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 ...

 

[truegenius]

counting on your fingers and toes..?

 

[truegenius]

+1
I always say to everyone that their is a method to [strike]my madness..[/strike] mal's mentalness

😀

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/17/is-amds-trinity-much-better-than-it-appears/

 

[-Fran-]

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/17/is-amds-trinity-much-better-than-it-appears/

Interesting read, but Intel has the i5 (2+2). I've always said that currently, the best P/P notebook out there is the Asus N53 series, which incidentally use the i5 + GT540M combo (and i5 IB + GT640M now it seems; quite a beast). That's no coincidence, it's the best trade off for a cheap but powerful mobile piece of hardware. Halving 2 full cores of the 45W part will indeed cover the 35W TDP the A10 4600 has and not even need to touch the HD4K speed. Even without the GT640M, a pure i5 IB will match in most cases the A10 4600, I'm afraid.

Intel needs to pull that same thing again and that will be on top of the whole Trinity lineup again. More like a roof to the whole line up price. Not to cut the merits for Trinity, but at the end of the day, in the mobile arena, Intel has the upper hand with the process advantage =/

Oh well, let's see how AMD gets back to that. I'm sure if they polish the Dual VGA thingy they'll be better, but having owned the Asus N53J, I can tell you it's quite the machine.

Cheers!

EDIT: There are 35W i5 IBs: the 3320M and 3360M. I'll wait word on those.

 

[Cazalan]

By my calculations, Piledriver will handly beat Thuban.

Then again I said the same about Bulldozer.

Using which benchmarks? I didn't see many that exceeded the 53%(Base)-33%(Turbo) clock advantage Trinity has over Llano. I guess we'll have to wait until product is shipping for more exhaustive benchmarks. Some linux numbers would be nice too but doesn't look like phoronix has any samples yet.

There are too many variables to extrapolate from a 35W notebook trinity to 100W desktop at this point.

 

[triny]

Using which benchmarks? I didn't see many that exceeded the 53%(Base)-33%(Turbo) clock advantage Trinity has over Llano. I guess we'll have to wait until product is shipping for more exhaustive benchmarks. Some linux numbers would be nice too but doesn't look like phoronix has any samples yet.

There are too many variables to extrapolate from a 35W notebook trinity to 100W desktop at this point.

most of the gains seem to have mutated to more battery life and less watts needed for mobile, in this iteration .
When the 100 watt rolls out Intel will blow Gabriel's Horn.

 

[triny]

Sumo GPU inside Llano was a monstrous overclocker (most GPUs in 3870K do 50%+ overclocks 24/7), but the performance was always held back by a rather slow NCLK domain and memory bandwidth.

In Piledriver the frequency of NCLK domain is tied to DRAM frequency with ratio of 1.25:1 (minimum).
This means the NCLK in FM2 Trinity chips must be atleast 1333MHz to match the highest officially supported DRAM frequency (DDR-2133).
The maximum officially supported NCLK frequency on Llano was 900MHz, yet this was rarely used since the memory compability was rather poor at high NCLK frequencies.

Piledriver unofficially supports DDR-2400 DRAM frequency (up to motherboard vendors if it is available or not), just like Bulldozer.
It is highly unlikely the GPU performance is held back by DRAM or NCLK on Trinity any longer.

The Devastator (excellent choice of a name btw ) GPU inside Trinity will most likely have a couple extra MHz to spare too.
If the Devastator GPU has even a part of the overclocking capabilities of Sumo GPU we will see 1GHz+ GPU (SCLK) clocks available for daily use on Trinity.

If Virgo platform can reach ~4.5GHz core frequencies, IPC is even marginally higher compared to Gen1 BD and the leakage (power draw) is slightly in better shape... AMD has unleashed the hell.
when kaveri dawns the world of electronics will learn to float,swim or shrivel to dust.or face escavator and it's beastly APU.
believe or not it's the era of HSA where exponential gains come with every tick and tock

 

[Cazalan]

Anand has some Cinebench single/multi benchmarks that are concerning.

