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The rumour mill has been churning out some new information regarding AMD's upcoming Zen architecture processors this week. According to someone supposedly familiar with AMD's internal tests, the upcoming Zen CPUs have met the company's own expectations and they have found no significant bottlenecks. While this may well be true, this is still rumour and should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the source of this information is a little shaky.
This all stems from a post coming from someone going by the online name ‘Lurker' on the RealWorldTech forums. He claims to be in touch with someone who worked at AMD, who helped design the L2 cache for Zen, with the sole purpose of being competitive against Intel. However, while performance expectations have been met, AMD has apparently yet to finalize specifications for clock speeds or TDP.
We already know that AMD is expecting its new Zen cores to deliver 40 per cent more instructions per clock over the older Bulldozer architecture, so assuming this new information is correct, then it would seem that AMD has met that goal. AMD's Zen processors have been in the making for quite some time now, so hopefully they will be as competitive against Intel's counterparts as it is hoping. Maybe we will see the CPU market shaken up a bit this time next year.
KitGuru Says: The source on this is a little shaky so take this information with a pinch of salt. However, assuming its all true, then it would seem that we have quite a bit to look forward to in the CPU market next year. Are any of you running an AMD CPU right now? Have you been waiting on Zen to upgrade?
Awesome that’s good to hear. Hopefully AMD will feed the bears as much as Intel will
“We already know that AMD is expecting its new Zen cores to deliver 40 per cent more instructions per clock over the older Bulldozer architecture”
AMD stated in slides that Zen is expected to be 40% over Excavator, not Bulldozer. Until we have a Carrizo APU or Excavator CPU to compare with for reference, we can only guess what to expect.
My guess, for instance, is that in purely CPU-bound apps, with Bulldozer being some 80% behind Haswell in IPC, while Steamroller adds a bigger chunk than Piledriver did, and Skylake not being that much ahead of Haswell; Zen could run right up against Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge.
I don’t know what anyone here considers competitive; enthusiasts prefer “better than the best” which isn’t going to happen against Intel anytime soon. But the business definition is about stealing sales, and you don’t have to have the best product for that.
Yes Mr. KitGuru I have a Phenom II X4 965 in one of my desktops and it still does just fine. I could use a better GPU in that machine though for gaming. I would like to build an HTPC in a mini case that’s on the stronger side with minor gaming, but still light on the power usage, discrete GPU need not apply there. That or buy a Brix mini-pc barebones or something. AMD’s APUs set up well for that, maybe Carrizo. The Intel Broadwell i5 with Iris Pro looks quite good for that but too pricey. Zen will probably be outstanding for that purpose especially if they have some HBM on them. I can probably wait a year.
Carrizo has been deployed and sold for 3 months. Where have you been?
80% behind Haswell? What? There is probably not a single benchmark, where Bulldozer is 80% behind Haswell.
Maybe a benchmark to test a specific instructions set that Bulldozer does not support, but Haswell does, but even that is unlikely.
Just look at some reviews, you will never find any test, where a Haswell core will perform at least 5 times of Bulldozer, as you suggest.
Usually Haswell is around 50%-100% more IPC.
But considering that Excavator is already 20%-30% faster than bulldozer, an additional 40% will mean that Zen is over 80% higher IPC than Bulldozer, which should be faster than Haswell on average.
Sorry AMD, I gave up waiting, went from Phenom II X4 940 with a 5870 hd, to an Intel i5-6600k and a 960 gfx.
So true. I’m gonna make my move too, and definitely an Intel and Nv combo.
Forgive me, I don’t rely on laptop platforms for reference. Until the desktop Carrizo APUs arrive next year, we don’t have a reference for Zen.
You need to check your math.
If I said “A” was 100% behind “B”, “A” isn’t zero, the “A” is half of “B” in value. 80% behind means that Bulldozer is 55.556% of Haswell in IPC per core– how many reviews have you seen of that?
Piledriver added 3% and Steamroller added 20%, add in Excavator’s 5% and Zen’s 40% = upwards of 68% difference at the same clock, per core. No doubt, AMD will raise the clocks of Zen, raising the gap between the flagship and FX8170.
If as your suggest, that Excavator is 20-30% faster than Bulldozer, then an additional 40% leads to between 60-70%, not 80%. It will in fact be slower than Haswell per clock, per core; therefore closer to Ivy Bridge after Zen’s clocks are raised. I wage it will have an IPC that matches Sandy Bridge, again per clock and per core.
I’d rather be wrong about an underestimation than wrong about an overestimation; AMD already has enough on their plate, they certainly don’t need their fanboys exaggerating and hyping their product to unrealistic levels.
Those have also been out already under HP.
You seriously need to learn how percentages work. Don’t take it personally, but half of what you said about percentages is just plain false.
A is speed 100.
B is 80% slower than A.
This means B is speed 20.
I know it’s not what you meant, but that’s what you said, it’s how percentages work.
If Bulldozer is speed 100.
Excavator is 30% faster, so speed 130.
Zen is 40% faster than Excavator (130*1.4), so 182.
So Zen is 82% faster than Bulldozer.
Aside from the math, I think Steamroller wasn’t +20%, it was barely 10% to Piledriver.
However, Piledriver itself was at least 10% over Bulldozer.
Check some old 8350 reviews, where they include 8150 too.
Annoying isn’t it, its like supporting the empire against the rebels (Well for normal people as I’m with the empire all the way!)