AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[Bonebreaker777]

So no more clues as to which cards you mean then?

I notice Scan have the R5 230 for £30. That's the price I was after, but not for a VLIW5 card with only 80 shaders. Perhaps it could be crossfired with a box of crayons.

Haha, with a box of crayons

[DanceswithUnix]

Haha, with a box of crayons

Sorry, but I was a bit annoyed at the time.

If I could crossfire 4 of those cards together, I could get all the VLIW5 compute power of my HD4670 that is no longer supported under Linux as it is outdated technology. Wohoo!

I guess they still have a warehouse full of HD4350 cards/chips, and whilst I am usually OK with re-branding I think this is so far over the line of acceptability that you probably can't see the line any more from where this card is. Not without anti-aliasing turned right up, which this card wouldn't be capable of.

ofc the best part of the re-brand is that the same card seems to be available as a 5450, also on Scan, but 25MHz faster and £10 cheaper. If driver support goes away for the 5450, I wonder if you could re-flash the BIOS to an R5 230?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You mean HD6450,right??

[DanceswithUnix]

You mean HD6450,right??

Ah you are right Cat (that shouldn't surprise me)

Looks like Scan have a typo, and their £30 card is a complete beast of 160 VLIW5 shaders. It is the R5 210 that is a 4350 re-brand.

Well that is all right then

[scaryjim]

Ah you are right Cat (that shouldn't surprise me)

Looks like Scan have a typo, and their £30 card is a complete beast of 160 VLIW5 shaders. It is the R5 210 that is a 4350 re-brand.

Well that is all right then

I think it's technically a 5450 rebrand - the 4350 was DX10, while the 5450 is DX11 (and 40nmm, rather than 55nm). Let's be honest though, they will never put out a GCN card with less than 384 shaders because then people could pair low end AMD graphics with Intel CPUs, and why would AMD want that? TBH I still can't get my head round major OEMs offering prebuilt boxes with AMD APUs in them, then adding discrete cards that are *less powerful* than the IGP in the APU. OEMs have a lot to answer for (IMNSHO)...

[watercooled]

Excess stock they need to shift?

I expect 'add-in graphics card' is more easily marketable than 'integrated graphics', despite actual performance.

On the subject of marketing, IMO the R7/R9 does have some hints of common sense about it; historically, you've needed to understand each manufacturer's naming system, and be aware of different versions, rebrands, etc, to know what you're getting with graphics cards. A 5450 is a bigger number than a 4870 so with no previous understanding, which one seems better?

On plenty of occasions, I've heard reasoning along the lines of a GT 210 is a 200 series card so it most resemble flagship 200 series performance, and ahead of the previous flagship.

Much like the iSomething and Asomething CPU naming systems - it's a decent idea, until the marketing teams are left in charge of deciding how to organise it...

[ik9000]

Excess stock they need to shift?

I expect 'add-in graphics card' is more easily marketable than 'integrated graphics', despite actual performance.

On the subject of marketing, IMO the R7/R9 does have some hints of common sense about it; historically, you've needed to understand each manufacturer's naming system, and be aware of different versions, rebrands, etc, to know what you're getting with graphics cards. A 5450 is a bigger number than a 4870 so with no previous understanding, which one seems better?

On plenty of occasions, I've heard reasoning along the lines of a GT 210 is a 200 series card so it most resemble flagship 200 series performance, and ahead of the previous flagship.

Much like the iSomething and Asomething CPU naming systems - it's a decent idea, until the marketing teams are left in charge of deciding how to organise it...

yes there are a lot of people who only research tech when they first buy it. So 8 years ago you did need a discreet card. Now they come to upgrade and remember discreet card = good, onboard = bad and just assume things are still the same. Fools!

And I agree OEMs are probably just trying to shift stock. I remember helping a friend a few years ago to save oodles of money by not buying a new (and worse spec) graphics card from Dell because he wanted to use two monitors. Dell not only advised him his current card couldn't (When it blatantly could) but told him the only way was to pay for a crappy obsolete card (that conveniently none of their current range used so happened to be in stock!) Rather than a £70+VAT + shipping charge for a card scan listed as £20inc VAT, he paid £5+shipping for a DVI to VGA converter and he was sorted.

I never did get chance to speak to the Dell rep directly, or their manager sadly. Perhaps just as well...

