AMD Confirms Zen Launch

[razor1]

I think they are going to be decent, and price will match performance, neither of these companies will be going into a price war. If they do they both get hurt, and for AMD, they want their margins to go up, that is a pretty big goal for them for the last few quarters. This is what I expect, an 8 core Zen will compete well with a 6 core Kaby. If that happens you will see the 8 core Zen will be price around the priced of the 6 core Kaby or just a bit lower $50 bucks or so. This will improve AMD's margins to 40%. Which is their goal.

This is what I'm hoping for, reality might be much different lol, as I have no idea how a 6 core Kaby will perform, assuming it can retain its clocks from a 4 core Kaby, 8 core Zen might not be able to reach it....

 

[Ripskin]

I think they are going to be decent, and price will match performance, neither of these companies will be going into a price war.

I think AMD needs this to be better than decent to win customers back. A cheap price is great, but the performance had better be there to back it up and justify the cost. Otherwise the bulk of people will stay going to Intel, pricey yes but they perform and don't need to be replaced frequently since there is no real competition.

I hope Zen performs and gets some market share back for AMD allowing them to get a good successor in order to keep the momentum going. They had a good number of solid chips at a good cost for many years which made everyone win.

 

[Shintai]

GF 14lpp had some metal layer defects that hurt performance/power until just recently, very possible we already have a1 and a2 revision Zen chips, their is a new revision of polaris 10 that is 50% better on power consumption, very likely same situation for zen.

No, just no.

 

[Shintai]

I think they are going to be decent, and price will match performance, neither of these companies will be going into a price war. If they do they both get hurt, and for AMD, they want their margins to go up, that is a pretty big goal for them for the last few quarters. This is what I expect, an 8 core Zen will compete well with a 6 core Kaby. If that happens you will see the 8 core Zen will be price around the priced of the 6 core Kaby or just a bit lower $50 bucks or so. This will improve AMD's margins to 40%. Which is their goal.

This is what I'm hoping for, reality might be much different lol, as I have no idea how a 6 core Kaby will perform, assuming it can retain its clocks from a 4 core Kaby, 8 core Zen might not be able to reach it....

It has to even compete with a quad SKL/IKL first. You know, those with much higher IPC that clocks way past 4Ghz. Unless its going to be the same story by cherry picking a few 7zip benchmarks and such.

 

[razor1]

I think AMD needs this to be better than decent to win customers back. A cheap price is great, but the performance had better be there to back it up and justify the cost. Otherwise the bulk of people will stay going to Intel, pricey yes but they perform and don't need to be replaced frequently since there is no real competition.

I hope Zen performs and gets some market share back for AMD allowing them to get a good successor in order to keep the momentum going. They had a good number of solid chips at a good cost for many years which made everyone win.

It has to even compete with a quad SKL/IKL first. You know, those with much higher IPC that clocks way past 4Ghz. Unless its going to be the same story by cherry picking a few 7zip benchmarks and such.

Well here is the thing if they can get increased margins, that alone will get AMD out of the debt hole they are in. That is the most important thing for them right now. Then IF Zen's base is good which it seems to be, they can iterate faster than Intel, to catch up to Intel as long as Intel is going to be doing small updates like they have been. So its not completely up to AMD it heavily depends on what Intel does in the future.

 

[ebduncan]

no point in speculating about Zen anymore.

just have to wait til retail silicon hits the market and then everyone can bicker over the reviews.

We know enough already about it, we just need hands on experience. I mean 95w is a small TDP for a 8 core desktop chip. Even Intel specs its desktop 8 core at 140w. The real question is what will Zen do if you give it a 200 watt tdp, aka the overclockers option.

 

[Rvenger]

It has to even compete with a quad SKL/IKL first. You know, those with much higher IPC that clocks way past 4Ghz. Unless its going to be the same story by cherry picking a few 7zip benchmarks and such.

I swear these goal posts move like the wind blows outside. Your comment sounds like AMD should just buy Intel chips and rebrand and call it a day because there's nothing better or ever will be.


Its going to be bad at something and it will be pointed out on every post by you. High power consumption, bad overclock-ability. Single threaded IPC is king, lets all just go back to 1 core right because that's the best.

These chips are going to be better offerings and give people options for upgrade paths. AMD would have scrapped ZEN if it was a complete failure. Sure, it will suck at something, but we need to see what that is first when the retail samples arrive.

