ZEN ES Benchmark from french hardware Magazine

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Zstream

Diamond Member
Oct 24, 2005
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650x305xamd_promontory_features_capabilities-1024x481.jpg.pagespeed.ic.m0QEsGW1Y5.jpg



http://www.kitguru.net/components/c...r-direct-nvme-storage-promontory-pch-usb-3-1/

Ok, got it. Is this because AMD has a hard time enforcing motherboard standards with its partners and forced to include that in the CPU? I guess I don't see the point in including that in a CPU, wasting precious resources.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Ok, got it. Is this because AMD has a hard time enforcing motherboard standards with its partners and forced to include that in the CPU? I guess I don't see the point in including that in a CPU, wasting precious resources.
What waste? It's quite a drop in platform cost, and also enables space savings for small form factors.

Here's a Kabini die shot, with an embedded FCH:
Kabini_die_shot_labled.jpg


How big of a waste do you think it is?
 

USER8000

Golden Member
Jun 23, 2012
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It has been mentioned elsewhere that the chip tested by CanardPC is an A0 one,and they also said their motherboard does not have the firmware to run later chips(AGESA version is older).
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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It looks like a bit of mess to me. A lot of nodes and few ressources. It doesnt add up.

1. Power 9 14nm hp process
2. 22FDX
3. FD-soi
4. 14 lpp
5. 7n

7nm is a future product, and it is uncertain which team(s) is/are working on that. Otherwise, remember that GF only recently merged with the remainder of IBM's fab team, and they brought with them the 22nm SOI process plus the facilities to produce it. 22FDX/FD-SOI comes from that team (apparently).

My guess is that team, with some collaboration from GF and (by proxy) Samsung, is working on 14nm HP for use with POWER9. And we all know about 14nm LPP. Whether or not GF will get all the updates that Samsung rolls out the door or not remains to be seen . . . the GF team may be taking the process in a different direction than Samsung, or perhaps they are collaborating with them as a part of the licensing deal. At this point, I would think it would be mutually beneficial for both Samsung and GF to collaborate as much as possible.

And who is the buyer besides amd? How many power9 is sold.
But yeaa if ibm can fund the 14HP nearly 100% there is a bit of sense but...

I don't know how many people are looking to buy into POWER9. It does have some high-profile wins like the Summit supercomputer. IBM's POWER platform appears to be vital to Nvidia's future compute interests since IBM is the only player that I know of to implement NVLink. Wherever Nvidia seeks to roll out Volta, POWER9 will be right there with it.

Ok, got it. Is this because AMD has a hard time enforcing motherboard standards with its partners and forced to include that in the CPU? I guess I don't see the point in including that in a CPU, wasting precious resources.

AMD is not wanting for die space. At all. The problem is power density. Most of the SoC-like logic is low power density, which does not hurt the design at all. And yes, taking more stuff off the board produces uniformity of quality standards. It also reduces board costs.
 
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inf64

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Mar 11, 2011
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Found an interesting comment in this reddit thread( maybe a German native speaker can listen to the video and confirm, it is ~26 minutes long).
Stream:
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=0RnkUhEP2q0

Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/5k011c/roman_hartung_aka_der8auer_comment_after_he_was/

Comment :
KINQQQQQQ said:
It's also important that he states that it is not only "completely competitive" but also more or less better but not that much that it's worth a jump from X99

PS Person in the stream is a very prominent overclocker from Germany, a guy who designed a heatspreader remover for intel.
 

Abwx

Lifer
Apr 2, 2011
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Ok, got it. Is this because AMD has a hard time enforcing motherboard standards with its partners and forced to include that in the CPU? I guess I don't see the point in including that in a CPU, wasting precious resources.

A separate chip will use more ressources, and will cost more than a few mm2 on the CPU die, both in term of silicon/packaging as well as for MB cost, besides this way the chip is self sufficent for low cost servers.

It has been mentioned elsewhere that the chip tested by CanardPC is an A0 one,and they also said their motherboard does not have the firmware to run later chips(AGESA version is older).

As said, also elsewhere, the plateform didnt support GTX1080 card, contrary to the ones used by AMD during their latest event..
 

dacostafilipe

Senior member
Oct 10, 2013
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Found an interesting comment in this reddit thread( maybe a German native speaker can listen to the video and confirm, it is ~26 minutes long).

He repeats a lot of times that it will be really interesting in perf/$ (Preis/Leistung) but someone with a moderns Intel CPU (ex: X99) should not expect a big performance leap.

So, nothing really new.
 
