APU's changing things

[Uranium-235]

I just got done installing windows 7 on a new Lenovo G780 for a customer. Curious about gaming performance I dl'd steam and downloaded HL2. Played mostly through "Water hazard". Textures high, shaders high, shadows off VERY playable. Naitive Resolution (1600x900), V-sync enabled, no AA/AF

Chip: PDC 2020M. 4GB DDR3-1600. Intel HD Graphics APU. No problems. Chip barely got warm.

I know HL2 isn't the latest graphics, but it still damn beautiful.

AMD APU's are better. I got an FM1 Fusion quad core A8 for another customer of mine over a year ago, 8GB and win7, didn't try gaming, but windows gaming score was much higher than the G780

whats next? AMD Fusion 3rd generation. Separate graphics memory bus. That's right, separate memory slot on the motherboard for a 128-bit GDDR5 stick. I'm guessing they'll have to put heat spreaders on that sucker.

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

No, not separate gddr5 stick... cpu and gpu share the same memory block without needing to transfer data and all that.
See HSA: http://developer.amd.com/resources/h...hitecture-hsa/

The first cpu/gpu to have that will be Kaveri : http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...ainboards.html

These would need new socket, FM2+, and will work with ddr3/ddr5

Kabini should come out sooner (a few already popped up, like A4 5000 and A6-5200 : http://www.techspot.com/review/671-amd-a4-5000-kabini/ ) but will only have improved graphics based on the current generation of cards (a reduced model based on current GCN architecture) and probably support for ddr3 2133 Mhz and stuff like that. But this one's htpc, for laptops or for servers to compete against intel atoms (amd kyoto): http://www.extremetech.com/computing...ervers-for-now


The modified Jaguar cores from AMD that will be in xbox one and ps4 run directly with GDDR5. The xbox version also has 32MB edram (a sort of ram that's super fast, a bit slower level 3 cache but faster than gddr5)

Yes, the integrated cards are actually quite excellent at 2d and video playback and as you found out they work great with more cpu heavy games like half-life 2.

The AMD gpus are much more compatible with modern games so you'd be able to run the games even if you have to drop everything to low. In contrast, the Intel cards have issues with some games and those games crash or refuse to run. But in the end, the games that would crash would run at under 10fps anyway, so it's not much of an issue.

[shovenose]

Re: APU's changing things

Yet AMD CPUs still suck. (Well, my FX-8350 is fine, but I'm looking to get an Intel replacement soon if I can sell my AMD CPU/Motherboard/Graphics to my neighbor who wants a new computer).

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

Depends how you look at things.

If you consider the performance / money they don't suck.

In the end it's all about Intel having loads of money to spend in improving their factories... and guess how they made those money in the past.
Now they just relax and charge high prices on the processors until AMD reaches them... look at the Haswell, it's only 5-10% faster than Sandy/Ivy Bridge, basically just a refresh, same old integrated video cards on desktop models, same x86 extensions, some cut down to differentiate between cpu models.

AMD is still behind at 28nm scale while Intel jumped forward at 20ish which explains why Intel cpus use less power and work better at some things.

[Uranium-235]

Re: APU's changing things

not kabini...kaveri

http://wccftech.com/amd-kaveri-apu-f...ry-controller/

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: APU's changing things

Yet AMD CPUs still suck.

Shut up already. I have Intel/ATi atm on both my desktop and laptop, but look at what the red team unveiled today: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases...2013jun11.aspx

5GHz stock, 8-core, multiplier unlocked. Looks like AMD means serious business in the performance segment once again.

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

Unfortunately, that's just hand picked dies that can overclock well over 5 Ghz.. they have a horrible tdp of about 220w and i wouldn't use them without watercooling.

The 8320 i have now runs at 4 Ghz on air cooler, if i overvolt it a bit i guess i could run it at 4.3-4.5 on air cooler.

