AMD Zen will get 8 channel DDR4 support and SMT

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Feb 12, 2016.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    An interesting snippet of news just before the weekend starts, AMD ZEN based processors will get up-to 8 channels of DDR4 support as well as SMT. The info was spilled by CERN engineer Liviu Valsan wh...

    AMD Zen will get 8 channel DDR4 support and SMT
     
  2. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    8 channel? Jeez, that better be a solid memory controller.
     
  3. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

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    I'm guessing AM4 will be dual channel or at most quad.
     
  4. Denial

    Denial Ancient Guru

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    I hope Zen is good. I want an AMD processor, I miss the Athlon 64 stickers I used to have all over my case when I was a young nerd.
     

  5. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    Even if they deliver what they promise, a 40%+ increase in IPC, it's still not going to catch up to Intel as far as per core performance goes.

    Bulldozer at 4GHz Vs Sky Lake at 4GHz - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1543

    Just about everything still seems to be single or dual threaded. Single core performance matters too much and AMD still seem to be playing the moar coars game.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2016
  6. Ryu5uzaku

    Ryu5uzaku Ancient Guru

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    But then again bulldozer should be somewhat slower then that excavator we just don't have anything to compare from excavator. Bulldozer seems to lose some 40-50% vs skylake in everything.
     
  7. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    Sky Lake turbo goes higher (4,2 GHz) than 4 GHz so not quite clock to clock comparison. Also Bulldozer is weaker than Excavator.


    Personally I think that Zen is really interesting BUT my 3770K @ 4,4 GHz still goes strong. I would love to have more cores and mobo that has better features but I think that I'll wait for Zen+. AM4 should be mature platform then.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2016
  8. vbetts

    vbetts Don Vincenzo Staff Member

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    I only care about the APU's, an APU with ddr4 support would be amazing!!!
     
  9. LimitbreakOr

    LimitbreakOr Master Guru

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    We really need an excavator ipc benchmark somewhere on the net, hasn't amd already released an athlon with 2 excavator modules on the fm2? A piledriver vs excavator vs Haswell vs skylake ipc benchmark. Why hasnt anyone done this?it would be a really sweet read!
     
  10. vbetts

    vbetts Don Vincenzo Staff Member

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    I believe it is not released yet, only has been announced.
     

  11. icedman

    icedman Maha Guru

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    Should be pretty awesome if it gets quad channel ddr4 I'm very much looking forward to playing with one of these apu's, my 5800k was the funest cpu I've ever played with.
     
  12. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    Seeing as AMD's IGPs have always been crippled by memory, I think the extra channels will make a pretty big difference (though, 8 might be overkill...).

    Without the IGP, 8 channels just sounds stupid, even for 32 cores. For the average CPU task, you can hardly ever notice a performance difference between 1 and 2 channels. I'm not talking about synthetic benchmarks here, I'm talking about real-world performance.
     
  13. Undercova

    Undercova Guest

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    Would be great to see some super-duper APU's, especially if they use those for the next gen of consoles. Even if you don't play on consoles, better performance on that side should translate to better PC ports. Like The Division dev said they didn't want to create too big difference between platforms, ect.

    Maybe.
     
  14. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    AM4 platform will almost certainly be dual channel DDR4 only. Server platform is another story.
     
  15. waltc3

    waltc3 Maha Guru

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    Remember that the 40% is simply from the architectural changes...has nothing to do with clocks. And the 40% comes from the implementation of SMT--this is something AMD has stated clearly several times in 2015. I don't think there's a question that at the very least it will bring AMD to performance parity with Intel. So just think of that while AMD undercuts Intel pricing by 10%-20%...;) Many games are already using 4 threads, btw. But I agree that anything over that is a bit of a waste (unless you're multitasking.) How they perform, of course, and how they are priced will make all the difference--most likely instituting a bit of a pricing war with Intel--which is great for consumers!

    Big deal will the be the AM4 chipset, too, and how that performs. Also, remember that in UHD gaming and up, the cpu makes little to any difference at all as those resolutions are GPU-limited. No question but that the higher the resolution the less the cpu matters to the performance equation.

    Also, benchmarks tend not to concentrate on the software most people who buy cpus actually use and so can be highly misleading for many reasons. Advising today I'd tell people who want to game at high resolutions to go cheap on the cpu and spend the big money on the GPU...;)
     

  16. Kaarme

    Kaarme Ancient Guru

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    Even if it's still slightly slower per core, I'd still take an AMD since I could buy a genuine 8-core for the same price that Intel is asking for a 4-core with the placebo hyperthreading function. The single core difference won't be that huge anymore, unlike right now when nobody serious gets an AMD CPU, diehard AMD fans aside. These days more than 4 cores might start to help even in the newest games, in non-game software they have been put to use for years already, despite Intel's best efforts to tell people nobody needs more than four cores.
     
  17. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    I completely forgot Excavator and Turbo are things. :wanker: Now I'm a little more optimistic.
    Yes but it seems unrealistic for AMD to achieve high enough clocks to compete with Intel while shoving in 8+ cores if they want to maintain a reasonable TDP. Don't expect some amazing clocks.
    That's just an assumption man, there's zero information on how AMD will price anything.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2016
  18. __hollywood|meo

    __hollywood|meo Ancient Guru

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    pretty interesting info this morning. the smt implementation is very, VERY welcome news! also glad theyre unifying the socket, & moving to ddr4 will be great for the apu chips. they scale practically linearly with bandwidth increases at the moment
     
  19. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    If it integrates some HBM (even a miniscule amount, like 256MB) as an L4, it has 40% faster IPC per clock than Carrizo (which is the latest implementation of the old architecture), and it's clocked at around 4GHz, it will be faster than Skylake.
     
  20. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    I'm not sure if that would be cost effective, let alone physically possible (remember, HBM is stacked. there isn't much vertical space in a CPU die). IMO, it would make more sense for them to just alter the memory controller to support HBM DIMMs. For CPU performance, this wouldn't accomplish much but it would make the IGP run so much better that getting something like an A10 crossfired with a discrete GPU could probably qualify as an upper-mid range gaming system.

    Now that I think of it.... why aren't they making HBM DIMMs?
     

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