11 ms·

On the other hand, the top AMD Ryzen (3950X, $749) is considerably faster than the top Intel CPU (10980XE, $1000). https://pcper.com/2019/10/ryzen-9-3950x-benc

by dannyw 7y ago

On the other hand, the top AMD Ryzen (3950X, $749) is considerably faster than the top Intel CPU (10980XE, $1000). https://pcper.com/2019/10/ryzen-9-3950x-benchmark-i9-10980xe/ https://pcper.com/2019/10/ryzen-9-3950x-benchmark-i9-10980xe... Technically meaningless, including thinking that Intel is superior to AMD. They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen, and starting to lose ground on the server front.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
> including thinking that Intel is superior to AMD I never stated that. Edit: I updated the original comment to clarify that. > They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen, and starting to lose ground on the server front. I never purchased any new Intel's CPUs (or AMD's CPU, for that matter) since Ivy Bridge. If I have to build a new x86 PC today, I'll definitely buy AMD.
- iCarrot 7y ago
  I'm curious, do you still use the old Ivy Bridge or have moved on to something else non-x86?
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    Sorry if it is disappointing: I'm still using the original Ivy Bridge machine ;-) I found it's a fairy capable machine for day-to-day uses, even building a relatively large project is not a problem. There is a performance hit after Meltdown/Spectre, especially when you disable hyperthreading. But yes, I'm actively looking forward to try a non-x86 platform as my desktop, and I'm watching for this PowerPC laptop [0]. Another option is the MNT Reform ARM laptop that offers an interesting, hackable design [1]. For desktops, HoneyComb LX2K is an ARM motherboard that offers workstation-level specs [2]. But the first two projects are still in development. HoneyComb looks good but the 550 USD price tag requires me to consider carefully (the same money may buy me more interesting hardware in the near-future soon). For POWER, the Raptor Talos II workstation [3] is the first choice comes to mind, but it's POWER, the 3000+ USD price tag is not for the light-hearted. For RISC-V, it costs around 2000+ USD (1000 USD for the CPU board [4], another 1000 USD for the PCI-E board [5]) to build a desktop from the current development system. I'm still waiting for an affordable RISC-V SoC that can be used as a 400-500 USD desktop. I can pay 2000 USD if I decide it's the One True machine that can be used as my daily driver, but it's obviously not the case for now. So... waiting, waiting, waiting, and decision, decision, decision... [0] https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231031 [2] https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works... [3] https://www.raptorcs.com/ https://www.raptorcs.com/ [4] https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed [5] https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expan...
    - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
      Why do you think your [2] is looking good when their [1] errata list shows all you get for 550$ is lacking what rev. 1.4 will bring, by then i assume for the regular 750$ ? [1] https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/lx2160a-cex7-errata-list/ https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/lx2160a-cex7-... OTOH 2x SFP+ @10GbE is nothing to sneeze at. Regarding the 'Work-Station-level' specs, which GPU would you use in there, assuming you'd want more than a simple frame buffer? I mean one which is fully supported by opensource drivers for that architecture and special platform quirks? Edit: writing this from some specced out Core i7-640LM docked into assorted cybertrash. Asking because experience taught me i can throw anything at old x86/x64, while that isn't the case with anything else, even if the physical slots/interfaces ARE there. At least not for now. Catch-22.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Can't speak for GP, but can say that for me, I'd been on a 4790K since launch and only recently jumped for a Zen 2 x570 setup when my old system was acting up. Waiting for a 3950X to displace the 3600 I'm using temporarily. I've looked at generational numbers and only in the past year or two has it gotten kind of bad. Been itching to upgrade since last November, but held out for a 16c Ryzen, I wanted more Linux stability, but pulled the trigger early as I said my old system was acting up. In the end, it's quite a jump just to an R5 3600 from the i7-4790K ... I don't know if/when I'll feel the need to upgrade again after next month.
