Sunday, February 26th 2017
Intel Plays Dirty Over Ryzen, Attempts to Manipulate Ryzen Reviews?
Intel is rattled with AMD Ryzen. Its 10-year old Nehalem CPU architecture that has been shrunk and incrementally updated over the years, is finally coming across as dated in the wake of AMD's "Zen" architecture. What to do when a competitor with 1/50th your R&D budget threatens to wreck your next annual appraisal? Play dirty and arm-twist the media of course! And playing dirty Intel is, according to a TweakTown report.
Apparently, Intel has scrambled its PR department to call in favors with the press in return for "guidelines" on how to review AMD Ryzen. Intel's PR emails allegedly ask reviewers to "call us before you write." The guidelines are worded more to make it sound like Intel wants its chips to be reviewed "fairly" against Ryzen, but the underlying objective is clear.
Source:
TweakTown
Apparently, Intel has scrambled its PR department to call in favors with the press in return for "guidelines" on how to review AMD Ryzen. Intel's PR emails allegedly ask reviewers to "call us before you write." The guidelines are worded more to make it sound like Intel wants its chips to be reviewed "fairly" against Ryzen, but the underlying objective is clear.
72 Comments on Intel Plays Dirty Over Ryzen, Attempts to Manipulate Ryzen Reviews?
If you are reviewing by either side's "guidelines" you aren't using common sense.
This is tragic for Intel 1600X is faster than their newest Broadwell-E, if he is faster from i7-6800K, than he is faster and from i7-6850K. 600$ worth CPU lost from 5-6th model from AMDs list. Not 2nd or 3rd. OK on table is not faster exactly but difference could vary from sample to sample and that's same as faster. 260$ CPU faster than 600$ CPU, nice.
We completely forgot what mean real performance improvements from generation to generation in CPU World.
AMD prove self few time as very good option for customers from one side.
They generations of GPU and CPU stay longer on market, hardware is not outdated so fast and than when new generation finally arrive improvements are huge.
Example HD7970 - R9-290x, R9-290X - Fury X, Vishera - Ryzen...
OK very small number of people stayed with AMD because he couldn't pull max from newest high end GPU last 2 years or more.
But customers like when their platform is not outdated so fast.
From other side Intel chipset platform on 10-14 months and no matter on compatibility always something miss, customers wait BIOS for previous generations, simply few months after they build price of their hardware drop significantly. Only Extreme platform stayed option for enthusiast, mainstream become option for people who want small RIGs without different smaller PSU types.
But because many years pass, really many years, and improvements are constanlty low, year after year 5% and 10% for Extreme than one generation mop floor with all of them from once.
How someone could complain now when we tolerate that i7-4790K DDR3 is faster because few MHz higher clock than completely new platform with new type of memory DDR4 and Skylake i7-6700K. That was only example what they do from us and in that moment was obvious how things are bad.
All of people who replace Z77, Z87, Z97 shouldn't done that and they didn't get CPU improvement, only some other option. CPU improvement of 50% at least was logic when everything else is improvemed and when completely new generation of platform arrive.
Now I only hope Intel will launch Skylake Xtreme as soon as possible because I want to know what to do with platform, if Intel fail or if their only 1000$ CPU is faster than 1800X I will think twice what will be my next platform.
If AMD truly have a CPU arkitektur that can give intel at brute awakening, then intel also deserve it. I mean intel have for years been the top dog, but also gone lazy then it comes to getting more cpu performence out of next generation every time and been more occupied by milking costumers with there stupid prices.
Nehalem and sandy bridge got some good performence increasement, bur after that intel got lazy cause of no threads from other companies there CPU´s got less and less increasement in performence while prices just got one way = up. And then after years they got taken on the bed by AMD and cant take that they now have competision from AMD.
Well Intel its your own fault for being lazy, greedy and not taking AMD serious. I id mit that i dit not took AMD for much, but at least know that they might some day came back stronger than ever and ready to kick Intels ass.
I read that as: Charlie Demerjian, a retard and a proven liar said: "Someone in China has just farted." You can read it and interpret it however you want and have a 40 page discussion about what that retard said...
