AMD Piledriver rumours ... and expert conjecture

[Reynod]

We have had several requests for a sticky on AMD's yet to be released Piledriver architecture ... so here it is.

I want to make a few things clear though.

Post a question relevant to the topic, or information about the topic, or it will be deleted.

Post any negative personal comments about another user ... and they will be deleted.

Post flame baiting comments about the blue, red and green team and they will be deleted.

Enjoy ...

 

[noob2222]

Its true in the real world(People who buy Computers not build them 95+% of everyone) people wont notice much difference. But when gaming we would notice a difference i agree that high speed ram needs to be put into the machines but this does not happen often and Intel will do better then Amd on slower ram. Anyways if these benchmarks are right Amd would need 2600 ram to equal 1600 from Intel not good not good at all.

DDR4 ram is going to make a big difference if its 2 times as fast that's going to make gaming benchmarks look 15-20%(on Average) better on even Intel graphics.

Plus stop saying Ram speeds are so Important for IPC because its not. If that was the case gaming would be much better on faster ram then slower ram and its been stated over and over it makes less then a 5% difference(Unless were talking about integrated graphics).

I'm not saying the memory controller will make a big enough difference for the CPU but it will make a good difference on their APU.

Basing that decision on Intel results does not hold true for AMD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6

0% for intel on memory speed, 0-5% or more for AMD. And as I stated, thats 2% more cost on a $1000 build. Where does that not make sense to go with the better memory?

Not sure why this turned into a discussion of pre-built systems. Maybe thats a way of justifying only testing systems with crap memory.

Besides, the whole memory speed discussion was brought up because memory affects benchmarks, not so much for intel, but for AMD it does. Should all tests be done on Intel standards and not AMD? If so why.

Thats all I want to know, why is it not ok to test AMD systems with the standards they support when Intel doesn't? Thats not AMD's fault Intel doesn't support 1866 memory with SB, but all benchmarks are only tested with what Intel supports. All I ever hear is "its not fair" to show that AMD supports faster hardware.

 

[de5_Roy]

Fair enough.

The complaint with 4ghz + is down to efficiency, but honestly how many concern themselves with that, considering BD halved Thubans efficiency numbers and still made older generations look ludicrously power consuming. At the end, people here said they would rather CPU manufacturers focus on clock speed et al and put less focus on power numbers. To me power efficiency is at the level that is tollerable, I am more concerned about performance numbers.

As for the RAM issue, I to have found that AMD benefits more from higher frequency RAM, more so than Intel, Intel stops responding beyond 1600mhz, latency timings have little effect too. With the FX having higher native frequencies, the advantage is there in some synthitics, but overall its not really a major factor as of yet.

halved? zambezi seems to be only slightly more efficient than thuban or deneb generally.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-power-consumption-efficiency,3060-14.html
that sort of power consumption may be tolerable to some, but not tolerable to many.
afaik sandy bridge's default memory speed is ddr3 1333, sb-e's ddr3 1600, ivb's ddr3 1600. it makes sense that intel would try to squeeze out as much performance as possible out of those specs. unlike zambezi, for example, which cannot get as much performance out of the same spec ram despite supporting higher spec ram. i think that right now only the igpu part of amd's apus can properly utilize higher speed ram.

Basing that decision on Intel results does not hold true for AMD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6

0% for intel on memory speed, 0-5% or more for AMD. And as I stated, thats 2% more cost on a $1000 build. Where does that not make sense to go with the better memory?

Not sure why this turned into a discussion of pre-built systems. Maybe thats a way of justifying only testing systems with crap memory.

Besides, the whole memory speed discussion was brought up because memory affects benchmarks, not so much for intel, but for AMD it does. Should all tests be done on Intel standards and not AMD? If so why.

Thats all I want to know, why is it not ok to test AMD systems with the standards they support when Intel doesn't? Thats not AMD's fault Intel doesn't support 1866 memory with SB, but all benchmarks are only tested with what Intel supports. All I ever hear is "its not fair" to show that AMD supports faster hardware.

how about intel gets more out of lower spec, cheaper ram than zambezi does of higher spec, costlier ram? just supporting faster ram isn't enough, amd has to get that kind of performance out of them. amd's 'fault' (if any) is to not design a better imc with bd.
besides, outside benchmarks, only time ram specs seem relevant with amd components is when they're being used with the apus. i wonder if anyone even notices performance increase from faster memory in a zambezi based pc.

