AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[watercooled]

It could still end up for sale to consumers, it just might not come with a fancy box with a disc full of useless utilities. Most Gigabyte boards are blue BTW.

[scaryjim]

besides, product details explicitly list the consumer APUs as the compatible ones - so while it may not be intended for direct sale to consumers, it's definitely intended for inclusion in consumer builds: so probably for system integrators. Plenty of OEM components end up in regular (r)etail stores. Although I have tyo admit I do occasionally fancy the idea of running a component & custom build shop just so that when something like this comes out I could get onto my disrto and order 5

[HalloweenJack]

50% price cut `unannounced`



http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=56227


under £300 for the 9590

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

50% price cut `unannounced`



http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=56227


under £300 for the 9590

OcUK has the FX9590 at £279.95 and the FX9370 for £179.99 excluding delivery.

[watercooled]

I'm still not sure I 'get' the FX9000 series, or at least their branding. In marketing terms, a lot of people see them as a negative because of power consumption, price/performance, etc, and I've actually seen a few people (even websites IIRC) confusing them for Steamroller CPUs, which again can't be good for marketing going forward. Another TWKR brand, or whatever it was called, would have made more sense IMHO.

[DanceswithUnix]

Taking one step back, I think the 9xxx devices would be fine as an FX device, but my 8350 should have been a Phenom because it is the AMD standard performance product.

[watercooled]

Some Xbox One SoC details revealed by MS: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/26/x...s-in-pictures/

That's one big die for high volume production! Although I suppose the node is fairly mature now at least.

I wonder how the PS4 die will compare? It has more shaders, but not the fairly big eSRAM block of the Xbox.

[watercooled]

Any idea what's happening with the Kabini rollout? There are a few products here and there available to buy, but stuff like the BRIX and motherboards in general are nowhere to be seen.

I'm not sure what to make of this: (edit: hang on a sec, posted wrong link...) OK found it: http://wccftech.com/amd-roadmap-2014...ate-september/

Kabini for release in Q1 14? It's already available to buy? Something looks wrong with that roadmap in general, look at Kaveri! I know there's no scale on it other than '2014' but still. Although it does quote only mobile TDP for Richland?

According to this article, it might have something to do with the GloFo WSA: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1660...elay-explained
The way I understand it, they're saying AMD are holding off on Kabini because it would take sales from Richland, but they can't afford to lose Richland sales because of the WSA? So maybe only mass production/shipping is being held off? Either way, it's disappointing if true, and they're losing lead over Silvermont.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I saw three Jaguar based laptops in PC World a few weeks ago.

[watercooled]

Yeah the whole thing seems a bit strange, but the roadmap looks legit?

The Digitimes article claims to be talking about the desktop parts, but the roadmap looks to be the mobile one?

I'm so confused. :S

[glitch]

I dont think that roadmap its legit, it looks almost the same as the one released by AMD in january (http://cdn2.wccftech.com/wp-content/...13-roadmap.jpg), only difference is the Trinity absence. Also AMD said that Kaveri will be available early 2014.

[watercooled]

Yeah after a bit more digging, a few sites are claiming Digitimes over-exaggerated the details, with early 2014 being the time for mass volume production of the desktop part. I assume they mean volume sales as the desktop and mobile parts are essentially binned versions of the same silicon AFAIK. The mobile part is most certainly available to buy now.

That roadmap at wccftech still makes no sense though; like I said it looks to be a mobile roadmap based on the TDPs, but mobile Kabini is out? I can't think of any point in time where AMD had that roadmap in mind; it's a fairly new style roadmap too. Could be plain fake I suppose, if someone were determined enough it wouldn't be that hard to forge.

Back to normal discussion though. I wonder if AMD will be/are producing separate dies for dual/quad core versions? It looks like they keep the same 128 shaders though so probably not, it wouldn't save much die size - even with the 1MB L2 we're talking ~10% of the die.

However I'd like to know why we're getting separate sockets for mobile and desktop? Bobcat-based APUs shared socket FT1, now we have ST3 for mobile and FS1B for desktop.

It seems like AMD could be more serious about using the cheaper-to-produce Kabini parts for entry-level desktops considering the Ax branding. I'm curious to see if Kaveri will occupy the same 'tiers' as Kabini. OTOH, there's a piece at Tom's claiming AMD might be doing away with the Ax naming anyway. Isn't speculation great?

Oh and why does Xbitlabs seem to be constantly down lately?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Intel published Z3770 CB scores:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7263/i...inebench-score

The TDP is not known but is between 7W to 8W.:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing...ows-8-1-tablet

The SKU does Turbo past 2GHZ,so it does seem IPC might be close to Jaguar but probably is inferior,and the IGP is also probably inferior. It seems to lack support for SATA for lower TDP models??

Its a shame AMD does not have the same low power process tech Intel has.

As usual on a certain forum some are saying its the end of ARM. Fail.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anand talks about the AMD semi-custom business:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/u...ustom-strategy

It seems he has spoke to many of the higher ups at the company.

Edit!!

AMD introducing new Temash parts:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthre...9#post35461109

I think you’ll also see that our products I said Temash was a four watt product I think you’ll see new products coming out from us at much lower power that will support the 7 to 8 inch screen sizes.

[teppic]

A few retailers are showing A88x boards in stock - are they even out yet?

e.g.

http://www.morecomputers.com/extra.a...0MB0FJ0-M0EAY0

[mikeo01]

£65.89 Inc Vat
Saving 62% was £172.68? Sure, ASUS priced it that high then suddenly dropped it


However yes ASUS has released an early board. Misco are starting to show some products too.

Edit:
I'm officially tempted even the colour scheme looks nice.