Let's just forget about single-core performance (where the new Ryzen is pretty much equal i7-7700K).
Ryzen 7 1700 is marketed as 40-50% faster than i7-7700K for the same money.
And you might think that changes the whole CPU market... right up to the point you realize that 3-year-old FX-8370 is not really that much slower (multicore!) than the latest i7 and it's 2/3 of the price of the Ryzen. :)
It get's even more interesting when you think about the Ryzen 5 and 3 chips.
In the leaked Fire Strike benchmark Ryzen 5 1300 ($175) got 10,2k pts (compared to e.g. i7-7700K's 13,4k points.)
But what if we add some older FX chips? Look below (sorry for the quality - it's 1 a.m. here :D).
Sure, we see that Ryzen is clearly faster than a polished Bulldozer, but is it really such a huge leap?
I've seen claims that Ryzen is "over twice as fast". I don't see that.
Based on what we know already - where do you expect to see the Ryzen 3 1100 ($129)?
It'll basically be an R5 1300 with extra threads disabled, so it'll most likely keep around 2/3-3/4 of performance... and suddenly we're very close to the FX-8320 (also priced $129).
Sure, Ryzen has lower clocks (and as a result - TDP), but that's largely an effect of changing the process (32nm -> 14nm).
The price/performance ratio doesn't seem to improve that much.
I'm not surprised AMD didn't launch the cheaper Ryzen models already - it could have shown the improvement is not that great.
Instead they started with the top of the range, where they didn't have any representation earlier, so Intel could overprice its offer. :)
Look I have Intel and I support AMD with such nice stuff, I mean look this numbers, 1600X faster than i7-5960X. We should love such improvements or we digg own grave. At least one of big player decide to move CPU market. When I tried to explain that i7-6700K and i7-7700K will look very bad with their 4 cores and almost 400$ price when Ryzen show up no one believe. And I made mistake, I thougth only Extreme will be similar, but they beat and Intel Xtreme.
1800X OC faster than i7-6950X stock.
But this is not possible to manipulate, only someone who try that can destroy reputation when customers start to show up with even better numbers when they set eveything nice with fastest memory possible, fresh OS, etc...
Intel should shame if they try that but I don't believe that someone from Intel tried something...
Results are to good. Intel probably expect to 1800X is close to i7-5820K or similar.
And they know before 18 months when AMD should launch Ryzen, they knew that will arrive in similar time as Kaby Lake and they still decide to gamble and to offer 0% improvements instead to build something nice and give people 30% more performance. No they decide to give same CPU as always.
I never had such upgrade in life as someone who upgrade from FX8350 to 1800X. That's insane upgrade on all fields, from power consumption to single and multi threaded performance. Incredible.
4th model on list with 6 cores and same price as i5 Kaby Lake is stronger than last year champion of the world i7-5960X.
This will be a long 7-8 months before Intel launch Skylake Xtreme.
AMD will sell processors better than ever in last decade.
Actually AMD never had such domination over Intel except maybe once.
If customers start to smell that AM4 will last long time and support later new generation... 30% of Intel customers will change side during 2017. Maybe even more.
NVIDIA knew that good part of them will buy Radeon instead GeForce and because of that maybe price of GTX1080Ti is cheaper.
I read some topic say Almost TITAN X performance for less than 1000.
What mean less than 1000? That could be and 900$ for 20% stronger than GTX1080.
Than many gamers will say goodbuy GeForce, goodbuy Intel in 2017.
No more cripple chips for 1200$, or 1000$ for cards and CPU, no more joking with HBM,
cheap paste, locked voltage regulation, etc, etc...
AMD itself claims 52%/64% IPC gains (and clocks are a tad lower now, so it can't be twice faster anyhow)
In short: it is a big deal, because:
1) AMD can even compete for the performance crown (6/8 cores)
2) Single threaded performance still matters and AMD was lacking badly on this front
3) Power consumption of Ryzen chips is unbelievably good, beating Intel at perf/watt while on inferior node. This is crazy.
