AMD - Zen chitchat

[scaryjim]

Another leak which apparently confirms the line-up:

https://videocardz.com/75217/amd-ryz...eer-and-renoir

Interestingly that implies that a) the 1500X and 1300X are being dropped (silently?) from the CPU line up this quarter, and b) that there won't be any Gen 2 quad core CPUs at all - it's 6/8 core CPUs and quad core APUs. It's a very simple looking product stack, although the disparity in numbering between mobile (2700, 2500, 2300, 2200) and desktop (2700,2600,2400,2200) looks rather Intel-esque in its complexity...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another £500 Core i5 8250U laptop with a 1080p screen:

https://www.box.co.uk/N24T6-Dell-Ins...&siteid=116019

Seems to have this graphics card:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ra....214534.0.html

The ones on the Dell site have 4GB of GDDR5 but this model has 2GB of VRAM. Amazon indicates it is 2GB of GDDR5.

Edit!!

GPU performance will be between a 920MX and 940MX/MX130 DDR3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7P8xN9pqLM

So probably quicker than the Intel IGP,but slower than the Vega8 IGP I suspect!!

Second Edit!!

AMD needs to get those drivers out,as if at least if graphics performance increases it might fend off some of these cheaper Core i5 8250U based laptops. It does make me wonder whether its not helping with battery life either??!!

[krustylicious]

Interestingly that implies that a) the 1500X and 1300X are being dropped (silently?) from the CPU line up this quarter, and b) that there won't be any Gen 2 quad core CPUs at all - it's 6/8 core CPUs and quad core APUs. It's a very simple looking product stack, although the disparity in numbering between mobile (2700, 2500, 2300, 2200) and desktop (2700,2600,2400,2200) looks rather Intel-esque in its complexity...

I think we will see a quad core ryzen 2xxx series chip later in the year. The dropping of the 2800x makes sense. It will be interesting to see what price changes we will see over the next 6 weeks

[Xlucine]

We did see high-end ryzen launched first with the 1X00 series

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If the model numbers are true especially as AMD on Twitter actually shared some of them briefly,I do wonder whether AMD is going to launch a higher binned Ryzen 7 2800X with a higher TDP like 125W?? If the X470 has lower power consumption that might negate to a degree any of the CPU power consumption increases.

Having said that upto a 400MHZ increase at 65W TDP and upto a 250MHZ increase at 95W TDP is not actually bad after only one year IMHO.

[scaryjim]

My takeaway from the leaks - if they're true - is that we should see OCs at around 4.2GHz - 4.3GHz. 6C/12T @ 4.2GHz for $199? Not too shabby....

As to the line up; note that the SKU transition slide very clearly shows the 2200G replacing both the 1200 and 1300X, and the 2600 replacing the 1500X - the 2600X covers both the 1600 and 1600X, and the 2700X covers both the 1700X and 1800X. Sure, it leaves some room for a 2500 and 2300 to slide into the stack, but is there really enough RRP and performance room for them? The 2500X would have to be priced between $169 and $199 (unless they drop the price on the 2400G when they introduce it)...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My takeaway from the leaks - if they're true - is that we should see OCs at around 4.2GHz - 4.3GHz. 6C/12T @ 4.2GHz for $199? Not too shabby....

As to the line up; note that the SKU transition slide very clearly shows the 2200G replacing both the 1200 and 1300X, and the 2600 replacing the 1500X - the 2600X covers both the 1600 and 1600X, and the 2700X covers both the 1700X and 1800X. Sure, it leaves some room for a 2500 and 2300 to slide into the stack, but is there really enough RRP and performance room for them? The 2500X would have to be priced between $169 and $199 (unless they drop the price on the 2400G when they introduce it)...

It's only been a year so it's not a bad increase in barely 12 months. If things like cache and memory latency are improved to I do wonder if that means Ryzen+ will play nicer with slower RAM??

[scaryjim]

... If things like cache and memory latency are improved to I do wonder if that means Ryzen+ will play nicer with slower RAM??

Depends what you mean by nicer, I suspect. AFAICT the latency is still determined by the fabric rather than the IMC, and I've seen nothing to suggest that the fabric speed is being uncoupled from the RAM clock, so it's still going to want nice fast RAM to get the best performance - the latency improvements in desktop Raven Ridge latency are better than you'd expect from clock speed alone, but they're getting a good 10% boost just from using 2933MHz RAM v 2666MHz for Summit Ridge.

