AMD ZEN Engineering Sample Shows Promising Perf

#5319885

SSD_PRO

2016-08-11 23:27

These slow clocked ES CPU's that are just that, engineering samples with a test run on one benchmark on likely an un-optimized platform. It could very well be that the final flagship SKUs clock 4.0~4.4 GHz, until actually released and tested you guys should take this news as the title states, the results look promising. Other then that you cannot draw any conclusions at this time. But let's cross our fingers and hope it's really good. We need a proper competitor against Intel rather sooner then later.

That post ends with my sentiment exactly. We NEED a competitor to Intel - mainstream CPUs are hitting very little performance increase and US$400 price tag. If this engineering sample is a sample, the numbers are a disaster. 2.8-3.4 GHz will get blown up in gaming performance. Cores just aren't great for gaming at low frequencies.

#5319886

omagic

2016-08-11 23:30

What bothers me, is why some people care how many cores it has. If CPU nr1 has 100 cores and is 1% faster than CPU nr2 which has 10 cores, it is fine as long as they are priced the same. Just look at graphics cards. AMD and NV have completely different architectures so number of shader units etc. are completely uncomparable. What realy should matter is performance/money ratio and maybe power consumprion. When I start a game i enjoy the gameplay and I dont care how many cores, shader units or how much vram is there as long as its enough to run the game well.

#5319893

MainFrame Alpha

2016-08-11 23:45

These slow clocked ES CPU's that are just that, engineering samples with a test run on one benchmark on likely an un-optimized platform. It could very well be that the final flagship SKUs clock 4.0~4.4 GHz, until actually released and tested you guys should take this news as the title states, the results look promising. Other then that you cannot draw any conclusions at this time. But let's cross our fingers and hope it's really good. We need a proper competitor against Intel rather sooner then later.

nothing more to add:) it is an engineering sample mostly under clocked...still looks very promising...we just have to wait and see the final product..i really hope it will be on bar with intel when released, the market really could use a product to move things up a bit 🤓

#5319895

Warrax

2016-08-11 23:52

"Good enough" and "does the job" shouldn't be the results of Zen processors. I can't wait for single thread benchmarks (they DO matter, a lot).

#5319900

__hollywood|meo

2016-08-12 00:05

So...if this is true, lets just get some things straight. This engineering sample at 4.0Ghz (if scaled perfectly) would roughly give 82fps, which would then beat the FX-8350 by 95%, clock for clock

stop being logical! lets complain about the low clocks on an engineering sample instead.

#5319906

Alessio1989

2016-08-12 00:24

I want Opteron CPUs for consumer desktop back.

#5319907

Aura89

2016-08-12 00:30

I'm a little underwhelmed. It's great that it may be clocked higher and meet/beat the consumer i7, but I was really hoping for an AMD home-run that just smashed everything Intel. Something like what the Core2Duo line did when it gave Intel the permanent lead. The q6600 was a fantastic chip. I guess this will do. It just feels like one of those Intel micro-steps we've gotten accustomed to the past 5 years since Sandy.

How can you be underwhelmed when AMD never said it would? the idea that it would be 40% better than their previous CPU itself made it clear it wouldn't be As well i don't understand your last statement, as that would imply that this CPU is a micro-step above previous generation AMD processors, so...when did near 100% faster (according to this "leak") become a micro-step?

I want Opteron CPUs for consumer desktop back.

There currently are, and by that i mean there are AM3+ opterons, there there will probably be AM4 opterons

#5319914

ScoobyDooby

2016-08-12 00:49

I want to see single thread numbers.

feckin THIS

#5319915

chumanga1

2016-08-12 00:52

Before seeing i expected it was 4 cores ZEN version but seeing 8 cores version someway dissapoint me. Ashes of Singularity is an unique Multi-threading game out there. It's the only game with Advanced Multi-threading Optimization which create game threads based in CPU thread count. So with 4 threads CPU the game launches 4 threads while with 8 thread CPU it launch 8 threads, and probably with 16 threads CPU it launch 16 threads. So now we know ZEN 8c/16t is better than i5 4c/4t at heavy multi-threading, but how it will perform in heavy single-threaded like ARMA 3 and others craps like this? Btw it loose to 4c/8t in a game which can use 16 threads, i expect the cause of this was lower clocks.

#5319919

Aura89

2016-08-12 01:10

Btw it loose to 4c/8t in a game which can use 16 threads, i expect the cause of this was lower clocks.

