AMD's AM4 Socket Comes To Fore; HP and Lenovo Shipping 7th Gen Bristol Ridge APUs

[Guest]

AMD announced the global launch of its 7th-gen Bristol Ridge APUs, which comes bearing the familiar 28nm Excavator cores, but the real news is that the new entry-level chips come sporting the Zen-supporting AM4 socket.

AMD's AM4 Socket Comes To Fore; HP and Lenovo Shipping 7th Gen Bristol Ridge APUs : Read more

 

[joex444]

> In the past, AMD APUs leveraged the FM2+ chipset, but FX-Series CPUs used the AM3+ chipset

Chipset -> Socket.

 

[RomeoReject]

Hoping that the higher up models will allow a little bit more DDR bandwidth. 2400MHz seems a hair slow by DDR4 standards.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

> In the past, AMD APUs leveraged the FM2+ chipset, but FX-Series CPUs used the AM3+ chipset

Chipset -> Socket.

Thanks for the quick eye Joex444, fixed!

 

[TechyInAZ]

Very impressive for the A12 to actually compete directly with a skylake Core i5. I hope that is legit for other real world applications.

 

[hannibal]

Ofcourse these Are the best case scenarios, but still not bad at all.

 

[problematiq]

Hoping that the higher up models will allow a little bit more DDR bandwidth. 2400MHz seems a hair slow by DDR4 standards.

I'm not 100% sure but it may just be referring to the small form factor APU's. The higher end will support faster I would suspect.

That or it's referring to the top standard which is 2400 I believe. Anything past that is considered overclocked. Again I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Cryio]

Hoping that the higher up models will allow a little bit more DDR bandwidth. 2400MHz seems a hair slow by DDR4 standards.

The Athlon and APUs are low budget PCs. You won't expect people to invest in RAM more than the cost of the APU itself.

Zen will be the one who will leverage 4000+ MHz DDR4 modules.

 

[tiagoluz8]

Performance Per Watt graphs are very biased, they changed the 65W Intel CPU with a 91W one and moved that 65W CPU to compare with the 35W AMD one. The thing with Intel is, you have an upgrade path, if you need. The best APU here matches the i5-6500, which can be upgraded up to an i7-6700K, miles ahead.

 

[IceMyth]

What worries me more is the talk about Zen+ which might need AM4+ MB which might come 1 year after release of Zen!

 

[penn919]

Wait for Zen + Then

 

[bit_user]

Hmmm... disappointed with the storage connectivity options, not to mention only x8 PCIe 3.0.

we suspect that the bulk of the TDP improvement is associated with reduced DDR4 power consumption

Really? For performance reasons, the RAM is directly connected to the APU. I don't see how it would affect the chipset's TDP.

I think the real explanation has mainly to do with the manufacturing process of the old/new chipsets. AMD builds their chipsets on fairly old nodes. I think my 890 FX was made on 65 nm.

 

[bit_user]

Very impressive for the A12 to actually compete directly with a skylake Core i5.

It's only for "a subset" of benchmarks, which are almost certainly limited by the i5's HD Graphics GPU. The CPU performance of their 28 nm Bristol Ridge APUs is in no way comparable to Skylake. Especially not at the same or lower TDP.

The thing with Intel is, you have an upgrade path, if you need. The best APU here matches the i5-6500, which can be upgraded up to an i7-6700K, miles ahead.

The main point of the AM4 socket is to support the upcoming Zen-based APUs. If that's not an upgrade path, I don't know what is!

 

[tiagoluz8]

Very impressive for the A12 to actually compete directly with a skylake Core i5.

It's only for "a subset" of benchmarks, which are almost certainly limited by the i5's HD Graphics GPU. The CPU performance of their 28 nm Bristol Ridge APUs is in no way comparable to Skylake. Especially not at the same or lower TDP.

The thing with Intel is, you have an upgrade path, if you need. The best APU here matches the i5-6500, which can be upgraded up to an i7-6700K, miles ahead.

The main point of the AM4 socket is to support the upcoming Zen-based APUs. If that's not an upgrade path, I don't know what is!

So you won't need the "TBA" chipset to run Zen? With Intel you would be dumb to pair a 6700K with an H110 chipset.

 

[bit_user]

So you won't need the "TBA" chipset to run Zen? With Intel you would be dumb to pair a 6700K with an H110 chipset.

Zen is just the core CPU architecture. There will be an entire generation of CPUs and APUs, at all price points, that will be built around it.

 

[tiagoluz8]

So you won't need the "TBA" chipset to run Zen? With Intel you would be dumb to pair a 6700K with an H110 chipset.

Zen is just the core CPU architecture. There will be an entire generation of CPUs and APUs, at all price points, that will be built around it.

