Zen delayed to 2017 (DigiTimes)

[Sweepr]

For a dual channel platform, with far fewer PCIe lanes? And probably a lot less L3?

Yes.

 

[Arachnotronic]

For a dual channel platform, with far fewer PCIe lanes? And probably a lot less L3?

I would think that pricing is more a function of performance than anything else. What sirmo appears to be saying is that he wants a 6900K equivalent but doesn't want to pay the 6900K price.

What I'm saying is that if AMD has a 6900K-class processor to sell, they're not going to price it cheaply. The whole point of trying to develop competitive solutions is so that you can get paid more for them, not so that you can dump them for far less than what they're worth.

 

[NTMBK]

I would think that pricing is more a function of performance than anything else. What sirmo appears to be saying is that he wants a 6900K equivalent but doesn't want to pay the 6900K price.

What I'm saying is that if AMD has a 6900K-class processor to sell, they're not going to price it cheaply. The whole point of trying to develop competitive solutions is so that you can get paid more for them, not so that you can dump them for far less than what they're worth.

My point of comparison would be the Phenom II X6. More cores than the Lynnfield competitors, but slightly lower per-core performance, at a comparable price. That's what I'm hoping for, not something that's going to beat Skylake at single thread.

 

[sirmo]

We don't know what AMD plans to charge for Summit Ridge, could very well be 6900K-territory pricing.

I strongly doubt it will be 6900k territory. Unless it completely laps the 6900k in which case, good on them.

 

[Arachnotronic]

My point of comparison would be the Phenom II X6. More cores than the Lynnfield competitors, but slightly lower per-core performance, at a comparable price. That's what I'm hoping for, not something that's going to beat Skylake at single thread.

Phenom II X6 offered worse ST perf and roughly similar multi-threaded performance relative to the Lynnfield i7.

Yeah, I guess if Summit Ridge only offers Skylake quad-core multi-core performance and lower ST performance, they'll try to sell it for Skylake quad-core prices.

 

[inf64]

I would think that pricing is more a function of performance than anything else. What sirmo appears to be saying is that he wants a 6900K equivalent but doesn't want to pay the 6900K price.

What I'm saying is that if AMD has a 6900K-class processor to sell, they're not going to price it cheaply. The whole point of trying to develop competitive solutions is so that you can get paid more for them, not so that you can dump them for far less than what they're worth.

I agree. If they have ~6900K performance chip, they will NOT sell it for ~350 dollars. They will sell it for at least 70% of 6900K's price.

I on the other hand doubt they will be that near 6900K's performance level, maybe at 5960x or around that at best. That is not bad at all provided they hit that performance target. Selling such a SKU for ~550-600 dollars would be awesome for AMD since their top desktop SKU now goes for around 230$ on newegg...

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would think that pricing is more a function of performance than anything else. What sirmo appears to be saying is that he wants a 6900K equivalent but doesn't want to pay the 6900K price.

What I'm saying is that if AMD has a 6900K-class processor to sell, they're not going to price it cheaply. The whole point of trying to develop competitive solutions is so that you can get paid more for them, not so that you can dump them for far less than what they're worth.

This was my contention for a long while as well. I still feel basically this way. However, the pricing on the 480x gpu is *extremely* competitive, and makes me think that AMD may try to undercut Intel more than I initially expected. It depends on performance as well as supply. If supply is tight, I would expect them to charge more.

Like I said earlier, if they can deliver performance between 6 and 8 core intel, or closer to 8 core, they have a lot of leeway for pricing. 8 core intel is absurdly overpriced relative to 4 and 6 cores, ie, almost 3x the price of 6800k for 33% more cores, seriously??? And it is not even the top of the line chip anymore.

However, if Zen performance in more in line with six core intel, then they are trying to break into a very crowded market, and pricing will be difficult. Really, Intel did AMD a big favor with BW-E pricing. In addition to the AMD diehards that would buy Zen no matter what, I think Intel's pricing of BW-E pissed off even a lot of intel supporters who might go to zen as a reaction to intel's hubris of raising prices on such a minimally improved product as BW-E.

 

[Doom2pro]

As I said before... *grin*


Where is the proof of this Zen delay? It's smelling like made up FUD. I have read five articles from the echo chamber already and there is no source for any of them...

Has anyone found a source yet? (For the Zen delay) I haven't seen one listed here yet...

 

[sirmo]

As I said before... *grin*


Where is the proof of this Zen delay? It's smelling like made up FUD. I have read five articles from the echo chamber already and there is no source for any of them...

Has anyone found a source yet? (For the Zen delay) I haven't seen one listed here yet...

Even if there was a delay we wouldn't know about it until AMD themselves came out and said so. Look how tight lipped AMD is on Polaris, and that's due to be released in 3 weeks.

So far the last from AMD as of last week was Zen is on track. This stuff is stock market speculation.

