[Xbitlabs]AMD Excavator Core May Dramatic Performance Increases.

[NTMBK]

But excavator certainly have the potential to do the same against bd. Lol

When the bar is set that low...

 

[Vesku]

Well you won't find much price difference when looking for SLI certified motherboards between Intel and AMD, at least starting from the bottom end of pricing.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

This is just going from sad to pathetic in real terms. What makes things even worse is the state of AMD chipsets. I've been looking into to this recently and I can't believe how far they are behind Intel in this arena as well.

What other things then SATA3 and USB3 do you require? Apart from a slight performance deficit the A85X/A88X is every bit as capable as any Intel chipset. I'm not counting AM3(+) in that comparison, simply because its a 4 year old platform, that hasn't seen a real update since the 800-series in 2009 (the 900-series is nothing more then a rebrand of the 800's). If you're looking at really cheap 760G boards, then honestly, what do you expect? The 700-series is from 2007... :whiste:

Its only if you get into more specialized features that AMD can't deliver.

 

[bgt]

I'm not counting AM3(+) in that comparison, simply because its a 4 year old platform,

But my 970 is soooooooooooo stable. Never had such a rocksolid platform as this 1:whiste:

 

[Ajay]

Well you won't find much price difference when looking for SLI certified motherboards between Intel and AMD, at least starting from the bottom end of pricing.

It's for F@H, I don't need SLI.

What other things then SATA3 and USB3 do you require? Apart from a slight performance deficit the A85X/A88X is every bit as capable as any Intel chipset. I'm not counting AM3(+) in that comparison, simply because its a 4 year old platform, that hasn't seen a real update since the 800-series in 2009 (the 900-series is nothing more then a rebrand of the 800's). If you're looking at really cheap 760G boards, then honestly, what do you expect? The 700-series is from 2007... :whiste:

Its only if you get into more specialized features that AMD can't deliver.

The FM2 boards didn't even have something like 2x PCIe slots w/8 lanes each - unless I missed something. I saw many problems on 900 series (AM3+) boards with VRMs - and not just on 4 module BD/PD CPUs, but even on Athlon II X2's! WTH?! [the latter, obviously, isn't an AMD chipset problem]. On AM3+ boards I noticed a number of people posting who were having problems running two GFX cards - that's a non starter. The only solid looking board I've seen is the Asus Formula and that's more than I wanted to spend. I was only looking for a solid stock motherboard, not a good overclocking board (which, per usual, would cost quite a bit more).

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's for F@H, I don't need SLI.



The FM2 boards didn't even have something like 2x PCIe slots w/8 lanes each - unless I missed something. I saw many problems on 900 series (AM3+) boards with VRMs - and not just on 4 module BD/PD CPUs, but even on Athlon II X2's! WTH?! [the latter, obviously, isn't an AMD chipset problem]. On AM3+ boards I noticed a number of people posting who were having problems running two GFX cards - that's a non starter. The only solid looking board I've seen is the Asus Formula and that's more than I wanted to spend. I was only looking for a solid stock motherboard, not a good overclocking board (which, per usual, would cost quite a bit more).

Unlike Intel, you need to pay close attention to what TDP a board can handle. Putting a 125W TDP chip in a board rated for 95W is a sure-fire way to fry the VRMs.

I don't know where you have been looking at FM2 boards, but at least ASUS and Gigabyte both have boards with 2x PCIe 8x available. You just can't get one in mATX size unfortunately. Such boards also tend to be a bit on the expensive side.

F.x.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4343#sp

But my 970 is soooooooooooo stable. Never had such a rocksolid platform as this 1:whiste:

Never wrote anything about AMD being unstable. In fact all my AMD systems have been rock stable, some have even lasted 10+ years without issue. But lets face it, AM3 is unlikely to see further enhancements. FM2+/FM3 is likely to take over everything from low- to high-end.

AMD also need that chance to integrate the northbridge into the CPU to optimize power efficiency (like they already do for FM1/2/2+). I think the northbridge is still fabbed on a 65nm process.

 

[Ajay]

Unlike Intel, you need to pay close attention to what TDP a board can handle. Putting a 125W TDP chip in a board rated for 95W is a sure-fire way to fry the VRMs.

I don't know where you have been looking at FM2 boards, but at least ASUS and Gigabyte both have boards with 2x PCIe 8x available. You just can't get one in mATX size unfortunately. Such boards also tend to be a bit on the expensive side.

F.x.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4343#sp

Pretty sure the Athlon II X2s where 95W or less.

Thanks for the link on that motherboard - I guess my search parameters were tossing out the wrong boards at Newegg, that's much better. Nice to see FM2+ finally adds PCIe 3.0. And around a hundred dollars is not allot for a motherboard. It's not like I'm looking for an x58 or x79 motherboard.

 

[ElFenix]

Has a company ever produced an x86 processor that has a 50% jump in IPC over its predecessor?

Sandy Bridge's IPC improvement over Conroe was about 30% IIRC, which is the most dramatic improvement I can think of. The second most dramatic improvement was probably the Athlon 64 X2 over the A64, but I can't find a decent set of benchmarks to compare that easily.

Since the A64 X2 I think AMD have been managing a 10% IPC improvement, ignoring the Ph1 and BD. If those two 'dodgy' generations are taken into account, the % IPC improvement looks pretty shaky.

conroe's performance over the P4 designs were bigger than sandy's improvement over its predecessor, which was nehalem. nehalem's performance improvements over conroe weren't as big as conroe's over P4.

conroe seriously spanked the P4 in IPC.

