AMD reportedly finishes testing Zen CPU, claims they met expectations

[dividebyzero]

Seriously? AMD has ALWAYS been a lot cheaper than Intel has been. By hundreds of dollars, even when AMD was beating Intel with performance.

You must be relatively new to computer hardware I am guessing. Some of us remember the Gigahertz War which puts lie to your statement. When AMD have had equal or better performance that has in the past been reflected by pricing. Allow me to show you some examples:
The first GHz processors in March 2000...
Athlon 1000 ($1299) followed a week later by Pentium III (Coppermine) 1000/1000EB at $990.
AMD pricing subsided a little as PIII Tualatin's improved Intel's situation, but the advent of Athlon 64 saw pricing back to previous levels. The FX-55 was at $1001, while the FX-57, -60, and FX-62 were all officially priced at $1031. Intel's competitor, the Pentium Extreme Edition's ( 840, 955, and 960) were all $999. The advent of Conroe effectively cratered AMD's pricing thereafter.

So AMD says the chip meets their "expectations". What is this "expectations" they speak of?

Bearing in mind the article's content is based not on AMD's PR but a third party who heard the news second-hand, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to quantify what the expectations are.
Remember when AMD were " Dancing in the aisles" over Barcelona? How well did that turn out?

 

[Jad Chaar]

Can't wait for AMD to show Intel that they cannot rule the industry.

 

[tod1234]

Thanks, really good news!

 

[supyo]

The sad thing is by the time AMD releases this new chip Intel will already be a generation or two ahead. AMD is stuck being a generation behind unless Intel does something really stupid (a la Pentium 4) which is very unlikely. I want to see AMD survive and prosper but going up against the Intel juggernaut is going to be very difficult for them. If they price this chip right it could be a decent budget/mid-level processor.

 

[EEatGDL]

Will the ancient south bridge chip be eliminated finally and go to a single motherboard chip design like Intel has had for years?

Ehm... actually the "single motherboard chip" in Intel's side is the south bridge. The north bridge is what has been integrated into the CPU the recent years; if you integrate the south bridge in the CPU we're talking about an SoC.

Seriously? AMD has ALWAYS been a lot cheaper than Intel has been. By hundreds of dollars, even when AMD was beating Intel with performance.

You must be relatively new to computer hardware I am guessing. Some of us remember the Gigahertz War which puts lie to your statement. When AMD have had equal or better performance that has in the past been reflected by pricing. Allow me to show you some examples:
The first GHz processors in March 2000...
Athlon 1000 ($1299) followed a week later by Pentium III (Coppermine) 1000/1000EB at $990.
AMD pricing subsided a little as PIII Tualatin's improved Intel's situation, but the advent of Athlon 64 saw pricing back to previous levels. The FX-55 was at $1001, while the FX-57, -60, and FX-62 were all officially priced at $1031. Intel's competitor, the Pentium Extreme Edition's ( 840, 955, and 960) were all $999. The advent of Conroe effectively cratered AMD's pricing thereafter.

So AMD says the chip meets their "expectations". What is this "expectations" they speak of?

Bearing in mind the article's content is based not on AMD's PR but a third party who heard the news second-hand, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to quantify what the expectations are.
Remember when AMD were " Dancing in the aisles" over Barcelona? How well did that turn out?

dbz to the rescue

 

[Forebode]

Can't wait for AMD to show Intel that they cannot rule the industry.

Doesn't make sense. This will never happen. Intel users like AMD, because when AMD tries to release something awesome, intel releases something better. AMD's market is budget CPUs.. It's not a bad thing, but get real. Intel has too much money to fail against AMD now. They've dropped the ball for too long. Perhaps if they fought for better pricing in their console sales. Intel would have to pull what Nvidia did with their 970, 10 times over to wreck their income enough for AMD to get back tot the top.

Remember they said great things about their Fury cards, which you can barely overclock. I was all ready to switch to AMD, but then the reviews came out with actual ultra quality benchmarks.

 

[Deshi]

I don't expect them to win against the most powerful Intel CPUs, but I really want them to compete at the mid to high end of the market. (have a CPU that can beat all of the i5 and a few i7 intel CPUs)
At least force Intel to lower the prices and offer a good roadmap for the future CPUs.

