AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[-Fran-]

I wonder why AMD didn't send TR an A10-7850K... Their drivers are in Release Candidate status and they're probably still working out the frame pacing thing, so they might have been afraid of TR's testing methodology, haha.

Anyway... Taking out Anand's intent of selling Intel hardware throughout the review, I say Kaveri numbers are quite good; not DA BEST THING EVAR, but good and within my expectations. Now, it was specially impressive for the 65/45W part, the A8-7600. I think that little baby is the gem. It will be a great HTPC buddy for low cost systems and I'm really eager to see it in Lappies. Well, once they lower its "TAKE IT WHILE ITS FRESH" price.

All in all, the only thing that disappointed me, was FM2 not accepting Kaveri; was that due to PCIe 3? Also the chipset thing was weird. They really made it complicated to know which NB goes where, haha.

Oh well... We need an HTPC article and some tweaking guide for Kaveri. And new software 😛

Cheers!

 

[logainofhades]

I have to say, Kaveri is a letdown on a similar scale of Faildozer. I was hoping at least Phenom II performance on the CPU side, and we didn't even get that. At the end of the day, a 750k/760k and an HD 7750 is still a better buy than Kaveri.

 

[palladin9479]

I could see that happening. GPU is more powerful this go around, and since all settings aren't created equal...In short, the more CPU power used, the better Intel looks in comparison. Hence why benchmarking should be done using presets and max/min settings ONLY, otherwise you get unreproducible results across different sites.

Hell I'd just like to know exactly what each bench profile was setup with, that way I know where to start tweaking.

APU's are really really good when used properly, their value rapidly drops once you add in a dGPU which so many people are quick to do. I find they work best for mobile solutions and the aforementioned low profile / SFF / quiet design's plugged into an HDTV, which is where AMD got it's 1080p @30fps concept. 1080p/60 actually runs 30fps by displaying each incoming frame twice, it's a feature meant to make it possible to convert the film 24fps and NTSC 29.9fps standards to what the native display handles. So if you can get 30FPS it'll look good on a HDTV even if it looks bad on a desktop LCD monitor. I was surprised to see now nice 1280x720 looked on my 42 inch LCD while sitting on my couch on the other side of the room.

 

[etayorius]

The sad thing isn't that it doesn't match up to an i5, as I think only Juan here was expecting that. The sad thing is that it isn't an obvious upgrade over Richland. It's better at some things, worse at others. Reminds me of BD over PII.

Not only Juanrga, i was expecting Kaveri to get close to i5 2600k SingleCore performance... i was wrong, i was the first to admit it.

This is Bulldozer 2.0 Reloaded, it is the exact same CPU crap AMD pulled with Zambezi, slow SingleCore and somewhat good Multithreaded, but all is not lost... as soon as AMD manages to ramp Kaveri Speed to Richland levels it will be damn worth it, as of now with that inferior speed Kaveri should be avoided unless you are at least 4 or more generations behind.

It`s not that bad actually, i would not mind building Kaveri Systems to casual gamers who are on a budget, on that side Kaveri is a pure win.

Highperformance? dream on AMD.

I actually like to see Kaveri matched against a 980 with Kaveri turbo disabled, i expect Kaveri to be faster on this regard by about 10-15%.

 

[de5_Roy]

I wonder why AMD didn't send TR an A10-7850K... Their drivers are in Release Candidate status and they're probably still working out the frame pacing thing, so they might have been afraid of TR's testing methodology, haha.

a recent leak showed that frame pacing for dual gfx will be available in catalyst 14 package. until that comes out, any dual gfx testing will show crap performance.

All in all, the only thing that disappointed me, was FM2 not accepting Kaveri; was that due to PCIe 3? Also the chipset thing was weird. They really made it complicated to know which NB goes where, haha.

Oh well... We need an HTPC article and some tweaking guide for Kaveri. And new software 😛

Cheers!

fm2 was never going to run kaveri, it's been known for months. only fm2 cpus can run on fm2+ motherboards. i don't think amd has ever supported new cpus running on older socket.

