AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[watercooled]

Some more random technology speculation.

So, we've all been hearing references to another die shrink for the 7th generation consoles, but not much actual information. However, this wiki references another new hardware revision, CECH-42xxx, with presumably speculated information on process node.

A similar spec table can also be found here: http://www.pakgamers.com/forums/f35/...h-42xx-193652/
The OP of this thread also links to a teardown video of the CECH-42xxx revision which shows a different looking die and package layout vs the existing version. Below is a clear image of the package from the video, unfortunately some TIM was applied to the die obscuring the markings. However, note the more square die which does appear considerably smaller relative to the memory packages, and the die text is now diagonal and the die is straight - vice versa for the other revision.

[watercooled]

Another stellar, completely un-researched chart from Tom's: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming...w-32899-4.html

Seriously how can they unconditionally recommend the 770 when the 280X is cheaper and nearly always faster, and when it's not faster it's still on-par e.g. TWIMTBP un-optimised games like Batman (although it's still faster with AA enabled). What's this 'huge price spike' they're on about? It's nearly non-existent in the UK!

And on the 290/780: "But the GeForce GTX 780 looks a lot more attractive with the R9 290 selling for a higher price in the States." Seriously? Who gives a crap if it's selling for more in a different country, how does that have any impact on a sensible purchase decision?

Furthermore, 'It's simply cooler, quieter, and better-built.' In which case they're completely ignoring the existence of decent non-reference models of the 290 which I can find in stock for £220-230 at various UK retailers now. Yeah, some more stellar researching effort there guys...

/rant

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I suppose we can see who has the bigger advertising budget!

[kompukare]

I think Toms Hardware only has a .co.uk site for advertising reasons: they don't have any content. Guess someone translates the currency from the .com site but that's it.

Tom's very good a SEO though, at least with Google: can't search for anything without their forums appearing near the top. And those forum hits are actually seldom relevant: SEO over contents.

[watercooled]

Yeah I've noticed that with the forums. It's like, 'you searched for 'grapefruit'', and shows you a thread about SuperPi benchmarks or something, with not even a mention of the keyword you used.

TBH I do get impression with the UK version though - they don't seem to actually bother doing any research on the UK market and just copy-paste the conclusions from the US site. Like you say, marketing for more clicks...

[scaryjim]

... Guess someone translates the currency from the .com site but that's it. ....

That'd make sense of the £190 and £270 categories, rather than the more logical £200 (or £150?) and £250. For instance, £150 puts a 270X against the 660, and AMD wins easily.

OTOH, with a budget over £180 but less than £300, a 760 or 770 is probably the best option. A quick review swoop suggests the 770 is usually a little faster than a 280X (unless I'm missing some reviews on updated drivers) at about the same price (£240+), and the 760 simply doesn't have a competitor at £180 (270X is ~ £150, 280 is > £200). Once you get over £300 then you've got the 780 and the 290 side by side and there's not much to choose between them again, but there's definitely a mid-range gap where nvidia currently offers better value...

[watercooled]

I guess 280X vs 770 depends on the games you end up comparing (I found the opposite, especially at 1080p and above), but a more fair point would probably be, there really isn't all that much in it for the most part, so I don't get why they call the more expensive card the undisputed winner.

Fair point about the 760 for that price point though, that seems to fit into a gap in AMD's current line-up, and I didn't call them out on that one.

Edit: That 280 is currently priced way to close to the 280X though!

[watercooled]

An article has just gone up on Anandtech, benchmarking some high core count Xeons with desktop applications: http://anandtech.com/show/7852/intel...-and-8-cores/3

Referring back to the post I made somewhere earlier in the thread about certain x264 results (e.g. Bittech), it seems it is indeed down to using very low resolutions; x264 can scale to threads very well, provided there's enough resolution to work with.

[DanceswithUnix]

An article has just gone up on Anandtech, benchmarking some high core count Xeons with desktop applications: http://anandtech.com/show/7852/intel...-and-8-cores/3

Referring back to the post I made somewhere earlier in the thread about certain x264 results (e.g. Bittech), it seems it is indeed down to using very low resolutions; x264 can scale to threads very well, provided there's enough resolution to work with.

They are comparing a many core Xeon with a 2 module AMD APU rather than an FX8350 or derived Opteron? That site really has gone to the dogs hasn't it

If they were going for comic effect they should have chosen a 4 core Jaguar.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The R9 280X and the GTX770 are the same price,and IMHO the R9 280X is a better card.

Anyway,it seems ASRock have finally made a AM1 motherboard with a DC-DC PSU onboard:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7869/a...19v-dcin-model
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AM1H-ITX/

[scaryjim]

They are comparing a many core Xeon with a 2 module AMD APU rather than an FX8350 or derived Opteron? That site really has gone to the dogs hasn't it

If they were going for comic effect they should have chosen a 4 core Jaguar.

