8 ms·

You want notable ? AMD is currently beating Intel on price, single threaded perf, multi threaded perf, TDP/power usage at equivalent performance AND on many of

by nolok 7y ago

You want notable ? AMD is currently beating Intel on price, single threaded perf, multi threaded perf, TDP/power usage at equivalent performance AND on many of the "little pluses on the side" (more PCI-e lanes, ECC supports, ...). When Zen first came is was a huge deal, but it merely put them as a real competitors, with a decent advantage on many cases, reinforced with Zen+. But Zen 2 put them ahead in almost every category, and in all markets; threadripper and EPYC are just as strong in their areas. Either Intel has something strong about to appear, or they're going to face a truly difficult few years with customers going AMD now that it's not merely "one generation of chip" that was good. It feels like getting their 10nm working will not be enough by itself.

lunchables 7y ago
And the motherboards from two years ago (AM4) will support the latest Zen2 / Ryzen 3000 series CPU[0]. Meanwhile intel changes the socket every generation which adds another $100-$300 to the cost of a CPU upgrade. [0] double check your board manufacturer for bios updates to support new CPU, my cheap B350 board does.
- TheCapn 7y ago
  Helpful link for knowing which motherboards are able to get their bios flashed to support Zen2 without an installed CPU/memory: https://redd.it/bvfo57 https://redd.it/bvfo57
- Iggy173 7y ago
  This is unfortunately not helpful to those of us who haven't made the jump to AMD yet :(
  - undersuit 7y ago
    It's been 24 years since you could use an Intel or AMD processor on the same motherboard and some people just can't get over it.
  - lunchables 7y ago
    Well the good news is you can pick up a very inexpensive board now, even a used one, and it will be compatible with the latest CPU. I bought my motherboard July of 2017 and will be upgrading my CPU to a Ryzen 3000 after 7/7 launch.
derefr 7y ago
> Either Intel has something strong about to appear People are hypothesizing this to be true given that Apple is putting Intel rather than AMD chips in the Mac Pro, and Apple doesn’t usually make dumb purchasing decisions, but does sometimes have private access to product roadmaps.
- deniska 7y ago
  Or there's a long term exclusivity agreement. Who knows.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Or it's just inertia. The Mac Pro (and every Mac computer) have always had Intel processors. It's true that quite a few have had AMD GPUs, and they made the more difficult PowerPC to Intel switch back in 2006 with OS X 10.4. But it would be a significant effort to change a processor partnership more than a decade old. No Apple developers have anything but Intel in their machines; it's not just an item on a BOM.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > No Apple developers have anything but Intel in their machines Given that Apple almost certainly has a research lab maintaining machines running macOS on top of Apple’s own ARM chips, to watch for the inflection point where it becomes tenable to ship laptops running those chips; and thus, given that Apple already has a staff for that lab whose job is to quickly redo macOS’s uarch optimization for each new A[N] core as Apple pumps them out; it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch that those same people would do a uarch optimization pass every once in a while to answer the “can we use AMD chips on desktop yet?” question, does it?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hajile 7y ago
  There are a lot of reasons for Apple to choose Intel. Apple has a lot of optimizations for Intel at the moment from the instruction set down to the motherboards and chipsets. A great example is all the work they do in undervolting mobile chips so they perform better (when the latest MBPs shipped with this disabled, everyone really complained). Re-writing all that software definitely has non-trivial R&D costs. When making a new motherboard design, a ton of stuff simply gets reused and moved around. Switch to a different chipset and you start all over for a lot of stuff. Even if AMD were 10-20% faster overall, their current "fast enough" Intel chips would still win out. AMD's zen+ 3000 mobile chips don't compete with Intel in single-clock performance, clockspeeds, or total power draw. With the exception of the mac pro, Apple's entire lineup uses mobile processors. In addition, Intel probably gives amazing discounts to Apple. Zen serves them best as a way to squeeze out an even better deal. A final consideration is ARM. Given the performance characteristics of A12, Apple most certainly has their sights set on using some variant in their laptops in the not-too-distant future. They already run their phone chips in their macbooks as the T2 chip. They are probably working on the timing to allow those chips to run more than the touchbar and IO.
ct520 7y ago
Don’t forget... security ;)
GuB-42 7y ago
It looks like Intel completely messed up 10nm. Nothing new since 2015... My understanding is that they pushed multi-patterning a bit too far and they have too much defects. 7nm, which use a different tech and is developed in parallel seems to get better. So if Intel has a big thing in the making, I expect it to be 7nm, not 10nm.
Zenst 7y ago
I hope Intel will at least offer ECC memory for their consumer CPU's now. For now at least AMD are offering the option and will only increase uptake, increasing supply/demand and drive prices down. I hope that in a few years time that ECC will become standard, as for many it is driving a car without a seatbelt. This and with security exploits (rowhammer), ECC would be the solution that is a price gap that for many, is still one that can and should be closed. That all said, it would only take the one or two big mobile manufacturers to go ECC and marketing virtu the whole security and integrity aspect for the rest of the market to follow suit. Which would be a bigger driver in reducing the price gap premium over non-ecc memory. Which is how I see things panning out as mobile phone makers are running out of sell features to add and this would be an easy one for the premium market of phones out there today. Also one in which would go down very well for that feature alone.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > I hope Intel will at least offer ECC memory for their consumer CPU's now. They do (or did?). My home NAS is running a Sandy Bridge Intel Celeron with ECC memory. Support seems to be randomly distributed thought through the product line[1] though and obviously depends on the motherboard manufacturer to implement it as well. In general, Intel has a problem with branding. Their product lines are confusing mess requiring looking up each specific part to get a list of features it does or does not support. There's little rhyme or reason to it. [1] https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22587440 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22587440
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Since Haswell, ECC support has been on (Core-based desktop) Celerons, Pentiums, i3s, and Xeons. It's quite straightforward, when they pulled 2C Xeons off the market they added it to the consumer processors instead, but they still want to retain Xeon sales for the higher-end products so they lock it off on the i5s/i7s/i9s. Of course you need to know what you're looking at, the suffix of the number matters a lot (eg 7100 vs 7100U), but that is nothing Intel-specific. A Ryzen 2700 and a Ryzen 2700U are very different processors as well.
knd775 7y ago
It's currently Intel's turn to have Jim Keller. They'll figure something out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  Everyone likes to look at individuals to solve problems when it's all about the team. I imagine the internal politics at Intel are much worse than at AMD but that's just a guess.
  - oaeide 7y ago
    Generally I would agree, but in this case its Jim Keller we are talking about.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I mean you might be right but looking at the lead times for a new CPU architecture I guess he will start making a difference in about 3-4 years from now.
      - iforgotpassword 7y ago
        Which would still be good enough for Intel, considering their current market share. They'll have a couple bad years but Intel will still be on top if it takes them four years to beat AMD again. Many businesses and OEMs didn't even have AMD on the radar anymore. I'm still waiting for a suitable dev laptop based on ryzen.
        nolok 7y ago
        Have a look at the ThinkPad. Lenovo has fully embraced Ryzen in desktop and laptop.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ldoughty 7y ago
I wish AMD would release something close to the NUC now :-( only thing keeping me from buying them is my disinterest in making large desktops anymore. I'm over the windows cases, water cooling, or jet engine desktops.
- fivefive55 7y ago
  Have you seen the Asrock Deskmini A300? It's not quite NUC sized but it's very close. I think it would fit the bill for you.

