back to article The calm before the storm: AMD's Zen bears down on Intel CPUs

AMD is continuing to drip feed information about Zen, its long-awaited designed-from-scratch x86 processor microarchitecture. Zen is a big deal, or rather needs to be a big deal, for AMD because its previous Bulldozer microarchitecture was, well, bulldozed by Intel's Core series. Thus, AMD needs Zen to succeed in order to win …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I want to buy an AMD cpu next time. Buying Intel always makes me feel dirty. But then again my i5 is still going strong and won't need replacing for a while.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Glad it's not just me. Used to like AMD as they saved on heating costs in the winter. Not an issue any more, but would be nice to have a proper choice again.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Which AMD chips were the hot ones?

        Also, didn't Intel chips of the same era also suffer from heat dissipation issues?

        1. Fungus Bob

          Back in the '90s AMD 486s ran a lot hotter than Intel 486s.

          1. Black Betty

            Oooh yeah! Electromigration FTL.

            Mine was the IBM knock off, by the time I was finally able to replace it, my FSB was down to 25 MHz from the 40 the part was supposedly rated for.

        2. shanen

          AMD failed back then with crappy cpu fans that would ultimately fail resulting in a cooked chip and motherboard socket.

          1. Hans 1

            >AMD failed back then with crappy cpu fans

            You say you use the stock fan as shipped with the CPU ? You get all you deserve ... fans shipped with Intel/AMD CPU's always suck ... you're not gonna tell me you're too cheap for a $50 CPU fan, right ?

            1. Alan Edwards

              Stock HSFs

              The Intel HSFs aren't *that* bad. The Pentium G2120 in my VMWare server has been going more-or-less non-stop for over 3 years on the stock Intel fan, it's already killed the fan in one PSU.

              I'm still using the stock HSF on my i7-6700 too. I've got a Corsair H-90 ready to go in, I only put the Intel one on to check the rest of the kit was working. One day I'll get around to taking it to bits and putting the Corsair in, but the Intel is coping well so far.

              1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                Re: Stock HSFs

                "The Intel HSFs aren't *that* bad."

                And surprisingly, Intel stock coolers are pretty efficient.

                Foil/air bearing fans aren't terribly expensive compared to any given CPU. These tend not to fail ever (unless dropped). I'm guessing the mentality is that a system is only expected to last 3-5 years at most so why spec the fan beyond that? (Because some proportion of them die early!)

                Of course most home systems end up with clogged up heatsinks long before the fans die. There has to be a better way of getting heat out of the box which doesn't cost the earth.

        3. Alan Brown Silver badge

          "Which AMD chips were the hot ones?"

          All of them have been hotter than comparable Intels. Some hotter than others.

          None as hot as the Intel 286 I left a baked-on fingerprint on though. The blister took weeks to heal.

      2. P. Lee

        >Used to like AMD as they saved on heating costs in the winter.

        My 3930k fills that function quite nicely.

        I'd love AMD to do well. I just hope people are buying new PCs in sufficient quantities to give them good sales. However much I might like them, I doubt I'll be changing to anything anytime soon. Let's hope the server market is kind to them.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The Lenovo laptop on which this is typed runs an AMD processor, and, with openSUSE and tlp, I have had it down to under 5w, screen on, admittedly at idle. The days of AMD=excess_power are long gone. I wish the chipset was available as a mini-ITX or similar, as it would make a great home/small office server with that power consumption.

        1. Paul Shirley

          The days of excess power are 'sort of' gone if you're using an AMD APU but that's because they're low end/low(ish) performance parts more than any real efficiency improvement. Intels equivalents still suck less power. Just harder to care about a few watts.

          The performance parts are a very different story. My current FX8370 under load supplies 50%+ of the winter heating in my office. Fire up the GPU and I have a heating problem ;)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      want to buy an AMD cpu next time.

      We have 3 desktop PCs and two laptops. No Intel to be found.