Why couldn't they win against intel?
The architecture is closely the same now and AMD has already won against windows in the past.

I'm not a fan of any of those brands but I've bought both of them and I clearly remember that my AMD K6-2 was far better than Pentium 2 a few (or a lot of) years ago. It was the same with AMD Athlon XP and X2. Of course now, intel chips are far better regarding the performance per thread but if AMD resurect, then it'll be a good deal for the consumers we are!

Its not so much that they can't, but that its not likely to last if they do. Main problem is cash flow. Intel has the resources to bounce back from pretty much anything AMD throws at them. If AMD does indeed produce a superior chip, and Intel is not too stuck up their lorelles to fight back with all their power like they were last time it happened (back in the original Athlon days), then it will not take too long for Intel to catch back up. Its sad but true. I just hope that AMD can at least recuperate enough to get themselves out of the financial hole they are in before it happens, and learn to be more conservative with their forward thinking approaches in the future, so they can remain competitive.

AMD is a lot like Apple in that they like to innovate and design ideas for the future, the big difference is Apple has the money and marketing power to back it all up, force vendors to adopt and integrate. If AMD had Apple's PR and Money, it would likely be a different story.

 

[Deshi]

Seriously? AMD has ALWAYS been a lot cheaper than Intel has been. By hundreds of dollars, even when AMD was beating Intel with performance.

You must be relatively new to computer hardware I am guessing. Some of us remember the Gigahertz War which puts lie to your statement. When AMD have had equal or better performance that has in the past been reflected by pricing. Allow me to show you some examples:
The first GHz processors in March 2000...
Athlon 1000 ($1299) followed a week later by Pentium III (Coppermine) 1000/1000EB at $990.
AMD pricing subsided a little as PIII Tualatin's improved Intel's situation, but the advent of Athlon 64 saw pricing back to previous levels. The FX-55 was at $1001, while the FX-57, -60, and FX-62 were all officially priced at $1031. Intel's competitor, the Pentium Extreme Edition's ( 840, 955, and 960) were all $999. The advent of Conroe effectively cratered AMD's pricing thereafter.

So AMD says the chip meets their "expectations". What is this "expectations" they speak of?

Bearing in mind the article's content is based not on AMD's PR but a third party who heard the news second-hand, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to quantify what the expectations are.
Remember when AMD were " Dancing in the aisles" over Barcelona? How well did that turn out?

This is true and expected. Its only natural if you have the best chip to charge a premium for it. AMD needs this in fact to get themselves out of the hole financially. I expect that maybe initially their pricing may be a bit conservative to make up for their tarnished name, but once the enthusiasts and reviewers get the word out, pricing will skyrocket, IF and thats a big IF, AMD does happen to produce a chip worthy of this.

 

[Nick D]

I do hope AMD can hang on. The console deals will help a lot but Nvidia/Intel are both beasts. Radeon really needed a big improvement (like AMD's CPU division) but they released a refresh of the 200 series which was a rebadge of the 7000 series.

 

[Evernessince]

Well I certainly hope they can compete with Intel's i5 & i7 procs, even stick it to them and keep on doing so although I'm not holding my breath. I'm sick and tired of their unnecessary, yearly minuscule performance updates which always requires you cough up for a new mobo as well.
That said, it's doubtful I'll ever switch to an AMD system but if they can keep pace with Intel it'll at least keep them honest.

By "their" you are referring to Intel right? You forgot to state the new subject so naturally one would be lead to believe that your pronoun "Their" takes the name of the last stated subject.

