AMD CPUs, SoC Rumors and Speculations Temp. thread 2

Page 28 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.


The downside to a FM2+ CPU right now is that it too is a dead socket as AM4 is set to replace all their sockets into one socket. So while for now it can game, the A series APUs are going to become a bottleneck for newer GPUs in the near future, especially Pascal and Greenland which should be able to start utilizing PCIe 3.0 bandwidth. In fact they are currently bottlenecks for top end GPUs which is what hurts them in the gaming market and pushes them to a lower price point.

If Zen can at least catch up to Haswell it has a chance. Problem is from what we are seeing it might still be behind Haswell by enough that the chip Intel has out at the time, Kaby Lake or Cannon Lake, might just keep it the status quo with AMD lining up the bottom end and Intel keeping the high end.

That also tells me that in the server market Intel might still dominate and I would much rather see AMD compete in the server market than the consumer market as even with lower performance in the consumer market the server market can easily turn a profit for them.
 
Out of curiosity... How many of you actually use all of the "special features" of your chipsets? How many of you use something other than USB3 (or even USB2)?

I know I use RAID 0 with mah good old 512GB HDDs brothers, but other than that and USB3, I don't really see any other bleeding edge tech being a "must have" on a chipset nowadays. You guys touted "NVMe", but that is just SSDs on PCIe, which is nothing but a marketing term for... well... SSDs on PCIe. And that can be done with MoBos from 2005 with a BIOS/UEFI upgrade AFAIK. Plus, you would need a LOT of data movement to see any benefit at all in the consumer landscape. Oh well, what else? M.2? Jeez... Why not just use a regular sATA interface and save some money building the MoBo? Fancy connectors that are really for a niche market (Ultrathins).

In any case, I'm not saying AMD isn't long overdue with the 990FX and the A88X (which is a bumped 990FX), but all of the "buzzwords" I'm reading here are not making me itch one bit. I do want more USB3s though. As long as new chipsets provide a bazillion of them, I'll be a happy camper. And not that gimped POG (piece of garbage) from Intel with the "I bet no one will notice, I'm just helping!" Z170 PCIe shenanigans.

Give it a deeper thought on what technologies are *really* necessary on a chipset and think about the close alternatives if they fit, are good enough, or are even better than the new shiny buzzword some Marketing department is trying to shove down yer throats.

Cheers!
 


You make a good point and that is actually why i went with a cheaper board this time around instead of going crazy like before the only thing i kind of wish i had was the option for M.2.
 


NVMe requires UEFI to be bootable and the first chipsets to offer UEFI was the Z68, not even a X58 chipset can do it.

And while I don't quite use it it is something nice to have. If in the future I need a faster SSD I can grab a NVMe based PCIe SSD and run it. And NVMe is not just an SSD on PCIe. Right now the downfall to SATA for SSDs is AHCI. AHCI was developed with HDDs in mind, to help alleviate a lot of bottlenecks they present. It works great too. Windows 7 on AHCI is vastly faster and smoother than on IDE. However, SSDs benefit from NVMe in a lot of ways from performance to reliability and longevity.

Again it is just my view on a platform as a whole. The CPU is one part. I don't make a decision base solely on the CPU, I make it based on the platform. I would rather build a system that will perform for years rather than have to worry about upgrading within a year.

Right now any AMD system will require a whole platform upgrade to keep it relevant in the gaming market and other markets.
 


This is an interesting piece of the link:

"Rogers will play a key role in software development for AMD's "Fusion" technology initiative, where CPUs and GPUs are combined and integrated to improve energy efficiency and performance capability."

That's what AMD said when they promoted him and I can see why he left the company. Fusion is not moving forward after the GPU unit streamline. I mean, it might be moving, but I bet they made his position irrelevant with the streamline.

And Jimmy, I don't know what brings NVMe to the table that you can't get already, but sATA is hardly a bottleneck for any system that is not dependent on it's "hard-drive" stuff. I know we all love faster loading times and all, but I don't think the cost benefit of it will make me switch or think of switching any time soon.

Cheers!

EDIT: Typos.
 


http://www.pcworld.com/article/2899351/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nvme.html

SATA is a bottleneck for SSDs. There are a lot of programs that could benefit from a faster SSD or a SSD that can fully utilize the speeds NAND is capable of.

But this is off topic. My point is that AMD needs to update their chipset, they are sorely lacking, and a lot of people look at these features as part of the platform, not just myself, as reasons to upgrade. You cannot discount a feature just because you don't see a benefit in it. That is like saying that PCIe 3.0 is pointless because no GPU currently saturates a x8 PCIe 3 connection. Yet if you built a system today and only did GPU upgrades for 5 years you could run into a bottleneck with PCIe 2.0 since GPUs will be getting major upgrades in the next few years. Someone with PCIe 3.0 will not.

