AnandtechAMD Carrizo ExcavatorReview

[BigDaveX]

It's genuinely cute that the AnandTech writers think that AMD has anywhere close to the same resources to work with OEMs that Intel does

It's not impossible for AMD to get design wins even with their limited resources - if you were to go back to ten years ago today, you'd have found plenty of high-quality notebooks that contained Turion 64 processors. Definitely less than their Core Duo or Pentium M counterparts, mind, but they were there.

Regardless of what Intel may be doing to sweeten the deal, OEMs know that most buyers wouldn't buy a product in the higher price range regardless of specs, and buyers who are on the look-out for higher-end products will pass over an AMD APU in favour of an Intel chip, because the performance on the AMD parts just isn't there. So, they just don't put the resources into developing AMD products.

 

[raghu78]

It's not FUD. I know these systems are single channel. I know its not fair. But this is basically all there is out there. If AMD gives OEMs the option to cripple their systems with single channel RAM, then that is what they will do. Same goes for cooling solutions that dont allow for max turbo, 5400 rpm hard drives, 768p panels, and even cat cores. They will pinch it all every way they can.

That is why I've been arguing that aMD should build ALL their SoCs with HBM and even stick flash on there too. And if they can, make their display controllers require a minimum 1080p panel in order to function. I dont know how feasiable that is, but they need to do this to recover their brand image and actually get some real design wins.

well said. i would go even further and say AMD needs a disruptive design for Zen APUs with HBM2. Just design a PC on an interposer. Get rid off DDR4 system memory. Quad core Zen APU with 1024 sp and 2048 bit HBM2 memory bus. 16 GB HBM2 using 8 Hi stacks. You can do wonders to form factor if you get rid off DDR4 and reduce board size. Go for an SSD storage only option. Build it with a Freesync enabled 1080p IPS panel. Thin and light options with TDP of 25-30w. Performance options at 45w-55w with beefier cooling and increased perf. AMD should pitch the performance parts against Intel notebooks with Nvidia GP107 graphics (1024 cc) using GDDR5. AMD will be able to build such a system at lower cost than Intel + Nvidia systems. AMD can provide better battery life and much more portability than a discrete GPU system with DDR4 memory. With DX12 and Vulcan this device would be more like a PS4 in a performance notebook with outstanding gaming perf, perf/watt and perf/sq mm.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Carrizo 28nm
broadwell 14nm

broadwell Dual Channel

Carrizo Single Channel

D:

Doesn't matter if you use single or dual channel in CB. And 14nm cant save it, far from. Its a disaster and shows my the next APU is a bigger flop than the previous time after time.

 

[Shaun_Brannen]

I guess that even after you take the blinders off, you won't be able to see what's written after the $ sign & of course what csbin said :thumbsup:

The FUD will continue so long as there are vested & invested interests here (& elsewhere) btw Intel's screwing their customers, who bought the non-K BCLK fad, was also the latter's fault right

You aren't wrong, but your perspective could use some serious adjustment. When Intel is able to charge more for similar performance, that's a bad thing for AMD, not a good thing.

In the end, it's not a good thing for consumers either, because when AMD's finished shooting themselves in the foot over and over, and they've finally bled out -- consumers won't even have them as a choice anymore.

I don't want to hear any nonsense about how people have been saying "AMD's doomed" for years either -- one of these days, they finally will succumb to their own incompetence. The only reason they're around at all is because a strong economy has carried them regardless of their poor management.

I mean, even AtenRa and raghu are criticizing AMD... but I guess they'll have your undying, baseless loyalty until the bitter end.

 

[AtenRa]

AMD is in no position to dictate terms to anyone, there's also this possibility that the other chipmaker wouldn't be too thrilled with a better design & would probably cut their incentives to OEM's :sneaky:

To anyone who's averse to this ludicrous idea, I say Intel's glorious record speaks for itself & will continue unabated in the future, z87-z170 lockdown is testament to that.

There are ways to sell your product the way you want to. You dont always have to innovate, look what other have done in the past. I can only hint on NVIDIA and Fermi.
Im sure this race to the bottom was RRs doing, following Lenovos paradigm. AMD doesnt need to sell billions of chips, they need to sell enough at the right price and make consumers want to buy their products.

