earlier i saw a pclab.pl bf4 mp bench where an athlon 750k was struggling to break 25 fps minimum and 30-35 fps avg. (forgot the precise number and the map).

The fact that it is Linux/OSX native is the biggest boon. Now you could do AAA titles on all 3 major OS platforms...breaking the monopoly Windows has on high end PC Gaming.

and seemingly shift the monopoly to amd. doesn't look like a good thing in long term.

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you are quite literally twisting the facts here. it's not the apu's(6790k's in that promo slide) performance of apu that increases. it's the reduction of the cpus' (fx) performance. go take a look at a 4 core apu vs 6+ core fx in a 7zip benchmark for real cpu performance comparison in a mainstream software.

Your "real cpu performance" benchmark would not show how the APU really performs if I want play BF4 Suarez @ 1080p ultra using a R9 280X.

it won't? i wonder why not... may be because the majority of work would be performed by the gfx card. why so much aversion to cpu benchmarks in a cpu discussion?

then he kept repeatedly bringing it up saying that benchmark is the reason amd cancelled higher core SR-FX cpus and apparently that's what amd 'told' oem representatives at that event (even thought he failed to provide an audio transcript after repeated asking).

This is pure and simply false (*). The reasons why AMD is not releasing SR FX line are multiple and I explained them here before: transition to APU, reorganization of server plans, and lack of demand. I gave details and further explanations for each one.

oh really? false, is it? here's what you said in your post, ad verbatim:

In their talk they were saying to OEMs that the new APU gives >90% of the FX-8350 performance at one fraction of the cost. That is what the slide #13 says. That doesn't look as promoting the FX line. The FX-4350 didn't even was mentioned by AMD.

I see two options either (i) AMD will be abandoning the FX-4000 and refreshing the FX-6000/8000/9000 a la Warsaw or (ii) AMD will drop the entire FX line completely and focus on an APU line only.

I am not assuming anything, I asked you a specific question.

but wait.. there is more, in case you have conveniently forgotten (along with the poorly executed deflection when i ask for audio version):

Spoiler

In their talk they were saying to OEMs that the new APU gives >90% of the FX-8350 performance at one fraction of the cost. That is what the slide #13 says. That doesn't look as promoting the FX line. The FX-4350 didn't even was mentioned by AMD.

talk? there's an audio version? i didn't listen to that. if amd said that the new apu(6790k) gives >90% of fx8350's performance, they were intentionally being vague (>90% of what? what tasks?) to pitch 6790k. benchmarketing at play - largely irrelevant, since independent reviews will reflect the real world perf/price.

^^ bolded the relevant part.

i just mentioned a couple of post ago that they were promoting 6790k (i.e. not fx). that's what the apu part of slideshow says, mostly filled with advertising than with facts.

And my reply was that usually one doesn't promote one product at the expense of another from the same company, unless the former product is going to replace/substitute the second.

the slide never mentioned exact fps, how did you deduce the numbers needed to calculate the percentage? those just show 'greater than' bars.

Measuring the bars and using the axis scale.

how did you measure this 'fraction of the cost' from slide #13? the apu has $130 msrp iirc, fx8350 sells for $200 - that's way more than a "fraction". the bf4 bench was done with a discreet card, so the apu's igpu is not a factor.

Evidently the cost is not obtained from slide #13. Spending $70 less for missing only a 8% of performance @ 1080p agrees with my concept of a 'fraction of the cost'.

I was assuming the iGPU was used together the dGPU. If it was not used then this move the performance per $ on the APU side.

above all, since when a single, very gpu bound, bf4 single player is representative of "new APU gives >90% of the FX-8350 performance at one fraction of the cost"(even though it's clearly miscalculated and misinterpreted)?

you have misinterpreted 'slide #13'. you're reading too much into it exacerbated by your own misinterpretation.

In the first place, when I presented the slide by the first time. I said that the point was not to discuss if the slide was representative or not, because the fact that AMD had made that slide was much more important. We can discuss if the situation represented in that slide is the general case or only a special case, but this is unimportant. The important is that the slide reflects AMD intentions.

Nobody makes a slide as that and present them to OEMs attending a talk if the goal is to sell lots of FX-6350 and 8350. The slide was clearly made with the goal of emphasizing the APU and deemphasizing the FX line. Now take your own opinion about that.

I see two options either (i) AMD will be abandoning the FX-4000 and refreshing the FX-6000/8000/9000 a la Warsaw or (ii) AMD will drop the entire FX line completely and focus on an APU line only.

