Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)

[DisEnchantment]

Speculate at will

 

[CouncilorIrissa]

I feel like there is huge disparity when AMD fails and don’t reach expectations compared to when Intel, Nvidia and Apple fail. Not directing this at you but it’s something I noticed here and other online forums/twitter.

Eh.
RDNA3 was mocked relentlessly too, deservedly so (I mean it has a RDOA3 nickname lol). Look up any /r/hardware thread about it.

Fanboys will do fanboy things. Getting one over on the opposition isn't exclusive to any single group.

 

[Jan Olšan]

Should it? That 9.71% you cite is int IPC, and nothing in Zen 5 desktop is going to increase int IPC. If anything, it could end up lower since AMD is reusing the IOD on desktop, and Strix may contain uncore improvements.

Floating point uplift will be higher on desktop when AVX 512 is in use, of course.

L3 cache is bigger on desktop, that will or at least can influence 1T results. Usually the APUs had lower performance compared to desktop version of the same core.

Besides, AVX-512 doesn't only work for floating-point, it works on integer datatypes too. That's why x264 or teh reference h.264 encoder are in specint (they use autovectorization instead of the assembly tho, so it's purely academic benching).

 

[Hitman928]

David Huang was not using an ES. It was a retail sample.

I don’t get how having a worse generation uplift than Zen 4 is a good result when you take everything into account.

I thought it was an ES, my mistake if not.

A ~10% IPC improvement with a greater improvement in efficiency and battery life on a very minor node tweak is pretty good. Not great and a definite step back from the previous few generations of improvements, but it's still pretty good.

Should it? That 9.71% you cite is int IPC, and nothing in Zen 5 desktop is going to increase int IPC. If anything, it could end up lower since AMD is reusing the IOD on desktop, and Strix may contain uncore improvements.

Floating point uplift will be higher on desktop when AVX 512 is in use, of course.

Leaked GB scores for desktop Zen 5 indicate higher IPC, but we'll see once we get better tests.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Apple got for that 7% IPC improvement over 7 months

Disingenuous. Over like 15 quarters.
Firestorm was the last bump before that (8%).
At least mention ARM, they still maintain their PPC CAGR, even if power went boom-boom since X4.

 

[Geddagod]

I thought it was an ES, my mistake if not.

A ~10% IPC improvement with a greater improvement in efficiency and battery life on a very minor node tweak is pretty good. Not great and a definite step back from the previous few generations of improvements, but it's still pretty good.



Leaked GB scores for desktop Zen 5 indicate higher IPC, but we'll see once we get better tests.

I don't think Zen 5's perf/watt uplifts are that good, based on what we have seen on desktop.
Strix Point as a whole is good though, I agree. But I'm not putting that on Zen 5.

 

[linkgoron]

I feel like there is huge disparity when AMD fails and don’t reach expectations compared to when Intel, Nvidia and Apple fail. Not directing this at you but it’s something I noticed here and other online forums/twitter.

RDNA3 was mocked relentlessly. However, people see AMD as the underdog, still remember Bulldozer, and will naturally be less harsh with them. Intel are also seen in a bad light in general because of business practices and lies.

The amount of crap Apple got for that 7% IPC improvement over 7 months mind you not even 22 months like AMD is certainly constitutes favouritism. Comments like Apple’s CPU team dead and ARM is dead but when AMD doesn’t reach expectations then its “design is hard”, they focused resources somewhere else, Zen 6 is the one to look out for etc.

10% increase in IPC is 5% YoY, so is AMDs CPU team dead no it’s not, so maybe Kepler and the “x86 gang” should not make statements like how Intel and AMD increase IPC 10% YoY which is certainly not true.

Apple is the biggest company in the world with over 3 trillion in market cap. AMD has a market cap of 220 billion. Apple's worst quarter's earnings is about the same as AMD's yearly revenue. They are not seen as the same thing, don't have the same resources, and don't have the same expectations.

