# No New FX Processor From AMD in 2013



## btarunr (Nov 5, 2012)

AMD's FX "Vishera" socket AM3+ processors are in for a long haul. According to a DonanimHaber report based on a leaked company roadmap slide, the company plans no new processor architecture to succeed it in 2013. The company recently launched its FX "Vishera" line of eight-, six-, and four-core chips just an year following FX "Zambezi," leading analysts to believe the company would launch a new micro-architecture each year to keep up with Intel's "tick-tock" product development strategy. 

The roadmap slide, pictured below, shows AMD FX "Vishera" continuing through 2013 as the flagship desktop platform, followed by "Richland" third-generation desktop APU, which combines "Piledriver" CPU components with "Radeon 2.0 cores" (we're guessing those are Graphics CoreNext stream processors), which maintains socket FM2 platform; and low-power "Kabini" APU, which carries the mantle from "Brazos."





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## newtekie1 (Nov 5, 2012)

Good, I'm all for a little bit of a slow down in new products being released.  I mean, I'm all for progress and all, but I'd like to see a little bit more progress between generations instead of just releasing new products with marginal improvements just for the sake of releasing products.


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 5, 2012)

I guess we won't be seeing a PCIe 3.0 controller from them anytime soon. I wonder how the new E series APUs will perform, as I did use an E-350 for a while (gave my SFF PC to my dad to use for a home server) and it would have had potential with a stronger CPU component that wasn't reminiscent of a single core K8 Athlon.


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## NC37 (Nov 5, 2012)

Not a terrible idea for AMD. Haswell may force a little price drop but Piledriver has so far delivered what Bulldozer lacked. Liking my 8320.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

Jstn7477 said:


> I guess we won't be seeing a PCIe 3.0 controller from them anytime soon. I wonder how the new E series APUs will perform, as I did use an E-350 for a while (gave my SFF PC to my dad to use for a home server) and it would have had potential with a stronger CPU component that wasn't reminiscent of a single core K8 Athlon.



probably ran better than the Atom Intel has. I had one and that thing was slower than my 9 year old desktop


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## Absolution (Nov 5, 2012)

Wasnt the successor to trinity supposed to be a Kaveri "Steam-roller" core :/



>


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## sergionography (Nov 5, 2012)

Absolution said:


> Wasnt the successor to trinity supposed to be a Kaveri "Steam-roller" core :/
> 
> 
> 
> http://lh3.ggpht.com/-YJ1VySqNd-o/UIJkd36f3qI/AAAAAAAAXEo/j3cUVpA8-38/s1600/-1.jpg



they had slides with the steamroller improvements based on simulations, it appeared to be pretty optimistic, but then after the haswell press release they probably realized it will be smarter to make more changes on the core, and probably give themselves more time to iterate the new instruction sets on haswell and release them in steamroller. especialy with the drive for parallelism in haswell with an architecture like steamroller its only better news


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

i like the fact they aint rushing this time around. if they continue figuring out the workings of PD then SR should be a major change in design.


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

I just want to point out it doesn't say there will be no new FX processors just that they will be Vishera based. We will likely see new revisions of Vishera with improved IMC's and improved power consumption/clockspeed.


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## TRWOV (Nov 5, 2012)

Absolution said:


> Wasnt the successor to trinity supposed to be a Kaveri "Steam-roller" core :/
> 
> 
> 
> http://lh3.ggpht.com/-YJ1VySqNd-o/UIJkd36f3qI/AAAAAAAAXEo/j3cUVpA8-38/s1600/-1.jpg



Yeah, but Steamroller will require a new socket plus I guess AMD will implement DDR4 and PCIe 3.0 support.


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> Yeah, but Steamroller will require a new socket plus I guess AMD will implement DDR4 and PCIe 3.0 support.



Well it wont require a new socket they already announced that. It will only require a new socket for DDR4 just like you can take Phenom II's and drop them into DDR2 AM2 boards as you very well know as a user of them


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## Steevo (Nov 5, 2012)

Meh. We are about as far along as we can go with this series of chips anyway. They have serious design flaws causing the cache latency issues. A simple respin and tweak helped in both the "needs more gigahurtz" department as well the other bottlenecks, but we didn't see a massive change in the primary issues like latency. 

