Back in 2012 AMD announced they were no longer going to compete with Intel in the enthusiast CPU market. But in many forums after the 2012 announcement the AMD vs Intel debates continue. Did all the AMD fanboys miss this AMD announcement back in 2012? It makes since with the current line of AMD FX processors and 990FX boards being released in 2012 all we have seen come from AMD since is APUs. So in 2015 or sooner with Haswell-E could we see Intel raise prices again now that they have no competition from AMD in the enthusiast CPU market. Also could the AMD 295x2 video card be a last hurrah like the FX9590 for AMD in the enthusiast market? Is AMD doing this cause the PC gaming market is dieing or cause they can't afford to compete with Intel or are they no longer interested in pc gaming now they have an APU in both consoles? My current gaming PC is my first AMD CPU and GPU build, I have always used Intel and Nvidia in the past so I'm not really a fanboy I just would like some other educated opinions on where all this is going between Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. How is this going to effect the enthusiast and PC gamer in the near future?
The enthusiast market is actually quite small. When I think of enthusiasts, I think of people with socket 2011 CPUs. AMD are perfectly capable of competing in the broader desktop market. The 8350 is just as good as the i5 in most instances.
AMD have stated that they intend to continue the FX line. I think you've taken the term "enthusiast" to mean anyone with an i5 and a bit of an overclock - correct me if I am wrong. I don't believe that they are enthusiasts.
AMD will probably continue to produce gaming components. We are observing optimisations that are negating power requirements. So AMD are serving the market with their lower-end, but increasingly capable hardware. We simply don't need powerful CPUs to play the latest games.
It looks like 2014 is it for the FX line and AMD considered that their enthusiast CPU on their past road maps. If all AMD is gonna bring to the table is some mediocre 2 core 4 thread APUs, "used as a cpu " cant even get close to and i5 at the same price.(AMD A10-7850k and i5 4430 $180). Example, the A10-7850k APU($180) + GTX770 will get less fps than a FX8350($180) + GTX 770. So say the FX8350 is gone at the end of 2014 then what... Intel would be the only option unless AMD gives us a much better APU we can use as a CPU. Everything I've read AMD isn't planning on releasing a 8 core APU either. They just keep telling the uninformed consumer the A10-7850k is a 12 core with HSA technology "HSA is just marketing BS right now it does not increase the current APUs performance and probably won't for a while". Take everything away from the new APUs they are just over priced mediocre 2 core 4 thread CPUs. So if DirectX12 does free the CPU up in gaming the current AMD APUs should be fine even with the largest next generation dx12 video cards and Intel will just be overkill I guess. I don't have that much faith in Microsoft and I would almost bet really demanding DirectX12 games with a high end DirectX12 video card will still require a better CPU than what AMD has put in the A10-7850k.
I see things from a very different perspective.
With Valve pushing gaming on linux, and with more and more developers starting to follow this trend, I think linux will become more and more popular on the desktop (it's already the dominant OS on everything else).
AMD is betting on linux.
From the graphic cards perspective, AMD is crushing NVIDIA: owning an NVIDIA card on linux is shooting yourself in the foot. There is simply no competition here: AMD is the better option. The open source driver for the AMD cards is about the same performance as the closed source driver (25% worse in 3D games, better in 2D), and AMD has plans to move the proprietary driver in userland, and interacting with the kernel by using the open source driver. This is as close to entirely open source drivers as AMD can get without breaking some license agreements for the Catalyst driver (or so they have been telling people).
As far as CPUs go, the FX8350 is equal to the i7 Haswell (better in some benchmarks, worse in other) on linux. Also worth mentioning the fact that Intel plans to release CPUs which run embedded microcode, which I think will be a complete disaster for them in the light of all the NSA spying, even with the all the payment they are getting from the NSA for it.
APUs are also going to benefit a lot from linux, and linux only, because there is no way you get the full benefits of the HSA architecture on an antiquated platform such as Windows. The HSA Foundation uses open source software, and we all know how Windows is scared shitless of adopting anything open source (I'm not going into all the lies they have spread about open source).
To conclude, I think AMD is a step ahead of both NVIDIA and Intel, if linux starts to gain the popularity it deserves. If not, then AMD is in trouble on the desktop market, but they can always fall back to the consoles and to the server market.
