AMD Q414 results

[Qwertilot]

Not that unusual I suspect, in principle at least.

The basic idea of doing away with the discrete GPU will no doubt annoy some of the max settings folk But it'll have a fair market - the small form factor people will be very happy once performance gets high enough with stacked memory etc.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, we have been hearing with every new generation how igps were going to replace dgpus for gaming, but they still are not an adequate solution for high end games. TBH, I dont see that happening with Broadwell/Skylake or Carrizo either, unless you want to spend several hundred dollars for a Skylake iris pro. Even with stacked memory, I am not sure performance will be enough. Look at Kaveri, even assuming no bandwidth limitations, the number of shaders is only HD7750 levels, and clockspeed is lower because of thermal constraints. Even then, throttling is a problem, at least according to some tests. HD7750 was a decent entry level card a year or two ago, but now would not meet the minimum requirements of a lot of current gen console ports, much less games a year or two in the future. And Intel is even worse, except for the outrageously expensive iris pro. Current APUs are limited to 720p except for less demanding games, while 1080p is pretty much standard resolution, and we are steadily moving toward 1440p and eventually 4k.

So what has to happen for a igpu to be an adequate solution?

More bandwidth, more shaders, higher clockspeed for the igpu, better cpu performance at least for AMD, and all this within a die size and thermal envelope of a cpu. I would never say it is impossible, but I would not call it likely.

 

[monstercameron]

Well, we have been hearing with every new generation how igps were going to replace dgpus for gaming, but they still are not an adequate solution for high end games. TBH, I dont see that happening with Broadwell/Skylake or Carrizo either, unless you want to spend several hundred dollars for a Skylake iris pro. Even with stacked memory, I am not sure performance will be enough. Look at Kaveri, even assuming no bandwidth limitations, the number of shaders is only HD7750 levels, and clockspeed is lower because of thermal constraints. Even then, throttling is a problem, at least according to some tests. HD7750 was a decent entry level card a year or two ago, but now would not meet the minimum requirements of a lot of current gen console ports, much less games a year or two in the future. And Intel is even worse, except for the outrageously expensive iris pro. Current APUs are limited to 720p except for less demanding games, while 1080p is pretty much standard resolution, and we are steadily moving toward 1440p and eventually 4k.



So what has to happen for a igpu to be an adequate solution?



More bandwidth, more shaders, higher clockspeed for the igpu, better cpu performance at least for AMD, and all this within a die size and thermal envelope of a cpu. I would never say it is impossible, but I would not call it likely.

Note the qualifier you used, high end games. High end gaming is a niche of the gaming world. Just look at steams hardware survey, it shows the kind of hardware most gamers use...it sure isn't Titan sli or 295x2s.

My point being no one recommends Kaveri or iris pro for high end gaming but both are more than adequate for casual gamers.

How many times must I say I can max out league with overhead to spare for recording or streaming to twitch...

 

[mrmt]

Ok I'll agree with you for some of that, but I'm gonna need a source on the "cost handicap" do you have a source on the pricing oems are getting for Intel and amd.

I can't really believe you think Intel selling a chip half the size of AMD's, and Intel also having the highest yields in the industry, wouldn't be able to match AMD pricing to OEMs and still get a bigger margin.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

During my time on active duty in the Navy, most guys had laptops to game with, forgoing any sort of gaming "system." About half of the laptops at any given Navy exchange are AMD based for their APU capabilities, giving sailors and marines the ability to have a good gaming experience and portable computing. Even though many of us we're guaranteed to be on that base for 1.5-2 years, I not once ever saw a desktop computer inspecting barrack rooms. Almost everyone was playing games like Skyrim, Starcraft 2, WoW among many others, happy with the integrated graphics. I hate to say it but mobile is a big deal already and will only get much bigger.

We're talking at least 400 laptops to 0 desktops in these two barracks. This was three years ago. Now that Intel has better IGPs than before and the advancements of AMD's line, I have no doubts about what the market is shifting to.