At 4Ghz electricity can only travel 2.9 inches in a perfect vacuum, electrons being pushed and pulled through silicon, copper and gold are much slower, and each change of direction causes heat and reduces the strength of that signal, and each process is only capable of handling so much electricity. As we make the process smaller and small these items become huge obstacles to increasing the performance, both in " jiggawatts" and in "jizzawatts" are you even still reading this or are you checking my math, assholes, anyway the issues seen in Bulldozer and piledriver CPU cores are due to designing them with poor R&D on the physical constrain side of things.


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

Steevo said:


> Meh. We are about as far along as we can go with this series of chips anyway. They have serious design flaws causing the cache latency issues. A simple respin and tweak helped in both the "needs more gigahurtz" department as well the other bottlenecks, but we didn't see a massive change in the primary issues like latency.



Says who? the cache is no slower than Phenom II or Intel's offering. It was designed by a computer and not a person yes...but on that note piledriver corrected a large number of those nuances. There is next to no reason why updated steppings wont clock higher Phenom II managed to reach a stock clock that the vast majority of the original chips couldn't even reach overclocked on water.


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## TRWOV (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Well it wont require a new socket they already announced that. It will only require a new socket for DDR4 just like you can take Phenom II's and drop them into DDR2 AM2 boards as you very well know as a user of them



I could swear that AMD stated Vishera was the last AM3+ CPU but then again AMD has switched its roadmap a lot. Maybe I missed that.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> Yeah, but Steamroller will require a new socket plus I guess AMD will implement DDR4 and PCIe 3.0 support.



SR might verywell be DDR3/DDR4 meaning AM4+


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> I could swear that AMD stated Vishera was the last AM3+ CPU but then again AMD has switched its roadmap a lot. Maybe I missed that.



It depended on the roadmap on which stated what. Like you said they like to play musical maps so I guess only time will tell.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> It depended on the roadmap on which stated what. Like you said they like to play musical maps so I guess only time will tell.



well since its near end of year anyway, its expected to see SR in 2014 then, as a DDR3 Model then eventually a DDR3/DDR4


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> well since its near end of year anyway, its expected to see SR in 2014 then, as a DDR3 Model then eventually a DDR3/DDR4



Knowing AMD's luck with memory controllers I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a set of SR chips released with disabled bad DDR4 controllers on them. Similar to the Phenom II X4 940.


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## Steevo (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Says who? the cache is no slower than Phenom II or Intel's offering. It was designed by a computer and not a person yes...but on that note piledriver corrected a large number of those nuances. There is next to no reason why updated steppings wont clock higher Phenom II managed to reach a stock clock that the vast majority of the original chips couldn't even reach overclocked on water.



Have you even read the other parts of any reviews?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/6


10ns is a huge amount of wasted time for L3, 10 more processor cycles wasted than the Intel offering every time the L1, L2 cahces are missed. 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-7.html


Looks like shit to me.That was one of the most massive differences in the "Bulldozer" "upgrade", its horrible and cannot be engineered out of the design with a minor respin and tweak. It will require replacement of the caches, which will cause replacement of almost everything on the die.


Transcoding and other very sequential non-branching items do well only due to the higher processor frequency that masks the failure. Its like a shit truck rolling by at 5 MPH or 55MPH, it may stink the same but it does it faster.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Knowing AMD's luck with memory controllers I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a set of SR chips released with disabled bad DDR4 controllers on them. Similar to the Phenom II X4 940.



AM3+ Supported, AM4+ Supported


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

Steevo said:


> Have you even read the other parts of any reviews?
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/6
> 
> ...



Add more speed 99% of problems go away. Cache latency also drops. No it is not even faster than Phenom II, but those performed fine and no one blames that for Phenom's misgivings. L3 cache on AMD has been that same latency and speed since Phenom was dropped many moons ago.


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## devguy (Nov 5, 2012)

Read this.  Now continue speculating.


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## NC37 (Nov 5, 2012)

devguy said:


> Read this.  Now continue speculating.



Fusing ARM cores into it...already?! Man I thought it would take them longer to start that stuff.


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

NC37 said:


> Fusing ARM cores into it...already?! Man I thought it would take them longer to start that stuff.



Hell why not show off the modular architecture I guess? Would be a killer tablet PC core. Shut down all of the cores until only the highly efficient ARM cores are running for OS support and kick the x86-64 cores on to do anything real. Standard battery life would kill.


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## Steevo (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Add more speed 99% of problems go away. Cache latency also drops. No it is not even faster than Phenom II, but those performed fine and no one blames that for Phenom's misgivings. L3 cache on AMD has been that same latency and speed since Phenom was dropped many moons ago.



You are missing the point. 

