Tuesday, November 3rd 2015
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AMD "Zen" CPU Prototypes Tested, "Meet all Expectations"
AMD reportedly finished testing some of its first "Zen" micro-architecture CPU prototypes, and concluded that they "meet all expectations," with "no significant bottlenecks found" in its design. This should mean that AMD's "Zen" chips should be as competitive with Intel chips as it set them out to be. The company is planning to launch its first client CPUs based on the "Zen" micro-architecture in 2016, based on its swanky new AM4 socket, with DDR4 memory and integrated PCIe (a la APUs). Zen sees AMD revert to the large, monolithic core design, from its "Bulldozer" multi-core module design with a near doubling of number-crunching machinery per-core, compared to its preceding architecture.
Source:
OC3D.net
107 Comments on AMD "Zen" CPU Prototypes Tested, "Meet all Expectations"
I got stung by Bulldozer;not happening again.
Used to use AMD stuff all the time.
Perf/watt should, erm, double, but this part I remember vaguely. Care to name "publicity machine" that has been proven "to be Trusted", please? Remember, tthat 980Ti was released to spoil the Fury launch. I hope that, since:
1) "Moore's law" is dead, fab development has slowed down a lot and if we see huge improvements, they are unlikely to come from silicon shrinks
2) AMD doesn't need to cover fab R&D costs
3) IPC optimizations are close to diminishing returns
AMD still has a chance.
The only thing that bugs me, is that I cannot find AMD chip, that has better IPC than my ancient 45nm i5 750.
PS
combined posts into one.
Personally, I'm bummed that there isn't an quad-core i7 part for 2011-3 however, you can get just about every quad core Xeon option on 2011-3 for less than a 5820k, so for the 3820 in Xeon form, on skt2011-3 could get you all of your PCI-E lanes, 2 less cores, and ECC support, without a hit to cost. For anyone who was planning on using a lot of PCI-E and wasn't planning on overclocking, I would point them to something like the Xeon E5 1630 V3. It's the quad core part that should have had an i7 counter part. Problem is that it would probably cannibalize the 5820k because most people have no use for 6c/12t but, gamers and workstations alike would probably prefer to have their 40 PCI-E lanes for multi-GPU, SSDs, RAID, whatever. I know I would.
Either way, this is all beside the point. AMD has to make some serious progress on single-threaded performance to get Intel change their ways. Until something substantial happens, they're going to keep milking the technology they've had for years. All the while, it has given Intel valuable time to improve their iGPUs which they have been doing... significantly (consider the leaps in performance every generation.)