New AMD Engineering Sample Zen Processors get higher Clocks
AMDs upcoming ZEN series processors are absolutely dominating the processor news-front this year. The hype is real. New information surfaced about updated engineering sample. The processor that is supposed to run IPC perf as fast as Intels Broadwell-E shows higher clocks.
User AMD Polaris reported that new information new SKUs that have just hit the post-boxes of the mainboard manufacturers. Both processors spotted are A0 revisions and Engineering Samples.
The first one is an 8-core design with AMD's HT implementation and it's got a 3150 MHz base clock, it's all-core turbo is 3300 MHz and the max turbo for 1 core is 3600 Mhz. Yes, here are some improvements regarding the previous 8-core SKU under the same TDP envelope.
The second SKU is a 4-core one with AMD's HT. It's got a 65W TDP and the base clock is still 2900 MHz. All-core turbo is 3100 MHz, max turbo is 3400 MHz. I don't know if it's only an SKU for testing mainboards or something is not okay with the clock-wattage correlation. I mean on higher clocks the 4-core SKU steps into the 95W TDP envelope, AMD can't keep the wattage low. Maybe GloFo's 14nm process needs some maturing.
Retail AM4 mainboards are under production. The whole platform will be ready to have a paper-launch at the end of the year with a real availability in February of 2017. Performance wise the Zen uarch will be around Haswell and Broadwell (except for FMA), it seems it won't catch Skylake clock for clock. It's not a big deal, but if the clocks can't go higher until the start it won't fulfill the expectations.
And we all know that expectations in this case are very high.
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I wouldn't really say so since all core boost is just 3,1 GHz. If anything this seems to confirm the clock problems which is likely caused by the 14nm process.
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The clock really does not matter to me as long as they perform as advertised (+40% IPC) and is good priced (I will not waste +600EUR for a CPU) in comparison with Intel or let's say €/"Perfromace Index" beeing better or equal with Intel. I actually expect this CPU at a 300-400 EUR range with 80...90% of the Skylake performance.
I still own an old 8350 and still kick strong in all last games and day by day usage, in principle I can skip this upgrade but I just feel that I need something new (love the smell of new and fresh hardware in my rig :nerd

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Polaris is also clocking considerably less than Pascal, so it's indeed quite possible architectural decisions aren't the only explanation and GlobalFoundries simply can't get it up at the moment. Although that being said, nothing explains why TSMC would have it working better since they are no more experienced with the smaller tech than GloFo, as opposed to the old man Intel.
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Looks like Zen will be a fine CPU for everything....except for what I need, Emulation.
More than 4 cores is irrelevant in the world of emulation and if Zen tops out at 3.6Ghz then that will still make them alot slower than Haswell,Skylake and Kaby Lake, all of which will easily reach 4.5Ghz.
When IPC is roughly equal, which seems to be the case with Zen vs Intel, clockspeed will be king.
Maybe later revisions will break the 4Ghz barrier, but right now for Emulation, Intel will still be the CPU of choice.
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COOOL, AMD bring it ON NOW. I want this CPU a.s.a.p.!