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 ...

 

[AbdullahG]

ram oc's don't work well and your performance won't increase much as you'd need to turn down the timings for the ram. Ram OC also make the system unstable at times and will cause BSOD when things get intense. I'd not recommend ram OC of more than 50mhz.

Then cheaper RAM it is :lol:
I highly doubt 2133MHz RAM would make much of a difference vs 1600MHz RAM.

 

[bawchicawawa]

the athlon chip on the llano doesn't compete with phenom clock per clock at all... They are using a better gpu/cpu architecture for trinity+higher memory bandwidth+a better dedicated gpu to crossfire with, etc. They will not mess up... I see it as impossible.

Also, abdullahg. There is no dedicated ram on the APUs (obviously), like there are on dedicated gpus, IE, 1gb of ddr5 ram. This is why APUs get a higher performance increase from higher freq ram, not like usual gpu setups, they feed off the mobos ram.

2133 ram isn't really expensive at all.. they are going for around 65-70$ for 8GBs, at this point in time. In around q2 when trinity comes out, they will have dropped even more.

 

[AbdullahG]

the athlon chip on the llano doesn't compete with phenom clock per clock at all... They are using a better gpu/cpu architecture for trinity+higher memory bandwidth+a better dedicated gpu to crossfire with, etc. They will not mess up... I see it as impossible.

Also, abdullahg. There is no dedicated ram on the APUs (obviously), like there are on dedicated gpus, IE, 1gb of ddr5 ram. This is why APUs get a higher performance increase from higher freq ram, not like usual gpu setups, they feed off the mobos ram.

2133 ram isn't really expensive at all.. they are going for around 65-70$ for 8GBs, at this point in time. In around q2 when trinity comes out, they will have dropped even more.

Oh okay.
I'm seeing prices for 8GB 2133MHz @ around $70 to $85 on average (Amazon and Newegg; TigerDirect and NCIX don't seem to have any).
Most people can live with 4GB of RAM, but still it's nice to have an efficient amount for anything that may demand more RAM.

 

[AbdullahG]

Yup, the CPU in Llano is pretty much a Propus-32nm die of course-with a decent to good integrated GPU fused in.

 

[jdwii]

Then cheaper RAM it is :lol:
I highly doubt 2133MHz RAM would make much of a difference vs 1600MHz RAM.

I don't know about that, BD and Gpu's in general benefit from higher ram speeds and 1600 is 533mhz slower then 2133. Would it be a night and day difference NO! But it would most likely improve performance by 10%. I'm talking on a APU of course.

 

[jdwii]

and there is no way it can run with a Phenom II clock for clock..

Hey now all it needs is some L3 cache and it will take the Phenom Down town and beat it probably 5-10% in IPC.

 

[bawchicawawa]

Hey now all it needs is some L3 cache and it will take the Phenom Down town and beat it probably 5-10% in IPC.

Ok... That's a cool speculation, anyways.

 

[esrever]

in 1 clock cycle both cpu can do the same things, its the same core.

The only difference is the L3 and you'd be hard pressed to do anything with L3 in 1 clock cycle. It'd take like a couple hundred cycles for a phenom to gain anything over an llano, respectably speaking they cpu performance difference isn't that big considering it as just a circuit that does something every time you input a clock pulse.

 

[BadTrip]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5288/quanta-sues-amd-for-faulty-laptop-chips

 

[bawchicawawa]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5288/quanta-sues-amd-for-faulty-laptop-chips

What does that have to do with anything?

 

[noob2222]

Then cheaper RAM it is :lol:
I highly doubt 2133MHz RAM would make much of a difference vs 1600MHz RAM.

http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/1000220/AMD-FX-8150-Bulldozer-CPU-Review/4#axzz1iX4PYxdQ

Ram speed vs timing, go for speed, and thats just on cpu side testing, APU difference will be even greater.

 

[AbdullahG]

What does that have to do with anything?

AMD chipsets in laptops includes the mobile APUs I believe, Trinity included.
It could have some sort of affect on the mobile Trinity, but like AMD said, it is likely due to the computer design since NEC didn't have any issues like this in their computers.

 

[bawchicawawa]

"No specific model numbers are mentioned, but both AMD and ATI are mentioned in the report, meaning that the complaints could cover CPUs, GPUs, or both."

It's super vague, you can't really draw a conclusion from it in any direction. That's kinda what i meant when i asked that of him.

 

[AbdullahG]

"No specific model numbers are mentioned, but both AMD and ATI are mentioned in the report, meaning that the complaints could cover CPUs, GPUs, or both."

It's super vague, you can't really draw a conclusion from it in any direction. That's kinda what i meant when i asked that of him.

Well, APUs are both CPUs and GPUs :lol:
But yeah, you're right.
Didn't catch that in the article.
Pretty sure it's not AMD's fault, unless others start having issues.

No interesting news on Piledriver...

 

[Gigz6413]

RAM @ 2133MHz is expensive.
Just 4GB @ 2133MHz is a bit more expensive than 8GB @ 1600MHz.
Better off just getting cheaper ram and OCing it.

By the time Trinity launched, 2133 will be a bit cheaper. Wait until then. Ivy Bridge and Trinity will both have support for it, and with support comes demand.