A CPU core is just that, a X86 procesing unit, there are only so few ways to make it work. 

The latency is a huge issue every time their inferior banch prediction fails. 5% worse hit rate added to a 10 cycle penalty due to the latency if it is even in L3 and you have your 15-20% slower per clock than Intel.

Bend of the knee my friend, AMD is there and it isn't a good place to be.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

oy veh:shadedshu Really no need to argue, AMD met their objectives this time compared to when they launched Bulldozer.


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## Covert_Death (Nov 5, 2012)

I for one am fine with this.... i just ordered my 8350 to replace my Pii x4 955 BE and can't wait to get it. it should last me until SR is released (hopefully with ddr4 and PCIe3.0)


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

Steevo said:


> You are missing the point.
> 
> A CPU core is just that, a X86 procesing unit, there are only so few ways to make it work.
> 
> ...



You are still assuming it is in the L3. Most major processes end up in the ram anyway at most the instruction set is there. There is next to no performance change per core on AMD between L3 and no L3 (FX series vs APU's). Heck even on Intel there is only a mild change the cacheless pentium and chips and i3 chips per clock.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 5, 2012)

L3 cache was made to compensate for the latency of the DDR3 DRAM for data access, so it means more common tasks are stored in the cache.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache


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## repman244 (Nov 5, 2012)

cdawall said:


> I just want to point out it doesn't say there will be no new FX processors just that they will be Vishera based. We will likely see new revisions of Vishera with improved IMC's and improved power consumption/clockspeed.



I think the same, and maybe we see Vishera on 28nm as well. Maybe it's a good thing, they will use Vishera to improve the 28nm process before doing Steamroller.


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## xenocide (Nov 5, 2012)

I knew this was going to happen.  I even called it back in the Piledriver discussion thread--and then was hastily berated by the very pro-AMD users.  Oh well, I'd rather AMD took their time and released a killer product than rushed another Bulldozer out the door.  Piledriver will be fine by now unless Haswell comes out and is substantially better than people expect.


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## Dent1 (Nov 5, 2012)

xenocide said:


> I'd rather AMD took their time and released a killer product than rushed another Bulldozer out the door.



Huh, Bulldozer wasn't rushed! It was delayed, and delayed and delayed again.


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## LiveOrDie (Nov 5, 2012)

there CPUs suck mite as well give up and put all there brain power into there GPUs.


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## Aquinus (Nov 5, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> L3 cache was made to compensate for the latency of the DDR3 DRAM for data access, so it means more common tasks are stored in the cache.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache



Hahaha, Wikipedia. Cache in general is for this. L3 is shared by all the cores and the bandwidth on the L3 cache for AMD processors is similar to that of its memory speed, just with lower latency, which is fine but if you compare the multi-core efficiency of an AMD processor with and without that L3 cache, you will notice that L3 helps multi-core efficiency more than anything else. Intel does the same exact thing. Not to say it doesn't help other tasks, but there is a reason why L2 is write-back and L3 is write-through on AMD processors IIRC.



Live OR Die said:


> there CPUs suck mite as well give up and put all there brain power into there GPUs.


GPUs don't handle linear applications well, they're built to run the same instructions on a huge set of data which the majority of applications in the world do not do or need... yet and I don't think that will change in the near future.


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## ChristTheGreat (Nov 5, 2012)

I guess we don't need right now faster CPU.. Maybe more optimization would be nice...


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## Melvis (Nov 5, 2012)

Live OR Die said:


> there CPUs suck mite as well give up and put all there brain power into there GPUs.



So every Intel CPU from the 3570K/2600K and down suck also is that right?


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## sergionography (Nov 5, 2012)

Steevo said:


> You are missing the point.
> 
> A CPU core is just that, a X86 procesing unit, there are only so few ways to make it work.
> 
> ...



the massive size of the L3 cache masks the latency, not to mention its the L2 cache that is more important not to mention the load queues/L1 especially in amd designs which amd is improving. as for the L2 its larger size kinda masks for the latency bit so at this point that's the most affordable way for amd to work around the problem, and with power gating the cache in steamroller they solve the extra power consumption issue.anyway aslong as they improve the branch predicted the less the latency is going to matter, at this point i think its more important for amd to add some complexity to the modules than just work on the cache, since now u have a module with shared resources that has less resources than a single core sandy bridge. Dedicated decoders in sgeamrollers kinda solve that problem, adding more ipc and better multithread scaling, then That whole its not really 8 core argument might finally be put to rest

I believe the only advantage for amd to improve their cache would be to allow them to use less cache and have more performance rather than wasting all this die area, but as far as performance its gonna be single digit gains in very specific kinds of code so its not worth it for amd right now


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## 3870x2 (Nov 5, 2012)

Melvis said:


> So every Intel CPU from the 3570K/2600K and down suck also is that right?



what?


