New high end FX series anytime soon?

Discussion in 'Processors and motherboards AMD' started by Tree Dude, Jul 22, 2014.

  1. Tree Dude

    Tree Dude Guest

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    I feel like AMD is abandoning their high end line. I have seen lots of quad core APUs drop recently, but nothing even close to matching Intel in single thread performance.

    Intel has been at the top of the gaming charts since the Core 2 line released. They have slowed down their progress with only marginal gains since Sandy Bridge released. Yet AMD has not tried to counter them.

    As it stands I am looking into a Broadwell CPU upgrade in the spring. I am really hoping AMD at least announces something before then to make me think about reconsidering. I would love to buy an AMD CPU again. I loved my Athlon XP back in the day.
     
  2. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

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    There is a possibility, AMD are releasing a 16-core (8-module) monolithic CPU with onboard PCIe sometime this year I believe, though whether that will get the FX treatment, I don't know.
     
  3. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    I would also like to see them open up to the high end CPu market as well, preferrably without a face melting 220w CPU. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. It looks more like they are focusing on being uncontested in the low end bracket while letting Intel have the high end bracket. That way they don't have to worry too much about competition.
     
  4. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

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    Their APUs are very, very good products. Let's see how the thing I mentioned pans out anyway, there is a chance it could get released as a HEDT CPU, assuming it can compete with the competition. Even if it's only say 33% faster than a 4-core i7 but cheaper, that's good enough, assuming the TDP is reasonable.
     

  5. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    Agreed 100%.
    What makes me weary about AMD's emphasis on maximizing cores (rather than core efficiency it seems) is that a lot of games still don't make good use of multicore CPUs. MMOs are especially guilty of this. Multithreading probably won't be much of an issue in the future, but current games will suffer.
     
  6. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

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    They did a fairly good job with Steamroller, it's about 15-20% clock-for-clock faster than Piledriver, and more power efficient.
     
  7. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    It's not that AMD is "letting" Intel have the high-end market. AMD doesn't have the financial capability to compete with Intel in the high-end market. AMD is forced to do whatever is necessary just to stay relevant in the market, period. Since Intel puts little effort into the entry-level and budget markets, that's where AMD has to focus their efforts.

    Intel, on the other hand, is doing everything they can to prepare for competition from ARM in the desktop and server market but at the same time are making sure that they stay ahead of AMD in the mainstream market. To compete with ARM, Intel has to reduce the power consumption of their processors without degrading performance. Intel was forced to compete with ARM in the past and won on capability. This time around, ARM is prepared and poses a bigger threat to Intel than AMD does or even has. Even AMD sees it and are preparing. Like Intel, AMD also has a license from ARM to develop RISC processors based on ARM's micro-architectures.

    Unfortunately, both Intel and AMD have other things to worry about besides keeping the enthusiast crowd happy....
     
  8. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    I'm not entirely sure about ARM processors hitting the desktop market and how it affects AMD and Intel. However, this last statement is something I have to question, since Intel still has a strong focus with enthusiast level components. In no way does Intel seem even remotely concerned or shy about putting E series refreshers out on the shelves.
     
  9. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    ARM designs RISC based processors. If you know anything about computer history, you know that Intel had to compete against RISC processors in the past. Apple opted to go with RISC based processors. Intel only beat RISC processors due to capability.

    The goal of ARM is to get into the laptop, desktop, server and HPC market. They've already gotten into the laptop/netbook market thanks to the Samsung Exynos processors. There are also Android based AIO PC's running TI OMAP4430 processors. It's really not a far stretch to think they'll get more penetration into the desktop market. ARM is also headed for the server and HPC market thanks to AMD. The first server oriented ARM based processor is the AMD Opteron A1100, which is an 8-core, 64bit ARM Cortex-A57 based processor.

    As for the enthusiast market, it's very small. We make up less than 1% of the total PC market. If we were to all stop buying components today, Intel would never notice the loss. However, if the commercial market stopped buying computers, both AMD and Intel would suffer. It would actually be enough to bankrupt AMD. Intel's purpose, is to make money. If they think a product will generate profit, they'll send it to market.

    You seem to be the typical enthusiast.....very naive about our affect on the market. Intel doesn't care if we buy them, or build them....so long as our computers contain their products. AMD on the other hand, needs every consumer they can get their hands on.

