AMD CPUs, SoC Rumors and Speculations Temp. thread 2

[jimmysmitty]

I have to agree with jimmy here. we are simply too far out to know where the final performance will lie. all we really have to work with are rumored uArch and AMD's lofty claim of 40% IPC improvement. we still don't know what clocks AMD is capable of here! that's basically the biggest part of this isn't it?

hell if they hit 6 GHz or something absurd then your worries of small pipeline are irrelevant.

still speculation is fun 😛

The problem with a smaller pipelin can be seen with Intels Netburst and AMDs BD uArchs. While they can hit absurdly high clock rates (the Pentium 4 topped out at 4GHz stock clocks well before the Core i did) they have such low IPC that it is almost a bad trade off. Core 2 came in and the 2.4GHz E6600 was pounding the higher clocked Pentium 4s. That was die to the wider pipeline but also a much more efficient design overall.

BD is in that same bucket right now. You can get a 5GHz FX CPU yet a stock i5/i7 beats it in most situations at a much lower clock speed.

The change they are making right now will for sure increase performance over Excavator, they are going back to a core design similar to K10 but adding SMT and improvements, but how much depends on a lot of factors and as with anything most companies use situational performance to tell us what it should be and until we know that we can only assume that 40% is one of many things.

As for clock speeds, the info right now points towards 3.5-4GHz much like Intel. I highly doubt that GF has a mature enough 14nm yet to do much higher clock speeds than that or to even match Intel. That we will have to wait and see.

Personally I think the increase is including the SMT cores and not a per core per clock increase. But that is just my opinion.

which is what I was getting at. despite the small pipeline amd matched ivy and sandy perf $ for $. amd claims 40% more ipc than excavator and lets say we only get 30% over piledriver (worst case scenario) if we take that info of 3.5 to 4 (stock, I overclock and assume everyone else here does as well so could we assume 4.5 effective?) puts us with a overclocked skylake clock to clock speed. only diff is in the IPC. and from what it looks like 30% over piledriver should get us there!

I see all arrows point to matching intel performance i7's closely and with pricing expected to be around a K series i5, we have a good chip on hand! Whats not to like about this? nobody expects it to be faster than intels i7, but nobody expects it to cost that much either so $ for $ we have another win to me. there is a reason I built 2 8350 computers and its because im cheap. not for top end perf. that title changes to a new cpu every year.

BD originally did not match Intel $ per $ if you consider the performance. The FX 9000 series launched at a top end price of $1000 and it wasn't even close to stock i7 performance.

If Zen performs at the level of the i7s it will not be priced at the i5 range. It will be priced based on the actual performance level it has. The Athlon 64 is a great example of this. It was priced equal to and in some case higher than an Intel chip and did not drop until a few months after the Core 2 series arrived.

And I have nothing against AMD. I wouldn't buy one right now for my system nor my wifes, although I did buy a Phenom II 965 for hers, but I do not like their southbridge. Their SATA performance is not as good as Intels, just upgraded my wife to a Samsung 850 Evo and it has a loss of about 20% in IOPS. Maybe that will change with Zen, it better because their current chipset is ancient compared to Intels.

 

[juanrga]

I have to agree with jimmy here. we are simply too far out to know where the final performance will lie. all we really have to work with are rumored uArch and AMD's lofty claim of 40% IPC improvement. we still don't know what clocks AMD is capable of here! that's basically the biggest part of this isn't it?

hell if they hit 6 GHz or something absurd then your worries of small pipeline are irrelevant.

still speculation is fun 😛

No way Zen will hit 6GHz. First because the uarch is brainiac instead speed-demon. Second the 14nm process node doesn't support those frequencies. I estimate ~3.5Ghz base frequency if they use a tweaked GF custom process. If they use raw 14LPP then AMD will have difficulties crossing the 3GHz barrier.