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## Fourstaff (Nov 5, 2012)

So they are not planning to release higher clocked versions?


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## cdawall (Nov 5, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> So they are not planning to release higher clocked versions?



They are not planning on releasing steamroller the road map doesn't show individual chips.


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## seronx (Nov 5, 2012)

Vishera 2.0(Orochi Rev E or Rev C(x)) is what is coming out next year.

Then with Viperfish Rev B coming out early 2014.  <-- With AMD returning to the early April-May launch dates.

Vishera 2.0:
FX-8370
FX-8340
FX-6400
FX-4400
New NB 8.0 GT/s
New SB (Hudson or Bolton D4)

Viperfish:
Socket GC36 only(1974+ pins)
Quad-channel DDR4
10 Steamroller Cores
80 PCI-E 3.x Links or 5 HT 4.0 Links(HTX4 GPUs?)
Internal NB and I/O Hub
External SB with Bolton D5?


----
LGA 1974(Reformatted) vs LGA 2011
FX vs i7

PGA 904 vs LGA 1150
A10 vs i7
----
^-2014 worth the wait?


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## Dent1 (Nov 5, 2012)

Live OR Die said:


> there CPUs suck mite as well give up and put all there brain power into there GPUs.



There CPU sucks? Look at the Piledriver reviews, AMD actually beats Intel in more tests overall. But apparently a CPU doesnt suck if it excels just in single threaded gaming.



seronx said:


> Vishera 2.0(Orochi Rev E or Rev C(x)) is what is coming out next year.
> 
> Then with Viperfish Rev B coming out early 2014.  <-- With AMD returning to the early April-May launch dates.
> 
> ...



Where did you read that? I Googled it and found nothing!


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## seronx (Nov 5, 2012)

Dent1 said:


> Where did you read that? I Googled it and found nothing!


The names I am guessing but Vishera 2.0 will replace Vishera and will give a timeframe for the next CPU line up.  The new NB and SB has been in the roadmap since 2007.


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## cadaveca (Nov 5, 2012)

Don't quote me on this, but isn't steamroller really just piledriver on 28nm?


which would still be piledriver...


Just sayin'.


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## xenocide (Nov 6, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> Don't quote me on this, but isn't steamroller really just piledriver on 28nm?
> 
> 
> which would still be piledriver...
> ...



From what I remember it was a fine-tuned variation of PD on 28nm--and PD was only a refined version of BD.  I know the implication is that we could still technically see new CPU's, but it's more likely revisions will come out next year (higher clocks, very minor tweaks) and they will lineup a Steamroller launch for Spring 2014 to finally be releasing around the same time Intel is, or just before them.


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## cadaveca (Nov 6, 2012)

Yeah, I can see the easy potential for 5 GHz clocks, perhaps, if they can get the process ironed out nice, and really, that's all I expect from AMD, myself, but you never know what might happen.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 6, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> Yeah, I can see the easy potential for 5 GHz clocks, perhaps, if they can get the process ironed out nice, and really, that's all I expect from AMD, myself, but you never know what might happen.



for now a 5GHz Chip is plausible.


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## HumanSmoke (Nov 6, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> *Yeah, I can see the easy potential for 5 GHz clocks*, perhaps, if they can get the process ironed out nice, and really, that's all I expect from AMD, myself, but you never know what might happen.


Ye gods I hope not. I'd personally hope AMD could be able to get closer to Intel's overall spec- keep clocks relatively static while bringing power consumption and die size down. Every enthusiast would dearly love insane clockspeed, but the enthusiast market isn't what will keep AMD afloat. I'd sincerely doubt 5GHz@28nm is going to be any more frugal on power usage than 4GHz@ 32nm...which may mean squat to a lot here, but given that the same four module parts are going 2-up on the same package for server duty, and OEM's have a love for cheapening out on PSU's and cooling- it doesn't sound like a recipe for success.


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## TRWOV (Nov 6, 2012)

3870x2 said:


> what?



He was quoting a guy that said the 8350 sucks. Since the 8350 trades blows with the 3570 so it's assumed that the 3570 also sucks. 