 

[SK10H]

I have to ask a straight forward question, can the people looking to buy 6-10 cores actually name 3 programs where the extra cores will be widely used by them? Video conversion / encoding app, rendering app, encryption app, compression/decompression app, etc.?

My litmus test is if there are no 2-3 programs that I use weekly that run faster on a max overclocked 6950X over a 6700K max overclocked, then Skylake wins every time. This is similar to buying tri-SLI/Tri-Fire and having 97-98% of games never actually use the 3rd card. Same story with PCIe 3.0 16x/16x SLI over PCIe 3.0 PCI 8x/8x = useless paper spec.

Also, compare the prices of 4x4GB DDR4 3466-3600 vs. 2x8GB DDR4 3466-3600 -> more premiums. X99 board --> more premiums --> higher end cooler required for a 4.4-4.5Ghz BW-E, more premiums.

I have only 1 app that need cores, running VM. I don't need 2-3 apps to justify my future purchase. I intend to get 64GB DDR4, as I already have 32GB DDR3 now.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231968
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232265
DDR4-3400 almost double the price over DDR4-2400 for my purchase. These premium alone more than offset the cost for getting a silicon lottery cpu if needed. I will take more CPU MHz at lower volt than chasing the memory speed. Let's see how Zen scale with mem speed in a few months, but I still would not spend these much for benchmark purpose.

The way I look at it is once more games use 6-8 cores, I'll just sell Skylake and buy Icelake-E. I honestly think it will be 3-4 years before a 6-8 core 4.4Ghz BW-E/HW-E starts to outpace 4.8Ghz 6700K.

This is why I think even if 3.8Ghz 8C/16HT Zen ~ IBV IPC, it's not good enough. If they are going to go that route, they should figure out how this CPU can run at 4.2-4.4Ghz with 6 cores, and 4.5-4.6Ghz with 4 cores. At least the IPC deficit can be somewhat narrowed with higher clocks.

Of Course 3.8GHz Zen max clock is not good enough, it need to be max out around Haswell level at reasonable watt. The 4.4GHz HW-E seem low, for BW-E it's high :sneaky:, the 4.8 on 6700 seem high for avg.

Dmitri from Hardware Canucks did tests of 3930K OC vs. 6700K OC and the former lost in almost everything, while barely winning in multi-threaded apps. Someone who legitimately uses/benefits 6-8 cores with Sandy/Ivy IPC already has such a CPU. How else am I supposed to believe that since 2012 until 2016 this user didn't need 6-8 fast cores but come 2017 when Zen shows up, all of a sudden 8 cores > 4 very fast Skylake cores? Makes no sense. You cannot have it both ways.

And I don't. A Haswell i5 at 4.5 is very slow when just 2 VMs are loading, let alone 6-8 trying to pull some Windows updates. My i5 is supposed to be a 6 month stop gap, but will become 2 year since Intel fail. Don't forget DDR3 and DDR4 price only plummet last year. The whole platform price tag was ridiculous for X99.

That's why to me unless Zen ~ Haswell IPC at minimum and overclocks at least as good as Skylake, it's not that exciting. I suppose for workstation and productivity users, 8-core Zen for $499 is going to cost less than 1/2 of 6900K. It would be a good deal but to me and many users both of those processors are not worth the $. What's better, $1070 worth 'useless 8 cores' or $499 of 'useless 8 cores'? Neither when $289.99 CPU smashes them both while using less power, and the entire platform costing less.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559&cm_re=6700k-_-19-117-559-_-Product

The i7-6700k cost ~ $350US. There's no Microcenter here and the world, and it's not fair to compare lost leader price against your expected future price target. They might do the same for Zen too. Otherwise, there's the Intel retail edge too.

If only Zen 8C/16t at Haswell IPC with Skylake oc to 4.8Ghz can get you excited, I will state you're shooting for AMD best case scenario. And buying a 4c/8t for $350 so close to Zen is a mistake at this point. Quad core exist for 9-10 years, 6c will become mainstream within 2 years even for Intel, assuming Zen is competitive. So no excitement here for 4c/8t.

A HW-E at 4.6GHz with "standard memory" is acceptable and a better purchase than Skylake. There's always freesync for min fps if needed, and for low res 1080p high fps setting, it becomes statistical noise.

 

[deasd]

Yes.

Both 9370 and 9590 has very limited quantity due to their clocks and yield.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I have only 1 app that need cores, running VM. I don't need 2-3 apps to justify my future purchase. I intend to get 64GB DDR4, as I already have 32GB DDR3 now.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231968
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232265
DDR4-3400 almost double the price over DDR4-2400 for my purchase. These premium alone more than offset the cost for getting a silicon lottery cpu if needed. I will take more CPU MHz at lower volt than chasing the memory speed. Let's see how Zen scale with mem speed in a few months, but I still would not spend these much for benchmark purpose.