 

[juanrga]

I have to agree with jimmy here. we are simply too far out to know where the final performance will lie. all we really have to work with are rumored uArch and AMD's lofty claim of 40% IPC improvement. we still don't know what clocks AMD is capable of here! that's basically the biggest part of this isn't it?

hell if they hit 6 GHz or something absurd then your worries of small pipeline are irrelevant.

still speculation is fun 😛

The problem with a smaller pipelin can be seen with Intels Netburst and AMDs BD uArchs. While they can hit absurdly high clock rates (the Pentium 4 topped out at 4GHz stock clocks well before the Core i did) they have such low IPC that it is almost a bad trade off. Core 2 came in and the 2.4GHz E6600 was pounding the higher clocked Pentium 4s. That was die to the wider pipeline but also a much more efficient design overall.

BD is in that same bucket right now. You can get a 5GHz FX CPU yet a stock i5/i7 beats it in most situations at a much lower clock speed.

The change they are making right now will for sure increase performance over Excavator, they are going back to a core design similar to K10 but adding SMT and improvements, but how much depends on a lot of factors and as with anything most companies use situational performance to tell us what it should be and until we know that we can only assume that 40% is one of many things.

As for clock speeds, the info right now points towards 3.5-4GHz much like Intel. I highly doubt that GF has a mature enough 14nm yet to do much higher clock speeds than that or to even match Intel. That we will have to wait and see.

Personally I think the increase is including the SMT cores and not a per core per clock increase. But that is just my opinion.

which is what I was getting at. despite the small pipeline amd matched ivy and sandy perf $ for $. amd claims 40% more ipc than excavator and lets say we only get 30% over piledriver (worst case scenario) if we take that info of 3.5 to 4 (stock, I overclock and assume everyone else here does as well so could we assume 4.5 effective?) puts us with a overclocked skylake clock to clock speed. only diff is in the IPC. and from what it looks like 30% over piledriver should get us there!

I see all arrows point to matching intel performance i7's closely and with pricing expected to be around a K series i5, we have a good chip on hand! Whats not to like about this? nobody expects it to be faster than intels i7, but nobody expects it to cost that much either so $ for $ we have another win to me. there is a reason I built 2 8350 computers and its because im cheap. not for top end perf. that title changes to a new cpu every year.

BD originally did not match Intel $ per $ if you consider the performance. The FX 9000 series launched at a top end price of $1000 and it wasn't even close to stock i7 performance.

If Zen performs at the level of the i7s it will not be priced at the i5 range. It will be priced based on the actual performance level it has. The Athlon 64 is a great example of this. It was priced equal to and in some case higher than an Intel chip and did not drop until a few months after the Core 2 series arrived.

And I have nothing against AMD. I wouldn't buy one right now for my system nor my wifes, although I did buy a Phenom II 965 for hers, but I do not like their southbridge. Their SATA performance is not as good as Intels, just upgraded my wife to a Samsung 850 Evo and it has a loss of about 20% in IOPS. Maybe that will change with Zen, it better because their current chipset is ancient compared to Intels.

Before Fury launch many people got excited by getting Nvidia performance at half the cost. I was during weeks claiming that AMD was going to price the Fury X card cheap, because the card was expensive (HBM and interposer is not cheap) and AMD needs the money (Lisa Su advised that AMD is no longer the cheap company). They didn't believe me and got disappointed when prices were revealed.

I am advising the same about Zen. Zen will be very expensive to fabricate and AMD needs the money. The 8-core Zen CPU will be priced similar to Intel 8-core enthusiast line.

 

[Vogner16]

jimmy what chipset are you using? the Bolton D4 and 950 are both good chipsets. remember you cant compare haswell chipsets to 2011 tech. you have to compare to what intel had for the day. if you want current amd chipset to compare to look at the Bolton D4 on APU setups. having said that amd is generally a little slower but sata is maxed out as it is anyway. even my kabini server maxes out sata interface and that entire computer was under $500...

secondly everyone should agree that the 9000 series can be ignored. they are essentially well binned 8350's. my 8350 is at 4.8 and I can get it to 5.0 (and match performance) with a simple voltage increase. so we consider the 8350 amd's best cpu NOT the OC 8350 9000 series garbage. and performance was close to intel i7!