Huge mistake not to create a demo Carrizo Laptop for reviews on launch date. But now we know why they didnt allowed to review Carrizo back then. A good Carrizo dual channel Demo Laptop would make all those crap OEMs devices look like shit. Nobody would buy those OEM laptops.

 

[Abwx]

Disaster.

The disaster is for Intel, look at the NUC CB 11.5 score :

And let see how much it consume to get this score :

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-NUC-5i5RYH-Mini-PC-Review.138978.0.html

Up to 42W, and there s no screen and so on, the chip use as much as 25-27W..

Of course the Intel plateforms werent set at 15W in the bios, in this graph they are basicaly comparing a 15W chip to 25-35W ones...

 

[krumme]

I think the analysis is wrong.
The purpose of carizo is to move some old gf 28nm capacity nobody else wants.
Its about safeguarding mubadala investment in gf.
Nomatter what happens it needs to move it.
Lowend always sell. Its safe strategy. Low risk.

Look what is awailable to amd (effectively mubadala)
A crappy arch intended for everything else but this. But its the only option.

It wouldnt matter if it was dual channel. Still weak. Its not something you build a brand on.

What is going to happen is a lot of dirt cheap 28nm capacity dropped on segment that would otherwise have kabini soc.
From that perspective what is not to like as a consumer?
Its this or kabini/atom

The capacity is there. Its going to get produced no matter what - its politics and oil money. Prices will just go way down. For those segments single channel is fine. So is 15w. They are both requirements.

 

[R0H1T]

You aren't wrong, but your perspective could use some serious adjustment. When Intel is able to charge more for similar performance, that's a bad thing for AMD, not a good thing.

In the end, it's not a good thing for consumers either, because when AMD's finished shooting themselves in the foot over and over, and they've finally bled out -- consumers won't even have them as a choice anymore.

I don't want to hear any nonsense about how people have been saying "AMD's doomed" for years either -- one of these days, they finally will succumb to their own incompetence. The only reason they're around at all is because a strong economy has carried them regardless of their poor management.

I mean, even AtenRa and raghu are criticizing AMD... but I guess they'll have your undying, baseless loyalty until the bitter end.

I guess when people stop giving Intel free passes for their anti competitive practices, or blocking (non Z/k) OC, for x97 the sales continued for well over a year, or all the chipset problems they've had till date then we'll talk. Until then let's enjoy Intel sucking the life out of the PC space :thumbsup:

 

[MrTeal]

I guess that even after you take the blinders off, you won't be able to see what's written after the $ sign & of course what csbin said :thumbsup:

The FUD will continue so long as there are vested & invested interests here (& elsewhere) btw Intel's screwing their customers, who bought the non-K BCLK fad, was also the latter's fault right

YES

not dual-channel

Did anyone actually read the article? It's not like Ian built these systems, these were laptops sourced by AMD for testing from their partners. Essentially the whole article was on the current state of the AMD mobile ecosystem, and the design choices being made by the OEMs. They're the ones providing single channel laptops, or premium priced laptops with fundamental design flaws.

What would the Y700 look like with dual channel DDR3-2133 and hybrid crossfire? I'd love to see that test. Unfortunately, you can't buy a laptop like that. Regardless of the fundemental abilities of the Carrizo silicon, Sweepr is right; the current state of available Carrizo designs is a disaster.

 

[dark zero]

So many garbage Carrizo laptops The only worthwhile selling point is the graphics, and then they strangle it with a tiny TDP and single channel RAM. Junk, the lot of them.

Only Carrizo? Even Intel since Broadwell went in the retarded way of the OEMs!

The HP Probook I have, which must be fast and reliable, has a freaking Intel Core i5 5200U processor! Is so slow that even when I am doing some work at home (tracing some codes), it takes up to 1.5X more time compared to my sis laptop which have a Core i3 380M!

OEMs are ruining their own products selling crap tier processors on Professional Products! Really HP? Really Lenovo? That is supposed to enter with the H tier products and the U tier is only for slim products.

What the hell are they thinking?!
They want to destroy the whole laptop industry by themselves? By using their sheer stupidity and lack of common sense?

