AMD CPUs, SoC Rumors and Speculations Temp. thread 2

[Vogner16]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

BD worked with AM3 sockets so that upgrade path was worth it.

I remember that never did it though. just got crosshair V with my 8150.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

What point is there? I doubt there will be any AM3+ compatibility since AMD said they weren't supporting DDR3 last I looked. Then it would be just spending twice as much.

 

[gamerk316]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

BD worked with AM3 sockets so that upgrade path was worth it.

I remember that never did it though. just got crosshair V with my 8150.

People here purchased boards ahead of time, then complained bitterly that they got less performance then they thought they did.

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

 

[con635]

What point is there? I doubt there will be any AM3+ compatibility since AMD said they weren't supporting DDR3 last I looked. Then it would be just spending twice as much.

He meant buy an am4 motherboard and ddr4 ram with a placeholder chip (bristol ridge apu) before zen.

 

[Vogner16]

What point is there? I doubt there will be any AM3+ compatibility since AMD said they weren't supporting DDR3 last I looked. Then it would be just spending twice as much.

your missing the link. amd is killing AM3. new socket is called AM4. we were comparing amd's business practice so we can get information from the past to what they might do in the future. AM4 will have DDR3 and DDR4 compatability.

DDR3 boards will only work with Bristol ridge APU's

DDR4 boards will work with Bristol ridge and possibly zen. (with bios update) **speculation**

 

[con635]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

BD worked with AM3 sockets so that upgrade path was worth it.

I remember that never did it though. just got crosshair V with my 8150.

People here purchased boards ahead of time, then complained bitterly that they got less performance then they thought they did.

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

Haswell to Broadwell on z97 is a more recent example although Haswell is a fine cpu anyway.

 

[Vogner16]

People here purchased boards ahead of time, then complained bitterly that they got less performance then they thought they did.

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

It would be stupid to assume that a motherboard built for Bristol ridge (Carrizo) that is "compatible" with zen would be as fast as a motherboard that was built for zen.

The question lies in if it works. can you do the upgrade if you want to get the first AM4 boards then upgrade later on when better APU's come out. I know these first batch AM4 boards will not be as good as the first zen batch boards, but if they work and you want to play with Carrizo apu, why not?

The whole thing of people complaining of getting BD boards early was more of how they couldn't OC them as well as proper BD boards and the bios's were not ready without an update and you needed a older cpu to update them. once people got them working with a bios update they worked just as any stock clocked BD ran.

 

[juanrga]

anyone here actually looking into buying a Carrizo based desktop APU? ddr4 will make the onboard gpu pretty good I imagine, but cpu cores on Carrizo were designed for low power and I don't think they will scale to 95W very well. I just cant imagine many people buying this unless they want a system that they can just throw a zen cpu in on release day.

The rumor/leak is that AM4 supports up to 3200MHz DDR4, which would provide about 50% more bandwidth than Kaveri mobos. This extra bandwidth could feed up to 12 CUs, but I doubt AMD will release Excavator-based APUs with more than 8 CUs.

 

[Vogner16]

The rumor/leak is that AM4 supports up to 3200MHz DDR4, which would provide about 50% more bandwidth than Kaveri mobos. This extra bandwidth could feed up to 12 CUs, but I doubt AMD will release 95W Excavator-based APUs, 65W looks more likely.

12 CU's would be far more than I would expect to see. that would be 768 SPU's. im thinking 640 SPU's or 10 CU's.
I wouldn't be supprised if they did another one with the same 512 SPU's or 8 CU's though.

and I agree juan. Carrizo was focused so heavily on low power that I don't think it is capable of scaling to high TDP and high clocks.

 

[Vogner16]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/september/ddr3_vs_ddr4_synthetic

is this where you get the speeds of ddr4 bandwith from? this is quad channel ddr4.

 

[jimmysmitty]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

BD worked with AM3 sockets so that upgrade path was worth it.

I remember that never did it though. just got crosshair V with my 8150.

BD only worked on AM3+. It was very specific too as it required the black socket (AM3+), not the white socket (AM3).

Zen is specifically set for AM4.

 

[-Fran-]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

BD worked with AM3 sockets so that upgrade path was worth it.

I remember that never did it though. just got crosshair V with my 8150.

BD only worked on AM3+. It was very specific too as it required the black socket (AM3+), not the white socket (AM3).

Zen is specifically set for AM4.

