AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[watercooled]

This is an old post,but I wonder if anyone can confirm this:

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m...e=1&print=true

Interesting, if true it would mean it's being essentially hamstrung by remaining on the AM3+ platform. It would be nice if AMD would release an update for the high-end platform and/or integrate the high-end platform with FMx, and I'm wondering why they still haven't? AMx compatibility has been preserved for ages, I'm sure not many people would mind if it were broken for the sake of properly updating it?

I know I've been over this before, but it will be interesting to see what route AMD take; keep preserving AMx as the high-end platform, release a new high-end platform, merge IGP-free 8-module die onto FMx kind of like what Intel did with 1156, or just do away with the high-end platform altogether. The latter doesn't make much sense IMHO, as they still have the server CPUs using the same die, and there's a market for them on desktop, but preserving AMx likely can't last for much longer. Releasing new/merging seems best for consumers IMO, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Biscuit]

I have only just upgraded from my phenom and 5870 and im pretty into BF3, i didnt even upgrade so that i could get better FPS, i upgraded so that i install hackintosh.

Still haven't been able to put it together due to work though

Interesting, if true it would mean it's being essentially hamstrung by remaining on the AM3+ platform. It would be nice if AMD would release an update for the high-end platform and/or integrate the high-end platform with FMx, and I'm wondering why they still haven't? AMx compatibility has been preserved for ages, I'm sure not many people would mind if it were broken for the sake of properly updating it?

I know I've been over this before, but it will be interesting to see what route AMD take; keep preserving AMx as the high-end platform, release a new high-end platform, merge IGP-free 8-module die onto FMx kind of like what Intel did with 1156, or just do away with the high-end platform altogether. The latter doesn't make much sense IMHO, as they still have the server CPUs using the same die, and there's a market for them on desktop, but preserving AMx likely can't last for much longer. Releasing new/merging seems best for consumers IMO, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I thought the indication was that HSA would make the high end platform (AM3+) redundant for both servers and desktop users once the software was optomised for it, and the theory behind its implementation was it would be fairly easy to accomplish based on current programming knowledge.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have only just upgraded from my phenom and 5870 and im pretty into BF3, i didnt even upgrade so that i could get better FPS, i upgraded so that i install hackintosh.

What new shiny did you get??

[Biscuit]

What new shiny did you get??

3570k, GB z77-UD5 and msi 660ti PE

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

3570k, GB z77-UD5 and msi 660ti PE

Not bad!!

Interesting, if true it would mean it's being essentially hamstrung by remaining on the AM3+ platform. It would be nice if AMD would release an update for the high-end platform and/or integrate the high-end platform with FMx, and I'm wondering why they still haven't? AMx compatibility has been preserved for ages, I'm sure not many people would mind if it were broken for the sake of properly updating it?

I know I've been over this before, but it will be interesting to see what route AMD take; keep preserving AMx as the high-end platform, release a new high-end platform, merge IGP-free 8-module die onto FMx kind of like what Intel did with 1156, or just do away with the high-end platform altogether. The latter doesn't make much sense IMHO, as they still have the server CPUs using the same die, and there's a market for them on desktop, but preserving AMx likely can't last for much longer. Releasing new/merging seems best for consumers IMO, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

AFAIK,in that article I mentioned a few posts back,AMD kind of indicated that FM2 and FM2+ will be longer term. I wonder what FM2+ brings to the table though??

BTW,Biscuit:

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/11/27/...raphics-cards/

[Biscuit]

Not bad!!

Yeah I want get back into live visuals and the software I know and love is mac only.
Kinda wanted to go mini ITX aswell but i would have had to buy more stuff like a bigger SSD, bigger hard drive, case, cooler. Don't wanna go too overboard with a holiday coming soon!

BTW,Biscuit:

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/11/27/...raphics-cards/

I dont want to leave anything to chance though, the GTX660 Ti has very good existing support and is very easy to get working. Il worry about more complex Hacks once i have got my head around the basic one.