[cheapie]

Re: APU's changing things

Unfortunately, that's just hand picked dies that can overclock well over 5 Ghz.. they have a horrible tdp of about 220w and i wouldn't use them without watercooling.

Doesn't that hold true for the first generation of anything? It's probably best to release it now for the people that really want it, then work on improving it, instead of falling behind because they're too busy working on it first.

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

It's not the first generation of anything. It's the same Piledriver cores used already in FX-6300, FX-8320, FX-8350.

The architecture makes these cpus very easy to reach high frequencies, just like the Netburst architecture used to let you. It just doesn't mean the processor will be super fast for all tasks - the current AMD architecture just doesn't have the same throughput (uses more cpu cycles to execute some instructions,compared to Intel processors) compared to Intel.
So if an application is single threaded (uses 1-2 cores) the application finishes a job faster on a slower Intel. With properly threaded applications like x264 (video encoding), the piledriver cpus kick Intel in the ass if you compare processor within +/- 100-250$ range of AMD cpus.

Anyway, these two 4.7-5ghz cpus will only be available as oem to system builders - just goes to show again what i said, they'll need some proper cooling to work right without throttling themselves.

[shovenose]

Re: APU's changing things

Their "5GHz CPU" is a joke. (Remember, that's the "max turbo" frequency not the normal frequency)...

I have an AMD FX-8350 so I can speak firsthand of experience. So can mariushm (I think, because has the 8320 if I remember right)...
Let's see, what's wrong with my CPU...
-125W TDP runs hot and noisy (and the new one is almost twice that, RIDICULOUS).
-same old socket that was in use years ago so no advancements in technology or chipsets
-bad to OC on a "budget" motherboard... ASRock 970 Extreme3... the VRM which is only 4 phase is not powerful to OC this power hungry CPU... yet a $30 ECS board I bought for a C2Duo E6600 I had OC'ed that CPU from 2.4 to 2.7GHz at stock voltage no problem. If I go up to 4.3GHz on this my system is extremely unstable
-It's an AMD.

When I am done buying parts for my neighbor's $1.5K computer I'm building him, I will order parts for my new system. (my stupid card can only do $500/day and I've got other things to pay for as well)...
Intel Core i7-4770K - I'm not going to OC at all when I get it (stock cooler) but down the road as games evolve I will)
I have yet to choose a motherbaord even though I think I'm going to get the Asus Z87-K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131983
I think I'll do GTX 670 for the graphics but I'm having a hard time deciding. Oh yeah, by the way my brand new Radeon HD 7850 2GB which should be enough to run GTA IV which is an old game, plays it worse than the GTX 550Ti 2GB it replaced. That's why I'm going nVidia for my new build.

The AMD FX series is just like the Pentium 4 - high #GHz but slow and power hungry and hot. And I'm going to sit a foot away from my computer for 10+ hours a day from here on out so I don't want to hear my computer... Yes, I'm out of school tomorrow, PERMANENTLY!!!!!

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: APU's changing things

I have an AMD FX-8350 so I can speak firsthand of experience. So can mariushm (I think, because has the 8320 if I remember right)...
Let's see, what's wrong with my CPU...
-125W TDP runs hot and noisy (and the new one is almost twice that, RIDICULOUS).
-same old socket that was in use years ago so no advancements in technology or chipsets
-bad to OC on a "budget" motherboard... ASRock 970 Extreme3... the VRM which is only 4 phase is not powerful to OC this power hungry CPU... yet a $30 ECS board I bought for a C2Duo E6600 I had OC'ed that CPU from 2.4 to 2.7GHz at stock voltage no problem. If I go up to 4.3GHz on this my system is extremely unstable

You're comparing apples to oranges here.

[shovenose]

Re: APU's changing things

You're comparing apples to oranges here.

No I am not.
The Intel CPU is only slightly more expensive. It's not even the best chip Intel makes. Even an i5 will wipe the floor with an FX-8350 (AMD's best CPU not counting Opterons, but don't get me started on how pointless Opterons are for normal servers) in most situations. Games and web browsing don't need 8 cores.