There where the times where we saw a Pentium and even a Celeron having a dGPU.... Seems that times are changing and not for good.

BTW, seems that Steamroller and Excavator ended to be a big disaster, just like Intel Cherry Trail. Bad designs destroyed their market... And considering that the CAT chips were better...

 

[raghu78]

You aren't wrong, but your perspective could use some serious adjustment. When Intel is able to charge more for similar performance, that's a bad thing for AMD, not a good thing.

In the end, it's not a good thing for consumers either, because when AMD's finished shooting themselves in the foot over and over, and they've finally bled out -- consumers won't even have them as a choice anymore.

I don't want to hear any nonsense about how people have been saying "AMD's doomed" for years either -- one of these days, they finally will succumb to their own incompetence. The only reason they're around at all is because a strong economy has carried them regardless of their poor management.

I mean, even AtenRa and raghu are criticizing AMD... but I guess they'll have your undying, baseless loyalty until the bitter end.

AMD is completely to blame for the Carrizo mess. AMD should not pander to OEMs. Atleast with Zen and Polaris they have an opportunity to set things on the right course. AMD needs to get out of the race to bottom syndrome. If it means doing a design like Surface Pro or Macbook Pro so be it. AMD Zen APUs with HBM2 could start off a paradigm change in notebooks provided AMD has the guts to sport a disruptive PC design with good industrial design and ergonomics and market it on their own. Its possible and definitely worth the attempt.

One thing is sure AMD's APUs over the next 3 years (2017 - 2019) will see massive increase in FLOPS. DDR4 is not going to be enough to feed the high performance next gen Polaris GPU portion of the Zen APUs. In 2017 we are likely to have 14nm Zen APUs. AMD can then get a shrink to TSMC or Samsung/GF 10nm in 2018 followed by a shrink to TSMC 7nm in 2019. TSMC 7nm brings close to 75% shrink from 16FF+ and 55-58% power reduction at same performance. We are likely to see a 2 TFLOP APU in 2017 and a 4 TFLOP APU in 2019. HBM2 is the only solution to feed this kind of beast. AMD can take this as a golden opportunity to push for a disruptive change and basically design a PC with a unified system memory using HBM2. There are huge area, power and cost reductions to be had from getting rid off DDR4 memory.

We are seeing even Microsoft find reasons to launch their own devices. For AMD it makes even more sense to design their own notebook given the level of integration possible and huge improvements to portability and battery life.

 

[Sweepr]

Of course the Intel plateforms werent set at 15W in the bios, in this graph they are basicaly comparing a 15W chip to 25-35W ones...

Cut down on your boring excuses. According to NBC even 35W Carrizo with dual-channel RAM is slower than Skylake-U @ CB 11.5. Your predictions were utterly wrong.

 

[Phynaz]

OK let me say here that all this crap is AMD FAULT and im dead serious this time.

DONT let the OEM destroy you, but that is exactly what the OEMs did to Carrizo. They completely destroyed a very nice product with awfully bad designed Laptops.

Im asking for a $400-500 35W TDP dual channel 2133MHz iGPU only 1600x900 14" Carrizo laptop that could make AMD and its product rise above the competition. But nooooo, OEMs know best. They create those abominations that nobody here and i mean nobody here even a die hard AMD fan boy would ever want to buy.

If AMD doesnt change its priorities and understand that if the public doesnt want to buy your products, OEMs would only make you look worse if you dont put guidelines.

keep up the good work guys, im hopping that you will not destroy ZEN as you did to Carrizo.

I'm really surprised to see you post this. I haven't read the reviews yet, but for you to come down on AMD like that, you must be very unhappy.

 

[Phynaz]

The disaster is for Intel, look at the NUC CB 11.5 score :

And let see how much it consume to get this score :

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-NUC-5i5RYH-Mini-PC-Review.138978.0.html

Up to 42W, and there s no screen and so on, the chip use as much as 25-27W..

Of course the Intel plateforms werent set at 15W in the bios, in this graph they are basicaly comparing a 15W chip to 25-35W ones...

This isn't an Intel thread. Stop derailing it with your fud

 

[Rngwn]

Only Carrizo? Even Intel since Broadwell went in the retarded way of the OEMs!