      The A8 and A10 are great for midrange, laptops, and I was putting off desktop upgrades (from 8150) to Zen (when it finally arrive). That said, I'd love a 32-core Naples in my desktop.

  2. Chez

    Nice to see AMD prepping for a comeback. Looking forward to a release, might replace my old i5 at last.

  3. Wommit

    AMD needs to survive, and, if possible, grow. Intel hasn't any other credible competition.

    Recently I built my new desktop workstation, all AMD. For my uses it thrashes the relevant i7. But then I don't game, I need cores and lots of them.

    I am looking forward to hearing more about the Zen.

    (AMD fanboi.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I couldn't agree more. All our systems are AMD, servers, workstations and equipment controllers, and we have a few ARM based NSA boxes.

      Oh, I forgot the the Intel P4 box we inherited that we seldom use.

  4. GrumpenKraut
    Pint

    Let's hope this time AMD delivers the promised performance.

    Pretty, bloody, please...

    AMD fanboi as well, using an i7 system right now and also feeling slightly unhappy about it.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Intel i5 & i7 support group

      Lot of unhappiness on here from AMD fans currently using i5 or i7. Maybe we should form a support group? We could be the founder members.

      Group hug!!

      1. jason 7

        Re: Intel i5 & i7 support group

        I was a big AMD fan for many years. But I switched over to Intel about three years ago.

        No regrets and no plans to change.

        As for Zen...let's just wait for the reviews shall we? No point getting all excited. I think we've been here before.

      2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        I'd rather not join that group

        I have an FX6100 in a four year old motherboard. I just hoping AMD get Zen out before it dies.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Competition

    Intel need competition, or they'll try to milk their customers dry. Whether that competition comes in the x86 space or from the up and coming ARM platform (chromebooks and desktop-focused android e.g. remix OS, as well as ARM-based servers) is another matter. AMD are pretty much unique, in that they are able to field products in both the x86 and ARM space.

    I wish them all the best... but I can't wait for them to catch up. My next machine is going to be based on intel - maybe next time I can go back to AMD.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Agreed

      Even the biggest Intel fanboys should want AMD competitive, as it will force Intel to either push harder or lower prices.

  6. Richard Wharram

    The Athlon days were good.

    It was great to have AMD around when Intel was pissing around with RDRAM and Netburst architecture and generally delivering crap. Athlon and DDRRAM was the only choice for a serious gamer in those days.

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: The Athlon days were good.

      The Athlon 64 days were even better. Cheaper and faster than Intel's offerings, and 64 bit.

      Intel came out with Prescott, which turned out to be rubbish (unless you were chilly), and had to go back to the drawing board and come out with the Core architecture.

      So, even if you prefer buying Intel, a strong AMD is good because they force Intel to up their game.

      (Unfortunately I just bought a new i5, ho hum)

      1. Richard Wharram

        Re: The Athlon days were good.

        And by Core Architecture you mean based on Pentium M which means based on Pentium 3 which means based on Pentium Pro.

        Netburst really was a fuck up of legendary proportions when Intel thought as long as they could market with the highest clock speeds of CPU and RAM then the performance didn't matter.

        1. jason 7

          Re: The Athlon days were good.

          Oh the wonderful Opteron 180, DFI LanParty NF4, 2GB of DDR500 ram, 10000rpm Raptor and a 7900GTX.

          BF2 and Eve Online were a great time.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: The Athlon days were good.

          "Intel thought as long as they could market with the highest clock speeds of CPU and RAM then the performance didn't matter."

          They're right, up to a point. People buy based on clock speed, not on actual benchmarks.

          When I point out how small the differences are between E5 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz cores for most _real world_ operations people look at me as if I've sprouted a second head.

        3. Ashley_Pomeroy

          Re: The Athlon days were good.

          "Netburst really was a fuck up of legendary proportions when Intel thought as long as they could market with the highest clock speeds of CPU and RAM then the performance didn't matter."