APU's are really really good when used properly, their value rapidly drops once you add in a dGPU which so many people are quick to do.

not quick, they just end up doing that. most apu owners retain their apu+mobo and just upgrade the gfx with discreet gfx card . and then they start noticing the cpu's limitations.

 

[logainofhades]

The sad thing isn't that it doesn't match up to an i5, as I think only Juan here was expecting that. The sad thing is that it isn't an obvious upgrade over Richland. It's better at some things, worse at others. Reminds me of BD over PII.

At the end of the day, PhII is still faster. I was kind of hoping Kaveri would show some promise. If the performance would have been there, I would have bought one for WoW rig #4. I would be better off just getting my old PhII 560 up and running again and pairing it with a decent GPU. 🙁

 

[palladin9479]

The sad thing isn't that it doesn't match up to an i5, as I think only Juan here was expecting that. The sad thing is that it isn't an obvious upgrade over Richland. It's better at some things, worse at others. Reminds me of BD over PII.

Not only Juanrga, i was expecting Kaveri to get close to i5 2600k SingleCore performance... i was wrong, i was the first to admit it.

It's an APU, it's not going to compete with any mainstream dCPU implementation, simply not possible.

The Intel CPU's currently pack 3 ALU's (haswell has 4 now I think) per core where as AMD's BD uArch has 2 ALU's per core and the old K10 has 3 ALU's. Your asking BD to do with 2, what IB/SB/K10 does with 3, not gonna happen. And that's before getting into Intel's superior IMC and cache system.

That's why I'm not surprised at the results. IPC increased by a good amount but the lower clock speed cut into their absolute CPU performance. The GPU on the other hand is amazing. Remember we're talking a 45~65W part (or 95W at the upper end) that combines a CPU and a GPU on one die. I mentioned earlier that physics is a cruel master, that's the price for a significantly faster iGPU.

I'll most likely be upgrading my 6800K richland kit to the 7600K or 7850K once prices come down to more manageable levels.

 

[de5_Roy]

At the end of the day, PhII is still faster. I was kind of hoping Kaveri would show some promise. If the performance would have been there, I would have bought one for WoW rig #4. I would be better off just getting my old PhII 560 up and running again and pairing it with a decent GPU. 🙁

it's not faster. ph ii can't execute avx instructions. has no aes acceleration. can't overclock like fx. can't scale to more cores without trading off clockrate. doesn't have a passable turbo. there are many other limitations, but i'll leave it at those.
above all - almost all ph ii are phased out. let it go.

 

[gamerk316]

I been reading AnandTech and ExtremeTech reviews of Kaveri, on the GPU seems good but on the CPU both sites seems rather disappointed, and it does seems that Kaveri is little bit faster on MultiThreaded than Richland and slower in SingleCore performance and both sides claim is not even competition to the i3.

So... what is your final verdict for Kaveri you all?

I think ill be sticking with my 980BE C3 at 3.91Ghz

Why would you be replacing a dCPU with an APU in a desktop system? The FX6350 / 8350 both beat our (I own one too) 980BE's pretty badly.

AT did their usual and tried to sell you on an Intel solution, both by including a $300+ USD CPU with a cheap GPU and by including the rare and expensive Iris Pro. So even with their usual bias Kaveri came out pretty good, for what it's designed for. It's solid for laptops and SFF desktops.

You'd put it inside something like this,
http://www.mini-box.com/M350-Enclosure-WITH-PICOPSU-150-XT-and-150W-Adapter-KIT

You can get a 120w PSU or a 150/160W PSU depending on what else you cram in there. Drop in two sticks of 4GB DDR3-2133 memory and a 2.5 inch HDD / SDD and you have a killer mini-itx "console". I've posted pics of my Richland living room PC (used for playing games on my HDTV at 1280x720). Actually that is a resolution that needs to be tested more often as it's incredibly common for HDTV's to use it when dealing with an input signal over 30hz.

