Mighty-Lu-BuThe only thing I hope with Zen 2 is that AMD irons out the issues with gaming. I am using a Ryzen 7 1700X and make no mistake, compared to my old AMD FX CPU my gaming experience is pretty great, but I am still slightly disappointed that we are still a tad bit behind Intel when it comes to gaming.

What issues? Apart from clock speed I see nothing wrong with Zen or Zen+ in gaming, the latency is a byproduct of IF & that's not as easy to work around.

R0H1TWhat issues? Apart from clock speed I see nothing wrong with Zen or Zen+ in gaming, the latency is a byproduct of IF & that's not as easy to work around.

The issue is that we are still lagging behind Intel even if it is ever so slightly- If you ask what the best CPU hands down for gaming is the answer you will get is the i7-8700K, not the Ryzen 2700X. I am not saying that Ryzen performance is bad for gaming (its a huge improvement from the FX line-up), but it doesn't really beat Intel when it comes to gaming, especially if we are talking about fps. Come to think of it, the last time AMD beat Intel in the gaming department was when they released the Athlon 64 and that was in the early 2000s.

AMD says they are committed to gamers so I guess we will see...

Zen2 will easily have +25-30% higher performance per core. And that is what matters. IPC without clocks is nothing. At least 15% higher IPC and 10-15% higher clocks are the expected figures for 7nm Zen arch. Core count and price are the totally unknown factors atm.

Wasn't Zen+ just a 1-2% IPC gain over Zen??

SIGSEGVno need to upgrade if it's turn out to be true.
wait...
I am confused with this part:

I'm upgrading for sure! A couple of months ago I built my rig with the 2600x, saved $100 by not going with the 2700x in order to go towards 3700x as soon as it drops. Bring it on!

Zen+ -> Zen2: +13% IPC (Average) in scientific tasks. Not bad.
P.S. No gaming data, atm.

13% IPC gains would be great, but having a few unknown synthetic workloads may not represent actual IPC.

IPC claims are usually heavily inflated, Intel typically claim ~12-15% when the reality is ~5%, and AMD also stretches the truth.

But judging by the past, the hype in next few months will drive expectations up to a level AMD never can achieve.

Mighty-Lu-BuThe issue is that we are still lagging behind Intel even if it is ever so slightly- If you ask what the best CPU hands down for gaming is the answer you will get is the i7-8700K, not the Ryzen 2700X. I am not saying that Ryzen performance is bad for gaming (its a huge improvement from the FX line-up), but it doesn't really beat Intel when it comes to gaming, especially if we are talking about fps. Come to think of it, the last time AMD beat Intel in the gaming department was when they released the Athlon 64 and that was in the early 2000s.

AMD says they are committed to gamers so I guess we will see...

Good gaming performance comes from uArch and latency inside the chip and that is pretty hard to fix.
Not everyone is obsessed about having 10 more fps at 150FPS and really, at the price these chips are selling, you have to be dumb to buy the 8700K just for a few frames that you will never see.

dj-electric+1
More woulds please, and less coulds.

Its nice dwelling in dreams about what could happen, market's reaction, the reaction to the reaction and an endless loop of market superiority fantasy.

AMD, time to bring the goods. We're waiting patiently.

Agreed, but for now all we can do is speculate (at least until AMD themselves put numbers out) But the numbers is somewhat expected. (If you take what AMD have boasted earlier about the IPC gains of Zen 2. 7nm should ensure higher clock (assuming that they dont f*** something up), so I would say that it all makes sense, but is at least as vague as it has always been! :D

noel_fsThen it's only up to clock speed to compete with Intel at this point

I don't normally attach anything to these posts. I have made an exception. This statement is mostly right but, speaking as a consumer, AMD Zen's, have been, still are and look to be in the future, the best performance value. Now though, if all this article says is true, it will definitely be a competition!

dirtyferretWasn't Zen+ just a 1-2% IPC gain over Zen??

It was actuall 3% average and solely due to memory tuning. Tweaking some latency issues and memory throughput got them 3% and then there was a small bump in turbo frequency. That is not bad for a 1 year product refresh. This is a die shrink and architecture improvements.

I don't know what the actual gains will be, but so far AMD has delivered exactly what they have promised for CPUs in the last 2 years without fail. So I will wait for an official announcement from AMD about what they expect Zen2 to gain.

Mighty-Lu-BuThe issue is that we are still lagging behind Intel even if it is ever so slightly- If you ask what the best CPU hands down for gaming is the answer you will get is the i7-8700K, not the Ryzen 2700X. I am not saying that Ryzen performance is bad for gaming (its a huge improvement from the FX line-up), but it doesn't really beat Intel when it comes to gaming, especially if we are talking about fps. Come to think of it, the last time AMD beat Intel in the gaming department was when they released the Athlon 64 and that was in the early 2000s.

AMD says they are committed to gamers so I guess we will see...

So it only renders 140 FPS instead of 150FPS on your 60hz monitor?

On 99% of systems, the GPU will be the limiting factor, even on 144hz monitors. If ryzen is indeed lagging "ever so slightly" behind intel for half the cost, seems like a great chip.

What are your specific issues? Where are you seeing problems? Saying "well its slower in gaming" doesnt really help, because outside of a select few titles, there is no appreciable difference btween a ryzen and intel rig.

I can GUARANTEE say if ipc is close to 13% the clock speed will be
4.4-4.5ghz Base
5Ghz Boost

for 8 core CPU
Cinebench R10 32Bit Single score ~ 6875 approx
Cinebench R10 32BitMulti score ~44000 approx

carexfor 8 core CPU
Cinebench R10 32Bit Single score ~ 6875 approx
Cinebench R10 32BitMulti score ~44000 approx

R10 is outdated, maybe refer to R15?