ekianjo 7y ago
AMD is only superior when it comes to performance for parallelized tasks, single thread performance is still owned by Intel. Also, your link is biased because it is well documented that AMD performance significantly improves with faster RAM and they used much faster RAM in the test only for AMD. That RAM is very expensive so you need to factor that in the total cost if you wanted fo be fair when doing price comparison as well.
- lettergram 7y ago
  Unless you count the 30%+ speed reduction due to vulnerability mitigation’s... in which case AMD has much higher performance all around.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Any source for that? Like, recent and properly designed test?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - lettergram 7y ago
      From July 2019: If looking at the geometric mean for these various mitigation-sensitive benchmarks, the default mitigations on the Core i9 9900K amounted to a 28% hit while the Ryzen 7 2700X saw a 5% hit with its default Spectre mitigations and the new Ryzen 7 3700X came in at 6% and the Ryzen 9 3900X at just over 5%. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-zen2-spectre&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-zen2... Should note: Keep in mind these benchmarks ran for this article were a good portion of synthetic tests and focused on workloads affected by Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF/Zombieload. Many of these particular tests aren't multi-threaded and that's why you don't see as much of a difference between these HEDT and desktop CPUs as in our more normal benchmarks.
      - wmf 7y ago
bluedino 7y ago
Losing the wars? I think sales numbers would disagree with that
- dannyw 7y ago
  Have a look at the sales numbers yourself: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/297785-amd-sales-are-booming-but-high-end-ryzen-3000-cpus-still-in-short-supply https://www.extremetech.com/computing/297785-amd-sales-are-b... Consumer purchases are very often influenced by brand and general 'knowledge'. These shifts take time to fully take effect.
paulie_a 7y ago
For the price point amd has been superior to Intel for atleast a decade. You could buy an fx black for a couple hundred dollars that absolutely demolished anything Intel makes. I don't know why AMD was ever seen as the underdog. They never released something like the P4 which used that crappy RAM. They also basically owned the console market. Intel certainly didn't. AMD stock price has always been the whipping boy that was easy to predict.
- toast0 7y ago
  Did you miss Bulldozer? It wasn't rambus bad, but it wasn't good. For most of Bulldozer's span, Intel was in tick/tock decent incremental increases every year, while AMD performance was pretty similar each year --- kind of like the last couple of years for Intel.
  - paulie_a 7y ago
    Intel made small improvements while the fx from years ago smoked pretty much anything for a tenth of the cost. Intel is overrated. The atom was a piece of junk. The celery was marginally better. And they ditched the Pentium class. I can't remember when they last used its name after the P4 debacle. AMD has consistently been competing at a much better price point. Now they are crushing Intel. And you admitted bulldozer wasn't as bad as rambus
    - LoSboccacc 7y ago
      that era athlons had lot stability issue and whatever you saved on cpu cost you had to spend in psu to run the thing.
      - paulie_a 7y ago
        A 200 dollar chip and 100 dollar psu doesn't add up to the equivalent 500-1000 dollar Intel.
        7y ago
ivalm 7y ago
While I am all for AMD the new Skylake X part is probably better performance (at much higher price point)? https://www.anandtech.com/show/14980/the-intel-core-i9-9990xe-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14980/the-intel-core-i9-9990x...
- burnte 7y ago