Funny Story: I sold my Crosshair IV to a friend of mine so I could swap it for a brand new Crosshair V (AM3 to AM3+) in preparation for BD. History came to be at the time and BD tanked. I told my friend to keep the C-IV instead of swapping it since his CPU at the time (Athlon II X3... Rana?) was still good for his needs. So, time passed and he told me his CPU was behind times and wanted to swap it. I told him to risk it and get a FX8350. This was a month or two ago. He got it and put it into his AM3 socket. It turns out Asus gave unofficial support through a beta BIOS to the PD based BD CPUs in the Crosshair IV. He read a bit about it so he was convinced it would work. Still risky, but fun experiment. So, he is now a happy camper. I sold my Crosshair V as I saw how awful BD was and thanks to Microcenter I got a 2700K for peanuts, haha.

All in all, gamerk, I have not forgotten about it. I will never forget. But, you can trust in 3rd parties coming forth with nice solutions on their own if the providers don't do it.

I would not advice to go in blindly with any AM4 MoBo, but there might be some Asus that will keep AMD's promise even if AMD itself doesn't fully do it. I'm sure of it.

Cheers!

 

[urishima]

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

This needs to be put on billboards all over the world. Together with 'Don't preorder videogames.'.

 

[Vogner16]

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

This needs to be put on billboards all over the world. Together with 'Don't preorder videogames.'.

woah woah woah preordering videogames usually pays off.

even for batman AK. I got every other batman ever made for free because of that fiasco. totally worth it to preorder from companies who will backup their product and reimburse you if needed.

@yuka that's what I ment. as long as companies did the proper bios update and that update was available the older mobos worked. people were mad that AM3+ wasn't AM3 and their 760 chipset wouldn't work with BD. and even then some 760 chipsets got bios updates to support BD! that crosshair IV worked with BD even though It was pre BD.

the discussion here is will amd do that again. will certian march release AM4 motherboards work with zen after a bios update. I would guess yes, but they would need to be DDR4 versions and be higher quality versions like the crosshair VI or sabertooth etc...

 

[jimmysmitty]

Do NOT buy products on promises of future performance people.

This needs to be put on billboards all over the world. Together with 'Don't preorder videogames.'.

woah woah woah preordering videogames usually pays off.

even for batman AK. I got every other batman ever made for free because of that fiasco. totally worth it to preorder from companies who will backup their product and reimburse you if needed.

@yuka that's what I ment. as long as companies did the proper bios update and that update was available the older mobos worked. people were mad that AM3+ wasn't AM3 and their 760 chipset wouldn't work with BD. and even then some 760 chipsets got bios updates to support BD! that crosshair IV worked with BD even though It was pre BD.

the discussion here is will amd do that again. will certian march release AM4 motherboards work with zen after a bios update. I would guess yes, but they would need to be DDR4 versions and be higher quality versions like the crosshair VI or sabertooth etc...

It is about the BIOS support and the pin layout. The biggest change to AM3 and AM3+ was the pin count and the layout for the pins. Depending on that it may or may not be supported but I assume we should know by that time if it will or wont as I do not see why AMD would leave people in the dark to take a risk and jump on something that is not 100% guaranteed.

 

[jdwii]

No offense, but the "I'll buy and upgrade when Zen releases" sounds an awful lot like the talk people were doing before BD launched. Funny how quickly the memories fade...

Agreed i wouldn't do it i did it once before when i bought a sabertooth 990fx before knowing, boy did i lose BIG time.

 

[cdrkf]

AMD have stated quite clearly that Zen and desktop carrizo will share the am4 socket.

I think that isn't really a question. As others have said however, buying now in preparation for Zen is risky.

 

[Vogner16]

Agreed i wouldn't do it i did it once before when i bought a sabertooth 990fx before knowing, boy did i lose BIG time.

Im missing on how you lost at all. sabertooth 990fx works great with both 8150 and the 8350 even. one of the best AM3+ overclocking motherboards ever made. in what way did you lose? did you buy the motherboard pre-release and not have an older AM3 cpu to use for the bios update?

cdrkf is asking the right question.

will both Carrizo AM4 boards and Zen AM4 boards be the same? (thus allowing an upgrade path)

My gut says you cant have a APU and a CPU share the same socket without wasting some pins for a CPU only option unless there is some kind of asic on the board to switch pin connection points if it detects an APU or CPU.

AM4+ will undoubtedly be a thing but I think (hope) that will wait until zen+ designs

 

[Vogner16]

It is about the BIOS support and the pin layout. The biggest change to AM3 and AM3+ was the pin count and the layout for the pins. Depending on that it may or may not be supported but I assume we should know by that time if it will or wont as I do not see why AMD would leave people in the dark to take a risk and jump on something that is not 100% guaranteed.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/ASRock-Explains-the-Differences-Between-AM3-and-AM3-Sockets-196906.shtml

pin layout did not change.

pin count did not change.

bios support came to motherboards that were capable of the higher power requirements of BD.

in other news, Bristol Ridge APU's details

http://wccftech.com/amd-bristol-ridge-apu-am4-desktop-fp4-mobility/

 

[wh3resmycar]

AMD's 40% improvement target is quite high imo. but if it gets to 20% that will be around ivyBridge performance on stock @14nm, an OC here and there should get it to haswell/skylake i guess.