An IGP/APU is a very adequate solution. The goalposts that wannabe "hardcore" gamers throw out are always moving and current products are never good enough.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Well, we have been hearing with every new generation how igps were going to replace dgpus for gaming, but they still are not an adequate solution for high end games. TBH, I dont see that happening with Broadwell/Skylake or Carrizo either, unless you want to spend several hundred dollars for a Skylake iris pro. Even with stacked memory, I am not sure performance will be enough. Look at Kaveri, even assuming no bandwidth limitations, the number of shaders is only HD7750 levels, and clockspeed is lower because of thermal constraints. Even then, throttling is a problem, at least according to some tests. HD7750 was a decent entry level card a year or two ago, but now would not meet the minimum requirements of a lot of current gen console ports, much less games a year or two in the future. And Intel is even worse, except for the outrageously expensive iris pro. Current APUs are limited to 720p except for less demanding games, while 1080p is pretty much standard resolution, and we are steadily moving toward 1440p and eventually 4k.

So what has to happen for a igpu to be an adequate solution?

More bandwidth, more shaders, higher clockspeed for the igpu, better cpu performance at least for AMD, and all this within a die size and thermal envelope of a cpu. I would never say it is impossible, but I would not call it likely.

Sounds to me the only two viable options are:

1. An APU with CPU + quite small iGPU.
2a ) A pure CPU with discrete GPU.
2b ) A CPU with a REALLY beefy iGPU and e.g. HBM.

1) can be used for anything except gaming, video encoding and similar. 2) for the rest.

Anything in between 1 and 2 is pointless, and that's where AMD is today. Hopefully that may change in the future, with Zen + interposer + 14 nm + previous two enabling beefier iGPU + HBM. Then they can have a real serious contender for 2) crushing Intel.

 

[monstercameron]

I can't really believe you think Intel selling a chip half the size of AMD's, and Intel also having the highest yields in the industry, wouldn't be able to match AMD pricing to OEMs and still get a bigger margin.

but if they are selling so well why would they need to undercut amd?

 

[mrmt]

but if they are selling so well why would they need to undercut amd?

Because Intel has the capacity to spare, it is already paid for.

 

[senseamp]

Sounds to me the only to viable options are:

1. An APU with CPU + quite small iGPU.
2a ) A pure CPU with discrete GPU.
2b ) A CPU with a REALLY beefy iGPU and e.g. HBM.

1) can be used for anything except gaming, video encoding and similar. 2) for the rest.

Anything in between 1 and 2 is pointless, and that's where AMD is today. Hopefully that may change in the future, with Zen + interposer + 14 nm + previous two enabling beefier iGPU + HBM. Then they can have a real serious contender for 2) crushing Intel.

It's always some hail Mary pass to "crush" the competition, usually based on static analysis that assumes that just because the competition isn't talking about some advance you are betting on, it's not aware of it or designing it into their future products if it makes sense. Even if the competition has a proven record of having your number, kicking your ass, and driving you on to the verge of bankruptcy, you believe they are too stupid to notice technical trends such as new memory standards, etc, and that they will just let you take candy from them.
If you have a winning product you are selling now, you are less likely to tell your customer how the one you have around the corner is going to make it obsolete. You want them to buy your current product, not your promises, and then later to buy the next product, and so on. If you don't have the goods, then all you can do is sell promises so that people will wait for your stuff instead of buying your competitor's product now. So the incentive is always for the loser to talk about cool stuff down the road more, and for winner to talk about it less, which creates an often false illusion that the loser has better products in the pipeline than the winner. Until the products hit the market, and it turns out that things are not what you thought they would be, based on the noise ahead of time. Then you just move on to making the next big promise, while the competitor is raking it in.

 

[Abwx]

but if they are selling so well why would they need to undercut amd?

Because their Baytrail line, among others, is not competitive, it s as simple as that, their TDP specs on mobile are largely underestimated, look at Notebookcheck, the 4W Baytrail is actualy 8-10W, you find even 11.5W and 15W HW that consume both 18-19W, for instance a i3 4030U has lower perf/watt than a Beema and equal absolute performance, hence Intel is currently selling this chip at about the same price than AMD s A8 6410.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Note the qualifier you used, high end games. High end gaming is a niche of the gaming world. Just look at steams hardware survey, it shows the kind of hardware most gamers use...it sure isn't Titan sli or 295x2s.

