AMD Steamroller on track for 2013 launch

deltatux

2013-04-01 23:11

I didn't even think of that. But what I fear is that the most likely case of often using AVX in the near future will be when the CPU is stressed to the maximum... on two cores; emulators. I'm currently limited by dual threaded performance in emulators and I'd be afraid of using an AMD CPU for the same reason. When that scenario does roll around, one module's FPU is used entirely for AVX, it's not going to move onto a core from the next module to make use of another FPU, it's going to use both cores off of 1 module and become bottlenecked.

When that happens, AMD could in theory just widen their FMACs to 2 256-bit FMACs, no? Probably AMD saw no need for 2 256-bit FMACs since there are barely any AVX applications. Right now with Intel's current CPU offerings, they do the exact opposite, the FPU is 256-bit wide and can logically split into 2 128-bit FMACs which can be locked to two SMT "cores" when HyperThreading is on. deltatux

#4567894

Norvekh

2013-04-02 00:17

I look forward to the day when I purchase another AMD-based system. Their graphics cards have dramatically improved on the software front in the past few years and they're making real strides there. And, their CPUs are looking quite good. If I had the money I'd run Bulldozer in addition to my Sandy Bridge just because I like toying with new things. So long as they keep improving both single and multi-threaded performance they'll do well.

#4567908

H83

2013-04-02 00:31

Single threaded and Power Consumption. I know plenty of you guys think that power consumption is overrated, but that alone is what gets you in or out of the laptops, you know... that thing that gets you lots of money

I agree with this. AMD cpus really need to fix their single treaded performance and power consumption and then they will have very competitive cpus against Intel. Although we can´t forget that right know Intel it´s not even trying to improve dramatically thei cpu performance because if they wanted they could simply add two or more cores and increase their clockspeed and destroy AMD all over again... But not everything is lost for AMD and and their HSA project seems to be taking off finally: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge_11.html#sect0 Lets hope AMD can still put off a decent fight against Intel!

#4567926

alanm

2013-04-02 00:52

The thing with AMDs performance is that they are just too inconsistent. I can see shrewd buyers picking them solely for the areas they do well and not care much about other areas. In gaming they can go from very well (Crysis 3) to abysmal. If its one thing to appreciate about Intel is the solid and assured consistency you get at least. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/57446-fx-8350-cpu-review-amds-vishera-arrives-17.html http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8350_6.html#sect0

#4567935

Pill Monster

2013-04-02 01:03

I imagine things will look better in another year when there will be more games out that take advantage of all cores.

#4567943

DSparil

2013-04-02 01:14

I imagine things will look better in another year when there will be more games out that take advantage of all cores.

Exactly. This is the direction the industry is headed, and soon enough single Multi-threaded apps will rule the galaxy. It seems AMD may have been a little early to the game with this architecture, but I only expect their performance to increase more and more over time.

#4567954

Taint3dBulge

2013-04-02 01:18

@Neo- why are you so mad at AMD?

http://cdn.overclock.net/0/07/0748c4b6_battlefield203201920_zpsd6e30a07.png Id be mad too if i spent so much money on an intel that performs the same as amd. lol 🤓 I dont use My system for anything other then typicle gaming and normal every day use, and I jump on my buddies computer and play around sometimes and i cannot see any diffrence when playing the same game and or just playing around ont he computer.. They feel the same even though his I7 should be way faster and he spend 1000 bucks more then i did i see no diffrence in every day tasks. Now decoding and doing benches i know you would see the I7 being faster.. But really what it comes down to is does the pc peform the way you want. Me yes way more then what I thought.. I herd from eveyone that amd is ****, untill I really started reading up on the 8350.. If it wasnt for the 8350club thread that pill started id prolly still be waiting for haswell.. Now im waiting for steamroller..

#4567958

---TK---

2013-04-02 01:22

^^you are linking a gpu heavy title there, MP BF3 is more cpu bound

#4567960

IcE

2013-04-02 01:24

Exactly. This is the direction the industry is headed, and soon enough single Multi-threaded apps will rule the galaxy. It seems AMD may have been a little early to the game with this architecture, but I only expect their performance to increase more and more over time.

The thing you guys aren't realizing is that the 8350 is already performing as well as it ever will. You will *never* see the kind of performance advantage that it has in a few specific, truly parallel multithreaded apps in games. It just isn't going to happen. Games are not built to benefit from the high level of integer performance. Best case scenario is that it matches the i5 line in upcoming games. This doesn't make it bad, but stop touting it like it's a performance investment, that's somehow going to get faster over time when it's not.

http://cdn.overclock.net/0/07/0748c4b6_battlefield203201920_zpsd6e30a07.png Id be mad too if i spent so much money on an intel that performs the same as amd. lol 🤓 I dont use My system for anything other then typicle gaming and normal every day use, and I jump on my buddies computer and play around sometimes and i cannot see any diffrence when playing the same game and or just playing around ont he computer.. They feel the same even though his I7 should be way faster and he spend 1000 bucks more then i did i see no diffrence in every day tasks. Now decoding and doing benches i know you would see the I7 being faster.. But really what it comes down to is does the pc peform the way you want. Me yes way more then what I thought.. I herd from eveyone that amd is ****, untill I really started reading up on the 8350.. If it wasnt for the 8350club thread that pill started id prolly still be waiting for haswell.. Now im waiting for steamroller..

