AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

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

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

A few reviews are already out:

http://forums.hexus.net/cpus/319797-...ew-thread.html

The Atom J1900 is outclassed it seems.

It appears a lower clocked Kabini CPU is beating a higher clocked BT CPU.

I wonder where all the people bleating about IPC and single thread performance will say now??

[Goobley]

Wow, the price is indeed impressive. I haven't seen normal through-hole electrolytic capacitors on a motherboard in a very long time (they're on that Gigabyte board). Whilst they don't have the longevity of solid caps, in these boards usage scenarios they should be fine.
The green caps look like Samxon GS series to me. They used to be the scourge of low ESR caps, but they've really cleaned up their act in recent years and I've used them on some quite high end switch-mode power supplies with no issue.

The CPUs also seem pretty decent (good enough for a lot of users) especially considering their TDP and price. I remember seeing a MoBo that took an external power brick teased. Something like that with one of these in a ThinITX case would be quite a competent machine for quite a few people who for some reason seem attached to their ancient towers (I know a surprising amount of people with over 7 year old towers).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Asus mini-ITX mb for £26 uses all solid capacitors.

[DanceswithUnix]

If you have 2GB of ram and boot Linux off a USB stick, I wonder if you can make a playable Minecraft box for £100.

[HalloweenJack]

If you have 2GB of ram and boot Linux off a USB stick, I wonder if you can make a playable Minecraft box for £100.

xbox 360

[DanceswithUnix]

xbox 360

That is a port, lacks features, and in a primary school playground will have you at the bottom of the hierarchy of players probably with fingers pointing at you and name calling.

I get the impression that lots of kids play MC on cast off laptops that can barely play it in preference to using the xbox/ps3 versions. There must be a real market for a cheap box that can plug into a bedroom TV and play full blown MC.

[Goobley]

That is a port, lacks features, and in a primary school playground will have you at the bottom of the hierarchy of players probably with fingers pointing at you and name calling.

I get the impression that lots of kids play MC on cast off laptops that can barely play it in preference to using the xbox/ps3 versions. There must be a real market for a cheap box that can plug into a bedroom TV and play full blown MC.

Hold the phone... primary school?! Don't know if that was just hyperbole... but I suppose it would explain quite a lot about lots of MC players. Indeed many people do play it on rubbish netbooks, I believe that PC dominates here due to the availability of interesting servers.

I bet this could do the job nicely (at a half ways sensible resolution), the only issue I can see off the top of my head is the lack of suitable display connectors (Component/Composite) as I expect that a lot of kid's bedroom TVs are still old CRTs (maybe they're not and I'm just insanely behind the times...)

[DanceswithUnix]

Hold the phone... primary school?! Don't know if that was just hyperbole... but I suppose it would explain quite a lot about lots of MC players. Indeed many people do play it on rubbish netbooks, I believe that PC dominates here due to the availability of interesting servers.

I bet this could do the job nicely (at a half ways sensible resolution), the only issue I can see off the top of my head is the lack of suitable display connectors (Component/Composite) as I expect that a lot of kid's bedroom TVs are still old CRTs (maybe they're not and I'm just insanely behind the times...)

No hyperbole, I have two kids at primary school and from about the age of 8 they start playing and the bit I don't get is they spend ages watching youtube videos about minecraft.

My kids now have bedroom TVs, for watching DVDs. When I bought them, CRTs weren't really an option already plus they use too much bedroom space compared to something you can hang on a wall.

So if there was a handy TV around then maybe kids will have a hand-me-down CRT, but if it was bought recently it will be flat screen with an HDMI port.

[DanceswithUnix]

Scan are a bit pricey on the CPUs, £45 for the top one.

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...ies-socket-am1

Just the 5350 at Ebuyer so far, at £41

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Componen...AMD-Socket-AM1

[HalloweenJack]

That is a port, lacks features, and in a primary school playground will have you at the bottom of the hierarchy of players probably with fingers pointing at you and name calling.

I get the impression that lots of kids play MC on cast off laptops that can barely play it in preference to using the xbox/ps3 versions. There must be a real market for a cheap box that can plug into a bedroom TV and play full blown MC.

I do agree lol - my 5 year old has it on the xbox , but theres no way my teenagers would admit to helping her on it {although they do - she calls it diggy diggy hole}..... you have to pay for everything doesn't help either BUT

it was recoded in C++ and its actually a lot faster than on a pc.

[kompukare]

Surely that Asrock which can take DC-in is the most interesting:


But pricey. One Amazon vendor has it
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-Mothe.../dp/B00J0DJJ28

but they want £57.24. Kikateck have it for a tenner less:
http://www.kikatek.com/P439592/AM1H-...ard-AM1-Socket

And CCL are meant to get it in for £47ish too once you add delivery:
http://www.cclonline.com/product/146...26/?Switch=Inc

No guarantee that a laptop PSU is more efficient than a normal or pico one but it should be quieter.

[watercooled]

Well a PicoPSU also uses a power brick, but they tend to pass 12V directly to avoid losses in another conversion stage, with 19V input it depends how efficient the buck converter on the motherboard is. Either way it's fairly reasonable to expect this setup with a reasonably-sized 19V adapter would be more efficient than a massively over-specced ATX power supply.

Looking at the idle-load power draw difference on Tom's, it seems the 25W TDP is quite conservative - it doesn't seem to increase by more than ~17W GPU+CPU, or ~12W CPU only. Then again, the 'chipset' is on-board with this part, so that might bring it closer.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Something interesting about the next AMD flagship GPU:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...&postcount=119

[watercooled]

Interesting. However I'm not sure I buy >550mm2 unless we're talking about interposers or similar - that would be one explanation of 'something new and different' and 'different memory config'. >500mm is a heck of a big die on a new node. I mean it's well within reticle size IIRC, but would AMD be willing to swallow early yields? Not being the first to use the node for production might help, but no, that die size just doesn't sit right with me.

I spotted this information yesterday: http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd...00_series.html
Fiji is called the 380X there though?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Bad news for Costa Rica:

http://wccftech.com/intel-pulls-cost...ry-dead-water/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This person tested Thief with many CPUs both under DX11 and Mantle:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...&postcount=120
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...&postcount=126