Really hoping for AMD to kick Intel in the buttocks this time, so we can have some real competition.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Looks like Sandy/Ivy Bridge in IPC, but an iGPU much stronger than the HD 530. They probably will make up the $150 and below market segment for AMD (about $200 is probably where quad core Zen lands.)

 

[sykozis]

Performance Per Watt graphs are very biased, they changed the 65W Intel CPU with a 91W one and moved that 65W CPU to compare with the 35W AMD one. The thing with Intel is, you have an upgrade path, if you need. The best APU here matches the i5-6500, which can be upgraded up to an i7-6700K, miles ahead.

Much like with Intel, AMD will provide multiple chipsets and multiple processors that can run on those chipsets. You'll have everything available from the Excavator based Athlon and A-series processors all the way to the Zen based processors.

Hmmm... disappointed with the storage connectivity options, not to mention only x8 PCIe 3.0.

we suspect that the bulk of the TDP improvement is associated with reduced DDR4 power consumption

Really? For performance reasons, the RAM is directly connected to the APU. I don't see how it would affect the chipset's TDP.

I think the real explanation has mainly to do with the manufacturing process of the old/new chipsets. AMD builds their chipsets on fairly old nodes. I think my 890 FX was made on 65 nm.

You can't measure APU and chipset power consumption separately. Instead, you measure platform power consumption. The 7th gen A-series processors are an SoC design according to the die shots.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_announces_7th_generation_desktop_amd_a_series_processors_and_am4.html

The chipset's TDP wouldn't be affected. It's power draw would be though, since the southbridge has been moved onto the APU and out of the chipset. TDP is NOT a measure of power draw or consumption. TDP is strictly the amount of heat that has to be dissipated, presented in Watts, to maintain a safe operating temperature. People need to stop associating TDP with power consumption, as they're 2 completely different things. TDP literally means Thermal Design Power.

The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often the CPU or GPU) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate in typical operation. Rather than specifying CPU's real power dissipation, TDP serves as the nominal value for designing CPU cooling systems.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

So you won't need the "TBA" chipset to run Zen? With Intel you would be dumb to pair a 6700K with an H110 chipset.

Doesn't make much sense to pair an i5 6500 with a Z170 chipset either, but that doesn't stop people from doing it. For best performance, it would make sense to pair a Zen based processor with that "TBA" chipset but it's quite likely that you'll be able to pair a 7th gen APU with that "TBA" chipset as well.

 

[TJ Hooker]

The chipset's TDP wouldn't be affected. It's power draw would be though, since the southbridge has been moved onto the APU and out of the chipset. TDP is NOT a measure of power draw or consumption. TDP is strictly the amount of heat that has to be dissipated, presented in Watts, to maintain a safe operating temperature. People need to stop associating TDP with power consumption, as they're 2 completely different things. TDP literally means Thermal Design Power.

The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often the CPU or GPU) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate in typical operation. Rather than specifying CPU's real power dissipation, TDP serves as the nominal value for designing CPU cooling systems.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

Yes, TDP is not meant to be a specification of power consumption. However, considering that heat generated is equal to power consumed, I certainly wouldn't say they're completely different things. If a CPU specifies that its cooler needs to be able to dissipate X watts, it follows that the CPU would draw somewhere around X watts under load.

 

[ravewulf]

Hmmm... disappointed with the storage connectivity options, not to mention only x8 PCIe 3.0.
[...]

That's just for these APUs, the Zen CPUs should have more lanes on their own plus we don't know what we'll get from the enthusiast chipset yet either.

 

[Xajel]

Yes, TDP is not meant to be a specification of power consumption. However, considering that heat generated is equal to power consumed, I certainly wouldn't say they're completely different things. If a CPU specifies that its cooler needs to be able to dissipate X watts, it follows that the CPU would draw somewhere around X watts under load.

Sorry bro but you're wrong, heat generated does not equal to power consumption, the heat is an un wanted by product duo to several reasons sources, but mainly the electrical resistance and the electrical leak, every material has a resistance and the more you have the more energy will be wasted as energy currently we can't avoid this theres hopes of superconductors but these are limited now to specific non-silicon materials and only works on extremely low temperatures, electric leak is also unwanted effect that increases with more smaller process technology, as even with low voltages the nano-scale insulator in these tiny transistors is thin enough to leak electrons, these also increase the inefficiency of the design and increase the wasted energy...

An optimized design will generate less heat while maintaining higher performance with better clocks in the same power consumption as in optimized design which will consume more power but works at lower clocks and performance and generating more heat.

 

[bit_user]

You can't measure APU and chipset power consumption separately. Instead, you measure platform power consumption. The 7th gen A-series processors are an SoC design according to the die shots.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_announces_7th_generation_desktop_amd_a_series_processors_and_am4.html

The chipset's TDP wouldn't be affected.

Wouldn't be affected by what? The power dissipation of the memory? That was my whole point!