Nice cherry picked benchmark showing BF3 single player performance. Really great work there. I get what you're saying, but this doesn't excuse the flaws that the processor line is suffering from. "It's good enough" isn't a legitimate argument.

#4567964

Pill Monster

2013-04-02 01:27

Exactly. This is the direction the industry is headed, and soon enough single Multi-threaded apps will rule the galaxy. It seems AMD may have been a little early to the game with this architecture, but I only expect their performance to increase more and more over time.

Yeah AMD are a little ahead of time but the flipside of this should be a long useful lifetime for the FX.

#4568038

mohiuddin

2013-04-02 05:15

http://cdn.overclock.net/0/07/0748c4b6_battlefield203201920_zpsd6e30a07.png Id be mad too if i spent so much money on an intel

this bench is just wrong. Gpu bottlenecked cpu performance.

#4568047

Neo Cyrus

2013-04-02 05:38

When that happens, AMD could in theory just widen their FMACs to 2 256-bit FMACs, no? Probably AMD saw no need for 2 256-bit FMACs since there are barely any AVX applications. Right now with Intel's current CPU offerings, they do the exact opposite, the FPU is 256-bit wide and can logically split into 2 128-bit FMACs which can be locked to two SMT "cores" when HyperThreading is on. deltatux

When that happens it'll already be too late and the damage is done. By the time AMD makes a move on anything it'll be at least 2 years. And Hyper Threading appears properly adaptive, it uses the main threads first, no recordable performance loss. Not to say that there isn't or can't be, but I've had no frame drops, it would use threads 0, 2, 4, 6.

I imagine things will look better in another year when there will be more games out that take advantage of all cores.

I will bet you a bottle of your favourite whatever that it won't happen in a year. AMD's 8 threads aren't going to effective in games for a while. Which ones properly utilize 8 now?

#4568052

deltatux

2013-04-02 05:46

When that happens it'll already be too late and the damage is done. By the time AMD makes a move on anything it'll be at least 2 years. And Hyper Threading appears properly adaptive, it uses the main threads first, no recordable performance loss.

Seeing how AVX is likely going to be used in server space and the media industry before it'll trickle down to mainstream consumers, I'm sure AMD will have enough wiggle room to predict when 256-bit AVX would be popular enough to dedicate silicon to it. As for HyperThreading (SMT) vs. CMT scheduling, that's entirely a Windows fault there. Linux properly schedules threads on Bulldozer properly by loading each module first before using the second core per module. Initially even Linux was having problems but that was quickly resolved in a few short months. I heard that Windows 8's kernel has resolved that issue but no confirmation there but I know for sure Linux has that resolved already (new releases of the Linux kernel comes out every few months, so I'd be surprised if that wasn't solved quickly). deltatux

#4568054

IcE

2013-04-02 05:56

Seeing how AVX is likely going to be used in server space and the media industry before it'll trickle down to mainstream consumers, I'm sure AMD will have enough wiggle room to predict when 256-bit AVX would be popular enough to dedicate silicon to it. As for HyperThreading (SMT) vs. CMT scheduling, that's entirely a Windows fault there. Linux properly schedules threads on Bulldozer properly by loading each module first before using the second core per module. Initially even Linux was having problems but that was quickly resolved in a few short months. I heard that Windows 8's kernel has resolved that issue but no confirmation there but I know for sure Linux has that resolved already (new releases of the Linux kernel comes out every few months, so I'd be surprised if that wasn't solved quickly). deltatux

Proper scheduling even on Windows 8 has shown to offer maybe 1% performance improvement. It's nothing to write home about.

#4568056

Pill Monster

2013-04-02 06:00

When that happens it'll already be too late and the damage is done. By the time AMD makes a move on anything it'll be at least 2 years. And Hyper Threading appears properly adaptive, it uses the main threads first, no recordable performance loss. Not to say that there isn't or can't be, but I've had no frame drops, it would use threads 0, 2, 4, 6. I will bet you a bottle of your favourite whatever that it won't happen in a year. AMD's 8 threads aren't going to effective in games for a while. Which ones properly utilize 8 now?

