DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
- 22,021
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AMD needs a 70-80%+ increase in single-threaded performance/IPC to catch up to a Skylake core. They are bringing 40%.
Too bad you linked benchmarks featuring Piledriver, not Excavator.
AMD needs a 70-80%+ increase in single-threaded performance/IPC to catch up to a Skylake core. They are bringing 40%.
AMD needs a 70-80%+ increase in single-threaded performance/IPC to catch up to a Skylake core. They are bringing 40%. Most consumers are not going out and buying a 5820K over an i5-6600K/i7-6700K despite that CPU having a far smaller deficit in IPC to Skylake than Zen will. You can connect the dots. The market values faster single core CPUs with lower power usage, not MOAR cores with lower IPC.
In simpler terms, if Zen brings 5820K performance for $350, Intel's workstation platform will still be better with a 6820K, while the mainstream will have faster quad-core i7-7700K. Where does that leave Zen? MOAR cores for less $? Ya, that already failed over the last 5 years.
I don't think this graph is a good choice to refute his point about Shitty intel upgrades.
I think FIVR on Haswell was a God-send to mobo mfgs. All they needed was to supply appropriate current at 1.8V, and let the CPU do the rest. (With appropriate BIOS programming. At least, that was my limited understanding.)The current thing is actually very interesting as we may see a relatively high-end IGP with nice CPU combo running at 100W+ at a very low voltage.
Compared to their previous APUs running 1.4V and more, it will be a gigantic change in motherboards VRM design.
Good question,well caught.Well, let me ask you this - why did you buy the 4820K over the 3770K? As you said the quad channel memory isn't all that useful on quad core. The extra PCIe lanes might be if you were doing SLI/CF.
You missed the whole point.
95W @ 1.0V = 95A
95W @ 1.3V = 73A
30% or 22A is a huge amount of current and can easily require one or two additional VRM phases, depending on the component quality (cost).
On the voltage side of things GF s 14nm LPP LVT work at 2.41GHz/0.8V, at 1V it would reach 3.75GHz if it was perfectly scaling with voltage, but we already know that there s a slightly faster variant (LPP sLVT) so it s quite possible that such a frequency will be reached at this voltage...
Good question,well caught.
If Intel's upgrades have been "shitty" then what would that make AMD CPUs?
RussianSensation did a decent reality check analysis.Even if compared against piledriver and not excavator,he did it with the highest clocked(4.7-5Ghz) pilerdriver.Use your brains a bit.4.7GHz piledriver is already 17.5% higher clocked than any imaginary or realistic 4GHz excavator.
There s not much worries to have about current deliveries, as for cost, well, recent AM3+ MBs cost "as much" as 88 here for a board that support 220W CPUs, is M2/USB3.1 equipped and has a good deal more chipery than an AM4 wich has a single Promontory chip.
Alright then. I'll give you objective reasons why I decided to not wait for Zen.
1. I used FX9590 4.7-5Ghz as a point of reference. I then assumed that Zen will launch with 4.7-5Ghz clocks right out of the gate (I am being extremely favourable to Zen with this assumption). You will see later why I did this -- essentially I am creating the most favourable position for Zen.
2. Now I just need to compare how far behind FX9590 is against 6700K in terms of IPC to set a point of reference. This tells me just how far behind FX9590 is in terms of IPC. Relating back to point #1 above, by assuming Zen and FX9590 are clocked similarly, I can focus specifically on the gigantic gap that Zen would have to make up against Skylake to catch up.
Ready?
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB / 384-bit GDDR5, 1000-1076 / 7010 MHz).
6700K is 103% faster
6700K is 64% faster
83% faster
50% faster
108% faster
Average gaming IPC delta: 6700K stock is beating FX9590 by 82%!
http://fcenter.ru/online/hardarticl...6700_Core_i5_6600_Core_i5_6500_i_Core_i5_6400
Wait for it, 6700K can also overclock another 400-600mhz from 4.2Ghz to 4.6-4.8Ghz. If we use a 4.6Ghz overclock, that's another 10% increase in IPC bringing us to 82% x 1.10 = 90% faster single threaded performance per core in games.