It's also funny that the FX 9590 uses about 150% more power and runs at 1,5x the clock of Ryzen at stock, with an exponential power consumption increase when you start overclocking it. The conclusion about Ryzen still doesn't change: this is AMD's Core architecture leap. You say 'process' but 32nm Sandy Bridge also ran at 4.5 Ghz with two BIOS edits and current gen Kaby Lake runs even faster. Ryzen matches Intel chips today and does it with a lower TDP, while there is still ample headroom to improve clocks and Intel is already rocking 14nm for years, while this is AMD's first 14nm CPU.
And with regards to pricing: the lowest Ryzen in your revamped chart is already cheaper than the best FX you can buy today which has a massive discount from its original MSRP, while being faster and way more power efficient.
See, perspective can go both ways :) But I honestly don't get how you read 'the improvement is small' from all of this.
I have a feeling overclockers are going to be very disappointed.
And I find it really overrated. Yes, Intel HEDT and AMD FX use 50-100W more in heavy load, but it became a standard in high performance rigs.
You can easily get a cooler and a PSU that support such a config.
The PC will eat a lot of electricity anyway because of GPU.
I'm really amazed when someone praises saving those 50W and I see he has in 2x R9 290 (600W :)).
Sure, if Ryzen-basen APU also shines in energy-efficiency, that'll be something important, because it will be usable in notebooks and AIO. But in extreme gaming rigs? Pff. :)4th result in my google search:
wccftech.com/amd-zen-cpu-performance-double-fx-8350/
A fairly old news, but that's when the Ryzen hype was starting (just like the climb of AMD stock :)).
I think most people read this as "double the performance for the same money". That's not happening. 30-50% is easily in range, but not 100%.But I'm not saying this is not a big deal compared to FX. I'm just pointing out this is just AMD catching up. Comparing Ryzen to what AMD sells today makes an impression of a miracle, but looking at a trend 5-10 years long it's actually nothing special.
AMD is simply jumping back on the right progress curve.
While AMD was occupied with firing managers and thinking what they want to be, Intel gave us few generations of CPUs with small IPC gains - something that was always criticized by reviewers and created an impression of poor development.
But that's the thing about small gains is: they add up. :)
According to the leak Ryzen 5 1300 will be 38% faster than FX-8350 (in a bit over 4 years).
If you compare i7-7700 (non-K) to its predecessor from 2012: i7-3770, you'll get very similar improvement: Futuremark score is +42% (in 4.5 years)
How about that? :)
7 hours past midnight...no reviews (couple hours yet). ;)
That is bit rot right there, having that name and the words super and awesome and super-awesome in the same sentence.
Hardly anyone has expected that money starved AMD would catch up with almighty Intel.
It does indeed look like a miracle.
And we aren't comparing "to 10 years old products". We are comparing to AMD's previous gen products.
Gaming market has an unlimited appetite for getting more of everything: we've moved from 1080p to 2160p in no time even though the actual benefits are not easy to see (at best).
Now it's VR, soon it will be something else.
Improvement in CPU performance slowed down, because they're kind of good enough already. Other things became important - e.g. we got ultrabooks that are slim enough to be put somewhere between documents in your bag, but still able to run for half a day and fairly competent in everyday tasks. This simply wasn't possible few years back.
Intel Atom is actually so small and energy-efficient, it can be put into pocketable devices (you have to have fairly big pockets, but it's still a fact :D).Money starved? Hardly anyone expected? Why?
AMD has had some financial difficulties (which won't be ended by Ryzen for sure), but it's still a huge company.
Keep in mind AMD's offer is fairly limited compared to Intel's, so having a lot less money on R&D in general doesn't mean they spend less on desktop CPU development.
Intel's activities are also much more fundamental. While AMD has - with Ryzen (and possibly upcoming Vega) - hugely benefited from improved process node, Intel is among few large companies pushing the semiconductor technology. This of course gives them some early access handicap once in a while, but for most of the time it simply wipes out their R&D budget. :)
Truth be told, it's not that difficult to develop a processor. We only have 2 companies making them for consumer PC users, but that's because this market simply has small volume (and declining) and fairly low profitability.
