Thursday, June 2nd 2016
AMD Confirms Key "Summit Ridge" Specs
AMD CEO Lisa Su, speaking at the company's Computex reveal held up the most important CPU product for the company, the new eight-core "Summit Ridge" processor. A posterboy of the company's new "Zen" micro-architecture, "Summit Ridge" is an eight-core processor with SMT enabling 16 threads for the OS to deal with, a massive 40% IPC increase over the current "Excavator" architecture, and a new platform based around the AM4 socket.
The AM4 socket sees AMD completely relocate the core-logic (chipset) to the processor's die. Socket AM4 motherboards won't have any chipset on them. This also means that the processor has an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, besides the DDR4 integrated memory controller. With the chipset being completely integrated, connectivity such as USB and SATA will be routed out of the processor. The AM4 socket is shared with another kind of products, the "Bristol Ridge" APU, which features "Excavator" CPU cores and a 512-SP GCN 1.2 iGPU.
The AM4 socket sees AMD completely relocate the core-logic (chipset) to the processor's die. Socket AM4 motherboards won't have any chipset on them. This also means that the processor has an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, besides the DDR4 integrated memory controller. With the chipset being completely integrated, connectivity such as USB and SATA will be routed out of the processor. The AM4 socket is shared with another kind of products, the "Bristol Ridge" APU, which features "Excavator" CPU cores and a 512-SP GCN 1.2 iGPU.
132 Comments on AMD Confirms Key "Summit Ridge" Specs
I suppose it might be nice since upgrading processor means upgrading the chipset too, I suppose, but still. Wicked fast despite those pile-o-crap Soyo motherboards that were so popular back then. Oh, that brings me back. I had to get a GeForce 2 MX PCI instead of AGP because my Soyo motherboard barely provided any power to the AGP port. All the AGP cards I tried wouldn't POST.
Years later, I ran across someone who worked at the store that I bought my Soyo board (and K6-2) from. He said that there were some rather severe disciplinary actions taken for any employee that even suggested those boards had issues, but he acknowledged they were terrible. Why not get an old workstation? Us WCG members love getting old dual-processor systems for compute tasks. Should be able to get two 6-core 12-thread Xeons for the price of one 6700k pretty easily. Ah. Tiny and heavy compute capable won't be easy.
I did consider getting a second hand workstation grade PC but I've become a minimalist over the years. I just don't want an extra huge mid-tower PC case while perfectly good one is right next to me. At one point, I am probably going to upgrade my media PC to an i7 and use network rendering instead. 8c/16t that way.
Even the games which liked high ipc are heavily threaded nowadays and will probably work just fine on AMD even if the pure IPC will still be behind intel.
Probably intel will have to rebrand i7 to i5 and bring a 6 core 12 threads to mainstream to be competitive ... which will be great for us ... the consumers.
But TDP also matters to me. If Zen's 8c/16t is rated at 125w or higher - and - performs close to i7, I am going to stick with 65w i7 intel cpu.
For about half a second I'm left speechless and completely confused. Thinking to myself "Wtf is this tractor bullshit I'm getting"...
LOL.... and every time my wife catches me doing it she looks at me like I'm retarded.
Sure if there's some new PCI-e 4.0 spec or some huge USB, SATA you might lose out, but it probably somewhat still backward compatible. If you went AM4 on a Bristol Ridge by this time next year drop a Zen and you have some/most new(er) ability's. Heck like upgrade to faster ram modules I would think you'd not be held back by what the Mobo other than it has longer lanes and slots are somehow constricting it
this, on the other hand, could offer 8 cores and 16 threads for a reasonable price...
It was something along the lines of 90% of the performance of an Intel for 15% less the price back in the K6 and K7 days. It wasn't until Athlon and Intel's mess up called P4 that AMD actually had a faster CPU.
It wasn't even a contest once thunderbird hit the scene. I miss that 1.4ghz bad boy. I was chewing through games. Upgraded to Athlon XP and was VERY impressed (put intel's crap 6ft under). Then, my baby, the athlon 64 3200+.... Best CPU ever made that I've had the pleasure of using.
And people today generally have more money to spend, and in consumer CPUs a 15% price difference is not a whole lot. It can differ that much between stores. So I dunno. They have an uphill battle for sure. Moar threads is awesome, but the more I think about it the more I get a sneaky suspicion it'll not be what it should be.
Fwiw, K6 and K7 were close to P2/P3 in integer processing. P2/P3 were still much faster in FP operations. Eh, a lot has changed since then.
It looks like the AM4 chipset-less design is really going to help with the longetivity of the motherboard, so we don't have to keep changing it whenever we upgrade to a new generation of CPU.
The price of Intel CPUs has been steadily going up. For a mainstream i7 to be priced at £300 is just too much. Hope Zen would put up a decent fight.
Man were those cpus good.
Later I got a hold of a Prescott (i think someone just gave it to me) with 400Mhz more than 3200, and it was significantly slower... even in the most basic of tasks.
Those were good times to own an AMD CPU
Back in those days I never imagined myself using (and praising) Intel. I was young...