AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[scaryjim]

... sounds like it will have non Intel graphics. ...

AFAICT, Rockchip almost exclusively use ARM's Mali graphics cores. So we're only a year away from a combined Intel & ARM IP chip on the market? Fascinating

Have to say, I'm rather lost as to what the point of this is. Presumably the idea is that using Rockchip's graphics and comms IP will be cheaper than Intel equivalents, while Atom cores will ... what? Perform better than 64bit ARM cores? Or will this be targeting an x86 OS *ahem* Windows 8.1 *ahem*? Why make a cheap tablet chip that only targets the Chinese market?

[DanceswithUnix]

AFAICT, Rockchip almost exclusively use ARM's Mali graphics cores. So we're only a year away from a combined Intel & ARM IP chip on the market? Fascinating

Have to say, I'm rather lost as to what the point of this is. Presumably the idea is that using Rockchip's graphics and comms IP will be cheaper than Intel equivalents, while Atom cores will ... what? Perform better than 64bit ARM cores? Or will this be targeting an x86 OS *ahem* Windows 8.1 *ahem*? Why make a cheap tablet chip that only targets the Chinese market?

Intel are having a hard time selling Atom chips compared to ARM sales. I think Intel are doing whatever it takes.

No idea what is in it for RockChip. I presume they get some marketing money or something.

[DanceswithUnix]

Thinking about this, Intel are probably hoping to get in there before 64 bit ARM establishes itself in the mobile market. That would explain them pulling out all the stops.

They failed to steer us to all running Itanium CPUs when the PC went 64 bit, if anything I expect they will have a harder time trying to pitch AMD64 against ARM in mobile.

[kompukare]

While Itanium is the classic $billion Intel joke, their x86 everywhere strategy seems equally mad.

Whatever Intel say about the x86 overhead only being a small % of their transistor budget, a clean design specially made for mobile would probably be far better suited. Being backward compatible with 8086 (or even 4040) in 2014 is sheer madness. Or even if Intel were to renew their ARM licence and design their own ARM processor.

Still Intel's failure in the mobile market after them spending years deliberately crippling Atom so as not to affect Core sales has a certain schadenfreude element to it. For years Atom was just an excuse for Intel to have something to manufacture in their previous generation fabs and while the current ones are a lot better in terms of IPC/watt, their graphic parts are still way behind. But then in terms of transistors used, Intel's top GPU the Iris Pro does rather poorly too. Not a good showing for a company with an almost limitless research budget and a sizeable node advantage.

[AETAaAS]

I don't think there is much in the Rockchip deal other than Intel trying to get a foot in the door for the vast market of cheap Chinese electronics. For a while when I was window shopping, I would see the Rockchip RK3188 everywhere. o.O I think it is still a common processor in the mid-to-high end Chinese stuff.

Intel may well have plied Rockchip with money or favorable licencing deals but I can also see Rockchip benefiting. With the Windows 8.1 sponsored by Bing (or whatever it was ), having Rockchip churn out x86 parts could mean a new wave of cheap Windows tablets.

I am not sure if there is any benefit for 64-bit in this area? I thought it only made sense on the ARM side because it involved a widespread restructuring which also helped 32-bit performance.

[scaryjim]

Intel have specifically said there's no money changing hands as part of the deal. The chips will be branded Intel but designed by Rockchip. Not sure what this means for x84/AMD64 cross-licensing - if Rockchip are designing it does that mean they'd need an x86/x64 license, or are they covered by using Intel's design directly...? Very confusing.

[shaithis]

I am not sure if there is any benefit for 64-bit in this area? I thought it only made sense on the ARM side because it involved a widespread restructuring which also helped 32-bit performance.

Sooner or later every chip will have to be 64bit due to the amount of RAM being thrown in every device. I am sure no one wants to go back to the "hacks" that decrease performance.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Confirmation AMD is launching something on the 4th:

http://www.ifitcanreachspace.com/
http://www.tweakpc.de/forum/news/965...ch-hinaus.html

FX picture??

I wonder if its the FX mobile CPU,the FX-7600P??

Edit!!

Some noise is there that it might use HBM,which if true would be quite revolutionary.

OTH,I doubt it will happen.

Second Edit!!

Some people looked at the code on the webpage and it indicates that the product is an APU.

