Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)

[Vattila]

Except for the details about the improvements in the microarchitecture, we now know pretty well what to expect with Zen 3.

The leaked presentation by AMD Senior Manager Martin Hilgeman shows that EPYC 3 "Milan" will, as promised and expected, reuse the current platform (SP3), and the system architecture and packaging looks to be the same, with the same 9-die chiplet design and the same maximum core and thread-count (no SMT-4, contrary to rumour). The biggest change revealed so far is the enlargement of the compute complex from 4 cores to 8 cores, all sharing a larger L3 cache ("32+ MB", likely to double to 64 MB, I think).

Hilgeman's slides did also show that EPYC 4 "Genoa" is in the definition phase (or was at the time of the presentation in September, at least), and will come with a new platform (SP5), with new memory support (likely DDR5).

What else do you think we will see with Zen 4? PCI-Express 5 support? Increased core-count? 4-way SMT? New packaging (interposer, 2.5D, 3D)? Integrated memory on package (HBM)?

Vote in the poll and share your thoughts!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If you're only looking to upgrade every 4-5 years then it's a great option, especially if you're not worried about the heat or extra power usage. AMD makes a lot more sense if you plan on upgrading every generation or every other generation including X3D refreshes.

That makes no sense to me as a thrifty gamer. You present it as - build on a dead socket and wait 4-5yrs. Then have to replace CPU, board, and OS license. Or - build on a socket just getting started that will see CPUs released through 2025 but keep changing CPUs in between?

How about, build on the socket getting started, and swap CPUs in 3 or 4 yrs. Depending on when the final one is released. Then you don't need a new board or OS license. And you can put off that next upgrade another 4-5yrs.

Don't even get me started about how the gaming experience isn't going to change between Zen 4 and Raptor. Too late. They will be indistinguishable while playing. Bar charts are silly for CPUs this fast. No matter what you build, it is going to handle everything readily. The rest is noise designed to influence you as to how to spend your money. If one can last 4-5yrs, so can the other. Which lets me circle back to buying the one that will see CPU releases for years to come, because that is the most economical solution.

 

[Kaluan]

Man, seeing Intel peeps over night suddenly fall silent about "OMG 95C!" and say 300W is fine after constantly bickering about the increase to 230W PPT on Ryzen 9 is quite something... 😂

Aside from Raphael X3D, which is irrelevant outside of gaming.

[citations needed]

Sorry friend, but your post reads exactly like what you were actively denying. Why even bother writing that here? Who are you trying to convince?

 

[moinmoin]

Meaning with how zen is ever changing, i don't expect AMD to be able to keep the same pin layout more then 1 gen unless its a refresh, (tock cycle), before requring a different pin layout, which will require a new socket, especially since they moved the pins to the board now like how intel did.

I don't think it's a good idea to take Intel's track record as an indication on how AM5 will fare. AMD showed with AM4 perfectly well how they can stick to a single pin layout (whether the pins are on the chips or the boards has no bearing on the layout). And arguably with AM5 it should be better prepared than it has been with AM4, bigger headroom, bigger BIOS, memory and PCIe standards that are likely not going to be surpassed in client mainstream during the boards lifetime. All things that made major revisions of AM4 necessary but are available right away on AM5.

AMD showed that socket longevity can be planned. Intel showed that a socket can be used for a long time without letting the customers profit of it by repeatedly changing the pin layout. I personally highly doubt the changes in pin layout were actually required except for business reasons.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Jason (J2C) did a video yesterday or the day before on lapping. He took off less than 1 mm using a tool that Hartung made that clipped the CPU inside of a vinyl resin case.

Wish I had had that in the past. Sure beats putting foam on the pins and praying.

 

[biostud]

This is what intel said at S1155.... Then they went oops the cpu a different pinout ... and we got S1150 ... then they went OOPS we need more pins and got S1151....

Meaning with how zen is ever changing, i don't expect AMD to be able to keep the same pin layout more then 1 gen unless its a refresh, (tock cycle), before requring a different pin layout, which will require a new socket, especially since they moved the pins to the board now like how intel did.

Why does it matter where the pins are located?

On AM4 we had zen on 14nm, zen+ on 12nm, zen2 and zen3 on 7nm

On AM5 we have zen4 on 5nm, zen5 probably on 3nm and then?

I think it will be an enhanced version of zen5 (like Zen2 - > Zen3), as I doubt AMD will design a completely new architecture after zen5, but rather do incremental improvements, and therefore I think it will be on AM5. (But this is obviously 100% speculation)

 

[RnR_au]

Has anyone come across numbers for the new IO die... ie power usage? Did the switch the new node get at least a little gain? Or apples and orange thing since the old IO die didn't have pcie 5 or gpu?

