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 ...

 

[wh3resmycar]

piledriver this, bulldozer that.

after everything is said and done, brisbane will still be the only last great AMD cpu (apu not included).

 

[gamerk316]

Actually 20~30 cycles for "L2" is absolutely horrible. Intel's currency design's have ~11 cycles for L2, AMD Phenom II has ~15 cycles.

L3 is typically 40+ which is what makes it a bad thing to rely on for performance. A cache hit out of L3 will always result in a doubling of processing time compared to a hit out of L2. Having to go to main memory is an absolute worst case scenario. Current Sandybridge CPU's have main memory access of approx 65 ~ 75 cycles with Phenom II having 95 cycles access time.

Yes Intel's engineer's are THAT awesome

Eh, maybe I'm just used to the ~25ish cycles it took to access the L2 on a Pentium. Its been a long time since I've personally worked at a low enough level to care about cache latency...

 

[MU_Engineer]

piledriver this, bulldozer that.

after everything is said and done, brisbane will still be the only last great AMD cpu (apu not included).

Brisbane wasn't all that great of an AMD CPU. It ran a little cooler than the Windsors it replaced, but was slightly slower at the same clock speeds due to higher L2 cache latency and lower L2 cache size. I'd put Deneb or Thuban far, far ahead of Brisbane. Probably the last really legendary AMD CPU would be the FX-60. Deneb and Thuban are solid but didn't have quite the same legend that the Socket 940 and 939 FXes did.

 

[g4114rd0]

-...in the futile hops that whoever it was might go away after a 8 cores attempt.”

Honorable Mention: AMD Excavator micro-architecture.

 

[g4114rd0]

- ...@ barista dreamed to see another integrated graphics Ultrabook."

http://lenzfire.com/2012/01/haswell-will-have-50-higer-graphics

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Question: Has JF-AMD been on this thread yet?

AFAIK JF hasn't even been back to AMDZone, which should be considered friendly territory even after the BD launch 😛..

 

[wh3resmycar]

Brisbane, really.?
I had a Brisbane and to tell you the truth my Athlon X2 7850 BE is/was better than Brisbane (5800+ and 6000+ Brisbane chips).

of course it is.

but back in the day you can make a pros/cons table when you compared a bris vs e1xxx/e2xxx. anything that came after that, the board was printed with wolfies.

i just think that compared to competition lately, intel wasn't landsliding brisbane unlike today. it's pretty dodgy to go AMD.

 

[-Fran-]

So...wait, you WANT Toms to make llano look artificially worse then it is? If they benched llano with the onboard GPU, you'd be complaining that it was bottlenecked, and it wasn't fair it didn't use the discrite.

Well, real case scenarios ARE bottle-necked one way or the other anyway... I mean, I have the A8 pushing the 1080p display/TV + a 1280x1024 monitor at it's side. The light gaming is done on the TV and it really looks good with med settings or 720p with some things in high. But I won't argue/push that, cause it's one of those "you gotta see it to believe it" things. That's the "qualitative" side (non-accurate if you like), and on the quantitative side, we got Tom's benchies in the former test that don't really show one of the main things Llano is about. I don't need that article to tell me that it's a bad call to use an A8 as a desktop CPU and attach a beefier GPU into it. It's been proven over and over that's the case. Not really unfair, but hardly a real-world testing. The pentiums were the true nice finding though, but then again, just reading the specs it won't come as a surprise the result.

That's all I'm saying here.

Brisbane wasn't all that great of an AMD CPU. It ran a little cooler than the Windsors it replaced, but was slightly slower at the same clock speeds due to higher L2 cache latency and lower L2 cache size. I'd put Deneb or Thuban far, far ahead of Brisbane. Probably the last really legendary AMD CPU would be the FX-60. Deneb and Thuban are solid but didn't have quite the same legend that the Socket 940 and 939 FXes did.

I loved my Athlon64 X2 Toledo. That big L2 really proved it was a great purchase back in 2004 (or 2005, don't remember, lol) XD!

Cheers!

 

[jdwii]

So...wait, you WANT Toms to make llano look artificially worse then it is? If they benched llano with the onboard GPU, you'd be complaining that it was bottlenecked, and it wasn't fair it didn't use the discrite.

Llano was never meant to be tested the way Toms did. If anyone gets a A8 over a I3 when they are going to get a discrete video card past the 6670 their dumb unless they did not have the money for a video card at first so they went with llano and then bought one later. The I3 SUCKS when it comes to gaming on its onboard video. Where Llano can play most games at 720P just fine.

 

[Blandge]

Llano was never meant to be tested the way Toms did. If anyone gets a A8 over a I3 when they are going to get a discrete video card past the 6670 their dumb unless they did not have the money for a video card at first so they went with llano and then bought one later. The I3 SUCKS when it comes to gaming on its onboard video. Where Llano can play most games at 720P just fine.