 

[razor1]

Well for AMD to gain marketshare they really do have to go head to head with Intel's best. Think about the reason why AMD still has 18% of the CPU market even with its troubles right now. Its only because of their pricing and people that can only afford very low end systems. I have not seen any corporation use AMD products (desktops general use) for a long time. I think the last ones I saw in corporate environment were for 3d development at Sulder & Hennessy (advertising firm) in 2004, pretty much just before Nehalam came out.

If they can't get to the best, they will still be marketshare starved, of course the people that want AMD and currently getting AMD, cash strapped people, will stick with them as they have no choice.

I don't expect AMD to gain much marketshare for at least a year or till Zen + comes out. I don't even think AMD expects it either going by their last conference call.

Now Zen is to be 90 watts, but the problem with that 90 watts, if they can't get to the same clocks speeds as SKL, or KL, don't expect a 8 core to match up against a 6 core, its going to be 8 core vs a 4 core again so your power envelope advantage won't be there anymore. Just too many ways to look at these things right now because of the unknowns, I hope this isn't the case of what happens.

 

[Shintai]

I swear these goal posts move like the wind blows outside. Your comment sounds like AMD should just buy Intel chips and rebrand and call it a day because there's nothing better or ever will be.


Its going to be bad at something and it will be pointed out on every post by you. High power consumption, bad overclock-ability. Single threaded IPC is king, lets all just go back to 1 core right because that's the best.

These chips are going to be better offerings and give people options for upgrade paths. AMD would have scrapped ZEN if it was a complete failure. Sure, it will suck at something, but we need to see what that is first when the retail samples arrive.

FX CPUs still sell. And FX was "without doubt an unmitigated failure" as an AMD VP said. Are you saying these CPUs shouldn't sell? Because then you are just plain silly. To begin with, Zen just has to be better than FX and it will sell just as much. The biggest error here is that the APU is so late compared.

The context is about some people already starting to think it competes with 6 cores and maybe even 8 cores from Intel. Yet it has to compete with a quad first.

 

[EuphoricRage470]

Well for AMD to gain marketshare they really do have to go head to head with Intel's best. Think about the reason why AMD still has 18% of the CPU market even with its troubles right now. Its only because of their pricing and people that can only afford very low end systems. I have not seen any corporation use AMD products (desktops general use) for a long time. I think the last ones I saw in corporate environment were for 3d development at Sulder & Hennessy (advertising firm) in 2004, pretty much just before Nehalam came out.

If they can't get to the best, they will still be marketshare starved, of course the people that want AMD and currently getting AMD, cash strapped people, will stick with them as they have no choice.

I don't expect AMD to gain much marketshare for at least a year or till Zen + comes out. I don't even think AMD expects it either going by their last conference call.

Now Zen is to be 90 watts, but the problem with that 90 watts, if they can't get to the same clocks speeds as SKL, or KL, don't expect a 8 core to match up against a 6 core, its going to be 8 core vs a 4 core again so your power envelope advantage won't be there anymore. Just too many ways to look at these things right now because of the unknowns, I hope this isn't the case of what happens.

18% share? Lol. Their revenue share of the PC market as a whole is sub 10%.

And even when AMD outs Zen+, Intel will be on Icelake or later.

 

[razor1]

18% share? Lol. Their revenue share of the PC market as a whole is sub 10%.

And even when AMD outs Zen+, Intel will be on Icelake or later.

Well that is the big unknown, we don't know what Intel plans for taking on Zen are. I expect them to take the bull by the horns but it all depends what they have in their pipeline.

 

[Rvenger]

FX CPUs still sell. And FX was "without doubt an unmitigated failure" as an AMD VP said. Are you saying these CPUs shouldn't sell? because then you are just plain silly.

The context is about some people already starting to think it competes with 6 cores and maybe even 8 cores from Intel. Yet it has to compete with a quad first.

FX is an unmitigated failure without a doubt. Never said it wasn't. ZEN isn't Bulldozer.

What I am saying is ZEN will not compete with Intel on every metric but should compete in areas that matter. One example is the missing AVX2 instructions from what I heard.

 

[Shintai]

FX is an unmitigated failure without a doubt. Never said it wasn't. ZEN isn't Bulldozer.

What I am saying is ZEN will not compete with Intel on every metric but should compete in areas that matter. One example is the missing AVX2 instructions from what I heard.

