(gamersnexus) AMD: "FX is Not EOL" & Why What We Need in a CPU is Changing

[Final8ty]

We recently posted about an alleged slide leak from AMD that, if real, seemed to suggest the end of the line for FX-series CPUs and the AM3+ socket. The slide stirred a great deal of concern throughout major social networks and enthusiast websites, and so I attempted to bring things back down to earth in our original analysis. I reached out to AMD for comment prior to publication, but we weren't able to speak with the company until yesterday.

AMD Manager of APU/CPU Product Reviews James Prior was quick to negate the slide's legitimacy: "I've never seen that slide before, I don't know where that came from," he told me in our call, and quickly followed-up by stating that "it's not real. FX is not end-of-life." Prior pointed-out that it's rare to ever see more than a year into the future with roadmaps, and that the real AMD roadmap looks like this:

http://www.gamersnexus.net/news/1240-future-of-amd-cpus-fx-not-eol

 

[Sweepr]

Nowhere in that slide it says FX is EOL. You will be able to buy the ''great'' FX83xx till the end of 2015. Does that mean they are launching new SR/EX-based models (with +2M/4C and no IGP)? Nope.

 

[Leyawiin]

Its a fake. Leave it at that until something concrete and irrefutable is released from AMD. As of yet it hasn't happened.

 

[jpiniero]

Its a fake. Leave it at that until something concrete and irrefutable is released from AMD. As of yet it hasn't happened.

AMD's own server roadmap shows they are going to release new Piledriver server models in 2014, so you might see some new FX processors, but it will still be Piledriver and might just be clockspeed tweaks.

 

[AtenRa]

From the same article.

"AMD will continue to supply AM3+ and AMD FX processors for the foreseeable future, as per AMD's official roadmap update at APU'13 [above]. Recently, AMD launched the FX-9000 series, AMD's fastest desktop processor to date. As AMD's business continues to evolve, AMD will focus on the areas of growth including support for the desktop PC enthusiast leveraging AMD's world-class processor design IP, including heterogeneous compute. AMD's FX branded products will continue to evolve and we look forward to sharing those updates in the future."

 

[Sweepr]

Well, I guess you can call Vishera-based models with Richland enhancements ''evolution''.

 

[AtenRa]

Well, I guess you can call Vishera-based models with Richland enhancements ''evolution''.

Obviously, they are evolved

 

[inf64]

Who is to say FX won't arrive on FM2+ in the future?

 

[Ajay]

Who is to say FX won't arrive on FM2+ in the future?

Ugh, kinda lame for a future FX CPU. Wouldn't you want at least 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes, maybe more? Maybe more than dual channel RAM?

 

[rtsurfer]

Nowhere in that slide it says FX is EOL. You will be able to buy the ''great'' FX83xx till the end of 2015. Does that mean they are launching new SR/EX-based models (with +2M/4C and no IGP)? Nope.

Who told you they are not...??
The current
roadmap just goes till 2014.

No, new FX CPUs in 2014. Nobody said anything about 2015.


Unless, you know, you can see the future.

Well, I guess you can call Vishera-based models with Richland enhancements ''evolution''.

Could you elaborate on this.
Can't figure what you are pointing at here.
Kaveri or the FX 9000(just OCed regular FX Cpus)..??

 

[Sweepr]

Who told you they are not...??
The current
roadmap just goes till 2014.

No, new FX CPUs in 2014. Nobody said anything about 2015.


Unless, you know, you can see the future.

There's a leaked roadmap (dont expect AMD to confirm anything about it) pointing Vishera till the end of 2015.
Unfortunatly I cant predict the future, but let me guess: AMD will repeat ''we will not EOL the FX-line'' till Vishera gets old and nobody remmembers about it, meanwhile by the end of 2015 everyone will be interested in newer APUs with much better ST performance.