660 Ti with overclocks is still a bit of a beast so im happy with my purchase!

Next step is a bigger, higher resolution monitor i think

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting commentary on single thread performance:

http://preshing.com/20120208/a-look-...pu-performance

It seems in the last decade the performance increases,have slowed down massively even for Intel. Hence,multi-threading will become more and more important especially in the next few years,if meaningful performance jumps are to be seen, and if anything the fact that both Intel and AMD are working on things like TSX too,indicates this.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Supposedly,the next generation consoles use Jaguar:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df...xt-gen-console

[watercooled]

Cheers, I was just about to put a film on then.

Really interesting, thanks for linking! Even at this late stage I'm somewhat surprised neither is rumoured to be going with a RISC CPU? Still, not a complaint, hopefully a multicore x86 CPU will mean better PC ports!

[DanceswithUnix]

Cheers, I was just about to put a film on then.

Really interesting, thanks for linking! Even at this late stage I'm somewhat surprised neither is rumoured to be going with a RISC CPU? Still, not a complaint, hopefully a multicore x86 CPU will mean better PC ports!

These things are seldom about technology and performance, usually about politics and commercial factors.

If AMD gave a good deal on the CPU by bundling with the GPU, then that counts for a lot in a mass market machine.

Perhaps IBM want to move away from any gaming ties and move Power upmarket, who knows.

[kompukare]

These things are seldom about technology and performance, usually about politics and commercial factors.

If AMD gave a good deal on the CPU by bundling with the GPU, then that counts for a lot in a mass market machine.

Perhaps IBM want to move away from any gaming ties and move Power upmarket, who knows.

This.

Plus RISC / CISC hasn't mattered for a very long time now. Sure, x86 still has an overhead with having to be backward compatible all the way back to the 8086 but what has defined CPU performance the last 10-15 years is how much money was pumped into research. For instance, for a given amount of performance IBM might only have to invest - for example - £1million into POWER to get X performance while Intel might have to spend say - again numbers out of the air - £10million to get the same gain. But since Intel probably spends x100 the amount of money that IBM does to upgrade their CPU architecture the long term favours Intel and their big pile of money.

Basically, the near monopoly which the IBM PC gave Intel has allowed the Intel's x86 to surpass tons of superior designs.

[watercooled]

It depends what you're doing though, there are still situations where only a high-performance RISC architecture like SPARC or POWER will do.

My wording could have been better though, I meant more that I'm surprised they chose x86, rather than not choosing RISC, although they both add up to basically the same thing.

No, consoles don't necessarily demand a specific architecture and pretty much any reasonably modern architecture would likely be workable, but existing console CPUs offer predictability and performance (traded with OoO and huge branch predictors common on x86, in terms of die-size) above what desktop CPUs of the time could. A lot of the burden of scheduling can be handled by the compiler rather than at run-time by the CPU's hardware, possibly meaning further die-size savings, but I'm not sure how well it pans out in practice, and of course there are some things you can't perfectly account for at compile time.

Still, a demand even for current consoles was for more threads/cores then were possible with x86 at the time IIRC, so based on that, 8 tiny Jaguar cores makes a lot of sense. It's also understandable the console MFRs wanting to go with, or only slightly customising, an existing design, rather than sinking tons of money (like they did last time) into a very customised core which may or may not work out how they expect.

Would IBM really care about their CPUs being used in consoles? Even if cost was a concern, surely an near off-the-shelf design would have been possible, and would have meant a reliable income for years to come, plus the marketing it potentially allows.

On a side note, I wonder how this will affect ports to the WiiU, which does use a POWER CPU of some sort?

[kompukare]

Well the hardware snobs on other forums are not happy with the 8-core Jaguar but then an i5 or i7 was never in the running. Intel are simply used to too high margins. Also, AMD are probably a lot more flexible in their terms since they aren't doing that well. So, AMD CPU & GPU sound credible - nVidia GPUs were somewhat unlikely since they are hard to deal with (according to MS from the original Xbox feedback): although strangely enough nVidia are back in Macbooks.