          I can remember Intel's boast that it would be selling 10ghz chips by 2011:

          http://www.geek.com/chips/intel-predicts-10ghz-chips-by-2011-564808/

          They didn't explicitly say that the Pentium 4 would reach those speeds, but it's an insight into their thinking - clock speed was the only thing that mattered. Since the late 1990s my main desktop PC has almost invariably been an Intel machine, not because I love Intel but because their chips have been mostly good. But I avoided the Pentium 4 era entirely. I skipped from an overclocked Celeron 300A to an AMD Duron, and then from the Duron to the Core Duo era.

          Based on this report Zen doesn't seem very impressive, which is a shame because I have a certain amount of residual affection for AMD. For a few years they took on Intel and won! On the other hand AMD's share price has gone up by 10% today so obviously the market thinks that Zen is a good thing.

  7. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Looking forward (hopefully)

    I could do with more cores for multi-threaded low latency audio work, and I'm very reluctant to give Intel any more of my money. I still feel ashamed for buying an i5 a couple of years ago.

  8. &rew
    Coat

    AMD upgrades

    I have stuck with AMD since my early days of self-build PC, and I liked that AMD changed their socket design less often than Intel. My current 4-year old processor is running on a 6/7-year old motherboard, and handles itself rather well - only sticking point is the memory bus speed.

    The other great thing is that they are cheap as ... well, you know.

  9. imanidiot Silver badge

    The problem for AMD

    AMD has to rely on external fabs for their semi-con production expertise, while Intel does everything in-house. Because Global Foundries just doesn't have the same sort of cash to burn as Intel they seem to be a step behind in terms of production expertise and capabilities. This hampers AMD as well. It's all well and good they can deliver a chip that can compete with Intels CURRENT offering, but what about the next generation?

    1. P0l0nium

      Re: The problem for AMD

      GlobalFoundries has the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi as a Sugar-Daddy, They just got paid $$Billions to haul away the trash that was IBM Microelectronics and they just got given Samsung's 14nm process for free !!!! Also ...they don't have to publish accounts.

      How can they NOT have "the same sort of cash to burn as Intel" ???

      1. imanidiot Silver badge

        Re: The problem for AMD

        @P0l0nium

        Intel spends those billions on R&D alone. There really is a massive scale difference there. Getting a fab process "for free" still doesn't give them the sort of deep know how about nano-lithography Intel gets from doing all the research itself. Once things are worked out the slightly less clever can get/keep it working. But when things inevitably go south because of some unforseen variable you want the really brainy chaps around who have the "fingerspitzengefühl" to get it fixed. From what I'm seeing Global Foundries is still playing catchup (Though they are making good progression and are certainly gaining on Intel)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem for AMD

      Things aren't exactly rosy around Intel's fabs right now. A lot of their better people took the early retirement and left including most of their more experienced engineers. I would stay away from their newer products until Intel can build up the same level of institutional experience that's walking out the door and over to Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM and GlobalFoundries.

  10. Fuzz

    "competitive TDP."

    Competitive as in similar to but ultimately worse than Intel.

    My current i7 is one of the 65W ones, it stays cool most of the time without needing the fan spinning. Current AMD chips that get anywhere near it on speed are over 100W.

    The old competitive AMD forced Intel to develop decent processors and release them quickly. Now my processor is 3 generations old and I don't see anything from benchmarks that would encourage me to upgrade. Hopefully something new from AMD will shake up the CPU market.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "competitive TDP."

      "Current AMD chips" have a 40% lower IPC than these new ones, or so they say. So don't base your assumptions about TDP on those old ones.

      And there's no way your i7 runs without the fan spinning. You mean it is spinning quietly, not that it isn't spinning at all. Getting any desktop CPU to run without a fan at all requires either a solid copper heatsink the size of a Rubik's Cube, or using one of those expensive ULV chips with a 15 watt TDP (and accepting reduced performance)

      Intel's reduced progress on performance has more to do with reaching physical limits than lack of competition. Increasing frequency increases power draw exponentially, so we've kind of settled at a ceiling of around 4 GHz, with little progress being made. You can have more cores, you can have more new instructions to speed up certain types of encryption, but the only improvements beyond single digits between generations of Intel chips you will see in the future is on the GPU - because graphics is easy to parallelize.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: "competitive TDP."