Simple, Richland is already 20% faster than a stock 980BE in SingleCore and about 10% faster in MultiCore, so i was expecting Kaveri to improve SingleCore performance close to i5 levels... i was wrong, Kaveri is a step backwards in SingleCore compared to Richland the MultiThreaded performance is an avg of 10% compared to Richland, in CPU side Kaveri is complete FAIL, the GPU side is good but it is being chocked by the Ram Bandwidth just as Gamer predicted, seems he was right the whole time.

I will say this: Eventually, this is the correct approach to take. I do think you are going to need a iGPU built in eventually, as I fully expect dGPU growth to eventually taper off, similar to how X86 performance has tapered off. At that point, it will make sense to use the CPU to drive the PC, dGPU to render graphics and iGPU to handle compute [physics, AI, post-processing, etc].

But right now? The infrastructure isn't there. Multi-graphics is handled driver side, limiting you to either Intel/NVIDIA or AMD/AMD, but not either/or. So no handling compute on an APU's iGPU if you have a NVIDIA GPU. This is something MSFT is going to have to deal with on their side, making each DEVICE both visible and usable to the developer, which will mean allowing multi-vendor graphics drivers again. From a coding perspective, I *should* be able to address the iGPU and dGPU separately, have them do different tasks, then combine the results. But right now, OS's don't support this type of setup. HSA and the like is just a way to get around OS limitations in this area.

The issue I have is less of design and more of implementation: AMD needs to understand CPU performance matters more. Yes, accelerating via the GPU will give better performance for SOME tasks, but your performance (and attractiveness as a product) is now slaved to developer support. And there's always those tasks that either will not scale, are will scale in a limited enough way where CPU horsepower is more important. And that's AMD's performance deficit in a nutshell.

In a decade, I think systems will look a lot like an AMD APU with hybrid graphics. But today, and five years from now, I don't view such systems as winners. That's all.

 

[etayorius]

ExtremeTech "Conclusion: An uncertain future"

This catches my attention:

*It’s possible that AMD could respin the core and deliver a faster variant, but after discussing the situation with the company, we’re not optimistic. We may see incremental improvements of ~10% on frequency over time, but AMD would have to hit 5GHz base on Steamroller to dramatically change the nature of its CPU competition with Intel. We’ve asked AMD about the chances of seeing such a part and been told that the characteristics of 28nm bulk silicon make it impossible.*

There you have it, not on my words... but if AMD manages to get Kaveri to a max of 4.5Ghz later year, i will haste to the store and buy one, then OC the hell out of it... as of now Kaveri CPU side is just not worth it.

Now, PhenomII is NOT faster... Kaveri is Faster by at least 10% Clock for Clock, the whole issue comes with Kaveri low clocks of 3.7Ghz Def 4Ghz Max, that´s the whole issue.

I have a 980BE and i bet you Kaveri is faster, but just not worth the 10% extra performance... if it had 10% more speed to surely hit the 20% Mark on Default, then everything would had been different.

 

[st379]

another disappointment from AMD no woner the reviews are hidden.
where are the 20% cpu increase?
another lie from amd according to anandtech unless you are willing to overclock it, i can't believe they did it again i'll guess i am going with intel after this huge disappointment i don't care about all the bs of hsa and on board gpu, it is even slower than last generation.

 

[etayorius]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

 

[logainofhades]

At the end of the day, PhII is still faster. I was kind of hoping Kaveri would show some promise. If the performance would have been there, I would have bought one for WoW rig #4. I would be better off just getting my old PhII 560 up and running again and pairing it with a decent GPU. 🙁

it's not faster. ph ii can't execute avx instructions. has no aes acceleration. can't overclock like fx. can't scale to more cores without trading off clockrate. doesn't have a passable turbo. there are many other limitations, but i'll leave it at those.
above all - almost all ph ii are phased out. let it go.