Then with AMD if you want these features you are now forced to go to their lower end platform, A88X, which currently only has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes. This presents a possible CPU bottelneck since the APUs are focused on the GPU more than the CPU. So now if you want a higher performing CPU instead from AMD you are going to get a 970/990FX platform which limits you to PCIe 2.0. AMD could have kept updating the chipset but they only have for new APU sockets. The 990FX chipset has been around since Bulldozers launch (slightly before it actually).
 
@jimmy, the point is amd have a modern chipset already for one of their platforms, so it's a given the new chipset for am4 and Zen will include all features already in fm2+. Looking at am3 and concluding amd are 'years behind' on chipsets is a strange conclusion imo.... Essentially amd have obviously determined due to its age there's little benefit to updating the chipset on am3 again so they haven't.

I mean your also grossly over estimating the impact of pcie bandwidth on graphics cards. I remember an article a year or so ago looking at the performance difference of the original titan on pcie1, 2 and 3- long story short very little at all even on 1.0, cause the titan had enough on board vram to minimize the pcie traffic.

Yes, pcie 2 Will hold back multi gpu setups, single cards though? Not really, I doubt even Greenland and Pascal will pose a problem.
 


I would rather say sales and the fact that they don't have enough money for R&D has kept them from releasing an updated chipset.

And again, I am looking at it from a platform. Yes the A88X is a "modern" (albeit still behind) chipset but it is for a lower end platform with weaker CPUs compared to the 990FX platform.

There is nothing wrong with wanting AMD to stay somewhat competitive. As I said I can't recommend AMD because of the platform, not just the CPU, for any enthusiast who is buying a new system today. Maybe when it first came out but now it is hard to justify when a equivalent Intel platform has more features and outperforms it.

AM4 and Zen might be a different story. I doubt they wont add features.

And that article is 2 years old on a much older GPU. A GTX 980Tiz or Fury X is vastly faster than a Titan. The 14/16nm shrink will allow for quite a bit more power out of the GPUs and add in HBM and other advancements it might start squeezing performance from more PCIe bandwidth. We wont know until then but again from a platform perspective I would rather build with the future in mind rather than assume it is good enough for now.
 


The article has been deleted. It seems certain company is nervous.

After Keller's departure I have always asked me who will left AMD first: Papermaster or Su?
 
http://wccftech.com/phil-rogers-leaves-amd-nvidias-chief-software-architect-compute-server/
 


I see all people say this about FM2+ and AM3+ as its a dead socket, but look at every socket ever made! they are all dead after the first gen they have CPU's out for them EXCEPT AM2,3 sockets and FM2. if you have an FM2+ you could have gotten Kaveri, Godvari, Richland, Trinity. 4 Gens (two gens two refresh). Look at AM2 had Athlon 64. Athlon 64X2 Phenoms etc it was 4 Gens as well and my AM2 mobo had a phenom for AM3 in it for a while. AM3 supported 3 Gens and would have supported more :/

Intel? Haswell and broadwell shared socket.... the rest? new boards new chipsets new cpu's allways new all intel sockets are dead sockets so essentially ALL sockets are dead sockets. even 2011 got changed to v3 and the new ones don't work in old motherboards...

AM4 should be like the last amd boards have been. upgrade paths at the dispense of slightly slower interconnects and southbridges etc. would you rather have like intel better performance but no upgrade path? or like amd less preferial(sata PCIe) perf and more upgrade path.

also Bolton D4 A88x has X4 USB3.0 support X6 AHCI 1.3 sata rev 3, X4 PCIe 2.0 Lanes, Raid 0 through 10, gigabit Ethernet , and PCI support. not total top end but better (sata at least) than 950 had. compared to Z97 its very close in compatibly. amd chipsets are not that far behind.

Also 950 came out in 2011 so AHCI 1.2 was out and PCIe 2.0 was out. only thing that was available but not on the chipset was the usb 3.0 and that was not on intel chipsets until the skylake ones Z170 etc... amd had first usb3.0 chipset.
 


Most sockets are dead yes. It has, however, become expected with Intel that a socket will last two CPU generations, 3 with 2011 and possibly 4 with Broadwell-E. But AMD has been known for longer lasting sockets, although AM2+ and AM3 have not lasted as long as usual.

As for USB 3.0, the first AMD chipset to natively support USB 3.0 was the A75 and A70M, Hudson-D3, which was launched in mid to late 2011 so yes, before the Z77 chipset. But that was the last time they had anything first in a very long time.

And there are still upgrade paths for Intel. Same as with AMD. So far each socket has 2 generations, except 1150 which had 2 and a refresh.
 

I always though like that, that an AM2-3 socket had a long upgrade path, but the truth is people don't upgrade their CPUs within the socket. Very few people do (like us), but the majority of market just keep the system for like 3 to 5 years, then make a major upgrade of the platform.

AM4 is meant to unify, more than be upgradeable, from what I see. Being able to support just one socket from budget to entusiast products is a great way to save money on research and manufacturing.
 


