Zen 2 APUs/"Renoir" discussion thread

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NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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Trying to figure out if I am putting $5 down on the 256 model or the 512 model. I feel like if its good, you'd want the bestest one.

If it's OK, then the middle model is fine. Decisions...

Maybe I'll use a couple of accounts to pre order both models and decide later. $5 hedge is... OK given the situations with buying nice things lately. It's hard to believe they are bringing this to market now but the console/PC supply chain must be OK.

Top one has an anti-glare coating on the screen. If you actually want to play it outside, I'd go for that one...
 

Shivansps

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Sep 11, 2013
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I wonder If any of those models have a M.2 slot or if they actually have 3 diferent PCB models. Because i was thinking if the 64gb model actually have a free m.2 slot (or maybe the emmc is in the M.2 slot?).
 

gdansk

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Feb 8, 2011
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Interestingly it seems that Exynos 2200 will have 6 CUs.
That's surprising to me. I thought more CUs at lower clock rates would be preferred in a mobile product. And 6 CU, even at higher than Van Gogh clock rates, would fall behind the already existing Adreno 660's 1.6-1.8 tflops in peak compute. Not that compute tells the entire story.
 

LightningZ71

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From the Anandtech review, it seemed that Adreno, while having a high theoretical throughput capability, suffered from throughput efficiency issues in practical use.
 
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Shivansps

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Interestingly it seems that Exynos 2200 will have 6 CUs.

We are going to be able to mine on a phone, yeay. (there are already people trying to guess how well the steam deck will mine)
Now, the only problem i see with that is the high resolution screens that will be used with that product, remember that things get a low slower once to get to 1080p.
 
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Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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andermans

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Durante (who's somewhat known in the PC modding scene) stated that per pixel its performance is actually slightly above Series X targeting 4K even. Mind it's just a 19:10 800p screen though, so a perfect match one could say.



I think an essential difference though is that resolution upscaling is going to deliver much worse quality at 800p than at 4k, so all those games that use upscaling or checkerboarding to hit 4k might be significantly more noticable on 800p (+ the benefit is less as the geometry costs don't scale). Combine that with 1.6 GHz almost certainly not being reached at 15W and things are getting pretty challenging.
 

Shivansps

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800p to me its definately the weakest point, it should have been 1440x900 or 1600x900, depending if they were targeting 16:10 or 16:9. It feels like the GPU is far too powerfull for that resolution (a lot will be wasted on better AA, or the GPU will be running at very, very low mhz, what might be the case here). It makes me remember my old Voyo A1 Mini tablet, one of the first chinese tablets running the new BT cpus that had that same resolution, too bad the Intel IGP on that Atom performed like a 780G at best.

Anyway, 800p is the same resolution of the AYA Neo running the 4500U.

Edit: oh i just realised, poor guy who made the Aya Neo :( it just got wrecked.
 
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Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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This thing does need to have some staying power going forward, so the screen resolution isn't a bad idea. At that screen size it will look fine.

There's no point in spending more for a higher resolution screen that you probably won't be holding close enough to your face in order to really notice the difference. You will notice the janky performance from the hardware struggling to render at that higher resolution though.

Come back in three years and tell me if you think that the GPU is too powerful for that resolution.
 

Shivansps

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And when that happens you are going to be playing on what basically is the 16:10 version of 720p whiout any AA, thats a bad position to be in. But i would need to see the screen first.
 

Mopetar

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And when that happens you are going to be playing on what basically is the 16:10 version of 720p whiout any AA, thats a bad position to be in. But i would need to see the screen first.

What's preventing it from using some kind of anti-aliasing in games it runs? Either I've missed some crucial fact about this hardware or I feel as though I'm not understanding you.
 

Shivansps

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What's preventing it from using some kind of anti-aliasing in games it runs? Either I've missed some crucial fact about this hardware or I feel as though I'm not understanding you.

