AMD will launch AM4 platform in March 2016 says industry source

[BigDaveX]

People have always valued performance and power consumption, regardless of brand. AMD used to have it all back in the day. Having said that, I don't remember many people complaining about their Intel rigs consuming more watts for worse performance, compared with AMD.

Of course you don't remember. Nobody was buying Intel rigs back then, aside from the people who were buying desktop Pentium M boards, and so obviously wouldn't have complained about its performance-per-watt.

The DDR based P4 systems were universally dogs, only the Northwood P4 with RAMBUS was competitive in certain specific benchmarks such as Q3A and linux kernel compilation.

You're conflating a bunch of different things. The first P4 incarnation, Willamette came with either RDRAM (very expensive, but a lot faster) or PC-133 SDRAM (cheap and widely available), and was decent but not great with the former, and complete crap with the latter. By the time Northwood came around, Intel had a DDR chipset; RDRAM was faster still, but DDR was still plenty competitive, and Intel really raced ahead in this period because AMD initially floundered on their 130nm process. Then, Intel finally left RDRAM behind for good in early 2003 with Northwood-C and the 875P chipset, which just completely crushed any remaining competition from the K7 line.

 

[Sweepr]

Anyone that could afford it ran a X2. Including myself. For those exact reasons. But then came Conroe.

I wish Pentium M (Dothan) was more popular among desktop users back then. In late 2004 you could buy a nice Intel system (855G-based socket 479 MB + Pentium M) that rivaled K8 performance per clock at much lower power consumption. I owned one back then.

Also before Conroe there was Yonah, the original Core Duo. Great performance, later on I skipped Core 2 Duo and bought a discounted Core 2 Quad instead.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Anyone that could afford it ran a X2. Including myself. For those exact reasons. But then came Conroe.

I had friends who insisted on buying Intel for some reason. I never understood that. I even kept one Pentium 3 rig, just because it was so damn power-efficient for what I used it for. The idle/full power consumption of early Athlon/Pentium 4's was terrible, compared with older chips ( i.e. ~30W TDP vs ~100W TDP). When Conroe came out, I was sold. It had everything, low idle/full power consumption and mind-blowing performance per megahertz compared with P4. The lower clocked Conroes weren't much faster than Athlon X2 though but with higher clocks, they performed extremely well. The idle power consumption finally began seeing hefty reductions.... every generation until it "peaked" in Haswell. Progress was good for Intel, but AMD somewhere lost its way in a dark tunnel. Still the same desktop AM3 socket we've seen for years... fingers crossed we shall see some action next year on that front

I wish Pentium M (Dothan) was more popular among desktop users back then. In late 2004 you could buy a nice Intel system (855G-based socket 479 MB + Pentium M) that rivaled K8 performance per clock at much lower power consumption. I owned one back then.

I owned a Merom (T7200) in a desktop board, w/ 4 gigs of SO-DIMM. Power consumption was good. In fact, I had two boards, one MSI board with expansion to PCI slots. I can probably still find this "junk" in the loft, heh.

Also before Conroe there was Yonah, the original Core Duo. Great performance, later on I skipped Core 2 Duo and bought a discounted Core 2 Quad instead.

Then we can also mention Tualatin w/ L2 512kb with some mods. Yeah, we've come a long way.

 

[AtenRa]

I dont know about you but I really liked some P4s, like the 1.6A and 2.4GHz Northwood. I still have my 2.4GHz Northwood that could OC to 3.7GHz on air with the ThermalRight SLK cooper Heat-Sink.

And then the Prescott Pentium HT 640 was another nice chip. I reached 4.2GHz on this one.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I dont know about you but I really liked some P4s, like the 1.6A and 2.4GHz Northwood. I still have my 2.4GHz Northwood that could OC to 3.7GHz on air with the ThermalRight SLK cooper Heat-Sink.