I think DX12 was geared to be a little lower level, to compensate for AMD's Mantle. Much of the performance developments are through software, currently. Developers are promoting the action to squeeze more performance out of hardware, especially the lower-end hardware. The 750k is more than capable of playing most games on ultra textures with a mid-range card.
AMD has a much longer release schedule than Intel. It is likely that we will see another FX line. But you, me, AMD users, are all scratching our heads, wondering when that might be scheduled for release. It's not as problematic as it seems. There is a wide availability of the AM3+ platform.
I guess the bottom line is, what AMD has is sufficient. Additionally, I think HSA was just a rebalance of performance per watt, or performance and thermal efficiency. It wasn't necessarily a move to a much more powerful CPU. HSA is much more of an efficiency drive, with some added benefits.
Huh ? what are you talking about. AMD is really good positioned for gaming compared to Intel.
Intel is striving to reduce power-consumption, not increase performance, Intel's main focus seems to be Business, Laptops & Ultra-portables. Which is going to be AWESOME for thin, fanless, lightweight long lasting battery life notebooks with good enough processing power, but not for raw desktop performance.
Note that with silicon we can maybe double pure cpu performance once more, but after that it's done, and chip manufacturers are going to stretch that until they can move to a new tech (probably) based on graphene .
For that reason the cpu is more and more being pushed towards purely administrative tasks, where more but weaker cpu cores are beneficial. AMD has better offerings in that regard. Although IBM might have a comeback if they scale their power8 chips for consumers.
Also AMD's APUs are enormously powerful chips, if you take HSA into account. Most compute intensive tasks actually benefit enormously from the highly parallel nature of gpu compute units. However AMD's APUs are currently brutally bottle-necked by memory bandwidth available for RAM, not their actual compute performance.
Much of game logic can be offloaded to gpu compute cores, as well as any kind of encoding.
If we want to keep increasing compute performance in the near future we are going to have to keep adding more and more specialized cores to our computers. I think that we are going to see some kind of FPGAs (field programmable gate array), as well as ASICs (application specific integrated circuit) that are paired with software.
So you might need a adobe creative suite chip, or an unreal engine chip. DRM-war on steroids here we come.
Intel seems to be less inclined to cater to "real-gaming-needs" than AMD.
I would like to see a third player, how-about Nvidia & Qualcom.
On a side note, the reason why AMD's Fx8xxx look like an i5 equivalent is because Windows sucks ass at using more than 6 cores. If you look at Linux performance the Fx8xxx is more like an i7 equivalent.
Nice load of BS, I'll try sort it out.
Intel is starving to reduce power-consumption MEANWHILE improving performance.
Software is basically what is holding Haswell back from performing better than IV.
Haswell have much more raw power than IV, sadly it is harder to utilize.
Check out AVX2 (This will eventually replace SSE too), TSX (Not all haswell chips support this ISA), BMI2.
These ISA are just waiting for the right utilization.
Please define "purely administrative tasks".
HSA is simply because AMD had a hard time going with Intels powerful SIMD.
I would be glad seen Intel joining the HSA foundation, but I dont think they would, I rather think they would go a more complicated way and designing their own version of "HSA". Idiotic, but that is how Intel likes it, obviously.
I would like to redefine a sentence for you:
"Much of game logic can be offloaded to gpu compute cores, as well as any kind of encoding."
To
"Some of the critical SIMD heavy situation, CAN be offloaded to the IGP cores, as well as some kind of encoding"
It sounded to misleading.
Okay, your last graph is purely BS, and I will explain why.
First thing first, the FX 8xxx look equivalent to an I5, because of its architecture, not because of windows operative system.
Second thing;
"Windows sucks ass at using more than 6 cores"
I could atleast have understood it, if you mentioned 2 cores or something like that, but 6 cores?
I would recommend looking into how windows, mac and most consumer versions of linux kernels works.
They do in basic work the same way, and only under full workload will offload to other cores.
In linux the 8350 is still equivalent to an haswell i5. This is purely because of the architecture.
Hey whatever happened to Intel saying they were ditching sockets entirely?
To my understanding Intel never said that they were ditching sockets, it was all speculation created from a leaked roadmap and not directly from Intel themselves.
This is a very good point! If Intel does this, the enthusiast market is... well fucked.
Enthusiasts to me aren't necessarily the people getting the highest performance stuff, they are also the people who pick and chose components to get great performance at ANY price point. Removing the option for a user to select a board and a processor is just dumb imo.
YES, there are products that require non-socketed stuff to make them smaller and thinner (Eg Phones) Removing the socket overall would be a bad move.
