What does Zen need to be in order to get you to buy it?

[superstition]

Many of the posters' The expectations in this thread are completely out of control. I guess that is an easy way to justify the coming butthurt on launch day. Zen won't even touch Intel in top-end singlethread performance. If the thought of an octa-core with IvyBridge-E performance and somewhat better efficiency is not attractive to you, then Zen is not what you want to buy.

fify

Something unobtainable given the current foundry situation and AMD's finances/market position/staffing! Otherwise, the sky will fall and AMD will die.

Seriously, though, it needs to offer a 25% IPC boost over Piledriver as well as the ability to get to 4 GHz with sane voltage. Since AMD is promising 40% over Excavator the only question is clocks.

There is no doubt it will be cheaper than Intel's offerings in similar categories.

Now, if I could have whatever I like I'd like an L4 cache. I do expect Summit Ridge to be unlocked and soldered.

The ability to do hardware-accelerated H.265 encoding with the full quality array of settings available (not sub-par quality as happened with GPU-based H.264 encoding) would also be welcome but I expect that would be on an APU.

For Zen+ AVX-512 would be a good idea.

Mine was likely too lenient. 30% over Piledriver is probably a better minimum improvement in IPC.

 

[DeathReborn]

The expectations in this thread are completely out of control. I guess that is an easy way to justify the coming butthurt on launch day. Zen won't even touch Intel in top-end singlethread performance. If the thought of an octa-core with IvyBridge-E performance and somewhat better efficiency is not attractive to you, then Zen is not what you want to buy.

Considering the question is "where would Zen need to be" and not "where will Zen be" people saying 6700K or whatever isn't out of control at all. I expect to still be playing DX11 games for the next few years and that needs good ST & sometimes MT performance, if Zen can't do that (even OC'd) then I will just buy whatever comes after Kaby Lake and not buy an AMD processor for another 4/5 years.

 

[superstition]

Considering the question is "where would Zen need to be" and not "where will Zen be" people saying 6700K or whatever isn't out of control at all. I expect to still be playing DX11 games for the next few years and that needs good ST & sometimes MT performance, if Zen can't do that (even OC'd) then I will just buy whatever comes after Kaby Lake and not buy an AMD processor for another 4/5 years.

Most of the responses are hyperbolic. Expecting AMD to go from Piledriver to equaling or beating Skylake with the first iteration of Zen is... laughable.

Gamers who already bought a 6700K are not the target market. There are a lot of other people, though, who may be interested in picking up a Zen system.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Most of the responses are hyperbolic. Expecting AMD to go from Piledriver to equaling or beating Skylake with the first iteration of Zen is... laughable.

Gamers who already bought a 6700K are not the target market. There are a lot of other people, though, who may be interested in picking up a Zen system.

Why will Zen be better than a 7700K for those buyers?

 

[superstition]

Why will Zen be better than a 7700K for those buyers?

Price and likely more cores+threads for those who need them.

 

[bystander36]

The expectations in this thread are completely out of control. I guess that is an easy way to justify the coming butthurt on launch day. Zen won't even touch Intel in top-end singlethread performance. If the thought of an octa-core with IvyBridge-E performance and somewhat better efficiency is not attractive to you, then Zen is not what you want to buy.

The main reason the requirements (not expectations as you said) to get many of us to upgrade is because we have fast systems now. It's highly unlikely Zen can get my business. That isn't to say Zen isn't going to be a decent CPU, just that I already have an i7 5820k. It would take a lot for Zen to convince me to upgrade.

 

[spat55]

IPC on par with Skylake and 8 Cores @4ghz (Allow me to OC to 4.5ghz easy) for £300 otherwise I'd probably go with Cannonlake and wait.

 

[jihe]

Considering my FX 8350 has done everything I need it to do and then some it wont take much for me to upgrade.

You too use it as a heater I see?

 

[MongGrel]

well considering im replacing my aging i7 930 next year ill be keeping a close eye on zen since learning about it last week.

It will need to be:

1. As fast or faster than intel product in same price range
2. Have just as strong set of instruction sets as intel
3. Overclock as well as intel comparable CPU.
4. Be as fast or faster than intel in encoding video.
5. Have comparable gaming performance.

You could still slap a X58 Xeon in that these days these days and kick it up cheap.

But I think that has been mentioned several times in the past.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

So what is the Zen PLatform Competing with then? Are they trying to compete with Intels Skylake or X99 platform?

 

[bononos]

The most important criteria would be better price/performance to a i7 skylake system for multithreaded performance.

 

[swilli89]

IPC on par with Skylake and 8 Cores @4ghz (Allow me to OC to 4.5ghz easy) for £300 otherwise I'd probably go with Cannonlake and wait.

Wow talk about hard to please! You are basically asking for a yet un-released Intel 7900K (8-core skylake at even higher clocks) 6 months early for about a third of the price!

 

[cytg111]

Am i the only one tired of the usual 2c 15w tdp ultrabook?
I cant really tell the difference from my ib powered to skylake.
I would really like some 4c and hbm vega beast in a 45w tdp form factor.
Hell my thinkpad t460 is so fat there is room for it.

- Nope. Hit me up with a 4c surface pro 5. That would be nice. Give it a fan and up the tdp to ~15 when plugged in = winner.

 

[AtenRa]

I was thinking,

It would be nice to have a 14nm ZEN SKU in 2017 with

1. Ivy/Haswell IPC
2. 65W TDP (Locked Model)
3. OC to 4.5GHz (K model)
4. 6x Cores 6x Threads

at $200-230

This could be a best buy in 2017.

 

[PingSpike]

As the one who like to tinker around with vms. What about something similar to intel iGVT-g? Being able to share real gpu to vms would be very nice.