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inf64

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Mar 11, 2011
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He repeats a lot of times that it will be really interesting in perf/$ (Preis/Leistung) but someone with a moderns Intel CPU (ex: X99) should not expect a big performance leap.

So, nothing really new.
It is interesting since X99+6900K OCed is basically top of the line performance, both ST and MT. And since he is talking as an OCer it means that OCed performance is right up there. If the price is better than price/performance ratio will be way better with Ryzen.
 

Lepton87

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2009
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I never expected that CPU to be even faster then mine so this is a very positive surprise for me. And all of this done on a lower TDP budget and only dual channel memory is nothing short of amazing in my view especially because Intel's 8 cores CPUs aside for very low clock server SKUs were price prohibitive. I don't need more MT performance but if this thing matches mine at ST then I'll probably switch just for fun.
 

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
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When was the last time Intel had to lower prices in the enthusiast / desktop space due to competition? I really hope these early benches have merit. This is an encouraging sign whether you want to buy AMD or Intel for your next build.

I'd love to see a 2C/4T or 3C/6T Zen core APU with good clocks, give it 12-14CU's/768-896SP's (Polaris) and some fast DDR4.

It's really unlikely that Intel will lower prices. Particularly on the more expensive parts.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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It's really unlikely that Intel will lower prices. Particularly on the more expensive parts.
Yea, lost in all this enthusiasm, is the fact that 8 core Zen with no IGP is only going to compete in a very small portion of the consumer market. So I dont really see much threat to the mainstream cpu market until Zen APUs come out in around a year or so. Like I said earlier in this thread, the major threat right now will be to the 6900k, which is clearly overpriced, and maybe to the 6700k and 6800k, depending on pricing and final performance, including overclocking.
 

inf64

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Mar 11, 2011
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Yea, lost in all this enthusiasm, is the fact that 8 core Zen with no IGP is only going to compete in a very small portion of the consumer market. So I dont really see much threat to the mainstream cpu market until Zen APUs come out in around a year or so. Like I said earlier in this thread, the major threat right now will be to the 6900k, which is clearly overpriced, and maybe to the 6700k and 6800k, depending on pricing and final performance, including overclocking.

Aren't you forgetting the 4C/8T parts? These will likely sell at i5 level while offering 8T performance. For the price difference one could buy discrete GPU and it was on this board that people argued even AMD's APUs were inferior to cheap QC+ discrete card options out there (QC being lower cheap X4 Athlons or i3s with SMT). What happens to the i5 range in that case? Or even to i7 8T range if Zen 8T parts OC well?
 

HurleyBird

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2003
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It has been mentioned elsewhere that the chip tested by CanardPC is an A0 one,and they also said their motherboard does not have the firmware to run later chips(AGESA version is older).

Awesome. The older the ES, the greater the chance that retail Zen will look even better. Disbaled features, looser timings, overvolting, worse power management, etc. etc. etc.
 

Tuna-Fish

Golden Member
Mar 4, 2011
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Ok, got it. Is this because AMD has a hard time enforcing motherboard standards with its partners and forced to include that in the CPU? I guess I don't see the point in including that in a CPU, wasting precious resources.

It's more because masks are now so stupendously expensive that they have decided to tackle all the markets they can with only two distinct dies. A lot of the features are things that are necessary somewhere, and Intel ships separate dies with them for that market. For AMD, it makes sense to pay less in masks and more in per-unit costs and put it all on the same chip.

Since the units won't cost any power when not in use, there is no way in which having them hurts.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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Aren't you forgetting the 4C/8T parts? These will likely sell at i5 level while offering 8T performance. For the price difference one could buy discrete GPU and it was on this board that people argued even AMD's APUs were inferior to cheap QC+ discrete card options out there (QC being lower cheap X4 Athlons or i3s with SMT). What happens to the i5 range in that case? Or even to i7 8T range if Zen 8T parts OC well?
Still the same relatively small market. Do you really think OEMs are going to go to the extra assembly steps, expense, and extra power consumption of putting in a discrete dgpu for a school/office/enterprise/internet browsing box? Well, you probably do, or can convince yourself that they will, but it seems very unlikely to me.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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Still the same relatively small market. Do you really think OEMs are going to go to the extra assembly steps, expense, and extra power consumption of putting in a discrete dgpu for a school/office/enterprise/internet browsing box? Well, you probably do, or can convince yourself that they will, but it seems very unlikely to me.

No, they won't. iGPU is a godsend for these types of systems because it's good enough to do what people want to do with them -- surf the web, play videos, play Facebook/Flash games, etc.

