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

[deasd]

Outperform Haswell in superpi/wprime/fritzchess.....

 

[DrMrLordX]

No, Multi-level Clustered Multitheading or simply Multistar is the way to go. It is no surprise who got that under patent, *cough*Intel*cough* and is also buying the company that implemented it, *cough*Soft Machines*cough*.

SMT is so last generation, Multistar and its parent CMT is current generation.

You aren't exactly disagreeing with me, but hey, feel free to pine for whatever you wish. Intel's acquisitions rarely fare well. I expect SoftMachines to find a nice place in the basement next to IA64.

If I am wrong, all the better. But . . .

It has to outperform my PII 965 that is oc'ed to 3.7.

You uh . . . do realize that both AMD and Intel have been producing CPUs that can do that for some time now, right? Even if you don't think SR or XV can do it, Intel will be more than happy to sell you something that will humiliate a Deneb.

 

[swilli89]

I'd like average performance roughly equal to a 5960X, or within 10-15% of an Intel 6900k for less than $500.

A 16 thread Zen CPU that I can overclock to about 3.8-4.0Ghz on water that is at least somewhat similar in IPC to the demo AMD showed in Blender would be great, I think this is feasible.

Later in next year we may see a 6c/12t higher clocked Zen part for around $350, that one would be very enticing as well.

 

[moonbogg]

Has to be a lot faster at gaming and everything else than a 3930k@4.6, I can promise you that much at least.

 

[severus]

I want whatever I buy to feel like the jump from my Athlon XP 2200 to my e6750 machine and then from my e6750 machine to my i5 2500k machine. I typically build a new computer every 5 years, but from the charts I'm seeing there's no reason to upgrade in the foreseeable future since performance has only increased 15% since I built this one. My moneys probably better spent on the next generation ATi graphics card (whatever is around $250 next summer).

 

[Vesku]

$200-250, 8c16t, with decent $100-150 motherboards and at least roughly equivalent to IB IPC-wise and able to OC to 4ish GHz before the power per additional MHz curve gets scarily vertical. $300-400 would be acceptable if it is Haswell/Broadwell IPC or is unexpectedly power efficient at ~4GHz.

 

[Alqoxzt]

It needs to be within 15% of kaby in terms of ST performance and best on price/perf (250-310 US).
Though I wish that AMD could have gone for 40% IPS instead of IPC @3Ghz.

 

[coercitiv]

I suspect many requirements on this thread will get updated once desktop Kaby Lake hits the market: between the jump in fmax Kaby provides in mobile and the announced Kaby Lake-X, Zen might find itself competing with 5Ghz+ quad cores from Intel. Zen better be able to clock high, in the 4Ghz+ zone.

Q4 2016 - Q1 2017 will likely be very interesting for PC enthusiasts.

 

[lixlax]

My thoughts:
*IPC at least 85-90% of Skylake
*base clock 3.3-3.4GHz with 3.8-4.0 single core boost (for top 8 core)
*rumoured 95W tdp would be nice, but I don't mind if they go 125W for top end models.
*at least 10% "easy" OC headroom
*competitive pricing
*modern and feature rich motherboards with competitive prices and lots of different models/variations to choose from

Ofcourse they won't match or beat Intel with a product like that, but it will enable them to be in the most competitive market position they've been on this decade. That should be good enough product to develop on Zen+ and beyond. Hopefully GF keeps improving their 14nm as well since polaris showed it isn't well suited for high perfomance products (yet).

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

At the end of the day, is perf/$ not the only metric that matters, for vast majority of consumers?

 

[cytg111]

I am building a dual v2670 rig, 16 cores, 32 threads .. But it is oldish sandy bridges, chips i got were cheap but used, my local pusher keeps screwing up my mainboard order .. I cant help but think that I might be able to get along on an 8 core. If Zen were to significantly outperform the 2670 sandys and i might just be able to get by with 8 cores and not 16 .. total cost of ownership might be in favor of zen.
Then again v2670 is tried and proven, gotta run esxi on it (dont know how zen+mainboard will handle that).
Bottom line, 8 cores is more than i'd use for desktop and gaming, but I might find a place for it for semi-server duty.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

So long as it's excellent for compiling, let's say Ivybridge-E levels of performance overall across 8c/16t for around $300, I'm all for it. Like TunaFish, my heavy needs are code compilation (Gentoo Linux), and this sounds so far like it'd be perfect for that.