    ARM entering the desktop market affects Intel and AMD by taking sales from them, which in turn takes money and market share from them. AMD's market share is already almost non-existent. If companies like Samsung, Qualcomm and Texas Instrument can get their processors into the desktop market (which Google is helping them do), and the systems based on them are priced competitively, they can easily hurt Intel and AMD. Microsoft is no longer designing Windows strictly to run on x86 processors. Even they see a future in ARM this time around.
     
  10. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    I do know the history of CISC and RISC processors. Honestly, I'm glad CISC processors are becoming more common. Less operations per clock to complete a task, lower power consumption, and overall more potential for growth over RISC processors. I suspect that's the reason why Nvidia aims (or at least once aimed) to include ARM processors on various Maxwell based video cards.

    While I do aim for the high end side of the spectrum, I do acknowledge enthusiasts make up a small portion of the market. That's the exact reason why things like CF/SLI, 3d, Eyefinity/Surround, is often times overlooked by developers.

    But honestly, I find it difficult to believe that AMD cannot provide components with a high(er) performance bracket. They used to legitimately compete with Intel's Extreme series processors in the early to mid 2000's, and often times offer FX CPUs that bridged the gaps between high end to enthusiast. On top of them being almost literally everywhere as far as the general consumer market is concerned, they also have their hands in on the 8th generation of consoles, and are probably making tons of money hand over fist, especially since both Microsoft and Sony are losing very little, if any, money per unit sold.
     

  11. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    x86 is CISC (complex instruction set computing)....they, to this point, dominate the PC market. Intel is struggling to get into other markets.....
    ARM designs RISC (reduced instruction set computing) processors which, to this point, dominate every other market that has products requiring a CPU. Cars, calculators, TV's, digital thermostats, routers, phones, tablets, answering machines, mp3 players, cd players, dvd players, blu-ray players, cable boxes, streaming media players, uninterruptable power supplies.... ARM is having similar success at getting into the desktop market as Intel is having in the mobile market.

    Processor development is expensive, contrary to the belief of so many enthusiasts. Most of AMD's sales are entry-level and budget processors where there is little return. AMD only made $12M last quarter which doesn't make much a dent in processor development when they've been losing money regularly for the last several years. AMD still has yet to become a profittable company.

    Consoles are low-margin. Basically, AMD is making pennies off those chips. Sony and Microsoft are the ones "making tons of money hand over fist".....

    The processors AMD was putting out in 1999 - 2006 were very unique. They weren't traditional x86 designs. They were designed by engineers from NexGen, DEC and AMD under the direction of Dirk Meyer (who was a former Intel and DEC engineer). They are, essentially, what processors turned into.... Intel has taken a similar approach with the "Core" processor series. The guys that designed the Athlon series processors were used to designing very efficient chips on a "shoe string" budget. They also had resources that are no longer available to AMD's processor design team for financial reasons. AMD also only has about 10% the "cash" that they had 10 years....which is a very bad position to be in when chip R&D can eat up all that "cash".....
     
  12. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    Heh, I inverted RISC with CISC. Derp

    It's almost a shame that developers were so invested in the x86 architecture that they didn't pay much attention to the PowerPC architecture. We probably would have a dominantly RISC oriented desktop environment if IBM was more consumer friendly.

    But that's neither here nor there.

    AMD has done very little to improve their lineup. They've been unnecessarily keeping to the Vishera architecture for nearly 2 years and basically refused to do a die shrink on any of the refreshers. AMD doesn't have to hit the $300+ market, but they could at least put in a little more effort with the areas of the market they are currently covering. It's absolutely ridiculous for an 8-core CPU to literally perform on par with an equally priced (and sometimes cheaper) 4-core CPU while having at more than twice the TDP. What's worse, their solution to increasing performance seems to be slapping more cores on a CPU rather than improving the architecture, which is bad news for applications that aren't multithreaded very well. As a result, typical PC users and low end gamers suffer, often times unknowingly so. For instance, most AMD users have a terrible experience with games like Planetside 2, while people with an equivalent Intel CPU is far better off, often times with nearly double the performance in large scale battles. That issue will never be remedied until either SoE offers better multithreading, or AMD finds a way to improve their per-core performance if not now then with future CPUs.