I am not assuming anything, I asked you a specific question.

you see those options based on a single promo slide from an apu promo slideshow? even if the cpus get phased out, your base is just wrong.
as for answer to your question: you don't know what i believe.

No. I didn't get that from the slide. I already discussed options (i) and (ii) before the slide appeared. That slide agrees with the options.

i didn't have to bold or underline parts, it's all there.

What I said about that October talk slide was that it clearly reflect AMD plans about migrating to an APU strategy and guess what Lisa Su (AMD vicepresident) confirmed my thoughts, this week during the opening keynotes:

Spoiler

Lisa Su, Senior VP & GM of Global Business Units at AMD, delivered the opening keynote and the message was clear: AMD is positioning its Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) -- which combine traditional multi-core CPUs and a discrete multi-core graphics processing unit on a single chip -- to dominate the market from smartphones to servers.

yeah... is she saying that amd cancelled sr-fx cpus because of 6790k delivered close performance to higher core fx cpus in a single player offline benchmark(as you incessantly claim, not speculate)? i dont see that here. it's also ridiculous to think amd would promote cpus at a conference literally called APU13. amd has been migrating to apus since 2011, while their cpu lineups co-exist.

(*) Like when you said that I never wrote the PFs for the slide but I did in one of my posts in this thread.

to be precise, i said that you never posted those values to me (the context-twisting is clearly on your part). not only that, you repeatedly avoided posting the values, intermediate results and calculations. 'one of my posts' is such a blanket term....anywho, please post them asap.

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD's 2014 mobile roadmap is built around low power, security logic
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2062137/amds-2014-mobile-roadmap-is-built-around-low-power-security-logic.html
this has been posted before. here's the roadmap, notice the mullins and temash entries:
http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/11/amd_2013_mobility_roadmap-100068083-orig.png
but i don't think anyone has noticed/discussed that amd has joined intel on this SDP scam. notice in the roadmap where amd specifies sdp but strangely abstains from specifying other chips tdp wattage (e.g. kaveri's) even though they're mentioning them. this is similar to what intel did while introducing y series core i cpus aimed at tablets.
allegedly, SDP stands for scenario design power/point/idontcare. basically, amd/intel sets a lower stock clockrate so that the tdp can be stated lower while in reality, it isn't. i support amd's mobile apus more than anyone here... but this is uncool. the apus were already better than intel's, they didn't have to lower them to intel's level. otoh, bay trail doesn't have sdp (it might, but the tdp is still lower), intel's y-series core i cpus have sdp.
amd's definition of SDP may be different. i am speculating based on intel's definition of SDP.

another implication is the 28nm mention. might mean that tsmc (who historically has fabbed mobile apus/socs) 20nm mobile bulk process isn't ready yet.. or amd is not partnering for them or apple/qualcomm has blocked them out or both of last two.

 

[noob2222]

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Disagreeing is fine, but he writing "to save their ass", "a crappy cpu", "and an idle IGP", "weak ass cores"... clearly denotes hate.

Specially when he is plain wrong. As shown in my article about Kaveri a 3.7GHz SR CPU perform like a SB/IB i5 with ordinary CPU workloads, loosing in the FP intensive ones but outperforming in the integer workloads. There I assumed 20% IPC over PD, but some late leaks suggest that the final improvement is >30%. Therefore add to the scores I published if the leak is true.

you want to claim I am wrong yet you only offer your opinion. APU cores are weak, always have been.

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the lowly fx-4100 is 46% faster than the A10 5700 and clocked slower. The fx-4320 is 58% faster and the fx-8350 and the I5 3470 is 73% faster. good luck catching that i5.

This is the same architecture. Id call that a weak ass core any day.

again, 4320 = 40% faster, 8350 = 56% faster, I5 3470 = 73% faster.

4320 - 52% , 8320 - 83%,I5 3470 - 89%

4320 - 33%, 8320 - 50%, i5 3470 - 62%

... there is plenty more where these came from

now tell me using these RL results how removing the L3 cache in favor of making the cpu weaker and adding an IGP is such a great thing to ever happen to the computing industry?

How is kaveri going to catch the I5? 8350? ... heck even the 4320 ...

Id say the a10 5700 is a pretty good spot to start with Kaveri figures since they both clock at 3.7 ghz. As you put it "in ordinary cpu workloads" shown above, its starting at negative 40% already just to get to the 4320.

Kaveri is not going to be the answer your hoping it will be. It will not catch the i5 3470 very often (if ever,) it may here and there, but that will take some luck "in ordinary cpu workloads"

Tell me just exactly how I am "just plain wrong"?