AMD is aiming to bring 40% increase in IPC. That means even if Zen comes out swinging with 4.7-5Ghz clocks, has another 10% overclocking headroom and has 40% increase in IPC, it's still nowhere close to Skylake.
Now I get it, no one games at 1280x800 with a 6700K. The point here is to show a CPU limited scenario of what would happen if Zen and Skylake were in a hypothetical CPU limited section of a game.
So what are the chances Zen has 4.7-5Ghz clocks, and another 10% overclocking headroom that i7-6700K has? All of a sudden it means that if Zen is clocked well below 4.7-5Ghz, you are now going to need to add 90% IPC advantage of Skylake + overclocking headroom of Zen to just catch up to 4.7-5Ghz of FX9590. See how dire the situation gets for Zen?
The next logical rebuttal is that Zen will offer more cores than mainstream Skylake in exchange for worse IPC. Since Zen will launch before SKL-E, we should instead compare it to BW-E's IPC. OK, that's covered too because BW-E's IPC is very close to Skylake's.
http://fcenter.ru/online/hardarticl..._Bridge_do_Skylake_Sravnitel_noe_testirovanie
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/940-6/cpu-sandy-bridge-vs-ivy-bridge-vs-haswell-vs-skylake-4-g.html
Further, Intel is about to introduce a 10-core BW-E and possibly drop prices on either the 6- or 8-core BW-E.
Bottom line: I think people have to set realistic expectations for Zen and I am not seeing that. Some are calling Zen a failure if it doesn't match or beat BW-E at minimum. Talk about living in dream land. Even Lisa Su has acknowledged in interviews that Zen is a start to a new path towards turning the firm around but she repeated that it's not a 1 time bullet/shot that will suddenly regain AMD CPU leadership position. It's rather a new fundamental base from which to build upon for Zen+ and so on.
See, people make a huge mistake of missing something. On the Intel side, we compare increase in IPC from SB to Skylake without realizing that FX9590's IPC is worse than Nehalems! Nehalem itself is a good 15-17% behind Sandy.
Proof:
Intel Core i7-870, 4C/4T, @ 2,80 GHz, 45 nm = 100%
Intel Core i7-930, 4C/4T, 2,80 GHz, 45 nm = 100%
vs.
Intel Core i5-2500K, 4C/4T, @ 2,80 GHz, 32 nm = 115%
Intel Core i7-2600K, 4C/4T, @ 2,80 GHz, 32 nm = 117%
http://www.computerbase.de/2011-01/test-intel-sandy-bridge/46/
Now we need to go way back to Nehalem era vs. FX8150 or compare FX8150 to Sandy to figure out just how far behind Bulldozer is.
AMD FX-8150, 4M / 8T, 3.60 GHz, 32 nm, Turbo = 100%
Intel Core i7-2600K, 4C / 8T, 3.40 GHz, 32 nm, Turbo, SMT = 128%
http://www.computerbase.de/2011-10/test-amd-bulldozer/14/
That means out of the 40% increase in IPC AMD is aiming for, almost 75% of that (30/40) will have to be used just to catch up to Sandy Bridge. This means we'd be lucky if Zen's IPC slots as a mid-point between IVB and Haswell.
So with that out of the way, where would an objective consumer stand right now?
Considering Intel CPUs hardly lose $ during resale, it's safe for 99% of consumers to buy Skylake now and see where Zen lands. It makes no sense to postpone an upgrade and wait 9+ months from now until Zen launches given the IPC characteristics of Broadwell and Skylake. Yet, once again I see Zen is being set up for failure from overhyping and having completely unrealistic expectations on this forum.
