AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[sassyjay]

Thank you, well I will bear that in mind. To be honest I have been getting a LOT of help from the cat the fifth with a build which has been awesome. Regarding the piledriver topic though I looked at benches at anandtech between the i5 3450 and fx 6300 and they go in favour of the i5 by quite a way, however the fx 6300 is much cheaper so with aircooling and an overclock it would be interesting to see how much that gap could be diminished.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=702

[DanceswithUnix]

Overclocking an fx 6300 will close some of the gap, but then if you buy the right i5 then you can overclock that as well and back to square one

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Overclocking an fx 6300 will close some of the gap, but then if you buy the right i5 then you can overclock that as well and back to square one

You would need a Core i5 K series CPU and a Z68 or Z77 motherboard or one of those Biostar H67 specials!!

[DanceswithUnix]

You would need a Core i5 K series CPU and a Z68 or Z77 motherboard or one of those Biostar H67 specials!!

Didn't say it would be easy. Intel have been doing their best to make my life hell for 30 years, can't imagine they would stop making things unnecessarily difficult now

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I just was reading this article on Titan:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6421/i...idia-gpu-cores

It does sound slightly more like a Nvidia infomercial though especially with these lines:

One possibility is to move from big beefy x86 CPU cores to billions of simpler cores. Given ORNL's close relationship with NVIDIA, it's likely that the smartphone core approach is being advocated internally. Everyone involved has differing definitions of what is a simple core (by 2020 Haswell will look pretty darn simple), but it's clear that whatever comes after Titan's replacement won't just look like a bigger, faster Titan.

So basically ARM cores and AFAIK Nvidia is using stock cores with custom IP around them.

If you look on twitter,people like CD and even the chap at Anandtech,are touting the fact that AMD is going to use ARM cores as something not positive,especially as they are not custom ones. You can even see this in the Anandtech annoucement about it:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6418/a...uction-in-2014

AMD offering ARM based Opterons is really to target the microserver market. As for why AMD isn't using Jaguar for these parts, it's likely that by going with ARM it can lower the development time and cost to get into this market. The danger here is the total microserver market is expected to be around 10% of the overall server market, but that includes x86 + ARM. With x86 as the default incumbent, it's going to be an uphill battle for AMD/ARM to carve out a significant portion of that market.

So basically ARM cores and AFAIK AMD is using stock cores with custom IP around them.

AMD produced the E350 with a custom core within a relatively short time,using low cost tools and an old process node. They have experience with Geode too.

AMD has not mentioned anyway that they are NOT using Jaguar in microservers.



AMD has a decade of experience in ther server and supercomputer field regarding CPUs,chipsets and additional IP for systems with multiple CPUs. They have invested in a new GPU architecture which is better suited for the HPC field. They bought a company which is one of the pioneers in the microserver field,so much so,that even Intel made custom parts for them.

Nvidia has no experience in building server platforms at all. AMD is going to have BOTH ARM and X86 based solutions based on small low cost cores. How can people twist this as a bad thing??

So AMD uses ARM= fail.
So AMD having low power X86 cores=ignored
Nvidia uses ARM=win??
Intel uses Atom=win??

It is always Chicken Little when it comes to AMD it seems.

[Terbinator]

They really need to get stock issues sorted - only place i'd buy from with stock in is Scan ATM and they only have the 8320.

[sassyjay]

Yeah I have been hunting around and have only seen stock available at scan and dabs. It seems a shame that with intel you have to cash out so much dough for motherboard and k chip in order to overclock. Then again I still think its a slight issue with piledriver that most motherboards (even new ones that are fairly pricey) require a bios update. Asus seem good on that front as they seem to be straight compatible from the boards I have looked at.

[Biscuit]

Yeah I have been hunting around and have only seen stock available at scan and dabs. It seems a shame that with intel you have to cash out so much dough for motherboard and k chip in order to overclock. Then again I still think its a slight issue with piledriver that most motherboards (even new ones that are fairly pricey) require a bios update. Asus seem good on that front as they seem to be straight compatible from the boards I have looked at.

If you buy new they are (probably a revision 2 or 3), if you have one from when they were first released (revision 1) things apparently get a little more complicated

[Terbinator]

PS4 Dev Kits = A10.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=498008

[Biscuit]

lol at one of the comments:

I don't get all this tech talk, just tell me how many WiiUs duct taped this is.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It would be good news for AMD if an A10 derivative is used. At least it should help the financials of AMD a bit.There were a lot of rumours about the PS4 using an SOC with Piledriver or Steamroller cores and an HD7850 level GPU.

I am not sure if the GPU is going to be that powerful in the retail unit though!!

[Terbinator]

lol at one of the comments:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...4&postcount=21

Haha.

[Biscuit]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...4&postcount=21

Haha.

Brilliant, we should do these kind of comparisons on Hexus more often.

[scaryjim]

It's fascinating how Sony are talking about a heavily modified version of an A10-like APU, and everyone's suddenly deciding that they're just going to slap a retail A10 in a box and call it a PS4

Depending on the base OS, the whole thing could be far more efficient at pumping graphics out than a Windows box even if they did use a retail A10, because the coding's going to be that much closer to the bare metal.

If they've got at least a year before release, then you could easily be looking at a Steamroller core with a larger number of GCN shaders on a 28nm die. In fact, since Sony have complete control over the software, they could even have dual graphics controlled at a low level and not suffer any of the crossfire issues that afflict windows: an APU + low/mid graphics card tied together could be pretty damn impressive. I keep wondering is we'll see 512 cores in the next gen APU anyway: they seem to go for roughly the same graphics block as the fastest bus-powered card with each APU gen so that would bring us up to the 7750 next time...

[DanceswithUnix]

So basically ARM cores and AFAIK Nvidia is using stock cores with custom IP around them.

Nvidia are currently using bought in cores, but they are rumoured to have a CPU design team and supposedly are working on a 64 bit core of their own design. Supposedly Nvidia wanted to emulate x86 using ARM, but Intel stomped on that idea.

You are right though, I can't see many data centre people wanting Nvidia systems for their pride and joy uptime statistics, most still consider AMD to be an upstart newbie.

[watercooled]

AMD stock price seems to have increased a fair bit, could be related? The PS4 news seems very well publicised, not just a random leak.