  Probably, but they are predicted to sell less than 100 in a year, so it's really more of a fluke part than anything you can reliably get.
- xigency 7y ago
  At much higher power and thermals as well.
paulmd 7y ago
9980XE can run closer to 35K physics score (Physics is the only part of Firestrike that actually tests primarily the CPU). 3950X is going to be good at productivity but Intel is still faster per-core and the 10980XE packs in 2 more cores. It's also more expensive, of course - there's a place for the 3950X here, just don't expect to see the 3950X handily best a 10980XE despite being short by 2 cores. The 3950X is just a 3900X with more cores, and we already know Zen2 pretty much just matches Intel in the best case and loses in many other cases. There is not enough architectural lead there to account for a (32,082 / 25,838) x (18/16) = 39.6% per-core performance lead in favor of AMD. Guaranteed. It's an erroneous test. It happens a lot with pre-release leaks, Zen has had a lot of timer bugs at launch. Or it's an LN2 run on the 3950X and an engineering sample 10980XE, or something like that. In a more realistic set of tests, with a 50% core deficit and mitigations enabled, Intel's geomean score is 6% lower than AMD's. They're not 40% behind AMD in per-core performance. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3900x-9900k-mitigations&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3900x-99...
- snovv_crash 7y ago
  Or, as we've seen in many benchmarks, AMD's SMT implementation gets much higher gains than Intel's.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    The math just isn't close to a 40% per-core lead in literally any single test let alone that being representative across the board. Real-world, AMD is still losing in per-core performance on average. Close, sometimes tying, sometimes leading, but not leading by 40%. Again: we already know what Zen2 performance looks like. Cascade Lake-X is basically Skylake-X+, a new stepping with some tweaks and (much) higher clocks. These are not new products when it comes to expected performance. It's straightforward to see that 40% per-core lead is purely wishful thinking from the AMD set here. Don't get your hopes up, you'll just crash the hype train yet again. I don't know why the hype train is such a thing for the AMD crowd, this spring it was supposed 5.1 GHz and 6C12T for $99 and that crashed into the brick wall of reality hard too.
anonymousDan 7y ago
Can you recommend a good AMD laptop? What is a reasonable spec AMD CPU for that market for a developer laptop, e.g. comparable to i7 intel? Looking at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the Dell XPS 13 at the moment but can't seem to find either with AMD.
- pmjordan 7y ago
  Reviews indicate that the AMD variant of Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 is actually a decent machine, as AMD and Microsoft have worked together to provide a good experience in terms of battery life, etc. Hopefully the outcome of that work will trickle down to other laptop manufacturers. (BIOS, drivers, etc.) Note that AMD's mobile "Renoir" chips are expected early next year, which will be based on the up-to-date Zen 2 microarchitecture used in the desktop Ryzen 3000/3000X series. (The 3000G series uses the older Zen+ from Ryzen 2000/2000X, just like the 3000-series laptop chips.)
  - aschismatic 7y ago
    I read that AMD is likely aiming for a CES 2020 release for "Renoir" [0]. How long from release does it usually take to start seeing released chips in new laptops? Also, I've read conflicting information on whether "Renoir" will use Vega or Navi. Various articles and comments from earlier this year seem to think Vega, while I'm seeing more mentions of "Renoir" and Navi together now that we're closer to its release. IS there any solid information on which of the two it will use? [0] https://wccftech.com/exclusive-next-generation-amd-7nm-mobility-cpu-apu-laptop-price-down-699/ https://wccftech.com/exclusive-next-generation-amd-7nm-mobil...
    - pmjordan 7y ago
