AMD Processor News: FX 8300 & Kabini-based E-3310

[octoberasian]

Some AMD News:

AMD FX-8300 (launched Dec. 29th.)

Unknown US release.

95W
Base clock: 3.3 GHz
Turbo: 4.2 GHz
Projected price: $199 (based on US conversion rates)

Source:
http://techreport.com/news/24111/rumor-95w-amd-fx-8300-due-later-this-week
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...nt_Eight_Core_Desktop_Chip_Due_This_Week.html
​

E-series Kabini-based E 3310

15W
Radeon HD 8240G
Dual core

Planned launch June 2013 (Production from March to April 2013)

Other models mentioned:

Quad core Kabini-based
- X4 5110
- X4 4110 (15W)

Dual core Kabini-based
- E 2210

All will be released and available in June 2013 (probably to OEMs).

Source: http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29958-amd’s-top-e-series-kabini-is-e1-3310
​

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Elsewhere http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29953-kabini-to-be-10-percent-faster-than-28nm-bobcat

Suggests that it is a good deal faster then Brazos, this is very good news.

 

[Faethon]

Some AMD News:

AMD FX-8300 (launched Dec. 29th.)

Unknown US release.

95W
​

Oh YES! Finally! I keep my fingers crossed! My wet dreams become dry! ​

 

[octoberasian]

Elsewhere http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29953-kabini-to-be-10-percent-faster-than-28nm-bobcat

Suggests that it is a good deal faster then Brazos, this is very good news.

Which is very promising. I'm still waiting on seeing these Kabini-based processors in a Windows 8 tablet, and hopefully MUCH cheaper than the Intel-based Win 8 tablets like the VIVO or Surface Pro. But, still with a great screen.

I think these are getting the newer HD 8000-series based GCN cores too, so should have decent graphics performance.

 

[Darakian]

Which is very promising. I'm still waiting on seeing these Kabini-based processors in a Windows 8 tablet, and hopefully MUCH cheaper than the Intel-based Win 8 tablets like the VIVO or Surface Pro. But, still with a great screen.

I think these are getting the newer HD 8000-series based GCN cores too, so should have decent graphics performance.

If it's GCN then it should have some pretty good compute performance as well.

 

[Ironhand]

Is it just an 8350 turned down or is is something new altogether?

 

[pelo]

Here's to hoping AMD actually spent some time improving their IMC!

 

[sheesh721]

Is it just an 8350 turned down or is is something new altogether?

Looks like an underclocked 8350 to me. Haven't heard any details. Seems like it will have the performance of a $125 chip priced at $200... Hopefully that is just an introductory price and not serious.

 

[Tsumi]

The FX-8300 is probably a specially binned part for the lower TDP. Parts that do not meet the necessary low voltage for low TDP get the voltage cranked up and sold as 8320 and 8350 parts.

 

[drescherjm]

Looks like an underclocked 8350 to me. Haven't heard any details. Seems like it will have the performance of a $125 chip priced at $200... Hopefully that is just an introductory price and not serious.

I would expect this to be just a factory underclocked / undervolted 8350 sold at a similar price to the 8350.

 

[Faethon]

After reading this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289809

I think i will stay with my 1090T. I could overclock it and it would most probably still draw less power and heat than the FX-8300. My rig with the 1090T draws about 170W. With a rough calculation, with the FX-8300 it will be at 200W in the best case.

So i will wait for official reviews in case they made some improvement in the chip. Otherwise i think i will wait for Steamroller or pass to the dark side eventually, once my 1090T starts showing its age in video encoding.

 

[Tsumi]

After reading this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289809

I think i will stay with my 1090T. I could overclock it and it would most probably still draw less power and heat than the FX-8300. My rig with the 1090T draws about 170W. With a rough calculation, with the FX-8300 it will be at 200W in the best case.

So i will wait for official reviews in case they made some improvement in the chip. Otherwise i think i will wait for Steamroller or pass to the dark side eventually, once my 1090T starts showing its age in video encoding.

There will be virtually no improvements except binning for lower leakage chips for lower power consumption.

Also, I thought it was already confirmed that performance per watt of Piledriver chips was better than that of Thuban?