My point being no one recommends Kaveri or iris pro for high end gaming but both are more than adequate for casual gamers.

How many times must I say I can max out league with overhead to spare for recording or streaming to twitch...

You have a point, but it is a quite disingenuous to imply that because I said an igp is inadequate that I am advocating that everyone has to have something like Titan SLI. There is a vast middle ground between those that will game markedly better than an APU. I also dont consider what I called high end games to be niche gaming, because a 400 dollar console will play all those games, so they are hardly "niche".

I consider a basic gaming system these days the to be a gpu like HD7790 (or whatever the rebrand is labelled, 260x I think) or a GTX 850/860m in mobile, of course with a decent cpu in both cases. This is what it takes to play decently the current games that will play on console. If one is willing to limit themselves in their gaming experience to less demanding games, or if they already have a system and only want to play on that one, that is fine. This is a more reasonable compromise in mobile, but makes absolutely no sense on desktop when so much better experience is available for a very small additional cost.

By the way, I was replying to Qwertilot who was talking about doing away with discrete gpu, and my main point is that we are far from any igp being able to do that.

 

[Ramses]

There were light gamers, heavy gamers, and not gamers before igpu or apu existed too. Seemed to work out ok. I take issue with not being given a choice.

 

[Abwx]

I consider a basic gaming system these days the to be a gpu like HD7790 (or whatever the rebrand is labelled, 260x I think) or a GTX 850/860m in mobile, of course with a decent cpu in both cases.

my main point is that we are far from any igp being able to do that.

I guess that in 5 years you ll claim the same thing in respect of the existing APUs offerings, that they are too weak compared to the future equivalent of a 7750/GTX 850/860m, unless of course that Intel is on par with AMD at this date....

 

[Ramses]

I guess that in 5 years you ll claim the same thing in respect of the existing APUs offerings, that they are too weak compared to the future equivalent of a 7750/GTX 850/860m, unless of course that Intel is on par with AMD at this date....

Hasn't that always been the case? Weak is relative to ones needs I guess. Surely it'd take a moderately fantastic breakthrough for it to be otherwise. Or the dgpu industry gives up maybe?

 

[Abwx]

Hasn't that always been the case? Weak is relative to ones needs I guess. Surely it'd take a moderately fantastic breakthrough for it to be otherwise. Or the dgpu industry gives up maybe?

If we are to follow some stretched logics APUs will indeed never be adequate due to the low range of dGPU progressing alike..

AMD s APUs are up to games requirements since Llano in 2011 but Intel wasnt, hence the discourse that put everybody in the same bag as a convenient cover to not aknwoledge that AMD s APUs are way more user friendly overall than Intel s.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, we have been hearing with every new generation how igps were going to replace dgpus for gaming, but they still are not an adequate solution for high end games. TBH, I dont see that happening with Broadwell/Skylake or Carrizo either, unless you want to spend several hundred dollars for a Skylake iris pro. Even with stacked memory, I am not sure performance will be enough. Look at Kaveri, even assuming no bandwidth limitations, the number of shaders is only HD7750 levels, and clockspeed is lower because of thermal constraints. Even then, throttling is a problem, at least according to some tests. HD7750 was a decent entry level card a year or two ago, but now would not meet the minimum requirements of a lot of current gen console ports, much less games a year or two in the future. And Intel is even worse, except for the outrageously expensive iris pro. Current APUs are limited to 720p except for less demanding games, while 1080p is pretty much standard resolution, and we are steadily moving toward 1440p and eventually 4k.

So what has to happen for a igpu to be an adequate solution?

More bandwidth, more shaders, higher clockspeed for the igpu, better cpu performance at least for AMD, and all this within a die size and thermal envelope of a cpu. I would never say it is impossible, but I would not call it likely.

Here's a crazy idea. Why not make the motherboard a passive backplane (essentially), and package their "Super APUs" like video cards, that have better cooling and dedicated GDDR5 or DDR4 memory soldered on the card. Imagine the cooling and power capabilities and high-speed local memory of a video card, but with an APU instead. A beefed-up APU, with enough memory bandwidth and TDP to handle modern video games. They would be upgradable to whatever future APUs, by just plugging them in. (Kind of like a video card, crossed with a Pentium II slot processor.)

