AMD Zen Rumours Point to Earlier Than Expected Release

Zen is a good name for it...all AMD fans need to meditate and pray that it doesn't suck
 
polonyc2 said:
Zen is a good name for it...all AMD fans need to meditate and pray that it doesn't suck
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Hey I still get 60 fps in all my games. ;) I wish I had USB 3.1 though. I still have USB 3.0 so I guess it's not so bad over here. There are new 990FX chipsets with USB 3.1
 
Quix said:
I'll believe it when I see it.
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I bought my Bulldozer motherboard in July 2011 and the processors didn't release until October 2011. Back then we could plug our old AMD processors into the mobo without issue though.
 
The eteknix.com article says Zen was originally scheduled for Q1 2016, which is wrong. It was originally scheduled for sometime in 2017, but was moved up in the schedule at the expense of delaying K12 which was scheduled for Q1 2016.
 
cageymaru said:
I bought my Bulldozer motherboard in July 2011 and the processors didn't release until October 2011. Back then we could plug our old AMD processors into the mobo without issue though.
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I remember that, but I take any piece of Zen news with a grain of salt. A whole new architecture is a lot of work and it's not going to come easy. AMD fans haven't had any new performance chips since 2011 so everyone is just straining for some news about Zen.
 
Roughly lines up with Nintendo's NX release which was rumored to use Zen/Artic islands. Nintendo was claiming a goal of 20m units for next year, so if they are using something Zen-like the earlier the better to hit that goal. Also rumors that Zen was hitting all its performance goals.

The irony of naming it Zen (Japanese rock garden) and pushing them out through Nintendo (Japanese company that made gray consoles)...
 
Hoping to see AMD make a good comeback, they've really fallen behind in some key areas. For gaming they remain a fine choice, but they're left way behind for almost any other compute task, ie content creation.
 
It may be the excavator APUs in march with zen later in the year.
 
I doubt it. AMD themselves stated zen itself was only going to be paper launched in q4 and that they don't expect actual revenue from it until q1 2017 at the earliest.
 
When was the last time AMD ever put out a CPU on time, let alone ahead of time?

This picture summarizes just about every AMD rumor regarding release dates.
salt_-_02.jpg


If they get it out in Q1 2016 it will be a miracle. I don't doubt they can, I just sincerely doubt all the rumors. I would think if they were going to launch in 3 months, there would be something...anything by now that AMD was in production.
 
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Will see, maybe they'll finally be a reason to upgrade my trusty 920 by whatever time Zen does come out.

Still, doubt they'll be a need to upgrade, but who knows.
 
I'm more concerned about pricing. If AMD thinks they can get away with Pricing the Fury and Fury-X/Nano at $550 and $650 respectively in a world of $530 GTX980-Ti's, then I'm worried that they'll price a chip the performs like an i7-6700k as if it were an i7-5930k.
 
Rauelius said:
I'm more concerned about pricing. If AMD thinks they can get away with Pricing the Fury and Fury-X/Nano at $550 and $650 respectively in a world of $530 GTX980-Ti's, then I'm worried that they'll price a chip the performs like an i7-6700k as if it were an i7-5930k.
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Most of the fury cost can be attributed to new tech or limited availability, whether because of HBM stock levels or their own GPU cores. As of this moment, HBM only exists in the Furys and that alone will add a premium.

By the by, the 980Ti is a $650 card MSRP. You cant use current sale prices you have to use release sale prices.
 
Rauelius said:
I'm more concerned about pricing. If AMD thinks they can get away with Pricing the Fury and Fury-X/Nano at $550 and $650 respectively in a world of $530 GTX980-Ti's, then I'm worried that they'll price a chip the performs like an i7-6700k as if it were an i7-5930k.
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I expect AMD to price Zen to be a little cheaper than the processor they believe they are competitive with although at first they may overcharge eventually they will get the price right.
 
I find it hard to believe they could jump the schedule by a good 6 months that would mean for the first time in a long long long time they had zero problems with the manufacturing process.

I'm not to bothered about the price as long as it is something with 8 cores or more.
 
It's not unusual for AMD motherboards to be released months prior to the CPU. If anything this rumor might point to Zen being on track for a Q3 or Q4 2016 release.
 
variant said:
It's not unusual for AMD motherboards to be released months prior to the CPU. If anything this rumor might point to Zen being on track for a Q3 or Q4 2016 release.
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But still if mobos are ready chances increase for leak of ES cpus and someone posting benchmarks :)

And getting to know if it's competitive or not could save a lot of time for people waiting for Zen.
 
