AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[Goobley]

Apple going desktop ARM?

It's been on the cards for a long time (that is when ARM becomes powerful enough). As one of the early designers/developers of ARM they are probably quite invested - it has obvious power advantages and a lot of their old guard would like to see a return to RISC.

Whether they would ever really be in a position to do it is questionable, I think they want it more for leverage over intel.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD Radeon R295X2:

http://www.chiphell.com/thread-1002731-1-1.html

They managed to keep it down to two 8 pin power connectors it seems.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

RWT analyses the Jaguar core:

http://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar/

[DanceswithUnix]

It's been on the cards for a long time (that is when ARM becomes powerful enough). As one of the early designers/developers of ARM they are probably quite invested - it has obvious power advantages and a lot of their old guard would like to see a return to RISC.

Whether they would ever really be in a position to do it is questionable, I think they want it more for leverage over intel.

Dunno about leverage.

Apple are supposed to be the reason Intel's graphics is as good as it is. Imagine how bad it would be without them? If they make an SOC, they choose the level of graphics power.

Oh and that NEON unit. It can issue three NEON instructions per clock. I just can't imagine why a tablet let alone a phone needs that sort of floating point throughput when stuff like video decode is all done on hardware assist to keep the power usage down. Something like Photoshop is a different matter though, but how many people run those sorts of apps on a tablet which is more of a consumption device than a creation device?

If they put 4 of those A7 cores on an SOC, they should have a laptop chip that can give Jaguar/Atom a clean pair of heels and at stonking power requirements. It looks a short hop from being a multi threaded CPU to make use of all those execution units, and tweaking to get adequate CPU frequency is something they shouldn't have too much trouble with.

Shame their patent disputes and general business practices mean it will never end up in a product I will buy.

[watercooled]

Just spotted this article: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news...reement-142962

I'm not really sure what to make of that, also I wonder if this is related in any way to the WSA?

It does make some sense , as we were discussing on the last page of this thread - Jaguar now produced at GloFo, and potential console multi-sourcing?

Not sure about GPUs at GloFo though; I wonder what their high-power processes are like vs TSMC at ~20nm/FinFET?

[watercooled]

Another nice bit of Nvidia PR: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7926/n...e-improvements

Compare the very specific results, presented on exaggerated graphs, against some actual benchmarks run by AAT...

Up to 64% faster single GPU performance? Err... where? Surely if they'd managed such gains in a certain games, they'd have stuck it on a chart for all to see?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another nice bit of Nvidia PR: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7926/n...e-improvements

Compare the very specific results, presented on exaggerated graphs, against some actual benchmarks run by AAT...

Up to 64% faster single GPU performance? Err... where? Surely if they'd managed such gains in a certain games, they'd have stuck it on a chart for all to see?

Look at the tests with a QX9650:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Nvidia...antle-1116527/

Hardly any improvement.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW,look at the PCPER review of the R9 295X2:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic.../Battlefield-4

They have figures for the GTX780TI with the latest Beta drivers and the R9 290X with the 14.4 Beta drivers.

They seem to be neck and neck!!

[watercooled]

Good spot! Funny I haven't seen much fanfare about the AMD drivers!

[scaryjim]

Looks like a DirectCU overclocked 290X v a stock 780 Ti, so perhaps not so surprising that they're very close. Looking back on the Hexus DCUII review - although it doesn't include BF4 - in a range of games it gets a lot closer to the 780 Ti at 1440p than at 1080p, and so you'd expect it to be very even at 2160p. That seems to be what PCPer's review shows: the 780 Ti seems to be slightly ahead at 1440p, but it's pretty much level at 2160p. I don't think drivers have a lot to do with that - more likely down to the wider back end and larger memory buffer on the 290X...

[watercooled]

Sorry, I should have elaborated more on what I meant there, I was being facetious. I.e. Nvidia have improved performance 'by ~70%', so AMD must have done so too...

[HalloweenJack]

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...ce-review.html


they seem to echo the pcper review

[DanceswithUnix]

Just went looking for AM1 apus, Amazon have a few in stock.

£25 low end http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-SD2650JA.../dp/B00IOMFFYM
£40 high end http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-AD5350JA.../dp/B00IOMFAQ0

Asrock mobo £40 http://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-AM1B-.../dp/B00J0DJILU

Needs to drop a bit to be better value than FM2 I think.

[DanceswithUnix]

Am1 reviews starting to come out:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7933/t...thlon-5350-am1

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Scan has two motherboards for under £30:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...-sub-hdmi-matx
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-hdmi-mini-itx

[DanceswithUnix]

Scan has two motherboards for under £30:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...-sub-hdmi-matx
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-hdmi-mini-itx

Interesting, wonder when the embargo lifted as they weren't there at lunchtime.

£25 for the motherboard, on release day. Wow.