True, and that is the point of the benchmark. Nobody interested in high performance gaming should ever consider Llano.

Llano is the BEST choice for those who desire to play games with modest performance on a < $500 machine. It's a niche, but a large niche.

 

[palladin9479]

True, and that is the point of the benchmark. Nobody interested in high performance gaming should ever consider Llano.

Llano is the BEST choice for those who desire to play games with modest performance on a < $500 machine. It's a niche, but a large niche.

It's a ridiculously large niche, in fact it's an entire market segment. That segment is so large that it overshadows both the mainstream and the high end segments. APU's were designed for sub $750 PC's and notebooks, they were never designed for high end gaming nor enthusiast PC's. I honestly don't know why AMD even made the F1 as a socket and didn't just have the manufacturers soldier the chip like on the Nano's and Atoms. APU's also are incredibly sensitive to memory speed, it's one of those few times that having high speed memory will actually make a significant impact on system performance. I'm using the HP dv6z-qe with a 3530MX and DDR3-1600 memory, that thing kick's major a$$ for it's size and form factor. I originally bought it for my GF so she could play games with me and have a light notebook to travel with, since then I've become attached to it and decided to buy myself another one but with the discrete GPU in crossfire mode.

 

[e56imfg]

piledriver this, bulldozer that.

after everything is said and done, brisbane will still be the only last great AMD cpu (apu not included).

I have a Brisbane, 5000+, and it's really starting to slow down on the web. I can't even go 5 tabs without a crash.

 

[esrever]

I have a Brisbane, 5000+, and it's really starting to slow down on the web. I can't even go 5 tabs without a crash.

should probably do a reinstall of windows and maybe more ram, the web should have problems.

 

[e56imfg]

should probably do a reinstall of windows and maybe more ram, the web should have problems.

Sadly, I'm limited to what I can put into this Slimline (one big mistake). I have reinstalled Windows several times and I do maintenance on my computer daily. I don't have any games or any other programs. I use this for school work. The only programs I have are Microsoft Office, FireFox, Skype, Smart Defrag, CCleaner, and Java. I have Anti-Virus system installed (Avast) and I don't go onto any suspicious websites.
I already know that my PC is slow, just because of dated hardware. Planning to build a new one when IB and Keplar are out.

 

[de5_Roy]

Llano was never meant to be tested the way Toms did. If anyone gets a A8 over a I3 when they are going to get a discrete video card past the 6670 their dumb unless they did not have the money for a video card at first so they went with llano and then bought one later. The I3 SUCKS when it comes to gaming on its onboard video. Where Llano can play most games at 720P just fine.

i totally agree with i3's igp gaming performance compared to llano.

True, and that is the point of the benchmark. Nobody interested in high performance gaming should ever consider Llano.

Llano is the BEST choice for those who desire to play games with modest performance on a < $500 machine. It's a niche, but a large niche.

to both of you: do you think that someone who bought a 3650 or 3850 will not consider a gfx card like gtx 560 or radeon hd 6950 after using his/her rig for 2-3 years?
i've seen many people with old radeon and nvidia integrated gpu wanting to upgrade to newer discreet gfx cards on different forums. many of them might not want to use entry level 6670 a few months later let alone a few years.
i agree with how tom's tested llano. besides, if amd doesn't provide socket fm1 backwards compatibility with trinity, llano users will be stuck.
you can google llano benchmarks and see that they were tested with cards like radeon 6950, 6990, 5870 etc.

 

[jdwii]

i totally agree with i3's igp gaming performance compared to llano.

to both of you: do you think that someone who bought a 3650 or 3850 will not consider a gfx card like gtx 560 or radeon hd 6950 after using his/her rig for 2-3 years?
i've seen many people with old radeon and nvidia integrated gpu wanting to upgrade to newer discreet gfx cards on different forums. many of them might not want to use entry level 6670 a few months later let alone a few years.
i agree with how tom's tested llano. besides, if amd doesn't provide socket fm1 backwards compatibility with trinity, llano users will be stuck.
you can google llano benchmarks and see that they were tested with cards like radeon 6950, 6990, 5870 etc.

Lol most people who have a Llano machine don't even know what a video card is. People whole built a Llano probably don't care much to own a high-end GPU with the build because they can't afford. And heck in the next 2-3 years they could just get a New board+APU and ram for probably around 250$ the price of a high-end GPU or CPU.

 

[de5_Roy]

Lol most people who have a Llano machine don't even know what a video card is. People whole built a Llano probably don't care much to own a high-end GPU with the build because they can't afford. And heck in the next 2-3 years they could just get a New board+APU and ram for probably around 250$ the price of a high-end GPU or CPU.

don't underestimate people's knowledge.... or google search...
a lot of possible factors e.g. llano users being tech-illiterate, having funds to replace cpu+motherboard, willingness to replace those parts etc. could change in the future.
i agree that a lot of people might not have technical know-how but i believe that most of them will eventually notice that their pc's performance has started to wane and might want to add performance instead of completely replace their hardware. this goes for prebuilt pc owners too.
a lot of people gain at least some knowledge over time. they come to know that adding a gfx card might boost their gaming performance. or they ask in the tom's forums.
for boosting gaming performance, between replacing cpu+mobo (and not be able to add gaming performance) and adding a performance gfx card - most people will go for the gfx card as long as the parts are compatible.