It would be nice if they improved their memory controllers and we could use 4000MHz RAM sticks with them.

carexI can GUARANTEE say if ipc is close to 13% the clock speed will be
4.4-4.5ghz Base
5Ghz Boost

for 8 core CPU
Cinebench R10 32Bit Single score ~ 6875 approx
Cinebench R10 32BitMulti score ~44000 approx

Cinebench R10 is, IIRC, outdated and not supported anymore. You really need to update and rerun your scores to maintain relevance and accuracy.

hellrazorIt would be nice if they improved their memory controllers and we could us 4000MHz RAM sticks with them.

I don't think that is out of the question. Some boards can get 3600 MHz stable and almost all can hit 3200 MHz. That should be more on the end of the boards getting their automatic tertiary timings right. Clearly AMD has to help facilitate that, but I don't think it will work well on initial release.

It's not wishful thinking to imagine Zen 2 making Intel quite uncomfortable. It won't beat the best Intel has but it will close the gap considerably. And if AMD keeps the cost down, it'll be a killer CPU.

TheLaughingManI don't think that is out of the question. Some boards can get 3600 MHz stable and almost all can hit 3200 MHz. That should be more on the end of the boards getting their automatic tertiary timings right. Clearly AMD has to help facilitate that, but I don't think it will work well on initial release.

It would be great if their controller was dimensioned to handle that, not just through an overclock that will mostly not be stable over time. Even Intel's memory controller is not good enough for that, most Skylake/Kaby Lake CPUs can't run 3200 MHz stable.

Reviews should start running benchmarks with and without overclocked memory, and clearly mark the results. Many reviews have started pushing 3400-3600 MHz, far beyond any certified speed for current CPUs. These are speeds most buyers wouldn't be able to run these speeds and maintain a stable system.

efikkan13% IPC gains would be great, but having a few unknown synthetic workloads may not represent actual IPC.

IPC claims are usually heavily inflated, Intel typically claim ~12-15% when the reality is ~5%, and AMD also stretches the truth.

But judging by the past, the hype in next few months will drive expectations up to a level AMD never can achieve.

AMD didnt hype IPC gains on Zen+

carexI can GUARANTEE

Interesting. When did you get your time machine?

the54thvoidIt's not wishful thinking to imagine Zen 2 making Intel quite uncomfortable. It won't beat the best Intel has but it will close the gap considerably. And if AMD keeps the cost down, it'll be a killer CPU.

I've seen this assertion a few times (not just on these forums mind) but if we take the two rumours of Zen 2's 8-core flagship - 4.5Ghz boost clock engineering sample and 13% IPC boost (the latter of which has been corroborated with another separate leak) - and combine it with the expected launch anywhere between March and August 2019, I can't see this not being the fastest 8-core on the market for some time.

This is because Intel's best consumer CPU unquestionably remains the 9900K during its release window (14nm+++++ refresh of 9900K won't come before a 3700X releases, their 10nm is Q4 at the earliest). So you think a 7nm Ryzen 3700X with 13% higher IPC, with a boost clock estimate of around 4.8Ghz, and with a further improved memory controller, won't beat the hot and power hungry 9900K? Someone do the maths. I think the rumours we have so far would see flagship Ryzen 3000-series CPUs sail right past Intel's 9900K in both gaming and multi-threaded workloads.

TheinsanegamerNSo it only renders 140 FPS instead of 150FPS on your 60hz monitor? On 99% of systems, the GPU will be the limiting factor, even on 144hz monitors. If ryzen is indeed lagging "ever so slightly" behind intel for half the cost, seems like a great chip.

What are your specific issues? Where are you seeing problems? Saying "well its slower in gaming" doesnt really help, because outside of a select few titles, there is no appreciable difference btween a ryzen and intel rig.

Yes this is another thing I keep seeing. People saying 8700K is best for gaming and 'Ryzen isn't as good' whilst not realising that the actual gap at worst case scenario for that CPU (1080p gaming benches) it's only......7% behind on average, according to yours truly TPU. Even worse than that is when people repeat this spiel and have cards on the level of a GTX 1080 and lower (almost 99% of gamers) and don't realise this small gaming performance gap starts to disappear completely as you go down the stack from a GTX 1080. I mean the performance gap on average if you're gaming with a 1080 @ 1080p res would be within the margin of error already let alone with all the cards slower than that.

R0H1TThe gains largely depend on the application, & optimization for Zen uarch. So the up to part will always apply, it's the same with Intel. You could think of it as a best case scenario wrt IPC btw the more important part to note will be the clock speeds. AMD can get very close to intel in MT tasks even with a 10~20% clock speed difference, thanks in large part to their SMT, so if they get closer to 5GHz OCed speeds I do think they can overtake Intel in most MT scenarios.

I have a feeling that this is currently the case because ryzen at its current form isn't refined to its best form and therefore doesn't feed single threaded tasks to the max core capability(somewhat higher latencies etc.). so when SMT is activated each core has plenty legroom left; making the benefit of SMT greater compared to intel for example. The more optimized the cores get; i suspect SMT will become more in line with intel. Remember intels cores have been refined for like over 6 or 7 generations, therefore each thread is being fed to its limit. Now this only speaks wonders of ryzen however and how much legroom it has left to improve.

13%? Damn CPU gains are shite these days.

Wow thats alot bigger IPC gain then I was expecting this would put AMD infront of intel for pure IPC performance as they are only now around 3% difference, that is very impressive! Lers hope it does indeed turn out this way.

noel_fsThen it's only up to clock speed to compete with Intel at this point

Going retro style back to the '90s then?:D