In the single core benchmark Trinity was still 10% behind Llano clock for clock.
Scale that to desktop 4.2ghz clock speeds and piledriver (without L3) is still below an i7@2.8Ghz. The 2627M was closest to the extrapolated score of 1.01 for a 4.2Ghz Trinity (turbo single core).

Just 1 benchmark but it scales fairly linearly.

Edit: Found a Bulldozer @ 4.22ghz getting 1.03 cinebench single threaded. So basically unchanged for this benchmark.

http://wccftech.com/amd-bulldozer-fx8150-pitted-phenom-ii-x6-1100t-clocktoclock-benchmark-comparison/

 

[triny]

Anand has some Cinebench single/multi benchmarks that are concerning.

In the single core benchmark Trinity was still 10% behind Llano clock for clock.
Scale that to desktop 4.2ghz clock speeds and piledriver (without L3) is still below an i7@2.8Ghz. The 2627M was closest to the extrapolated score of 1.01 for a 4.2Ghz Trinity (turbo single core).

Just 1 benchmark but it scales fairly linearly.

Benchmarks certainly tell a part of the tale ,but are a rough gauge that fails miserably at comparing products because scaling to meet parameters never tells half the story.
for instance a10 4600 is scaled back itself compared to lano to provide for more battery life ,among other things.
when we see 100 watt lano compared to 100 watt Trinity then we'll have a viable gauge.
Until then no Benchmarks mean much. What is plain to me is that Intel best get going on Haswell ,they best give up cpu turf on it's die and commit
full to HSA .higher CPU is not what is needed from them.

 

[viridiancrystal]

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/17/is-amds-trinity-much-better-than-it-appears/

A comment read:

"In Diablo III, AMD’s Trinity is 48% faster than Ivy Bridge Extreme i7-3920XM, a 55 Watt Intel chip priced at $1096."

That made me laugh, a whole lot.

 

[triny]

A comment read:

"In Diablo III, AMD’s Trinity is 48% faster than Ivy Bridge Extreme i7-3920XM, a 55 Watt Intel chip priced at $1096."

That made me laugh, a whole lot.

35watt apu outperforms a 55 watt Intel flagship? that's what I call exponential increase.
Imagine if it wasn't choked down to 35 watts

I wanna see 100 watt trinity with Intel's big gun both with hd 7770 loaded now we're talking, Vishera can pick up the pieces.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I believe what Charlie is saying is, having a 10 watt advantage does 2 things.
It keeps IGPs at the high clocks as noted earlier, but, the cpu suffers, and has lower clocks as well.
A balance is needed, as gamers know, and cutting from the pie, whether its cpu or gpu, it has its effects.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

In the games where the 4000 does well is cpu stressed games, cut that out, and you lose some advantage.
And is why many use Intel cpus in their gaming rigs with higher TDPs

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

quit dreaming..
in Trinity the only thing better is the graphics over Intel, comparing the CPU's only then AMD loses..

Problem here is, its also power, at a higher node, which is what t of the article was about.
Charlie wasnt saying buy it for number crunching, if your read the article

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

If youre surfing, streaming a movie, normal users usage, it does extremely well with power and of course gaming

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Read it, youll find no dreams, just a try at a more apples to apples scenario

Cleeve was asked several times for a IVB in his review, so one could be made, its just that he wouldnt do what everyone else did, place something non comparable against it, in price and power envelope.

 

[-Fran-]

It will be interesting watching how the i5 handles against the A10. I'm willing to bet the A10 will edge it out in the APU front (CPU and GPU wise) thanks to the strong CMT (module approach) vs HT and beefier GPU arch. In the dGPU arena, I'm sure Intel will edge out AMD; that's a no brainer I guess, lol.

Intel is really going to be pushing the 22nm process advantage now that AMD managed to make a good 32nm in the 35W envelope.

Cheers!

 

[triny]

Cheers!

