Do you think AMD's new 8 core Zen processor will be competitive with Intel?

[Brian 1960]

So with AMD's 8 core Zen processor supposedly being released in January 2017, do you think it will keep up with Intel's latest offerings? And what is the max you'd be willing to pay for it? I've read indications it may be priced around $300 and be competitive with Intel Broadwell-E processors so if that is the case, it may be time for AMD to shine again. 

[Mr. Fox 2522]

I suppose anything is possible, but I'd never entertain the idea of spending money on any AMD product at launch. I'd want to see tons of examples proving that is it equal to or better than the Intel equivalent before I would consider the notion of buying an AMD CPU instead of Intel. Same thing applies to AMD versus NVIDIA. Taking a chance on anything from AMD being desirable based on marketing hype has great potential to end in disappointment.

 

Answer:  I don't think they'll be able to pull it off.

[Brian 1960]

On 12/11/2016 at 9:11 PM, Mr. Fox said:

I suppose anything is possible, but I'd never entertain the idea of spending money on any AMD product at launch. I'd want to see tons of examples proving that is it equal to or better than the Intel equivalent before I would consider the notion of buying an AMD CPU instead of Intel. Same thing applies to AMD versus NVIDIA. Taking a chance on anything from AMD being desirable based on marketing hype has great potential to end in disappointment.

 

Answer:  I don't think they'll be able to pull it off.

 

Fair enough, I share in your sentiments as well. What makes me slightly optimistic about Zen is the fact that OEMs have pre-purchased it and the few leaks we have seen seem promising. I don't think it will keep up with Intel in power efficiency and IPC either but if AMD can hit  90% of the performance Intel achieves with more cores + less cost then I think they will have a very solid platform on their hands. They also have been improving quite a bit on the GPU front with their drivers as they have started a regular cadence of releases again and now they have a Shadowplay equivalent called ReLive which is nice. We need two healthy viable competitors in the CPU and GPU space and AMD is definitely fighting against two opponents who are giants in their respective fields but at least on the CPU side of things, Intel has dragged its feet for years so this will push them to release something worthwhile I hope.

[Mr. Fox 2522]

10 minutes ago, Brian said:

 

Fair enough, I share in your sentiments as well. What makes me slightly optimistic about Zen is the fact that OEMs have pre-purchased it and the few leaks we have seen seem promising. I don't think it will keep up with Intel in power efficiency and IPC either but if AMD can hit  90% of the performance Intel achieves with more cores + less cost then I think they will have a very solid platform on their hands. They also have been improving quite a bit on the GPU front with their drivers as they have started a regular cadence of releases again and now they have a Shadowplay equivalent called ReLive which is nice. We need two healthy viable competitors in the CPU and GPU space and AMD is definitely fighting against two opponents who are giants in their respective fields but at least on the CPU side of things, Intel has dragged its feet for years so this will push them to release something worthwhile I hope.

Yes, if it works out that way it would be wonderful. AMD releasing a socketed mobile CPU with 6700K performance would force Intel to back off of their BGA garbage kick as well. We could not ask for a better outcome than that. We would definitely need an AMD MXM GPU that holds its own against 1070 and 1080 to make that attractive to everyone. I don't know that I would like the idea of mixing AMD CPU with NVIDIA GPU. That just doesn't seem right. The possibility of great things is always welcome, and since I do not believe in brand loyalty, I'd kick Intel and NVIDIA to the curb without batting an eye. The winner is the winner. Brand is irrelevant.

[Khenglish 1144]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Yes, if it works out that way it would be wonderful. AMD releasing a socketed mobile CPU with 6700K performance would force Intel to back off of their BGA garbage kick as well. We could not ask for a better outcome than that. We would definitely need an AMD MXM GPU that holds its own against 1070 and 1080 to make that attractive to everyone. I don't know that I would like the idea of mixing AMD CPU with NVIDIA GPU. That just doesn't seem right. The possibility of great things is always welcome, and since I do not believe in brand loyalty, I'd kick Intel and NVIDIA to the curb without batting an eye. The winner is the winner. Brand is irrelevant.

 

AMD coming back in the GPU department would be amazing. Modding AMD vBIOS is a breeze. Power limits, clocks, voltages, and even memory timings is very easy to do. None of this inconsistent clocks crap that Pascal has. AMD vBIOS just works logically.

 

I'm still skeptical on Zen. We still don't know how it will clock. IPC has been rumored to be at the Broadwell level for some time, which is good enough. The Ryzen 3.4GHz+ on an 8 core sounds competitive with Intel, but Intel's been sandbagging so hard for so long it's hard to compare stock clocks to how well a chip can actually clock. The big question is when the voltage is raised, does Zen reach the 5GHz clocks that have been leaked for Kaby Lake so far, or does it struggle to break 4GHz.

[Brian 1960]

11 minutes ago, Khenglish said:

Modding AMD vBIOS is a breeze. Power limits, clocks, voltages, and even memory timings is very easy to do. None of this inconsistent clocks crap that Pascal has. AMD vBIOS just works logically.

 

AMD just recently added bios signature enforcement in their driver for Polaris so it made vBios modding a bit more difficult but still doable: https://www.techpowerup.com/228536/amd-bios-signature-check-re-enabled-with-relive-locks-out-polaris-bios-modders

 

But I agree it is far easier than the b.s. NVIDIA has done with Pascal. I think with Zen + Vega we're going to see AMD come back into the fight in 2017 so it should be an interesting year. Plus AMD recently licensed their Radeon IP to Intel for use in Intel iGPU so they're going to get a nice revenue bump from that. More money for AMD hopefully means more R&D money so they can put pressure on NVIDIA.

[Brian 1960]

More information on Zen now known as Rizen: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/amd-zen-performance-details-release-date/

 

• AMD RIZEN
• 3.4 GHz base-clock (or greater) at launch.
• 20 MB L2+L3 Cache
• Processor chipset
• SenseMI

 

[gallery800x800]
[album]9[/album]
[/gallery]

 

I gotta say I'm getting more excited about Rizen now that it's release is approaching. Getting an 8 core CPU that has a higher base clock than Intel 8 core CPUs and uses less power is pretty great. I hope that it is able to keep up with Intel's IPC because that's the last remaining factor and if it can in most games and applications, then damn it will be an attractive platform for gamers. If AMD offers enthusiast notebook gamers socketed CPUs then all the better but I suspect that may not be the case simply because most of these ODMs want super thin and light and with that comes BGA filth.

[Khenglish 1144]

What do people think the odds are of Vega showing up in some sort of MXM format? It's hard to tell, but it seems to be offering GTX 1080 performance with similar power draw. If it did I'd immediately jump to AMD. Their MXM cards back when they were competitive were always far cheaper than Nvidia cards. The $1200+ price tag for the MXM 1080 and $900+ for the MXM 1070 are utter BS.

[Brian 1960]

2 hours ago, Khenglish said:

What do people think the odds are of Vega showing up in some sort of MXM format? It's hard to tell, but it seems to be offering GTX 1080 performance with similar power draw. If it did I'd immediately jump to AMD. Their MXM cards back when they were competitive were always far cheaper than Nvidia cards. The $1200+ price tag for the MXM 1080 and $900+ for the MXM 1070 are utter BS.

 

I think it depends on whether Clevo, Dell, Asus, MSI etc push for mxm based notebooks. If they have moved away from it then the chances of getting mxm from AMD are slim. Nvidia stopped furnishing reference mxm designs since it was supposedly too costly and that could be a reason why AMD won't bother either since they have even less working capital.