by nolok 7y ago

lunchables 7y ago

And the motherboards from two years ago (AM4) will support the latest Zen2 / Ryzen 3000 series CPU[0]. Meanwhile intel changes the socket every generation which adds another $100-$300 to the cost of a CPU upgrade. [0] double check your board manufacturer for bios updates to support new CPU, my cheap B350 board does.

TheCapn 7y ago
Helpful link for knowing which motherboards are able to get their bios flashed to support Zen2 without an installed CPU/memory: https://redd.it/bvfo57 https://redd.it/bvfo57
Iggy173 7y ago
This is unfortunately not helpful to those of us who haven't made the jump to AMD yet :(
- undersuit 7y ago
  It's been 24 years since you could use an Intel or AMD processor on the same motherboard and some people just can't get over it.
- lunchables 7y ago
  Well the good news is you can pick up a very inexpensive board now, even a used one, and it will be compatible with the latest CPU. I bought my motherboard July of 2017 and will be upgrading my CPU to a Ryzen 3000 after 7/7 launch.

derefr 7y ago

> Either Intel has something strong about to appear People are hypothesizing this to be true given that Apple is putting Intel rather than AMD chips in the Mac Pro, and Apple doesn’t usually make dumb purchasing decisions, but does sometimes have private access to product roadmaps.

deniska 7y ago
Or there's a long term exclusivity agreement. Who knows.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Or it's just inertia. The Mac Pro (and every Mac computer) have always had Intel processors. It's true that quite a few have had AMD GPUs, and they made the more difficult PowerPC to Intel switch back in 2006 with OS X 10.4. But it would be a significant effort to change a processor partnership more than a decade old. No Apple developers have anything but Intel in their machines; it's not just an item on a BOM.
- derefr 7y ago
  > No Apple developers have anything but Intel in their machines Given that Apple almost certainly has a research lab maintaining machines running macOS on top of Apple’s own ARM chips, to watch for the inflection point where it becomes tenable to ship laptops running those chips; and thus, given that Apple already has a staff for that lab whose job is to quickly redo macOS’s uarch optimization for each new A[N] core as Apple pumps them out; it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch that those same people would do a uarch optimization pass every once in a while to answer the “can we use AMD chips on desktop yet?” question, does it?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hajile 7y ago
There are a lot of reasons for Apple to choose Intel. Apple has a lot of optimizations for Intel at the moment from the instruction set down to the motherboards and chipsets. A great example is all the work they do in undervolting mobile chips so they perform better (when the latest MBPs shipped with this disabled, everyone really complained). Re-writing all that software definitely has non-trivial R&D costs. When making a new motherboard design, a ton of stuff simply gets reused and moved around. Switch to a different chipset and you start all over for a lot of stuff. Even if AMD were 10-20% faster overall, their current "fast enough" Intel chips would still win out. AMD's zen+ 3000 mobile chips don't compete with Intel in single-clock performance, clockspeeds, or total power draw. With the exception of the mac pro, Apple's entire lineup uses mobile processors. In addition, Intel probably gives amazing discounts to Apple. Zen serves them best as a way to squeeze out an even better deal. A final consideration is ARM. Given the performance characteristics of A12, Apple most certainly has their sights set on using some variant in their laptops in the not-too-distant future. They already run their phone chips in their macbooks as the T2 chip. They are probably working on the timing to allow those chips to run more than the touchbar and IO.

ct520 7y ago

Don’t forget... security ;)

GuB-42 7y ago

It looks like Intel completely messed up 10nm. Nothing new since 2015... My understanding is that they pushed multi-patterning a bit too far and they have too much defects. 7nm, which use a different tech and is developed in parallel seems to get better. So if Intel has a big thing in the making, I expect it to be 7nm, not 10nm.

Zenst 7y ago

I hope Intel will at least offer ECC memory for their consumer CPU's now. For now at least AMD are offering the option and will only increase uptake, increasing supply/demand and drive prices down. I hope that in a few years time that ECC will become standard, as for many it is driving a car without a seatbelt. This and with security exploits (rowhammer), ECC would be the solution that is a price gap that for many, is still one that can and should be closed. That all said, it would only take the one or two big mobile manufacturers to go ECC and marketing virtu the whole security and integrity aspect for the rest of the market to follow suit. Which would be a bigger driver in reducing the price gap premium over non-ecc memory. Which is how I see things panning out as mobile phone makers are running out of sell features to add and this would be an easy one for the premium market of phones out there today. Also one in which would go down very well for that feature alone.

AlexandrB 7y ago
> I hope Intel will at least offer ECC memory for their consumer CPU's now. They do (or did?). My home NAS is running a Sandy Bridge Intel Celeron with ECC memory. Support seems to be randomly distributed thought through the product line[1] though and obviously depends on the motherboard manufacturer to implement it as well. In general, Intel has a problem with branding. Their product lines are confusing mess requiring looking up each specific part to get a list of features it does or does not support. There's little rhyme or reason to it. [1] https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22587440 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22587440
- paulmd 7y ago
  Since Haswell, ECC support has been on (Core-based desktop) Celerons, Pentiums, i3s, and Xeons. It's quite straightforward, when they pulled 2C Xeons off the market they added it to the consumer processors instead, but they still want to retain Xeon sales for the higher-end products so they lock it off on the i5s/i7s/i9s. Of course you need to know what you're looking at, the suffix of the number matters a lot (eg 7100 vs 7100U), but that is nothing Intel-specific. A Ryzen 2700 and a Ryzen 2700U are very different processors as well.

knd775 7y ago

It's currently Intel's turn to have Jim Keller. They'll figure something out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)

andy_ppp 7y ago
Everyone likes to look at individuals to solve problems when it's all about the team. I imagine the internal politics at Intel are much worse than at AMD but that's just a guess.
- oaeide 7y ago
  Generally I would agree, but in this case its Jim Keller we are talking about.
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    I mean you might be right but looking at the lead times for a new CPU architecture I guess he will start making a difference in about 3-4 years from now.
    - iforgotpassword 7y ago
      Which would still be good enough for Intel, considering their current market share. They'll have a couple bad years but Intel will still be on top if it takes them four years to beat AMD again. Many businesses and OEMs didn't even have AMD on the radar anymore. I'm still waiting for a suitable dev laptop based on ryzen.
      - nolok 7y ago
        Have a look at the ThinkPad. Lenovo has fully embraced Ryzen in desktop and laptop.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ldoughty 7y ago

I wish AMD would release something close to the NUC now :-( only thing keeping me from buying them is my disinterest in making large desktops anymore. I'm over the windows cases, water cooling, or jet engine desktops.

fivefive55 7y ago
Have you seen the Asrock Deskmini A300? It's not quite NUC sized but it's very close. I think it would fit the bill for you.