Again, FX CPUs still sell. So that's the only entry Zen as such as to beat to be a better product that still sells.

 

[Gideon]

Well that is the big unknown, we don't know what Intel plans for taking on Zen are. I expect them to take the bull by the horns but it all depends what they have in their pipeline.

I really doubt Intel will fight very hard over the desktop market, servers I could see due to high margins lots of profit but Intel has stated they are no longer focused on the desktop market.

 

[razor1]

I really doubt Intel will fight very hard over the desktop market, servers I could see due to high margins lots of profit but Intel has stated they are no longer focused on the desktop market.

You better believe they will fight, they don't want AMD around, and giving AMD an opportunity to survive, is not in their best interest at all. As I stated, with current marketshare (AMD is only in desktops right now), just a 10% increase in AMD's margins will get them 1 billion a year, they will be in the black, that is enough money to start pushing R&D for Zen + and if Zen proves to be a good platform to build on, expect AMD to expedite Zen+ iterations.

Also AMD will gain marketshare in notebooks with Zen from the looks of it, so most likely they will make more money then just the increase of margins.

I don't mean fighting as in dropping prices either, Intel will not initiate the price war, they will only fight on the tech innovation side.

AMD is not capable of going into a price war either. And for AMD to gain that 10% margin they will have to keep their prices relative to performance 8 core Zen against a 6 core Intel.

AMD is really still in between a rock and a hard place with Zen, but they will be able to get out of that after a couple quarters of Zen. I think Intel will not allow that if they can and if they have the capability to keep AMD where they are, and don't, its their folly.

This is just my pure business cap on, if I was in Intel's shoes, I would not give AMD a chance to go anywhere but that is all dependent on what is in the pipeline, if Intel hasn't been prepping its pipeline for Zen there will be no response for around 3 years......

Server side, Intel has no need to worry, only way Zen can take server share away from Intel, is if its core for core competitive and even that, as I explained earlier they have to wait because of contracts.

Server side give you an example, Opteron came out, and it took 1 year before AMD was able to start increasing market share in Servers, and this was before Intel started playing their games with kickbacks, rebates, what not. Pretty much contracts were running out on Intel and people were jumping ship for a vastly better product. If the products are the same its kind of a hard sell, to switch over to an entirely new platform. So yeah servers I expect very little to nothing for AMD in the short term.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Server side give you an example, Opteron came out, and it took 1 year before AMD was able to start increasing market share in Servers, and this was before Intel started playing their games with kickbacks, rebates, what not. Pretty much contracts were running out on Intel and people were jumping ship for a vastly better product. If the products are the same its kind of a hard sell, to switch over to an entirely new platform. So yeah servers I expect very little to nothing for AMD in the short term.

Before Intel kickbacks , please give me a break...

 

[razor1]

Before Intel kickbacks , please give me a break...

Opterons came out 1 year before Intel started doing their kick backs. The kickbacks couldn't even stop business to switching over to AMD because the amount of money the saved else were, operations, power, efficiency, the kickbacks couldn't cover that.

Please look up the history and timing of who did what and when things came out, not that hard to find.

The kickbacks, rebates were used for OEM's, not towards end businesses.

Dell and HP were the first OEM's to start offering AMD servers, and Intel couldn't stop them because prior to HP and Dell, offering them, many data centers and server farms were custom building AMD blades, because they weren't offering them. Yeah you can ask around too if you want to confirm what I'm saying.

 

[Shintai]

Kickback for servers didn't exist and with good reason. It was for consumers only.

Same reason why server CPU price as such is mostly irrelevant. Its also why they cant sell a current Opteron server even when they give the CPUs away for free to put it bluntly.

Price is quite far down the list of the metrics being looked at.

 

[razor1]

Yep price is meaningless in the server market, infrastructure costs are pennies compared to the rest of the the costs of actually running the damn things, software is like 10 fold more expensive then the hardware it runs on. Ram is even more expensive then the CPU (as much as 5 times more) costs. Cooling and other costs associated with the needs of the servers are even more then the hardware. Added it all up the hardware is only a low fraction of the total expense.

 

[EuphoricRage470]

Opterons came out 1 year before Intel started doing their kick backs. The kickbacks couldn't even stop business to switching over to AMD because the amount of money the saved else were, operations, power, efficiency, the kickbacks couldn't cover that.

Please look up the history and timing of who did what and when things came out, not that hard to find.

The kickbacks, rebates were used for OEM's, not towards end businesses.