The Cedar Mills were the late cool ones. I believe, they were named in xx1/xx3 fashion. But you needed a more recent 775 board to take advantage of SpeedStep, it seemed like a cool feature to drop clocks from 3.4 Ghz to 2.8 Ghz. But it was a start in the right direction. Intel released a bunch of P4/PD cpus late in life just right before Core 2 Duo showed up. No idea what market Intel was trying to target them with.

And then the Prescott Pentium HT 640 was another nice chip. I reached 4.2GHz on this one.

Did you have a chance to measure its AC power consumption, stock vs oc?

 

[Fjodor2001]

Anyone that could afford it ran a X2. Including myself. For those exact reasons.

Just curious, what would it take for you to buy a new AMD CPU again? Where would AMD Zen have to be performance and price-wise for you to buy it?

 

[BigDaveX]

Intel released a bunch of P4/PD cpus late in life just right before Core 2 Duo showed up. No idea what market Intel was trying to target them with.

I don't think they particularly cared who bought them - though as I recall there were actually a fair few enthusiasts who picked up 900-series Pentium Ds because of the insane overclocks that were feasible - they just wanted to make something that would allow them to work out the kinks in their 65nm process before going full speed ahead with Core 2. Prescott was a head-on collision between a poorly-conceived architectural redesign and a 90nm process that was basically a dud; Intel's whole Tick-Tock cadence almost certainly came about in order to avoid a repeat of that fiasco.

 

[AtenRa]

Did you have a chance to measure its AC power consumption, stock vs oc?

At that time power consumption was not in my vocabulary, it was only OC OC OC

 

[krumme]

I guess the brand with the highest perf also decides if perf/w is important for consumers

Take k6-2 that at its time was an efficient and very cheap mobile chip.

And yonah core duo that was a blast imo for mobile also.

Both star product that didnt get the attention and recognition they deserved.

 

[jpiniero]

Can we now put what this "industry source" says to bed?

If MSI doesn't have specifications from AMD yet there will not be boards in March.

He did specifically ask about Zen. Since Zen APUs are a long way off, it's possible Bristol Ridge only supports Carrizo DDR4?

 

[cbn]

He did specifically ask about Zen. Since Zen APUs are a long way off, it's possible Bristol Ridge only supports Carrizo DDR4?

These AM4 boards are supposed to support Bristol Ridge, Stoney Ridge and Zen 8c/16T.

Assuming Bristol Ridge uses the same die as Carrizo (but has DDR4 enabled rather than DDR3) we assumed AM4 would show up without Zen 8C/16T available.

But it may be that they will push AM4 back till Zen 8C/16T is ready.

 

[SPBHM]

I had friends who insisted on buying Intel for some reason. I never understood that.

I think you will find that some people did the same with AMD, buying Bulldozer because they had Phenoms and Athlons before more than anything else,

but specially with people building PCs, AMD was extremely popular during the k7-k8 days (and even Phenom II), if Zen (or whatever new AMD CPU) can deliver, convincing OEMs might be difficult, but for people building their own PCs, not really.

 

[jpiniero]

Assuming Bristol Ridge uses the same die as Carrizo (but has DDR4 enabled rather than DDR3) we assumed AM4 would show up without Zen 8C/16T available.

It's a different die I thought since it doesn't have HDL.

 

[cbn]

It's a different die I thought since it doesn't have HDL.

Citation on it not having HDL?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Just curious, what would it take for you to buy a new AMD CPU again? Where would AMD Zen have to be performance and price-wise for you to buy it?

Like previous when I had the X2, tho it was short lived and expensive like hell. Its not some sort of rocket science.

But forget your Zen dreams, its not going to happen.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I don't think they particularly cared who bought them - though as I recall there were actually a fair few enthusiasts who picked up 900-series Pentium Ds because of the insane overclocks that were feasible - they just wanted to make something that would allow them to work out the kinks in their 65nm process before going full speed ahead with Core 2. Prescott was a head-on collision between a poorly-conceived architectural redesign and a 90nm process that was basically a dud; Intel's whole Tick-Tock cadence almost certainly came about in order to avoid a repeat of that fiasco.

90nm was fine, Pentium-M is the example.