 

[Jan Olšan]

Here is what David Huang got for Spec 1t and IPC with an ES sample when equalizing clocks.

View attachment 104081

So a 9.71% IPC increase and the GCC test actually improved by 10.4%. I estimated 7% from Anandtech’s data with a rough calculation of actual clock speed difference but actual clock equalized tests are obviously better. Still a bit underwhelming, but combined with the efficiency increase, it’s an overall good result, just a let down after all the hype. The desktop variant should have higher IPC, it’s just a question of how much.

I agree that IPC not going up over Zen4 in Specint at all, is dubious. I would suspect there is some problem in AnandTech testing. Like assuming it ran at higher frequency than it really did, and thus not calculating the IPC properly. Wouldn't be the first time.

I have to remember that time when AnandTech had x264 result for Core i3-6300T that was much higher than for Core i3-6300 (iirc it was that SKU pair, not totally sure now) in their bench database and apparently nobody considered that weird and worth rechecking.

 

[FlameTail]

Does anyone have rumors or estimate of the die size of Kraken Point?
It is even more cost efficient for AMD to make than Hawk Point?

From a customer perspective, why would anyone buy Kraken Point over Hawk Point?

Hawk would have better CPU MT performance and better GPU performance. CPU ST performance advantage of Kraken will be tiny. As far as I can see the only reason to buy Kraken insteaf of Hawk, is the 50 TOPS NPU.

 

[Goop_reformed]

Precisely. I guarantee this forum mocks Lion Cove relentlessly when it launches with similar performance increases.

Same node, double digits performance increase vs 2 nodes jump, 2 new cores design single digits performance increase.

They are not the same.

 

[H433x0n]

Same node, double digits performance increase vs 2 nodes jump, 2 new cores design single digits performance increase.

They are not the same.

According to David Huang it's not even double digits performance increase in Specint.

 

[poke01]

Disingenuous. Over like 15 quarters.
Firestorm was the last bump before that (8%).
At least mention ARM, they still maintain their PPC CAGR, even if power went boom-boom since X4.

I was talking about Gen on Gen improvements.

M3 -> M4 was 7 months regardless of how you spin it. Both have different architectures.

 

[Jan Olšan]

I was talking about Gen on Gen improvements.

M3 -> M4 was 7 months regardless of how you spin it. Both have different architectures.

His point is that the real gap between the architecture development was likely much longer. It's just M3 got delayed by the 3nm delay at TSMC. It was supposed to launch at least a year earlier, if not two (as M1 successor). That's really the only reason why it looks like Apple can whip up a new CPU core "in 7 months"...

Basically, if it takes only 7 months (M4), why does it also take 3 years (M3)?

 

[Geddagod]

Same node, double digits performance increase vs 2 nodes jump, 2 new cores design single digits performance increase.

They are not the same.

Node wise, Intel has the bigger jump, but core wise, Zen 5 seems like a much more radical departure than LNC is over GLC. And tbh, some parts of LNC don't seem to be buffed as much as a usual Intel tock is, like the ROB capacity or the uop cache capacity. I don't think the same can be said for Zen 5.
It's not like Intel tried for a massive core arch refresh and got mid results, they literally didn't try at all.
I would consider Zen 5 a bigger "meh" than LNC, but as a whole, the entire "which core is more disappointing vs expectations" shtick isn't really important in the end lol.

 

[adroc_thurston]

M3 -> M4 was 7 months regardless of how you spin it.

Coll-P had rounding error IPC bumps (and some regressions).
Also not v9 so it's a weird dead end.

I was talking about Gen on Gen improvements

No such thing, you do CAGR.
Apple CAGR in 2021/2022/2023 was bretty much zero.

 

[Joe NYC]

Edit : On a side note :

Was Ryzen 9000 delayed over a simple typo? AMD Ryzen 9 9700X spotted - VideoCardz.com

Ryzen 9000 delay, it was a typo all along? Ryzen 9 9700X instead of Ryzen 7 9700X. AMD has not directly confirmed the reason for the Ryzen 9000 launch delay. Officially, the company cited quality issues that did not meet their expectations. However, it seems the issue might have been a simple...

videocardz.com

They could have just sold the mislabeled 9700x with $25 discount.