Dell and HP were the first OEM's to start offering AMD servers, and Intel couldn't stop them because prior to HP and Dell, offering them, many data centers and server farms were custom building AMD blades, because they weren't offering them. Yeah you can ask around too if you want to confirm what I'm saying.

You speak the truth here.

 

[luminousone]

We bought 4 dell r715 opty servers 4-5 years ago, they have been great machines, at the time, made sense for our VM's, could buy 4 cores for every 1 core on the intel stuff for about the same price. *note power use isn't our problem =-p*

 

[razor1]

yeah they were still good buys really depending on what the business needs are.

But over all, when you are talking about companies that buy these things in the 10000's of units at a time, their business isn't driven by the cost of the hardware.

 

[EuphoricRage470]

You better believe they will fight, they don't want AMD around, and giving AMD an opportunity to survive, is not in their best interest at all. As I stated, with current marketshare (AMD is only in desktops right now), just a 10% increase in AMD's margins will get them 1 billion a year, they will be in the black, that is enough money to start pushing R&D for Zen + and if Zen proves to be a good platform to build on, expect AMD to expedite Zen+ iterations.

Forget "giving AMD an opportunity to survive" -- Intel doesn't want to lose the revenue/manufacturing scale. Ceding any significant amount of PC/server volume would have a negative impact on Intel's revenue/profits, and their shareholders wouldn't be very happy about it.

Also AMD will gain marketshare in notebooks with Zen from the looks of it, so most likely they will make more money then just the increase of margins.

Zen for notebooks will have to compete with Cannon Lake-Y/U in the high volume thin and light/2-in-1 spaces and for high perf notebooks it has to go up against Coffee Lake (Cannon Lake-H) with up to six cores (probably +5% IPC over SKL) and a new Gen 10 gfx engine all on a new revision of 14nm (which will likely be called 14nm++). People seem to forget that Intel has new stuff coming too, not just AMD

I don't mean fighting as in dropping prices either, Intel will not initiate the price war, they will only fight on the tech innovation side.

Ideally they can fend AMD off by offering better tech for the same price through innovation, but I can see them cutting prices/introducing more granular SKUs to fight at lower price points if need-be. Losing volume hurts their factory utilization rates (and thus margins), so they are better off cutting prices a bit if they have to than outright losing that volume.

This is just my pure business cap on, if I was in Intel's shoes, I would not give AMD a chance to go anywhere but that is all dependent on what is in the pipeline, if Intel hasn't been prepping its pipeline for Zen there will be no response for around 3 years......

Why wouldn't Intel have been preparing their pipeline for Zen? What do you think Intel has been spending $12B+/year in R&D on?

Server side, Intel has no need to worry, only way Zen can take server share away from Intel, is if its core for core competitive and even that, as I explained earlier they have to wait because of contracts.

Server side give you an example, Opteron came out, and it took 1 year before AMD was able to start increasing market share in Servers, and this was before Intel started playing their games with kickbacks, rebates, what not. Pretty much contracts were running out on Intel and people were jumping ship for a vastly better product. If the products are the same its kind of a hard sell, to switch over to an entirely new platform. So yeah servers I expect very little to nothing for AMD in the short term.

Server side Intel has been increasing its R&D/product investments pretty significantly; they know there is a whole ARMy just waiting to pounce and of course they must have known AMD would try again (again, AMD has been yelling into that megaphone for years that this is their intention).

 

[razor1]

Forget "giving AMD an opportunity to survive" -- Intel doesn't want to lose the revenue/manufacturing scale. Ceding any significant amount of PC/server volume would have a negative impact on Intel's revenue/profits, and their shareholders wouldn't be very happy about it.

Well Yeah lol, I was thinking of the end result if they don't give space for Zen, AMD will have a tough time keeping a float, they are on a life jacket right now

Zen for notebooks will have to compete with Cannon Lake-Y/U in the high volume thin and light/2-in-1 spaces and for high perf notebooks it has to go up against Coffee Lake (Cannon Lake-H) with up to six cores (probably +5% IPC over SKL) and a new Gen 10 gfx engine all on a new revision of 14nm (which will likely be called 14nm++). People seem to forget that Intel has new stuff coming too, not just AMD

True, but still going from nothing to at least something, is better even with the new chips from Intel, AMD might get some market share in notebooks, compared to right now, where they can't even dream of it with their current products.