[DanceswithUnix]

To be fair, if you buy a PC from a vendor like Dell and it doesn't come with a graphics card, then should you ever try to upgrade the machine you might find they saved the cost of a PCIe slot and it isn't an option. And gimped the PSU, because without the ability to plug in graphics you won't ever need more than 200W will you

[ik9000]

To be fair, if you buy a PC from a vendor like Dell and it doesn't come with a graphics card, then should you ever try to upgrade the machine you might find they saved the cost of a PCIe slot and it isn't an option. And gimped the PSU, because without the ability to plug in graphics you won't ever need more than 200W will you

totally been there my friend. But at least in his case he had a GPU from the off. A reasonable one for his needs, and better than the gimped replacement "upgrade" they were recommending he switch to...

[scaryjim]

To be fair, if you buy a PC from a vendor like Dell and it doesn't come with a graphics card, then should you ever try to upgrade the machine you might find they saved the cost of a PCIe slot and it isn't an option. And gimped the PSU, because without the ability to plug in graphics you won't ever need more than 200W will you

Be fair, there are plenty of 1080p capable graphics cards available now that would be very happy on a 200W Dell OEM PSU (given they use reputable OEMs to make them ).

You could be right about the PCIe slot, but actually I suspect the cost of developing two almost identical motherboards, one with PCIe and one without, is probably higher than the cost of just doubling the order size of a board with PCIe. I have to admit that if I wanted to buy a pre-built base to upgrade/customise, there's every chance I'd go hunting for a good deal on a Dell...

[ik9000]

Be fair, there are plenty of 1080p capable graphics cards available now that would be very happy on a 200W Dell OEM PSU (given they use reputable OEMs to make them ).

You could be right about the PCIe slot, but actually I suspect the cost of developing two almost identical motherboards, one with PCIe and one without, is probably higher than the cost of just doubling the order size of a board with PCIe. I have to admit that if I wanted to buy a pre-built base to upgrade/customise, there's every chance I'd go hunting for a good deal on a Dell...

oh it's not to say Dell machines aren't bad, I'd happily recommend to friends family etc they buy one. They do however heavily customise the inside. Everything from HDD mounts, to no sata ports, no spare RAM slots, custom OEM PSUs and weird CPU cooler solutions that make you go "eh wtf?" and then solve the gordian knot to get inside, not even a PCI slot, nevermind PCIe. Everything is tailored, customised, and largely unmodifiable. So I would not recommend them to anyone wanting to upgrade/expand internally in the future. If you do, get the mobo diagrams of Dell Support beforehand to make sure you will be able to do what you want to do when the time arises.

[DanceswithUnix]

Be fair, there are plenty of 1080p capable graphics cards available now that would be very happy on a 200W Dell OEM PSU (given they use reputable OEMs to make them ).

You could be right about the PCIe slot, but actually I suspect the cost of developing two almost identical motherboards, one with PCIe and one without, is probably higher than the cost of just doubling the order size of a board with PCIe. I have to admit that if I wanted to buy a pre-built base to upgrade/customise, there's every chance I'd go hunting for a good deal on a Dell...

I have seen it, motherboard with a bunch of pads where the PCIe slot should have been. As I said, I think it is to save support calls when the PSU is underrated. I'm sure there must be a business case for doing it, they aren't stupid. The PSU was custom as well, so no chance of upgrading that to put a big graphics card in it.

I have used plenty of high end Dell business class & workstation class machines, and those are utterly top notch with good reliability for a PC. I wouldn't want one for home tinkering though.

[DanceswithUnix]

More amusement from Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7742/i...d-ddr3-modules

So new memory modules are coming, but they don't work on many Intel chips. Now Occam's razor says to me that Intel simply have a bug in their memory controller, which would be understandable if no silicon existed for them to validate against.

But no, apparently Intel must have discovered a performance optimisation that stops it from working.

Couldn't make it up could you. *sigh*

[Bonebreaker777]

I wonder why he hasn't tested them on some "random" Intel chips as well, when he done it on AMD chips... WHat a Kaveri would use potentially 32GB of RAM for I do not know.

[DanceswithUnix]

I wonder why he hasn't tested them on some "random" Intel chips as well, when he done it on AMD chips... WHat a Kaveri would use potentially 32GB of RAM for I do not know.

A Brix style device that can run lots of VMs?

Sounds like Anandtech haven't actually got any modules yet so are only reporting what the manufacturers have tried them on. I imagine that would be everything they can get their hands on.

[Bonebreaker777]

Wonder if the error is considered as "minor" thus performance drop or more hard errors or as "major" thus inability to boot with and such. Pure curiosity.
I do wonder about the unbiased nature of manufacturers.