BF3 and Crysis3 are the only 2 I know of off the top of my head....no doubt BF4 will also. This might cheer you up; as u prob know consoles will use AMD Jaguar 8 core APU's which means future games will be developed to take advantage of multicores and parallel processing.... The follow on from this is when the consoles are ported over to PC they will be optimized for AMD FX architecture, not Intel's as it is now.... So essentially the software developers and AMD will be meeting halfway. 🙂 Nvidia may be sneering but AMD scored a major coup with the console deal, it's gonna affect the way games are developed.

#4568070

Chillin

2013-04-02 06:56

http://cdn.overclock.net/0/07/0748c4b6_battlefield203201920_zpsd6e30a07.png Id be mad too if i spent so much money on an intel that performs the same as amd. lol 🤓 I dont use My system for anything other then typicle gaming and normal every day use, and I jump on my buddies computer and play around sometimes and i cannot see any diffrence when playing the same game and or just playing around ont he computer.. They feel the same even though his I7 should be way faster and he spend 1000 bucks more then i did i see no diffrence in every day tasks. Now decoding and doing benches i know you would see the I7 being faster.. But really what it comes down to is does the pc peform the way you want. Me yes way more then what I thought.. I herd from eveyone that amd is ****, untill I really started reading up on the 8350.. If it wasnt for the 8350club thread that pill started id prolly still be waiting for haswell.. Now im waiting for steamroller..

Awww... get ready to feel the pain: http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-63.jpg http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-67.jpg http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-69.jpg http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-71.jpg http://media.bestofmicro.com/O/M/375430/original/Crysis3-CPU.png http://media.bestofmicro.com/F/E/371210/original/Skyrim.png http://media.bestofmicro.com/F/H/371213/original/StarCraft2.png

#4568071

Pill Monster

2013-04-02 07:04

Awww... get ready to feel the pain:

In what way are those benchmarks painful? They look fine to me....:3eyes:

#4568073

Chillin

2013-04-02 07:07

Single threaded and Power Consumption. I know plenty of you guys think that power consumption is overrated, but that alone is what gets you in or out of the laptops, you know... that thing that gets you lots of money

This, so this. This is what happens when you plan wrongly 6 years in advance for a market that isn't there. The market today isn't about pure performance, it's about performance per watt. AMD can blow past Intel by 50% in performance for all Intel cares, it will still not get them into servers or mobile, the big two money makers. Intel right now is in a race to the bottom for energy consumption, and they must (the Boston Viridis is an ARM cluster server at roughly the same price as the Intel one): http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6757/53557.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6757/53556.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6757/53555.png AMD targeted an expectant market eight years ago when they first started work on Bulldozer that isn't there, and now they are just trying to make it by till they can finish up work on a new architecture. But so far, they are completely being slaughtered in the real money making areas today, Mobile (phones, tablet, ultrabooks, etc) and Servers. I'm not worried for AMD. In the worst case scenario, they will be bought out by some investment firm and re-organized. ARM is Intel's real competition today and Intel is funneling money by the truckload into its R&D labs to get out competitive chips.

#4568074

Chillin

2013-04-02 07:08

In what way are those benchmarks painful? They look fine to me....:3eyes:

I know, just breaks his view that there is no difference.

#4568080

Neo Cyrus

2013-04-02 07:46

Seeing how AVX is likely going to be used in server space and the media industry before it'll trickle down to mainstream consumers, I'm sure AMD will have enough wiggle room to predict when 256-bit AVX would be popular enough to dedicate silicon to it. As for HyperThreading (SMT) vs. CMT scheduling, that's entirely a Windows fault there. Linux properly schedules threads on Bulldozer properly by loading each module first before using the second core per module. Initially even Linux was having problems but that was quickly resolved in a few short months. I heard that Windows 8's kernel has resolved that issue but no confirmation there but I know for sure Linux has that resolved already (new releases of the Linux kernel comes out every few months, so I'd be surprised if that wasn't solved quickly). deltatux

I have about as much faith in AMD to keep up as I do in a politician to not lie. Doesn't Dolphin use AVX already? As mentioned, the Win 8 optimizations didn't seem to do anything more than 1%. In this scenario we're talking about it'd obviously be more though. Even if it had no optimization issues the single threaded performance is just too far behind for me. Their top CPU is $200, compared to $330, yet it still doesn't make sense for me to buy it. It's motherboards are cheaper too aren't they...

This might cheer you up; as u prob know consoles will use AMD Jaguar 8 core APU's which means future games will be developed to take advantage of multicores and parallel processing.... The follow on from this is when the consoles are ported over to PC they will be optimized for AMD FX architecture, not Intel's as it is now....

I completely forgot about that. It would illogical if that's not what happens. Perhaps we will see multithreaded games becoming more mainstream in a year after all, depending on when they release the 720/PS4. It seems they're aiming for Decemeber but I haven't kept up in a while. In that best case scenario I'd still end up buying Intel's overpriced CPUs. I have a plethora of esoteric programs written by monkeys that run on a single thread. Someone invent reverse hyper threading plox.