Was AMD holding back on their fusion line?

[Soulkeeper]

That graph is showing exactly what AMD did wrong. 512 gcn cores on kaveri is pointless. Extremely minimal performance gain for a larger die.

IMO Kaveri should have been 384 gcn cores. So were they holding back in that aspect? No, they were overextending themselves.

I agree, 512 is pointless for most everything. But I do understand that gpgpu/opencl stuff was on their mind. It would have been better off with an extra CPU module than more SPs for many users.

 

[Abwx]

That graph is showing exactly what AMD did wrong. 512 gcn cores on kaveri is pointless. Extremely minimal performance gain for a larger die.

IMO Kaveri should have been 384 gcn cores. So were they holding back in that aspect? No, they were overextending themselves.

The 6800K is running at higher frequency and consume more, against a 5800K a Kaveri has 30% higher fps for 33% more shaders and as much lower power comsumption, when you put all the parameters into thev equation this morph to much better perf/watt.

 

[Yuriman]

The 6800K is running at higher frequency and consume more, against a 5800K a Kaveri has 30% higher fps for 33% more shaders and as much lower power comsumption, when you put all the parameters into thev equation this morph to much better perf/watt.

True, but if it hadn't been for a process change it would have been a much larger die with higher upfront costs, enough that it would offset several years' power savings.

 

[AtenRa]

That graph is showing exactly what AMD did wrong. 512 gcn cores on kaveri is pointless. Extremely minimal performance gain for a larger die.

IMO Kaveri should have been 384 gcn cores. So were they holding back in that aspect? No, they were overextending themselves.

It has beed said so many times that AMD doesnt targeting Gaming as the first priority of its APUs.

The following graphs shows exactly what AMD have made wright. Even 45W Kaveri is faster than Core i7 4770 + HD6750, HSA/Compute is what AMD is targeting with its fusion not gaming. Gaming is coming as an added bonus.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I agree, 512 is pointless for most everything. But I do understand that gpgpu/opencl stuff was on their mind. It would have been better off with an extra CPU module than more SPs for many users.

Agree somewhat. 5 CUs does seem a bit excessive. But AMD must have felt it was worth the cost in die area to include them.

A 3 module Steamroller + basic 2CU (128 shader) GPU, might be a very useful product. You'd get quite good multitasking (~6300-level) along with a good enough GPU for everyday usage. Plug in a discrete graphics card, and you'd have a decent gaming machine.

The 6800K is running at higher frequency and consume more, against a 5800K a Kaveri has 30% higher fps for 33% more shaders and as much lower power comsumption, when you put all the parameters into thev equation this morph to much better perf/watt.

The 6800K really ought to be labelled as a 125W part. Considering you can almost get the same graphics performance out of Kaveri at 65W is quite impressive. The 45W Kaveri models actually look very good from a performance per watt.

 

[AtenRa]

Agree somewhat. 5 CUs does seem a bit excessive. But AMD must have felt it was worth the cost in die area to include them.

A 3 module Steamroller + basic 2CU (128 shader) GPU, might be a very useful product. You'd get quite good multitasking (~6300-level) along with a good enough GPU for everyday usage. Plug in a discrete graphics card, and you'd have a decent gaming machine.

They already have the FX6300 for that, why make a new SKU and bleed more resources ??? Also, that would be against their HSA targets.

The 6800K really ought to be labelled as a 125W part

Why is that ??

 

[Insert_Nickname]

They already have the FX6300 for that, why make a new SKU and bleed more resources ??? Also, that would be against their HSA targets.

Weather we like it or not, AM3+ is a "dead" socket. It'd be nice to have an FM2(+) FX option, and three modules would really help for stuff like video encoding. Moving the FX-series to FM2+ would also be good for energy efficiency, as AM3+ still requires the use of a dedicated northbridge for PCIe. We can also get rid of those god awful ancient 760G chipsets.

There is also absolutely no reason such a chip would not be HSA enabled. You'd have a basic level of OpenCL support to help where that makes sense. F.x. see what that dinky 2CU GPU in Kabini is capable of... :sneaky:

But again, it'd be most useful to drive a discrete graphics card. You could also make it IGP-less, but I'd like just a basic IGP to be present.

