Wednesday, July 14th 2021
AMD Zen 4 Desktop Processors Likely Limited to 16 Cores, 170 W TDP
We have recently seen several reputable rumors confirming that AMD's Zen 4 Raphael desktop processors will be limited to 16 cores with 2 compute units. There were previous rumors of a 24 core model with 3 compute units however that now seems unlikely. While the core counts won't increase some skews may see a TDP increase up to 170 W which should offer some performance uplift. AMD is expected to debut their 5 nm Zen 4 Raphael desktop processors in 2022 which will come with support for PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. The processors will switch to a new AM5 LGA1718 socket and will compete with Intel's Alder Lake-S successor Raptor Lake which could feature 24 cores.
Source:
@patrickschur_
75 Comments on AMD Zen 4 Desktop Processors Likely Limited to 16 Cores, 170 W TDP
Sounds like they're satisfied with their place in the market and have switched to stagnation mode.
Not to mention that threadripper exists?
Stronger single-core performance is more versatile than having a load of weaker cores that only performs well in compute scenarios.
There isnt much out there that makes use of that full amount and if you are a pro that need that amount of cores then threadripper would probably be a better choice.
5950x as an actual need is very niche
"Just because they aren't adding more cores means they stagnated?" (3770K to 4770K)
"Not to mention that HEDT parts exist." (3960X)
AMD made a giant leap to make sure people noticed (gaining back some mindshare) by going for 8 cores with the 1800x for consumers and then very quickly to 16 cores, but as it stands nothing has caught up yet, so going for even more atm is just silly, Improving on IPC and efficienty etc makes more sense now.
And also lets not forget that Intel's HEDT parts were rediculously expensive, AMD made that entry point waaaay lower to the point of being able to get 16 cores on a consumer platform.well that still holds true though doesnt it?
how many consumer programmes really make use of 8 cores? the best all around gaming chip you can buy atm is the 5600X which is 6 cores...in 2021.
Weird times ahead.
If you're already at 170w on consumer products, don't add more cores, get a bigger socket. We already know the disaster gen 11 is at the top end.
My 11700 uses 40-45 watts during gaming.
i sincerely hope those are 16 *logical* and 8 *physical* cores, and in order to justify that high TDP the chip will run close to 5GHz all core turbo.
Even 8 is pushing it, there are limits to segments in a market. You don't see 300 kph family cars either. There simply isn't a reasonable demand for it.
But with Zen 4 there are risk of memory problems do to the move to ddr5 memory. Problems cut be something similar to Zen 1. Just a guess off cause. With zen i dont get memory problems.
So I think it was a good move to get a 5950X now. Do to i really can't afford problems and down time on my pc do to hardware issue or problems.
A lot of AM4's appeal is that the same platform (B450, really) works from the poopy Athlon X4 950 quad core to the 5950x 16 core
The bottom end and top end parts are niche products, and NOT the main sellers
Intel kept 4 cores as top mainstream part from Nehalem to Skylake refreshes (so not just 3770K to 4770K), so 8 consecutive years! Not to mention that IPC gains were often single digit only and sometimes even nil or close to it during these years (especially SKylake and it's refreshes where only clock speeds and corecounts increased, exactly due to AMD's push on that front).
HEDT: 3960X was a 6 core part (to a 4 core 3770K desktop chip) whereas at the same time they could have had a lot more (Ivy-Bridge EX (Ivy Town?) already went up to 15 cores on workstation/server). Now TR is already at 4 times tthe corecount of the desktop chip, not 1,5X, not to mention that by the time this Zen 4 comes out probably they wil have 96-128 core parts on at least the EPYC line up (Genoa), quite poossibly coming to HEDT too.
The real changes came with the transitions from DDR2 to DDR3 to DDR4 - and basically nowhere else.
Games didnt even start requiring 4 cores to run right until very recently, as in 2019+. Even then, unlocked core i3 parts like the dual core 7350k can still hit 60 FPS in most titles. You dont need 16 cores to play games or run 99 of consumer software. GaMeRz constantly overbuy on the CPU front.
Today, AMD isnt pushing more then 16 cores. Oh boo hoo, you really need 20 cores to play minecraft, right? Instead you only get a 29% Ipc bump per generation! You dont need 17+ cores in a consumer product. If your workload needs 17+ cores, you fall into the HDET catagory and likely need more then dual channel RAM to satiate your needs anyway, so the whole point is moot.Yeah, OK, I guess that core 2 quads had the same per core performance on DDR3 as haswell then? Dude just stop embarassing yourself.
And this is what we got
Then the change zen managed in 2 gens... (including a 4 core equivalent and then GASP there is no zen 3 4 core chip! how dare they progress!)
(images look different, got them from different sources, but both passmark)