AMD Carrizo Pre-release thread

[maarten12100]

Well...let's just hope that they are competitive with their own products at least...since we already know that they won't be competing with Intel xP

They are competing with Intel obviously. The thing is low idle power and mediocre performance is all that is needed to counter core-M(eh) if they halved the power that is pretty doable. (double the efficiency will be little perf improve and a lot of power saving I think)

 

[DrMrLordX]

That said...something I didn't quite think about before...wouldn't Carrizo be nearly perfect for the AM1 socket?

Just off the top of my head, Carrizo-L would. Puma quad + GCN cores > 5350. It would be like getting updated Beema/Mullins to replace Kabini.

Downside: still might be stuck with single-channel memory.

Its a unified driver across platforms isnt it? I dont see the speculation.

Um . . . which platforms are we talking about here? If they are using the same driver stack for FP4 BGA then maybe this applies to future Carrizo systems, and then yeah it doesn't mean anything.

If not, it means they've put some effort into supporting Carrizo on an older platform (such as FM2+) which contradicts previous claims of "no Carrizo on FM2+". Or maybe this just means they're prepping AM1 for Carrizo or (more likely) Carrizo-L?

 

[ShintaiDK]

AMD got one driver for everything.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows+8.1+-+64

AMx, FMx, BGA, whatever you name it. One driver.

The only other driver you can download is the 32bit version.

 

[coercitiv]

That quote was taken from the Omega Driver, however I could not download it from AMD so I used the Softpedia one.

This is what the Readme file from the Win81 folder driver says:

[FONT=&quot]Copyright 2014 ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC. All Rights Reserved.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]AMD AHCI controller driver distribution list[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Win81\x64 - Windows 8.1 x64[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Win81\x86 - Windows 8.1 x86[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Supported Chipsets/Programs[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]SB7xx family[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]SB8xx family[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Hudson-1/2/3/4 family[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]SB9xx family[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Bolton[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Kabini[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Mullins[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Carrizo[/FONT]

The path for the file is
\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SB7xx\AHCI\WB

 

[DrMrLordX]

Okay, didn't know they were using that driver for BGA systems. Makes sense they'd support FP4 BGA systems using it in the near future.

 

[Spawne32]

I'm still waiting to hear specifically whether AMD will have Excavator desktop chips for FM2+ or not before I buy my next system. I definitely will if there will be. My Core2 x4 could use a bump up.

Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a snickers. lol

 

[parvadomus]

5% IPC

 

[DrMrLordX]

Wow. That probably answers questions we haven't even thought to ask yet. But looking at the "normalized frequency" versus power-per-module chart (assuming module = "core pair") tells quite the story about why Carrizo got bumped off FM2+. Carrizo's HDL voltage scaling past ~23W per module is inferior. That means, 45W Carrizo would probably reach the same clocks as an A8-7600 (guesstimate).

The second slide seems to contradict itself. What do they mean, double-digit increases in performance when the IPC increase is only 5%? Granted, you have to take promises of IPC with a grain of salt. Having witnessed Kaveri exhibit some odd performance characteristics, it is probable that Excavator will make gains in some areas and not in others. That 5% is probably just an average.

I will say this much, Carrizo will probably be much cheaper to produce with area reduction like that. Funny that the cache block isn't reduced at all.

 

[Abwx]

5% IPC

IPC improvement is somewhat meager, efficency at low power seems good but AMD stated that it s not designed to work in a 5-6W range, wich seems to be contradicted by the curve, overall that lookss to be exclusively a Core M competitor.

This CPU would suit perfectly an AM1 like plateform, too bad that AMD seems to be less concerned by long term upgradability, my AM1 is begging for this...

 

[DrMrLordX]

You might get Carrizo-L on AM1. People have been asking for Beema on that socket, so why not go a step further and get Carrizo-L instead?

 

[parvadomus]

It might be very good for notebooks, its near 2X increase in efficiency. Lets wait for the iGPU side.

 

[Abwx]

You might get Carrizo-L on AM1. People have been asking for Beema on that socket, so why not go a step further and get Carrizo-L instead?