I use a LOT of handbrake encoding and my OC 8350 is faster than a 3770k stock. that's pretty damn close if you ask me. It regularly gets better (multithread) performance than a simulary priced i5 from 2012 and even has better handbrake perf than a skylake i5!!! mostly due to twice the cores/threads, but that's as expected. point is don't focus too much on single core performance because for most things I do are multithread and amd has always been cost effective.

3770k was $330 new 8350 was $250 new, BUT remember intel top end i7's don't drop price until the new one arrives. amd DOES! I got my 8350 before haswell and only paid $200 for it.

aside from the launch date which nobody should go out and buy ever if you have any sort of budget, amd is excellent $ per $.

yea fury is expensive but its the same price as NVidia's 980ti so right with competition. if amd is to price zen 8 core at $600 it will have to be as fast as a $700 intel part. (as history shows) for mainstream $300 tops for an i7 level perf.

 

[Vogner16]

I have to agree with jimmy here. we are simply too far out to know where the final performance will lie. all we really have to work with are rumored uArch and AMD's lofty claim of 40% IPC improvement. we still don't know what clocks AMD is capable of here! that's basically the biggest part of this isn't it?

hell if they hit 6 GHz or something absurd then your worries of small pipeline are irrelevant.

still speculation is fun 😛

No way Zen will hit 6GHz. First because the uarch is brainiac instead speed-demon. Second the 14nm process node doesn't support those frequencies. I estimate ~3.5Ghz base frequency if they use a tweaked GF custom process. If they use raw 14LPP then AMD will have difficulties crossing the 3GHz barrier.

I know that they never could hit 6 it was a theoretical statement more or less. and they wont use LPP it will be a semi custom node like how 28nm is on HPP not SLP.

 

[jimmysmitty]

jimmy what chipset are you using? the Bolton D4 and 950 are both good chipsets. remember you cant compare haswell chipsets to 2011 tech. you have to compare to what intel had for the day. if you want current amd chipset to compare to look at the Bolton D4 on APU setups. having said that amd is generally a little slower but sata is maxed out as it is anyway. even my kabini server maxes out sata interface and that entire computer was under $500...

secondly everyone should agree that the 9000 series can be ignored. they are essentially well binned 8350's. my 8350 is at 4.8 and I can get it to 5.0 (and match performance) with a simple voltage increase. so we consider the 8350 amd's best cpu NOT the OC 8350 9000 series garbage. and performance was close to intel i7!

I use a LOT of handbrake encoding and my OC 8350 is faster than a 3770k stock. that's pretty damn close if you ask me. It regularly gets better (multithread) performance than a simulary priced i5 from 2012 and even has better handbrake perf than a skylake i5!!! mostly due to twice the cores/threads, but that's as expected. point is don't focus too much on single core performance because for most things I do are multithread and amd has always been cost effective.

3770k was $330 new 8350 was $250 new, BUT remember intel top end i7's don't drop price until the new one arrives. amd DOES! I got my 8350 before haswell and only paid $200 for it.

aside from the launch date which nobody should go out and buy ever if you have any sort of budget, amd is excellent $ per $.

yea fury is expensive but its the same price as NVidia's 980ti so right with competition. if amd is to price zen 8 core at $600 it will have to be as fast as a $700 intel part. (as history shows) for mainstream $300 tops for an i7 level perf.

My wife has a Phenom II X4 965 so it is a SB950. And Intel has always had better SATA controllers than AMD, Intel is heavily involved in the development of SATA standards. And I am comparing it as SATA III to SATA III. Not much has changed since Intels first SATA III chipset and that was still better than AMDs. I understand that SATA is currently limited, hence why we are moving to M.2/SATAe, but on my system my SSD gets the max IOPS (+/_ a few percent) not the massive drop I see on my wifes system. And if you read reviews AMDs SB950 has always been meh.