 

[Vogner16]

AMD's 40% improvement target is quite high imo. but if it gets to 20% that will be around ivyBridge performance on stock @14nm, an OC here and there should get it to haswell/skylake i guess.

we have discussed this in great detail here.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2864699/zen-theoritical-performance.html

Ivy is 38% faster clock per clock than BD.

 

[juanrga]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/september/ddr3_vs_ddr4_synthetic

is this where you get the speeds of ddr4 bandwith from? this is quad channel ddr4.

Is this addressed to me? I compute the values, because there aren't measurements for AM4 still. The maximum bandwidth is obtained multiplying the number of channels by the channel width and by frequency. DDR3 and DDR4 have the same width: 8 Byte per channel

For instance dual-channel DDR4@2400MHz gives:

(2 channel) x (8 Byte / channel) x (2400 M / s) = 38400 MB/s = 38.4 GB/s

This is the maximum allowed by the memory spec. Measured bandwidth on a concrete situation will depend of the workloads, the quality of the memory controller, etc.

 

[juanrga]

AMD has finally confirmed by claim that Zen is not still tapped-out

Zen was a clean sheet design that started few years ago. We are in the final figure of executing and the milestone that you want hear us talk about is Zen tapping out, which should be over the next several months. And then putting samples in the hands of our customer and then starting portfolio of revenue in 2017.

And by the way, because we have this reuse approach for cores, you will see us with Zen cores in the high-end desktop first and then the server from our overall products standpoint. But the key is tapping out in the next several months, samples and customers for the validation of the product over the 2016 time frame and then the revenue ramp happening in 2016.

As far as market share is concerned where we are starting from. I think, the latest data shows that the market share has 0.5%, so call it zero and the question is how we execute, what our customer do with it. But from my standpoint with the competitiveness of the product that Mark Papermaster and his team has put into place, it can only go up from there if you have a competitive partner and our customers for their own reasons they have nothing else from a competitive leverage standpoint, would want at least some amount of competition that's pays because today the pricing and the margins that are commanded by the competitor against our customers are pretty high, right. And for us, is significant higher than where we are sitting today and about 30% gross margin at the corporate level. And where it could be significantly accretive for every dollar of revenue.

And that market today is about $13 billion, $14 billion and we think we'll continue to grow. And the data center business or market today because of the slower trend of ARM being able to capture market share that is predominantly the data center market on x86 and they are only two companies that can provide the x86 technology for the data center space.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3741456-advanced-micro-devices-amd-at-raymond-james-technology-investors-conference-transcript?part=single

Therefore if Zen is tapped-out on February, for instance, add 12 or 14 months and that is when Zen will be likely available on stores.

 

[juanrga]

The rumor/leak is that AM4 supports up to 3200MHz DDR4, which would provide about 50% more bandwidth than Kaveri mobos. This extra bandwidth could feed up to 12 CUs, but I doubt AMD will release 95W Excavator-based APUs, 65W looks more likely.

12 CU's would be far more than I would expect to see. that would be 768 SPU's. im thinking 640 SPU's or 10 CU's.
I wouldn't be supprised if they did another one with the same 512 SPU's or 8 CU's though.

and I agree juan. Carrizo was focused so heavily on low power that I don't think it is capable of scaling to high TDP and high clocks.

65W and 8CUs seem confirmed

AM4 supports up to 3200MHz DDR4, but Carrizo APUs will be limited to 2400MHz (surely a memory controller issue). This means about same bandwidth than Kaveri and similar graphics performance.

 

[Vogner16]

65W and 8CUs seem confirmed


AM4 supports up to 3200MHz DDR4, but Carrizo APUs will be limited to 2400MHz (surely a memory controller issue). This means about same bandwidth than Kaveri and similar graphics performance.

Yes I saw that as well in my wccf link. had a link to benchlife on that page.

so Carrizo apu's officially support 2400mhz but I would bet overclocking support to 3200 on good motherboards. I thought Kaveri was limited to 2133mhz ddr3 ram. add in slightly faster stock clocks to the igpu (948mhz) and it does look a little faster. isn't gcn 1.1 in kaveri and gcn 1.2 in Carrizo?

also look at the cpu clock speeds they are slightly slower, and ipc is slightly faster so they will be about the same performance wise and only using 65W.

Sum all this up: Bristol ridge APU's will be identical cpu performance to kaveri with slightly faster gpu all the while using 2/3 of the power kaveri needed. what I take from this the most is the bottom tier chip no longer has a 2 thread and 192 SPU gpu. its been upped to a 256 SPU count. the bottom tier chip is actually relevant for a lot of bottom end users.