AMD RyZen CPU Architecture for 2017

What is too good to be true is that if they result translate into real world software you are getting same performance for LESS than HALF the price, almost a THIRD....this is so good.
 
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Another thing reviews constantly fail to do is disable SMT for gaming benchmarks, which often helps the 4 core CPUs but hurts the 6 and 8 core CPUs. check Youtube if you need proof. I saw substantial gains with my 5820k when I disabled SMT in several games (and it allows for easier overclocking).
 
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sebbbi said:
But the damage would be already done. Reviewers would compare the salvaged low-clocked 4-core Zens to 4-core Kaby Lakes and that would make Zen look bad, hurting the Zen brand. AMD needs a good first impression to restore their CPU brand value. I am just trying to say that it's way better from marketing and brand perspective for AMD to attack Intel's Broadwell based $617 six-cores and 1089$ eight-cores and win the fight in all three categories (performance, price and TDP). That is what AMD needs. Fantastic press reviews.

I am just talking about the first impression. Release 6-core and 8-core lineup first. Get fantastic reviews vs Broadwell. Release the salvaged 4-cores one quater later to fill the lower price points. Don't even try to market them against Kaby Lake. Ensure that everybody knows that the fast dedicated 4-cores are coming later. That would be my plan :)
Click to expand...

They could sort of avoid that by going for segmented marketing names for different tiers similar to Intel and AMD CPUs of the past.

For example, Opteron/Athlon 64/Sempron/Turion. Do something similar for Zen core CPUs.
  • 8/6 core server chips. - Positioned against Xeon
  • 8/6 core enthusiast/performance mainstream chips - Positioned against i7/i5/i3
  • 4 core mainstream/budget chips - Positioned against Pentium/Celeron
And have a different brand name for each. I imagine they should compare favorably if positioned that way. Hell, even if the 4 core CPUs were positioned against the i3 CPUs, it'd be favorable for them.

Again, as you mentioned, if the leaked benchmarks are representative of shipping silicon.

Regards,
SB
 
ToTTenTranz said:
I'm guessing the Core i3 will start to die shortly because most games are now fully using 4 cores and HT just doesn't cut it, as recent benchmarks put the 3GHz i5 7400 on par with an i3 7340K overclocked to 4.8GHz (which also consumes over 50% more power). That or the i3 will go down to Pentium's price bracket, eventually leaving core-based Celeron models to die.
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None of these Pentium vs i3 comparisons even mention that Pentium doesn't support AVX and AVX2 instruction sets. Doesn't matter much right now in games, but I am sure there will be AAA games in future that require AVX. Skylake/Kaby Pentium is the only recent CPU model that doesn't support AVX. Every other PC processor since 2011 supports AVX (Sandy Bridge+, Bulldozer+). Except the Intel ATOM netbook/tablet CPUs (but these do not meet any AAA game minimum requirements). The AMD Jaguar netbook/tablet CPU also supports AVX, and it is used by Sony and Microsoft consoles.

I personally dislike the decision to drop AVX support from Pentium, as it will certainly generate lots of consumer complaints towards game developers in the future. I wouldn't recommend these CPUs to gamers.
 
sebbbi said:
doesn't support AVX and AVX2 instruction sets. Doesn't matter much right now in games
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Most games use SSE?
From a quick google it seems Cinebench 15 is SSE2 only which may be why Zen is doing well vs Intel, would be interesting to see performance with older versions/properly optimised software (are there actually any compilers that do an even handed job while enabling latest tech?)
 
sebbbi said:
None of these Pentium vs i3 comparisons even mention that Pentium doesn't support AVX and AVX2 instruction sets. Doesn't matter much right now in games, but I am sure there will be AAA games in future that require AVX. Skylake/Kaby Pentium is the only recent CPU model that doesn't support AVX. Every other PC processor since 2011 supports AVX (Sandy Bridge+, Bulldozer+). Except the Intel ATOM netbook/tablet CPUs (but these do not meet any AAA game minimum requirements). The AMD Jaguar netbook/tablet CPU also supports AVX, and it is used by Sony and Microsoft consoles.

I personally dislike the decision to drop AVX support from Pentium, as it will certainly generate lots of consumer complaints towards game developers in the future. I wouldn't recommend these CPUs to gamers.
Click to expand...
What are the benefits of avx in games? How would it helps developers?

Enviado desde mi HTC One mediante Tapatalk
 
So it looks like AMD Zen core delivers >52% better IPC compare to XV core! Pretty impressive if that slide reproduction floating around is correct!

Sorry no link as typing on phone in the middle of work day.
 
xEx said:
What are the benefits of avx in games? How would it helps developers?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions

SSE vectors are only 4-wide. AVX adds 8-wide vectors and some new instructions (broadcast, permute, masked move). Also AVX is non-destructive (3 operands), meaning that AVX doesn't need to write the result over one of the inputs. This reduces register pressure and removes need to generate extra mov instructions. On Intel CPUs, you can reach up to 2x higher FLOPS with AVX compared to SSE. Without AVX you can only reach 1/2 peak FLOPS of modern Intel CPUs. AMD splits AVX instructions to two 4-wide instructions. Thus AVX is a smaller gain for AMD. Reduced instruction cache pressure (1/2 instructions) and the other smaller gains mentioned above still hold.

The problem is that if you try to run AVX code on a CPU that doesn't support AVX, it the program will crash (illegal opcode). This is same problem as running SSE4 code on a CPU that only supports SSE3. Game developer could code support for both SSE4 and AVX, but that requires extra time and maintenance (doubled code). Thus most games nowadays use either SSE3 or SSE4 on PC. AVX code is usually only found in console specific parts of the engine (as consoles are guaranteed to support AVX).

Game developers would obviously want to write all their vector code as AVX, as AVX is better than SSE. The problem however is PCs that have older CPUs than Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer. Many casual gamers are still using 6-core AMD Phenoms, Intel Nehalem (first i5/i7 gen) and Intel Core 2 Quads. We still need to wait for a year or two to drop support for non-AVX CPUs. Unfortunately the new Pentiums with disabled AVX support complicate this situation. I am just saying that there's no guarantee that all future games run on these particular Pentium CPU models.
 
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Btw I know a CPU is made by an army of very important and smart guys but damn, keller is such a god, more than 12% improvement over an already double and "optimism" goal is just incredible. If I were Lisa I would offert a blank check for him to come back.
 
Here's something I got from Gigabyte's new motherboards that will probably be very relevant when Raven Ridge comes out:

- They all say the iGPU can access a maximum of 2GB of shared memory
- They all have HDMI 1.4 ports and/or DVI ports.

No HDMI 2.0 or Displayport 1.3.
No Freesync and no HDCP 2.2? This is very bad.
I recon if USB-C 3.1 is natively supported one could find an adapter for alternate mode and have all that (assuming there's a HDCP 2.2 key somewhere in the process?), but not having it by default is a really bad decision.
 
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