 

[Puiu]

I do hope AMD can hang on. The console deals will help a lot but Nvidia/Intel are both beasts. Radeon really needed a big improvement (like AMD's CPU division) but they released a refresh of the 200 series which was a rebadge of the 7000 series.

they were mostly forced to do it because the 14/16nm node wasn't yet ready. big optimisations for GCN (3.0?) are slated for 2016 together with the 2nd gen HBM. in 2016 Nvidia's Pascal architecture will also release on the 14/16nm node. it's weird to not know what both companies will use: Globalfoundries has 14nm 14LPE (Low Power Early/Extreme) and 14LPP (Low Power Performance); TSMC has 16nm 16FF (FinFET) and 16FF+ (FinFET+). (most likely we'll see the GPUs use 16FF+ and the Zen CPU/APU use 14LPP)

 

[dividebyzero]

it's weird to not know what both companies will use: Globalfoundries has 14nm 14LPE (Low Power Early/Extreme) and 14LPP (Low Power Performance); TSMC has 16nm 16FF (FinFET) and 16FF+ (FinFET+). (most likely we'll see the GPUs use 16FF+ and the Zen CPU/APU use 14LPP)

I doubt 14LPE will be used at all for standalone GPUs. It is differentiated as LPE (Early) to satisfy early adopter SoC vendors (notably Apple). Tier 1 and 2 (enthusiast/performance/mainstream) GPUs should all be TSMC's 16FF+ and 16FFC (Nvidia's Pascal flagship, GP 100, has already begun production on 16FF+). Tier 3 and 4 (budget/entry level) could go to either Samsung/GloFo's 14LPP or TSMC - or both if desired. $2-3m in making an extra set of masks might be a reasonable insurance policy against possible wafer allocation/delivery schedule hiccups.

I would think that Zen would be - as you say, a GloFo/Samsung 14LPP product.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

By "their" you are referring to Intel right? You forgot to state the new subject so naturally one would be lead to believe that your pronoun "Their" takes the name of the last stated subject.

If you say so.

 

[Evernessince]

If you say so.

It's a pretty basic piece of grammar.

ex. "Charles when to the store"
"After that, they went to the mall together"

The pronoun "he" must mean charles, as we've all been taught. If you are going to refer to a new subject, you need to restate said subject

ex. "Charles when to the store"
"After that, Charles and Charleen went to the mall together"

 

[Geforcepat]

I don't expect them to win against the most powerful Intel CPUs, but I really want them to compete at the mid to high end of the market. (have a CPU that can beat all of the i5 and a few i7 intel CPUs)
At least force Intel to lower the prices and offer a good roadmap for the future CPUs.

Why couldn't they win against intel?
The architecture is closely the same now and AMD has already won against windows in the past.

I'm not a fan of any of those brands but I've bought both of them and I clearly remember that my AMD K6-2 was far better than Pentium 2 a few (or a lot of) years ago. It was the same with AMD Athlon XP and X2. Of course now, intel chips are far better regarding the performance per thread but if AMD resurect, then it'll be a good deal for the consumers we are!

AMD has been behind since the release of Core 2 Duo.

Yeah once conroe hit bam! that was it. although phenom II was a great comeback and the last good amd proc.

 

[dividebyzero]

@Puiu
Some possible/probable confirmation regarding our earlier conjecture. Anandtech just posted an article regarding 14LPP production for AMD w/ GloFo. 14LPP seems very likely for Zen given the timeframe, and the last sentence "Similarly, in today’s announcement AMD reiterated that they will be releasing products in 2016 based on GlobalFoundries’ 14LPP process".

 

[infiltrator]

I am Intel fan and all my computer builds have had an Intel CPU on it. However, I've built systems with AMD chips inside and they are not all that bad. They deliver good performance levels, but not as near as Intel CPUs does.

I hope this new CPU can really deliver the performance that they are claiming.

 

[BadThad]

I don't expect them to win against the most powerful Intel CPUs, but I really want them to compete at the mid to high end of the market. (have a CPU that can beat all of the i5 and a few i7 intel CPUs)
At least force Intel to lower the prices and offer a good roadmap for the future CPUs.

Why couldn't they win against intel?
The architecture is closely the same now and AMD has already won against windows in the past.

I'm not a fan of any of those brands but I've bought both of them and I clearly remember that my AMD K6-2 was far better than Pentium 2 a few (or a lot of) years ago. It was the same with AMD Athlon XP and X2. Of course now, intel chips are far better regarding the performance per thread but if AMD resurect, then it'll be a good deal for the consumers we are!

The K6 was a WEAK CPU, the floating point performance was abysmal. I 100% disagree, the Pentium II was vastly superior to the K6 albeit 3x the price.