Why is that ??

Perhaps because it uses ~125W with 2133MHz memory...

 

[Zor Prime]

PC buyers dont want a great GPU with an anemic CPU that can barely do regular tasks.

Outside of high-end gaming and specialized apps, just about any half-assed CPU from the past FIVE YEARS can run mainstream apps smoothly.

Good Enough(tm) has been here a long while now.

 

[desura]

But then, APU's only make sense when the GPU half is powerful enough to run games decently.

I dunno, I'd gladly have picked up an AMD APU that was tilted more towards a fast GPU instead of the intel+descrete GPU I ended up with. And I would have been fine with slower CPU since pretty much all games are GPU limited, not CPU.

 

[Enigmoid]

The 6800K is running at higher frequency and consume more, against a 5800K a Kaveri has 30% higher fps for 33% more shaders and as much lower power comsumption, when you put all the parameters into thev equation this morph to much better perf/watt.

I was looking at the 384 gcn ship vs the 512 shader chip. Minimal gain is fps there.

@AtenRa

You are right but but the market for those using an APU for serious OpenCL tasks is basically nonexistent. That die space costs substantial money (only one die) are benefits almost nobody.

 

[SPBHM]

Only if you compare both with the same High-End GPU. But we are evaluating the SKUs alone and if one is competitive to the other. Yes the Core i3 with a High-End GPU may be better, but that is not the only scenario one CPU will ever be used for.

it doesn't change anything, even with a slow VGA the i3 can still show a performance advantage in CPU bound situations (think reasonable settings and MMOs, RTs primarily), also, going from faster to the same (equalized by a GPU bottleneck test, which might not represent well things anyway) is not a disadvantage for the cheaper and lower power usage CPU.

We evaluate the performance at that price point because that is the price of the A10-7850K + 8GB of 2133MHz memory. What Hardware can you have at that price that is close to CPU and iGPU performance ??? That is the question here, not what hardware is better in one or the other.

why is that a valid price point to analyze, why not lower it by $50 and see the best you can do or whatever? it's just nonsense, also as I said, with the $73 difference (4130 + slower ram), you can buy a 250, 240 GDDR5 or something, I think you will achieve the same or higher performance for most games within this $260 with the i3-4130 + 240/250 GDDR5 and slower ram

I mentioned the Core i3 GT3 SKU because it is technically and performance wise equivalent to Kaveri.

it's not available for competing price or anything, it's a mobile/low volume focused chip,
it would be a very bad choice for gaming desktops, just like the 7850k

Again it is an MSI board that has the problem, i dont believe it has to do with the CPU because every motherboard would have the same problem. I have also used low end FM2/+ boards without any of that problems.
In fact, i have used the ASUS F2A85-M that is an older design without cooling on the VRMs and i could OC the A10-6800K at 4,8GHz without any problems.

do you think the same throttling issues would occur with the a8 7600? I don't, so yes, it's related to how cheap boards are made and the CPU power requirements, like the 8350 causes problems with some MBs.

Yes but we are not evaluating that here, we are evaluating if A10-7850K the SKU is competitive against Core i3 both in CPU and iGPU. And the fact remains that A10-7850K provides better graphics and nice MT CPU performance even without OC and Core i3 provides better CPU performance and worst GPU performance.

the i3 4130 is much cheaper, so the fact that it works faster a CPU most of the time is already nice, now the GPU portion is much slower, but the price difference is enough to start buying discrete graphics, so it looks like the best choice for a desktop and gaming, since you can achieve around the same performance with discrete graphics, but you receive a huge performance boost by increasing you budget by? 10% (only for CPU+RAM/VGA, not total! it looks even better when you include hd, psu, case and so on)

 

[bunnyfubbles]

The CPU isn't anemic at all. That CPU would be great for someone doing 3D, picture or movie editing. Eight OOO CPU cores attached to a super high bandwidth memory subsystem with a very solid GPU built in? Sign me up.