 

[cbn]

I'll be looking for a better performing alternative to the Skylake/Kabylake Core i3 at the Skylake/Kabylake Core i3 price point.

This especially as I predict relatively powerful video cards (including ones on the used market) will drop quite a bit in price over the next 12 months.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Cheap fast quad core. i5 performance for i3 prices.

 

[lehtv]

First and foremost, better price/perf in games compared to Skylake. I doubt anything else could make up for worse price/perf at this point.

But it also has to have stock i5 level performance with mild OC. Wattage can be higher but nowhere near FX-8xxx high, I'd prefer to keep it under 150W with a good chunk of extra clock speed.

 

[cbn]

First and foremost, better price/perf in games compared to Skylake. I doubt anything else could make up for worse price/perf at this point.

Yes, and we also have to consider AMD's incentive to provide better CPU performance per dollar in order to sell more of their own dGPU? (re: A person needs a relatively powerful CPU to feed a relatively powerful dGPU. So in that way the dGPU market is tied to the health of the desktop CPU market.)

Example: A stronger midrange video card needs a stronger midrange CPU. The greater the number of stronger midrange CPUs available increases (up to a point) the number of stronger midrange video cards that can be used by consumers like us.

So AMD having significantly better performing CPUs at X price price points potentially helps another part of their own company. In contrast, Intel doesn't have this same incentive to boost CPU performance per dollar.

 

[ElFenix]

assuming i were making a buying decision for one of my computers, i don't see it beating 4 core SKL (and derivatives) in games, not with 8c/16t trying to fit into 95 watts. so it wouldn't be going into that box.

so the other usage case is my "server," which is VM and x264/x265. due to the sheer number of cores i expect x264 performance to be better than 4c SKL (even at a hair over 3GHz and ivy IPC). not sure with x265 as i've read that's heavily dependent on AVX instructions.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

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

Available.

 

[Shehriazad]

1: Unlocked
2: Performance per $ competitive
3: Have ITX or smaller formfactor available.

 

[nerp]

Considering that I've basically completed my current system, it would have to offer same performance per thread or better and have 8 cores and run as cool and efficiently for no more than $350, and I don't think that would happen. If you caught me with the i3-6100 still as my main CPU, I would have faced the choice of dropping in an i7, i5 or a platform switch to Zen.

When it comes time for me to build a new rig, which could happen considering I have two small kids starting to be of age to use a computer for school and play, if AMD offers something that is fast, efficient, able to rip through general tasks and not bottleneck a mid-range card, I'm in. I'm especially interested in what they might do with onboard graphics. I'd love to see something with RX480 or 470 level performance integrated. A mini-itx motherboard with that kind of graphics and you have a console killer.

 

[Rngwn]

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.

 

[Boze]

Well, a lot of unrealistic posts here, and a few realistic ones.

Lemme chime in with some realism.

I want it to be faster than a comparable Intel product in terms of its price.

If they're asking $550-$600 for a chip, it better outperform an Intel i7-6850K in most benchmarks, and by at least 3-5%.

Adjust your pricing accordingly for any of the current chips from i5 6600K to i7 6900K. I don't care if its a $250 chip or a $1700 chip. Just beat Intel in most or all benchmarks and you'll earn my money.

 

[Rifter]

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.

 

[Doom2pro]

assuming i were making a buying decision for one of my computers, i don't see it beating 4 core SKL (and derivatives) in games, not with 8c/16t trying to fit into 95 watts. so it wouldn't be going into that box.

Give it a chance batman... LOL

I would be SHOCKED if it can't fit 8c/16t in 95 watts... Everything AMD has said so far about 40% IPC has been the same thing about 95W TDP.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Really hoping to put one into a nice office PC build. If by the time I build it (next summer most likely), they have a true quad core around (preferably below) $200, I'll pick it over the i5-6400.