AMD have plans for Zen that spans 5 years

[WYP]

AMD plans for their Zen architecture are long term, saying that there will be newer refined iterations of their designs over the next 5 or so years.

Read more on AMD's Zen architecture and their future plans.

 

[AlienALX]

If they can stay in business that long.

 

[dwatterworth]

With such a crippled budget and constant other worries, I wonder what AMD will be able to pull off if they recoup some of their business.
Being able to stay very competitive with Nvidia and Intel is no small feat for such a glorious underdog. I say competitive meaning in general ballpark of performance in regards to Intel; AMD is definitely in striking distance.
Time for the bloated titans to be worried once the AM4 starts rolling in!

 

[AlienALX]

I think the most worrying thing I have seen so far about Zen was the claim that a certain Zen APU would be as good as the PS4....

 

[WYP]

I think the most worrying thing I have seen so far about Zen was the claim that a certain Zen APU would be as good as the PS4....

Depends what way you look at it, if it was on the GPU side that would be amazing performance for a desktop APU.

Also if we consider this as a quad core APU that would be decent CPU performance too if a Quad core Zen could beat an older AMD 8-core.

It is all rumors ATM, we won't know anything for certain until reviews are live.

 

[AlienALX]

Depends what way you look at it, if it was on the GPU side that would be amazing performance for a desktop APU.

Also if we consider this as a quad core APU that would be decent CPU performance too if a Quad core Zen could beat an older AMD 8-core.

The issue for me is that the whole "APUs are awesome" thing has kinda died down. For ages and ages magazines were recommending AMD APUs of various sorts and flavours, now they have gone back to things like the Pentium Anni and a dedicated GPU.

I think what's happened is games have gotten much harder to run than they were. Things like Crysis 3 won't run on any res at any settings on an APU and that's probably why they are not being recommended as strongly as they were.

So yeah, I guess if the PS4 really is "that good" and these new APUs can meddle with recent games? then I guess it could save their bacon but I think what most people are expecting and wanting really is high end "mix it with Haswell E" Zen.

Zen came too late for me tbh. I bought a 3970x and then took a step sideways buying a 5820k and I won't be replacing it any time soon.

 

[WYP]

The issue for me is that the whole "APUs are awesome" thing has kinda died down. For ages and ages magazines were recommending AMD APUs of various sorts and flavours, now they have gone back to things like the Pentium Anni and a dedicated GPU.

I think what's happened is games have gotten much harder to run than they were. Things like Crysis 3 won't run on any res at any settings on an APU and that's probably why they are not being recommended as strongly as they were.

So yeah, I guess if the PS4 really is "that good" and these new APUs can meddle with recent games? then I guess it could save their bacon but I think what most people are expecting and wanting really is high end "mix it with Haswell E" Zen.

Zen came too late for me tbh. I bought a 3970x and then took a step sideways buying a 5820k and I won't be replacing it any time soon.

The thing is that APUs are only really good for a bargain basement gaming PC, playing at 720p 900p and such.

The pentium K is passed it's time now, we are in the age of quad cores/threads. The minimum I would recommend for gaming now is an i3 or a AMD quad core. nost games are struggling or simply don't work with dual cores now.

I really hope Bios updates can unlock the BCLK on the i3 skylake chips, as that would be insane performance for the money.

 

[AlienALX]

The thing is that APUs are only really good for a bargain basement gaming PC, playing at 720p 900p and such.

Yeah. At first they could do things like L4d2 at acceptable FPS @ 1080p but that's what I meant when I said they have been basically made extinct by newer games over the past three years.

The pentium K is passed it's time now, we are in the age of quad cores/threads. The minimum I would recommend for gaming now is an i3 or a AMD quad core. nost games are struggling or simply don't work with dual cores now.

I really hope Bios updates can unlock the BCLK on the i3 skylake chips, as that would be insane performance for the money.

The Pentium K was the biggest load of crap ever.

People got all excited because Intel had released a cheap unlocked chip but the reality was even overclocked games made them bloody wince hard, even at low resolutions. I paired mine with my at the time spare Titan Black just to make sure there were no limitations caused by the GPU and all it did was chuffing stutter. Stutter, stutter, stutter. I ran mine @ 4.4ghz but it was very evident that modern games now want four cores, not two. So IMO the PK was too little too late from Intel but it sold by the bucketload and god, the amount of gutted faces out there when reality set it must have been huge!

I too hope the I3 can be overclocked on cheaper more run of the mill boards. I priced it up the other day with this -

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...cket-1151-ddr3-atx-motherboard-mb-672-as.html

With 8gb DDR4 and it came in at just under £200. TBH? if it ends up that you can overclock with a H110 board I will happily pay the £200 and replace the 1055T X6 I have.

 

[barnsley]

the amount of gutted faces out there when reality set it must have been huge!

I think they were mostly bought by people who wanted a stopgap cpu or a toy more than a budget gaming PC.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I'm excited for Zen and hope it is successful. But will that make me want to move over from an already more than enough i5 to Zen on release? Nope. I think this is the problem too, how willing are people to jump on Zen when Intel's current and past offerings are still more than capable for gaming? This is the problem I see. A new cpu/board is quite a big investment.