I already said this to you. Also you continue using essentially the same logic than in your previous attack to AMD ARM line.

Here you pick very old benchmarks (not optimized for AMD architecture, one of them is a Nvidia sponsored game) and an old 5700 Trinity APU and you claim this is how Kaveri will perform.

You miss the estimation of Kaveri CPU performance in the BSN* article, you miss the leaked benchmarks comparing Kaveri to Bulldozer and Piledriver FX, and you miss the BF4 benchmark given by AMD during October talk, where a Richland APU got the 98% of the performance of a FX-6350 and the 96% of the performance of the FX-8350 (the three using a R9 280X and playing @ 1080p ultra). I think you continue missing the subsequent discussion on multiplayer BF4. And you miss that AMD is in the consoles now, with a CPU based in jaguar cores.

Can you compare the performance of the PS4 CPU to Kaveri CPU? I can.

Maybe you don't still understand this, but game developers will be offloading the consoles CPUs and running the heavy computations on the consoles GPUs. That is why both consoles have GPGPU abilities and HSA support.

You also miss that MANTLE aims to liberate some CPU bottlenecks that exist in current gaming technology. This is from Oxide talk at APU13:

Mantle Unleashed: How Mantle changes the fundamentals of what is possible on a PC. Over the last 5 years, GPUs have become so fast that it has become increasingly difficult for the CPU to utilize them. Developers expend considerable effort reducing CPU overhead and often are forced to make compromises to fully utilize the GPU. This talk will discuss real-world results on how Mantle enables game engines to fully and efficiently utilize all the cores on the CPU, and how it’s efficient architecture can eliminate the problems of being CPU bound once and for all.

get over yourself. Very old benchmarks? I specifically looked for games released in 2013 ... ermago ... thats soo friggin old.

a10 5700 = piledriver without l3 cache
4320 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

whats soo old about the a10 5700? all that richland brought was higher clock speeds over trinity, kaveri brought lower clock speeds. you can't compare the 4.2 ghz richland to the 3.7 ghz kaveri and say its going to be 30% faster on top of being slower clock. 3.7 ghz piledriver vs 3.7 ghz kaveri is a fair comparison.

If anything id describe AMD's APU as a gpu with an integrated cpu while Intel is making cpus with an integrated gpu.

The reason your stuck on this "BF4 ERMAGO BENCHMARK" is because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its a gpu bound benchmark. Thats why it was chosen, its a tactic called marketing.

As for the BSN article, its was pulled from your website.

Agree on that "very old" was an exaggeration from my part, but it was needed to compensate your exaggerated attack on Kaveri APU (I mean that one where you wrote "ass", "crappy", and "ass").

In the same paragraph I also wrote what I mean by "old", (="not optimized for AMD architecture"). Sorry but no, I was not referring to if was released in early 2013 or in late 2009.

I am not discussing marketing, you are. I am discussing technical and economic details behind marketing and execution plans by a company. I am explaining you that the whole master plan (which I have given you some elements) is towards offloading the CPU more and more. As you don't get it, offloading the CPU means you push more work on the GPU. Therefore a GPU bound benchmark is more characteristic of how next gen games will behave than old Intel+Nvidia games.

I note how you avoided my question about the jaguar-based CPU in the consoles...

Spoiler

Spoiler

Juan we do agree that richland and piledriver is basicly the same, expect for powermanagement and the like, right? what does the richland APU have that the fx doesn't? And specifically what is it that makes the APU be the only one recieving performance increases:

The six factors, Except for the piledriver -> steamroller/HSA (Won't help in singlethreaded), doesn't everything else apply to fx and older apu too..?

The APU lacks L3 cache. I don't know if there are other differences which AMD has not disclosed. What I know is what follows.

The BF4 benchmark given at the October talk to OEMs shows a Richland APU performing as well as FX-6350 and FX-8350. The APU gives a 98% and 96% of the performance of each FX respectively.

The 'old' argument that FX is 30--50% faster because has L3 cache doesn't apply here.

The argument that Suez map is single player and not well-multithreaded doesn't mean anything, because a FX-4350 will not be 30--50% faster than the FX-6350 and FX-8350.

meaningless ... really ...

ya, ... multiplayer really favors the APU core in the 750k doesn't it.

Just to clarify,
750k = piledriver without l3 cache and no IGP.
4350 = piledriver fx
6300 = piledriver fx
8350 = piledriver fx

lets compare the 4.5 ghz piledriver 750k to the 4.7 ghz fx. That only accounts for a 4.5% difference in clock speed, if perfect scaling (wich its not) then subtract 4.5% from the results.