If you want to play real 3D games, then you buy a dGPU. That's pretty much the only reason to have one these days, unless you are trying to upgrade the media functionality of an ancient system (but most people don't upgrade systems, they buy new ones).
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Yea, lost in all this enthusiasm, is the fact that 8 core Zen with no IGP is only going to compete in a very small portion of the consumer market.
Ok, let's take the alternative universe route where AMD is still behind but launches APUs first.
torridsteppe987654 said:
Yeah, lost in all this enthusiasm, is the fact that Zen APU is still not fast and cheap enough to take on the flagship Intel i7 CPUs in dGPU gaming. AMD still doesn't have a flagship product to re position themselves in the consumer market, not to mention the APU is of no use in servers. They are still one year away from something to write home about.
 

itsmydamnation

Platinum Member
Feb 6, 2011
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No, they won't. iGPU is a godsend for these types of systems because it's good enough to do what people want to do with them -- surf the web, play videos, play Facebook/Flash games, etc.

If you want to play real 3D games, then you buy a dGPU. That's pretty much the only reason to have one these days, unless you are trying to upgrade the media functionality of an ancient system (but most people don't upgrade systems, they buy new ones).

So who exactly is buying an i5/i7 level desktop system (4core 8 thread) to "surf the web, play videos, play Facebook/Flash games, etc"? Sounds like the I3/Pentium range to me.
 
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Jun 19, 2012
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I think Zen won't initially impact the mainstream or gamers as much. The 8 core 16 thread sunmit ridge and 32 core 64 thread naples part will be most useful for workstation stuff such as
  • Digital audio workstations/music production
  • 3d models, rendering and video game development
  • Software Development, building applications from source tar balls. Building applications in IDEs.
  • Video editing and production, rendering, encoding, handbrake for converting makemkv blu ray backups.
For gamers the Core i5 series and AMD FX series are still great for games and the prices will only get better as time goes on. A Core i7-6900k or AMD Summit Ridge 8 core 16 thread only provides benefit in games with large maps like strategy games, tycoon games, or city builders, but not the majority of games though. AMD to better meet the needs of gamers should have a lower power and lower cost FX and a higher clocked quad core Zen and maybe a quad core Zen with an integrated Vega GPU that can crossfire with a dedicated Vega GPU.

For servers AMD already is planning products but is remains to be seen if they can make a significant dent as this Intel's biggest golden goose by far.

For Ultrabooks, Chromebooks, convertibles, mini desktops, HDMI sticks, and Windows tablets class products. AMD needs something to compete with the ULV core i series, Intel Atoms and Core M products. I think AMD can crack this egg but this is a harder egg to crack. ARM will probably be a better competitor in this area. I would love a 8" tablet with an active digitizer and AMD processor and graphics.

For essential products or low end computers such as the Celeron or Pentium series, AMD has competing products but maybe Zen plus vega can bring needed improvement in this segment.

Finally another area that will be hard for AMD to crack is Intel's laptop grade full voltage core i Series processors. Maybe improved APUs can help here, but this is by far the hardest egg of them all to crack. The laptop Core i5 processor is ubiquitous it will be hard to compete in this area.

My .02 Federal Reserve Notes.
 

Dresdenboy

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Jul 28, 2003
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citavia.blog.de
So who exactly is buying an i5/i7 level desktop system (4core 8 thread) to "surf the web, play videos, play Facebook/Flash games, etc"? Sounds like the I3/Pentium range to me.
The history of civilization is full of unsound decisions. Aside from buying something future proof (perf/platform features) it could be a mix of succesful salespeople, ego driven desires (e.g. bragging), single/two threaded browsers (Firefox w/ plugin container process not long ago), etc. No need to wrap a technical fact based discussion around it. ;)
 
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bjt2

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Sep 11, 2016
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It has been mentioned elsewhere that the chip tested by CanardPC is an A0 one,and they also said their motherboard does not have the firmware to run later chips(AGESA version is older).

Yes, on semi... ;)
Moreover more info from twitter:

Discussion between Dresdenboy, Instlatx64 and Canard PC:

https://twitter.com/Dresdenboy/status/812053513031352326

1) AIDA test too good to be true, so they didn't publish yet. Double throughput of Skylake on some intructions, they think it's a bug in AIDA. Instlatx64 answers that skylake/kabylake have some trouble on port 5 and thus even Bristol Ridge have higher throughput for some instructions (e.g.: VEXTRACTI128)

2) Canard PC sample has problems with SMT and uop cache and then, coupled with semiaccurate infos i would not draw conclusions on Canard PC tests being worse than new horizon event...

Other tweet:

https://twitter.com/InstLatX64/status/813539775944785921
C0pEfFFWQAE3ZVi.jpg


Finally decent cache latencies... :)
 
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