Even regular consumers it would be great. Having 8 cores you could multitask like there's no tomorrow. With today's workloads being more parallel, more threads equal a non-linear improvement in computing experience.

For example, back in the day Athlon 64 ruled over Netburst. Now compare Windows 7 and using Excel on a P4 2.4c w/HT to an Athlon 3500+. If you can, the P4 is now far more responsive in not only general performance, but high intensity workloads as well. Benchmarks will still heavily favor the Athlon, but the user could still listen to internet radio and check their email on the P4 while excel was calculating. The 3500+? Not so much.

The same concept applies to the topic at hand. Highly parallel processors dramatically improve user responsiveness, which is the ultimate barometer of a fast computer. An 8 core jaguar APU would be great for us consumers. I believe the speeds could be upped to 2.5GHz for desktop users without a massive tdp shift.

I would even wager that a 10 core 2.0ghz atom Z530 cores with HT would be a very responsive work processor.

apparently you haven't looked at any of the benchmarks, this isn't P4 vs. A64 territory (not that you'd want to use either with modern OS/software), that argument MIGHT have some ground in an 8350 vs. i5 3570K argument, but the 8 Jaguar cores are so slow they'll lose to a dual core i3 which is already more than twice as fast as 4 core Kabini @ 2GHz...

Give me a lackluster set of Steamroller cores over the far more pitiful Jaguar coresany day. Jaguar cores are built from the start with an emphasis on compromise, they sip power and are simply never going to be ideal in a desktop scenario.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Give me a lackluster set of Steamroller cores over the far more pitiful Jaguar coresany day. Jaguar cores are built from the start with an emphasis on compromise, they sip power and are simply never going to be ideal in a desktop scenario.

You don't think that Steamroller's design wasn't based on compromise? At least the Jaguar cores don't have shared FPUs. Quite frankly, if they clocked a bit higher, I would prefer the better IPC + FPUs of the Jaguar cores.

 

[AtenRa]

why is that a valid price point to analyze, why not lower it by $50 and see the best you can do or whatever? it's just nonsense, also as I said, with the $73 difference (4130 + slower ram), you can buy a 250, 240 GDDR5 or something, I think you will achieve the same or higher performance for most games within this $260 with the i3-4130 + 240/250 GDDR5 and slower ram

I have explained that the price point was set at A10-7850K + 8GB DRR-3 2133MHz = $185 + $70 = $255

Core i3 4130 cost $125 and the cheapest 8GB DDR-3 memory cost $60 = 125 + 60 = $185

That leaves you with $70 extra to spend on a dGPU. Now R7 240 is slower than A10-7850K but the cheapest one at $70 or $60 with AR. So for the same price you have to get the R7 240 in order to get slower Graphics Performance.

You can aim for the R7 250 but the Cheapest R7 250 is at $90 making the total price overcome $255. Yes it will be faster but it is also more expensive. So at the end the A10-7850K is very competitive and we havent even looked at the Overclockability of the CPU and iGPU.
Not to mention you can use a Slim SFF case and lower PSU with the A10-7850K.

But again, Gaming is only one Scenario each of those SKUs will be used for.

do you think the same throttling issues would occur with the a8 7600? I don't, so yes, it's related to how cheap boards are made and the CPU power requirements, like the 8350 causes problems with some MBs.

So the MSI motherboard is made only for 65W and bellow, is that what you are saying ??

 

[BSim500]

You can aim for the R7 250 but the Cheapest R7 250 is at $90 making the total price overcome $255. Yes it will be faster but it is also more expensive

But at the end of the day, the average person *IS* going to pay $20 more for 40% higher fps even if it means buying 9 games now and 1 game later rather than 10 games now. Most people's "budget" is a general guideline with a little lee-way either side, not a hard rigid "I'm not paying $1 more even if it triples my speed!" overly-rigid outlook.

