AMD Piledriver rumours ... and expert conjecture

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Reynod

Reynod

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Mar 26, 2007
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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 ...
 
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IDK. Thinking back, my last 5(?) motherboards have all had firewire on them. My last 4 motherboards have all had eSATA on them. Worrying about people who won't upgrade will only hold us back. Sometimes you just need to kick them in the pants and scream "upgrade" at them. Then again I LOVE feature rich boards so I'm always buying boards that have way more then I need.
 
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my board offers AHCI mode 😛 for onboard sata ports


i thought that that vehicle uses anti gravity or strong magnetic field to levitate 😛
 
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I got an external HDD sata bay for hot plugging disks and got the front eSATA in the CM 932. There's not even a way to compare how good it is for transferring files compared to the USB2 (since USB3 dongles are nowhere to be found around here for disks). Works at full speed and saves a lot of "open the case, close the case", haha.

I've never used FW, but a friend that worked with video did notice what Palladin said; the latency using high bandwidth transfers really made a difference with older CPUs (Pentium 4 and Athlon XP time). Ahh, the good old single core times, lol.

Anyway, any news with PD? Any more faked benchies? lol

Cheers!
 
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Only part I disagree with is I haven't seen any PD benches so I don't know how true it is. I also slightly disagree that the x6 chips are an upgrade over the x4. More of a sideways move if anything. They are the same chip but with 2 extra cores. For the most part they would provide the same scores. (unless you are doing something that can use the extra cores.)

Other then that I would agree. It's horribly sad that the 2100/2120 can provide the same frame rates or better then BD or the x4 chips. When building a gaming rig I really do suggest Intel CPUs. Even if you can't OC them.
 
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true or false.?
Click to expand...

False.

In single threaded or low threaded workloads, the i3 will be enough for a long time (has faster clocks than the i5s in the price segment). Long enough to need a whole new platform anyway (DDR4 RAM included maybe). So the "upgrade path" will be there as long as SB and IB chips exist in the market. Even more, if you think getting a used 2500k or any OC'ed CPU is a good investment, I would not agree. And if you really need 4+ cores, the closest thing for the i3 is the lowly i5 2300 (or it's IB equivalent) which is locked.

If you go by price alone, the 970BE is the strongest chip out there that gives you 4 cores and OC potential. And that 4.4ghz being equal to the i5 2400. There's a caveat to that. When I ran the testing in Cinebench, the 965BE finished faster by a lot, but the score was lower. I timed them both, but I don't know what Cinebench measures, so it's a moot point to do a timed finish. Still, the i5 is a good CPU as well, but it doesn't do OC.

Also, PD might be the last CPU promised by AMD for socket AM3+, but is still an upgrade from the 970BE in a lot of workloads. If you intend for gaming, though, the 970BE would still be a tough one to beat and it's dirt cheap. Which is a close case scenario with the i3. If Toms starts doing MP benchies, the i3 will be put to shame I'm sure (or any other dual core). Still, in the current FX lineup, the 8120 is the best P/P from AMD's lineup IMO; if you don't mind a sudden meltdown from the local power plant, that is, hahaha.

If there would only be K i3s though... Damn.

Cheers!
 
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False.

In single threaded or low threaded workloads, the i3 will be enough for a long time (has faster clocks than the i5s in the price segment). Long enough to need a whole new platform anyway (DDR4 RAM included maybe). So the "upgrade path" will be there as long as SB and IB chips exist in the market. Even more, if you think getting a used 2500k or any OC'ed CPU is a good investment, I would not agree. And if you really need 4+ cores, the closest thing for the i3 is the lowly i5 2300 (or it's IB equivalent) which is locked.

If you go by price alone, the 970BE is the strongest chip out there that gives you 4 cores and OC potential. And that 4.4ghz being equal to the i5 2400. There's a caveat to that. When I ran the testing in Cinebench, the 965BE finished faster by a lot, but the score was lower. I timed them both, but I don't know what Cinebench measures, so it's a moot point to do a timed finish. Still, the i5 is a good CPU as well, but it doesn't do OC.

Also, PD might be the last CPU promised by AMD for socket AM3+, but is still an upgrade from the 970BE in a lot of workloads. If you intend for gaming, though, the 970BE would still be a tough one to beat and it's dirt cheap. Which is a close case scenario with the i3. If Toms starts doing MP benchies, the i3 will be put to shame I'm sure (or any other dual core). Still, in the current FX lineup, the 8120 is the best P/P from AMD's lineup IMO; if you don't mind a sudden meltdown from the local power plant, that is, hahaha.

If there would only be K i3s though... Damn.

Cheers!
Click to expand...