Live OR Die said:


> there CPUs suck mite as well give up and put all there brain power into there GPUs.





Melvis said:


> So every Intel CPU from the 3570K/2600K and down suck also is that right?


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## NeoXF (Nov 6, 2012)

What about Piledriver 2.0 (or was it Vishera 2.0?)?


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## nt300 (Nov 6, 2012)

btarunr said:


> followed by "Richland" third-generation desktop APU, which combines "Piledriver" CPU components with "Radeon 2.0 cores"


Shouldnt this be with Steamroller Cores 
What is AMD doing.


cadaveca said:


> Don't quote me on this, but isn't steamroller really just piledriver on 28nm?
> 
> which would still be piledriver...
> 
> Just sayin'.


Steamroller is suppose to be the major design change and should look nothing like Bulldozer. Most of the shared coomponents in Bulldozer are suppose to be removed for Steamroller and should offer approx about 45% performance improvement.


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## HumanSmoke (Nov 6, 2012)

nt300 said:


> Steamroller is suppose to be the major design change and should look nothing like Bulldozer. Most of the shared coomponents in Bulldozer are suppose to be removed for Steamroller and should offer approx about 45% performance improvement.


_Suppose_ is the operative word. AMD go from 10-15% improvement (which is more of a tweak than an overhaul), to Mark Papermaster shooting his gob off about 45% improvement. The only AMD released info regarding projected performance has already passed into the inconsistent


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## sergionography (Nov 6, 2012)

HumanSmoke said:


> _Suppose_ is the operative word. AMD go from 10-15% improvement (which is more of a tweak than an overhaul), to Mark Papermaster shooting his gob off about 45% improvement. The only AMD released info regarding projected performance has already passed into the inconsistent
> http://img.techpowerup.org/121106/bulldozertopiledrivertoexcavator fixed.jpg



who knows maybe it was scrapped for a new architecture, or was reevaluated and turns out its not enough to face haswell. Either or hopefully the delay is to bring something more competitive later


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## sergionography (Nov 6, 2012)

nt300 said:


> Shouldnt this be with Steamroller Cores
> What is AMD doing.
> 
> Steamroller is suppose to be the major design change and should look nothing like Bulldozer. Most of the shared coomponents in Bulldozer are suppose to be removed for Steamroller and should offer approx about 45% performance improvement.



more like 20%better ipc and 20% better multicore scaling which gives 40% better multithread performance, pretty good but still behind hasaell, 20%ipc puts steamroller in first Gen i7 territory core by core at same clock.  u Need lik 30-35% ipc increase to match sb, let alone haswell. One has to mention that the clocking capability might play a role but then who knows haswell is said to be much more dynamic in its clocks and power envelope so amd Can't depend on that


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Nov 6, 2012)

nt300 said:


> Shouldnt this be with Steamroller Cores
> What is AMD doing.
> 
> Steamroller is suppose to be the major design change and should look nothing like Bulldozer. Most of the shared coomponents in Bulldozer are suppose to be removed for Steamroller and should offer approx about 45% performance improvement.



They are actually makeing sense now imho as swapping the core, uncore and gpu all at the same time sounded insane to me, from a yield perspective.


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## Super XP (Nov 7, 2012)

HumanSmoke said:


> _Suppose_ is the operative word. AMD go from 10-15% improvement (which is more of a tweak than an overhaul), to Mark Papermaster shooting his gob off about 45% improvement. The only AMD released info regarding projected performance has already passed into the inconsistent
> http://img.techpowerup.org/121106/bulldozertopiledrivertoexcavator fixed.jpg


Wrong, that 45% performance improvement clock for clock came from an insider via AMD's tech department. Papermaster stated 30% via Steamroller. I say the insider is dead on right.


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## trickson (Nov 7, 2012)

AMD dragging the industry down.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 7, 2012)

trickson said:


> AMD dragging the industry down.



no they are moving forward and just ramping things up in prep for SR in 2014 since 2012 is done


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## Super XP (Nov 13, 2012)

trickson said:


> AMD dragging the industry down.


 AMD's Management has failed AMD's CPU Architects, you know those very smart individuals that keep getting their funding slashed. 

On a side note, this may be a very good move for AMD, give them enough time to achieve the performance they are targeting for via Steamroller. 
In the meantime a little birdie is telling me that we are going to see Piledriver 2.0 sometime in 2013 based on the leaked roadmap. In this case I can see a performance improvement of up to 10% to 15% over Piledriver 1.0 based on a combination of a process improvement and clock speed.


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