        "but the only improvements beyond single digits between generations of Intel chips you will see in the future is on the GPU - because graphics is easy to parallelize."

        Yup and for the kind of stuff I'm supporting, that's a major problem.

        The mantra for the last 50 years in research computing has been "computers always get faster" and they've relied on it when predicting delivery of results.

        We've been getting a steady stream of complaints that "the new server is no faster (or slightly slower) than the old one" - and invariably the culprit is badly written, singlethreaded code that simply doesn't know how to run in a multicore system.

        Physicists refuse to take computing or programming courses (they think that IDL(*) is a good language to do heavy lifting in FFS), let alone accept that they have to know how to multithread. The current kludge is to run lots of individual processes from the command line but this comes with its own gotchas.

        (*) IDL is to scientific computing as MS Excel is to business operations.

        1. Roo
          Windows

          Re: "competitive TDP."

          "We've been getting a steady stream of complaints that "the new server is no faster (or slightly slower) than the old one" - and invariably the culprit is badly written, singlethreaded code that simply doesn't know how to run in a multicore system."

          We have a similar problem, but the root cause is PHBs thinking that more cores on the same memory + cache config = more speed. They are finding out that more cores is f.all use when memory is the bottleneck. With respect to threads, they tend to make the cache/memory contention problem *worse*, the ideal is a bunch of loosely couple processes that share as little memory as possible. :)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "competitive TDP."

        Large performance gains will be easy for Intel to show when they bite the bullet and

        introduce high bandwidth 3d memory cache on Xeons, just as Knights Landing, Nvidia Pascal

        and AMD GPU's already have.

        Interestingly, AMD may be even ahead of Intel here, since they already have experience

        of HBM with their GPU's.

        Its the memory that's the problem.

  11. Lamb0
    Linux

    No Wintel for me!

    I'm not a gamer, nor in the market for Zen... yet. When I need a couple more cores to keep most of the the 32GB ECC (unbuffered) RAM, 10 SATA3 + 6 USB3 ports, and 4 PCIe3 slots busy (SABERTOOTH 990FX/GEN3); I'll swap the FX6300 for a liquid cooled and somewhat overclocked (~4.5GHz?) FX8370e. Primarily for storage with an occasional compile, and maybe a VM or two, it does yeoman's duty - thank you very much AMD! It's EVGA Superclocked 750Ti is more than fit for purpose for the user side - while a Geforce4 64MB chugs away in the PCI(no e) slot as the Console. (Presuming it lasts a few years longer a Zen+ is in that box's future.)

    There's no rush, but a Raven Ridge APU will be a fine foundation for graphical workstation late next year. Ye Olde 1.6GHz 4GB dual 64bit Athlon (RS780) AIW is currently sufficient for web surfing so long as NoScript blocks most of the useless CPU Cycle Thieves.

    The one lung "Walmart Special" (Compaq) 2GHz 32bit Athlon upgraded to 1GB RAM with the Radeon Xpress 200M (1150 chipset w/ATI Radeon X300 GPU) is getting a little tired. A "lightweight" OS like AntiX works fine, but the graphics are weak. In a laptop I'd like an APU with HBM2 to assist the graphics and plenty of ports. Even just 8GB of HBM2 with no DDR4 would be sufficient, though mobile APUs with HBM2 probably won't arrive till '18 or later. An additional battery draining GPU need not apply at it's endurance for hobbyist Astronomy and Amateur Radio applications rather than gaming prowess that I'm wanting. ;-)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "As for Zen...let's just wait for the reviews shall we? No point getting all excited. I think we've been here before."

    This. Yes, we have been here before expecting a new processor/gpu/architecture to eclipse the competitor's offering. We see smoke and mirrors tests (like this article) and get our hopes up for true competition to the reigning champion.... only to be disappointed when the final product comes out and third parties start testing.