      How long from release does it usually take to start seeing released chips in new laptops? I seem to remember reading about a January launch (i.e. CES as you say) with shipping laptops expected towards the end of Q1 2020. Vega vs Navi: IS there any solid information on which of the two it will use? I don't think there's any solid information; watchers seemed to interpret recently added device IDs in Windows and Linux drivers as belonging to Vega-based APUs with new video engines backported from Navi. Whether that's Renoir or another APU line remains to be seen. There's also rumours that the next batch of APUs might just be a Zen+ die shrink to 7nm rather than a full upgrade to Zen 2. Given that mobile CPUs and SFF business desktop systems with integrated graphics are where the volume markets are these days, it seems a little odd that AMD lags their APUs behind the standalone desktop and server CPUs so much. The next desktop APUs are only expected mid 2020. I can only assume they are still battling idle power draw issues (especially if Zen 2's PCIe 4.0 is hard to swap out for more the power efficient PCIe 3.0) or that the integration of CPU and GPU via Infinity Fabric is difficult to pull off in practice.
gumby 7y ago
AMD no longer has a fab so can’t compete with Intel on process (though they can in theory choose someone else’s process other than Global Foundry). Clearly this restriction isn’t hurting AMD right now! But process is the topic under discussion.
- kaibee 7y ago
  AMD is currently using TSMC for their new line of CPUS. I think this gives AMD a huge advantage over Intel, as they can always just go to whoever has the best foundry.
  - georgeburdell 7y ago
    You’re taking the current situation and crafting a narrative around it. If Intel were ahead, you would be extolling the tight integration of fab and design that only Intel offers. Apple is one current company that’s bucking your narrative by bringing more and more in house and is doing well. The truth is that both models work and Intel’s problems are created by their management, not by their operating model.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I can't see why you are getting down-voted - I see people do this kind of post-factum 'reasoning backwards' all the time, and it's all make-believe. If these theories had real predictive power, they would allow you to make a killing on the stock market.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    We just saw on Hacker News today that AMD machines can't even boot and are having trouble getting their microcode updated. How is that a "huge advantage?"
    - katmannthree 7y ago
      Do you have a link to that? Anecdotally, I'm using two Ryzen 3000 systems right now (a 3900X and a 3200U) and both are working just fine.
coldtea 7y ago
>They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen and starting to lose ground on the server front. So they're losing the domain that matters less (since laptop is where it's at, and that just because of a flash in the pan, AMD wont be able to sustain it, as they historically never were), while the server will also end with more ARM, not more AMD.
agloeregrets 7y ago
Part of this is that AMD is using TSMC’s ‘7nm’ process, which is comparable to intel’s delayed 10nm. Development of that process was funded by Apple (as they use it for the A12/A13). So the pairing of AMD and Apple can out spend and out develop intel.
- phatfish 7y ago
  Is this really true? It seems very unlike Apple to let another company profit from their funding. Surely TCSM already had the tech and they are just licensing it to both AMD and Apple?
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    It's developed by TSMC, but you can argue that they developed it primarily to offer it to Apple. In that sense you can say Apple paid for it, just by singlehandedly making the investment worth it.
    - agloeregrets 7y ago
      Exactly. Apple said “if you do X we will pay Y” in that sense, Apple put the money up to cover development costs.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    apple has TMSC build their chips. amd has TMSC build their chips. apple doesn't quite have to clout to tell TMSC not to build chips for anyone else.
    - chungus_khan 7y ago
      It also doesn't benefit them in any way to do so. AMD doesn't make any products that compete directly with anything they make, and is their primary provider of dedicated Macintosh graphics hardware.
      - 7y ago