 

[EXT64]

AMD still has decent (perf/$) Opteron chips for HPC 😀

 

[mactronix]

no reason to go AMD at all right now if not going APU..

Agreed, thing is there is no point going Intel either really.
I had it all pegged a little while ago, AMD upgrade all worked out and priced, then realised that it was probably good money down the drain as Intel offered more performance for slightly more money, (New MoBo). Then realised that the perf increase just wasn't worth it so lets wait for Haswell. If Haswell was not a new socket I would have gone ahead, as it is I'm happy to wait for Haswell and Piledriver then make a decision.

Mactronix

 

[sarinaide]

Oh wells, we all know AMD have claimed to not be competing in the high performance desktop market, that should mean that the products be reviewed against the previous generation. Piledriver should blow away BD/Phenom II so that would be a success if you are a AMD user. Despite the synthetic slower performance and contrary to what is said the AMD (including FX) is still rather competitive in the gaming/mainstream and professional market, that is also to say that AMD's entire project is different to Intel making it harder to asses exactly where AMD are.

Considering Intels rather haphazard display in the DT market, some are lead to believe that Intel have also given up on the desktop market. 22nm nodes, trigate transistor technology and only the same ol 2/4 core split, one would have also thought they would be pushing the 5ghz base clock mark with such efficiency...I am sure AMD are going to get blamed for this "Y U no competitive" "Y U make my Intel more expensive for no gains" again it wasn't without Intel and hook and crook that tried to bury AMD.

43% market share is still nowhere near as bad as made out to be, I can still see it pushing even split over the next 18 months.

 

[viridiancrystal]

Agreed, thing is there is no point going Intel either really.
I had it all pegged a little while ago, AMD upgrade all worked out and priced, then realised that it was probably good money down the drain as Intel offered more performance for slightly more money, (New MoBo). Then realised that the perf increase just wasn't worth it so lets wait for Haswell. If Haswell was not a new socket I would have gone ahead, as it is I'm happy to wait for Haswell and Piledriver then make a decision.

Mactronix

I believe Steamroller will be what Haswell will go up against.

Sorry but you need to know that Acer/HP/Dell and so on put cheap slow ram into their machines which means Amd needs to work on their memory controller. Take a look here

Both are using the same ram but Trinity had half the bandwidth.

BD had bandwidth just about equal to SB.

I wouldn't be too worried about it.

 

[mactronix]

I forgot what you are running now..?

Unlocked and overclocked 555 BE. (B55)

Mactronix

 

[mactronix]

and HD 6850.?
your lucky, my 555 didn't unlock stable.

Nearly, 5850. Not bad my memory is rubbish.
Funny thing with the unlock I posted about it on here when I did it. First time it only went to 3 cores. After a reinstall of W7 it Just detected it when I first started it up as a 4 core chip and away we went. weird or what.
Being unlocked keeps me to 3.6 but to be honest I just did it for kicks its not like anything was struggling at stock.

Mactronix

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I doubt buying 2133 ram would even make a difference(except for APU's). Not to mention Intel gets more bandwidth from 1333 then Amd does from 1866.

IIRC there was an article here on THG comparing various memory speeds to performance increase & costs, last summer I think, and at that time the sweet spot was DDR3-1600. I just built a 3770K system and used 1866 CL9 memory however, since I don't plan to oc over 4GHz..

 

[truegenius]

what type of ram they used to test amd hardware, looks like all dead modules is the thing that they used,

i got 10GB/s bandwidth on my 1090t with 1600mhz ram in single channel only

lowest letancy, most responsive ram

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I remember that article and your spot on, it was the 1600MHz as the sweet spot is exactly what they called it..

Plus it showed way more than "0%" performance gain going from 1366 to 2100 - around 7% IIRC 😛..

Noob makes a big deal about "Intel supported" memory speeds being just 1366, but all it took was one click in the UEFI to change the memory default speed to 1866, as long as you keep the voltage at 1.5V. While it is probably true that Joe 6-pack won't do this on his Intel system, it's also true that Jane 2-pack won't be buying higher speed memory for her AMD rig either 😛..