+1 😉
in multithreaded tasks, i3-2130 can match phenom 2 x4 955@3.2GHz, provided that hyper threading is working at its best (around 30% of a full core 😗 )

is less threaded, having two powerful cores will minimize thread switching, cache loading offloading reloading :pt1cable:

and if intel can introduce a unlocked i3 :ouch: then i will sell my phenom 2 x6 1090t :ange: 😀 and will switch to intel, and none of the amd's 4 core cpu can match a i3@5GHz 😉 , but only thing is where to find a cheap overclocking board 😀 (cheapest found in India coasts around 150$ :ouch: )
 
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....
Click to expand...

true or false.?
Click to expand...
somewhat false.
imo it depends on the frequency of upgrades. if one is a frequent upgrader or compulsive upgrader, then the pentium/core i3 to core i5/i7 would seem feasible to him/her. i think most people assume they'd upgrade down the path but when that time comes after 3/4/5 years, they usually get advised on buying a new platform/buy a new platform.
haswell will be on a new socket so the upgrade/sidegrade ends with ivb. otoh, amd did what intel used to do and restricted llano owners (due to changes in trinity). desktop llano users will have to buy a new system if they want to upgrade.
it's true that amd fanboys avoid power consumption discussion. i know that some even try to dismiss it by suggesting things like replacing light bulb with led ones.
fx 8120 is only a good 'fx cpu' because we're hard pressed to find any other.
piledriver's performance numbers are not yet known afaik. one can use trinity's benchmarks as an indication what pd will be capable of doing, since trinity is pd minus l3 cache built on glofo's (more mature) 32 nm fabrication process.
 
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Issues with USB is that it's not DMA capable. ...The lack of DMA requirements means the devices can be much cheaper but at the expensive of performance.

Not an issue with mouse / keyboard / printer stuff, hella big issue with mass storage devices and other latency sensitive peripherals.

eSATA on the other hand is just the SATA specification that's been speced for better shielding and higher signaling for longer cables, it's identical to SATA in all other ways. ...
Click to expand...

What he said. I love eSATA because it's native SATA. You wouldn't care unless external drives were important to you.
 
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Upgrade paths used to be a valid argument. Nowadays though your pretty much going to be using the same platform for three years at a time. When it's time to upgrade it's almost always better to go to a new platform.

I wouldn't recommend anyone getting an i3 if they ever expected to play games. It worked for single player timed loop demos of the console ports of old, upcoming games will start to deviate away from that as we're starting to see. We need to stop thinking in such narrow terms, people tend to do multiple things at once on their computers and the processing landscape is changing. Four functional processing units (aka cores) should be a minimum now.

Phenom II 970BE is a venerable CPU, in it's time I was one of the best value CPU's with a high OC headroom. It's become old in the tooth and no longer a viable solution. As it stands I'm having to make due for one more year so that I can jump to another platform (whichever it is). Something that helps out is K10stat, having become an expert using it on my APU I started playing with it on the 970BE and wow. You can software OC the older K10's, they only have four Pstats and no automatic "boosting" but you can create your own version of it. Lock Core's 3/4 at 800Mhz, start your game and assign it to cores 1/2. Then you can software OC the first two cores higher then you could previously, your only OCing 50% of the CPU and thus have a higher thermal headroom. Also helped in keeping my power usage down as K10 will auto-throttle down the cores to 800 when their not being used.

A note on HT, HT is not a core, it's not even a processor resource. HT just allows the front end scheduler to put a higher load on the CPU then otherwise possible. Rarely does anything use more then 1~2 ALU's (thus BD's integer performance does not suffer even though its only got 2 ALU's). Being able to assign a second workload onto the unused ALU's allows more efficient use of processing resources, AMD just build a different processing unit instead of virtualizing two. Do not ever expect HT to give you more then what you already have, especially when we're talking only two cores and thus only 2 FPUs / cache units.
 
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considering most of the world is using Pentium 4,Pentium D,Core2Duos or Athlon64 x 2s
(95 percent what I see in my shop and on the job)
I have to respectfully disagree with the statement "Phenom II 970BE is a venerable CPU, in it's time I was one of the best value CPU's with a high OC headroom. It's become old in the tooth and no longer a viable solution"

Granted you are in a job that is very high end on the tech curve so for you that is true
But for 90% of the world a 4ghz Deneb would more than handle anything they throw at it

For me as an ethusiast and PC technician the 965BE at 4ghz is only lacking in Folding at Home and really that is my level of expectation

I do video edting and rendering,audio editing,photoshopping,transcoding,recording streaming video from internet and also TV tuner

for all those purposes my 965BE IMHO is pretty darn good

but again it is the level of expectation isnt it now? :)
 
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And speaking of illogical and delusional....
Click to expand...


