AMD Raven Ridge 'Zen APU' Thread

[Gideon]

I'm really hopeful about the Raven Ridge Lineup being great, possibly even unreasonably so. AMD needs that as well, as mobile is where the money is (considering the number of CPUs sold).

Zeppelin features a highly advanced power management, as stated many times before. Just like Carrizo / Bristol Ridge, which feature a very similar PM, Zeppelin can infact support cTDP as well. cTDP is not officially supported (or available) on any consumer Zeppelin based SKU (AFAIK). The lack of official support is merely a distraction

850 points in Cinebench 15 at 30W is quite telling. Or not telling, but absolutely massive. Zeppelin can reach absolutely monstrous and unseen levels of efficiency, as long as it operates within its ideal frequency range.

Why to expect great things from Raven Ridge:

1. Desktop Ryzen is clocked way-above its efficiency curve sweet-spot, Ryzen should do disproportionately better in lower TDP environments with lower voltage (At least according to the quoted strictly technical thread post by Stilt)
2. Raven Ridge has no CCX communication issues, as it only has one to begin with.
3. It seems to be manufactured on the 14nm+ node, that should improve clocks somewhat (also see point 4)
4. The leaks indicate, that the models are in the 2XXX series (R7 2700U and R5 2500U). While this might be just marketing, it might mean that it actually has Pinnacle Ridge cores, which is done on the same node and released at about the same time. Or at the very least newer version than the desktop Zen

I'm probably getting carried away by rumor-site generated hype, but still can't wait till they announce the SKUs and the clocks

 

[VirtualLarry]

apparently the A12-9800 will be priced at about Ryzen5 1500X current price. In my opinion way, way overpriced for what it is.

Well, that's unfortunate. I was expecting under $130 for the BR APUs.

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't look at the slide in the post below that one yet.

$99 USD for the top BR APU SKU is fine by me. A friend of mine will likely be happy with that.
He currently has an A10-5800K. Will BR be much of an upgrade? He'll have to buy some DDR4, or trade me his DDR3 from his current rig, for some of my DDR4.

 

[AtenRa]

Well, that's unfortunate. I was expecting under $130 for the BR APUs.

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't look at the slide in the post below that one yet.

$99 USD for the top BR APU SKU is fine by me. A friend of mine will likely be happy with that.
He currently has an A10-5800K. Will BR be much of an upgrade? He'll have to buy some DDR4, or trade me his DDR3 from his current rig, for some of my DDR4.

I would wait for the RR release along with new X300 Micro-iTX motherboards in H1 2018

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Well, that's unfortunate. I was expecting under $130 for the BR APUs.

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't look at the slide in the post below that one yet.

$99 USD for the top BR APU SKU is fine by me. A friend of mine will likely be happy with that.

$99 is a lot more reasonable, but I'd still say they shouldn't charge more then $60-70 for it. Because desktop BR only has the CPU grunt to be a (fair) Celeron competitor. IGP is a lot better, but Excavator isn't suited as a gaming CPU.

He currently has an A10-5800K. Will BR be much of an upgrade? He'll have to buy some DDR4, or trade me his DDR3 from his current rig, for some of my DDR4.

No, not really. It'd be a side-grade at best, with better IGP. Wait for RR, or look at the Ryzen 3 1200 + GT1030. The 1200 absolutely smokes anything dual module BD derived.

 

[nathanddrews]

EDIT: In the context of Raven Ridge:
I think you're being optimistic about the price. $99 for a Ryzen CPU with better-than-Iris graphics included? I guess I could see that if it were a 2C/2T Celeron-equivalent around 2.2GHz or something.

 

[Gideon]

I think you're being optimistic about the price. $99 for a Ryzen CPU with better-than-Iris graphics included? I guess I could see that if it were a 2C/2T Celeron-equivalent around 2.2GHz or something.

As far as i understand they are talking about Bristol Ridge not Raven Ridge

 

[nathanddrews]

As far as i understand they are talking about Bristol Ridge not Raven Ridge

If so, then I retract my statement.

 

[cbn]

I'm pretty sure we'll see the return of 3-core CPU's with Raven Ridge.

Yeah triple core would be nice considering by the time Raven Ridge launches there should still be Core i5 7200U MX150 (Nvidia Pascal GP108 dGPU) laptops around.

In fact. sometimes the older laptop models linger for quite some time. ( Evidence: There are still plenty of Intel Skylake and Kabylake Core i5 and Core i7 940MX (Nvidia Maxwell GM108 dGPU) laptops for sale at Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006740 8000 600029658 601183898 4814&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE&PageSize=36 <----Of these 21 models, 19 have 940MX and 2 have 940M)

MX150 vs. 940MX:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11449/nvidia-announces-geforce-mx150-for-laptops

(NOTE: The cheapest 940MX laptop (with Core i5 7200U) currently listed at Newegg does use 2GB GDDR5---> https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834316125&ignorebbr=1 )

 

[cbn]

Comparison of MX150, 940MX (with GDDR5), 940MX (with DDR3), HD 620 (the iGPU found in Core i5 7200U and Core i5 8250U, etc.):

http://www.ultrabookreview.com/16888-acer-swift-3-sf314-52-review/#a5

(Notice how MX150 is significantly faster than 940MX GDDR5.....this, in part, due to higher memory bandwidth (20% higher) and more efficient delta color compression (20% improvement over Maxwell)).






