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

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Vattila

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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).

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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! :)
 
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Timorous

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I know it is so frustratingly difficult for so many to understand, but AMD designs CPU's for general purpose abilities. AMD is not out there to build a "gaming CPU". If you want one of those, get a console. AMD builds CPU's that are capable of incredible things, from supercomputers to servers. If you can happen to game on one, great!

For redacted sake, if all we did was build computer hardware for entertainment or gaming, rather than scientific research or trying to find answers to questions that actually matter, we'd be no better off then those chumps in the movie "Idiocracy". It's like saying "Who cares about learning about the universe? Give me Half Life 3!".

All I get from this post is Half Life 3 confirmed.
 
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Joe NYC

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I know it is so frustratingly difficult for so many to understand, but AMD designs CPU's for general purpose abilities. AMD is not out there to build a "gaming CPU". If you want one of those, get a console. AMD builds CPU's that are capable of incredible things, from supercomputers to servers. If you can happen to game on one, great!

For redacted sake, if all we did was build computer hardware for entertainment or gaming, rather than scientific research or trying to find answers to questions that actually matter, we'd be no better off then those chumps in the movie "Idiocracy". It's like saying "Who cares about learning about the universe? Give me Half Life 3!".

I get it. AMD has limited resources, and cannot have optimized product every use case scenario.

But that was 2020, when Zen 3 launched. We are in 2021, and the main competitor is releasing gaming optimized SKU as a launch SKU for its next gen CPU design.

As a response to that, I am suggesting that AMD assembles the Lego pieces to also launch a gaming optimized CPU - to compete with Alder Lake.

I don't think this is a far fetched proposition, to expect AMD to launch a Halo product, using optimum configuration of existing dies to achieve the highest performance.
 
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soresu

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But that was 2020, when Zen 3 launched. We are in 2021, and the main competitor is releasing gaming optimized SKU as a launch SKU for its next gen CPU design.
AMD are doing extremely well now, but even with that they still have only a fraction of the operating capital of either Intel or nVidia to develop new products.

(not to mention that fab capacity is also an ongoing issue now affecting SKU volumes)

Their Zen3D/Zen3V platform will nicely boost gaming performance already, there is no need for any further platform.

Then once Zen4 is ready it will increase overall IPC once again, not that a whopping big load of cache won't benefit other compute tasks beyond gaming with Zen3V.
 

eek2121

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That's probably what "5950x gamers" think they need.

Some of my work (development) likes high core counts. However, gaming DOES benefit from the faster clock speeds of the 5950x. Many of my cores can hit 5ghz, and in many games, 4.7-5ghz on a few cores is the norm. You might be inclined to state that you can overclock the other chips, well, you can so that with the 5950x as well. I don’t overclock because I need the stability.

I get it. AMD has limited resources, and cannot have optimized product every use case scenario.

But that was 2020, when Zen 3 launched. We are in 2021, and the main competitor is releasing gaming optimized SKU as a launch SKU for its next gen CPU design.

As a response to that, I am suggesting that AMD assembles the Lego pieces to also launch a gaming optimized CPU - to compete with Alder Lake.

I don't think this is a far fetched proposition, to expect AMD to launch a Halo product, using optimum configuration of existing dies to achieve the highest performance.

The competition is not launching a “gaming oriented SKU”.
 

Joe NYC

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That's not what you're asking for.
You asking for a dedicated development just for games.

No, I said nothing of the kind.

I was brainstorming which product configuration would have the best performance. Of the 2 I mentioned:

5800x + highest binned dies + maxed out V-Cache: can be assembled with the Lego pieces AMD will have by the end of the year.

Cezanne + V-Cache: is not something possible presently, because most likely, Cezanne is not set up for that with the TSVs and all. But as a future CPU, this would be a killer product across all categories, from laptop to corporate desktop to SFF boxes to gaming.

Unless AMD optimizes the CCD-IOD connection in the future so that it is not holding back the CPUs from best gaming performance
 
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Joe NYC

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AMD are doing extremely well now, but even with that they still have only a fraction of the operating capital of either Intel or nVidia to develop new products.