I'd rather see that implemented for all AMD discrete cards, but yes I'm certainly interested in that as well.

 

[Dribble]

Well a starting point is as good as or better ipc then a top end intel i7 which is what my next cpu would be otherwise. In addition I obviously need a good quality reliable motherboard with the full set of features expected in 2017, and right now I am waiting for a 6 core chip - the only way I'd get another 4 core is if the ipc was massive.

 

[beginner99]

The expectations in this thread are completely out of control. I guess that is an easy way to justify the coming butthurt on launch day. Zen won't even touch Intel in top-end singlethread performance. If the thought of an octa-core with IvyBridge-E performance and somewhat better efficiency is not attractive to you, then Zen is not what you want to buy.

These are not expectations. Read the thread title. "What will make you buy Zen?"

Since I don't run database, do 3d rendering or tons of software trans-coding, yes I full expect not to buy Zen. What will make me buy it? If it's single-threaded performance is close enough to intel in an OC to OC comparison to justify going Moar Cores over fast cores. And the platform better deliver. Intel SATA ports usually are just faster.

 

[beginner99]

Why will Zen be better than a 7700K for those buyers?

Probably not for most of them unless AMD really surprises us for once in a positive way. But given probable process issues seen with polaris clocking and power consumption, my hopes for that are pretty much 0. I mean intel hexacores can at least be oc'ed to be almost as fast in ST as the mainstream quads. But I don't see myself paying more for a 8-core CPU slower in ST. It's a niche for workstation usage like 3D Rendering, transcoding and such. For gaming? Nope.

 

[RussianSensation]

Considering i7 6700K OC beats every single CPU in the world for games, including 6-10 core 6800/6900/6950X OC processors, I have no interest in Zen. I just bought a 2nd 6700K yesterday too. For my use cases 6-8 Ivy/Haswell IPC cores in 2017 isn't good enough, regardless of the price. A lot of people on here blindly follow the 40% greater IPC claim while ignoring that i7 6700K reaches 4.7-4.8Ghz. If, for instance, Zen can only overclock to 4.2Ghz with a $50 cooler, but 7700K can easily hit 4.8Ghz on a $20 CM212 Evo, the 20% IPC lead would translate into a 37% per core lead on a budget off-the-shelf CPU cooler. The major risk for Zen is not much overclocking headroom on all cores simultaneously.

Since a 6-core i7 5820K hit 4.4-4.5Ghz in August of 2014, having this level of IPC in the 1H of 2017 is a fail to me. Modern gaming benchmarks continue to show little to no benefit from 6-10 cores and by the time they do, AMD will have Zen+, while Intel will have Icelake/E. Considering how the landscape has changed since January 2011 Sandy 2600K, modern i7 3770K/4770K/4790K/6700K CPUs can be sold with a very small loss in resale value. That means there is little to no incentive to spend hundreds of dollars more to future-proof with 8-10 cores when they cost $500-1700. In 2-3 years, a $350 Icelake + Intel chipsets with more mature Optane PCIe SSD, DMI 4.0 and PCIe 4.0 support will completely obsolete the $1700 6950X for the typical user/PC gamer. Now substitute 6950X with an 8 core Zen and the end result is the same.

As a 6700K user: "Why would I want an 8-core "5820K 4.4Ghz" style Zen CPU when I could have just purchased the 6-core 5820K in August 2014 and enjoyed it all this time?" By the time Zen even comes out, my 1st 6700K system will a year old.

Most people in this thread have unrealistic expectations wrt to Zen. It was primarily designed as a server/workstation CPU.

Let me put it this way, during C2D/Quad days, Intel had a much smaller IPC lead over Phenom II than Kaby Lake will have over Zen, and still C2Q Q6600-9550 were better than Phenoms.

To me where Zen can excel is in heavily multi-threaded workloads. For someone who will ACTUALLY use 8-16 cores/threads, even if Zen offers 75% of the performance of the 6950X for $799, it would be a good deal. Unfortunately for AMD, I am currently not the target market for those workloads. I keep wishing AMD to offer a platform discount for consumers who buy their CPU+mobo+GPU but they don't want to do that either.

I always looked at Zen as a server/workstation CPU first and as a stepping stone for closing the IPC gap. It should be a nice foundation towards Zen+.

 

[Chaotic42]

I'd be willing to upgrade my workstation/processing system to Zen if it really does well in multithreaded computational workloads like PovRay. Unfortunately AMD has been lagging in those for a while.

 

[kawi6rr]

You too use it as a heater I see?

It excels in many roles

 

[Lil'John]

For me, it would have to equal the performance of Intel's offering at the time while being half the price. This is what it would HAVE to do for me to convert... not what I realistically expect Zen to do.

Caveat, I get a GREAT discount on Intel CPUs so virtually no chance at AMD processor for me

 

[Mr Evil]

I see everyone is concentrating on performance, but one of the reasons that I buy AMD processors rather than Intel is that they don't skimp on features like ECC in their consumer CPUs. I would be strongly discouraged from buying Zen if it didn't have ECC support, although I'm pretty sure that it will, and it will therefore be down to the motherboard manufacturers to implement it.

 

[linkgoron]

It's too late for me. I already have a 1+ year old 6700k desktop, and I don't see Zen coming anywhere close. Maybe as a server, but I highly doubt it.

I would consider an APU HTPC more seriously, if it comes with decent video capabilities, but those are probably late q3 or q4 2017.

 

[Rifter]

I

You could still slap a X58 Xeon in that these days these days and kick it up cheap.

But I think that has been mentioned several times in the past.

Im probably going to do this. But im also probably going to upgrade late next year to get a VR setup, which will likely require a new CPU anyways even if i go xeon now.