[scaryjim]

So, utterly predictably, it's the launch of mobile Kaveri. Not sure why they'd make such a big fuss over such a relatively low key launch (after all, desktop kaveri was months ago) unless they have done something special in terms of performance. Since there was speculation about the memory controller, perhaps they have bolted some kind of RAM onto an interposer. That's certainly merit a bit of fanfare...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So, utterly predictably, it's the launch of mobile Kaveri. Not sure why they'd make such a big fuss over such a relatively low key launch (after all, desktop kaveri was months ago) unless they have done something special in terms of performance. Since there was speculation about the memory controller, perhaps they have bolted some kind of RAM onto an interposer. That's certainly merit a bit of fanfare...

Clockspeeds for the FX-7600P do look much healthier relative to the desktop A10 7850K,than the A10-5757M when compared to the A10 6800K.

It basically is a downclocked A10 7850K running at a 35W TDP instead of a 95W TDP,with 2.7GHZ to 3.6GHZ core clockspeed instead of 3.7GHZ to 4.0GHZ and a 512 shader IGP running at 600 to 666MHZ instead of 720MHZ.

However,ther FX-7600P can also use 2133MHZ DDR3 RAM,so it should not be far off an A10 7850K in lightly thread and IGP performance. The previous highest end AMD mobile CPU,the A10 5750M,had much lower clockspeeds for the IGP relative to the desktop version,so with the faster RAM,the IGP performance should be much better overall.

If there is some RAM bolted on though,it would probably be quite interesting in regards to performance.

The desktop A10 7850K is already quite competitive with Iris Pro in many games with system RAM AFAIK.

[The Hand]

When do you guys think 20nm Excavator + DDR4 will be an option? I'm thinking Q3 - Q4 2015 myself. Educated guesses are welcome!

[Agent]

Sooner or later every chip will have to be 64bit due to the amount of RAM being thrown in every device. I am sure no one wants to go back to the "hacks" that decrease performance.

This is really a Windows issue though. Once you start talking about embedded devices or almost anything non-Windows based, the RAM limit is usually around 64GB without any hacks or performance issues thanks to PAE. You just address the memory in a different way, it's not a big deal

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the Pentium G3258 is on pre-order for £60:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CP-531-IN

Expect lots of Skyrim benchmarks when this is launched and none of those pesky BF4 MP benchmarks on big maps!

It does make me wonder,since you need to go for an aftermarket cooler and Z series motherboard,whether a Core i3 or FX6300 would be better value??

Maybe,Intel will surprise us with some cheap overclocking enabled motherboards??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is interesting:

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...26channel%3Dsb

Edit!!

It looks like AMD might be doing some work similar to what Intel was doing with NTV.

[kompukare]

It seems the Pentium G3258 is on pre-order for £60:

Hm, the list is $72 vs $64 for the G3240. While the G3240 costs £42.17, the G3258 is £53.96 (both from Scan). Seems a bit high although the G3440 (list $75) is £58.01. List vs retail prices a bit strange anyway, but going by the G3240, the G3258 should be £47.45. Guess the early ones will be sold to competitive overclockers where a dual core processor should be able to do rather well (Core2 Celerons and Pentiums were really easy to overclock, but I never paid much attention to LGA1156 Pentiums).

Maybe,Intel will surprise us with some cheap overclocking enabled motherboards??

Yes a cheap H97 board would be nice but I can't see how they could limit it to this Pentium. Maybe a Z96 with some random fuses blown to limit it somehow. Good old Intel, always so obsessed by margins that they have to go crazy segmenting stuff. Worked out very well for them with Atom, their fear of cannibalising Core meant ARM totally ran away with the phone and tablet market!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hm, the list is $72 vs $64 for the G3240. While the G3240 costs £42.17, the G3258 is £53.96 (both from Scan). Seems a bit high although the G3440 (list $75) is £58.01. List vs retail prices a bit strange anyway, but going by the G3240, the G3258 should be £47.45. Guess the early ones will be sold to competitive overclockers where a dual core processor should be able to do rather well (Core2 Celerons and Pentiums were really easy to overclock, but I never paid much attention to LGA1156 Pentiums).



Yes a cheap H97 board would be nice but I can't see how they could limit it to this Pentium. Maybe a Z96 with some random fuses blown to limit it somehow. Good old Intel, always so obsessed by margins that they have to go crazy segmenting stuff. Worked out very well for them with Atom, their fear of cannibalising Core meant ARM totally ran away with the phone and tablet market!

It seems there might be some cheaper Z97 motherboards now:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-review...ml#post3288385

Edit!!

Not sure how viable they are going to be longterm. I can see the Intel loving crowd recommending these over FX6300 and Core i3 CPUs. I just think their might be a lot of unhappy people in the next year or so,the way things are going with more and more games.