(not to mention that fab capacity is also an ongoing issue now affecting SKU volumes)

Their Zen3D/Zen3V platform will nicely boost gaming performance already, there is no need for any further platform.

Then once Zen4 is ready it will increase overall IPC once again, not that a whopping big load of cache won't benefit other compute tasks beyond gaming with Zen3V.

I was not suggesting a new platform somehow magically appear in 3 months (although I hope the B2 stepping will have some incremental improvements).

All AMD needs to do is to configure an SKU with a single, highest binned Zen 3 die max out the V-Cache, and hope for the best against Alder Lake.
 

LightningZ71

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VCache would be absolutely killer in an APU. Just using a 64MB VCache tile stacked on something as simple as the existing Cezanne die, IF IT WAS SO PROVISIONED, would be a dramatic performance boost, even if it only served as a cache for the iGPU, or, if it just served as a memory controller cache. It would save power on unneeded memory requests, and it would drastically improve the effective memory performance for the whole package.
 

Joe NYC

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Some of my work (development) likes high core counts. However, gaming DOES benefit from the faster clock speeds of the 5950x. Many of my cores can hit 5ghz, and in many games, 4.7-5ghz on a few cores is the norm. You might be inclined to state that you can overclock the other chips, well, you can so that with the 5950x as well. I don’t overclock because I need the stability.

That's actually what I was referring to as sub-optimal.

5950x is clearly a sub-optimal CPU for 9 out of 10 current games, 10 out of 10 of older games.

The reason it wins some is because AMD dedicated the highest binned parts to this CPU, and it has the highest boost clock.

5800x configuration with a single CCD is better suited for gaming, if it had the best binning parts and highest boost clock. Single CCD would have more of the power budget, and the performance is not slowed down by resolving memory coherency between 2 CCDs.

The competition is not launching a “gaming oriented SKU”.

Maybe you missed the news that Intel is launching only the gaming oriented K SKUs this year, with DDR5, postponing all of the mainstream SKUs for next year.
 

Thunder 57

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That's actually what I was referring to as sub-optimal.

5950x is clearly a sub-optimal CPU for 9 out of 10 current games, 10 out of 10 of older games.

The reason it wins some is because AMD dedicated the highest binned parts to this CPU, and it has the highest boost clock.

5800x configuration with a single CCD is better suited for gaming, if it had the best binning parts and highest boost clock. Single CCD would have more of the power budget, and the performance is not slowed down by resolving memory coherency between 2 CCDs.



Maybe you missed the news that Intel is launching only the gaming oriented K SKUs this year, with DDR5, postponing all of the mainstream SKUs for next year.

I still wasn't aware that AMD was developing gaming chips. Pretty sure they want to produce general central processing units. AMD and Intel pretty much develop chips with a "server first" mentality, as that is the lucrative market.
 

Timorous

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Zen 3d does not need to be faster than Alder Lake in gaming imo, it just needs to be better value like Zen 2 was. Further with the initial offering for Alder being DDR5 I expect the platform cost itself to be a lot more expensive.
 
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Joe NYC

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I still wasn't aware that AMD was developing gaming chips. Pretty sure they want to produce general central processing units.

No need to twist my words. AMD has dies that can be assembled to optimize for different use scenarios.

Assembling an SKU that is optimized for gaming does not equal "developing gaming chips"
 
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Ajay

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Zen 3d does not need to be faster than Alder Lake in gaming imo, it just needs to be better value like Zen 2 was. Further with the initial offering for Alder being DDR5 I expect the platform cost itself to be a lot more expensive.
That's would be an option, but AMD will be following Adler Lake with Zen3 + vCache in fairly short order (which may be more expensive than Intel's CPU). So, I think the platform cost may be similar. Interesting times though!
 

Thunder 57

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No need to twist my words. AMD has dies that can be assembled to optimize for different use scenarios.

Assembling an SKU that is optimized for gaming does not equal "developing gaming chips"

I don't mean to twist your words. It just annoys me when people think gaming is the goal. I've seen numerous reviews of ~32 core CPU's and they do gaming benchmarks on them. Sure, it'll game, but at a price that is way to high while delivering less performance.
 