 

[BadThad]

I sincerely hope AMD comes out with another giant slayer like the original Athlon. Intel has been resting for many years now and just giving us minor performance updates and architecture upgrades. We haven't seen big performance jumps since the Core architecture was developed. For once I'd like to see a 2x or 3x performance jump, one that blows the last gen CPU away instead of this 5-10% better crap Intel seems to have mastered.

 

[funkydmunky]

If Zen hits the market with any savvy, Intel will be forced to place its 6 core into "mainstream" and 8 cores into "enthusiast" class instead of the "bend-over" class they have had the luxury of.
How can anyone with half a brain hope for an AMD failure? How can anybody with half a brain assume Zen won't be competitive when AMD has rightly abandoned its high-end line years ago so it could pursue a fully new architecture?

 

[Puiu]

If Zen hits the market with any savvy, Intel will be forced to place its 6 core into "mainstream" and 8 cores into "enthusiast" class instead of the "bend-over" class they have had the luxury of.
How can anyone with half a brain hope for an AMD failure? How can anybody with half a brain assume Zen won't be competitive when AMD has rightly abandoned its high-end line years ago so it could pursue a fully new architecture?

because we don't know anything about the CPU and because it will use 14nm LPP which trades performance for better power consumption.
we can safely assume that the best Zen CPU won't be able to compete with the best Intel CPU, but we can hope that it will offer better performance than the current architecture, just enough to get closer to the i7 intel CPU in the benchmarks where even the i3 CPU wins.

 

[funkydmunky]

If Zen hits the market with any savvy, Intel will be forced to place its 6 core into "mainstream" and 8 cores into "enthusiast" class instead of the "bend-over" class they have had the luxury of.
How can anyone with half a brain hope for an AMD failure? How can anybody with half a brain assume Zen won't be competitive when AMD has rightly abandoned its high-end line years ago so it could pursue a fully new architecture?

because we don't know anything about the CPU and because it will use 14nm LPP which trades performance for better power consumption.
we can safely assume that the best Zen CPU won't be able to compete with the best Intel CPU, but we can hope that it will offer better performance than the current architecture, just enough to get closer to the i7 intel CPU in the benchmarks where even the i3 CPU wins.

Best Intel CPU now or in one year when Zen launches? I don't like how you safely assume about a CPU you know nothing about. Your words. And the drivel that is your assumptions? I mean come on.

 

[dividebyzero]

Best Intel CPU now or in one year when Zen launches? I don't like how you safely assume about a CPU you know nothing about. Your words. And the drivel that is your assumptions? I mean come on.

Um, because AMD themselves are claiming a 40% increase in IPC for Zen over Excavator.

Then it is a relatively simple task to calculate IPC speedups using single-threaded benchmarks....of which this is just one.
Intel (Skylake) 6700K (@4GHz).....2324 points
AMD (Steamroller) A10-7850K (@4GHz)...1568 points. Add ~ 5% increase to accommodate the max IPC gain from Steamroller -> Excavator = 1646.
1646 + 40% = 2304 (assuming that Zen clocks at 4GHz - not a given at this point)

Bear in mind that by the time Zen launches (sampling in late 2016, revenue in 2017 according to AMD), Intel will have launched (Skylake derived) Kaby Lake, and will be very close to launching Ice Lake (on the 10nm FinFET process) and the new Union Point chipset which should provide a decent speedup over Skylake/Kaby Lake.

So estimating performance isn't actually that difficult if you make a basic assumption that AMD's 40% IPC increase is a real number. If that is the case, then it is a safe assumption that IPC on a clock-for-clock basis will be slightly less than Skylake.

 

[Puiu]

Best Intel CPU now or in one year when Zen launches? I don't like how you safely assume about a CPU you know nothing about. Your words. And the drivel that is your assumptions? I mean come on.

don't think that I'm talking about this just because I like to throw out technical terms to sound smart. you have all of the details on what AMD is aiming to achieve in the technical details of Zen that they've released. all you need is to put all of the pieces together and you'll see the bigger picture.
And yes, I was talking about the best Intel has now, not next year. I can't compare it to something I don't much about.

 

[red1776]

I really want to see (and hope ) that software developers finally get it together and widely start writing programs that take advantage of the cores they now have at their disposal.