If there were an A10-7950K that had the same 30-40% higher fps for $20 more over the A10-7850K, there's absolutely no question you'd be recommending that instead and would simply raise the bar from $255 to $275 to suit... :whiste:

 

[AtenRa]

But at the end of the day, the average person *IS* going to pay $20 more for 40% higher fps even if it means buying 9 games now and 1 game later rather than 10 games now. Most people's "budget" is a general guideline with a little lee-way either side, not a hard rigid "I'm not paying $1 more even if it triples my speed!" overly-rigid outlook.

If there were an A10-7950K that had the same 30-40% higher fps for $20 more over the A10-7850K, there's absolutely no question you'd be recommending that instead and would simply raise the bar from $255 to $275 to suit... :whiste:

I could use the Athlon 750K + R7 260 and completely destroy that Core i3 + R7 250 at the same or lower price. That would also make the Core i3 irrelevant dont you agree ??
Again you are missing the point and that is to evaluate the A10-7850K against comparable SKUs at the same price point.

 

[BSim500]

I could use the Athlon 750K + R7 260 and completely destroy that Core i3 + R7 250 at the same or lower price. That would also make the Core i3 irrelevant dont you agree ??
Again you are missing the point and that is to evaluate the A10-7850K against comparable SKUs at the same price point.

I didn't "miss your point", you missed mine. An rigid arbitrary price dictated by you (which changes as and when it suits you) isn't everyone else's "budget gamer" priority. As I said, if $20 (Haswell i3 + R7 260) makes the difference between having +40% fps or not (due to ancient Athlon's single thread bottlenecking in many games - see earlier benchmarks), most sane people I know will go with that even if you personally won't...

Earlier on you were talking about GT630 graphics cards. Even the poorest budget gamer I know doesn't buy those. You picked it to "prove as point", not to reflect reality of what "budget gamers" are actually buying. And as mentioned, if AMD released a new APU with +40fps vs the A10-7850K 30fps for only 20 bucks more, you'd be all over it and that $255 rigid figure would suddenly have "growth flexibility". We both know that as that's pretty much what you've done before suddenly "allowing" an extra $40 for a "budget gamer" over and above a 6800K when the 7850K was released.... ;-)

Edit: In reality, many people who upgrade on a budget often do so in "steps" anyway, ie, reuse the same existing dGPU whilst upgrading CPU & motherboard, then upgrade dGPU 6-12 months later whilst keeping CPU, etc. That way they get the best of both worlds. Buying a slow CPU & slow GPU just to make the numbers match on any one payday, is a false economy regardless of CPU brand. And in the context of the thread and OP's post, since most desktop gamers already own a dGPU of some kind from a previous rig, the economics for an expensive APU as some kind of "money saver" are made even worse...

Edit 2 : And that's pretty much why any "Super PS4 APU" for the PC doesn't exist - AMD look at not just what people are buying but what they upgrade from, and realize that the economics of such a chip has to fall WAY short of a CPU + dGPU due to the way people on a tight low budget reuse older mid-range GFX cards between rigs - and even buy them dirt-cheap 2nd hand on Ebay). Only a complete moron is going to buy a brand new GT630 for "gaming" no matter what CPU they own or how low their budget is. Half of those cards are "half height" & passively cooled meant for silent slimline non-gaming HTPC's. For the same price, I've seen 7770's on Ebay - and that's what people are buying are reality. True "low budget gamers" are bargain hunters who pick up a lot of stuff 2nd hand.

 

[frozentundra123456]

You just defeated your own argument. At the same price point, even disregarding the need for expensive ram for best performance with kaveri, a 750k plus 100.00 discrete card will destroy it in gpu performance, while a low end i5 will be faster in both single and multithreaded CPU performance.

 

[AtenRa]

I didn't "miss your point", you missed mine. An rigid arbitrary price dictated by you (which changes as and when it suits you) isn't everyone else's "budget gamer" priority.

First of all that price point is not set by me but by NewEggs prices.
Secondly, it is you that are ONLY talking about gaming. I have explained so many times that we are evaluating the A10-7850K, not only in gaming but in general.

As I said, if $20 (Haswell i3 + R7 260) makes the difference between having +40% fps or not (due to ancient Athlon's single thread bottlenecking in many games - see earlier benchmarks), most sane people I know will go with that even if you personally won't...