The HP Probook I have, which must be fast and reliable, has a freaking Intel Core i5 5200U processor! Is so slow that even when I am doing some work at home (tracing some codes), it takes up to 1.5X more time compared to my sis laptop which have a Core i3 380M!

OEMs are ruining their own products selling crap tier processors on Professional Products! Really HP? Really Lenovo? That is supposed to enter with the H tier products and the U tier is only for slim products.

What the hell are they thinking?!
They want to destroy the whole laptop industry by themselves? By using their sheer stupidity and lack of common sense?

There where the times where we saw a Pentium and even a Celeron having a dGPU.... Seems that times are changing and not for good.

BTW, seems that Steamroller and Excavator ended to be a big disaster, just like Intel Cherry Trail. Bad designs destroyed their market... And considering that the CAT chips were better...

Really? The 5200U scored 2.8-2.9 in CB11.5 MT compared to 2.1 by the 380M. Either that was a power plan setting, or your laptop got to have some serious throttling.

BTW, I believe most people have no clue what is under the hood of 5600U or 5700HQ and might actually believe both parts are going to be comparable (c'mon both are i7 *shrugs*). They are just taking advantages of those average joes and selling those crappy laptops. Another good example would be OEMs putting crappy dGPUs that are barely better or even worse than the iGPUs. Well, "dGPUs are miles better than iGPUs" impression are quite strong there.

 

[Abwx]

Cut down on your boring excuses. According to NBC even 35W Carrizo with dual-channel RAM is slower than Skylake-U @ CB 11.5. Your predictions were utterly wrong.

I provided the NBC test of a 5200 in isolation, it s you who is making excuses by using non controled tests and sticking fairy taled TDP that exist only in marketing slides, the SKL U is about the same as a BDW, they just increased the temp ceilling to get better scores...

As for NBC neutrality what about their test of this very same Lenovo laptop.??.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-Y700-15ACZ-Notebook-Review.158768.0.html

: Even if the extensive benchmarks list leaves a different impression, you can hardly play any 3D game without frustration. The reason is slowdowns appearing in short intervals. It is strange that they do not show in the frame rates recorded by FRAPS, but, subjectively, they are all the more disturbing.

Lol, it cant be measured but for sure it s eye catching, i guess that the sujectivity he s talking about is the one provided by a....check...

 

[raghu78]

I'm really surprised to see you post this. I haven't read the reviews yet, but for you to come down on AMD like that, you must be very unhappy.

Even the most ardent AMD supporter will be frustrated by their lack of spine and giving in to the OEMs stupid requests. Crippling Carrizo's powerful GPU with single channel memory is a disgusting thing to do. These OEMs don't give a damn about the user experience or perception of AMD's products. These OEMs are only bothered about their margins. They will do anything to improve that at the cost of destroying a product. Unless you are Intel who pays them a lot for marketing programs they are not going to put a lot of effort into great designs with a lot of configurability and good default configurations.

AMD has to take a decision to change the perception of their products by sporting their own decisions which are disruptive, well designed and aggressively marketed. I think for that they need a fresh start (or shall we say a reset point) from the architectural point. With Zen/Polaris based APUs they have that opportunity. I hope Raja is entrusted with the responsibility of getting some interesting designs out for the Zen/Polaris APUs with HBM2. I have respect for his achievements and leadership and think he can do a good job.

 

[jhu]

I'm really surprised to see you post this. I haven't read the reviews yet, but for you to come down on AMD like that, you must be very unhappy.

Everyone has a breaking point. I gave up after Piledriver.

 

[dark zero]

Really? The 5200U scored 2.8-2.9 in CB11.5 MT compared to 2.1 by the 380M. Either that was a power plan setting, or your laptop got to have some serious throttling.

BTW, I believe most people have no clue what is under the hood of 5600U or 5700HQ and might actually believe both parts are going to be comparable (c'mon both are i7 *shrugs*). They are just taking advantages of those average joes and selling those crappy laptops. Another good example would be OEMs putting crappy dGPUs that are barely better or even worse than the iGPUs. Well, "dGPUs are miles better than iGPUs" impression are quite strong there.