Basically, the way I see it, AMD's Zen strategy will be to offer more cores and price them more aggressively, coupled with cheaper motherboard prices. Offer 8 cores for the price of an i7 6700K and 4 cores for the price of an i3. The difference is Zen should have closer single-threaded performance, way lower power consumption, modern motherboard features and an upgrade path to Zen+ on the same socket/mobo. This will make it less trade-off of the Bulldozer strategy, but it still won't be enough to overcome Skylake's single threaded prowess. But, realistically speaking, the gap in IPC against modern Intel architectures is HUGE. If Zen nets 40%+ increase in IPC, with Intel's next major architecture out in 2018 with Icelake, this is where AMD can try to claw back another 10-15% IPC and slowly start catching up. I hope I am wrong as I want more competition but benchmarks of Skylake and IPC comparisons to FX9590 paint a different picture that I cannot just dismiss.
If my estimates of IPC of modern architectures are way off, then I apologize as I am open to reviewing other reviews/benches. Obviously, DX12 could save Zen's lower IPC by focusing on leveraging more cores but this is a far shot as there are too few DX12 games and chances are they won't be enough out in the next 12 months to suddenly start benefiting from 8-16 cores/threads to hide Zen's IPC deficits. Making matters worse, by the time Zen launches, Intel will have i7-7700K.
RussianSensation did a reality check with imaginary estimates. The same arguments that can be used to taser back to reality the people who dream of killer chip Zen can also be used to sober up forumites who emulate unknown cores on an unknown process in order to prove it unworthy.RussianSensation did a decent reality check analysis.
RussianSensation did a reality check with imaginary estimates. The same arguments that can be used to taser back to reality the people who dream of killer chip Zen can also be used to sober up forumites who emulate unknown cores on an unknown process in order to prove it unworthy.
Anybody can guesstimate and speculate, but only few people on this forum actually understand and maybe give the rest of us some kind of insights related to Zen. The rest are divided between the fallen doomsayers who were convinced Zen was to be a weak & power efficient Jaguar successor, the naysayers who think Zen it is a SandyBridge class core on a mobile oriented process that won't go past 3Ghz without draining the planets energy core, and the ascended believers that envision Broadwell IPC @ 4Ghz+ while slowly draining lithium batteries.
There's also one guy who wants to wait and see how the situation develops, but he's new to the forum. He needs a reality check.
I'm not, he's only one factor and cannot single-handedly make or break an architecture. The entire team deserves credit for Zen, be it applause or utter silence.I am big beliver in Jim Kellers architecture though
Those "220W compliant" cheap ASRock boards do not work properly with 220W TDP CPUs, as proven many times. The VRM will overheat on them even in light multithreaded workloads, when FX-9xxx CPUs are used. That's the very reason why they lost to FX-6K & FX-8K series CPUs in some gaming roundups (IIRC multiple times in the botched reviews of GamersNexus.net).
Also ASRocks own forum is flooded by the complaints regarding the same subject.
220W FX-9K CPUs have TDC of 140A and that's a serious amount of current. On Zen you can expect to see similar TDC for 140W TDP products.
If my estimates of IPC of modern architectures are way off, then I apologize as I am open to reviewing other reviews/benches. Obviously, DX12 could save Zen's lower IPC by focusing on leveraging more cores but this is a far shot as there are too few DX12 games and chances are they won't be enough out in the next 12 months to suddenly start benefiting from 8-16 cores/threads to hide Zen's IPC deficits. Making matters worse, by the time Zen launches, Intel will have i7-7700K.
I'm not, he's only one factor and cannot single-handedly make or break an architecture. The entire team deserves credit for Zen, be it applause or utter silence.
+1 :thumbsup:
Not to mention he quit and slammed the door.
+1 :thumbsup:
Not to mention he quit and slammed the door.
Also, we now know who to blame if it doesn't deliver.
Yes, anyone but AMD as always
I don't think this graph is a good choice to refute his point about Shitty intel upgrades.
Additionally it has very little to do with Zen arch if at all.
The current thing is actually very interesting as we may see a relatively high-end IGP with nice CPU combo running at 100W+ at a very low voltage.
Compared to their previous APUs running 1.4V and more, it will be a gigantic change in motherboards VRM design.
You mean to go along with all the posts breaking down why it will be 8 cores, haswell IPC, 95 watts and 300.00? Seems like wild speculation about how great it will be is OK, but not the opposite.
Alright then. I'll give you objective reasons why I decided to not wait for Zen.