So AMD is claiming that Zen will have a 40% IPC gain over their previous architecture Excavator. Excavator had about a 10% IPC gain over Piledriver, so those of us on Piledriver FX processors should expect to see about a 50 to 55% IPC gain. I was hoping that Zen would target Broadwell single core performance, but some very loose conjectures have put it at around Haswell single thread performance.
For me, I would like to see Zen within at least a 5% margin of Haswell single core performance for me to go the AMD route. It's looking like the top of the line FX chip will be an 8-core 16-thread. If AMD can keep the multithreaded momentum with that heavily threaded CPU going, AND deliver at least Haswell level single-core performance, I will be pleased indeed. It will of course be interesting to see how much more performance one can squeeze through overclocking once we get our hands on some silicon (here's to hoping that happens before December!)
I would much rather pay for an 8-core 16-thread AMD CPU with Haswell single-core performance, than a Skylake 4-core 8-thread, due to DX 12, Vulcan, and my workload scenario liking more threads (occasional video editing and running VM's). If AMD can deliver that 8-core at a price lower than the current top of line Skylake i7, I will be buying in for sure. If they return with dismal single-core performance again, tough to say, I am going Intel.
Would you be satisfied with slightly under or at Haswell single-core performance with the new Zen chips, even if the multi-thread performance matches or exceeds current Skylake CPU's from Intel? In all honestly, I am tired of games utilizing two threads, I hope that DX 12 finally changes this. Multi-core CPU's are the future, while I know it's harder to design games to effectively utilize multiple threads, we've been using quad-cores and up for the better part of the last 6 to 7 years.
Still can't get Zen off my mind, I have begun saving up my pennies. I hope they don't disappoint, AMD really needs a win.
Im guna say what I tell all my friends, wait for benchmarks, the chip can be ungodly powerful but if no one knows how to work with it or use it properly it could be a bigger POS than its predecessor.
The performance deficit compared to Intel is probably too large to catch up in a single generation. Especially a generation that is both an architecture change and a node shrink.
I think the 1st gen Zen will still be 5-10%slower, owing to lower than expected clockspeed.
However if they get a second generation, that gap will close significantly.
I plan to build at least one Zen system. Just to support them. Been using Lynnfield for forever so regardless of exact numbers I'll get a boost. I try to think about what Zen could do for me as opposed to sweeping synthetic benchmarks.
I agree with synthetic benchmarks being lame. I still wonder if the lower clock-speed chips being shipped to engineers are just that: engineering samples and the final product will have a higher clock-speed (like 3.4 or 3.5GHz). In all honesty, my FX-8350 is still mostly sufficient for me right now. In terms of productivity it is fast enough, but it's single threaded performance has always been its greatest weakness. I will probably upgrade to first gen Zen, hopefully with the AM4 platform I will be able to upgrade my CPU in the future without swapping out my motherboard.
I'll have to wait and see. My main rig is a Haswell-E so I have 6C/12T. I'll need to compare the 2 along with any platform upgrades that the motherboard manufactures put on their boards. If the single thread performance is comparable and the motherboard partners have some good features I might consider upgrading. I've already got 5 AMD gpu's so I do try to support the underdog a little, but I really stuck with them because I've been anticipating AMD gpu's to perform better with Vulkan and a properly implemented DX12 and I haven't been disappointed. DOOM w/ Vulkan runs great on one Fury X 4K@60hz at ultra settings.
The quad-core Zen CPU runs at a 65W TDP, while the eight-core model runs at a 95W TDP, so we can already start to see efficiency improvements over AMD’s last batch of desktop CPUs. The 24 core and 32 core server SKUs run at 150W and 180W respectively.
Quad-core Zen has eight threads and 2MB of L2 cache or 8MB of L3 cache, meanwhile the octa-core Zen has 16 threads and double the cache. Both of these CPUs currently run at 2.8GHz with a boost clock of 3.2GHz. However, while running in idle mode, both chips can clock down to just 550MHz and consume just 5 watts of power.
Actually it had a 4%-15% gain over steamroller (according to wikipedia) and I read somewhere that it had a 35% over bulldozer. I dont know how much the improvement was over piledriver but since it wasnt much better than bulldozer it must have been more than 10%
But overall if the single core performance is at least as good as the one one haswell (less would be undesirable cause im running a 4690k) and the price is right, ill probably get an 8 core/16 thread zen and finally get 16-32gb of ram. If zen doesnt deliver ill probably just upgrade to haswell-e x99 or get a xeon
Whether it is haswell or skylake ipc rates from Zen are achieved I think IPC has flat lined. HSA and maybe specialized cores working with general purpose cores may increase some performance but the free lunch is over. Most future performance gains are gonna have to come the hard way, better software. Non-truckdrivers can explain it better, like this guy: "The vast majority of programmers today don’t grok concurrency, just as the vast majority of programmers 15 years ago didn’t yet grok objects" and: "Applications will increasingly need to be concurrent if they want to fully exploit continuing exponential CPU throughput gains Efficiency and performance optimization will get more, not less, important"
Didn't they say Zen's IPC will be on par with Haswell? But let's remember they also said the 2x 480s will be better than 1 1080 So smallest grain of smallest imaginable taken. This thread is pointless imho.