Would be great, also i noticed that i was wrong on some point, the power graph is for one module, so the upper power limit with equivalent efficency than Kaveri is up to 45W for the cores excluding the uncore, so a 45W variant with better efficency than Kaveri is doable.

 

[AtenRa]

Wow. That probably answers questions we haven't even thought to ask yet. But looking at the "normalized frequency" versus power-per-module chart (assuming module = "core pair") tells quite the story about why Carrizo got bumped off FM2+. Carrizo's HDL voltage scaling past ~23W per module is inferior. That means, 45W Carrizo would probably reach the same clocks as an A8-7600 (guesstimate).

The second slide seems to contradict itself. What do they mean, double-digit increases in performance when the IPC increase is only 5%? Granted, you have to take promises of IPC with a grain of salt. Having witnessed Kaveri exhibit some odd performance characteristics, it is probable that Excavator will make gains in some areas and not in others. That 5% is probably just an average.

I will say this much, Carrizo will probably be much cheaper to produce with area reduction like that. Funny that the cache block isn't reduced at all.

+5% at 40% less power.

That means, you will get more performance at 15W TDP Carrizo than 30W TDP Kaveri

That is exceptional, it will reach Broadwell U 2+2 CPU performance in MT loads at 15W TDP and im expecting higher iGPU performance at the same TDP.

 

[ShintaiDK]

+5% at 40% less power.

That means, you will get more performance at 15W TDP Carrizo than 30W TDP Kaveri

That is exceptional, it will reach Broadwell U 2+2 CPU performance in MT loads at 15W TDP and im expecting higher iGPU performance at the same TDP.

No it doesnt. Try look at the graph.

It also shows quite clearly why we wont see desktop SKUs.

 

[Abwx]

+5% at 40% less power.

That means, you will get more performance at 15W TDP Carrizo than 30W TDP Kaveri

That is exceptional, it will reach Broadwell U 2+2 CPU performance in MT loads at 15W TDP and im expecting higher iGPU performance at the same TDP.

I see 20% improvement for two modules consuming 15W, and that s accounting for the 5% IPC, if they want to be on line with the announced 30% then they should had reduced the uncore power comsumption such that they can send more power to the cores at a given TDP, this would require 3W savings on the CPU uncore, it s quite possible because Kaveri has substancialy higher leakage than a Beema.

 

[AtenRa]

No it doesnt. Try look at the graph.

The graph is frequency vs Watt, not performance at same frequency

 

[AtenRa]

I see 20% improvement for two modules consuming 15W, and that s accounting for the 5% IPC, if they want to be on line with the announced 30% then they should had reduced the uncore power comsumption such that they can send more power to the cores at a given TDP, this would require 3W savings on the CPU uncore, it s quite possible because Kaveri has substancialy higher leakage than a Beema.

What you see in the graph is that Carrizo will reach the same frequency as Kaveri at 15W.

+5% IPC at 40% Less power has nothing to do with the graph

 

[ShintaiDK]

The graph is frequency vs Watt, not performance at same frequency

I am quite aware. But we are talking about your "prediction".

 

[AtenRa]

I am quite aware. But we are talking about your "prediction".

The prediction is that you get the performance of 30W TDP Kaveri at 15W TDP.

 

[parvadomus]

Just to add more slides.

I dont think there will be a desktop version, it would be more productive to bring 6core Kaveri apus than this.

 

[NTMBK]

Better efficiency and a cheaper platform, seems like a sensible design given AMD's limited options.

 

[AtenRa]

I dont think there will be a desktop version, it would be more productive to bring 6core Kaveri apus than this.

I want a 45W TDP FM2+ Carrizo

 

[monstercameron]

I want a 45W TDP FM2+ Carrizo

I agree, hell even on am1!

 

[Abwx]

What you see in the graph is that Carrizo will reach the same frequency as Kaveri at 15W.

+5% IPC at 40% Less power has nothing to do with the graph

You seems to be right according to the curves on Parvadomus update...

But the info wasnt on the first slides he posted...

 

[metalliax]

I agree, hell even on am1!

I will gladly take a mini-itx board with a carrizo apu packaged with it. This should make a killer htpc build.