However I really think they need to hit 14nm with Zen(i think with all there products but doubtdull) since it will slightly help in performance, efficiency, and performance/watt which is crucial to Servers/Enterprises/HPCs/Datacenters/etc. I know they are many of those types of companies waiting to see how Zen goes and are holding off on buying more Intel cpus, simply because Intel control 99% of the market and can charge whatever they want since they always need more processing power. This is probably more important of a market for them than consumers are. They make much more per chip. So with all that, I think 14nm for the start of the 5 year plan is important. They need that big BANG to get the attention and every edge they can obtain to best Intel. I think 14nm would be a great start for that.

 

[Kushiro]

Yeah. At first they could do things like L4d2 at acceptable FPS @ 1080p but that's what I meant when I said they have been basically made extinct by newer games over the past three years.



The Pentium K was the biggest load of crap ever.

People got all excited because Intel had released a cheap unlocked chip but the reality was even overclocked games made them bloody wince hard, even at low resolutions. I paired mine with my at the time spare Titan Black just to make sure there were no limitations caused by the GPU and all it did was chuffing stutter. Stutter, stutter, stutter. I ran mine @ 4.4ghz but it was very evident that modern games now want four cores, not two. So IMO the PK was too little too late from Intel but it sold by the bucketload and god, the amount of gutted faces out there when reality set it must have been huge!

I too hope the I3 can be overclocked on cheaper more run of the mill boards. I priced it up the other day with this -

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...cket-1151-ddr3-atx-motherboard-mb-672-as.html

With 8gb DDR4 and it came in at just under £200. TBH? if it ends up that you can overclock with a H110 board I will happily pay the £200 and replace the 1055T X6 I have.

I was and still am quite happy with my PK.
It did what was expected of it and for the price it was great. Its nowhere near any of my other PCs, however they cost a lot more.

 

[Porxster]

I don't see late Intel owners switching to Zen.
Pretty much only AMD FX owners would if the price to performance is right.
I'd buy a Zen if it's 300$ cheaper (Board+CPU) with no more than 10% performance difference from a Skylake (Board+CPU).
APU's where never meant for high end gaming IMO.
2016 should be an interesting year for both on CPU's and GPU's.

 

[Wraith]

I don't see late Intel owners switching to Zen.
Pretty much only AMD FX owners would if the price to performance is right.
I'd buy a Zen if it's 300$ cheaper (Board+CPU) with no more than 10% performance difference from a Skylake (Board+CPU).
APU's where never meant for high end gaming IMO.
2016 should be an interesting year for both on CPU's and GPU's.

Given that what I've heard is that Zen is aiming to compete with Haswell and they claim it will have a 40% IPC improvement over current FX chips which to be fair is a vast improvement for them, I'm genuinely excited to see what happens in Q4 next year but I'm also hesitant too as 12 months is a long time to wait and Intel are ever moving forward still... just hope they can redeem themselves and upset the apple cart so to speak.

What AMD need to do:
True Cores NOT modules,
Improve IPC,
Low TDP,
Competitive Pricing,
Bring balance to the force :lol:

 

[WYP]

Given that what I've heard is that Zen is aiming to compete with Haswell and they claim it will have a 40% IPC improvement over current FX chips which to be fair is a vast improvement for them, I'm genuinely excited to see what happens in Q4 next year but I'm also hesitant too as 12 months is a long time to wait and Intel are ever moving forward still... just hope they can redeem themselves and upset the apple cart so to speak.

What AMD need to do:
True Cores NOT modules,
Improve IPC,
Low TDP,
Competitive Pricing,
Bring balance to the force :lol:

Wait, if AMD is the red team and Intel is the Blue team........

Is AMD the dark side?

 

[AlienALX]

I don't see late Intel owners switching to Zen.
Pretty much only AMD FX owners would if the price to performance is right.
I'd buy a Zen if it's 300$ cheaper (Board+CPU) with no more than 10% performance difference from a Skylake (Board+CPU).
APU's where never meant for high end gaming IMO.
2016 should be an interesting year for both on CPU's and GPU's.

You would be amazed how many people are still using X58 or P2 rigs dude. It's actually quite startling how many people have switched their 920/30/50 to a 6 core Xeon on OCUK.

The problem is that whilst Intel's newer CPUs are now quite a fair chunk faster than the old I7s the old I7s the older CPUs can still put up a very good display of themselves in gaming. So the way they are looking at it is "Why should I bother, if the rig does what I want it to do?".

The same, however, is not true of graphics cards. Pretty much every year we are given a new engine or a new game and immediately the "old" cards begin to show their age. As thus many people upgrade their GPU yearly, rather than waiting for five years. A five year old GPU serves as nothing but a mere paperweight if you want to game.

And that's why no matter how much Intel steam ahead on their new CPU tractor many just CBA to get on it. Intel basically did the Tortoise and the Hare, only they rewrote it to where the Hare won. They got into a big old race with themselves and continued to churn out faster and faster CPUs that no one really needed.

Seriously? I bet the majority of people out there in the consumer market are still running I5 2500k. And the reason? there's nothing worth bothering to upgrade to.

AMD can only really change that if Zen is fast and cheap. Not one or the other. If it is Haswell E fast for say, 6700k or less money? then I can see a lot of people jumping on.

 

[Wraith]

I'd be inclined to agree but looking at the Steam Survey of GPU usage it gives a good idea of what people are using, I'm not seeing the yearly GPU upgrade bug though, plenty of older cards in the top ten which gets even more interesting when you look at the DX10 table.

 

[Zoot]

If they can stay in business that long.

My thoughts exactly.

Although, it means that AMD has quite a degree of confidence in the Zen core if that's the case. So that can only be positive really.