Joe NYC

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Zen 3d does not need to be faster than Alder Lake in gaming imo, it just needs to be better value like Zen 2 was. Further with the initial offering for Alder being DDR5 I expect the platform cost itself to be a lot more expensive.

Not every Zen 3d SKU needs to beat Alder Lake. But ideally, AMD will have 1 (of several) SKUs that will beat Alder Lake.

Because if this happens, AMD can happily sell 7nm Zen 3D dies all year 2022 (against Alder Lake), of which AMD can produce millions, without having to depend on Zen 4 timing for desktop and 5nm capacity from TSMC.
 
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Joe NYC

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I don't mean to twist your words. It just annoys me when people think gaming is the goal. I've seen numerous reviews of ~32 core CPU's and they do gaming benchmarks on them. Sure, it'll game, but at a price that is way to high while delivering less performance.

Exactly. Good gaming CPU is one with excellent single thread performance that takes into account the price.

So 5950x has too much overhead in resources (unnecessary extra CCD) and price. So less than ideal.

But I have faith that AMD will released an optimized SKU this fall that will have high binned die paired with enough V-Cache to successfully counter Alder Lake, and hopefully, at a price that is within reach of gamers. (closer to $500 than $1,000)
 
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Thunder 57

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Exactly. Good gaming CPU is one with excellent single thread performance that takes into account the price.

So 5950x has too much overhead in resources (unnecessary extra CCD) and price. So less than ideal.

But I have faith that AMD will released an optimized SKU this fall that will have high binned die paired with enough V-Cache to successfully counter Alder Lake, and hopefully, at a price that is within reach of gamers. (closer to $500 than $1,000)

Like some sort of 5800X variant? Sounds reasonable.
 
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I get it. AMD has limited resources, and cannot have optimized product every use case scenario.

But that was 2020, when Zen 3 launched. We are in 2021, and the main competitor is releasing gaming optimized SKU as a launch SKU for its next gen CPU design.

As a response to that, I am suggesting that AMD assembles the Lego pieces to also launch a gaming optimized CPU - to compete with Alder Lake.

I don't think this is a far fetched proposition, to expect AMD to launch a Halo product, using optimum configuration of existing dies to achieve the highest performance.

So why exactly are you arguing against the product that literally is that?

And your argument is that Intel is only rolling out the highest of their high end ones for their next platform (which will require an entire platform upgrade including likely quite expensive memory), but saying that AMD needs to counter with a cheaper halo product? Until we know the performance and price of Intel's stuff, I'm not sure I'd say much about what AMD needs to do to counter it.
 
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Joe NYC

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Like some sort of 5800X variant? Sounds reasonable.

That's what I am hoping for.

Between the B2 stepping, selecting higher binned dies (with higher boost clocks) and V-Cache - AMD has some "dials" to to adjust.

Since Intel is releasing a gaming SKU that with projected power draw between 125 Watts and upwards of 200 Watts peak, with single goal of capturing the gaming crown, I hope AMD will have a decent response.
 

Thibsie

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AMD based their whole range on the fact (among others) that the more higher in the range you go, the higher MT you get bit you don't lose ST (except 5950 if I'm not mistaken) or very little which means you do not regress in ST as a price to get better MT.
(Not taking APU into account obviously).

If you break this, you lose the incentive to go 12/16 cores CPU, which mean those with better margin which means less sales of high margin CPU. Why on earth would AMD do such a stupid move?
Just for PR of 'I'm still the best at games' ?
How shortsighted this would be.
 

DisEnchantment

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Here is a nice example of 2 top bin CCDs slowing each other in 5950x and the lowest bin parts 5800x and 5600x zoom by 5950x.

This, in a ST dominated application. 5950x has 300 MHz and 200 MHz boost clock advantage over 5800x and 5600x.

That's some serious mis-allocation of resources on part of AMD,

Misallocation is that the dies that are capable of highest ST performance are sent to a MT optimized product, and dies capable of the lowest clock speed (lowest ST performance) are sent to ST optimized product.
I am not sure that is a problem with 5950X.
You can see 5600X beating a 5800X which makes no sense.
Could just be windows migrating threads all over the place or not optimal multihreaded programming

This review here of the scaling in Zen3 family shows 5950X on top in almost all cases
Misallocation is that the dies that are capable of highest ST performance are sent to a MT optimized product, and dies capable of the lowest clock speed (lowest ST performance) are sent to ST optimized product.
Why would people paying the most settle on a compromise? 5950X is the highest SKU in the 5000 series and AMD naturally reserve the best dies for this.
 
