More good news for AMD (CPU side anyway) and it's looking good for 2018 as well. Long may it continue 🙂

As long as AMD keeps raking in cash from these large corporations, all that money will [hopefully] go toward improving designs that will trickle down to consumers, and helps encourage competition. The rumors around Ryzen 2 look very appealing, so I like where everything is heading. But let's not get too excited too soon - AMD may finally be in the black but Intel historically never allowed AMD to get too far, and Nvidia's Volta spells bad news for RTG.

schmidtbag:

As long as AMD keeps raking in cash from these large corporations, all that money will [hopefully] go toward improving designs that will trickle down to consumers, and helps encourage competition. The rumors around Ryzen 2 look very appealing, so I like where everything is heading. But let's not get too excited too soon - AMD may finally be in the black but Intel historically never allowed AMD to get too far, and Nvidia's Volta spells bad news for RTG.

The great thing about it, AMD is providing as much value to the large corps as they are to consumers with this generation of CPU. The PCI lanes and memory density are also more important than top frequency. They hit a home run here. The interesting deal is the Azure adoption. If you think Microsoft isn't going to optimize Windows Server and Hyper-V for the platform now that they've adopted it, think again. This optimization for the Zen architecture(s) will be huge. AMD never had the GPU high-end, and Volta, for now, is not a factor due to price. AMD won't gain any ground, but they won't be hurt either. Also, don't give up on Vega yet. I have one and it's performing great. With Xbox One X out, DX12 and other engines are bound to eventually optimize for AMD. Right now they're really undervalued going into 2018 based on the partnerships and product line they've announced. Haven't figured that out yet, but it's a good time to buy-in.

MorganX:

The great thing about it, AMD is providing as much value to the large corps as they are to consumers with this generation of CPU. The PCI lanes and memory density are also more important than top frequency. They hit a home run here. The interesting deal is the Azure adoption. If you think Microsoft isn't going to optimize Windows Server and Hyper-V for the platform now that they've adopted it, think again. This optimization for the Zen architecture(s) will be huge.

I completely agree. Right now, the greatest weakness of Zen comes down to the scheduler, where any time there is cross-communication between the CCXs occur, there is a lot of wasted time. For the most part that seems to have been addressed, but I feel there is still room for improvement. These server implementations ought to help with that.

AMD never had the GPU high-end, and Volta, for now, is not a factor due to price. AMD won't gain any ground, but they won't be hurt either. Also, don't give up on Vega yet. I have one and it's performing great. With Xbox One X out, DX12 and other engines are bound to eventually optimize for AMD.

AMD has been in the high-end market plenty of times. They almost never had the best GPU available, but they had products that appealed to enthusiasts. The HD 5000 and 6000 series were good examples of this. But ever since the R# 300 series, their high-end hardware just wasn't quite good enough, not for the power draw and heat anyway. I'd argue their reference coolers hurt their reputation the most. So far, the only Volta product we know about is the Titan V, which doesn't really tell us much about consumer-grade products and their prices. Titans have always been obscenely expensive. AMD hasn't had a noteworthy GPU since the Fury(X), which had a rough launch. However, the Furies have aged fantastically (especially in Linux), and I suspect Vega will too. Vega is a lot like ARM CPUs: a great architecture, but only for low-power or server workloads They don't seem to scale up very well. But the Vega-based APUs seem very promising. I agree that XB1X ought to help with performance for PC gaming with AMD, though. On the other hand, XB1 and PS4 never did much to help the Bulldozer architecture. I sincerely hope AMD/RTG pulls something great for the RX 600 series, but considering their progress vs what we know about Volta, I think Nvidia will once again dominate the high-end market.

x1950xtx

Jagman:

More good news for AMD (CPU side anyway) and it's looking good for 2018 as well. Long may it continue 🙂

What I love is that this stuff is actually happening, not just some possibility like it was back in 2012 and on. (I remember seeing a ton of stuff from AMD as concepts but nothing that you could ever actually purchase.)

Clawedge:

x1950xtx

9800 pro 256 also. Even the x800 GTO except its lack of SM3.0. But seriously, why do people act like the 7970 wasnt a top of the line GPU. The 7950 and 7970 put Nvidia in their place, and while the 290x had a terrible stock cooler, it put nvidia in their place again, even if it wasnt the top of the line gpu. But it gave us titan performance for half the damn price. I just think people are blinded by fanboyism.

schmidtbag:

I agree that XB1X ought to help with performance for PC gaming with AMD, though. On the other hand, XB1 and PS4 never did much to help the Bulldozer architecture.

I'm not sure i understand what you are saying. Xbox one and Xbox one x both use Jaguar (bulldozer ultimately) CPUs, though supposedly the Jaguar for Xbox one x is "customized". Being the fact that, like you said, that didn't help much with bulldozer, how would that help AMD now? With ryzen, for that matter?

The GPU parts in the Xbox one and PS4. They are based on AMDs previous high end config. Which is very similar to the current high end GPU design from AMD. People also forget that VEGA is essentially IT for both GPGPU computing and gaming. That means it hosts alot of silicon dedicated to GPGPU. The likes of the GTX 1080 cuts out alot of silicon dedicated to GPGPU performance which can either make a simpler chip that runs cooler and or faster. Or they can add back features that increase gaming petformance. VEGA is a compromise between gaming and GPGPU. Nvidia has the benefit that it doesnt have to float the CPU business as well. But AMD get feature synergy for laptop cpus. (Good internal GPU ).

Dwwolf i would actually prefer it if the GPGPU circuitry was remived from AMD gpus if it made them cheaper and faster for gaming, as gaming is where the gpu should be focused on anyway. amd can keep those GPGPU features for pro/workstation cards where it matters.

Aura89:

Xbox one and Xbox one x both use Jaguar (bulldozer ultimately) CPUs, though supposedly the Jaguar for Xbox one x is "customized". Being the fact that, like you said, that didn't help much with bulldozer, how would that help AMD now? With ryzen, for that matter?

To my knowledge, the only thing that was especially customized with the Jaguar cores was each core worked entirely independently, whereas in BD, pairs of cores shared the same fetch and decode. Otherwise, I don't think any instruction sets were taken away, I don't think the pipelines were increased, and the IPC was likely roughly the same. All that being said, you would think that any micro-optimizations made to the games would carry on to PCs built around BD, but it didn't seem to. I'm not suggesting XB1X will have any influence on Ryzen whatsover; what I and MorganX were referring to was the GPU. I just brought up the CPU from XB1 and PS4 as an example to show why PCs with AMD GPUs might not get optimizations from consoles.

schmidtbag:

I'm not suggesting XB1X will have any influence on Ryzen whatsover; what I and MorganX were referring to was the GPU. I just brought up the CPU from XB1 and PS4 as an example to show why PCs with AMD GPUs might not get optimizations from consoles.

Ah, i thought you were referring to the CPU, hence my confusion lol