I am just saying AMD really needs to improve its chipsets as well because the CPU is one part of the equation. I buy based on a lot more than just the CPU performance. Right now I can buy a Z170 board that has everything I would need to be set for 5 years. But if I buy a FX990 board I will have to upgrade in less than a year if I want newer tech such as native M.2 or PCIe 3.0 etc. AMD has dropped the ball vastly in the chipset market for their mainstream CPUs, which is what Zen will replace.

And yes you got a great deal on your 8350. The reason why is because after launch the FX 8000 series was laughable and they had to drop price to stay competitive. If they kept their prices where they were they wouldn't have sold enough.

And I highly doubt AMD was cost effective when the FX-62 CPUs were $1K each and a QuadFX setup for board and chips alone cost almost $2500 bucks yet at the same time you could get the better performing Q6600 for less than half the price. Hell you could have almost built a entire system for that price.

Again, AMD charges based on performance. Do not be surprised if the 8 core Zen performs similar to Intels 8 core that it is priced the same.

 

[salgado18]

Again, AMD charges based on performance. Do not be surprised if the 8 core Zen performs similar to Intels 8 core that it is priced the same.

Or priced similar to Intel's 6 core, which is what I think it will compete against, given the lower IPC.

That said, yes, they urgently need new chipsets, but none will come for the FX family. Some vendors, like MSI (if I remember correctly) are adding third-party controllers to make new AM3+ boards with current tech, which I think is smart. Don't see them selling much, but it's nice.

Also, since Intel doesn't enable the entire connections possibilites in their Z170 chips, AMD could take advantage yet again of offering lots of PCI-Express lanes, just like in the past.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Again, AMD charges based on performance. Do not be surprised if the 8 core Zen performs similar to Intels 8 core that it is priced the same.

Or priced similar to Intel's 6 core, which is what I think it will compete against, given the lower IPC.

That said, yes, they urgently need new chipsets, but none will come for the FX family. Some vendors, like MSI (if I remember correctly) are adding third-party controllers to make new AM3+ boards with current tech, which I think is smart. Don't see them selling much, but it's nice.

Also, since Intel doesn't enable the entire connections possibilites in their Z170 chips, AMD could take advantage yet again of offering lots of PCI-Express lanes, just like in the past.

The only problem with third party controllers is they are not always as reliable or perform as well as onboard. I know some Intel boards had additional SATA 6 controllers but they normally performed poorly and had a lot of issues.

And the Z170 is fully enabled on high end board but it is just split differently than people wanted. The other side of that is that it wont be Skylake they will be competing against, it will be Kaby Lake which we have very little info and they might also release a new chipset with it.

The closer we get the sooner we will know. And if it is competing with Intels 6 core CPUs then it will have to do a lot since LGA2011 CPUs have 28-32 PCIe lanes available.

 

[jdwii]

I have to agree with jimmy here. we are simply too far out to know where the final performance will lie. all we really have to work with are rumored uArch and AMD's lofty claim of 40% IPC improvement. we still don't know what clocks AMD is capable of here! that's basically the biggest part of this isn't it?

hell if they hit 6 GHz or something absurd then your worries of small pipeline are irrelevant.

still speculation is fun 😛

The problem with a smaller pipelin can be seen with Intels Netburst and AMDs BD uArchs. While they can hit absurdly high clock rates (the Pentium 4 topped out at 4GHz stock clocks well before the Core i did) they have such low IPC that it is almost a bad trade off. Core 2 came in and the 2.4GHz E6600 was pounding the higher clocked Pentium 4s. That was die to the wider pipeline but also a much more efficient design overall.

BD is in that same bucket right now. You can get a 5GHz FX CPU yet a stock i5/i7 beats it in most situations at a much lower clock speed.