How do you think 35W Raven Ridge will do in comparison?

My guess is that it will be a bit faster than 940MX GDDR5 for games*, but perhaps at certain custom settings (and lower resolutions) it could do better?

Example: Remember the testing AtenRA and I did with A10-7870K (with dual channel DDR3 2133) vs. Athlon x 4 860K and GT730 GDDR5? (The GT730 GDDR5 won 5 out 5 games at 1080p, but the APU won 3 out of 5 games at 720p).

*Assuming DDR4 2400 or DDR4 2667. With DDR4 3200, it should be significantly closer to MX150 at 1080p.

 

[PeterScott]

How do you think 35W Raven Ridge will do in comparison?

A little faster than Intel HD graphics. It doesn't look like there is any secret sauce in Vega. Just about any modern dGPU part is going to beat it.

 

[AtenRa]

A little faster than Intel HD graphics. It doesn't look like there is any secret sauce in Vega. Just about any modern dGPU part is going to

I will suggest you wait for the desktop BristolRidge reviews first on the 18th of August and then make any performance estimation for RavenRidge vs Intel HD

 

[PeterScott]

I will suggest you wait for the desktop BristolRidge reviews first on the 18th of August and then make any performance estimation for RavenRidge vs Intel HD

Bristol Ridge is nothing special:
https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/71...igpuncounterstrike-global-offensive-1920x1080

That's the 65W desktop version clocked at 3.8GHz base/4.2GHz boost with 1100 MHz GPU, and 2400MHz DDR4.

 

[cbn]

Bristol Ridge is nothing special:
https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/71...igpuncounterstrike-global-offensive-1920x1080

That's the 65W desktop version clocked at 3.8GHz base/4.2GHz boost with 1100 MHz GPU, and 2400MHz DDR4.

Looking at the Global Offensive results, why are the APUs faster in the medium setting @ 1080p ( A12-9800 @ 65.5 FPS and A10-7870K @ 70 FPS) than the low setting at 1080p (A12-9800 @ 52.3 FPS and A10-7870K @ 66 FPS)?

Here is the translation of the text above the two charts:

3DMark is a handy tool to determine relative performance differences, but for real world performance we need to look at real games. CounterStrike Global Offensive we run at a resolution of 1920 at 1080 pixels. We use two settings: Low and Medium. The A12-9800 performs less well than expected, including repeated tests.

 

[PeterScott]

It happens in some games, when on Low settings they run some more things on the CPU instead of the GPU, and the CPU is weak in BR.

Here is a similar discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4c2epv/info_fps_may_improve_on_high_instead_of_low/

 

[cbn]

It happens in some games, when on Low settings they run some more things on the CPU instead of the GPU, and the CPU is weak in BR.

Here is a similar discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4c2epv/info_fps_may_improve_on_high_instead_of_low/

Looks like it is strongly affecting AMD processors in CS:G0.

Example: 1080p low for CS:GO the G4520 (52.4 FPS) was actually beating the A12-9800 (52.3 FPS) by a hair, but then when switched to 1080p medium the A12-9800 (65.5 FPS) beats the G4520 (42.1 FPS) by a wide margin.

 

[PeterScott]

Raven Ridge should do better in both, it won't have to worry about CPU bottlenecking anymore.

But I still don't expect huge results. It will beat intel IGPs, but dGPUs will still be better.

 

[cbn]

For the low resolution and/or lower detail setting tests I think it will be very interesting to see how 35W Raven Ridge compares to Core i5 8250U (which is the first Intel 15W 4C/8T) and MX150.

Four Intel cores with HT at 15W (with all system RAM bandwidth dedicated to CPU) vs. Four AMD Zen cores with HT (with some system RAM bandwidth and part of the 35W power budget dedicated to the iGPU).

Assuming both laptops have DDR4 2667, do we end up getting 20W (or even 25W depending on the game) worth of the very efficient Zen cores (with shared bandwidth) going up against the 15W of Intel 4C/8T (with fully dedicated bandwidth)?

And for the mid range details settings (for 1080p) could it be the AMD CPU still does well enough (with reduced energy) to compensate for the iGPU assuming aftermarket DDR4 3200 is not bottlenecking the iGPU?

 

[cbn]

The gaming issue aside, two things I think 35W Raven Ridge would do well at compared to the Core i5 8250U (15W) and the M150 (25W) would be video editing and Blender.

Reason: for video editing Raven Ridge could allocate all 35W of its power budget to the CPU (whereas as the Core i5 8250U/MX150 combo has a fixed power budget, of course, for both CPU and dGPU).

And for Blender (assuming the OPEN CL improvements in Blender 2.79 work as advertised) rendering on the AMD iGPU would not only be much improved it was also allow for GPU rendering with a much larger amount of memory than typically used*--- 8GB,16GB or greater (depending on the how much RAM the laptop has). This, in contrast, to the 2GB the MX150.