 

[moinmoin]

Has anyone come across numbers for the new IO die... ie power usage? Did the switch the new node get at least a little gain? Or apples and orange thing since the old IO die didn't have pcie 5 or gpu?

I'm not aware of more focused testings. But if the guesses so far are right and Dragon Range is the same as Raphael including IOD, just in mobile, we should be able to see how we it can fare in an optimized environment once that launches.

 

[biostud]

Has anyone come across numbers for the new IO die... ie power usage? Did the switch the new node get at least a little gain? Or apples and orange thing since the old IO die didn't have pcie 5 or gpu?

The old was 12nm, the new is 7nm.

 

[Asterox]

It is expected, lower binned version of R7 7700X or 8/16 R7 7700 65W, or even can be 95WTDP.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1583663773642293248

 

[Harry_Wild]

And yet AM5 has had relatively slow sales because of higher platform costs and high CPU costs, despite people knowing that they can upgrade down the line. The higher upfront cost is hard to swallow for many, even if in some cases it is irrational to do so. It was so bad at one point that Microcenter legit started bundling free ddr5 to get sales going! You also see this in recent public opinion polls such as the 3dcenter.org one, zen 4 has less than HALF the interest to buy percentage than zen 3!

Many buyers are like myself waiting to see Intel Raptor Lake and the day after Thanksgiving to buy computer stuff since it is normally at the lowest price of the year to buy.

 

[biostud]

Many buyers are like myself waiting to see Intel Raptor Lake and the day after Thanksgiving to buy computer stuff since it is normally at the lowest price of the year to buy.

Also people can't drop in upgrade zen4.
Many are waiting for 7800X3D
EXPO memory kits are not available in large quantities
B650E boards have just reached retailers.
X670E are very expensive
PCIE5 nvme drives haven't launched.
Not many ATX3.0 PSU's are on the market.
Next gen video cards are not on the market yet (except for the 4090).

 

[Schmide]

One thing to think of in the next few weeks. If AMD launches a competitive navi, there may be a few situations (spiderman?) where the number of pcie lanes and storage speed can sway the gaming benches a few percentage points. AMD with an AMD graphic card on a x670e will be running pcie5 16x graphics with storage running at pcie5 4x. An intel z790 can run at best pcie5 16x graphics with pcie4 4x storage or pcie5 8x graphics pcie5 4x storage. (the latter seems to be the provisioning many boards) If you look at techpowerup's pcie scaling it can sway a few percentage points going down the stack 16x 8x 4x etc, what is stopping the top from gaining a few percentage points?

 

[aigomorla]

Why does it matter where the pins are located?

apparently it did on on 1150 -> 1151.

It really ticked us off too.
Because intel SWORE they wouldn't change sockets on us... *laughable*.

Even the board vendors i believe were all pissed off, because they were ready to roll the new boxes and had to scrap all that.

 

[biostud]

apparently it did on on 1150 -> 1151.

It really ticked us off too.
Because intel SWORE they wouldn't change sockets on us... *laughable*.

Even the board vendors i believe were all pissed off, because they were ready to roll the new boxes and had to scrap all that.

But that is Intel...

 

[maddie]

apparently it did on on 1150 -> 1151.

It really ticked us off too.
Because intel SWORE they wouldn't change sockets on us... *laughable*.

Even the board vendors i believe were all pissed off, because they were ready to roll the new boxes and had to scrap all that.

I think he meant if on the CPU or on the socket being irrelevant.

 

[Mopetar]

And yet AM5 has had relatively slow sales because of higher platform costs and high CPU costs, despite people knowing that they can upgrade down the line.

Some of it was also waiting on Intel since the launches were so close. I suspect there's another group who like me are just waiting for Zen 4D as well if they want to build a new gaming rig. That and waiting a few months likely means cheaper memory and any early board issues getting resolved.

Frankly both AMD and Intel fans can be pretty happy with their company. They trade blows well enough that you can justify either for a new build.

 

[Markfw]

Some of it was also waiting on Intel since the launches were so close. I suspect there's another group who like me are just waiting for Zen 4D as well if they want to build a new gaming rig. That and waiting a few months likely means cheaper memory and any early board issues getting resolved.

Frankly both AMD and Intel fans can be pretty happy with their company. They trade blows well enough that you can justify either for a new build.

I would agree with that conditionally. If you are going lightly threaded work, and you set the power limits down, Raptor Lake is a decent buy. If you don't touch the power setups you may be in trouble (see Kociaks posts). If you go Zen 4, you still need to set the power down a little, but not nearly as much as RL. And for any highly threaded sustained use, ONLY Zen 4 works, and then only practical if you set the power down.