by dannyw 7y ago

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

> including thinking that Intel is superior to AMD I never stated that. Edit: I updated the original comment to clarify that. > They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen, and starting to lose ground on the server front. I never purchased any new Intel's CPUs (or AMD's CPU, for that matter) since Ivy Bridge. If I have to build a new x86 PC today, I'll definitely buy AMD.

iCarrot 7y ago
I'm curious, do you still use the old Ivy Bridge or have moved on to something else non-x86?
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Sorry if it is disappointing: I'm still using the original Ivy Bridge machine ;-) I found it's a fairy capable machine for day-to-day uses, even building a relatively large project is not a problem. There is a performance hit after Meltdown/Spectre, especially when you disable hyperthreading. But yes, I'm actively looking forward to try a non-x86 platform as my desktop, and I'm watching for this PowerPC laptop [0]. Another option is the MNT Reform ARM laptop that offers an interesting, hackable design [1]. For desktops, HoneyComb LX2K is an ARM motherboard that offers workstation-level specs [2]. But the first two projects are still in development. HoneyComb looks good but the 550 USD price tag requires me to consider carefully (the same money may buy me more interesting hardware in the near-future soon). For POWER, the Raptor Talos II workstation [3] is the first choice comes to mind, but it's POWER, the 3000+ USD price tag is not for the light-hearted. For RISC-V, it costs around 2000+ USD (1000 USD for the CPU board [4], another 1000 USD for the PCI-E board [5]) to build a desktop from the current development system. I'm still waiting for an affordable RISC-V SoC that can be used as a 400-500 USD desktop. I can pay 2000 USD if I decide it's the One True machine that can be used as my daily driver, but it's obviously not the case for now. So... waiting, waiting, waiting, and decision, decision, decision... [0] https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231031 [2] https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works... [3] https://www.raptorcs.com/ https://www.raptorcs.com/ [4] https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed [5] https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expan...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    Why do you think your [2] is looking good when their [1] errata list shows all you get for 550$ is lacking what rev. 1.4 will bring, by then i assume for the regular 750$ ? [1] https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/lx2160a-cex7-errata-list/ https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/lx2160a-cex7-... OTOH 2x SFP+ @10GbE is nothing to sneeze at. Regarding the 'Work-Station-level' specs, which GPU would you use in there, assuming you'd want more than a simple frame buffer? I mean one which is fully supported by opensource drivers for that architecture and special platform quirks? Edit: writing this from some specced out Core i7-640LM docked into assorted cybertrash. Asking because experience taught me i can throw anything at old x86/x64, while that isn't the case with anything else, even if the physical slots/interfaces ARE there. At least not for now. Catch-22.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Can't speak for GP, but can say that for me, I'd been on a 4790K since launch and only recently jumped for a Zen 2 x570 setup when my old system was acting up. Waiting for a 3950X to displace the 3600 I'm using temporarily. I've looked at generational numbers and only in the past year or two has it gotten kind of bad. Been itching to upgrade since last November, but held out for a 16c Ryzen, I wanted more Linux stability, but pulled the trigger early as I said my old system was acting up. In the end, it's quite a jump just to an R5 3600 from the i7-4790K ... I don't know if/when I'll feel the need to upgrade again after next month.

ekianjo 7y ago

AMD is only superior when it comes to performance for parallelized tasks, single thread performance is still owned by Intel. Also, your link is biased because it is well documented that AMD performance significantly improves with faster RAM and they used much faster RAM in the test only for AMD. That RAM is very expensive so you need to factor that in the total cost if you wanted fo be fair when doing price comparison as well.

lettergram 7y ago
Unless you count the 30%+ speed reduction due to vulnerability mitigation’s... in which case AMD has much higher performance all around.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Any source for that? Like, recent and properly designed test?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lettergram 7y ago
    From July 2019: If looking at the geometric mean for these various mitigation-sensitive benchmarks, the default mitigations on the Core i9 9900K amounted to a 28% hit while the Ryzen 7 2700X saw a 5% hit with its default Spectre mitigations and the new Ryzen 7 3700X came in at 6% and the Ryzen 9 3900X at just over 5%. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-zen2-spectre&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-zen2... Should note: Keep in mind these benchmarks ran for this article were a good portion of synthetic tests and focused on workloads affected by Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF/Zombieload. Many of these particular tests aren't multi-threaded and that's why you don't see as much of a difference between these HEDT and desktop CPUs as in our more normal benchmarks.
    - wmf 7y ago

bluedino 7y ago

Losing the wars? I think sales numbers would disagree with that

dannyw 7y ago
Have a look at the sales numbers yourself: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/297785-amd-sales-are-booming-but-high-end-ryzen-3000-cpus-still-in-short-supply https://www.extremetech.com/computing/297785-amd-sales-are-b... Consumer purchases are very often influenced by brand and general 'knowledge'. These shifts take time to fully take effect.

paulie_a 7y ago

For the price point amd has been superior to Intel for atleast a decade. You could buy an fx black for a couple hundred dollars that absolutely demolished anything Intel makes. I don't know why AMD was ever seen as the underdog. They never released something like the P4 which used that crappy RAM. They also basically owned the console market. Intel certainly didn't. AMD stock price has always been the whipping boy that was easy to predict.