 

[esrever]

llano offers great laptop performance which is really the only market it needs to do well in. also the A8 is actually plenty powerful for casual gamers who just want to play some older/non stressing games like sim3, sc2, wow, LoL and just about any mmo. Oh look I pretty much listed 90% of games people play on pc. Games like bf3 and metro 2033 are pretty niche in comparison. Games that are on consoles have most people playing on consoles as well.

 

[-Fran-]

llano offers great laptop performance which is really the only market it needs to do well in. also the A8 is actually plenty powerful for casual gamers who just want to play some older/non stressing games like sim3, sc2, wow, LoL and just about any mmo. Oh look I pretty much listed 90% of games people play on pc. Games like bf3 and metro 2033 are pretty niche in comparison. Games that are on consoles have most people playing on consoles as well.

Even more; it plays the MW saga with no sweat and that's no "niche" game, lol.

@de5_roy

I would agree with you if the old CPU was not a low end part from the beginning. I could not tell another person to buy a $150+ video card for a 3-4 year old CPU that wasn't even a high/mid end part in it's time. Would you really tell him/her to do so when the alternative is to just get another APU and have an overall upgrade?

APUs, like palladin said, are pretty much DIY-SoCs wannabes. They should be sold as a whole solution, but AMD still let's you choose, since they want to keep the usual PC config and upgrade path (small, but upgrade path anyway, lol).

Cheers!

 

[truegenius]

m.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html
i am too confused
www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
which parameter does passmark use?

In passmark a8-3870k is better than i3 and i5-2400s, so does that mean that a8 is better than i3 and i5-2400s for non gaming use

if a8 cannot stand against g8xx then why a8 is around 2 times better than g8 in passmark

 

[truegenius]

😱 www.compreviews.about.com/od/PC-Gaming-Components/fr/AMD-A8-3850-Processor.htm 😱
whats this
1ns for l1 cache in a8
while anandtech shows 3ns as fastest in l1
also l2 latency as 3.6ns which is massively low when compardd to ~7ns of i5

 

[Cazalan]

Picture of a Thuban die

It's 6MB of L3 could easily fit 2 cores worth of processing power.

I think you'll find that cache uses significantly less power than CPU cores, so you couldn't just add more CPU cores and have the chip run at the same TDP or clock speeds.

It's all a balancing act.

 

[esrever]

m.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html
i am too confused
www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
which parameter does passmark use?

In passmark a8-3870k is better than i3 and i5-2400s, so does that mean that a8 is better than i3 and i5-2400s for non gaming use

if a8 cannot stand against g8xx then why a8 is around 2 times better than g8 in passmark

passmark is a horrible synthetic benchmark. No idea how it actually works but it seems to test the igp as well as the cpu itself. Making the i5-2500k score higher than the i5-2500 and making llano score amazing compared to the phenoms.

 

[g4114rd0]

- …..  is obviously a mistake, even a large mistake can be rectified.”
The amount of APUs experiments are considered very useful 4 amd Tablet platform, where Tom's review doesn't have to be a painful process.

 

[jdwii]

Exactly what I mean...Performance should be measured across a platform.
Though, you'll also have to note plenty of OEMs are shipping their Core i7s with HD6450 GPUs.....and people wonder why their i7 can't play Crysis..... 😴

This always makes me sick to see. If i could only have a A8 or a I7 their is no way i would pick a I7.

don't underestimate people's knowledge.... or google search...
a lot of possible factors e.g. llano users being tech-illiterate, having funds to replace cpu+motherboard, willingness to replace those parts etc. could change in the future.
i agree that a lot of people might not have technical know-how but i believe that most of them will eventually notice that their pc's performance has started to wane and might want to add performance instead of completely replace their hardware. this goes for prebuilt pc owners too.
a lot of people gain at least some knowledge over time. they come to know that adding a gfx card might boost their gaming performance. or they ask in the tom's forums.
for boosting gaming performance, between replacing cpu+mobo (and not be able to add gaming performance) and adding a performance gfx card - most people will go for the gfx card as long as the parts are compatible.

Llano is perfect for a Laptop and for OEM's such as HP/Dell and so on. For system builders yes i can see a need for them and it's pretty good for Media centers and so on. Not having to have a Video card cuts down on power and a I3 just doesn't cut it, I've seen a I3 try to play True 1080P Blu-ray and it skips FPS some times and uses more power trying to do so. The A8 is a more efficient deign for this types of situations.