Raptor lake is good for short duration's and a few threads, after fixing the power so it does not use 500 watts,

Zen 4 is good at stock, but much better with a little power reduction, especially for prolonged heavy use.

 

[Mopetar]

I would agree with that conditionally. If you are going lightly threaded work, and you set the power limits down, Raptor Lake is a decent buy. If you don't touch the power setups you may be in trouble (see Kociaks posts). If you go Zen 4, you still need to set the power down a little, but not nearly as much as RL. And for any highly threaded sustained use, ONLY Zen 4 works, and then only practical if you set the power down.

Raptor lake is good for short duration's and a few threads, after fixing the power so it does not use 500 watts,

Zen 4 is good at stock, but much better with a little power reduction, especially for prolonged heavy use.

I'm not running heavy workloads 24/7 like you so I would buy Intel again if they were clearly better, but they're basically even with Zen 4 on gaming (which is what I'm going to use it for primarily) which means Zen 4D is going to be the best on average.

Getting in on a new platform is a bit of a long term plus as well. I probably won't upgrade for the life of it, but if AM5 is as well supported as AM4 is, it's good to know that in 5 years I'll probably be able to drop in a decent upgrade CPU to possibly repurpose it.

I don't know if AMD has the voltage limits licked with v-cache yet, but I honestly wouldn't mind if they can't crank it as much. The 5800X 3D is still one of the most efficient gaming CPUs around and I'd like to see a Zen 4 successor in the same vein. The gains from the extra power seem to be pretty marginal.

 

[Timorous]

So if AMD feel they need a master of everything CPU how about a Zen 4 CCD with v-cache and a Zen 4c CCD as a 24core 48t 7970X?

Throw in some automated profiles in Ryzen master so games only load up the 8c CCD and it would truly be the halo part that does it all.

 

[cortexa99]

So if AMD feel they need a master of everything CPU how about a Zen 4 CCD with v-cache and a Zen 4c CCD as a 24core 48t 7970X?

Throw in some automated profiles in Ryzen master so games only load up the 8c CCD and it would truly be the halo part that does it all.

I don't think AMD need to do anything further for Zen4, just release Zen4 APUs, X3D(s?) on time.

I'm skeptical to see any ZenXc in client segment. If they do, we might see it with Zen5 the earliest.

I'm not running heavy workloads 24/7 like you so I would buy Intel again if they were clearly better, but they're basically even with Zen 4 on gaming (which is what I'm going to use it for primarily) which means Zen 4D is going to be the best on average.

I think the big problem on Intel side is under light workload the E core is useless, but since Intel add E cores in everything more than i5 non-K, we have to pay for it. For me the future generation from both side it seems to be a trend that Intel is less cost effective.

 

[nicalandia]

Blender Benchmarks of different PBO and PBO Negative 7950X also a 5965WX ThreadRiper Pro for comparison to HEDT.

Blender-5, PboNegative10, Blender 3.3 Benchmark Comparison Performance Comparison - OpenBenchmarking.org

openbenchmarking.org

 

[ondma]

I don't think AMD need to do anything further for Zen4, just release Zen4 APUs, X3D(s?) on time.

I'm skeptical to see any ZenXc in client segment. If they do, we might see it with Zen5 the earliest.


I think the big problem on Intel side is under light workload the E core is useless, but since Intel add E cores in everything more than i5 non-K, we have to pay for it. For me the future generation from both side it seems to be a trend that Intel is less cost effective.

Actually, quite the opposite. For 12 gen especially, intel was the go to value option for midrange.

 

[Kaluan]

Actually, quite the opposite. For 12 gen especially, intel was the go to value option for midrange.

Ryzen 7 5000 and lower can be had for dirt cheap for at least the last 6 months. So not really. Intel had a window of opportunity 3 months after ADL launched/begning of this year, but that's about it.

Anyway, as DDR5 prices continue to come down, so does AMD's need to offer cheap AM5 alternatives/price cuts intensifies. By H2 next year, just recommending people AM4 Ryzen 5-7 5000 or 12/13400-12600K w/ DDR4 won't cut it anymore IMHO.

 

[biostud]

Let's see if they adjust prices when they launch zen4 3D.

 

[Panino Manino]

IMO AMD/Lisa should sit down and think really hard about working on adding Zen 4c cores to Ryzen right now.

3D Cache helps, but helps more with things that Zen 4 is not far behind Raptor Lake. On the contrary, Zen 4 is more often than not ahead of Raptor Lake on those things, so 3D Cache will not make a difference where Zen 4 really needs helps.
The only thing that can help Ryzen to remain competitive against this abundance of little cores is more cores, so IMO AMD should really start thinking if they should better start working on integrating c cores to their died as soon as possible.