 

[jdwii]

doubt it, there's more to it then just that, L3 cache is a nice thing to have though....😉

Well if you think about it Llano has more Performance/Per clock then a Athlon II x4 and a Athlon II x4 is the same thing as a Phenom II x4 Minus the L3 so i'm pretty sure a Llano with L3 cache will take are Phenom's down in IPC By 5-10%. And the fact that their made from a smaller die means it could probably OC better then are Phenom's to.

 

[de5_Roy]

i'll just add one thing... hopefully i get it right...
cpu+ram performance depends on the memory controller, yes? what if most people who are potential llano buyers do not know that and oems put ddr3 1333 rams in llano machine? llano (and trinity) is aimed at entry level desktop/laptop markets where most people buy a whole machine or simply put together cheap parts. few people would bother to educate themselves on how to take more advantage of llano/trinity.
piledriver should include a better MC.. and amd should include a pcie 3.0 controller in trinity. without those upgrades, trinity won't be able to take more advantage of higher speed ram for it's upgraded igpu. however, i think amd should have designed an MC that outperforms intel's IMC in sandy bridge since amd's igpu can utilize faster ram.

 

[dogman_1234]

I thought they cancelled Trinity?

 

[amd955be5670]

AMD pick up a phenom II x6, toss away 4 cores, start ultra modifying the remaining two cores, you might get somewhere, from that example make an x4, and call it a day, you might actually survive in performance processors.

 

[gamerk316]

^^ I think he's saying make a super efficent two core version, then scale upward.

 

[-Fran-]

Well if you think about it Llano has more Performance/Per clock then a Athlon II x4 and a Athlon II x4 is the same thing as a Phenom II x4 Minus the L3 so i'm pretty sure a Llano with L3 cache will take are Phenom's down in IPC By 5-10%. And the fact that their made from a smaller die means it could probably OC better then are Phenom's to.

^ This.

I didn't want to get into details, but clock per clock, doing regular things (gaming and browsing, not benchmarking), the A8 is on par with my PhII 965 clocked at the same speed (2.9Ghz, no OC on the A8). L3 makes little to no difference whatsoever in the majority of programs we all use, remember that.

Besides, Llanos have bigger L2, which are a lil' more important. It's like when AMD launched 2 flavors of Athlon64s: 512Kb and 1MB 😛

Take a look here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_a8_3870k&num=3

See where the i5 2500k stands in there and then remember where the PhIIs stand against the i5 2500k.

Cheers!

 

[saint19]

ram oc's don't work well and your performance won't increase much as you'd need to turn down the timings for the ram. Ram OC also make the system unstable at times and will cause BSOD when things get intense. I'd not recommend ram OC of more than 50mhz.

Not always, if you have a good RAM the overclock give you a jump in performance

Then cheaper RAM it is :lol:
I highly doubt 2133MHz RAM would make much of a difference vs 1600MHz RAM.

It does

 

[-Fran-]

dude your killing me because I know your smarter than that....
on par with 955BE per clock, NO.
compare it to the 940BE C2 and then yes, on par with...
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/399?vs=80

let's be real here and put this into a real perspective please..
and I likes my L3 cache, may I also have yours..?
😀

the efficiency of the C3 stepping compared to the C2 stepping helps out.
(voltage and heat)

and the Phenom II doesn't stand in the same bracket against the i5-2500K but does better than the A8..

cheers back...😉

Actually, you're giving me the point whith the link, mal.

Take a look at the 100Mhz difference and then take a look a the games score difference plus 3DMax, WinRAR and Encoding. In almost everything else, they're close at least (cept 1 or 2 where the Phenom beats the A8 badly, lol). The A8's L2 cache is in bigger effect than the Phenom II's L3 cache.

I'm not sayin' L3 is of no use; not at all. But for almost all CPU duty for us (games, most of all), make little to no use of L3.

Also, from C2 to C3, there was no IPC improvement IIRC, only the new state plus a few extra Mhz. A link to remind that: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/11/04/amd-phenom-ii-x4-965-be-c3-review/1

So I'm pretty much right overall. Llano is on even grounds (better, I'd say) with Athlon IIs and just a lil' behind Phenom II clock per clock (IMO, they tie).

Which makes me still worried about the Trinity CPU cores. They'll need more Hz to equal Llano on the same 32nm process, but I really don't think they'll be able to pack it within the same TDP ranges of Llano. VLIW4 will help with the GPU side to keep the TDP lower, but I don't know if they'll be able to pack it all under 100W and pack more punch than Llano. I don't want another side-grade, dammit XD

Cheers!

EDIT: Typo

 

[gamerk316]

Guys, lets remember that the L3 cache isn't significantly faster then main memory. You can get data from the L3 in about 80 cycles or so, compared to around 100 for main memory.

The L3 basically is extra insurance against a page fault, which takes several million clock cycles to clean up. Thats it. With sufficent RAM and 64-bit support, the L3 is basically just a waste of die space.

Really, all onboard CPU cache is basically just a way to get around the fact memory speeds have been slower then CPU speeds for over a decade now. As memory and CPU speeds start to close [due to CPU speeds being stuck in the 3.x range], I wonder if we start seeing cache size start to decrease on new architectures, to make room for other enhancments on the chip...

 

[esrever]

the L3 is still like 2x faster than memory even in bulldozer.

I'd say its usefully to have some but not much more than now.