Oh and AMD's "8 cores" are a lie. It's really a quad core with a variation of hyperthreading. At least Intel has the heart to tell people buying their products that!

The only reason I don't want AMD to die is because if they did Intel would jack up their prices even more.

[Elysarian]

Re: APU's changing things

AMD won't die any time soon...

Have you noticed what APU is going into the PS4 and XBone?

Nintendo also use AMD GPUs in their consoles...

As for "8 cores is a lie" - not strictly true, they do have 8 integer procesors onboard, they just happen to share resources in pairs - most importantly the FPU - and are weaker than Intels equivalent.

I'm hoping some of the cash AMD make from the new consoles will be channeled into Processor R&D and we might see them challenge the mighty Intel again

Not a fanboy here - I have Intel silicon in my test server (dual Xeons) and AMD in my gaming machine (FX8120, runs even Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite perfectly well).

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

Their "5GHz CPU" is a joke. (Remember, that's the "max turbo" frequency not the normal frequency)...

It's about 4.7 ghz stock on all cores, 5ghz overclocked (default, probably 4 out of 8 cores, but it can be set manually for 2,4,6,8 from amd overdrive)


I have an AMD FX-8350 so I can speak firsthand of experience. So can mariushm (I think, because has the 8320 if I remember right)...

Yes, it's fx-8320 ...3.5 Ghz, 4 ghz turbo, 125w tdp

-125W TDP runs hot and noisy (and the new one is almost twice that, RIDICULOUS).

It doesn't have to run hot and noisy.
If you want to overclock your Intel, you're going to buy third party cooler. Just as the stock intel cooler is lousy, amd stock cooler is also not that great but workable. Don't compare an intel cpu with third party cooler with an amd with stock cooler.

FX-8320 is also 125w, yet the cpu hovers between 2.2ghz and 3.7 ghz at 37c and the fan (noctua realsilence) idles at 1000-ish rpm (click to zoom):




-same old socket that was in use years ago so no advancements in technology or chipsets

On the contrary, new chipset have very fast sata 6 gbps, usb 3 integrated without issues. On the other hand, Intel didn't even have usb 3 in chipsets and basically had to leave only 2 sata 6 gbps out of 4 or 6 enabled in their chipsets due to hardware bugs. Only the recent chipsets have more than 2 native sata 6 gbps ports. They didn't even want to push for usb 3 and dragged their feet because they wanted to push their proprietary thunderbolt so that they would make more money from licensing.

-bad to OC on a "budget" motherboard... ASRock 970 Extreme3... the VRM which is only 4 phase is not powerful to OC this power hungry CPU...

Number of phases has nothing to do with the maximum power it can give to a chip.

yet a $30 ECS board I bought for a C2Duo E6600 I had OC'ed that CPU from 2.4 to 2.7GHz at stock voltage no problem. If I go up to 4.3GHz on this my system is extremely unstable

Don't compare a cpu with 125w tdp with a e6600 that has a tdp of 65w (not to mention the tdp on intel has other meaning compared to AMD processors, the AMD tdp is more honest).
Of course a 30$ ecs board designed for cpus up to 80-100w tdp would allow you to oc a 65w tdp cpu.


If you buy a more expensive intel cpu and plan to OC it, you would get the K version. Hence, you're also going to have to buy a motherboard that would allow you to overclock that cpu, and that one's also going to be expensive. It won't be as cheap as the boards that work with G1610 or G2020 celerons. You pay a premium just to be able to do overclocking on Intel cpu and to unlock features that are artificially cut out on cheaper motherboards.