*Cough*

Other then that I would agree. It's horribly sad that the 2100/2120 can provide the same frame rates or better then BD or the x4 chips. When building a gaming rig I really do suggest Intel CPUs. Even if you can't OC them.
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It provides the same framerates as an i5 and i7. In a single player timed loop demo. On 32~64 player maps it falls behind quickly and the BD is on the same curve as an i5.

I keep telling people, stop looking at single player timed loop demo benchmarks, their not indicative of actual game experience anymore.

Just to punctuate it a little.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1654043

both FRAPs runs were timed benchmarks 5 min in length done on a FULL 64 player server on metro in conquest (you know how bad this meat grind fest is!!) i started the benchmark once i got to the famous choke point battles for B capture point and just played like i normally do from there and was in the middle of the grind both times rather than trying to get away/past the choke points.

first test i5-2500k with all 4 cores active, running an overclock of 4.2ghz
Frames
40855
Time (ms)
300000
Min
70
Max
201
Avg
136.183

second test i5-2500k with only 2 cores active and cpu downclocked to the minimum (3.4ghz no turbo mode)
Frames
19941
Time (ms)
300000
Min
32
Max
115
Avg
66.47
Click to expand...

And to illustrate where a BD / 970 would fall when comparing to an i5~i7.

http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/14650-prestandaanalys-battlefield-3/5#pagehead
 
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I agree that these new technologies are definitely better, however I think adoption will be moderate (unless they come with a USB adapter too) for mobile external devices because the majority of computers out there don't have the proper connections (laptops, older desktops, etc.). For permanently attached drives, eSATA and the new technologies are great, as you don't need to worry about compatibility with other people's computers.
Click to expand...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57447131-1/belkin-to-add-usb-3.0-to-macs-via-thunderbolt-dock/

Interestingly enough it looks like Thunderbolt can be made into USB 3.0 ports.

I think the original idea behind Lightpeak (the original name) was as well to use the USB style port as to allow for it to also be backwards compatible with USB but the USBIF decided that thats a no-no.

So instead Intel had to create a new port type instead of using something thats more common. Not sure why when in the end it benefits everyone but not much can be done about that.
 
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57447131-1/belkin-to-add-usb-3.0-to-macs-via-thunderbolt-dock/

Interestingly enough it looks like Thunderbolt can be made into USB 3.0 ports.

I think the original idea behind Lightpeak (the original name) was as well to use the USB style port as to allow for it to also be backwards compatible with USB but the USBIF decided that thats a no-no.

So instead Intel had to create a new port type instead of using something thats more common. Not sure why when in the end it benefits everyone but not much can be done about that.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's rather simple. Patents 😛

I'm sure there's a patent mambo-jambo in between somewhere that prevented Intel from grabbing the USB standard into Lightpeak. Weird thing is that Intel is part of the USBIF.

Cheers!
 
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Socket AM4 is expected to support DDR4 memory? If not, perhaps AM4+? It seems that the release of the Steamroller chips will be nearing the arrival of DDR4 in ~2014.

EDIT: So many 4s! It's like a prophecy! :ouch:
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amd changes sockets with memory standard changes. i think it's because of the new imc and other factors. am4 might bring in support for ddr4 and pcie 3.0 (finally). until then, am3+ and pcie 2.0 will be standard for amd. amd's server cpus might get ddr4 support earlier, like haswell server cpus might get ddr4 support first.
@palladin: mostly agree. however, not every one plays multiplayer fps that heavily taxes cpu cores. afaik most people play mmorpg games which have modest system requirements. will a core i3 suffice in those situations, provided that the users might be expecting 60fps~?
 
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@palladin: mostly agree. however, not every one plays multiplayer fps that heavily taxes cpu cores. afaik most people play mmorpg games which have modest system requirements. will a core i3 suffice in those situations, provided that the users might be expecting 60fps~?
Click to expand...

That depends on the game. WoW and most older MMO's would do just find on an i3. I can't speak about newer ones thought I don't expect the trend to change. MMO's aren't nearly as fast paced nor as interactive (environment wise) as large scale FPS games. Having said that, DDO has a pretty steep requirement to max it out, though it's more then playable on a low end setup.

Since someone wanted to flamebait with BF3 numbers (SPTLD) I used that as a way to demonstrate the higher requirements for competitive gaming and how what works for one scenario (playing campaign) doesn't work for all scenarios (playing on a map with 63 other players).

Also of note, we've finally broken out of the PS3/360 days of gaming limbo when everything was designed to run on 2006 era hardware. There will be newer consoles out soon which will raise the bar again for gaming. Games produced this year and in the next three years will have higher requirements then the console trash we've had to deal with the past 6 years. This is why I suggest people avoid the i3 CPU (fx4/6 series included) and go for something with at least four full cores. They will be able to handle the biggest things now and the games that will be released in the next few years.
 
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