 

[Faethon]

There will be virtually no improvements except binning for lower leakage chips for lower power consumption.

Also, I thought it was already confirmed that performance per watt of Piledriver chips was better than that of Thuban?

If you read 10 reviews about power consumption of Vishera, you will get 10 different opinions...

In this one, Thuban is more efficient:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/880-4/consommation-efficacite-energetique.html

I don't remember another example of AMD CPU with so controversial results in power draw. It's as if there is a huge variation betweem CPUs. Another guy claims to have brought the 8350 to 1.18v. But what are the chances? 1 out of 1.000.000?

 

[pgaster]

I agree, power consumption numbers are all over the place in different reviews.
There was one review of an 8150 where a guy disabled all power saving features in the BIOS, overvolted the cpu as well, then showed a graph of how bad the power draw was. Well, duh.

Toms undervolted an 8150 pretty far at stock speed: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bulldozer-efficiency-overclock-undervolt,3083-9.html

If that can be done with an 8150 I would expect the Vishera to be about the same or even a bit better.

 

[defaultluser]

There will be virtually no improvements except binning for lower leakage chips for lower power consumption.

Also, I thought it was already confirmed that performance per watt of Piledriver chips was better than that of Thuban?

It's better, but not by much.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/4

AMD needs to ditch AM3+ so they can get the platform power consumption down. After seeing Trinity idle power go so low with exactly the same core power optimizations, I have to believe it's the platform holding Piledriver/Bulldozer idle power back.

If they could fix the idle power, the numbers for Piledriver would TOAST Thuban.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

It depends If you are running windows 7 then it won't matter much the OS doesn't really like shutting down cores.

Windows 8 is a bit better in this regard.

 

[Tsumi]

Well, it seems like it is able to overclock higher with lower voltages. Granted, it's only one sample, but a good start regardless.

FX-8300 @ 5 ghz with 1.3v vcore.

 

[pelo]

It's strange, but clearly AMD is binning these - Trinity and Vishera - differently. Trinity seems to be a pretty decent chip as far as perf-per-watt goes. It's still behind in CPU loads, but quite good in GPU arena.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1312-page1.html
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/47257-amd-a10-5700/

The perf-per-watt debate is an interesting one, I think. If you consider that most computing is done at idle (let's say 90-95%) then it's clear that idle power consumption is far more important than the CPU and/or GPU loads.

As soon as you get to form factor and TDP/cooling, then the total TDP becomes the determining factor. For example, a hypothetical Bulldozer SoC/APU might get to 2W at idle, but if it's full load tips the scales at over 100W then it's no good for a tablet, despite the fact that for 95% of the time it would be fine. (this is the same reason why Haswell isn't going to end up in thin and small tablet designs despite the good drop in idle power consumption)

For your average desktop/workstation user and enthusiast, the weight of idle and load power consumption depends entirely on the workload of the PC. If you're like me, you're gaming maybe 2-3 hours a week with countless hours spent dicking around on the web, on [H], and on CAD. Of those, gaming is the most strenuous but also rare, while the more frequent tasks aren't that CPU heavy at all (or GPU. I'll rarely have to do anything intensive in 3D). For most desktop users, myself included, the load power consumption isn't anything to worry about, rather the consequent heat output and cooling are both something that would affect them more than load power consumption. If you're not like me and you do F@H or bitcoin mining or whatever, then you'd obviously have to reconsider just how important the idle and load power consumption figures are to you.

Modern CPU architectures seem to focus mostly on getting both overall TDP down as well as decreasing idle power consumption, thus drastically improving perf-per-watt. For the typical enthusiast/desktop crowd, this doesn't make much sense as a low idle power + higher TDP/more performance would likely be the best fit.

I reckon that AMD's Steamroller chips got dumped/delayed due to the power consumption issues. A 28nm GloFo HKMG process isn't all that different from the 32nm-SOI HKMG. With the larger and wider core architecture, the power consumption was likely to suffer. Given the trend of decreasing overall performance at the sake of perf-per-watt, AMD likely scrapped it or decided it would be better to revise the design goals and tweak it a bit.