Intel Core i7-4770K - I'm not going to OC at all when I get it (stock cooler) but down the road as games evolve I will)

Would be noisy as hell and won't oc much,

I have yet to choose a motherbaord even though I think I'm going to get the Asus Z87-K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131983

OK, then do everyone a favor and don't compare a 130$ motherboard with a 85$ asrock extreme 3.
My Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 is 135$ and packs more features than the board you link to, and that's supposed to be a NEW board, not years old board like the Gigabyte...

Oh yeah, by the way my brand new Radeon HD 7850 2GB which should be enough to run GTA IV which is an old game, plays it worse than the GTX 550Ti 2GB it replaced. That's why I'm going nVidia for my new build.


Everyone knows GTAIV is a big pile of unoptimized shit. It has nothing to do with the video card.


Oh and AMD's "8 cores" are a lie. It's really a quad core with a variation of hyperthreading. At least Intel has the heart to tell people buying their products that!

Sigh... it's eight integer cores, 4 floating point cores. 8 integer schedulers, assign tasks to eight integer cores, so you have 8 real processors. 4 floating point shedulers take 4 256 bit floating point commands or 8 128 bit floating point commands and assign them to the 4-8 floating point cores:



Video processing software, games, lots of software works strictly with integer.. x264 is 99.9% integer, and you can see in benchmarks that it kills Intel cpus at video encoding. It's real eight cores.

Intel's hyperthreading is 4 real cores always, and generates 4 virtual cores that process stuff depending on how poorly optimized the software running on them is, leaving various integer processing units available for other threads. Get a highly optimized software like x264 on them and hyperthreading will be almost useless.

[cheapie]

Re: APU's changing things

Even if a given Intel CPU is twice the performance of an "equivalent" AMD, Intel's price gouging makes that almost irrelevant.

Also, are you calling my CPU obsolete? It can't be that old, I just got it 6 years ago!

[shovenose]

Re: APU's changing things

It doesn't have to run hot and noisy.
If you want to overclock your Intel, you're going to buy third party cooler. Just as the stock intel cooler is lousy, amd stock cooler is also not that great but workable. Don't compare an intel cpu with third party cooler with an amd with stock cooler.

I'm not using the stock AMD cooler. It was too high-RPM noisy. I'm using a Cooler Master 212 Evo which is a very well regarded and popular cooler.

Number of phases has nothing to do with the maximum power it can give to a chip.

Gonna have to call BS on that. The lame VRM on my 970Extreme3 is the primary reason it's a cheap board.

If you buy a more expensive intel cpu and plan to OC it, you would get the K version. Hence, you're also going to have to buy a motherboard that would allow you to overclock that cpu, and that one's also going to be expensive. It won't be as cheap as the boards that work with G1610 or G2020 celerons. You pay a premium just to be able to do overclocking on Intel cpu and to unlock features that are artificially cut out on cheaper motherboards.

Yes, the MSI H61M boards I use to build customer's Celeron G540/G1610 systems would not be suitable for an overclocked i7 system. I never said that anywhere.

I'm getting the K edition i7 because it's an extra 100MHz which is cool, and because should I ever decide to OC I could.

Everyone knows GTAIV is a big pile of unoptimized shit. It has nothing to do with the video card.

Yeah well I enjoy playing it. So whether it's shit or not is irrelevant.
I'm simply stating the fact: my old Geforce GTX 550Ti plays it better than my new Radeon HD 7850. And it's a significant difference too!

[shovenose]

Re: APU's changing things

Even if a given Intel CPU is twice the performance of an "equivalent" AMD, Intel's price gouging makes that almost irrelevant.

Also, are you calling my CPU obsolete? It can't be that old, I just got it 6 years ago!

lol, your CPU is obselete. There, I said it

[mariushm]

Re: APU's changing things

I'm not using the stock AMD cooler. It was too high-RPM noisy. I'm using a Cooler Master 212 Evo which is a very well regarded and popular cooler.