[Xlucine]

I'd assumed the purported leak on videocardz was running both chips at their rated RAM frequencies (so 2.4 GHz vs 2.9 GHz for the new chips), but they're both running 2.7 GHz and the new chip still gets an 11% drop in latency

[Millennium]

i'd assumed the purported leak on videocardz was running both chips at their rated ram frequencies (so 2.4 ghz vs 2.9 ghz for the new chips), but they're both running 2.7 ghz and the new chip still gets an 11% drop in latency

w o w

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Depends what you mean by nicer, I suspect. AFAICT the latency is still determined by the fabric rather than the IMC, and I've seen nothing to suggest that the fabric speed is being uncoupled from the RAM clock, so it's still going to want nice fast RAM to get the best performance - the latency improvements in desktop Raven Ridge latency are better than you'd expect from clock speed alone, but they're getting a good 10% boost just from using 2933MHz RAM v 2666MHz for Summit Ridge.

When I say slower,something under 3GHZ,but as noted by Xlucine they used the same speed RAM.

I'd assumed the purported leak on videocardz was running both chips at their rated RAM frequencies (so 2.4 GHz vs 2.9 GHz for the new chips), but they're both running 2.7 GHz and the new chip still gets an 11% drop in latency

Look at the reduction in L2 and L3 cache latencies a 33% reduction in L2 cache latency and a 16% reduction in L3 cache latency.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Crikey:

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2018/0...onsumer_choice

Is Nvidia that worried about AMD Ryzen and the AMD-Intel partnership??

[scaryjim]

Cache latencies (well, cache speeds, to be more accurae, but...) are based on the core clocks, so an increase in core clock *will* show a decrease in latency. As I say, it looks like the improved latencies are partly down to clock speed boosts, and partly down to architectural improvements.

OTOH, Intel's latencies are still vastly better - the question is inevitably going to be whether it's the IMC or the fabric to blame. The really interesting thing for me will be seeing how the caches behave once you hit cross-CCX levels. With Ryzen 1000 cross-CCX latency was the same as main memory latency, indicating that the fabric was the deciding factor. The big question is whether these reduced latencies are now being limited by the fabric, or the IMC...

[kompukare]

Looks like Xbox-S and Xbox-X are both getting a FreeSync update soon:
https://www.techpowerup.com/242271/a...console-family
https://www.computerbase.de/2018-03/xbox-one-free-sync/

Guess that means that eventually most TVs will support it. One of the comments in CB implies that Samsung's 2018 TV line up will support FreeSync.

[scaryjim]

Another £500 Core i5 8250U laptop with a 1080p screen: ...

Heh, it only took me a week to take your advice and buy this one

A bit of further research turned up a couple of interesting factors - firstly the notebookcheck benchmarks that put the Radeon 530 level with a 940MX DDR3 were done with a DDR3 Radeon 530 (according to their listings, at least) so I'm hopeful that a DDR5 version will perform better; and more importantly the base laptop can be configured with dual storage and it appears that the M.2 slot will be available and unpopulated in the shipping laptop, leaving the possibility open that I can add an SSD. It's also possible that the laptop will ship with single channel RAM despite having two RAM slots (the 8GB versoins on the Dell website do*), which would open up the chance to expand to 16GB in the future.

I'm very lucky to have a couple of wonderful people who helped stretch my budget for my birthday


* however, the ones on the Dell website also only ship with an optical drive (this one doesn't), and there's no option for a 1TB HDD and a dGPU. So goodness knows what will actually turn up

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Heh, it only took me a week to take your advice and buy this one

A bit of further research turned up a couple of interesting factors - firstly the notebookcheck benchmarks that put the Radeon 530 level with a 940MX DDR3 were done with a DDR3 Radeon 530 (according to their listings, at least) so I'm hopeful that a DDR5 version will perform better; and more importantly the base laptop can be configured with dual storage and it appears that the M.2 slot will be available and unpopulated in the shipping laptop, leaving the possibility open that I can add an SSD. It's also possible that the laptop will ship with single channel RAM despite having two RAM slots (the 8GB versoins on the Dell website do*), which would open up the chance to expand to 16GB in the future.

I'm very lucky to have a couple of wonderful people who helped stretch my budget for my birthday


* however, the ones on the Dell website also only ship with an optical drive (this one doesn't), and there's no option for a 1TB HDD and a dGPU. So goodness knows what will actually turn up

Apparently earlier models were shipped with single channel RAM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spldop-OLtY

I would be useful if you could give us some first impressions,especially regarding the IGP and GPU!!