Ideally they can fend AMD off by offering better tech for the same price through innovation, but I can see them cutting prices/introducing more granular SKUs to fight at lower price points if need-be. Losing volume hurts their factory utilization rates (and thus margins), so they are better off cutting prices a bit if they have to than outright losing that volume.

This would come from AMD, AMD will initiate a possible price war (limited) We are looking at most 1 segment change down, nothing more.

Why wouldn't Intel have been preparing their pipeline for Zen? What do you think Intel has been spending $12B+/year in R&D on?

Yeah most likely they have been, but because they haven't talked about it, which any company in their right mind and in a position that Intel has been wouldn't lol, its up in the air. I expect them to be prepping for it, if Intel didn't well then that gives AMD the breathing room they need and I will say it right now, if that happens, I would ask people to tell Intel to change their management around because that would mean they are so blind that they are asking to get fired.

Server side Intel has been increasing its R&D/product investments pretty significantly; they know there is a whole ARMy just waiting to pounce and of course they must have known AMD would try again (again, AMD has been yelling into that megaphone for years that this is their intention).

Yep they have been, and its not for their chips only, they have increased it for their peripherals and platforms, all in anticipation of competition from ARM and Zen, so it points to that they have been prepping for this for a while now.

 

[Gideon]

I think you underestimate corporate arrogance. Most executives would not believe at Intel that AMD could catch them with Zen, so most would not authorize spending cash to compete with it. I dont think will be seeing 8 core consumer cpu from Intel anytime soon, if you never worked at a large corporation you may not understand that arrogance. But last time Intel was wrong about the threat AMD was they went to shady tactics to try to stop them as they tried to fix their architecture with raw speed at first and then finally a whole new design not based on just pure speed.

 

[fullvietFX]

Throwing my Intel systems in the bushes when Zen comes out. AMD Fanboy for life! My first CPU was an AMD 1GHZ Slot-A.

 

[drescherjm]

I dont think will be seeing 8 core consumer cpu from Intel anytime soon,

You mean on the mainstream platform. The main reason there will not be one is because its performance would not be as good as a 4C / 8T processor (because of the reduced clock speed to meet the lower TDP) for most consumers who do not have software designed to use 16 threads effectively. And also price for a 8C / 16T CPU is higher than most will be willing to pay. This will be the same reasons why there will be 4C / 8T Zen processors as well.

 

[razor1]

I think you underestimate corporate arrogance. Most executives would not believe at Intel that AMD could catch them with Zen, so most would not authorize spending cash to compete with it. I dont think will be seeing 8 core consumer cpu from Intel anytime soon, if you never worked at a large corporation you may not understand that arrogance. But last time Intel was wrong about the threat AMD was they went to shady tactics to try to stop them as they tried to fix their architecture with raw speed at first and then finally a whole new design not based on just pure speed.

I don't underestimate it, big companies or companies that become the top dog can be blind, and that is why I stated, there is a possibility they might miss Zen and its impact, but it doesn't look like it when you see Intel's R&D expenditure and what they have been doing.

Zen's and AMD's future is not in their hands, its in Intel's hands, and what Intel can or cannot do in the 3 years after Zen is released.

You can get 8 core parts for Intel for the general consumer, just have to get a different platform for them. For Intel they did this because its a way to make more money, but making pin capability is not that much of a task if they have to, but it requires many changes for existing motherboards, so probably won't see that happen for them, only for next gen chips and platforms and this will only happen if they have to do it.

 

[Shintai]

I think you underestimate corporate arrogance. Most executives would not believe at Intel that AMD could catch them with Zen, so most would not authorize spending cash to compete with it. I dont think will be seeing 8 core consumer cpu from Intel anytime soon, if you never worked at a large corporation you may not understand that arrogance. But last time Intel was wrong about the threat AMD was they went to shady tactics to try to stop them as they tried to fix their architecture with raw speed at first and then finally a whole new design not based on just pure speed.

It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't because AMD was the top dog in arrogance.

Intel haven't stod still, just because they dont give you 8 cheap cores that most wouldn't have any useful purpose for anyway doesn't mean they have stood still. The perf/watt gains that everyone asks for have been utterly fantastic.

 

[Gideon]

It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't because AMD was the top dog in arrogance.

Intel haven't stod still, just because they dont give you 8 cheap cores that most wouldn't have any useful purpose for anyway doesn't mean they have stood still. The perf/watt gains that everyone asks for have been utterly fantastic.