If you are unable to play at 900p at a playable FPS, you will be unable to play with any sort of AA at 720 or 800p. With a Vega APU at least, 1080p has a MASSIVE fps impact, to the point that 900p (1600x900) is better both in quality and fps, compared to 1080p, 900p gives you the possibility to use higher details, for example with a overclocked 2200G it was about 30-35 fps on Witcher 3 on 1080p all low, but, i was able to to play at 40fps avg using a combination of low/med/high/ultra settings, to the point i was unable to notice a diference from when i had the RX480 with everything on high-ultra whiout a side by side comparison.
This is why i always hate tech sites APUs reviews, they have no idea of what they are doing because they never actually used one and they do 1080p low and show you bad fps and then they drop to 720p just to tell you it looks awful.

Going from 900p to 720p, it gives you more FPS but not much as you may think, and you really start having some severe quality problems from lack of AA, and if you apply AA to 720p you are defeating the point of going 720p.

So this is why i like 900p more. 800p may be better to use here due to screen size, ill need to see it, but i dont think it has anything to do with performance, unless the alternative was a 1080p screen.
 
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Mopetar

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If you are unable to play at 900p at a playable FPS, you will be unable to play with any sort of AA at 720 or 800p.

I think that really depends on the type of AA being used doesn't it? SSAA or MSAA are pretty big performance hits, even at 2x settings in many games. However, others such SMAA or TAA probably aren't going to create a perceptible difference in frame rate for most players and games and if jaggies really bother you more than a little blur you can just use FXAA which has the least cost out of any of the techniques.

I'm going to trust that Valve put a little bit of thought into their design of this and made some good hardware choices. This isn't just Walmart just shoving components together to make a cheap box, it's a company that develops (and used to actually release!) PC games. The APU being used is pretty clearly custom-built for this device so it's hard to imagine it being chosen without these sorts of considerations being made.
 
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KompuKare

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The APU being used is pretty clearly custom-built for this device so it's hard to imagine it being chosen without these sorts of considerations being made.
Is it?
I was expecting van Gogh to see a wider release.
Can't see Valve having enough money to pay for a full custom APU design which even taking existing parts (Zen2 + RNDA2 etc.) would run into ten of millions.
Wonder what the die size is as 7nm is still very supply constraing (aside from Sony and MS who seem to shipping by the millions),
 
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Mopetar

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I wasn't aware it was Van Gogh (which I though people were saying was canceled not all that long ago, but it's getting the point where it's getting hard to keep up with all the different names/products so perhaps I'm thinking of something else) which after looking does check-out spec wise. I'd just assumed it was custom since it was a blend of Zen 2, RDNA 2, and LPDDR5 which was unlike all of their other APUs. It's even got quad-channel memory.
 
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Panino Manino

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On PCs, the APUs have a impact hit from the smaller L3.
What about this APU? It's the same amount of L3 as the other Zen 2 APUs or does this one have more?
 

KompuKare

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I wasn't aware it was Van Gogh (which I though people were saying was canceled not all that long ago, but it's getting the point where it's getting hard to keep up with all the different names/products so perhaps I'm thinking of something else) which after looking does check-out spec wise. I'd just assumed it was custom since it was a blend of Zen 2, RDNA 2, and LPDDR5 which was unlike all of their other APUs. It's even got quad-channel memory.
Could the quad channel just be sure LPDDR5 being 2x32 bit rather than 64 bit per channel?

Whether this is what was known as van Gogh is still not certain, but it certainly points that way.

Die size, and a proper spec would be nice. Would like to know if it has a DDR4 controller too, mainly to know whether it comes to the AM4 DIY market or is BGA only.
 
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NTMBK

Lifer
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Could the quad channel just be sure LPDDR5 being 2x32 bit rather than 64 bit per channel?

Whether this is what was known as van Gogh is still not certain, but it certainly points that way.

Die size, and a proper spec would be nice. Would like to know if it has a DDR4 controller too, mainly to know whether it comes to the AM4 DIY market or is BGA only.