JustReason said:
Most of the fury cost can be attributed to new tech or limited availability, whether because of HBM stock levels or their own GPU cores. As of this moment, HBM only exists in the Furys and that alone will add a premium.

By the by, the 980Ti is a $650 card MSRP. You cant use current sale prices you have to use release sale prices.
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Ther are no 980 Ti's on sale at $530 either.
 
cageymaru said:
AMD Zen Rumours Point to Earlier Than Expected Release.
http://www.eteknix.com/amd-zen-rumours-point-earlier-expected-release/
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They seem to be just talking about releasing the platform early not the Zen CPU's. IIRC AMD always planned to have some Carrizo based AM4 CPU's out before Zen showed up in Q4 2016. That is effectively what Bristol Ridge is.

A non-heat limited/gimped Carrizo should make for a decent low end system. Being able to upgrade to Zen eventually is the enticement in the long run I guess. If AMD can pull off IvyBridge/Haswell-ish performance for lower than Intel prices it'd definitely be worth it but no one knows for sure if they can do that yet.
 
cageymaru said:
I bought my Bulldozer motherboard in July 2011 and the processors didn't release until October 2011. Back then we could plug our old AMD processors into the mobo without issue though.
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I did the same thing. I decided to upgrade my motherboard for ddr3 and other options at the time. Swapped in bulldozer few months later even though it was terrible, my upgrade path was set when I bought that first mb. Won't be doing that again haha.

I'm getting pretty close to just doing a skylake build. Maybe if the mobos are released early that will give me time to look over them and see if the platform is any good.
 
I'm honestly pretty excited about this. I won't be building any zen systems for myself, but having market competition is never a bad thing. In reality most of the PCs that I build are AMD based so having new products out builds interest.

cageymaru said:
Hey I still get 60 fps in all my games. ;) I wish I had USB 3.1 though. I still have USB 3.0 so I guess it's not so bad over here. There are new 990FX chipsets with USB 3.1
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At this point I'm thinking 3.1 is partially a marketing gimmick playing on the idea of future proof. There's not any mainstream acceptance yet. I recently bought an X99 motherboard and saved $50 not buying the 3.1 version of the exact same thing.
 
What 3.1/.2 is supposed to get you, eventually, is much higher power delivery. That plus the extra bandwidth is what makes it real interesting.

Being able to run your monitor and a USB3 hub and speakers off of a single cable is something that it should be capable of eventually. Right now though no is putting out a implementation that will deliver the ~100w that it is capable of.

If the 1st AM4 mobo's make that happen that would be a nice bit of actual future proofing. Even if its only for 1 or 2 ports.
 
cageymaru said:
Hey I still get 60 fps in all my games. ;) I wish I had USB 3.1 though. I still have USB 3.0 so I guess it's not so bad over here. There are new 990FX chipsets with USB 3.1
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I imagine (and hope) AMD will be releasing a new chipset with Zen. AMD is woefully behind the other guys with chipsets, I can't imagine their new killer CPU is going to be using an old chipset. I'm talking USB 3.1, PCI-E 3.0, NVMe support - the works.
 
mesyn191 said:
What 3.1/.2 is supposed to get you, eventually, is much higher power delivery. That plus the extra bandwidth is what makes it real interesting.

Being able to run your monitor and a USB3 hub and speakers off of a single cable is something that it should be capable of eventually. Right now though no is putting out a implementation that will deliver the ~100w that it is capable of.

If the 1st AM4 mobo's make that happen that would be a nice bit of actual future proofing. Even if its only for 1 or 2 ports.
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Maybe that's the case, but how many enthusiasts are using onboard graphics? If it becomes the new discrete graphics standard then great, but at this point in time it is simply marketing fuel, and the supporting products haven't caught up.
 
Beaflag VonRathburg said:
how many enthusiasts are using onboard graphics? If it becomes the new discrete graphics standard then great, but at this point in time it is simply marketing fuel, and the supporting products haven't caught up.
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There is no word unfortunately on if it'll become common on discrete GPU's but even if it it doesn't it'll still nice to have and that is the long term goal for other (printers, scanners, etc.) devices too. Its not marketing at all. Not sure why you'd think it would be.

Products always lag major standard developments of any sort. OEM manufacturers want the standard hardware to become common place and cheaper before they're willing to start producing stuff that requires it. To do so otherwise would artificially limit their sales and kill their financial bottom line.
 
mesyn191 said:
There is no word unfortunately on if it'll become common on discrete GPU's but even if it it doesn't it'll still nice to have and that is the long term goal for other (printers, scanners, etc.) devices too. Its not marketing at all. Not sure why you'd think it would be.