Yeah Intel has pretty much stood still, look at the Intel thread and see how many complain the next gen processor is just not worth the upgrade. 5% to 10% performance a generation at best is not a fantastic gain, to be honest the last few years cpu performance has been almost at a standstill. The biggest reason people seem to upgrade these days is they just want some features their current motherboard does not have. Also having more cores is not a hindrance when a program only uses a couple of them as the ship will clock up the used cores and when the program needs them all it will slow down in total clock speed but the program will have more raw power at it's disposal. I do agree with Razor tho that AMD's success and failure is more in the hands of Intel then they would like.

 

[drescherjm]

Also having more cores is not a hindrance when a program only uses a couple of them as the ship will clock up the used cores and when the program needs them all it will slow down in total clock speed but the program will have more raw power at it's disposal.

It is when the max turbo clock is significantly lower on the CPU with more cores versus the CPU with less cores.

 

[lolfail9001]

Yeah Intel has pretty much stood still, look at the Intel thread and see how many complain the next gen processor is just not worth the upgrade. 5% to 10% performance a generation at best is not a fantastic gain, to be honest the last few years cpu performance has been almost at a standstill. The biggest reason people seem to upgrade these days is they just want some features their current motherboard does not have. Also having more cores is not a hindrance when a program only uses a couple of them as the ship will clock up the used cores and when the program needs them all it will slow down in total clock speed but the program will have more raw power at it's disposal. I do agree with Razor tho that AMD's success and failure is more in the hands of Intel then they would like.

Intel went after performance/watt instead. Not what [H] crowd wants, but what most of the market needs.

 

[razor1]

Yeah Intel has pretty much stood still, look at the Intel thread and see how many complain the next gen processor is just not worth the upgrade. 5% to 10% performance a generation at best is not a fantastic gain, to be honest the last few years cpu performance has been almost at a standstill. The biggest reason people seem to upgrade these days is they just want some features their current motherboard does not have. Also having more cores is not a hindrance when a program only uses a couple of them as the ship will clock up the used cores and when the program needs them all it will slow down in total clock speed but the program will have more raw power at it's disposal. I do agree with Razor tho that AMD's success and failure is more in the hands of Intel then they would like.

When a company has a lead like that they just want to maximize their profits, PC makers are very well aware of the only people that buy a new pc because of pure performance increases are people like us. The average joe just wants their computer do what they need it to, mostly surf the web, office, save media files, basic gaming, what not. If applications don't push the need for more horsepower the need for these types of people to upgrade is limited.

So Intel just went on with milking their tech for what its worth, but as lolfail9001 stated, they focused on lowering power more then increasing performance. Now we will get a taste of what they did has been good enough.

 

[Gideon]

Perhaps so, but regular people are not exactly rushing out to upgrade these days either. For the most part a modern cpu has more than enough power for the average user and while the newer cpu's do use less power not too many people worry about that as a reason to upgrade unless they have a very old computer. Gaming still is the biggest driver in the upgrade world I think and I see them starting to use more cores more often now, they have been slow to adopt that path tho. But back to the main point, I think Zen will do fine and will be good for AMD on the revenue side and in the end that is what we need, two healthy companies trying to compete for our cash is a good thing.

 

[Shintai]

Perhaps so, but regular people are not exactly rushing out to upgrade these days either. For the most part a modern cpu has more than enough power for the average user and while the newer cpu's do use less power not too many people worry about that as a reason to upgrade unless they have a very old computer. Gaming still is the biggest driver in the upgrade world I think and I see them starting to use more cores more often now, they have been slow to adopt that path tho. But back to the main point, I think Zen will do fine and will be good for AMD on the revenue side and in the end that is what we need, two healthy companies trying to compete for our cash is a good thing.

Lets look at the facts for a bit.

People want lower power, smaller devices. Companies want lower power etc to save TCO. The only crowd asking for more performance with no regard to power consumption is a sub 1% crowd.

People are moving away fast from desktop class CPUs. More and more so called desktop class products now contain mobile CPUs because this is what consumers want.

A product like HEDT chip wouldn't even be possible to sustain itself if it wasn't for the server line. There is nothing preventing you from buying "moar cores" if you want. But the truth is people dont want to and that's why it cant sustain itself despite what your personal demand may be. What you want is not what the 99% want. AMD wouldn't even make Zen with 8 cores if it wasn't because of the server segment. All you see would be 2 and 4 core APUs instead.