 

[inf64]

There's a leaked roadmap (dont expect AMD to confirm anything about it) pointing Vishera till the end of 2015.
Unfortunatly I cant predict the future, but let me guess: AMD will repeat ''we will not EOL the FX-line'' till Vishera gets old and nobody remmembers about it, meanwhile by the end of 2015 everyone will be interested in newer APUs with much better ST performance.

About that "leaked" roadmap this whole article is about... Maybe read it?

 

[Sweepr]

About that "leaked" roadmap this whole article is about... Maybe read it?

Dont be naive informal64, you know they would never confirm anything from a leaked roadmap, especially if it could put them in a bad light. As much as we'd love 3M/4M SR/EX AMD CPUs and +4C/8T mainstream Intel CPUs its not hapenning (next year and quite possibly 2015), simply because thats not where the market is heading.

 

[blackened23]

Nowhere in that slide it says FX is EOL. You will be able to buy the ''great'' FX83xx till the end of 2015. Does that mean they are launching new SR/EX-based models (with +2M/4C and no IGP)? Nope.

This mirrors my thoughts exactly. Current FX CPUs aren't EOL, but they aren't making new ones. At least, there aren't any that they have made us aware of, and I highly doubt that they would keep products in the pipeline a secret.

 

[inf64]

@Sweepr

I'm not naive I just stated the facts that article mentions.

@ Blackened23

Why would AMD bother when performance wise (not power wise or perf/watt) they cover Haswell rather well in modern workloads? 9370 and 9590 (former especially) are positioned rather well. Most buyers in this price category don't care about power efficiency anyway so why should AMD spend millions on a new FX line when 4.4-5Ghz FX models do the job well anyway?

 

[blackened23]

The FX CPUs are substantially worse than Haswell by every metric (even when they're clocked 1000-1500mhz higher), so i'm not sure how to take your comment. The only metric they do well in are PC games that are so GPU limited that the GPU is doing all the work with the CPU doing not much of anything. In CPU limited tasks, all of the FX CPUs ... well...I wouldn't say they "cover" Haswell rather well.

 

[rtsurfer]

Dont be naive informal64, you know they would never confirm anything from a leaked roadmap, especially if it could put them in a bad light. As much as we'd love 3M/4M SR/EX AMD CPUs and +4C/8T mainstream Intel CPUs its not hapenning (next year and quite possibly 2015), simply because thats not where the market is heading.

Not happening next year, but might happen in 2015.

I dont expect AMD to leave their years of hardwork on the x86 platform and just walk away from it.

They are not financially caple enough to release a new CPU every year, but 2 years is possible.

 

[inf64]

The FX CPUs are substantially worse than Haswell by every metric (even when they're clocked 1000-1500mhz higher), so i'm not sure how to take your comment. The only metric they do well in are PC games that are so GPU limited that the GPU is doing all the work with the CPU doing not much of anything. In CPU limited tasks, all of the FX CPUs ... well...I wouldn't say they "cover" Haswell rather well.

I disagree since I don't run SPI 1m, wprime and C15 all day long .
FX @ 4.4+Ghz is more than competitive with Haswell in modern workloads people actually use . Sorry to be the one to break the truth to you...
Sure, power efficiency is worse but most buyers do not care about that.
Also note that haswell 4770K on paper is just 3.5Ghz chip that actually runs at close to 3.8-3.9Ghz in most of the benchmarks we see, thanks to advanced Turbo.

As for GPU comment , IF we are lucky, CPU will become less of a factor and GPU will become more of a factor in performance,again thanks to AMD and mantle. Shifting the bottleneck to GPU is natural and preferable option as GPU has much more raw processing performance Vs poor CPU. It's not even funny

 

[JDG1980]