Gonna have to call BS on that. The lame VRM on my 970Extreme3 is the primary reason it's a cheap board.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP7

32+3+2 power "phases"

http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/316/z77x-up7.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6786/g...range-overkill

One feature in particular on the Z77X-UP7 is mildly described as ‘overkill’ – the power delivery.

Since Computex 2012, Gigabyte have been getting to grips with International Rectifier’s IR3550 60A PowIRstage, a high efficiency, small footprint power delivery IC designed to supply power and produce less heat while doing it. The IR3550 is not a cheap IC, with IR’s own website quoting $2.65 each when purchased in units of 10k, meaning ‘~$3.20’ each when on a motherboard.
Gigabyte decide to use 32 of them on the Z77X-UP7 (~$100, or 1/4 of the overall price), and are often showcasing up to 2000W of deliverable power through the platform. This is despite an i7-3770K requiring <100W at stock, ~250W at 5 GHz and ~600W on crazy 6.8 GHz liquid nitrogen overclock scores.
Having 32 IR3550s on the board is complete overkill – no extreme enthusiast power user will ever need to come close to half the 2000W of deliverable power. We are reminded the analogy of power supplies and cars – going everywhere at 70 mph in an old Fiat Panda that has 80 mph max speed can be frustrating, but using a 160 mph Porsche to cruise at 70 mph is relatively comfortable. While the analogy is a bit of a stretch on the power delivery, the IR3550s should definitely run cool, even at 5 GHz for a daily build, and is akin to swatting a fly with a Buick for high overclocks, but there is a price in that privilege.

A 4 phase motherboard with 4 of these IR3550s could easily deliver 240-300 watts to a processors, more than enough even for medium to serious overclocking. Just the same, you can have 8-12 power phases with crappy ics that can only do 10-20 amps each.

Now of course the Asrock doesn't have such high end chips, but it can probably still do 150-200 watts, or about 35-40 amps on mosfet/fet/whatever the proper term for these is.
They never claim it's a serious overclocking board, but it can do some overclocking.
More phases is more about dinamically enabling and disabling them for efficiency, heat spreaded over more surface of the board and heatsink and other reasons like more voltage stability when there are sudden spikes of current and other things, and just the number alone doesn't correlate to better overclocking capability.

This video tries to explain it and probably does a good job, and compares that IR3550 with other mosfets including the ones on my Gigabyte board: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fl1iFtOLKU (edit: also see parts 1 and 2 because they're very informative)

I should add that with the latest Haswell processors, the actual vrm is on top of the cpu die, so the vrm on the board is just a plain 12v to 1.4-2.xv (a fixed value within this range) and the vrm on the cpu derives all the voltages from there, so the actual number of phases on Intel varies even less.

[ratdude747]

Re: APU's changing things

It's not the first generation of anything. It's the same Piledriver cores used already in FX-6300, FX-8320, FX-8350.

The architecture makes these cpus very easy to reach high frequencies, just like the Netburst architecture used to let you. It just doesn't mean the processor will be super fast for all tasks - the current AMD architecture just doesn't have the same throughput (uses more cpu cycles to execute some instructions,compared to Intel processors) compared to Intel.
So if an application is single threaded (uses 1-2 cores) the application finishes a job faster on a slower Intel. With properly threaded applications like x264 (video encoding), the piledriver cpus kick Intel in the ass if you compare processor within +/- 100-250$ range of AMD cpus.

Anyway, these two 4.7-5ghz cpus will only be available as oem to system builders - just goes to show again what i said, they'll need some proper cooling to work right without throttling themselves.

Sounds like AMD is the new Intel. Megahertz myth anybody?

Water cooling... 220W makes me think more along the lines of a refrigeration system, with a compressor and expansion valve(s). Using R134a so one could DIY it (albeit needing $250 in tools, vac pump and manifold gauges).

edit- thermaltake has already done it: http://www.dvhardware.net/article30006.html I remember there being an even older case (P4 era) that was also refrigerated come to think of it.

Or perhaps an active immersion fishtank PC...