First of all, Haswell i3 + R7 250 is $20 more expensive. Haswell i3 + R7 260 is more than $70 more expensive than A10-7850K.

Earlier on you were talking about GT630 graphics cards. Even the poorest budget gamer I know doesn't buy those. You picked it to "prove as point", not to reflect reality of what "budget gamers" are actually buying.

You only keep talking about gaming and gamers, I have never said i was only talking about gaming alone. Also, have a look at Newegg and see how many systems are still sold this day with GT610/620/630 and 635.
The GT630 was used to illustrate that in order for the Core i3 to reach the A10-7850K Graphics performance it needs to add a dGPU of GT630 or higher. Nobody said that a gamer will only use that GPU. But even if i would use the R7 240 which is faster than the GT630 it will still be slower than the A10-7850K.

And as mentioned, if AMD released a new APU with +40fps vs the A10-7850K 30fps for only 20 bucks more, you'd be all over it and that $255 rigid figure would suddenly have "growth flexibility". We both know that as that's pretty much what you've done before suddenly "allowing" an extra $40 for a "budget gamer" over and above a 6800K when the 7850K was released.... ;-)

For the millionth time this is not about gaming only, we are evaluating if A10-7850K is competitive against the competition (Intel i3 or equivalent SKU).

Just answer this,

What SKU from Intel or AMD can provide the same CPU performance, same iGPU performance, same OpenCL performance, same Power Consumption, same 95W TDP and at the same price as A10-7850K + 8GB 2133MHz memory. Add what ever dGPU and 8GB memory you wish but dont overcome the price and no Overclocking.

Im waiting

ps: I could make it harder for you and ask you to only use a SFF case but ill let you use any case. But just remember, OEMs would prefer to go with an SFF because it cost less to them.

 

[AtenRa]

You just defeated your own argument. At the same price point, even disregarding the need for expensive ram for best performance with kaveri, a 750k plus 100.00 discrete card will destroy it in gpu performance, while a low end i5 will be faster in both single and multithreaded CPU performance.

No i didnt,

Athlon 750K + 8GB Memory + R7 260 is still more expensive than A10-7850K + 8GB 2133MHz Memory. Also, the Athlon setup will have lower CPU performance, it will use more power and it will need a higher-end PSU and it cannot be used with an SFF case.

So you may have higher performance but you must sacrifice power consumption, Form Factor and higher PSU. It may not seem that bad to you and me but it certainly looks bad from an OEM point of view.
Look how many PC are sold with just HD4600 graphics. The majority are with SFF cases and there are even Slim SFF.

 

[BSim500]

Secondly, it is you that are ONLY talking about gaming. I have explained so many times that we are evaluating the A10-7850K, not only in gaming but in general.

You only keep talking about gaming and gamers

I have never said i was only talking about gaming alone.

For the millionth time this is not about gaming only

Probably because I bothered to read what the OP has actually posted in the context of a "Super APU" : "Next Gen", "consoles", "performance for those next-gen", "...while the consoles are not?", "while consoles...", "It seems like the PS4...", "to run games decently", "since pretty much all games...".

And you sit there wondering why people are talking about games for a PS4 equivalent APU and couldn't care about obscure Luxmark OpenGL synthetics you've adopted as a hobby-horse?...

As for "show me this", "show me that" that's "equivalent to an APU in OpenCL & power consumption" - I'll say this : Out of the 9 people I know with APU's, 8 have ended up buying mid-range dGPU's (7790/7850/7870 & nvidia equivalents) within 6 months (which they didn't originally plan on doing). The other one doesn't play games. It's also quite funny that "power consumption" matters now to you, but is still simultaneously "irrelevant" every time a FX-8350 vs i5 comparison crops up... :sneaky:

 

[Enigmoid]

No i didnt,

Athlon 750K + 8GB Memory + R7 260 is still more expensive than A10-7850K + 8GB 2133MHz Memory. Also, the Athlon setup will have lower CPU performance, it will use more power and it will need a higher-end PSU and it cannot be used with an SFF case.