 

[poke01]

I agree that IPC not going up over Zen4 in Specint at all, is dubious.

I would wait for Geekerwan testing.

 

[poke01]

They could have just sold the mislabeled 9700x with $25 discount.

It could been a collectors item too

 

[Jan Olšan]

It could been a collectors item too

Yeah, misprints are precious stuff, heh.

Note that the "D" labelled processors aren't retail units, but samples. So if it only appears on "D" marked processors, it doesn't mean it's really the issue behind the recall.

Though, spreading these pictures would be perfect way to stop the rumors and speculation about the nature of the mysterious issues, heh. "See? Intel keeps decaying silicon on market, AMD recalls even if just the bloody text on the lid is not perfect"...

P. S. Also if you see processors with this mark on sale somewhere, somebody is monetizing samples...

 

[Josh128]

It could been a collectors item too

Will probably make it to Ebay, at some point, I'd bet.

 

[ErichZannMusician]

So based on post-release benchmarks of Strix Point, reported Cyberpunk 2077 weirdness, lower SMT yeild as discerned from CB R23 MT ratio, barely any gain in Geekbench 6 Navigation subtest which has the most branch mispredict rate, it is safe to say that Zen 5's new front-end is more of a miss than a hit.

And yet there exist some posters here who insist that the competitor giving up SMT altogether would cripple them with a blanket ~30% loss in MT performance.

 

[Josh128]

I would consider Zen 5 a bigger "meh" than LNC, but as a whole, the entire "which core is more disappointing vs expectations" shtick isn't really important in the end lol. It's not like Intel tried for a massive core arch refresh and got mid results, they literally didn't try at all.

Are you forgetting that LNC is a two node jump from GLC while Zen 5 is a half-node (at best) jump from Zen 4? Thats pretty significant. And where do you get the idea that Intel didnt "try" for a massive core arch refresh? Isnt that what both Lion Cove and Skymont are?

If Arrow Lake doesnt show a massive jump in perf or perf/watt with a 2 node jump, its going to be a way bigger L than these results with Zen 5 we've seen thus far. Last time Intel did major arch change on same node was Rocket Lake, and that was objectively their worst new CPU generation as far back as I remember.

 

[StinkyPinky]

So dunno if this has been posted yet, but I did some testing on my own.

The standard fan profile on the Zenbook S limits the power setting to 17W. Performance mode to the full 28W. The "full pull performance mode" (not to be confused with performance mode) doesn't do much, just makes the fan more aggressive for very little performance gain (I think it's bios locked at 28W). I think the performance mode is the way to go. Still very quiet and there is a performance gain.

There is also a "whisper" mode I haven't tested that, but I'm assuming that limits to even further. Perhaps 15W or even lower.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I hope they iron out whatever kinks it now has come second gen FWIW. Would be a shame to waste an unconventional design.

Agreed. Zen6 may bring more than originally intended to the table, just from bugfixing Zen5. Let's not get our hopes up too much though, shall we?

 

[techjunkie123]

So what's with the much higher power consumption with ST workloads on AMD/Intel APUs? Is the core power that much higher or uncore?

Any chance of being fixed in future generations?

 

[Mahboi]

Looks like the forum's still boiling over from the Z5 mobile results.
I'd be the advocate of waiting for some likely fine-tuning in the next months, and it looks like a solid improvement in power consumption for an equal perf over Z4...but at the same time what's the point of bumping 8 Z4 cores to 12 Z5 cores if you're going to have the same perf, lel.
AMD clearly fumbled something. I might've considered that with a sufficient amount of power we'd see something stronger, but no. That's the laptop they sent to reviewers, it's likely that that's what the product's meant to be.
The option "AMD splurged on the core count to get some leeway with reviews" also isn't viable, at least not in this dimension. AMD never splurges.