Yeah, not joking... Is an Acer 5742ZG with the upgraded processor from P6000 to i3 380M and is supposed to be weaker... Both power plans were set to High Performance. The only disadvantage is that the 380M is really hot. Maybe the i5 I throtling as hell... Damn... HP is killing the Probook brand with those things.
Just like the rest of the industry...if some Chinese company start to sell the H tier based laptop at similar cost than the U tier, I'll go to the chinese.

 

[AtenRa]

I'm really surprised to see you post this. I haven't read the reviews yet, but for you to come down on AMD like that, you must be very unhappy.

You really dont want an Intel only consumer market, its not good for anyone except Intel. There are countries even inside EU today that Intel has 99% of the laptop market share. No competition and Intel crap 15W TDP 15.6" Laptops are selling for 400-500 Euro, give me a brake. We had 11.6" Netops at $300-350 a few years ago, now 11.6" is a $1200 ultrabook territory, really ???

 

[Abwx]

Even the most ardent AMD supporter will be frustrated by their lack of spine and giving in to the OEMs stupid requests. Crippling Carrizo's powerful GPU with single channel memory is a disgusting thing to do. These OEMs don't give a damn about the user experience or perception of AMD's products. These OEMs are only bothered about their margins. They will do anything to improve that at the cost of destroying a product. Unless you are Intel who pays them a lot for marketing programs they are not going to put a lot of effort into great designs with a lot of configurability and good default configurations.

I beg to differ, this is one laptop among others, generaly these are of good quality contrary to what is said here, at equal prices the AMD offerings are better overall.

Carrizo (excluding HP elite books) and SKL respectively :

https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=6749_13#xf_top

https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb&xf=6752_Core+ix-6xxxU#xf_top

 

[ShintaiDK]

You really dont want an Intel only consumer market, its not good for anyone except Intel. There are countries even inside EU today that Intel has 99% of the laptop market share. No competition and Intel crap 15W TDP 15.6" Laptops are selling for 400-500 Euro, give me a brake. We had 11.6" Netops at $300-350 a few years ago, now 11.6" is a $1200 ultrabook territory, really ???

You seem to mix stuff around to create a case for AMD. The market isn't changing with or without AMD.

 

[SlowSpyder]

OK let me say here that all this crap is AMD FAULT and im dead serious this time.

DONT let the OEM destroy you, but that is exactly what the OEMs did to Carrizo. They completely destroyed a very nice product with awfully bad designed Laptops.

Im asking for a $400-500 35W TDP dual channel 2133MHz iGPU only 1600x900 14" Carrizo laptop that could make AMD and its product rise above the competition. But nooooo, OEMs know best. They create those abominations that nobody here and i mean nobody here even a die hard AMD fan boy would ever want to buy.

If AMD doesnt change its priorities and understand that if the public doesnt want to buy your products, OEMs would only make you look worse if you dont put guidelines.

keep up the good work guys, im hopping that you will not destroy ZEN as you did to Carrizo.

The difference is, if Intel tells HP that they want certain configurations or they won't sell them CPU's, HP listens. AMD is probably just happy to have an OEM buy their CPU's/APU's so they can stay afloat until they have Zen... if Zen is good enough, AMD should have more leverage in getting better products.

 

[Rngwn]

The difference is, if Intel tells HP that they want certain configurations or they won't sell them CPU's, HP listens. AMD is probably just happy to have an OEM buy their CPU's/APU's so they can stay afloat until they have Zen... if Zen is good enough, AMD should have more leverage in getting better products.

I'm afraid that if AMD would try to do the same thing, the OEM would have "fine, I still have Intel, so no deal." kind of reaction.

 

[superstition]

It's interesting that the AnandTech writers think that AMD has anywhere close to the same resources to work with OEMs that Intel does or that the OEMs are interested in investing the time to build show-case AMD products around 2nd class silicon

The OEMs put these systems out mainly to try to keep Intel honest ("hey, we offer systems with your competitor's chips, too"), but it's quite plain to everybody involved that AMD's silicon/platforms are inferior. So AMD gets stuck into systems that require minimal R&D and have the absolute cheapest components possible.

It doesn't require extra R&D to use dual channel RAM.