I could care less about Vishera, but Kabini looks really interesting. Successor to their most popular Bobcat/Brazos platform is definitely something to get excited about. Whether it succeeds or not will determine the fate of AMD as a company. That's how important Kabini is. The Q2 release date isn't helping any, though.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

I could care less about Vishera, but Kabini looks really interesting. Successor to their most popular Bobcat/Brazos platform is definitely something to get excited about. Whether it succeeds or not will determine the fate of AMD as a company. That's how important Kabini is. The Q2 release date isn't helping any, though.

There so many people with so many do or die segments to their posts (over the years) on hardforum.com that AMD can be officially renamed to Jesus Christ .

It is more like can they keep the ball rolling and have some growth not just on the cpu side of things but also on the market. Selling well means nothing if the successor is a failure then there is no momentum.

AMD excels at not building momentum , Unless you count the firing of a good deal of people then AMD is on FIRE .

 

[pelo]

There so many people with so many do or die [sentiments] to their posts (over the years) on hardforum.com that AMD can be officially renamed to Jesus Christ .

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...der_AMD_Un_Investable_Start_to_Lose_Hope.html

And when you look at the product roadmap it looks even worse. Steamroller/Kaveri delayed/cancelled and Temash and Kabini both slotted for a Q2 release, meaning AMD has only one product in server/desktop and it's a Piledriver (plus minor tweaks) refresh. With decreasing PC sales next year (again) the Kabini/Temash products are the only ones that can see AMD through financial struggle. GPU sales are also going to dip again and their short term server prospects are looking even worse given AMD's announcement that they're diving into ARM microserver market - remember that servers are generally bought by platform, thus when potential customers hear that AMD is splitting its already comparatively fewer resources between two architectures and segments, they're far more likely to look elsewhere (Intel). That's not at all surprising considering AMD is below 5% server market share and likely has dipped even below ARM's currently poor showing (no 64-bit yet).

So, yes, AMD is in big big trouble. Sticking your fingers in your ears here isn't going to work, and the worst time for them is going to be the Q1-Q3 quarters of this year:

Finally, AMD has also spent a bit of time talking about 2013 and beyond. On a financial side of things AMD’s goal is to get their operating costs to the point where a quarterly revenue of 1.3B would be their break-even point, which is part of AMD’s attempt to “reset” the company to survive on what would ultimately be lower margins.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6383/amd-q3-2012-earnings-157m-loss-15-of-workforce-to-be-cut

Surviving on lower margins = lowering prices because of poor demand. That demand isn't going to get any stronger in 2013 for APUs, desktop CPUs, laptop APUs, nor GPUs. All of those sales figures are going down, not up.

Meanwhile on the product side of things, silicon for Kabini (their 28nm Brazos replacement) is already back and AMD is working on a H1 2013 launch for that. As it stands nearly 85% of AMD’s current business is focused on the “legacy” PC market, so AMD is looking to shift into high margin, fast growing markets like tablets as soon as possible, which is where products like Kabini will take them.

Their only products that can see them back to success are the followups to the products that's keeping AMD alive today: Brazos/Bobcat.

While many people are clamoring about doom and destruction, claiming the sky is falling, once upon a while you bump into somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about. I just so happen to be that guy.

If AMD is going to see through 2013 without selling off portions of its assets/IP then it's going to be on the back of Kabini and Temash.

** The 95W 8300 likely isn't just an underclocked but a binned part. This is the same as Intel does with their T/S models. Obviously every chip differs, but if you take a thousand of the 95W-underclocked and 125W-underclocked models (or 65W and 77W respectively) and compared them you'd see that on average the lower-TDP parts would consume less power.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

I can only laugh at this , you are forgetting that AMD has chips for Nintendo Microsoft and Sony were only short on release dates for the last 2 but might that be something AMD kept track of?

The declining market for AMD are yelled by every analyst you can find yet AMD is still around.

The reason why this is being put on the forefront is due to this management wanting to get rid of a good number of people. So when AMD is saying were doing bad then they fire people if there doing good/okay then why would they fire people?

The delay for Steamroller is anyone guess might have something to do with them not being interested in making AM3+ chips because that is something where profits might be the worst for AMD.