 

[The Stilt]

It's a different die I thought since it doesn't have HDL.

I find it extremely unlikely that AMD would redesign Excavator with HP instead of HDL just to gain 200-300MHz additional frequency. Afterall the 28nm HPP process they´ve used since Excavator is even more limited in terms of Fmax.

Not in their financial situation and especially not this late. It´s like giving a heart transplant for a 98 year old person with couple years left to live, in the best case.

As far as I know, Bristol Ridge has no physical changes over Carrizo. AMD did the same exact thing as with Richland or Godavari before. These parts didn´t have physical changes either, just more mature process and different config bits at most.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Nice find. So motherboard makers are not even working on anything yet.

No, it just means MSI isn't working on anything yet. Though the way things are going, we may not see AM4 until June regardless.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Like previous when I had the X2, tho it was short lived and expensive like hell. Its not some sort of rocket science.

Care to be more specific? Would e.g. a Zen with 8 core IB/Haswell-E performance at $600 and 95 W TDP do it for you? Or does it have to both faster, cheaper and lower TDP than the corresponding Intel equivalent for you to consider an AMD product?

But forget your Zen dreams, its not going to happen.

Since you don't know what my expectations for Zen are, how do you it will not happen?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Care to be more specific? Would e.g. a Zen with 8 core IB/Haswell-E performance at $600 and 95 W TDP do it for you? Or does it have to both faster, cheaper and lower TDP than the corresponding Intel equivalent for you to consider an AMD product?

Since you don't know what my expectations for Zen are, how do you it will not happen?

You can try all the hypothetical games you want. But I want to see the real product rather than overhyped fantasy expectations. You also forgot the clockspeed of your fabled 8 core product. Are we talking 2.5Ghz at 95W?

We all know what you expect of Zen.

 

[Fjodor2001]

You can try all the hypothetical games you want. But I want to see the real product rather than overhyped fantasy expectations. You also forgot the clockspeed of your fabled 8 core product. Are we talking 2.5Ghz at 95W?

It doesn't matter if the performance comes from higher clocks or IPC. So if it performs as 8 core IB/Haswell-E, then would you be interested in buying it assuming the price is right?

We all know what you expect of Zen.

I'm impressed. Then you more know about what I expect than I do myself, because I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I only have a rough guess.

 

[rainy]

As far as I know, Bristol Ridge has no physical changes over Carrizo. AMD did the same exact thing as with Richland or Godavari before. These parts didn´t have physical changes either, just more mature process and different config bits at most.

I have agreed with you on that part, however my question is: how it's possible that upcoming top mobile APU (FX-9830P?) have so much higher base clock than FX-8800P (3.0 GHz vs 2.1)?

 

[el etro]

I find it extremely unlikely that AMD would redesign Excavator with HP instead of HDL just to gain 200-300MHz additional frequency. Afterall the 28nm HPP process they´ve used since Excavator is even more limited in terms of Fmax.

So great to know. So, the benefits of HDL really pay the downsides of the tech. Good to be carried over Zen.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It doesn't matter if the performance comes from higher clocks or IPC. So if it performs as 8 core IB/Haswell-E, then would you be interested in buying it assuming the price is right?

8 cores at 2.5Ghz with IB/HW IPC and 95W, no I dont want it. I wouldn't want it at 3Ghz either for that matter.

I'm impressed. Then you more know about what I expect than I do myself, because I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I only have a rough guess.

If your memory is that short, that you forgot your own statements...sure.

 

[Magic Carpet]

8 cores at 2.5Ghz with IB/HW IPC and 95W, no I dont want it. I wouldn't want it at 3Ghz either for that matter.

I think it's clear, Shintai doesn't want to downgrade his current build with Zen.

As for me, I want 6700K performance cheaper then I could upgrade my other systems with Zen. If AMD is targeting IB/HW level of performance, it's a fail, imo. At the very least it should be able to beat i3 6100 in 4T workloads to be even considered in budget builds. Yeah, 2016 is around the corner.