How many SSDs are you running that 3.0 GB/sec is too little? sATA3 is pretty crazy fast. TBH...the NVMe stuff is essentially a new way to package a widget to a consumer to drive them to upgrade. You show me a SSD currently available for less than commercial workstation class money that approaches saturation on sATA3 and I will show you an experimental piece of hardware not fully ramped for production.
 


This is more a sign of NVidia trying to tighten the grip of CUDA on server infrastructure than anything specifically negative at AMD.
 


Most current consumer SSDs top out at 550MB/s which is the max that SATA 3 gives (BTW it is 6Gbps not 3). Every review shows that a M.2 NVMe based SSD or a PCIe based NVMe SSD performs vastly faster.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147425&cm_re=samsung_951-_-20-147-425-_-Product

While it is not as cheap as SATA SSDs it is still not as expensive as workstation class SSDs. A lot of people said SATA was also the same thing, just something to drive people to upgrade and that their PATA 100 was fast enough and not bottlenecked. I highly doubt you are anyone would use a PATA based HDD today.
 
Remember socket != chipset. AMD has had 940-ish pin layout since 2004 with socket 939. Intel has been changing a lot in the last decade, which at the end of the day has me wondering if they have been getting most of each socket or they're just testing whatever they have on the design board.

I don't remember any talks in regards to pin count for AM4, but I would expect it to have a similar count. If they go up, it would be nice, since it might imply longer gen support. Still, I guess pin count is pretty irrelevant unless you want to save every single dime you can. I think I read they were going BGA as well. Anyone knows or remembers something of the like?

And Jimmy, the PCIe example/parallel is funny, cause Intel is really screwing all of it's customer base that *might* use their NVMe, USB3 and even sATA buses to the fullest. I think the "ancient" 990FX has more bandwidth against the CPU than the Z170. Same with the X58 (!) chipset. I mention that, because it does worry me that Intel might be offering more "goodies" up front, but grabbing your... Uhm... Bandwidth and choking it the wrong way. I *hope* AMD doesn't do that with whatever they have planned for AM4. Remember having 16 USB3.1 ports imply ~5GB/s of brute bandwidth if used to the fullest; that is equivalent to PCIe 3.0 5x-ish. Then you add sATA and GPU and... What else? Well, you can just start slapping more stuff to the PCIe BUS and it will eat away your channels when actually used. To be realistic, I don't see most users saturating that, but I do have 4 USB3 drives and I'm planning on getting more. Externalizing the drives allows me to downsize the PC itself! I still need to fine tune some details, but it might just work, haha.

Cheers!
 


It was S920, S939, AM2/AM2+ (940), AM3 (940 or 941), AM3+ (942). However, none of these were backwards compatible.

If we look at Intel in the same class we have had LGA 775, 1156, 1155, 1150 and now 1151. Not much change on the pin number.

And I don't get everyone's fuss on the Z170 chipset. Honestly if you think you are planning to fully saturate all the USB, SATA and PCIe 3.0 slots from a Z170 chipset then maybe you need to look into a higher end solution like a work station based solution instead. I have built a lot of systems for a customer and the closest I got was a workstation with dual Titans, a OCZ Revo X2 drive (PCIe) and 8 4TB HDDs in a RAID 5 (although those were connected to a RAID controller). Even then there were still lanes available and I highly doubt anyone would utilize 14 USB 2.0 ports and however many USB 3.0 ports. Hell just runnign two USB 3.0/2.0 drives starts to bottleneck those devices because USB is an outdated interface on the back end.
 
The "chipset" isn't that complex anymore. It's just a small PCIe x4 link if this is accurate.

amd_promontory_features_capabilities-1024x481.jpg
 


Much of the IO is on the APU itself. Meaning they will probably offer an SoC version. They've already done that with Carrizo. Why go backwards from there?
 
@jimmy, your point on ssds saturating sata3 is a little misleading... Yes lots of drives can saturate the interface * when doing high batch queue sequential read / write operations* (essentially very artificial benchmarks).

When doing low batch count, more random / combined read write, the performance is only a fraction of the available bandwidth of sata 3 and incidentally all these exotic solutions suddenly offer no benefit any more.

I agree that it makes sense to get up to date connectivity when building a new machine and I guess the newer interfaces offer some benefit, however it's a lot less than the advertising would have you believe in real world.
 


+1 for cdrkf
over a year ago I snaped up a 1 TB crucial ssd for $400 that was much slower than options such as 850 pro at the time, but in real world it is a little slower than my ocz vertex 4 256. both claim to max out the sata 6 and the 1 TB drive is both newer and has more modules to spread data to giving it the theoretical advantage. the soft stats make up for a lot of performance in real world workloads.

PCIe is of course much faster than sata 6, but $ to storage to perf I would go with the 1 TB crucial "slow" sata 6 ssd any day. as it is a low percentage faster in things such as game load times boot times application loads times and yea its a farkin Terabyte!
 


we already discussed this on page 11 or 10 I think. all leads point to SoC
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom