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> imagine that CPU for probably 50% or less the cost Intel is raking it in right now because AMD doesn't have an equivalent product. If AMD produces a competit

> imagine that CPU for probably 50% or less the cost Intel is raking it in right now because AMD doesn't have an equivalent product. If AMD produces a competitive chip Intel should reduce their prices. So it is possible AMD releases this chip and Intel reduces the price of the 5960X. End result => people still buy Intel.

mtgx 10y ago
Sure, but Intel's chips still won't be the best "value for the money" if Zen is as good as AMD claims it is. Intel will never go toe-to-toe with AMD on pricing, at least not in the long term (1+ years), and unless it's approaching bankruptcy, which I assume isn't the case for now. Intel's chips are the best value for the money right now because AMD totally messed up its last microarchitecture. They bet on something (high parallelization) that didn't pan out. And they suffered greatly for it. Kind of how Sony went with the Cell processor in the PS3 (although Sony did make the best of it in the end). But Zen completely changes that equation. Zen is basically a direct and very close competitor to Intel's current microarchitecture and they should have rather similar performance. However, It doesn't mean AMD's chips will necessarily beat Intel's chips in "peak performance". Because for one, Intel still has a better process technology, and second, AMD still had to compete with a moving target (albeit a very slowly moving target - Skylake is only like 20-25% faster in single-thread performance compared to Sandy Bridge). But I imagine Zen is going to be within 10% or so of Intel's equivalent chips in single-thread performance, but potentially much better at multi-threaded performance if AMD actually sells twice as many Zen cores in its similar priced chips (8-core Zen vs quad-core Core i6, quad-core Zen vs dual-core Core i5, etc). On top of having more cores, AMD may also offer lower pricing points that outweighs the 10% difference in single-thread performance, but that remains to be seen (I probably wouldn't do that if I were them, as double the cores at a similar pricing point should be more than enough value for money).
- qarioz 10y ago
  > Intel will never go toe-to-toe with AMD on pricing, at least not in the long term (1+ years), and unless it's approaching bankruptcy, which I assume isn't the case for now. That's why Intel still keep their own fabs and AMD don't have fab anymore.
  - sunstone 10y ago
    Intel certainly did when AMD had superior parts.
- TheCondor 10y ago
  Anyone know how much memory these parts will be able to address? 128GB would be interesting.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    I think that (given a supported motherboard) being able to access ECC ram is a bigger thing... AMD on ASUS can do ECC at a price point much better than Xeon. Power usage is another issue though.
    - Symmetry 10y ago
      A big reason to consider AMD is that they tend to always just enable pretty much all their features for every chip rather than cherry pick what they enable for each market segment like Intel does.
      - vegabook 10y ago
        yes it's about time, for example, that we had ECC ram capability in consumer-grade CPUs instead of having to pay double/triple for a XEON that doesn't even outperform (much).
        simik 10y ago
        What's the point of ECC RAM in consumer PCs?
        tracker1 10y ago
        Same reasons as ECC on a server, or for that matter, being able to do a lower cost home or small office server. The same rules apply on a desktop too though, just less risk of impact from corrupt data in memory for a consumer PC vs server. That said, most offices are using consumer grade CPUs and hardware too.
        bubuga 10y ago
        > What's the point of ECC RAM in consumer PCs? Some people do very professional stuff with consumer PCs.
- mrb 10y ago
  Intel has the fastest processors but it doesn't have the best value for the money, in the entry level and mid level consumer market (sub-$300 range). Concrete example: I recently built a Linux video transcoding machine to reencode H.264 BluRay movies to smaller H.264 files [1]. A $110 AMD FX-8300 is able to reencode an average BluRay movie around 47-50 fps, while you would need to spend more than twice that amount of money to match this performance with Intel (the performance of the FX-8300 at this tasks falls between a $200 Intel i5-4590 and a $250 Xeon E3-1231 v3). [1] Using: avconv -i input.mkv -threads auto -s hd720 -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -sn -b:v 1400k -b:a 128k -ac 2 output.mkv
  - tracker1 10y ago
    There's also the power cost, depending on how much you're running that... went from an 8350 to an i7-4790K early last year, the power cost difference is pretty significant.
    - Symmetry 10y ago
      Even if the AMD chip runs 100 watts hotter and you're encoding constantly all year that's still only $100, small compared to the chip price difference. In datacenters where you have to think about density, cooling, etc then power efficiency gets more important but not so much for consumers except in terms of fan noise.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options?
        bubuga 10y ago
        > But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options? It gets you to do the math. The $100 estimate was based on a scenario where the AMD product ran 100W hotter and ran all year long with a heavy workload. In reality, the comparable offer from Intel runs only 10W hotter, and a normal workload, at best, only costs some cents per year. After all those years saving money going with the best and cheaper offering from AMD, the money you save gets you more cash to upgrade your computer. Because economic matter.
- commandar 10y ago
  >Because for one, Intel still has a better process technology One of the reasons I've had some hope for Zen, personally, is because AMD has put manufacturing and tech sharing agreements in place with Samsung ahead of the Zen launch. Intel still arguably has a process lead, but Samsung is one of the only companies in the world that has the resources to compete. A couple of years ago, I thought Intel's process lead might be a semi-permanent advantage. Now I'm seeing some hope that may finally be coming to an end.

mtgx 10y ago

Sure, but Intel's chips still won't be the best "value for the money" if Zen is as good as AMD claims it is. Intel will never go toe-to-toe with AMD on pricing, at least not in the long term (1+ years), and unless it's approaching bankruptcy, which I assume isn't the case for now. Intel's chips are the best value for the money right now because AMD totally messed up its last microarchitecture. They bet on something (high parallelization) that didn't pan out. And they suffered greatly for it. Kind of how Sony went with the Cell processor in the PS3 (although Sony did make the best of it in the end). But Zen completely changes that equation. Zen is basically a direct and very close competitor to Intel's current microarchitecture and they should have rather similar performance. However, It doesn't mean AMD's chips will necessarily beat Intel's chips in "peak performance". Because for one, Intel still has a better process technology, and second, AMD still had to compete with a moving target (albeit a very slowly moving target - Skylake is only like 20-25% faster in single-thread performance compared to Sandy Bridge). But I imagine Zen is going to be within 10% or so of Intel's equivalent chips in single-thread performance, but potentially much better at multi-threaded performance if AMD actually sells twice as many Zen cores in its similar priced chips (8-core Zen vs quad-core Core i6, quad-core Zen vs dual-core Core i5, etc). On top of having more cores, AMD may also offer lower pricing points that outweighs the 10% difference in single-thread performance, but that remains to be seen (I probably wouldn't do that if I were them, as double the cores at a similar pricing point should be more than enough value for money).

qarioz 10y ago
> Intel will never go toe-to-toe with AMD on pricing, at least not in the long term (1+ years), and unless it's approaching bankruptcy, which I assume isn't the case for now. That's why Intel still keep their own fabs and AMD don't have fab anymore.
- sunstone 10y ago
  Intel certainly did when AMD had superior parts.
TheCondor 10y ago
Anyone know how much memory these parts will be able to address? 128GB would be interesting.
- tracker1 10y ago
  I think that (given a supported motherboard) being able to access ECC ram is a bigger thing... AMD on ASUS can do ECC at a price point much better than Xeon. Power usage is another issue though.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    A big reason to consider AMD is that they tend to always just enable pretty much all their features for every chip rather than cherry pick what they enable for each market segment like Intel does.
    - vegabook 10y ago
      yes it's about time, for example, that we had ECC ram capability in consumer-grade CPUs instead of having to pay double/triple for a XEON that doesn't even outperform (much).
      - simik 10y ago
        What's the point of ECC RAM in consumer PCs?
        tracker1 10y ago
        Same reasons as ECC on a server, or for that matter, being able to do a lower cost home or small office server. The same rules apply on a desktop too though, just less risk of impact from corrupt data in memory for a consumer PC vs server. That said, most offices are using consumer grade CPUs and hardware too.
        bubuga 10y ago
        > What's the point of ECC RAM in consumer PCs? Some people do very professional stuff with consumer PCs.
mrb 10y ago
Intel has the fastest processors but it doesn't have the best value for the money, in the entry level and mid level consumer market (sub-$300 range). Concrete example: I recently built a Linux video transcoding machine to reencode H.264 BluRay movies to smaller H.264 files [1]. A $110 AMD FX-8300 is able to reencode an average BluRay movie around 47-50 fps, while you would need to spend more than twice that amount of money to match this performance with Intel (the performance of the FX-8300 at this tasks falls between a $200 Intel i5-4590 and a $250 Xeon E3-1231 v3). [1] Using: avconv -i input.mkv -threads auto -s hd720 -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -sn -b:v 1400k -b:a 128k -ac 2 output.mkv
- tracker1 10y ago
  There's also the power cost, depending on how much you're running that... went from an 8350 to an i7-4790K early last year, the power cost difference is pretty significant.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Even if the AMD chip runs 100 watts hotter and you're encoding constantly all year that's still only $100, small compared to the chip price difference. In datacenters where you have to think about density, cooling, etc then power efficiency gets more important but not so much for consumers except in terms of fan noise.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options?
      - bubuga 10y ago
        > But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options? It gets you to do the math. The $100 estimate was based on a scenario where the AMD product ran 100W hotter and ran all year long with a heavy workload. In reality, the comparable offer from Intel runs only 10W hotter, and a normal workload, at best, only costs some cents per year. After all those years saving money going with the best and cheaper offering from AMD, the money you save gets you more cash to upgrade your computer. Because economic matter.
commandar 10y ago
>Because for one, Intel still has a better process technology One of the reasons I've had some hope for Zen, personally, is because AMD has put manufacturing and tech sharing agreements in place with Samsung ahead of the Zen launch. Intel still arguably has a process lead, but Samsung is one of the only companies in the world that has the resources to compete. A couple of years ago, I thought Intel's process lead might be a semi-permanent advantage. Now I'm seeing some hope that may finally be coming to an end.