So you may have higher performance but you must sacrifice power consumption, Form Factor and higher PSU. It may not seem that bad to you and me but it certainly looks bad from an OEM point of view.
Look how many PC are sold with just HD4600 graphics. The majority are with SFF cases and there are even Slim SFF.

Yes it is but how much better is it?

That's what everyone else is saying. Who cares about $20 more if it doubles the fps.

Granted the Athlon 750k will have lower CPU performance but its unlikely to bottleneck many games with a R260 and the CPU can be mildly overclocked. Power consumption will go up but power use will be so low that realistically you are going to be using the same PSU on both builds (~300W). SFF yep, thats a problem.

That said you could get the 750K + 8 GB RAM and a R250/250X.

 

[AtenRa]

Probably because I bothered to read what the OP has actually posted in the context of a "Super APU" : "Next Gen", "consoles", "performance for those next-gen", "...while the consoles are not?", "while consoles...", "It seems like the PS4...", "to run games decently", "since pretty much all games...".

And you sit there wondering why people are talking about games for a PS4 equivalent APU and couldn't care about obscure Luxmark OpenGL synthetics you've adopted as a hobby-horse?...

As for "show me this", "show me that" that's "equivalent to an APU in OpenCL & power consumption" - I'll say this : Out of the 9 people I know with APU's, 8 have ended up buying mid-range dGPU's (7790/7850/7870 & nvidia equivalents) within 6 months (which they didn't originally plan on doing). The other one doesn't play games. It's also quite funny that "power consumption" matters now to you, but is still simultaneously "irrelevant" every time a FX-8350 vs i5 comparison crops up... :sneaky:

I suggest you re-read the OP, nah let me quote it for you.

in the pc space, their fusion chips I find to be highly fascinating, but ultimately not really competitive vs a traditional intel cpu + discrete GPU.

Yet they power the two big consoles of the next-gen.

Was AMD holding back all this while on their APU line, to differentiate the market? Or does this mean that performance for those next-gen will ultimately be disappointing?

Hm, not competitive against a traditional Intel CPU + dGPU. I believe the Intel Core i3 + GT630 was spot on.

Also, quote a single post that i have talked about irrelevant power consumption for the FX8350. Good luck finding one

Also, this is not a high-End Gaming PC with 200-300W GPUs. And the importance of the TDP is more about the PC case and thermals than power consumption in this segment.

So, could you answer the question or not ???

 

[BSim500]

Yes it is but how much better is it?

That's what everyone else is saying. Who cares about $20 more if it doubles the fps.

This was pointed out to him earlier - even a much cheaper R7 250 still totally clobbers an A10-7850K by up to 50% in many modern games (on both AMD & Intel CPU's), so the "A10-7850K is better because an i3 4130 + R7 260 is too expensive" is another "false dilemma" he loves to throw around.

The difference in BF4 on medium is huge:-
37fps - A10-7850K iGPU
55fps - A10-7850K + R7 250
86fps - A10-7850K + R7 260X
102fps - i3-4330 + R7 260X
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/BF4-D3D.png

37 -> 55fps is almost 50% more fps for $20-25 more (i3-4130 + R7 250), whilst 37 -> 102fps is almost TRIPLE the fps for $60 more (i3-4130 + R7 260X). Sales popularity can often be gauged in the number of reviews a product gets vs another. R7 250 gets about 54 Newegg reviews whilst R7 260X gets about 192. It's pretty obvious what the budget gamers choice is in reality - people are buying R7 260X / 7790 class of cards regardless of what CPU/APU they get - and even though it isn't AtenRa's "yes but it's not EXACTLY the same price", people with common sense are generally willing to pay a small premium for 50-175% higher fps over a 37fps stutter-fest...

And for "non-gamers" where no dGPU is required at all, an i5-3470 / i5-4430 is listed for only $5 more ($189) than the A10-7850K ($184). No matter how you "cut the cake", the A10-7850K is just plain overpriced.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I think everyone cept the most diehard fans have accepted by now that chips like the 7850K is worthless. And the only chip that may have a relevance, the 7600, is delayed to H2.