Of Course 3.8GHz Zen max clock is not good enough, it need to be max out around Haswell level at reasonable watt. The 4.4GHz HW-E seem low, for BW-E it's high :sneaky:, the 4.8 on 6700 seem high for avg.



And I don't. A Haswell i5 at 4.5 is very slow when just 2 VMs are loading, let alone 6-8 trying to pull some Windows updates. My i5 is supposed to be a 6 month stop gap, but will become 2 year since Intel fail. Don't forget DDR3 and DDR4 price only plummet last year. The whole platform price tag was ridiculous for X99.



http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559&cm_re=6700k-_-19-117-559-_-Product

The i7-6700k cost ~ $350US. There's no Microcenter here and the world, and it's not fair to compare lost leader price against your expected future price target. They might do the same for Zen too. Otherwise, there's the Intel retail edge too.

If only Zen 8C/16t at Haswell IPC with Skylake oc to 4.8Ghz can get you excited, I will state you're shooting for AMD best case scenario. And buying a 4c/8t for $350 so close to Zen is a mistake at this point. Quad core exist for 9-10 years, 6c will become mainstream within 2 years even for Intel, assuming Zen is competitive. So no excitement here for 4c/8t.

A HW-E at 4.6GHz with "standard memory" is acceptable and a better purchase than Skylake. There's always freesync for min fps if needed, and for low res 1080p high fps setting, it becomes statistical noise.

Not sure how many VMs you're running, but I built a 2P Xeon server in 2013 for all my VMs (about 50, of which around 30 run 24/7) and it chews them up and spits them out, though disk performance is something I need to improve.

 

[SK10H]

I agree. If they have ~6900K performance chip, they will NOT sell it for ~350 dollars. They will sell it for at least 70% of 6900K's price.

I on the other hand doubt they will be that near 6900K's performance level, maybe at 5960x or around that at best. That is not bad at all provided they hit that performance target. Selling such a SKU for ~550-600 dollars would be awesome for AMD since their top desktop SKU now goes for around 230$ on newegg...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1676

This is the price AMD used to charge in their best year.
The dual core start at $537. The single core start at $272.

AMD has no competitive part at all when Zen come out in a few months if they don't have at least one Zen SKU to compete against i5 pricing.

3 months later
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1745

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ come out at $354. Still pricey, but the lower end is occupied by Single core A64. They don't have the luxury this time to wait 3 months and take their sweet time to overcharge early adopters.

 

[Sweepr]

Both 9370 and 9590 has very limited quantity due to their clocks and yield.

Will Summit Ridge be any different in the beggining, especially if there is reasonable demand?

 

[Phynaz]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1676

This is the price AMD used to charge in their best year.
The dual core start at $537. The single core start at $272.

AMD has no competitive part at all when Zen come out in a few months if they don't have at least one Zen SKU to compete against i5 pricing.

3 months later
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1745

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ come out at $354. Still pricey, but the lower end is occupied by Single core A64. They don't have the luxury this time to wait 3 months and take their sweet time to overcharge early adopters.

Great post, thanks!

 

[el etro]

I think that Zen will be ready at October, but not much availability of it in the stores.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think that it is the suggestion, and it is surely entirely believable?

I don't know, that doesn't sound terribly believable to me. First, I question how much influence OEM supplies of chips will have anything to do with AMD's decision to or to not launch Zen in limited quantity. I expect most Summit Ridge chips (and the boards capable of handling them) to go to the DIY market. The rest will probably be to high-end OEM systems where supplies of other chips won't be as big of a factor.

AMD is going ahead with OEM Bristol Ridge systems (just not the DIY desktop stuff), and inventories for products roughly-equivalent to Bristol Ridge are probably much greater right now than inventories for anything with the same product profile as future Summit Ridge chips. AMD's decision to or to not go ahead and do a limited launch of Summit Ridge to DIYers and boutique OEMs is probably not going to be affected by Skylake supplies. And do you really think that inventories of Haswell-E/Broadwell-E are really high right now? I'm thinking probably not?

He's joking guys, don't take it so seriously

You say that, but I don't think he's really joking. He seems quite passionate in his disdain for Keller's group in general. That's just my impression.

I think that Zen will be ready at October, but not much availability of it in the stores.

I see no reason to believe otherwise. AMD hasn't said anything about delays, new respins of the chip that'll keep it off shelves until CES 2017, or anything else like that.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

I have no idea, not one, where Seronx gets these things...but it's an interesting speculation. Is he reading the history from a dead timeline or something, one where IBM and AMD merged?

Certainly an AMD64/Power9 hybrid is an interesting idea. I'm not sure if it would be worth IBM's while to pull it off though, and am trying to figure out just what the application would be. HPC? Surprise anti-Intel blitz on the mid and high-end of the server market? Insane enthusiast desktop? Secret deal with Apple for new Mac Pro?