And please drop the competition BS. It serves no purpose because if innovation wasn't there, people wouldn't upgrade. AMD and Intel isn't selling tap water. The competition is previous products and always was.

 

[c3k]

Perhaps so, but regular people are not exactly rushing out to upgrade these days either. For the most part a modern cpu has more than enough power for the average user and while the newer cpu's do use less power not too many people worry about that as a reason to upgrade unless they have a very old computer. Gaming still is the biggest driver in the upgrade world I think and I see them starting to use more cores more often now, they have been slow to adopt that path tho. But back to the main point, I think Zen will do fine and will be good for AMD on the revenue side and in the end that is what we need, two healthy companies trying to compete for our cash is a good thing.

This. As a home user, my last remaining AMD rig is anFX8350 paired with a GTX670 4GB as an htpc. (See sig.) Sure, it could use a newer gpu. I'm happy with thecpu horsepower...not the heat that dumps out of the thing. Sure, most of that is the gpu. The specs on the FX8350 call it a 125w TDP. For me to upgrade to Zen, I'd need much better tdp (yes, I'll swap out the gtx670 at the same time for the same reason), similar but not worse performance (mobo chipset, ram, etc., included in that performance comparison), at a reasonable price.

This htpc is currently only driving 1080p screens. I see the upgrade to 4k screens looming in the mid future. My htpc will need to push playable 4k frames. This means the gpu is the component most in need of an upgrade. Zen will very much be a discretionary purchase. If it looks good, I'll buy it...to support competition.

 

[razor1]

Perhaps so, but regular people are not exactly rushing out to upgrade these days either. For the most part a modern cpu has more than enough power for the average user and while the newer cpu's do use less power not too many people worry about that as a reason to upgrade unless they have a very old computer. Gaming still is the biggest driver in the upgrade world I think and I see them starting to use more cores more often now, they have been slow to adopt that path tho. But back to the main point, I think Zen will do fine and will be good for AMD on the revenue side and in the end that is what we need, two healthy companies trying to compete for our cash is a good thing.

I agree with the competition it creates a healthy ecosystem for consumers,

Performance and power wise, everything has to be competitive for AMD to gain marketshare, if they want to maintain status quo and raise margins, they just need Zen to do much better then what they have now with bulldozer. If applications don't drive computers sales, which is what is happening right now and has been happening for the past few years, The need for general consumers to upgrade isn't there.

This is the differentiating factor right now between GPU and CPU sales, games still drive GPU sales, they push GPU's to the boundaries of what they are capable of. And they soon will do that to CPU's too, so for the average pc gamer they will be upgrading sooner rather then later. We already have seen games that push 6 cores and many 4 cores are starting to bottleneck the higher end GPU's. That means mid range GPU's for next gen will not be able to fully perform on today's 4 core CPU's (factoring in next gen game development).

General applications just aren't doing this. This is why Chrome books, net books, all of them had their niche, fortunately once the crazy was over people started realizing how damn slow they were lol. Personally experience, like 8 years ago, my ex wife, she bought this pink netbook, she was like, its so cute and it can do everything she needed it to. Yeah POS that lasted 6 months before she rellized it was running on XP and couldn't be upgraded to Vista or 7 without major draw backs in performance, then she went back to the 13 inch ultrabook I got for her a few months prior lol.

 

[lolfail9001]

This is why Chrome books, net books, all of them had their niche, fortunately once the crazy was over people started realizing how damn slow they were lol.

Joke's on you, my netbook served it's task of doing some minor stuff on the go with most of job done on proper PCs pretty well last 4 years.
Ironically, it was AMD-based.

 

[razor1]

well it really depends on what ya need them for, for her she needed it for then general work, she needed to be able to see xray's, MRI's, Cat scans and what not and yeah a netbook isn't going to cut it lol.

 

[luminousone]

Makes we wonder how close the x86 cpu market is to the saturation point, I get the impression that Intel has regulated this to an extent, but I also get the impression that their fab capacity has generally been aimed at being as close as possible to this point. I wonder what scale of sales AMD would have to pull off to not just fill open sales volume available to a competitor for the mere quality of being a competitor, but to displaces sales within the market. If Intels fab capacity is so closely matched to just under the market saturation point how many chips does AMD have to sell to force Intel to idle capacity, or be left with unsold stock.