I hope it isn't coming to AM4. AM4 support would add extra cruft and inefficiencies, and I want this to be the highest possible efficiency for a handheld.
 

tomatosummit

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I hope it isn't coming to AM4. AM4 support would add extra cruft and inefficiencies, and I want this to be the highest possible efficiency for a handheld.
I just want asrock to get their hands on it and make a mini pc the size of a credit card again.
 

Mopetar

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Could the quad channel just be sure LPDDR5 being 2x32 bit rather than 64 bit per channel?

The tech specs page on Valve's site does indicate it's 4x 32-bit channels, so you're correct. Either way it's still impressive because based on the specification they give it should be 88 GB/s bandwidth which is on par with the discrete RDNA cards when considering bandwidth available per CU. One of the major criticisms of APUs has generally been that they're bandwidth starved in some scenarios.

Whether this is what was known as van Gogh is still not certain, but it certainly points that way.

Die size, and a proper spec would be nice. Would like to know if it has a DDR4 controller too, mainly to know whether it comes to the AM4 DIY market or is BGA only.

I don't know one way or another, but when I did a search for Van Gogh the first article I came across was from earlier this year saying it was a rumored 4-core Zen 2, RDNA2 graphics, LPDDR5 chip supposedly targeting the ultra-portable market. The TDP that Valve lists on their website is 4-15W so at the lowest clock rates it certainly seems like it would fit in well.

I have no idea if it's canceled and this is a way for AMD to salvage work already done or if AMD isn't announcing anything because Valve bought up every single chip for the time being or whatever else the truth might be.
 
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Shivansps

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I think that really depends on the type of AA being used doesn't it? SSAA or MSAA are pretty big performance hits, even at 2x settings in many games. However, others such SMAA or TAA probably aren't going to create a perceptible difference in frame rate for most players and games and if jaggies really bother you more than a little blur you can just use FXAA which has the least cost out of any of the techniques.

I'm going to trust that Valve put a little bit of thought into their design of this and made some good hardware choices. This isn't just Walmart just shoving components together to make a cheap box, it's a company that develops (and used to actually release!) PC games. The APU being used is pretty clearly custom-built for this device so it's hard to imagine it being chosen without these sorts of considerations being made.

Im just saying that the Steam Deck has the same resolution as the Aya Neo that has just a Vega 6, the Neo needed that resolution for performance, i dont think thats the case for the Steam Deck. The good thing is that the GPU will be underused in a lot of games, that means more battery life.
 

Mopetar

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Im just saying that the Steam Deck has the same resolution as the Aya Neo that has just a Vega 6, the Neo needed that resolution for performance, i dont think thats the case for the Steam Deck. The good thing is that the GPU will be underused in a lot of games, that means more battery life.

I'm going to assume that the RDNA2 GPU in the Steam Deck is better than the older Vega tech in AMD's other APUs. The additional memory bandwidth is likely going to help alleviate potential bottlenecks as well. A higher resolution screen (at the same size) would also use more battery since higher PPI LCD screens need a stronger back-light. A mobile device is always going to have to compromise in some regard.

The tech specs page on Valve's site lists the refresh rate of the screen as 60 Hz anyhow, so I'm assuming that it's designed to be able to hit the FPS cap in most of the games that it's going to run and really I think that's more important than having a slightly better screen. My biggest gripe about the Switch was the times where it would get a bit laggy and not be able to keep up a consistent frame rate.
 

moinmoin

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What's notable is that Valve's RAM spec of the Steam Deck
16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (5500 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)
puts the Steam Deck right in line with the new consoles (which use GDDR6) bandwidth wise (via):
XSX: 46.09 GB/s per GPU TFLOP
XSS: 55.91 GB/s per GPU TFLOP
PS5: 43.58 GB/s per GPU TFLOP
Steam Deck: 53.72-85.94 GB/s per GPU TFLOP

If that turns out to be correct (there is still the chance it's actually quad 16-bit, which would halve the Deck's number, but even then) this is a vast improvement from the usual memory setup of AMD APUs so far.
 
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