  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Pint

    Go AMD !

    I still have my Athlon chip (on the shelf), and I'm proud of that little one. It's good to see that AMD is getting back to where it should be : toe-to-toe with Intel. Good for everyone, as we all agree.

    But I am not ashamed of my current i7. I just want the best performance my money can buy for my gaming needs. And it has been a (long) while since AMD was in that picture. I do sincerely hope that my next CPU choice will be AMD.

    Here's to looking forward to that.

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Go AMD !

      But I am not ashamed of my current i7. I just want the best performance my money can buy for my gaming needs. And it has been a (long) while since AMD was in that picture. I do sincerely hope that my next CPU choice will be AMD.

      My current machines are i5 and plenty of life left in them for my needs. No shame here either, but also looking forward to building an AMD machine again. It has been a long time...

    2. Boothy

      Re: Go AMD !

      Long time AMD CPU fan here, I've built a few AMD gaming rigs over the years (late 90s onward)..

      But my current rig, built in 2012, is an i7 (3770k), as unfortunately for gaming, single core speed, not number of cores, rules, and AMD just were not there!

      I really hope this 3GHz speed is just due to it being a test, and that this isn't indicative of the real world speeds we can expect from this new chip set in the final production version.

      Hopefully if they can match proper desktop speeds, as in 4.5GHz (and upwards), then this could mean AMD become a contender against the top end i7 chips, and become a viable option in time for my next build.

  14. John 104

    That's it?

    I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed to read that it is on par with current Intel architecture. I expected a ground up chip design to blow away the competition, not something to get the to the current level of performance.

    I was an AMD fanboi back in the day, but when I looked for my new laptop recently, I didn't consider AMD as a viable alternative. As long as PC cycles are these days, I'll probably consider it in several years. By then it might be too late t hough.

    1. jason 7

      Re: That's it?

      Well I should think you struggled to find a decent AMD based laptop for a start. Not many around and they are usually hamstrung in a major way and overpriced for the privilege.

      5400rpm HDDs, Single Channel Ram (nice with an APU) and 1366x768 TN screens all for £700+

      1. John 104

        Re: That's it?

        Or my HP Envy with an i7 skylake, 8GB DDR3L RAM and a Samsung SSD for $850 :)

  15. Cameron Colley

    I was just telling somebody today that I thought I just bought my last AMD chip...

    I recently upgraded to an FX-8370 (currently mildly overclocked at 4.5GHz) to replace the FX-8120 that I built this system with* in the hope of extending the life of this system until I feel I can afford to build something new.

    I was telling a colleague this and explaining that I did so because it's the most powerful chip that will fit in the socket and that next time I'll be looking to (possibly spend more that I would for AMD and) build an Intel system as AMD just aren't performing as well.

    As somebody who admires AMD for the architecture they invented (AMD64) and some Intel-beating chips of the past I hope that this means I may be able to choose AMD and be buying something close to top-of-the-table (assuming I can afford it, of course).

    *I knew at the time it wasn't impressive with benchmarks but knowing that all virtualisation features were definitely enabled rather than Intel's "You must read all the specifications, regardless of price, as sometimes we just disable things for fun" approach and knowing that I'd at least 4 proper cores and potentially 8 (usage-dependent) for my money meant it was generally fine and I still think it was the right choice.

  16. Leeroy

    X2 5200

    I'm still using a very old x2 AMD as my main work PC, it's been upgraded to 4GB ram, SSD, and an AMD 250 graphics card to run 2x 30 inch monitors. Works fine for me as I actually work and don't FB, LinkedIn etc all day.

    Server side its several 8350 cpu's with 32 GB each ram runing VM's on a cost effective SAN. At half the price of intel kit they get upgraded more often and I have more redundancy.

    Unfortunately when we need new desktops in a hurry it always ends up being intel based. AMD are either out of stock or the lead time is too long. Sort that out and they woud probably sell more machines :/

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