Yeah, I noticed that. I guess they'd claim they were comparing the Xeon's to the intel consumer chips, rather than the AMD chips (indeed all the text in the article is about the Xeon's v. the Haswell consumer CPUs) but only putting FM2+ results alongside really doesn't paint AMD in a very good light. I'd rather have seen AMD represented by perhaps the 6800k and 7850k, plus an FX6350 and FX8350 - particularly since they were meant to be looking at the value of extra cores. But that would probably mean re-benching an AM3+ platform, and that'd be, like, work...!

The R9 280X and the GTX770 are the same price,and IMHO the R9 280X is a better card.

Hmm, anandtech bench certainly supports the 280X being at least as good as the 770. I don't think there's a lot in it, and your purchasing choice at that price should probably be game dependent - if you play a lot of Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite then actually the 770 is the clear winner; if you prefer CoH 2 and Crysis Warhead go 280X. IThat said it seems to be the only price point where there's no clear winner to me - the 290 v 780 and 290X v 780 Ti both seem to come down firmly on the side of AMD in value terms (very similar performance but (custom-cooled) AMD are ~ £40 cheaper); and as I said earlier for £150 get the 270X, for ~ £200 get the GTX760.

EDIT: although that's a significantly off-topic diversion for a "Piledriver chit-chat" thread

[watercooled]

EDIT: although that's a significantly off-topic diversion for a "Piledriver chit-chat" thread

We're long past that being a concern.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah, I noticed that. I guess they'd claim they were comparing the Xeon's to the intel consumer chips, rather than the AMD chips (indeed all the text in the article is about the Xeon's v. the Haswell consumer CPUs) but only putting FM2+ results alongside really doesn't paint AMD in a very good light. I'd rather have seen AMD represented by perhaps the 6800k and 7850k, plus an FX6350 and FX8350 - particularly since they were meant to be looking at the value of extra cores. But that would probably mean re-benching an AM3+ platform, and that'd be, like, work...!

It is Anandtech after all!! But,still all the games are as playable with a GTX770 on a A10 7850K as the high end Xeon CPUs when used in SP games.

Hmm, anandtech bench certainly supports the 280X being at least as good as the 770. I don't think there's a lot in it, and your purchasing choice at that price should probably be game dependent - if you play a lot of Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite then actually the 770 is the clear winner; if you prefer CoH 2 and Crysis Warhead go 280X. IThat said it seems to be the only price point where there's no clear winner to me - the 290 v 780 and 290X v 780 Ti both seem to come down firmly on the side of AMD in value terms (very similar performance but (custom-cooled) AMD are ~ £40 cheaper); and as I said earlier for £150 get the 270X, for ~ £200 get the GTX760.

EDIT: although that's a significantly off-topic diversion for a "Piledriver chit-chat" thread

The R9 280X has better compute performance than a GTX770(things like Adobe software will run better with the AMD cards and I am interested in photography) and it has more VRAM and memory bandwith to boot too. The GTX770 uses non-deterministic boosting whereas the R9 280X uses relatively mild deterministic boosting,ie, overclocking an R9 280X is likely to give greater gains. For that sort of money,I would be expecting a relatively long lifespan - I see the R9 280X being a better longterm bet especially with the drop in cost of higher resolution displays,and that for acceleration of software the R9 280X will be better. The GTX770 is a one trick pony.

In the price range of the GTX760,AMD has really no offering as the R9 280 is priced too highly. The only thing is that you need to avoid reference ones.

If you go down the range the GTX660 and R9 270 are closely matched,although the R9 270 tends to be faster.

The GTX750TI would be generally better than a R7 260X if priced better,but is R7 265 and nearly GTX660 and R9 270 level pricing.

The problem in the UK is that unlike in the US the Nvidia cards tend to be relatively higher priced when compared to the competition.

[ik9000]

I think you made a typo in that last line. I've corrected it for you

The problem in the UK is that everything tends to be relatively higher priced when compared to other countries like the US.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think you made a typo in that last line. I've corrected it for you

The UK is not always bad when compared to countries like Australia when it comes to computer parts.

However,it does worry when people read US reviews on cards like the GTX750TI or Corsair PSUs,and forget the relative UK pricing is different.

[Noxvayl]

South Africa isn't cheaper than the UK; While I lived there I got a family member to bring a graphics card to South Africa because it meant I could get something better with the same money. At the moment electronic equipment is still more expensive there, in December 2013 I checked the difference in price between South Africa and the UK for the WD Live TV player, it is the equivalent of £90 in South Africa while it is only £62 including VAT in the UK.

The UK might be the most expensive region in the northern hemisphere but it is still cheap in comparison to some southern hemisphere countries.