The change they are making right now will for sure increase performance over Excavator, they are going back to a core design similar to K10 but adding SMT and improvements, but how much depends on a lot of factors and as with anything most companies use situational performance to tell us what it should be and until we know that we can only assume that 40% is one of many things.

As for clock speeds, the info right now points towards 3.5-4GHz much like Intel. I highly doubt that GF has a mature enough 14nm yet to do much higher clock speeds than that or to even match Intel. That we will have to wait and see.

Personally I think the increase is including the SMT cores and not a per core per clock increase. But that is just my opinion.

which is what I was getting at. despite the small pipeline amd matched ivy and sandy perf $ for $. amd claims 40% more ipc than excavator and lets say we only get 30% over piledriver (worst case scenario) if we take that info of 3.5 to 4 (stock, I overclock and assume everyone else here does as well so could we assume 4.5 effective?) puts us with a overclocked skylake clock to clock speed. only diff is in the IPC. and from what it looks like 30% over piledriver should get us there!

I see all arrows point to matching intel performance i7's closely and with pricing expected to be around a K series i5, we have a good chip on hand! Whats not to like about this? nobody expects it to be faster than intels i7, but nobody expects it to cost that much either so $ for $ we have another win to me. there is a reason I built 2 8350 computers and its because im cheap. not for top end perf. that title changes to a new cpu every year.

I expect IPC to be around sandy-bridge level but we might see 6 cores aimed towards the I5-I7 price range and i expect the 8 core to be priced around 350-400$.

But the rumor is we will only see a 4 core and 8 core model with that in mind i expect the 4 core to be priced around the high-end I3 price range.

Also as for being cheap i can agree with you think off all the people who bought a I7 920 back in 2008 yet that CPU is still kicking butt today i doubt people who bought similer Phenom parts are still kicking butt in those later games for example look at I7 920 benchmarks in farcry 4 vs 955 or even watch dogs or GTA5. Sure they might still slightly be able to give you an OK experience today but overall i'd much rather have that 920.

If you spend quite a bit of money on your CPU you probably won't have to upgrade for 4 years. 8350 to me was to much of a bottleneck even last year when i owned it when it couldn't keep my old 770 at 99% during games.

Zen i hope changes all this and i hope for a athlon type launch i truly do.

 

[salgado18]

I expect IPC to be around sandy-bridge level but we might see 6 cores aimed towards the I5-I7 price range and i expect the 8 core to be priced around 350-400$.

But the rumor is we will only see a 4 core and 8 core model with that in mind i expect the 4 core to be priced around the high-end I3 price range.

Also as for being cheap i can agree with you think off all the people who bought a I7 920 back in 2008 yet that CPU is still kicking butt today i doubt people who bought similer Phenom parts are still kicking butt in those later games for example look at I7 920 benchmarks in farcry 4 vs 955 or even watch dogs or GTA5. Sure they might still slightly be able to give you an OK experience today but overall i'd much rather have that 920.

If you spend quite a bit of money on your CPU you probably won't have to upgrade for 4 years. 8350 to me was to much of a bottleneck even last year when i owned it when it couldn't keep my old 770 at 99% during games.

Zen i hope changes all this and i hope for a athlon type launch i truly do.

The Phenom II X4's are still good for gaming, just like the old Core 2 Quads, because AMD's lower range is still on that level. I don't thing it's much because the CPUs are weak in themselves, but because developers have aimed at the lower range of available processors all this time.

But even now, games are getting more complex, requiring higher-clocked AMD CPUs and i3s as minimum requirements. When Zen comes, and spreads to the lower range, devs will count on more processing power on the market average. Then, the old Phenoms, Bulldozers (and derivations) and Core 2s will become obsolete.

I think that, even if Zen is slower than the then-current Intels, it will be a good thing to the consumer market, and a good product for AMD.