If you look at small mobile chips, it turns out that most smartphone manufacturers design their own ARM hearts and they're all fairly similarly performing.
At least Apple and Samsung could make CPUs as good as AMD/Intel do (Apple has at some point). They don't because... why bother?Again: why?
By doing that you're not evaluating how good the current product is, but how lazy AMD is in upgrading.
AMD seldom releases new designs and they always make a huge marketing commotion around it. It always ends up in benchmarks showing great progress, big wins for AMD and so on. Intel releases new generations more often, so they offer less improvement over the previous ones (which in turn results in reviews stating something like "great performance, but disappointing progress").
If you compare the actual progress in performance over long period of time, it's usually pretty much the same (it has to be, really). I gave an example earlier, but I'm now thinking about a more serious analysis. :)
But if you compare benchmarks (especially those doing what you've said - comparing to company's previous gen), it actually favours AMD. :)
It is, however, one hell of a task to develop a processor that can be competitive.
Heck, even something that could take on on Intel/AMD from 2001.
Let alone something that can take on Intel's today's offerings.
In fact, in the last 2 decades, I only recall one company doing that.It is a bloody multi-billion market, Intel alone had revenue of 60 billion $ last year.
They couldn't keep up, because they could not roll out something that is competitive.
Xenons (and back then, Opterons) wiped the floor with anything Sun/IBM had to offer.Give me a break...
Simply put: this is a fairly small market with low profit margin, so you need scale effect to make this financially sensible.
AMD is losing money even though they have a significant share of the market (currently about 20%).
Check their financial results:
Financial Tables 2016Q4 PDF, page 4
quarterlyearnings.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=quarterlyearnings
The result figures for discrete CPU/GPU business ("Computing and graphics") are just awful: -28% in 2015 and realistically something similar in 2016, but they presented half of it as "Other" (restructuring and so on).
If you think about it, you might start to look at Intel prices differently. Yes, their HEDT is expensive, but maybe that's the realistic price? What will happen to the market with AMD dumping pricing of Ryzen? Next 2-3 years will in fact be very interesting.First of all: no, the "client computing group" is $32bln of revenue. And this includes CPUs, chips, SSD disk, multiple other motherboard solutions (e.g. for networking), while AMD "Computing and graphics" is almost purely CPU+GPU.
Second: revenue is not profit. AMD loses 25% on their "consumer" segment, while Intel gains 25% (possibly around 20% if they'd allocate more costs).
All in all, because AMD has such low revenue and because they're likely to sell a lot of Ryzen chips this year (I guess 2-3 mln easily, lets say $300 each), this should be very visible in the financial statements (already from Q1). We'll see how such aggressive pricing will affect their financial results.Incorrect again (and BTW: it's Xeon, non Xenon)
Intel won the battle because of huge volume and low production costs - not technological superiority. AMD had it's moment around 2005, because they were the first to introduce mass produced 64-bit consumer chips, which lowered the cost of their server stuff.
Since then their market share is fairly stable, but nothing to write home about. It's been in decrease lately (like with consumer CPUs) - we'll see if Naples changes anything.
And as for AMD/Intel wiping the floor with IBM in the server business - are you aware of the fact that IBM and AMD have had very similar server market shares for the last 10 years?
Oh, wait, VW just set goal to get to whopping 3%...
/facepalmAMD's total revenue (including GPUs) is 15 times smaller than Intel's, margin's are half of Intel's.No shit, Watson.IBM as x86-64 server vendor, yeah.
The revenue ratio is correct, but why is it important here?
AMD has 20% of market share, but this is an estimate based on CPUs in use (e.g. according to PassMark database), not sold.
I can't find reliable numbers for yearly shipping. I think we can assume that Intel users replace CPUs a lot more often, so their revenue is much higher.
Think about AMD offer before Ryzen. CPUs had little progress since 2012, so there's no need to replace. And the prices were low, really low.
The best selling CPUs from Intel are the mid-range i5 - they cost around cost $200 (e.g. i5-6500).
The best selling CPU from AMD lately was (AFAIK) the FX-6300... for $90.
AND?
You don't know the revenue of Hollywood, AND?