Clock for clock, PhII is faster than Trinity/Richland. A 4.3ghz 750k can't keep up with a 4.0ghz PhII 965 in games. Kaveri really isn't much of an improvement over Trinity/Richland. It would be a waste of $$$ for anyone with a PhII x4 to buy Kaveri. I am better off just getting a decent GPU and keeping the PhII X2 for WoW rig #4 as WoW doesn't do multicore very well anyway. It is sad that AMD still fails at building a better CPU than PhII clock for clock. FX Vishera is only faster due to the high clock speeds it can reach and better multicore support with the FX 83xx chips. A 4.2 FX 4350 is just barely faster in games than a 4.0ghz PhII X4 965. That is just pathetic.

 

[-Fran-]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

I think you're a little obsessed with the 980. Kaveri is not a CPU replacement for any "high end" CPU (past or present) in my opinion.

If you want to change your C05 'Vette, you don't go asking around if a F150 Raptor would make sense. It doesn't. I know you can always measure "raw CPU power", but the idea behind Kaveri (or the APUs) is not being CPU king of the hill. That's why AMD has the FX lineup (for better or worse) and like I said a couple of pages ago, the FX8350 is a great 980 replacement (and it should be cheaper for you if you're on AM3+).

Cheers!

EDIT: Typo.

 

[etayorius]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

I think you're a little obsessed with the 980. Kaveri is not a CPU replacement for any "high end" CPU (past or present) in my opinion.

If you want to change your C05 'Vette, you don't do asking around if a F150 Raptor would make sense. It doesn't. I know you can always measure "raw CPU power", but the idea behind Kaveri (or the APUs) is not being CPU king of the hill. That's why AMD has the FX lineup (for better or worse) and like I said a couple of pages ago, the FX8350 is a great 980 replacement (and it should be cheaper for you if you're on AM3+).

Cheers!

Simple, if i am doing an upgrade of CPU (at this point i need to upgrade MoBo, CPU and Ram) better be something aimed at the future, i was expecting Kaveri to be about 20% faster in Raw CPU power compared to Richland, like i said MANY times Richland is already faster than the 980 by about 10-15%, if Kaveri had delivered the promised performance it would had been direct competition to the i5 2500k...

Well, guess what? i was wrong by expecting Kaveri to be faster than Richland... barely an 10% improvement over Richland CPU side, so let`s say Kaveri did manage to be really 20% ahead of Richland, it makes sense for me to move to an APU with a dGPU because the CPU will still be overall better than my current one, is that hard to explain? also HSA, MANTLE and HUMA were good Bonus.

I really don`t want to move to AM3+, future is uncertain... they may or may not continue to release FX CPUs, Intel i am not supporting ever again so the only choice seemed to be FM2+ with the promise upgrade path of Carrizo.

You people keep asking too many silly questions, why move from a 980 to an APU???

because as long as the APU is 20% faster than my current CPU it will still be an upgrade. In other words, it does not Matters for me to move from a 980 to an APU as long as it at least 20% faster.

The thing is... Kaveri it`s not worth it as of now with the current speed of 3.7-4.0.

Not hard to understand really.

I am repeating myself again, but damn Kaveri would had been great if AMD had manage to match Richland Speeds or Greater, damn GloFo.

 

[gamerk316]

At the end of the day, PhII is still faster. I was kind of hoping Kaveri would show some promise. If the performance would have been there, I would have bought one for WoW rig #4. I would be better off just getting my old PhII 560 up and running again and pairing it with a decent GPU. 🙁

it's not faster. ph ii can't execute avx instructions. has no aes acceleration. can't overclock like fx. can't scale to more cores without trading off clockrate. doesn't have a passable turbo. there are many other limitations, but i'll leave it at those.
above all - almost all ph ii are phased out. let it go.

