AMD Zen and Intel Kaby Lake to go toe-to-toe at end of 2016

[MercutioUK]

I think a good number of us still remember AMD64. I REALLY do want something worth considering. If it ends up being a straight up brawl between the 2, all the better

[flearider]

i'm thinking it will be better than what has been said .. it has to be or amd will just wither away ..
but we will see .. i'm due an upgrade my trusty 8350 has been running 5ghz for some yrs now .. time for it to rest ..

[iiee]

I'm hoping amd are going to go after the x99 platform. A 250-350 pound 8-10 core with single core performance within 15% of Intels and 30+ pci express lanes would be very attractive. I don't believe amd have any chance of competing in the bulk pc market until they have a solid enthusiast and server platform again.

[Percy1983]

I looks like my 3570k will be retiring to hopefully Zen, if not Kaby Lake it is.

On that AMD don't have to have the best chip just the best chip for what I am willing to spend.

[MRFS]

I may be dreaming (again) here, but I think it would be fabulous
if the Zen architecture supported a full range of modern RAID modes
with at least four integrated U.2 ports on AMD's workstation-class
chipsets. Another welcome advance is higher raw bandwidth between
the CPU and x16 slots: add-in RAID controllers with four U.2 ports
are a natural extension of the PCI-Express architecture:
four NVMe SSDs @ x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes = x16 edge connector.

[azrael-]

I may be dreaming (again) here, but I think it would be fabulous
if the Zen architecture supported a full range of modern RAID modes
with at least four integrated U.2 ports on AMD's workstation-class
chipsets. Another welcome advance is higher raw bandwidth between
the CPU and x16 slots: add-in RAID controllers with four U.2 ports
are a natural extension of the PCI-Express architecture:
four NVMe SSDs @ x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes = x16 edge connector.

I'd say most of that is the responsibility of the accompanying chipset. Personally, apart from hoping for performance competitiveness with Intels CPUs, I really hope AMD will enable ECC support on the "consumer class" Zens. Just like they did with the Athlon 64.

[maxp779]

Zen will be a chip of glorious design! It will crush the Intel equivalent easily and dominate the high end CPU market for years to come... What? I can hope cant I? Its been such a long time since AMD were genuinely competitive with Intel. Athlon X2's were the last chips to outright beat what Intel had on offer, at least till they brought Core2 to the table.

[scaryjim]

... I really hope AMD will enable ECC support on the "consumer class" Zens. Just like they did with the Athlon 64.

AMD's consumer CPUs supported ECC until very recently (my K10 Sempron 140 did).

intel's support is interesting: All dual core skylake chips support ECC, from Celeron through to i3. The reason? I suspect it's because there are no Skylake Xeon E3 dual cores. Want 2 Cores? Consumer chips with ECC. Want 4 cores? Consumer chips OR ECC, take your pick.

A lot will depend on how many dies AMD decide to serve the market with. They've traditionally only produced one or two different silicon version of each chip, and fused features off to make the different models, whereas Intel produce different dies for each market segment. Recently, however, the embedded side of the business has been going down the route of creating new silicon for new target markets. I don't know how much more complicated ECC makes a memory controller, but I suspect that new AMD might drop the feature from silicon if it makes it cheaper to produce...

[malfunction]

AMD's consumer CPUs supported ECC until very recently (my K10 Sempron 140 did).

intel's support is interesting: All dual core skylake chips support ECC, from Celeron through to i3. The reason? I suspect it's because there are no Skylake Xeon E3 dual cores. Want 2 Cores? Consumer chips with ECC. Want 4 cores? Consumer chips OR ECC, take your pick.

A lot will depend on how many dies AMD decide to serve the market with. They've traditionally only produced one or two different silicon version of each chip, and fused features off to make the different models, whereas Intel produce different dies for each market segment. Recently, however, the embedded side of the business has been going down the route of creating new silicon for new target markets. I don't know how much more complicated ECC makes a memory controller, but I suspect that new AMD might drop the feature from silicon if it makes it cheaper to produce...

To be fair Intel's i5 / i7 equivalent Skylake Xeons are pretty much the same price as the actual i5 / i7 chips now, and ECC supporting mobos aren't exactly expensive at the low end either, e.g.

i5 6600 (~£170) vs Xeon E3 1225 V5 (~£175) plus a C232 based motherboard (~£100)
i7 6700 (~£260) vs Xeon E3 1245 V5 (~£250) plus a C232 based motherboard (~£100)

It's quite a bit more for the mobo than a low end consumer board but you're not forced to pay silly money to get ECC support in a self build if you want it.

Though according to this a C232 mobo won't enable vpro support, which is a bit bloody daft but Intel has always been this way in terms of segmentation:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9877/a...-v5-processors

(though it doesn't say which bits of vpro are affected and I can't be bothered to look it up)

[DanceswithUnix]

AMD's consumer CPUs supported ECC until very recently (my K10 Sempron 140 did).

My FX8350 is running with ECC

[jigger]

To be fair Intel's i5 / i7 equivalent Skylake Xeons are pretty much the same price as the actual i5 / i7 chips now, and ECC supporting mobos aren't exactly expensive at the low end either, e.g.

i5 6600 (~£170) vs Xeon E3 1225 V5 (~£175) plus a C232 based motherboard (~£100)
i7 6700 (~£260) vs Xeon E3 1245 V5 (~£250) plus a C232 based motherboard (~£100)

It's quite a bit more for the mobo than a low end consumer board but you're not forced to pay silly money to get ECC support in a self build if you want it.

Though according to this a C232 mobo won't enable vpro support, which is a bit bloody daft but Intel has always been this way in terms of segmentation:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9877/a...-v5-processors

(though it doesn't say which bits of vpro are affected and I can't be bothered to look it up)

It depends what you want from the board really. Once you start adding features most ECC Greenlow systems get expensive and you comprises on what a similar priced desktop setup offers.

If AMD can offer ECC with overclocking and 2 - 3 generations of CPU support with AM4 then I think they will be onto a winner.

[MRFS]

> I'd say most of that is the responsibility of the accompanying chipset.

This add-in card comes pretty close to the wiring topology
we have in mind, but I believe it's just a "pass-thru" card,
not a h/w RAID controller:

http://www.serialcables.com/downloads/PCI-HBx16-I.pdf

[SiliconAudio]

i'm thinking it will be better than what has been said .. it has to be or amd will just wither away ..
but we will see .. i'm due an upgrade my trusty 8350 has been running 5ghz for some yrs now .. time for it to rest ..

If it is, it will be the first time ever for AMD. The Bulldozer was super hyped by AMD but performed like a lemon. Hopefully they've learned from the experience.

[Output]

Is it "Cabbie" or "KayBee" Lake?

Or "Carb Eye"?

No idea how it is actually meant to be pronounced, but my chosen preference is "Cabbie".

Still very eagerly awaiting Zen, I think I say that correctly - "Zen"

At least that one is easy enough to get right... unless there's a strange reason that they would want us to somehow see it as being "Zee-En" instead.

[badass]

If AMD can offer ECC with overclocking and 2 - 3 generations of CPU support with AM4 then I think they will be onto a winner.

Why would you want ECC and overclocking?
One or the other surely.

[kalniel]

Why would you want ECC and overclocking?
One or the other surely.

I'm guessing that'd mean you could sell the same chip to two different types of people.