Lower clocks and as well as the game doesn't utilize the CPU very well (not non-existent, just not as well as one would expect) above 4c/8t, once it gets to 6 cores, and/or 6 cores and 12 threads, the benefit starts to slope

#5319926

PrMinisterGR

2016-08-12 01:25

Considering the engineering sample nature of the thing, the non-finalized clocks and the immature platform, these are actually very good results. It would be MUCH more interesting to see it against similarly clocked 8-core Intel CPUs. I know it might sound unbelievable, but I have a feeling that it would compete very nicely on perf/watt with them.

#5319934

GhostXL

2016-08-12 01:40

stop being logical! lets complain about the low clocks on an engineering sample instead.

4ghz does not mean anything if the architecture is there to back it up. 4ghz could outperform even 6ghz if done right.

#5319937

PrMinisterGR

2016-08-12 01:57

4ghz does not mean anything if the architecture is there to back it up. 4ghz could outperform even 6ghz if done right.

The power envelopes mean a lot though.

#5319940

Humanoid_1

2016-08-12 02:26

In most games that are CPU bound, they scale fps fairly linearly with frequency. Knock this up to 4GHz and it might give about 72.5fps - a pretty respectable 10.9% step up from the i7-4790 at 4GHz A 72.6% increase over 8350 is Far more than I was expecting 🙂 If it clocks much over this and is cheaper than an i7, AMD are going to sell a lot of them.

#5319941

sykozis

2016-08-12 02:28

Considering the engineering sample nature of the thing, the non-finalized clocks and the immature platform, these are actually very good results. It would be MUCH more interesting to see it against similarly clocked 8-core Intel CPUs. I know it might sound unbelievable, but I have a feeling that it would compete very nicely on perf/watt with them.

Thank you for being the voice of reason in this thread. I was getting frustrated reading other posts. I felt the "leaked benchmarks" were quite promising considering that it's an engineering sample and not a retail model. Means there's room for improvement still before launch. I'd like to see this clocked at around 3.4 - 3.6ghz with a boost clock around 3.8 - 4ghz. Obviously, being an 8c/16t engineering sample, it should be able to outperform an i7 in heavily multi-threaded tasks, but for a gaming benchmark, I think it's performance is quite respectable for an engineering sample. I'm still not getting my hopes up though. There's still plenty of time for something to go wrong...or really right. I'm quite interested in Zen myself, so I'm hoping everything goes right.

#5319942

Aura89

2016-08-12 02:30

4ghz does not mean anything if the architecture is there to back it up. 4ghz could outperform even 6ghz if done right.

what does that have to do with anything about what was posted? Unless you thought he was being serious...?

#5319945

cowie

2016-08-12 02:43

Am I missing something? What is AMD's business plan for the Zen? It's like creating a car manufacturer and making cars that are already out. Why would I get rid of my car I already own, for theirs if it's the same? If you made a new fast and sexy car that was a little cheaper than mine then yes I would come to buy. Just saying.

because the hardware it was made to go up against was maybe 47xx at the time. its not the first benchmark I would like to see but hopefully they can take a bite of the market

#5319946

sykozis

2016-08-12 02:46

what does that have to do with anything about what was posted? Unless you thought he was being serious...?

It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the post he was quoting, but Ghost does make a good point. AMD proved with the Athlon that clock frequency isn't everything. You can skimp on frequency if the architecture can support high enough IPC to compensate. AMD's Athlon had an IPC of 9....whereas Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium D had an IPC of 4-6. That's how AMD managed better performance at a lower clock speed. Intel corrected their IPC deficiency with Conroe though and AMD hasn't been able to recover since.

#5319947

__hollywood|meo

2016-08-12 02:46

hehe yes tongue firmly in cheek during my last comment. it was directed to the unimpressed - if the clock speed scales highly enough, zen could be very interesting indeed.

#5319954

sykozis

2016-08-12 03:10

hehe yes tongue firmly in cheek during my last comment. it was directed to the unimpressed - if the clock speed scales highly enough, zen could be very interesting indeed.

My thoughts as well. Of course, we have no idea what kind of improvements can still be made before the architecture is "finalized" for production. We also don't know how old (or new) this particular engineering sample is. We just have to wait until it gets released to reviewers to find out how Zen will really perform. I have a good feeling about Zen, unlike Bulldozer, but there's still too much time until release.