Go big (to beat Intel), or go home! (Intel's already embedding high-speed local memory into their highest-SKU APUs.)

Edit: I christen the concept "discrete APU", or dAPU.

It would move the APU concept out of the middle-ground doldrums, and squarely into enthusiast-gamer sights. Basically like a PS4 on a card.

Edit: I imagine a three-module / six-core APU, with 1024 GCN 1.1 (or whatever newest GCN rev that they can integrate), and 8GB of dedicated GDDR5 or DDR4, with a 200W TDP (if necessary, lower is always better). It would take 1-2 PCI-E power connectors, like a video card. (Convenient, since both CPUs and video cards take 12V for their VRM stages.)

 

[DrMrLordX]

Here's a crazy idea. Why not make the motherboard a passive backplane (essentially), and package their "Super APUs" like video cards, that have better cooling and dedicated GDDR5 or DDR4 memory soldered on the card. Imagine the cooling and power capabilities and high-speed local memory of a video card, but with an APU instead. A beefed-up APU, with enough memory bandwidth and TDP to handle modern video games. They would be upgradable to whatever future APUs, by just plugging them in. (Kind of like a video card, crossed with a Pentium II slot processor.)

Go big (to beat Intel), or go home! (Intel's already embedding high-speed local memory into their highest-SKU APUs.)

Hmm, sounds like Xeon Phi, almost. Interesting idea. I see some potential problems with it, but yeah, interesting idea. This strategy would work better with Carrizo or any of the other chips that have/will have the FCH on-die.

 

[frozentundra123456]

If we are to follow some stretched logics APUs will indeed never be adequate due to the low range of dGPU progressing alike..

AMD s APUs are up to games requirements since Llano in 2011 but Intel wasnt, hence the discourse that put everybody in the same bag as a convenient cover to not aknwoledge that AMD s APUs are way more user friendly overall than Intel s.

Wow, you finally said something accurate, at least your first sentence.

 

[Abwx]

Wow, you finally said something accurate, at least your first sentence.

What i said was accurate but your understanding of it wasnt...

 

[Ramses]

Here's a crazy idea. Why not make the motherboard a passive backplane (essentially), and package their "Super APUs" like video cards, that have better cooling and dedicated GDDR5 or DDR4 memory soldered on the card. Imagine the cooling and power capabilities and high-speed local memory of a video card, but with an APU instead. A beefed-up APU, with enough memory bandwidth and TDP to handle modern video games. They would be upgradable to whatever future APUs, by just plugging them in. (Kind of like a video card, crossed with a Pentium II slot processor.)

Go big (to beat Intel), or go home! (Intel's already embedding high-speed local memory into their highest-SKU APUs.)

Edit: I christen the concept "discrete APU", or dAPU.

It would move the APU concept out of the middle-ground doldrums, and squarely into enthusiast-gamer sights. Basically like a PS4 on a card.

Edit: I imagine a three-module / six-core APU, with 1024 GCN 1.1 (or whatever newest GCN rev that they can integrate), and 8GB of dedicated GDDR5 or DDR4, with a 200W TDP (if necessary, lower is always better). It would take 1-2 PCI-E power connectors, like a video card. (Convenient, since both CPUs and video cards take 12V for their VRM stages.)

Backplane systems used to be around. I had a dual socket 7 one years ago.
Dunno why it never caught on for consumers. They existed at least in to S370 days.
I ran my drive IO sys on a card too in years back, VLbuss, big Promise caching IDE card,
had it's own CPU and RAM, worked well.

Otherwise what you're describing is why GPU's are separate from CPU's no?
You free yourself from the constraints of having the GPU and CPU in the same package.

I can see it now, if dGPU's magically disappeared and iGPU's inherited the earth, five years from now they'll have this breakthrough innovation: having GPU's on their OWN CARD! New worlds of performance will open up.
So called innovation is almost depressing sometimes. The auto industry is worse.


Or was that all sarcasm and I missed it? Either way, very cool.