Clock for clock, PhII is faster than Trinity/Richland. A 4.3ghz 750k can't keep up with a 4.0ghz PhII 965 in games. Kaveri really isn't much of an improvement over Trinity/Richland. It would be a waste of $$$ for anyone with a PhII x4 to buy Kaveri. I am better off just getting a decent GPU and keeping the PhII X2 for WoW rig #4 as WoW doesn't do multicore very well anyway. It is sad that AMD still fails at building a better CPU than PhII clock for clock. FX Vishera is only faster due to the high clock speeds it can reach and better multicore support with the FX 83xx chips. A 4.2 FX 4350 is just barely faster in games than a 4.0ghz PhII X4 965. That is just pathetic.

Wow, OCd Q9550 hanging around. Kinda surprising really...

 

[palladin9479]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

I think you're a little obsessed with the 980. Kaveri is not a CPU replacement for any "high end" CPU (past or present) in my opinion.

If you want to change your C05 'Vette, you don't go asking around if a F150 Raptor would make sense. It doesn't. I know you can always measure "raw CPU power", but the idea behind Kaveri (or the APUs) is not being CPU king of the hill. That's why AMD has the FX lineup (for better or worse) and like I said a couple of pages ago, the FX8350 is a great 980 replacement (and it should be cheaper for you if you're on AM3+).

Cheers!

EDIT: Typo.

I really don't get why people thought a 8 ALU 95W APU would be competing with a 12 ALU full fledged 125W CPU. Guess everyone forgot that the Phenom II APU was named Llano and ran into it's own performance problems from having to share TDP with an iGPU.

 

[Rum]

Geez, people need to stop getting their panties in a bunch! Kaveri's CPU if clocked to the same freq as Richland is better so stop whining, to think that AMD was going to pull some amazing performance boost on steamroller with all the Fab issues that GloFo was and is having is asinine. AMD did the best with with the situation at hand and put out a respectable product, is it competitive in the DT market, not really but in the HTPC and low end gaming it is a killer choice for those on a budget.

AMD didn't give us some false hope (as some have said) of monster gains, they stated with HSA enabled it would be huge gains but without the software it would lose to an i5 (now we see badly to boot)...
hopefully for all our sake GloFo gets their act together if they don't then hopefully AMD gives them the boot and go with another Foundry to return to some sort of competitiveness. The market needs a competitive AMD otherwise intel will slowly take over and the prices will continue to rise.

 

[palladin9479]

Spoiler

Simple, if i am doing an upgrade of CPU (at this point i need to upgrade MoBo, CPU and Ram) better be something aimed at the future, i was expecting Kaveri to be about 20-30% faster in Raw CPU power compared to the 980 since like i said MANY times Richland is already faster than the 980 by about 10-15% overall compared to the 980, if Kaveri had delivered the promised performance it would had been put in direct competition with the i5 2500k... well, guess what? i was wrong expecting Kaveri to be faster than Richland... which is barely an improvement over Richland CPU side, so let`s sat Kaveri did manage to be really 20% ahead Richland (which is already faster overall than my 980) it makes sense i move to an APU with a dGPU because the CPU will still be better overall than my current one, is that hard to explain? also HSA, MANTLE and HUMA were good Bonus.

I really don`t want to move to AM3+, future is uncertain... they may or may not continue to release FX CPUs, Intel i am not supporting ever again so the only choice seemed to be FM2+ with the promise upgrade path of Carrizo.

You people keep asking too many silly questions, why move from a 980 to an APU???

because as long as the APU is faster than my current CPU it will still be an upgrade.

The thing is... Kaveri it`s not worth it with as of now with the current speed of 3.7-4.0.

Not hard to understand really.

If this was your thought process then you REALLY didn't understand how APU's work. If you want an upgrade for your 980BE then it's the 6350 or the 8350, that is your upgrade path. Stop fidgeting over "uncertain blah blah", as socket's haven't remained stable for years. Intel just replaced their sockets with Haswell, AMD just replaced theirs with FM2+. You will see another socket come on in the next few years which will render whatever you purchase in the next six months obsolete. What you need to do instead is create an upgrade schedule, every X number of years do a system refresh and expect to move to a new motherboard + CPU.