4350 = 18% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
6300 = 47% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core
8350 = 76% faster than the l3 cacheless APU core

How many times do you have to be proven wrong? Single player benchmark is meaningless because it doesn't stress the cpu AT ALL. Its strictly a gpu benchmark until you drop below 3.0 ghz.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/734/bench/CPU_01.png

More of the same. Here you pick again the same benchmark that I commented before in a reply to you, when you linked it by the first time. And then you repeat the same without reading what was said to you. So typical.

And you always change the story. You stated that kaveri will =i5 in ordinary cpus workloads. When proven wrong now it's only in apu specialized software.

You may be happy with weaker cores coupled with a software solution, it will not go over well when the reviews come out.

And unsurprisingly you come with the same misunderstanding again, one that I corrected before and before...

In my BSN* article, which evidently you didn't read, I show how kaveri performs as an i5 using ordinary cpu workloads. I am not using "apu specialized software" as you pretend.

Finally, I am happy with the idea of software using my hardware. All my hardware (or most of it) and not only one half or one third of it. There is another person here with similar ideas to me. He compiled a program for his hardware and now it runs 2x faster or said in another way the former unoptimized program was using only a 50% of the performance of his hardware.

You seem to prefer the other way. If the software only uses a 50% of the hardware you update to a 2x more powerful hardware for that the same software can now ignore the 50% of more.

I love the idea of utilizing software. Not at the expense of only releasing low end hardware and relying solely on the software to make up the lack of good hardware. We need both. APU are not high end. Period.

APU are a little of both, and a master of none. Without the specialized software as I have shown kaveri needs 80% or more boost to catch the low end i5. It needs 40% to catch the 4320. This is in ordinary gaming cpu workloads.

Your the one not looking at the data I have provided and coming up with lame excuses instead of trying to convince me with hard evidence. Your website and marketing slides that are designed to only show the best possible scenario do not count as evidence. Those will be only true in a few select cases and are not representative of "ordinary workloads".

 

[noob2222]

anyone know how they did 2x the performance per watt while still being on 28nm? They should be competitive with baytrail with numbers like this if true.

Wow , that's just strange. Beema and Mullins weren't canceled to make way for arm cpus? Wonder who said they would be.

 

[con635]

I thought the whole point of kaveri was increase ipc AND take away the 'hit' from using both cores in the same module so the single threaded performance increase would transfer to multithreaded???
In a month or so we'll get benchmarks I'm sure from review sites...

 

[noob2222]

I thought the whole point of kaveri was increase ipc AND take away the 'hit' from using both cores in the same module so the single threaded performance increase would transfer to multithreaded???
In a month or so we'll get benchmarks I'm sure from review sites...

That's steamroller your describing. Kaveri is an apu and generally speaking they are slower than their counter parts. Removed l3 cache to make room for the gpu and sacrifices performance.

Couple that with a reduction in clock speed on the final silicon, things don't look good.

 

[con635]

http://www.hardware.fr/news/13450/apu13-oxide-fait-exploser-limite-cpu-avec-mantle.html
Look at the slides, mantle looks awesome, the second last slide (results):
cpu benchmarks indicate that 8350 is comparable to core i7 4770k for performance
r290x still gpu bound even when 8350 down clocked to 2ghz

 

[de5_Roy]

http://www.hardware.fr/news/13450/apu13-oxide-fait-exploser-limite-cpu-avec-mantle.html
Look at the slides, mantle looks awesome, the second last slide (results):
cpu benchmarks indicate that 8350 is comparable to core i7 4770k for performance
r290x still gpu bound even when 8350 down clocked to 2ghz

yeah, the keyphrase here is "gpu bound". does not mean fx8350 is comparable to i7 4770k or vice versa.
looks like mantle is turning out to be amd's admission that they cannot reduce cpu overhead from their current catalyst drivers, blaming dx instead (partly justifiable). it's great for amd and gcn based gpus' performance.

 

[con635]

^^Dice think or would like nvidia to jump on board going by the talk last night, one of the last slides also specifically stated that mantle wasnt just for gcn and was forward compatible open to *any* vendor or platform.
This is the best thing for pc gaming in a long time imo, hope it all works out.

 

[de5_Roy]

from those slides, another sentence that caught my eye was "thin layer of abstraction" but how thin? amd claims it is extendable to other uarches and forward compatible. doesn't that mean it will eventually become bloated? may be i'm being too skeptical.