Products always lag major standard developments of any sort. OEM manufacturers want the standard hardware to become common place and cheaper before they're willing to start producing stuff that requires it. To do so otherwise would artificially limit their sales and kill their financial bottom line.
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I'm talking about motherboard manufacturers charging more for usb 3.1 versions of motherboards now. There's maybe one of two products out at this point in time that could take advantage of the speed. For 99.9% of the population it is just a marketing key to up selling motherboards for something that should be standard.
 
Kemerd said:
compete with Intel on more enthusiast upper-level chips in terms of power consumption, heat, and performance that a smaller process gives.
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Its GF as the foundry so maybe they can compete with Intel on 1 of those things in the desktop and server space but not all 3. For laptops/mobile maybe they can actually end up with a viable mass sale low end product (which would be a big step up from how things are now) vs Intel but I don't think they'll be able to meet or beat Intel in the mid or high end range.

For the enthusiast market: If we're lucky they'll have tuned their CPU's and process for lower power reduction (following in Intel's footsteps, which is what they tend to do) but still have enough head room in the process and design to allow for good OC'ing. If we're unlucky they'll be already near max headroom for the process and design out of the box which means they'd overclock like crap and run relatively hot vs Skylake/Kaby Lake by default.

Your guess is as good as mine as to which it'll be. There is just virtually no solid information at this point so its all a bunch of WAG's for now. As others have noted maybe the biggest deal about a AM4 platform launch is that we'll see some more information leak about Zen.
 
Beaflag VonRathburg said:
I'm talking about motherboard manufacturers charging more for usb 3.1 versions of motherboards now.
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Sure but its always been like that in nearly any market. Early adopters usually get screwed unfortunately when it comes to price.

Not saying I particularly like that either mind you, just that is the way it is.
 
If they put 8 cores in mainstream cpu with around 4790k score and price it at like 350 euro, it will be great. They don't have to get 6700k/canon lake scores, as cpu they are still in few percent range from each other. But "moar corz" at mainstream price, with games more and more utilising more than 2 threads, it would be epic. I'd certainly swap the DC for 8 core Zen.
 
Hopefully they will have good ITX and large EATX boards. Then I could replace my FM2 HTPC and AM3 big PC.
 
mesyn191 said:
What 3.1/.2 is supposed to get you, eventually, is much higher power delivery. That plus the extra bandwidth is what makes it real interesting.

Being able to run your monitor and a USB3 hub and speakers off of a single cable is something that it should be capable of eventually. Right now though no is putting out a implementation that will deliver the ~100w that it is capable of.

If the 1st AM4 mobo's make that happen that would be a nice bit of actual future proofing. Even if its only for 1 or 2 ports.
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I think it would be funny to try and power my CRT monitor off of a USB port. I wonder if the USB cord or the mo board would melt down first.
 
my guess is bristol ridge to launch AM4 in Q2, with Zen to follow Q4.

i seem to remember they did the same with 890FX and Thuban, platform was available before the high-end processor for it.

bristol ridge won't be the most exciting thing in the world, presumably its Carrizo+, i.e. a wider thermal range of SKU's released, and the existing DDR4 controller enabled.
 
R3MF said:
my guess is bristol ridge to launch AM4 in Q2, with Zen to follow Q4.

i seem to remember they did the same with 890FX and Thuban, platform was available before the high-end processor for it.

bristol ridge won't be the most exciting thing in the world, presumably its Carrizo+, i.e. a wider thermal range of SKU's released, and the existing DDR4 controller enabled.
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It was funnier than that initial 890FX/GX mobos released together with Thuban were not compatible with Bulldozer.

Well in the hindsight we can say no big loss since even best FX barely outperforms Thuban >4 Ghz
 
Yeah, I am an AMD fan but, I no longer believe anything they say without proof. Besides Bulldozer and some video cards, there were so many things they showed over the last few years that appeared ready for productions but never came to fruition.
 
rabidz7 said:
I think it would be funny to try and power my CRT monitor off of a USB port.
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Probably. No adapters or anything to make that happen though. Modern LED LCD's typically seem to use 60w or less though so for anything bought in the last couple of years or so it could work pretty well.
 
mesyn191 said:
Probably. No adapters or anything to make that happen though. Modern LED LCD's typically seem to use 60w or less though so for anything bought in the last couple of years or so it could work pretty well.
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Depends on the voltage of the USB port. If you really wanted to do it, you could swap the AC-DC board in the monitor for a transformer and USB port. It uses over 150W, so it would probably melt the cord, but it would probably be possible.
 
I REFUSE to get my hopes up.

I CANNOT afford another bulldozer-load of emotional damage.
 
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