So if you need an upgrade now and are using a full sized desktop tower with room for a dGPU, then go get an i5 or a 6350/8350. If you can wait another year, then do so and see if AMD releases another DT style CPU. Otherwise your complaining, and outraged, that your Orange tastes a whole lot like an Orange and not like the Apple you were thinking of.

 

[gamerk316]

What other foundry? TSMC is at capacity, and they aren't going to crawl to Intel (even if they ARE offering wafer space for producing ARM cores...Nah). AMD's stuck with them, for better or worse.

Hence why I never liked AMD spinning them in the first place. Yes, the cost of keeping them was huge, but I argue that they'd be making more money now had they kept and invested in their fabs.

 

[etayorius]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

I think you're a little obsessed with the 980. Kaveri is not a CPU replacement for any "high end" CPU (past or present) in my opinion.

If you want to change your C05 'Vette, you don't go asking around if a F150 Raptor would make sense. It doesn't. I know you can always measure "raw CPU power", but the idea behind Kaveri (or the APUs) is not being CPU king of the hill. That's why AMD has the FX lineup (for better or worse) and like I said a couple of pages ago, the FX8350 is a great 980 replacement (and it should be cheaper for you if you're on AM3+).

Cheers!

EDIT: Typo.

I really don't get why people thought a 8 ALU 95W APU would be competing with a 12 ALU full fledged 125W CPU. Guess everyone forgot that the Phenom II APU was named Llano and ran into it's own performance problems from having to share TDP with an iGPU.

Yeah, no... what part of as long as its faster i don´t care if it´s an APU you people don´t understand?

Besides, Richland already beats the 980 anytime so your argument about an APU not replacing an old k10 CPU falls apart in this regard.

Do i need to post all those Benchmarks again where Richlands mops the floor with the 980 in CPU Single and MultiCore? please no.

Is that seriously hard to understand? APU or CPU, ill take which ever is faster as long as it improves enough on what i got.

Not trying to mean or rude, but what i do with my money and my system is really none of your business, i think the whole APU thing is too hard codded into your brains, it really does not matter if an APU is meant to small Cases or not meant to have a dGPU, i can still put a dGPU in there and as long as the APU delivers greater performance than my old PhenomII, i don´t see why you people got offended by the idea.

The reason i did not moved to Richland and FM2+ it´s while it is faster than my 980 the performance gains where not that great, i was really expecting Kaveri to be a whole bunch faster than Richland so the performance gains where to be worth, my plan was to keep the GTX470 i already own and just move to Kaveri and in second half of 2014 buy a R9 270X, but sorry for even considering that... i guess even if FM2+ based system can use a dGPU, it was not meant for that reason, God knows, and even if theoretically would be a faster than my current system, it was just not mean to be used like that, did i get that right?

Silly me, considering to move to a possibly Faster APU with a greater CPU performance than why i got and keeping my Current GPU, what was i thinking?.

 

[-Fran-]

Yeah, no... what part of as long as its faster i don´t care if it´s an APU you people don´t understand?

Besides, Richland already beats the 980 anytime so your argument about an APU not replacing an old k10 CPU falls apart in this regard.

Do i need to post all those Benchmarks where Richlands mops the floor with the 980? please no.

Is that seriously hard to understand? APU or CPU, ill take which ever is faster as long as it improves enough on what i got.

Not trying to mean or rude, but what i do with my money and my system is really none of your business, i think the whole APU thing is too hard codded into your brains, so who cares if an APU is meant to small Cases or not meant to have a dGPU? i can still put a dGPU in there and as long as the APU delivers greater performance than my old PhenomII, i don´t see why you people are even offended by the idea.