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eek2121

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That's actually what I was referring to as sub-optimal.

5950x is clearly a sub-optimal CPU for 9 out of 10 current games, 10 out of 10 of older games.

The reason it wins some is because AMD dedicated the highest binned parts to this CPU, and it has the highest boost clock.

5800x configuration with a single CCD is better suited for gaming, if it had the best binning parts and highest boost clock. Single CCD would have more of the power budget, and the performance is not slowed down by resolving memory coherency between 2 CCDs.



Maybe you missed the news that Intel is launching only the gaming oriented K SKUs this year, with DDR5, postponing all of the mainstream SKUs for next year.

Since when does “K” mean gaming oriented? All “K” means is that they are unlocked. Quite often, “K” CPUs are often binned better and have better clocks than “non-K” equivalents.

Also, I am going to call you out on calling the 5950X “sub-optimal” for gaming. Out of the 5 games I play regularly, only 1 uses less than 8 threads. The rest use > 8 threads. This isn’t 5 years ago, games are catching up with hardware.
 

eek2121

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Here is a nice example of 2 top bin CCDs slowing each other in 5950x and the lowest bin parts 5800x and 5600x zoom by 5950x.

This, in a ST dominated application. 5950x has 300 MHz and 200 MHz boost clock advantage over 5800x and 5600x.

That's some serious mis-allocation of resources on part of AMD,

Misallocation is that the dies that are capable of highest ST performance are sent to a MT optimized product, and dies capable of the lowest clock speed (lowest ST performance) are sent to ST optimized product.

View attachment 48392

Or maybe something is wrong with their setup. As usual AnandTech gives no information about their benchmarks, but running the standard "Gathering Storm" graphics benchmark on my 5950X gives me 193fps average, ~130 fps 95th percentile. Also, I took this screenshot of task manager after I quite the game. Notice that it uses ALL cores:

1628384945386.png

Also notice it uses 100% of the GPU, so clearly here it is GPU bound, not CPU bound.

EDIT: That is "Ultra Details" with full MSAA (8x) at a resolution of 5120x1440. I may try to run it in a CPU bound scenario later.
 
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eek2121

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Or maybe something is wrong with their setup. As usual AnandTech gives no information about their benchmarks, but running the standard "Gathering Storm" graphics benchmark on my 5950X gives me 193fps average, ~130 fps 95th percentile. Also, I took this screenshot of task manager after I quite the game. Notice that it uses ALL cores:

View attachment 48398

Also notice it uses 100% of the GPU, so clearly here it is GPU bound, not CPU bound.

EDIT: That is "Ultra Details" with full MSAA (8x) at a resolution of 5120x1440. I may try to run it in a CPU bound scenario later.

I found the issue with AnandTech's "review". Civilization 6 is still GPU bound at 1080p max. My benchmark figures:

Average: 223.26 fps
99th Percentile: 154.53fps

GPU usage was still 100%, CPU usage was 40%. AnandTech is GPU bound. Why did they get a better result on lower end CPUs? Probably less heat in the system so the GPU could run faster. Who knows. My CPU usage was around 30%.

EDIT: If you claim the 5950x is power limited, keep in mind it is easy for those of us with one to prove you wrong. It is trivial to disable a CCD.

Also I feel the need to note that mine runs at stock with PBO disabled and virtualization enabled.

EDIT: Because I'm feeling extra crunchy today and need to get to bed. With 1 CCD enabled (basically a 5800x with the faster clocks you mentioned):

Average: 184.03 fps
99th Percentile: 128.80fps

I then loaded up a very large save game I added and measured the FPS there, my results had slightly higher FPS for both configurations and slightly lower CPU usage. This save game I've been playing for months.

Same settings as with 2 CCDs.

EDIT: Almost forgot to add. Max CPU Package power was 142.667W, CPU Core Power was 105.974W. This is according to HWInfo64.
 
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