 

[AtenRa]

It seems to me that people doesn’t understand why APUs were made and for what market segments. APUs were made for Compute, it is the only thing that Intel cares and the reason they continue to invest die space for the iGPU with each generation. If AMD APUs were not existed, nobody would talk about gaming with APUs that much. Gaming is an added feature that comes with the APUs due to the common design they share with the dGPUs but not the main focus.

It will take some time more but eventually APU (iGPU+CPU) compute performance will be the main metric for Desktop and Mobile in the near future. From Skylake onwards Intels CPUs will devote more than 50% of their die size for the iGPUs. Performance metrics will start to change towards the iGPU compute than the CPU.

Software will have to ride the APU (iGPU+CPU Compute) wagon train or else applications will start to lag badly behind in performance. Imagine a Video editing application relying only to CPU performance in an age of Skylake/Carrizo where iGPU performance will be much much faster than 4 CPU threads in the consumer world. Imagine that a 15W TDP Mobile APU running an application that can leverage the APU strength to be faster than a 4 Core 95W TDP Desktop CPU running an application only with its CPU cores. Second application will have a tremendous disadvantage in the market.

The battle in x86 consumer segment is changing, from now on it will be on iGPU compute first and not CPU. APUs will devote larger and larger die size for the iGPU with every new generation. But that doesn’t mean they will replace dGPU in the high-end. dGPUs will remain dominant in their segment for a long time.

 

[cbn]

AtenRA,

Regarding Kaveri why does the die size have to be so large and the iGPU speed so slow @ 720 Mhz. (This doesn't seem like much compute performance relative to the very high expense of integrating such a large iGPU on desktop)

In contrast, AMD clocks R7 250 @ 1000/1050 Mhz, R7 250X @ 1000 Mhz, R7 260X @ 1100 Mhz.

 

[AtenRa]

AtenRA,

Regarding Kaveri why does the die size have to be so large and the iGPU speed so slow @ 720 Mhz. (This doesn't seem like much compute performance relative to the very high expense of integrating such a large iGPU on desktop)

In contrast, AMD clocks R7 250 @ 1000/1050 Mhz, R7 250X @ 1000 Mhz, R7 260X @ 1100 Mhz.

It is more efficient (perf/watt) to have a larger iGPU at lower frequency than a smaller iGPU at higher frequency. Also, larger iGPU let you create more SKUs with a single die and increase factional yields as well.

 

[Qwertilot]

Actually, as someone who likes the idea of single chip solutions for it, the question of when we get the first iGPU that can be sensibly recommended for 1080 gaming is interesting/a bit frustrating.

AMD's current CPU stuff isn't nearly efficient enough and their GPU stuff could really do with major improvement on that count too. Perhaps the latter is coming. Very short on 'spare' R&D funds for halo products too though, so I really don't know.

NV have the graphics tech of course but no x86 stuff.

Intel have the CPU tech to do it, and the process of course, GPU seems to be much more debatable. Might not quite care either.

In the dream world we've already got 750ti class stuff joined to 35w intel quads That's 1080 gaming in a <100w chip, even without the gains from shrinking the 750ti onto Intel's process!

With Pascal aiming at doubling perf/watt again you can easily enough imagine the performance of a 980 attached to a 35w quad CPU in a single ~100w chip. That'd be getting close to doing 'reasonable' 4K.

 

[Erenhardt]

During my time on active duty in the Navy, most guys had laptops to game with, forgoing any sort of gaming "system." About half of the laptops at any given Navy exchange are AMD based for their APU capabilities, giving sailors and marines the ability to have a good gaming experience and portable computing. Even though many of us we're guaranteed to be on that base for 1.5-2 years, I not once ever saw a desktop computer inspecting barrack rooms. Almost everyone was playing games like Skyrim, Starcraft 2, WoW among many others, happy with the integrated graphics. I hate to say it but mobile is a big deal already and will only get much bigger.

We're talking at least 400 laptops to 0 desktops in these two barracks. This was three years ago. Now that Intel has better IGPs than before and the advancements of AMD's line, I have no doubts about what the market is shifting to.

An IGP/APU is a very adequate solution. The goalposts that wannabe "hardcore" gamers throw out are always moving and current products are never good enough.

I think they all will jump ship to "Pirate Island" IGP APU as soon as it is released!(!pun!)