OT, but I booted up the new rig last night and it worked fine. Only problem I ran into so far is that my Win7 Pro edition is an "upgrade", so now I have to install XP or Vista on a drive just so I can activate 7. Ridiculous - used to be that if you inserted the original install disk for the prior OS version, the later one would read it and then proceed as an upgrade..

 

[jdwii]

I believe Steamroller will be what Haswell will go up against.

BD had bandwidth just about equal to SB.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/Q/310562/original/sandra memory bandwidth.png

I wouldn't be too worried about it.

Weird??? Odd results since other sites state its only competitive with the original I7 920 and often loses? Well results are results but Trinity is only half as good as Intel maybe the graphics in Trinity doesn't like to share bandwidth with the CPU?

 

[jdwii]

Plus it showed way more than "0%" performance gain going from 1366 to 2100 - around 7% IIRC 😛..

Noob makes a big deal about "Intel supported" memory speeds being just 1366, but all it took was one click in the UEFI to change the memory default speed to 1866, as long as you keep the voltage at 1.5V. While it is probably true that Joe 6-pack won't do this on his Intel system, it's also true that Jane 2-pack won't be buying higher speed memory for her AMD rig either 😛..

OT, but I booted up the new rig last night and it worked fine. Only problem I ran into so far is that my Win7 Pro edition is an "upgrade", so now I have to install XP or Vista on a drive just so I can activate 7. Ridiculous - used to be that if you inserted the original install disk for the prior OS version, the later one would read it and then proceed as an upgrade..

When it comes to memory performance their is almost no difference in the real world anyways, You would probably see better performance by clocking your CPU 100mhz higher then you would from 1333mhz to 1866 under most applications.

 

[noob2222]

Plus it showed way more than "0%" performance gain going from 1366 to 2100 - around 7% IIRC 😛..

Noob makes a big deal about "Intel supported" memory speeds being just 1366, but all it took was one click in the UEFI to change the memory default speed to 1866, as long as you keep the voltage at 1.5V. While it is probably true that Joe 6-pack won't do this on his Intel system, it's also true that Jane 2-pack won't be buying higher speed memory for her AMD rig either 😛..

you mean this article that only showed any difference in sandra's synthetic test?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-vengeance-crucial-ballistix-kingston-hyperX,2907-11.html

Gaming performance between 2133 and 1600 = ... its not 7%

Maybe SB-E does better. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quad-channel-ddr3-memory-review,3100-10.html

... nope.

besides, outside benchmarks, only time ram specs seem relevant with amd components is when they're being used with the apus. i wonder if anyone even notices performance increase from faster memory in a zambezi based pc.

considering I seem to be the only one running a zambezi pc here on 2133 memory ... i must not know what I am talking about, too hard to go to the bios and change it to 1333 and verify the results are accurate.

http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/1000220/AMD-FX-8150-Bulldozer-CPU-Review/4#axzz1wBTd8gfY

OT, but I booted up the new rig last night and it worked fine. Only problem I ran into so far is that my Win7 Pro edition is an "upgrade", so now I have to install XP or Vista on a drive just so I can activate 7. Ridiculous - used to be that if you inserted the original install disk for the prior OS version, the later one would read it and then proceed as an upgrade..

There is a workaround, I actually have to use this as my full version of windows is xp 32 bit, 64 bit does a clean install when going from 32 so I just skip it all together.

IF you use the upgrade disk to install windows 7 and you install on a clean HD or boot from the disk and format the HD then when you install you need to ignore putting in a serial that came with the disk. Once installed if you enter your upgrade disk serial and you get the above error, the procedure is this:

Run CMD as an admin.
Type regedit
once in registry editor navigate to the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE

Look in that folder and look for an entry named MediaBootInstall
Doubleclick it and change the value from 1 to 0
Exit out of registry editor and while still in CMD type in the following:
slmgr /rearm

 

[-Fran-]

Why no 1600 C8 in there? =/

And faster RAM do shows when you use RAM disks 😛

Cheers!