Ah yep you're right.
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/26/intel-kills-off-the-desktop-pcs-go-with-it/
Funny how he writes about Intel not caring about enthusiasts, at least there's AMD.
Now the story is that AMD doesn't care about enthusiasts, at least there's Intel.
How can I ever learn to trust again? :)
You could say, they are the people who are enthusiastic about building a computer. :) Like heck yes I'd rather build one than not. Not including the Chinese children who are happy just to have a job. They probably would prefer solder anyway.
they are instead competing with Nvidia.
I feel like in the future (like 10-20 years), we'll have a nuc equivalent,(for most people) and most of the tasks will be offloaded to servers (storage and computing power) if we can have a 1-10 gigabit broadband access (if ISPs don't fuck up more), we could just buy a remote access to a server for something like 10$ per month, which could be cheaper than buying a full computer (at this price, you pay 600$ for 5 years, and don't have any side cost). What is the point of saying this, could you ask, dear reader, I think AMD has probably seen that current desktop computers will not be needed anymore, and that using a single chip with small cores for graphics/parallel applications and some bigger cores for single threaded applications is more efficient (specially in small form-factor). Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am right, and maybe AMD is just plain dumb.
Personally the way I See it, i don't see why AMD Can't Compete with Intel when they are very capable. to be honest i think AMD Buying ATI years ago saved their skin, cause if it wasn't for their GPU Market i don't really see AMD Being here today. however I believe they are capable of really competing. If someone was using a computer for General use, i don't see a reason if they bought a pre-built computer why cant it have an AMD Chip to bring the price of the system down, or if they were building a cheap computer for general use that they should use an AMD Chip its capable of getting basic things done. now with the FX-Line, I think AMD is just really holding back, cause to be really honest, if AMD could massive performance into a GPU i don't see why they can't bring massive performance into a CPU.
im waiting for the essay from zoltan
I think he's probably worn out. Too many lengthy posts.
That word "enthusiast" is a bit vauge, when I hear that, I think of a high end Intel CPU with sli 780ti based system. (the "best of the best" if you will)
Those FX CPU's are standing their own against the i5's (might not be the best for "work...", but still pretty close in gaming terms. (did they make a crap-ton of the 8350's or something...?)
As of now an Athlon II 760k and an R9 270X based system, is the maximum you could spend while still being on a comparably low "budget", (it's the least you could spend and still get great results)
Say what you like, but I think money talks, the more I have to spend, the less interested I am.
Intel is starving to reduce power-consumption MEANWHILE improving performance.
Well, maybe if you look at benchmarks, but if you consider the improvements Intel made between generations a decade ago, you'd consider what is currently happening as absolute stagnation in performance gains.
Haswell have much more raw power than IV, sadly it is harder to utilize
Yeah yeah CPU manufactures and their special sauce.
AVX2 -> yeah would be interesting for software raids, but why would you, software raids are horrible.
TSX -> it's a mixed bag, ive seen too many threads of people complaining about having to bend over backwards to not get killed by overhead.
Please define "purely administrative tasks".
I hope you don't want me to be specific, but basically everything you can't offload onto a more specialized circuit.
I like HSA because effort-to-use/performance-gain is great.
"Some of the critical SIMD heavy situation, CAN be offloaded to the IGP cores, as well as some kind of encoding"
Well that's misleading too, since you make it sound like it isn't a big deal, like some minor incremental improvement, but it's a big deal, if you offload video encoding from purely cpu cores to gpu you'll get 5-10x improvements. And don't you dare mentioning quicksinc because that IS accelerated (and intel cheated on video quality, by the way)
First thing first, the FX 8xxx look equivalent to an I5, because of its architecture
0__0 whaaat...? hooow...?
I could atleast have understood it, if you mentioned 2 cores or something like that, but 6 cores?
Simple: In windows i get comparable performance on a FX6xxx with linux, but on a FX8xxx Windows falls behind.
Conclusion Windows doesn't (fully?) utilizes the last 2 cores.
In linux the 8350 is still equivalent to an haswell i5
Oh ok so my I5 3570 must be defective then, because it falls short by about 15-20% of my FX 8350
(i did some benchmarks a while back: kernel 3.11 phoronix test suite 4.8.4)
>Haswell
>my 3570
>What?
The 8350 goes blow for blow with the 4670k. Which is Haswell. Not a 3570.