The mind boggles.

 

[Zstream]

I have only 1 app that need cores, running VM. I don't need 2-3 apps to justify my future purchase. I intend to get 64GB DDR4, as I already have 32GB DDR3 now.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231968

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232265

DDR4-3400 almost double the price over DDR4-2400 for my purchase. These premium alone more than offset the cost for getting a silicon lottery cpu if needed. I will take more CPU MHz at lower volt than chasing the memory speed. Let's see how Zen scale with mem speed in a few months, but I still would not spend these much for benchmark purpose.









Of Course 3.8GHz Zen max clock is not good enough, it need to be max out around Haswell level at reasonable watt. The 4.4GHz HW-E seem low, for BW-E it's high :sneaky:, the 4.8 on 6700 seem high for avg.







And I don't. A Haswell i5 at 4.5 is very slow when just 2 VMs are loading, let alone 6-8 trying to pull some Windows updates. My i5 is supposed to be a 6 month stop gap, but will become 2 year since Intel fail. Don't forget DDR3 and DDR4 price only plummet last year. The whole platform...

Ok, your scenario of windows updates is not very cpu intensive. It's hard drive iops that matter on any VM server.

If AMD can come out with 8 core or true 16 core HW competitive processor 3.2-3.8ghz), they will sell millions (assuming the price is right).

 

[Qwertilot]

A delay to excess stock is definitely more believable for Kabylake than Zen, that I grant you We'll find out.

 

[SK10H]

Ok, your scenario of windows updates is not very cpu intensive. It's hard drive iops that matter on any VM server.

I have a 500GB SSD just for the VM, it's spilling over to the 2nd one now. :sneaky: It's CPU bound as I click install on all of them at once and my web browsing become slow motion on my 3rd main OS SSD. Verified by task manager.

 

[Ajay]

And do you really think that inventories of Haswell-E/Broadwell-E are really high right now? I'm thinking probably not?

Do you really think that an octo-core Zen @ 95 W is going to deliver the same performance as an octo-core HW-E/BDW-E @ 140 W? That would require AMD to deliver something like 45% higher perf/watt than Intel - that would mean Zen is a revolutionary CPU. If 2 memory channels can feed an 8C/16T processor under heavy load - I just can't see how it gets anywhere near Intel's HEDT CPUs.

I'd love to hear that Zen was actually pulling 125+ Watts and that it requires really fast DDR4. I would be much more optimistic about it's likely performance. I really would like to see AMD succeed, hopefully some of these rumors are dead wrong.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Do you really think that an octo-core Zen @ 95 W is going to deliver the same performance as an octo-core HW-E/BDW-E @ 140 W? That would require AMD to deliver something like 45% higher perf/watt than Intel - that would mean Zen is a revolutionary CPU. If 2 memory channels can feed an 8C/16T processor under heavy load - I just can't see how it gets anywhere near Intel's HEDT CPUs.

I'd love to hear that Zen was actually pulling 125+ Watts and that it require really fast DDR4. I would be much more optimistic about it's likely performance. I really would like to see AMD succeed, hopefully some of these rumors are dead wrong.

The 95W, dual channel DDR4, and so on are already confirmed:

 

[swilli89]

Do you really think that an octo-core Zen @ 95 W is going to deliver the same performance as an octo-core HW-E/BDW-E @ 140 W? That would require AMD to deliver something like 45% higher perf/watt than Intel - that would mean Zen is a revolutionary CPU. If 2 memory channels can feed an 8C/16T processor under heavy load - I just can't see how it gets anywhere near Intel's HEDT CPUs.

I'd love to hear that Zen was actually pulling 125+ Watts and that it requires really fast DDR4. I would be much more optimistic about it's likely performance. I really would like to see AMD succeed, hopefully some of these rumors are dead wrong.

I think what at least myself and a good few others are hoping for is that Zen hits that magical single threaded performance that basically maxes out games in regards to CPU performance. You may squeeze 4 or 5 more fps by overclocking a 6700k, maybe even more than that in isolated cases, but for the majority of titles, especially with newer APIs, once you get to something like Ivy Bridge to Haswell IPC you are good to go in games.

The next step is to get to 8 cores which Intel won't currently allow overclockers to do for less than $1000. I think the 6900K is $1099 right now!

If we can get what amounts to the same IPC (for the intent of gaming) yet get 8 cores for anything under $600 (not to mention the cost of Intel's HEDT platform and memory) then that is a huge step forward for all of us.

 

[Ajay]

The 95W, dual channel DDR4, and so on are already confirmed:

Thanks for the pics. So @ 95 Watts there is no chance of Zen getting anywhere close to the performance of Intel's most recent 8-core HEDT processors :\