I suspect we won't see a big-core FX Steamroller, but we might for Excavator. Steamroller, core-for-core, thread-for-thread, will probably be about on par with Nehalem, which is considerably better than before, but not enough to substantially close the gap with Intel on the server and high-end desktop. However, Excavator is supposed to widen the execution path considerably, and might well have IPC about on par with Sandy Bridge. That would be good enough to be competitive in high-end markets. For all the talk about the "death of the desktop" (which is really just about slower replacement cycles), servers aren't going anywhere - that's where all the vaunted "cloud" work is actually done, after all. And the margins on server products are higher than for those aimed at consumers. AMD has to focus on their biggest strengths (APUs and GPUs) as a priority, but I think they want to recapture some of that sweet server revenue in the long run. And that's not going to happen with APUs or Vishera. And once you've got a large multi-core server CPU, selling the lower-binned products to enthusiasts becomes a cheap and easy sideline. That said, I don't think any FX products beyond Piledriver will use the existing sockets. More likely they will create a new unified socket (basically AMD's answer to LGA 2011) to replace AM3+, C32, and G34.

Of course, all this is speculation. We could see Vishera stagnate forever if AMD runs into serious financial problems. Or if everything goes right (console and GPU revenues stay strong, Steamroller is a big hit with reviewers, and they score some important design wins) we might see a few extra bucks thrown towards R&D so that Warsaw can come out with Steamroller cores instead of Piledriver. I don't know, and I don't think that even AMD's management knows for sure yet. A lot of this is contingent.

What AMD really needs is an angel investor to throw $10 billion at the company. There's tons of future potential there, but they're held back by their financial limitations and the ongoing impact of the poor decisions made by Hector Ruiz.

 

[nenforcer]

There is still to much money to be made as an alternative lower cost x86 vendor to Intel for them to go away completely at the high end.

However, even their current single socket ATX Opteron workstation motherboards (socket C32/G34) lack native USB 3, PCI-E 3.0 and SLI / CFX.

I'm hoping that with the upcoming APU based Opterons (Warsaw?) there will be new server socket motherboards with all of these native features possibly in 2014.

Hopefully by the time DDR4 is ready AMD will have consumer and server platforms with native support plus all of the above features.

 

[NaroonGTX]

That damage control. It's mostly based on technicalities and certain variables that can't truly be confirmed right now anyway.

Him saying FX isn't "EOL" is a somewhat-clever wordplay, because it's true -- they will keep producing and selling 32nm Vishera chips, but that doesn't mean there will be any new CPU's on AM3+. And even the most interesting quote, where he says FX will continue to "evolve", could easily just be Vishera+ (Vishera with the Cyclos RCM finally enabled, a la Richland), which is what Warsaw is. Would cost them nothing to do a refresh like that since the Vishera chips used the exact same die as the Opteron parts did.

So in essence, AM3+ = dead socket, technically "still alive" due to still getting "support" via the Vishera sales. But there isn't a real upgrade path for it, and there won't be an AM4 either.

 

[Vesku]

The "leaked" roadmap doesn't have DDR4 listed for 2015 "Carrizo" Excavator, which makes it very dubious imo.

AMD's own roadmap though shows FX line as Piledriver based through 2014, which is underwhelming.

 

[NaroonGTX]

Carrizo is headed for Q1 2015, and even by then, DDR4 won't be that mainstream. We'll most likely see DDR4 as a part of Socket FM3, with the Excavator-based Basilisk APU instead.

 

[mrmt]

Nowhere in that slide it says FX is EOL. You will be able to buy the ''great'' FX83xx till the end of 2015. Does that mean they are launching new SR/EX-based models (with +2M/4C and no IGP)? Nope.

They must have somewhere to dump trash silicon from their server chips, so until Piledriver is dead for servers, we're going to see FX on the desktop market.

 

[ShintaiDK]

What had you all expected the guy to say. AM3+ is dead. But AMD would like to keep selling them to the naive people who still think there is an upgrade path and that the next CPU will magically fix the massive performance problems AMD got. Money is money. However there is not enough money in making a new CPU. And as mrmt says, its a free place to dump broken Opterons.

While the FX brand may not be dead, since AMD can just brand a 2M/4T SR or EX as FX. The AM3+ platform certainly is.