AMD 2016 Zen CPU Speculations

[Helios]

*speculation thread*

[mbc07]

(10-16-2015, 08:23 AM)IceStrike256 Wrote: Nah skylake is only about ~4% faster than haswell not much of an improvement.

No surprises here, Skylake focused on other things, like the new L4 cache and IGP and support for newer tech (like DDR4 RAM)...

[Nintonito]

(10-16-2015, 11:02 AM)helios747 Wrote: *speculation thread*

My info is directly from an AMD presentation on Zen,  where the 40% IPC raise was eagerly noted.  Not speculation.

[Shonumi]

While it is a fact that AMD has claimed a 40% increase in IPC, until anyone (especially other than AMD) puts it to the test, all we can do is guess on future possibilities. It doesn't matter what anyone says; the hardware itself will have the final word, and that's just not available to us, hence everything is still theoretical at this point. Let's not forget what AMD has promised before in terms of performance...

[AnyOldName3]

The 40% better not be the same kind of 40% they said they'd have with Bulldozer.

[sulblazer]

I must reiterate that this is just a speculation post. Shonumi is correct. There is no way to make an informed guess about the potential performance of the Zen chip. Having said that, I do think it's safe to say that the Zen will most likely outperform the current 'dozer' line that include the FX and FM1-socket chips. In the past, AMD did claim they would have the upper hand in the desktop market because they made a judgment call on future software development and created a microarchitecture to suit it. They thought that software would be faster on their chips when processed in parallel with numerous core. Bad call on their end. Since then, the AM3 and AM3+ sockets have seen little love from AMD after getting smashed by Intel's Sandy Bridges in most benches. I hope AMD has learned from their, arguably, bad call. Everything I've read about the new Zen chips suggests that they have. Tentative bottom line is that the Zen's should see a nice improvement over the FX and APU lines for Dolphin emulation. How they'll pair up with Intel Skylake is anyone's guess? If anything, I hope AMD will keep cost low and put some heat on Intel to lower some prices. Intel prices haven't budged very much in the last 2 years (an i5 4670k is still $220 - $240). A claim of 40% IPC is really good...if they can deliver on it. AMD powering a heavy-duty gaming PC may be reality once again (I miss the Phenom days)!

The potential of the Zen has, at least, convinced me to put off upgrading to an i7 until I see some benches next year. Still rocking that stock FX8350...which actually runs most games pretty well with little stuttering. Furthermore, we may get a glimpse into the Zen performance when benchmarks of the server chips are introduced to businesses in early 2016. Here's me keeping my <fingers crossed> fore a good chip!

[kirbypuff]

(10-18-2015, 10:21 PM)sulblazer Wrote: I hope AMD will keep cost low and put some heat on Intel to lower the prices of their CPUs. Core iX prices haven't budged very much in the last 2 years.

A 40% improvement in IPC is really good...if they can deliver on it.
AMD CPU powering a gaming PC may be reality once again (I miss the Phenom II days!)

Still rocking that stock FX8350, which actually runs most games pretty well with little stuttering.
Furthermore, we may get a glimpse into the Zen performance when benchmarks are introduced in early 2016.

But how does that FX perform in Dolphin (using the latest dev. build)?

I see you have a decent AM3+ mainboard and some high-speed RAM. If you care about Dolphin performance, maybe you could try this just for fun:
Remove that FX CPU and replace it with a *dirt-cheap* Athlon II X2 280 or 270 (dual-core with 1MB L2 cache per core) and then overclock it to ~4.2 GHz (while still set to run at stock voltage!).

The Phenom II has higher IPC than any FX (Bulldozer/Piledriver), but it runs hot as ****, is hard to overclock without running into stability issues or losing the power-saving functionality and is far from being power-efficient.
But the Athlon II, when paired with high-speed (1866MHz+), low-latency RAM and overclocked to 4.1+ GHz has *the same IPC* as a Phenom II (with DDR3 RAM). Still better than any current FX CPU.
The increased memory speeds, doubled L2 cache and lower latency makes up for the loss of the L3 cache.
Even when heavily overclocked, it runs so cool and sucks so little power, it's unbelievable. And as a special bonus, you keep all the power-saving features.

I think you might get better performance in Dolphin by "downgrading" to the cheapest AMD CPU available today It's like AMD's version of the Pentium G Anniversary Edition.

[kirbypuff]

Another thing you might want to do to improve the performance in Dolphin is change your GPU.

I recommend getting a *last-generation* AMD GPU with the TeraScale2 architecture (HD5000 or HD6000 Series).

The latest AMD GPUs with a GCN architecture (HD7000,HD8000,Rx and Fury Series) are still horribly unoptimized (the drivers have unusually high CPU overhead).

But last-gen GPUs are so optimized they perform even better than NVIDIA's GPUs, especially when using the Direct3D backend (e.g. 2100fps [HD6000 Series] vs. 1100fps [R9 Series] in text/logo screens at native res. That's a ~2x difference in driver overhead.)

Another advantage of getting an older generation AMD GPU is that it doesn't have any of those "smart" power-saving features which introduce a lot of performance-related / stuttering problems.
What's even funnier about these older cards is they end up being even more power-efficient than the current ones, despite lacking the smart power-saving "gimmicks" because they run the VRAM at 100 MHz when idle instead of 300 MHz.

FYI, Current NVIDIA GPUs have a VLIW5 architecture, just like last-gen (TeraScale2) AMD GPUs, which is extremely efficient.

[Anti-Ultimate]

(10-19-2015, 12:09 AM)kirbypuff Wrote: Another thing you might want to do to improve the performance in Dolphin is change your GPU.

I recommend getting a *last-generation* AMD GPU with the TeraScale2 architecture (HD5000 or HD6000 Series).

The latest AMD GPUs with a GCN architecture (HD7000,HD8000,Rx and Fury Series) are still horribly unoptimized (the drivers have unusually high CPU overhead).

But last-gen GPUs are so optimized they perform even better than NVIDIA's GPUs, especially when using the Direct3D backend (e.g. 2100fps [HD6000 Series] vs. 1100fps [R9 Series] in text/logo screens at native res. That's a ~2x difference in driver overhead.)

Another advantage of getting an older generation AMD GPU is that it doesn't have any of those "smart" power-saving features which introduce a lot of performance-related / stuttering problems.
What's even funnier about these older cards is they end up being even more power-efficient than the current ones, despite lacking the smart power-saving "gimmicks" because they run the VRAM at 100 MHz when idle instead of 300 MHz.

FYI, Current NVIDIA GPUs have a VLIW5 architecture, just like last-gen (TeraScale2) AMD GPUs, which is extremely efficient.

This is so wrong, I'm not even gonna bother to explain the issue because you just triggered NaturalViolence.

[piccolo289]

Kirbypuff i'd start running because NaturalViolence will have your head. He will make you feel less human by just one post.