    Addendum

    What's the % of PC users that have AMD compared to Intel processors? According to the Steam hardware charts, only 26% of the users have an AMD based CPU in their system, but surely it's a little more level when looking at the whole picture. You mention them being in financially difficult times, yet it seems to me that the computers that sell the best on the low end/average consumer market are AMD based computers. Why is AMD suffering, even with having omitted enthusiasts completely, while Intel is not? Catch 22 perhaps?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 23, 2014
  13. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    Problem is, AMD has nothing ready to replace Vishera. Architecturally, the best processor AMD has is the Athlon 5350. Unfortunately, it's clocked too low and has a single-channel memory controller. If AMD were to clock it at 3.5-4.0ghz and it's performance scales like some benchmarks have indicated (based on an OC to 2.5ghz) it would be a competitive little chip. At 2.5ghz, it's not much off the FX-6300 in SuperPi.....

    AMD only has 16.9% of the x86 market as of April 2014.....and 4% of that market share is due to the PS4 and XBOne... Intel holds a majority of the remaining 83.1% x86 market. VIA, if memory serves, maintains less than 1% x86 market share.

    Back in 2000-2006, Intel offered special rebates, discounts and "kick backs" to OEM's that intentionally reduced product offerings with AMD chips, or flat out refused to use AMD chips. That did a lot of damage to AMD (and Compaq, who went bankrupt as a result).

    Intel also has a real marketing department. AMD's idea of marketing is having their logo on a PC box on a store shelf, in a tech magazine or an annoying ad..... Intel runs ads on TV, the radio, newspapers, websites and anywhere else they can manage to get their logo. Most consumers don't even know AMD exists and if informed as to what processor is in the computer on the shelf, will choose Intel more often than not due to brand recognition....
     
  14. LinkDrive

    LinkDrive Guest

    So basically they don't have money to put out ads, and can't make money due to lack of ads, resulting in having to recycle assets.

    Catch 22 at its finest.

    Hopefully they can get out of that rut and start legitimately competing with Intel. Healthy competition is long overdue and it seems the CPU market has become stagnant as a result.
     
  15. thatguy91

    thatguy91 Guest

    Broadwell is a short lived CPU that will be the last to run on socket 1150, Skylake replaces it, and requires socket 1151. The realistic choice is either to update now to Z97 and drop in a Broadwell when it is released, since it also runs on the same boards, it wait for Skylake.

    AMD are supposedly working on a completely new architecture that will replace the Bulldozer series. An accumulation of rumours suggests it will be a very interesting CPU, but will probably require at least Windows 9 due to the explicit parallelism. Of course older operating systems will work, just that you won't be able to make full use of it. Programs aware of the CPU can make best use of it, other programs will see the parallel graphics cores as whole processing units and make use of them accordingly. If they ever get it working properly it should be a very strong competitor against Skylake/Skymont, it should be released early 2016 or something.
     

  16. PhazeDelta1

    PhazeDelta1 Guest

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    wrong thread.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2014
  17. Tree Dude

    Tree Dude Guest

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    I realize I would be putting myself at a dead end in terms of CPU upgrades, but I don't upgrade every year anyway (as you can see by my now ancient CPU). Because of Intel's "tick and tock" strategy we get a new socket with every other new microarchitecture. So even if I waited, I would be looking at a new mobo by the time I upgraded again (I am going to shoot for every 3-4yrs).

    CPUs now really have some longevity. Even with mine being so old I can still play most anything on high. The biggest increase I will see is in my Handbrake encode times. I rip and compress all my Blu-Rays and DVDs for easy viewing on my HTPC (and to keep my 4yr old's fingers off the disks). Right now an animated BR movie would take my CPU about 3hrs and a really grainy or action packed BR movie closer to 10hrs (DVDs are around 1hr).
     
  18. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    The APUs are very popular and very good for HTPC stuff or some light to moderate gaming if you are only on the APU alone. If you have a separate graphics card such as an R9 280x or a 770 moderate to high end gaming.

    The one thing that I am waiting for out of AMD would be an enthusiasts version of an APU that would be very OCable and have like 6 cores and graphics unit that is similar to a r9 290 or so. I just giving my 2 cents so I do not think that this is even possible due to the fact that you need very good cooling to cool an r9 290 and a 6 core CPU.
     
  19. Tree Dude

    Tree Dude Guest

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    You are dreaming. Look at the size of an R9 290. If it were even close to being possible, the card would not be that big. Years from now it will certainly happen, but by then an R9 290 will be considered low end and inefficient.

    A high end APU with low-mid range graphic capabilities would be possible. Would be great in a switchable mode with a high end card for the energy conscious gamer :p.
     
  20. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    Yeah I know but a 6core based APU is possible though.
     

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