 

[cdrkf]

@jdwii, phenom ii x6 was the equivalent to i7 920 (specifically the 1055t), and in the better threaded modern engines thuban is still a champ

Not to disagree that the first gen i7s were superb and extremely long lived cpus mind. Just remember phenom ii x4 was aimed squarely at core 2 quad rather than Nehalem...

 

[8350rocks]

Again, AMD charges based on performance. Do not be surprised if the 8 core Zen performs similar to Intels 8 core that it is priced the same.

Or priced similar to Intel's 6 core, which is what I think it will compete against, given the lower IPC.

That said, yes, they urgently need new chipsets, but none will come for the FX family. Some vendors, like MSI (if I remember correctly) are adding third-party controllers to make new AM3+ boards with current tech, which I think is smart. Don't see them selling much, but it's nice.

Also, since Intel doesn't enable the entire connections possibilites in their Z170 chips, AMD could take advantage yet again of offering lots of PCI-Express lanes, just like in the past.

The only problem with third party controllers is they are not always as reliable or perform as well as onboard. I know some Intel boards had additional SATA 6 controllers but they normally performed poorly and had a lot of issues.

And the Z170 is fully enabled on high end board but it is just split differently than people wanted. The other side of that is that it wont be Skylake they will be competing against, it will be Kaby Lake which we have very little info and they might also release a new chipset with it.

The closer we get the sooner we will know. And if it is competing with Intels 6 core CPUs then it will have to do a lot since LGA2011 CPUs have 28-32 PCIe lanes available.

That partly depends on whose 3rd party controller we are talking about...

However, AMD will have a new chipset with Zen. It will be a unified chipset for both APUs and CPUs, so you can bet they will have a new southbridge. The northbridge should see an update as well...not sure if they are going to use HTX3200 or if JK developed a new system bus...however...they will have to do something different.

 

[Cazalan]

That partly depends on whose 3rd party controller we are talking about...

However, AMD will have a new chipset with Zen. It will be a unified chipset for both APUs and CPUs, so you can bet they will have a new southbridge. The northbridge should see an update as well...not sure if they are going to use HTX3200 or if JK developed a new system bus...however...they will have to do something different.

The chipset has apparently been outsourced to ASMedia.

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=245294&postcount=139

 

[juanrga]

Not apparently. AMD licensed the chipset because lacks the R&D for in-house development.

 

[salgado18]

The chipset has apparently been outsourced to ASMedia.

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=245294&postcount=139

That looks to me more like a forum post than a source. Is it reliable?

In other point, is ASMedia reliable?

 

[juanrga]

The chipset has apparently been outsourced to ASMedia.

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=245294&postcount=139

That looks to me more like a forum post than a source. Is it reliable?

In other point, is ASMedia reliable?

http://techreport.com/news/26591/report-amd-to-outsource-chipset-design-to-asmedia

 

[jimmysmitty]

The chipset has apparently been outsourced to ASMedia.

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=245294&postcount=139

That looks to me more like a forum post than a source. Is it reliable?

In other point, is ASMedia reliable?

http://techreport.com/news/26591/report-amd-to-outsource-chipset-design-to-asmedia

Good for Asus. Not sure why they are even considering SATAe when M.2 with NVMe is vastly better.

 

[salgado18]

Good for Asus. Not sure why they are even considering SATAe when M.2 with NVMe is vastly better.

They probably were going to ASMedia just for SATAe, but then changed to a whole chipset with them. They have to include M.2 and any newer technology, or no matter how good Zen is, it's going to sink before even sailing.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Good for Asus. Not sure why they are even considering SATAe when M.2 with NVMe is vastly better.

They probably were going to ASMedia just for SATAe, but then changed to a whole chipset with them. They have to include M.2 and any newer technology, or no matter how good Zen is, it's going to sink before even sailing.

Well Asus (ASMedia) is a good choice to do it then. They tend to push newer tech a lot. Hope they make better Chipsets than NVidia or VIA did.