Technically, Penryn was Conroes predecessor. The IPC increase of Conroe over Prescott was dramatic, but Conroe also dropped the clocks quite low.

penryn was a die shrink of conroe (along with wolfdale and yorkfield)

 

[ChronoReverse]

Everything spanked the P4 in IPC =P

But Conroe was truly a huge jump since it had decent frequencies along with the IPC buff.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2012/-01-Cinebench-11.5,3142.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/x86-core-performance-comparison/Cinebench-11.5,2753.html


Looking at the scores, it looks like Conroe doubled the P4's overall performance and the IPC.

After that, it took until Haswell to double the overall performance from original Conroe (and still not the IPC).

 

[Exophase]

I really hesitate to count Conroe vs Prescott as an IPC improvement. It wasn't a successor, it was a parallel design path that took over its market position. I don't believe we've a true design successor that turned back clock speed, making the whole thing a pretty different comparison.

 

[Piroko]

penryn was a die shrink of conroe (along with wolfdale and yorkfield)

My bad, meant Core Duo / Yonah. Intels codenames were as random as their marketing names at times... :\

 

[Insert_Nickname]

And around a hundred dollars is not allot for a motherboard. It's not like I'm looking for an x58 or x79 motherboard.

I just meant in relation to other FM2 boards, not in the grand scheme of things... 😀

 

[Gikaseixas]

Shouldn't the hype be around SR???
Not saying that it's a bad topic to have here but we should be exited over SR leaks now :hmm:

 

[Erenhardt]

Shouldn't the hype be around SR???
Not saying that it's a bad topic to have here but we should be exited over SR leaks now :hmm:

Unfortunately only leaks about SR we have, are that it is delayed to 2014.

 

[Vesku]

AMD is keeping very quiet about Steam Roller numbers, although they've been happy to show off working chips since the Summer.

 

[Zor Prime]

I'm interested to see if Keller had been back at AMD long enough to influence much of the SR core.

 

[schmuckley]

All that and not benchmark 1
Shennanigans

 

[ElFenix]

My bad, meant Core Duo / Yonah. Intels codenames were as random as their marketing names at times... :\

right about that, though the conroe gen had 2 predecessor architecture implementations, pressler/cedar mill* on the desktop and yonah in laptops. as conroe was the desktop part its immediate predecessor was pressler. merom was the code for the laptop part, which succeeded yonah. merom wasn't as big an improvement over yonah as conroe was over pressler.




*pressler and cedar mill were pretty much a straight die-shrink of prescott, so they could be included under the prescott umbrella.

 

[Ajay]

I'm interested to see if Keller had been back at AMD long enough to influence much of the SR core.

Based on his position and apparent responsibilities, he is influencing the direction of AMD CPUs more by organizing time, talent and dedication of resources. I think all the the top level architects realized how BD needed to evolve. The real fruits of his labors, and those of his teams will come into view post 2014. All, IMHO.

So in answer to your question, probably not much influence on SR. Maybe some on EX, but more of his influence should be seen after that, depending on where AMD will be after that.

 

[Abwx]

I'm interested to see if Keller had been back at AMD long enough to influence much of the SR core.

"AMD are on track to catch up on high performance cores" - Jim Keller, Corporate Vice President and Chief Architect of AMD's Microprocessor Cores

Jim confidently stated AMD are on track to catch up on high performance core, a function of design improvements. We couldn't pin down a timeline for this, but with a time scale of two years core design and one year build and test, it's not going to be immediate. My expectation is 2015.

http://www.rage3d.com/articles/hardware/amd_worldcast/

 

[Ajay]

http://www.rage3d.com/articles/hardware/amd_worldcast/

Sadly, AMD can't really catch up, even if EX turns out to be an excellent architectural implementation, it'll be on 20nm planar bulk at best, as opposed to Intel's 14nm second generation FinFET.

On the plus side, Keller seems to have put some order, stability and discipline back into AMD's design teams. And based on his comments, all that will constitute better execution on the EX APU Carrizo.

 

[JDG1980]

Currently, I believe that Piledriver's IPC is roughly the same as Conroe (though of course this varies somewhat depending on the application). I think a reasonable expectation for improvements would be for Steamroller to have roughly equivalent IPC to Nehalem, and Excavator to catch up to Sandy Bridge.

AMD does have one thing going for them: Intel's architectural improvements on the big-core side have been slowing down, and that trend will continue and perhaps even accelerate. Haswell is part of the P6 family, which dates back to the original Pentium Pro. As far as IPC tweaks go, the low-hanging fruit was plucked long ago. Sandy Bridge to Haswell isn't really that big of an upgrade. In contrast, AMD's construction equipment architecture is still relatively immature, with plenty of additional optimizations that can be added as soon as the fabrication process is up to par.

 

[krumme]

Intel is controlling sales and oem. Amd needs to have far superior product to make serious profit. Excavator will not get there, even if it a major improvement, as gf is performing badly compared to intel or tsmc.

 

[krumme]

Amd share price is tanking because the market realizes there is no more money in the pc market for amd using their big core.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Currently, I believe that Piledriver's IPC is roughly the same as Conroe (though of course this varies somewhat depending on the application). I think a reasonable expectation for improvements would be for Steamroller to have roughly equivalent IPC to Nehalem, and Excavator to catch up to Sandy Bridge.

AMD does have one thing going for them: Intel's architectural improvements on the big-core side have been slowing down, and that trend will continue and perhaps even accelerate. Haswell is part of the P6 family, which dates back to the original Pentium Pro. As far as IPC tweaks go, the low-hanging fruit was plucked long ago. Sandy Bridge to Haswell isn't really that big of an upgrade. In contrast, AMD's construction equipment architecture is still relatively immature, with plenty of additional optimizations that can be added as soon as the fabrication process is up to par.

Phenom II had a lower IPC than Conroe, and Phenom II has a higher IPC than PileDriver. So, no.