toast0 7y ago
Did you miss Bulldozer? It wasn't rambus bad, but it wasn't good. For most of Bulldozer's span, Intel was in tick/tock decent incremental increases every year, while AMD performance was pretty similar each year --- kind of like the last couple of years for Intel.
- paulie_a 7y ago
  Intel made small improvements while the fx from years ago smoked pretty much anything for a tenth of the cost. Intel is overrated. The atom was a piece of junk. The celery was marginally better. And they ditched the Pentium class. I can't remember when they last used its name after the P4 debacle. AMD has consistently been competing at a much better price point. Now they are crushing Intel. And you admitted bulldozer wasn't as bad as rambus
  - LoSboccacc 7y ago
    that era athlons had lot stability issue and whatever you saved on cpu cost you had to spend in psu to run the thing.
    - paulie_a 7y ago
      A 200 dollar chip and 100 dollar psu doesn't add up to the equivalent 500-1000 dollar Intel.
      - 7y ago

ivalm 7y ago

While I am all for AMD the new Skylake X part is probably better performance (at much higher price point)? https://www.anandtech.com/show/14980/the-intel-core-i9-9990xe-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14980/the-intel-core-i9-9990x...

burnte 7y ago
Probably, but they are predicted to sell less than 100 in a year, so it's really more of a fluke part than anything you can reliably get.
xigency 7y ago
At much higher power and thermals as well.

paulmd 7y ago

9980XE can run closer to 35K physics score (Physics is the only part of Firestrike that actually tests primarily the CPU). 3950X is going to be good at productivity but Intel is still faster per-core and the 10980XE packs in 2 more cores. It's also more expensive, of course - there's a place for the 3950X here, just don't expect to see the 3950X handily best a 10980XE despite being short by 2 cores. The 3950X is just a 3900X with more cores, and we already know Zen2 pretty much just matches Intel in the best case and loses in many other cases. There is not enough architectural lead there to account for a (32,082 / 25,838) x (18/16) = 39.6% per-core performance lead in favor of AMD. Guaranteed. It's an erroneous test. It happens a lot with pre-release leaks, Zen has had a lot of timer bugs at launch. Or it's an LN2 run on the 3950X and an engineering sample 10980XE, or something like that. In a more realistic set of tests, with a 50% core deficit and mitigations enabled, Intel's geomean score is 6% lower than AMD's. They're not 40% behind AMD in per-core performance. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3900x-9900k-mitigations&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3900x-99...

snovv_crash 7y ago
Or, as we've seen in many benchmarks, AMD's SMT implementation gets much higher gains than Intel's.
- paulmd 7y ago
  The math just isn't close to a 40% per-core lead in literally any single test let alone that being representative across the board. Real-world, AMD is still losing in per-core performance on average. Close, sometimes tying, sometimes leading, but not leading by 40%. Again: we already know what Zen2 performance looks like. Cascade Lake-X is basically Skylake-X+, a new stepping with some tweaks and (much) higher clocks. These are not new products when it comes to expected performance. It's straightforward to see that 40% per-core lead is purely wishful thinking from the AMD set here. Don't get your hopes up, you'll just crash the hype train yet again. I don't know why the hype train is such a thing for the AMD crowd, this spring it was supposed 5.1 GHz and 6C12T for $99 and that crashed into the brick wall of reality hard too.

anonymousDan 7y ago

Can you recommend a good AMD laptop? What is a reasonable spec AMD CPU for that market for a developer laptop, e.g. comparable to i7 intel? Looking at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the Dell XPS 13 at the moment but can't seem to find either with AMD.