 

[de5_Roy]

considering I seem to be the only one running a zambezi pc here on 2133 memory ... i must not know what I am talking about, too hard to go to the bios and change it to 1333 and verify the results are accurate.

http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/1000220/AMD-FX-8150-Bulldozer-CPU-Review/4#axzz1wBTd8gfY

in the two similar-to-real-world benches i.e. x264hd and gaming (far cry2 and mafia2) fx barely gains... but very minor gains are definitely there.
i never said that you don't know what you're talking about. those were your own words. i said that outside benchmarks, advantages from higher spec ram are not very likely to show up in a zambezi based pc. i'll add 'unless it is set up for benchmarking'. the madshrimps reviewer clearly set up the tests to show off fps scaling with rams (selecting older games, setting resolutions lower etc), kinda like toms did with the starcraft bench to show cpu scaling in the sub $200 roundup (used a 4 ghz 2500k to use as a scale).

 

[-Fran-]

Problem is, when using those benchmarks, we're really not putting any 'real world stressing' to the memory system.

Not saying we should bench a game while compressing a video, but you can have memory demanding (hence, CPU interrupting) programs that want a chunk of memory at any given time.

The first example that comes to mind, not being Winamp or Skype, is the really annoying upgrade software (that I kill like the plague) on a computer that starts asking for memory allocation (either RAM or Virtual) and it shows when you're using slow memory. I can say this because of some builds I've put up with 'slow' 1333 RAM and compare it to others with 1600. Small, but they are there. Gosh, now that I remember, just leave Firefox or Outlook running in the background and go do something else on your computers, lol.

Cheers!

 

[mahin1islam]

with all the talk of trinity, im actually a bit more exited about amd's 2nd gen fx series. can they make a comeback after their initial fall? im really looking forward to this.

also, its rumored that the next get consoles will be using a piledriver cpu. what i wonder is how powerful we can expect it to be.

 

[viridiancrystal]

with all the talk of trinity, im actually a bit more exited about amd's 2nd gen fx series. can they make a comeback after their initial fall? im really looking forward to this.

also, its rumored that the next get consoles will be using a piledriver cpu. what i wonder is how powerful we can expect it to be.

I wouldn't put that out of reason, we have seen how well it performs in a low power situation, which is good for consoles.

 

[anxiousinfusion]

with all the talk of trinity, im actually a bit more exited about amd's 2nd gen fx series. can they make a comeback after their initial fall? im really looking forward to this.

also, its rumored that the next get consoles will be using a piledriver cpu. what i wonder is how powerful we can expect it to be.

I wouldn't be surprised if IBM still held the arena for console processors.

And it's a shame AMD couldn't wait on the architecture and just call this generation "Bulldozer". It will be very exciting if it's even capable of competing with first generation Core i series CPUs.

 

[de5_Roy]

rage3d's trinity preview
http://www.rage3d.com/articles/amd_launches_trinity/

 

[sarinaide]

So I got into trouble from the miss and looked towards cost savings, I have sold off all the higher end GPU's to settle on a modest HD7850 crossfire solution.

On a different not, I am going to go with a Trinity APU, I intend it to be for the youngsters to game on and also as a multimedia setup. In the absence of reviews I am unsure of what will be the supported asymetrical crossfire dedicated GPU's, I am going to assume either of the 7700's will work.

 

[4745454b]

I doubt that. 77xx are GCN, while trinity is VLIW4. You'll need a 76xx(?) or 75xx at best.

 

[bawchicawawa]

So I got into trouble from the miss and looked towards cost savings, I have sold off all the higher end GPU's to settle on a modest HD7850 crossfire solution.

On a different not, I am going to go with a Trinity APU, I intend it to be for the youngsters to game on and also as a multimedia setup. In the absence of reviews I am unsure of what will be the supported asymetrical crossfire dedicated GPU's, I am going to assume either of the 7700's will work.

The highest CF configuration for trinity will be 7670, which isn't bad at all though

 

[sarinaide]

I doubt that. 77xx are GCN, while trinity is VLIW4. You'll need a 76xx(?) or 75xx at best.

Ta...

So I was researching the 7670 as I wasn't aware of its existance and it seems to be in line with a big step up on Llano. My only concern is availablility of said HD 7670. Overall I can see trinity being a massive improvement on Llano