 

[8350rocks]

Good for Asus. Not sure why they are even considering SATAe when M.2 with NVMe is vastly better.

They probably were going to ASMedia just for SATAe, but then changed to a whole chipset with them. They have to include M.2 and any newer technology, or no matter how good Zen is, it's going to sink before even sailing.

Well Asus (ASMedia) is a good choice to do it then. They tend to push newer tech a lot. Hope they make better Chipsets than NVidia or VIA did.

Asus and Gigabyte both tend to offer the higher end stuff more frequently...

 

[Vogner16]

Well Asus (ASMedia) is a good choice to do it then. They tend to push newer tech a lot. Hope they make better Chipsets than NVidia or VIA did.

For sure I remember my old Athlon 64 system with NVidia nvlink networking and GeForce 6130. what garbage! that chipset wasn't worth the silicon it was made from. If we look at Bolton D4 we can see how much further amd can go by adding m.2 ( a simple PCIe connection) and maybe even usb 3.1.

I have a hunch that PCIe based storage will become soon the only way to have storage on anything faster than a chromebook. amd has always had lots of PCIe lanes. who knows!

Also I fully suspect Northbridge to be put into a SoC. say goodbye to the northbridge.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Well Asus (ASMedia) is a good choice to do it then. They tend to push newer tech a lot. Hope they make better Chipsets than NVidia or VIA did.

For sure I remember my old Athlon 64 system with NVidia nvlink networking and GeForce 6130. what garbage! that chipset wasn't worth the silicon it was made from. If we look at Bolton D4 we can see how much further amd can go by adding m.2 ( a simple PCIe connection) and maybe even usb 3.1.

I have a hunch that PCIe based storage will become soon the only way to have storage on anything faster than a chromebook. amd has always had lots of PCIe lanes. who knows!

Also I fully suspect Northbridge to be put into a SoC. say goodbye to the northbridge.

AMDs chipsets are pretty much like Intels, they are just Southbridges now. The NB has been on both CPUs for a while.

AMD needs more than just M.2 or USB 3.1. They need a new interconnect between the CPU and peripherals to handle the speed up these devices present. Intel needed to go to PCIe 3.0 for its SB to handle M.2 and USB 3.1. I can't imagine what it will need when 10Gbe becomes standard on desktop boards.

 

[cdrkf]

Lol, everyone is talking like amd hasn't updated their chipset since bd.. yeah am3+ is ancient by modern standards, but fm2 on the other hand has support for the latest stuff, just not the processor to go with it 😛

 

[jimmysmitty]

Lol, everyone is talking like amd hasn't updated their chipset since bd.. yeah am3+ is ancient by modern standards, but fm2 on the other hand has support for the latest stuff, just not the processor to go with it 😛

Thats the thing. When I consider a AMD build for gaming I do not consider the APUs. ANd that is due to their weaker performance.

Hopefully Zen changes that but the chipset is something that AMD sorely needs to update. They consider their FX platform the top of the line yet you cannot buy a 990FX or any 900 series board with PCIe 3.0. While it is not super important right now, what do you think will last longer? A 990FX build with PCIe 2.0 or a Z87 setup with PCIe 3.0?

That is why I tell people I consider the whole platform when buying, not just the CPU. The CPU is one part of the picture but right now with Intel you can build a system with more new tech that will help the system overall last longer than any AMD setup right now which is why AMD is losing in the desktop market.

My current CPU and board can probably last me another 3 years or more with just a GPU upgrade and my GPU wont have to worry about a PCIe bottleneck.

 

[sitandspin]

Hi jimmy i can agree with your point intel generally has the newer tech ready right out of the gate but cdrkf is also right fm2+
has closed the gape for consumers at a lower price point, and lower performance. As the sbm pointed out a 860k can game. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/newegg-system-builder-marathon-q3-2015-amd-mini-pc,4307.html