pmjordan 7y ago
Reviews indicate that the AMD variant of Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 is actually a decent machine, as AMD and Microsoft have worked together to provide a good experience in terms of battery life, etc. Hopefully the outcome of that work will trickle down to other laptop manufacturers. (BIOS, drivers, etc.) Note that AMD's mobile "Renoir" chips are expected early next year, which will be based on the up-to-date Zen 2 microarchitecture used in the desktop Ryzen 3000/3000X series. (The 3000G series uses the older Zen+ from Ryzen 2000/2000X, just like the 3000-series laptop chips.)
- aschismatic 7y ago
  I read that AMD is likely aiming for a CES 2020 release for "Renoir" [0]. How long from release does it usually take to start seeing released chips in new laptops? Also, I've read conflicting information on whether "Renoir" will use Vega or Navi. Various articles and comments from earlier this year seem to think Vega, while I'm seeing more mentions of "Renoir" and Navi together now that we're closer to its release. IS there any solid information on which of the two it will use? [0] https://wccftech.com/exclusive-next-generation-amd-7nm-mobility-cpu-apu-laptop-price-down-699/ https://wccftech.com/exclusive-next-generation-amd-7nm-mobil...
  - pmjordan 7y ago
    How long from release does it usually take to start seeing released chips in new laptops? I seem to remember reading about a January launch (i.e. CES as you say) with shipping laptops expected towards the end of Q1 2020. Vega vs Navi: IS there any solid information on which of the two it will use? I don't think there's any solid information; watchers seemed to interpret recently added device IDs in Windows and Linux drivers as belonging to Vega-based APUs with new video engines backported from Navi. Whether that's Renoir or another APU line remains to be seen. There's also rumours that the next batch of APUs might just be a Zen+ die shrink to 7nm rather than a full upgrade to Zen 2. Given that mobile CPUs and SFF business desktop systems with integrated graphics are where the volume markets are these days, it seems a little odd that AMD lags their APUs behind the standalone desktop and server CPUs so much. The next desktop APUs are only expected mid 2020. I can only assume they are still battling idle power draw issues (especially if Zen 2's PCIe 4.0 is hard to swap out for more the power efficient PCIe 3.0) or that the integration of CPU and GPU via Infinity Fabric is difficult to pull off in practice.

gumby 7y ago

AMD no longer has a fab so can’t compete with Intel on process (though they can in theory choose someone else’s process other than Global Foundry). Clearly this restriction isn’t hurting AMD right now! But process is the topic under discussion.

kaibee 7y ago
AMD is currently using TSMC for their new line of CPUS. I think this gives AMD a huge advantage over Intel, as they can always just go to whoever has the best foundry.
- georgeburdell 7y ago
  You’re taking the current situation and crafting a narrative around it. If Intel were ahead, you would be extolling the tight integration of fab and design that only Intel offers. Apple is one current company that’s bucking your narrative by bringing more and more in house and is doing well. The truth is that both models work and Intel’s problems are created by their management, not by their operating model.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I can't see why you are getting down-voted - I see people do this kind of post-factum 'reasoning backwards' all the time, and it's all make-believe. If these theories had real predictive power, they would allow you to make a killing on the stock market.
- fortran77 7y ago
  We just saw on Hacker News today that AMD machines can't even boot and are having trouble getting their microcode updated. How is that a "huge advantage?"
  - katmannthree 7y ago
    Do you have a link to that? Anecdotally, I'm using two Ryzen 3000 systems right now (a 3900X and a 3200U) and both are working just fine.

coldtea 7y ago

>They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen and starting to lose ground on the server front. So they're losing the domain that matters less (since laptop is where it's at, and that just because of a flash in the pan, AMD wont be able to sustain it, as they historically never were), while the server will also end with more ARM, not more AMD.

agloeregrets 7y ago

Part of this is that AMD is using TSMC’s ‘7nm’ process, which is comparable to intel’s delayed 10nm. Development of that process was funded by Apple (as they use it for the A12/A13). So the pairing of AMD and Apple can out spend and out develop intel.

phatfish 7y ago
Is this really true? It seems very unlike Apple to let another company profit from their funding. Surely TCSM already had the tech and they are just licensing it to both AMD and Apple?
- wongarsu 7y ago
  It's developed by TSMC, but you can argue that they developed it primarily to offer it to Apple. In that sense you can say Apple paid for it, just by singlehandedly making the investment worth it.
  - agloeregrets 7y ago
    Exactly. Apple said “if you do X we will pay Y” in that sense, Apple put the money up to cover development costs.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  apple has TMSC build their chips. amd has TMSC build their chips. apple doesn't quite have to clout to tell TMSC not to build chips for anyone else.
  - chungus_khan 7y ago
    It also doesn't benefit them in any way to do so. AMD doesn't make any products that compete directly with anything they make, and is their primary provider of dedicated Macintosh graphics hardware.
    - 7y ago