The reason i did not moved to Richland and FM2+ it´s while it is faster than my 980 the performance gains where not that great, i was really expecting Kaveri to be a whole bunch faster than Richland so the performance gains where to be worth, my plan was to keep the GTX470 i already own and just move to Kaveri and in second half of 2014 buy a R9 270X, but sorry for even considering that... i guess even if FM2+ based system can use a dGPU, it was not meant for that for God knows why reason, and even if it´s theoretically would be a faster than my current system, it was just not mean to be used like that, right?

Silly me, considering to move to a possibly Faster APU with a greater CPU performance than why i got and keeping my Current GPU, it was just not meant that way.

Well, then Kaveri is still an upgrade (or Richland) in your own argument. Why hesitate then? Like gamerk said, the iGPU in Kaveri will still become handy down the road when HSA software starts spawning and the new instruction sets are also handy right now.

I have to agree that a F150 Raptor with street tires could be sexy as well, haha. There's a reason we also have Baja Bugs 😛

Cheers!

 

[Rum]

What other foundry? TSMC is at capacity, and they aren't going to crawl to Intel (even if they ARE offering wafer space for producing ARM cores...Nah). AMD's stuck with them, for better or worse.

Hence why I never liked AMD spinning them in the first place. Yes, the cost of keeping them was huge, but I argue that they'd be making more money now had they kept and invested in their fabs.

Unfortunately I think you are right about the the lack of foundry choices... As for spinning off GloFo I think it was a very poorly thought out business choice, yes it got them out from under some debt but at the same time crippled them production wise... Who makes a deal like they did with GloFo anyways?.. talk about shooting themselves in the foot.
I would venture to say that if they would have been able to produce their CPUs/APUs like they wanted to they would far more competitive and be making more money! Makes one wonder how different AMD would be right now if Read had taken over a year or two before this craptastic move!

 

[etayorius]

etayorius "Do i need to post all those Benchmarks where Richlands mops the floor with the 980? please no. " Yes post all these cpu benchmarks you claim mop the floor with the 980. Cpu benchmatks not gpu benchmarks.

Here you are:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a2o87dlvcnd8pnk/2.jpg

Here is another:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eotom6rspg7menp/PT-6800k-1.jpg part 1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vidvt89tnzijyvn/PT-6800k-2.jpg Part 2


Another one:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tdv5q4mghlmvc3z/Image01.jpg



and here is one where Richland falls slightly short vs 980:


https://www.dropbox.com/s/we7qirh9qeuqrx0/Image02.jpg


I don´t like AnandTech, they are extremely Intel Biased... anyway here is 965BE vs Trinity, Seems fair right? lets pretend its 980BE vs Richland:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/102?vs=675


CPU only, where the GPU never comes into play, there is a really bad misconception that the PhenomII are faster than Richland, overall Richland is faster just in a couple benchies where Richland falls behind in MultiThreaded.

I think what happens is that Richland never gets matched against other CPUs, mostly against Trinity, Llano or Intel "APUs" (if they can be called that), so there are not really many benchmarks out there with Richland against "PhenomII CPUs"

 

[logainofhades]

I am waiting for TechPowerUp to review on Kaveri, they usually mix and match the reviewed CPU with a ton of other CPUs, hopefully they have an 980BE lying around so i can see how much faster Kaveri is compared to 980.

I think you're a little obsessed with the 980. Kaveri is not a CPU replacement for any "high end" CPU (past or present) in my opinion.

If you want to change your C05 'Vette, you don't go asking around if a F150 Raptor would make sense. It doesn't. I know you can always measure "raw CPU power", but the idea behind Kaveri (or the APUs) is not being CPU king of the hill. That's why AMD has the FX lineup (for better or worse) and like I said a couple of pages ago, the FX8350 is a great 980 replacement (and it should be cheaper for you if you're on AM3+).

Cheers!

EDIT: Typo.

Actually, to me, the Raptor would make perfect sense. One I am a Ford guy, and two, I prefer a truck over a car any day. :lol: Give me a Raptor, throw and STS turbo on it, and watch it eat many Vettes and GT 500's for breakfast. 😀