EDIT: There are 35W i5 IBs: the 3320M and 3360M. I'll wait word on those.

now that would be a long wait ,and too embarrassing for Intel too.
Intel's problem is that the multi core era is in the last stage,they have to employ expensive techniques to eeck out that last performance possible
from the multi core era. They should put 100 % effort towards HSA as well. They need a solution sooner than later. it took 5 yrs for AMD + ATI to bring HSA forward. It may take Intel + Nvidia 3-5yrs maybe more.

 

[-Fran-]

Both with 56Wh batteries (regular 6 cells) should be very comparable at least for browsing and stuff, but for "gaming", I'm sure Trinity will be better. Video and media in general, QuickSync might edge out Trinity, but at least they should be comparable IMO.

And just for reference... Brazos can game for like 2 hours being off the grid with respectable performance, so I'm expecting Trinity to do so as well. My sister's Athlon II X2 320 + HD4250 can play WoW for 50 minutes on battery only. I personally tested it while traveling, in a car, using a 3G stick (don't ask, lol).

Cheers!

 

[Cazalan]

I wanna see 100 watt trinity with Intel's big gun both with hd 7770 loaded now we're talking, Vishera can pick up the pieces.

We already know the clock speeds. The high end Trinity is 3.8/4.2Ghz and 800Mhz on the GPU.

31% faster CPU, 17% faster GPU. You're only getting ~33% more performance when tripling the power.

 

[-Fran-]

now that would be a long wait ,and too embarrassing for Intel too.
Intel's problem is that the multi core era is in the last stage,they have to employ expensive techniques to eeck out that last performance possible
from the multi core era. They should put 100 % effort towards HSA as well. They need a solution sooner than later. it took 5 yrs for AMD + ATI to bring HSA forward. It may take Intel + Nvidia 3-5yrs maybe more.

Haswell is supposed to address HSA in some way or the other. Knights-something as well (Larabee's sucessor).

In this gen, the HD4K has OCL and DC support that doesn't suck (at least so far), so they're walking down that path as well. Intel might be Intel, but they won't ignore heavy computing trends if they can profit out of them.

Cheers!

 

[-Fran-]

We already know the clock speeds. The high end Trinity is 3.8/4.2Ghz and 800Mhz on the GPU.

31% faster CPU, 17% faster GPU. You're only getting ~33% more performance when tripling the power.

I'm actually eager for the unlocked version (if they plan on one) down the road. The A8 MX seems to be quite the performer, so I'd expect the A10 MX to be even better.

Also, I wonder how the clock mesh tech will behave at greater speeds. Those resonant technologies have horrible diminishing returns in their efficiency at high frequencies.

Cheers!

 

[triny]

It will be interesting watching how the i5 handles against the A10. I'm willing to bet the A10 will edge it out in the APU front (CPU and GPU wise) thanks to the strong CMT (module approach) vs HT and beefier GPU arch. In the dGPU arena, I'm sure Intel will edge out AMD; that's a no brainer I guess, lol.

Intel is really going to be pushing the 22nm process advantage now that AMD managed to make a good 32nm in the 35W envelope.

Cheers!

cpu wise Intel has an edge ,and AMD will no doubt hamper the APU to some extent to make way for Vishera
We will see.
Haswell cast a big shadow and the billions at Intel's disposal may determine much
But I for can't help but piture the Apu igp spinning at 1ghz computing.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Again, look to Pitcairn/GCN IGPs, with some memory tweaks.
If you look at perf/watt, its tough to beat, and an early 28nm node as well.

Point here is, very nice improvements without all the GGPU added
Rumors of steamroller appear to be sparse, but looks good from what Ive seen.
Some are being compared already as well

 

[triny]

We already know the clock speeds. The high end Trinity is 3.8/4.2Ghz and 800Mhz on the GPU.

31% faster CPU, 17% faster GPU. You're only getting ~33% more performance when tripling the power.

when we see 100watts to 100watts trinity a10 will be 25-30 %cpu+ better and 50-90% better igp+ better ,over a83850 lano.
That's my prediction.