More interesting is the question whether the 8 core Jaguar is CPU-only or if it an APU with at least some iGPU part: coupled with the rumoured Pitcairn dGPU a second slow iGPU on the Jaguar die may seem useless. But while that's not necessarily the case if that part was used only for physics calculation or maybe some after-render graphics effects.

Doing something useful with the iGPU of APUs might also stop all those Intel owners complaining about having 'paid' for HD2000/3000 etc. with wanting to - assuming Microsoft comes up with a DirectX physics API which can utilise unused iGPUs for this. Or in the case of AMD APUs, offloading physics should be more useful than Hybrid Crossfire. Although ironically enough Hybrid Crossfire would probably work fine on a console were the hardware is 100% fixed and known.

[watercooled]

Certain people tend to complain when anything non-Intel is used in anything. Considering the devs would have likely had some AMD big cores open to use, they must have decided there's some advantage to going with smaller cores. Another potential problem with Intel, they don't fab stuff for other people, so they'd have to go against that and fab custom parts in their foundries, but I doubt they'd want another fab producing ICs with their IP. Combined with the lower margins on consoles, and very high margins Intel are used to, like you say it's not really a likely solution.

I'd expect he IGP, if present, would likely be used to offload some compute from the CPU cores, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. MS will probably use the DirectCompute API, and Sony, OpenCL. Compute is only supported on Intel IGPs from HD 4000.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is that a lot of the enthusiasts on forums are not really enthusiasts,but sheep obssessed about E-PEEN who want to feel better about the brand they have spent money on,and have very little understanding about things.

It seems after Intel blocked overclocking with cheap CPUs,you now need to spend £150 to £180 on a CPU. So,in the end these people need to justify that a Core i5/Core i7 is the BEST choice for everything,even if was a pocket calculator.

I bet the Intel people are laughing all the way to the bank with their nice bonuses with that one!!

The problem is now these very same people are spreading their sickness to other areas like phones,tablets and consoles where,nobody really cares anymore,about what brand is inside,as long as it does a good job,ie,what the chip does is more important than the brand. So,if an AMD SOC does a good job,I don't see why it should be an issue as long as it is an improvement over what the previous consoles had. If anything having an X86 CPU should be a good deal for us PC gamers in fact,but no the brand is obviously more important!!

You would think that with the success of the iPad and games consoles people would get this into their thick skulls,but it appears not,and go on how Intel will wipe out ARM,AMD,MIPs,etc!!

[Biscuit]

The problem is that a lot of the enthusiasts on forums are not really enthusiasts,but sheep obssessed about E-PEEN who want to feel better about the brand they have spent money on,and have very little understanding about things.

It seems after Intel blocked overclocking with cheap CPUs,you now need to spend £150 to £180 on a CPU. I bet the Intel people are laughing all the way to the bank with their nice bonuses with that one!!

Yeah i have to admit that was wounding, i think i paid £160 for the 3570K and it was pretty grim feeling when i pressed that buy button. I wanted to still be able to overclock because its like a hobby, its an interesting process that helps you understand the components and how they work together, but the main point in doing it is to turn a low end CPU into a higher end one so the whole thing is just a joke.

The other thing that really skews peoples opinion is synthetic benchmarks. People seem to base their purchasing decisions on benchmark results that will have almost zero impact on their experience. In reality the performance difference is actually very close anyway, and its because its very close that Intel often look better as the scales on the tables and graphs are zoomed in.

The problem is now these very same people are spreading their sickness to other areas like phones,tablets and consoles where,nobody really cares anymore,about what brand is inside,as long as it does a good job,ie,what the chip does is more important than the brand. You would think that with the success of the iPad and games consoles people would get this into their thick skulls,but it appears not,and go on how Intel will wipe out ARM,AMD,MIPs,etc!!

I havent noticed this to be honest, but ARM are right where they should be for the way the world is moving forward.