*CPU rendering also makes use of system.

 

[cbn]

As a correction to the previous post (which I can't edit now):

Please change "it was also allow for GPU rendering with a much larger amount of memory than typically used" to "it will also allow for GPU rendering with a much larger amount of memory than typically used in a budget laptop".

 

[cbn]

As a comparison to Raven Ridge 35W in Blender 2.79 (using either Zen CPU or Vega iGPU), it would also be interesting to compare Intel's 45W CPU Kabylake i7-7700HQ. (This can actually be configured to 35W cTDP down....although I don't know if any of the manufacturers actually does this?)

Here is an example of a Core i7-7700HQ with MX150 laptop:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154149&cm_re=MX150-_-34-154-149-_-Product

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-PL62-7RC-001.235196.0.html

(This one is 15.6", 4.85 lbs, $799.99....heavier than what a 35W Raven Ridge laptop would likely weigh and more expensive.)

NOTE: This CPU usually comes with a GTX 1050 or better---> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-7700HQ-Notebook-Processor.187975.0.html

So at least four different comparisons for Blender 2.79:

1.) 35W Raven Ridge Vega iGPU using all of the system RAM for rendering.
2.) 35W Raven Ridge Zen CPU using all of the system RAM for rendering
3.) 45W Core i7-7700HQ CPU using all of the system RAM for rendering.
4.) MX150 using its 2GB GDDR5 VRAM for rendering (the 2GB VRAM vs. using System RAM limits the size of the scene that can be rendered)

SIDE NOTE: When considering 2.) vs. 3.) note how well the Zen CPUs do (vs. Intel CPUs) in the AMD Blender benchmark for 2.78c --> https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...at-running-the-amd-blender-benchmark.2507832/ (Other scenes should obviously be used as well though)


P.S. Another processor to consider would be Core i7 8700HQ?? (specs not available, but I predict to be a 45W 6C/12T, configurable to 35W cTDP down?). This also paired with MX150. It should fairly expensive and heavy though just like the Core i7 7700HQ and MX150.

 

[DrMrLordX]

the CPU is weak in BR.

More specifically, the small l2 cache of Bristol Ridge (and Carrizo before it) hampers its performance in many games. Kaveri wins a lot of game benchmarks against Bristol Ridge with iGPU and dGPU. The lower the resolution, the (relatively) worse are the results from Bristol Ridge.

I don't think we should draw too many conclusions about Raven Ridge's gaming performance from Bristol Ridge.

 

[cbn]

Assuming a comparison of 35W Raven Ridge vs. Core i5 8250U and MX150 vs. Core i7 7700HQ and MX150 (the two MX150 laptops currently found at Newegg here and here) and a budget Core i5 7200U and 940MX GDDR5 laptop here these would be my predictions for Blender 2.79 and Video editing (in order of fastest to slowest):

Blender (smaller scenes, 2GB or smaller):

1.) and 2.) Not sure what would be faster MX150 (at 25W) or Vega iGPU (using most of the 35W TDP of Raven Ridge). This will depend on how the improvements in OPEN CL pan out. According to this article It does look very encouraging at this point though.
3). 940MX GDDR5
4). Zen CPU (using most of Raven Ridge's 35W TDP)
5). Intel Core i7 7700HQ
6.) Core i5 8250U
7. Core i5 7200U

Blender (larger scenes, greater than 2GB...which excludes MX150 and 940MX GDDR5):

1.) Vega iGPU (using most of the 35W TDP of Raven Ridge)
2.) Zen CPU (using most of Raven Ridge's 35W TDP)
3.) Intel Core i7 7700HQ
4.) Intel Core i5 8250U
5.Intel Core i5 7200U

Video editing:

1.) Intel Core i7 7700HQ
2.) Zen CPU (using most of Raven Ridge's 35W TDP)
3.) Core i5 8250U
4. Core i5 7200U

P.S. Would be very interesting to see how Zen and Vega iGPU do in Blender installed on Linux as well.

 

[cbn]

The current pricing of the three laptops I linked in the previous post (All laptops happen to be Windows 10 Home 15.6" designs with 1080p screens, weighing 4.85 lbs):

Core i7 7700HQ with MX150, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HDD: $799.99 free shipping
Core i5 7200U with MX150, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SATA M.2 SSD: $699.99 free shipping
Core i5 7200U with 940MX GDDR5, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HDD : $539.99 free shipping.

 

[DisEnchantment]

New SKUs spotted
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-vega-8-and-vega-10-mobile-spotted

Ryzen 7 2700U with Radeon Vega 10 Mobile Graphics
Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 Mobile Graphics - This is the one reported as 15DD (Raven Ridge) Graphics corresponding to Open Source commits.

    {0x1002, 0x15dd, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_RAVEN|AMD_IS_APU|AMD_EXP_HW_SUPPORT},

However all the graphics are GFX 9XX series.

EDITed
Confusing. There are Mobile Graphics and APUs.

 

[AtenRa]

Trolling and off-topic are not allowed
I deleted this entire post as its WAY off-topic to stop more flames.
Markfw
Anandtech Moderator