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, with your comment about how it "can't be measured separately", but I was referring to the article, which quoted TDP numbers from AMD (click through the various slides - they have one titled "AMD AM4 Chipset Efficiency") and made a speculation which I quoted. I won't repeat that, but check my post & the article.

Indeed, wikipedia indicates that AMD 970 was built on 65 nm. I checked a page on AMD's site for it, but didn't see any datasheet links. Didn't really care to look further, because the only thing that matters now is what process the new chipset uses. But then I didn't care enough to look for that, if they even announced it (the above wiki page doesn't currently know it).

Sorry bro but you're wrong, heat generated does not equal to power consumption, the heat is an un wanted by product duo to several reasons sources,

Sorry bro, but TJ knows his stuff. Power consumption = heat output. Sure, some miniscule amount of energy is dissipated in other forms, but very nearly all of it is converted to heat. Most of us know that. I suggest you do some more reading on the subject.

The one distinction that can be drawn is that TDP represents a typical peak level of power consumption. So, you could have two chips with the same TDP, but one might have lower average power consumption. That's more concern for tablets & laptops, since battery life is a significant issue for those applications. But, for most of us desktop users, AC power is cheap enough that we're mainly concerned with cooling (which must be designed around the sustained peak output). Hence, TDP gets most of the attention among us, with idle power being only a secondary or tertiary concern.

 

[SteelCity1981]

well id expect the r7 in the 9800 to easily beat the 6500 hd 530. i mean who is surpried by that. what they don't show is the cpu performance and for good reason the 6500 would own a 9800 in cpu performance...

 

[sykozis]

You can't measure APU and chipset power consumption separately. Instead, you measure platform power consumption. The 7th gen A-series processors are an SoC design according to the die shots.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_announces_7th_generation_desktop_amd_a_series_processors_and_am4.html

The chipset's TDP wouldn't be affected.

Wouldn't be affected by what? The power dissipation of the memory? That was my whole point!

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, with your comment about how it "can't be measured separately", but I was referring to the article, which quoted TDP numbers from AMD (click through the various slides - they have one titled "AMD AM4 Chipset Efficiency") and made a speculation which I quoted. I won't repeat that, but check my post & the article.

Indeed, wikipedia indicates that AMD 970 was built on 65 nm. I checked a page on AMD's site for it, but didn't see any datasheet links. Didn't really care to look further, because the only thing that matters now is what process the new chipset uses. But then I didn't care enough to look for that, if they even announced it (the above wiki page doesn't currently know it).

Sorry bro but you're wrong, heat generated does not equal to power consumption, the heat is an un wanted by product duo to several reasons sources,

Sorry bro, but TJ knows his stuff. Power consumption = heat output. Sure, some miniscule amount of energy is dissipated in other forms, but very nearly all of it is converted to heat. Most of us know that. I suggest you do some more reading on the subject.

The one distinction that can be drawn is that TDP represents a typical peak level of power consumption. So, you could have two chips with the same TDP, but one might have lower average power consumption. That's more concern for tablets & laptops, since battery life is a significant issue for those applications. But, for most of us desktop users, AC power is cheap enough that we're mainly concerned with cooling (which must be designed around the sustained peak output). Hence, TDP gets most of the attention among us, with idle power being only a secondary or tertiary concern.

Translation from power consumption to heat production is not a specific 1-to-1 as TJ is implying. Different materials react differently to heat. Some see increases in resistance while others see a reduction in resistance. As resistance changes, heat output will also change.

Also, we're not trying to dissipate 100% of the heat generated by the CPU. That's why TDP and power consumption are not related. We're only trying to dissipate enough heat to keep the processor at a safe temperature. You don't have to dissipate 100% of the heat generated to meet that goal.

Not my fault the author didn't understand the slide. The TDP decrease for the chipset is due to the southbridge being moved from the chipset itself, onto the CPU and has nothing to do with the move to DDR4. The B350 chipset is more closely related to the A78 chipset than the 970 chipset. Of course, that's based on a very brief look at the specs for the B350, A78 and 970 chipsets

 

[ET3D]

So you won't need the "TBA" chipset to run Zen? With Intel you would be dumb to pair a 6700K with an H110 chipset.

There are only two ways I interpret 'dumb' here. First, the H110 doesn't support overclocking, so using it with an unlocked GPU is 'dumb'. Second, the H110 provides too few features for enthusiasts (such as PCIe lanes), so it's 'dumb' to match it with a high end CPU.

The low end AMD chipsets will likely fail the second point too. If the features they provide with Bristol Ridge are okay for someone, they'd be fine with Zen, but I don't really expect Zen to provide more without the enthusiast chipset.

For the first point, far as I can recall AMD has never limited overclocking at the chipset level, so I don't expect a problem with that even with the lower end chipsets.