 

[pelo]

I can only laugh at this , you are forgetting that AMD has chips for Nintendo Microsoft and Sony were only short on release dates for the last 2 but might that be something AMD kept track of?

The only made money off of the Nintendo Wii from the last generation of consoles. The Xbox360 net them only a paltry one-time payment that amounted to chump change. On the Wii AMD made money per unit sold and it amounted to quite a bit of cash. The release dates of the next-gen consoles is late Q4 2013 or even 2014, so AMD isn't going to be making much off these consoles for a while, and that's assuming the agreement is for royalties.

The declining market for AMD are yelled by every analyst you can find yet AMD is still around.

That doesn't make the market any bigger. In fact, it just makes it smaller and smaller. In tiny markets it's usually the tiny players that get the boot. Given that even during good times AMD struggled to make money, how do you think they'll fair now that times aren't so good and prospects are even worse?

The reason why this is being put on the forefront is due to this management wanting to get rid of a good number of people. So when AMD is saying were doing bad then they fire people if there doing good/okay then why would they fire people?

Yep. A publicly traded company is purposely sending out false rumors that they're in troubled times so they can fire people, and somehow that's a good thing.

I'm sure it hasn't hurt their stock value and affected their profits.

The delay for Steamroller is anyone guess might have something to do with them not being interested in making AM3+ chips because that is something where profits might be the worst for AMD.

Which means they're going to rely on other processors for their money...

... like, oh idunno, Kabini.

 

[maxius]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...der_AMD_Un_Investable_Start_to_Lose_Hope.html

And when you look at the product roadmap it looks even worse. Steamroller/Kaveri delayed/cancelled and Temash and Kabini both slotted for a Q2 release, meaning AMD has only one product in server/desktop and it's a Piledriver (plus minor tweaks) refresh. With decreasing PC sales next year (again) the Kabini/Temash products are the only ones that can see AMD through financial struggle. GPU sales are also going to dip again and their short term server prospects are looking even worse given AMD's announcement that they're diving into ARM microserver market - remember that servers are generally bought by platform, thus when potential customers hear that AMD is splitting its already comparatively fewer resources between two architectures and segments, they're far more likely to look elsewhere (Intel). That's not at all surprising considering AMD is below 5% server market share and likely has dipped even below ARM's currently poor showing (no 64-bit yet).

So, yes, AMD is in big big trouble. Sticking your fingers in your ears here isn't going to work, and the worst time for them is going to be the Q1-Q3 quarters of this year:



http://www.anandtech.com/show/6383/amd-q3-2012-earnings-157m-loss-15-of-workforce-to-be-cut

Surviving on lower margins = lowering prices because of poor demand. That demand isn't going to get any stronger in 2013 for APUs, desktop CPUs, laptop APUs, nor GPUs. All of those sales figures are going down, not up.



Their only products that can see them back to success are the followups to the products that's keeping AMD alive today: Brazos/Bobcat.



While many people are clamoring about doom and destruction, claiming the sky is falling, once upon a while you bump into somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about. I just so happen to be that guy.

If AMD is going to see through 2013 without selling off portions of its assets/IP then it's going to be on the back of Kabini and Temash.

** The 95W 8300 likely isn't just an underclocked but a binned part. This is the same as Intel does with their T/S models. Obviously every chip differs, but if you take a thousand of the 95W-underclocked and 125W-underclocked models (or 65W and 77W respectively) and compared them you'd see that on average the lower-TDP parts would consume less power.

So we meet again pelo interesting fiction you present and hot-linking images shame. If your in the shit why would not hold your cards close to the vest...

From what i understand this year every Amd product is getting a refresh the biggest of these refreshes are going to be the release of the official 28nm jaguar cores in the 1h along with an updated and tweaked piledriver am3+ and richland Fm2+ chips that should fall in the 2h or sooner and dare i speculate to say they may be 28nm as well...

 

[maxius]

The only made money off of the Nintendo Wii from the last generation of consoles. The Xbox360 net them only a paltry one-time payment that amounted to chump change. On the Wii AMD made money per unit sold and it amounted to quite a bit of cash. The release dates of the next-gen consoles is late Q4 2013 or even 2014, so AMD isn't going to be making much off these consoles for a while, and that's assuming the agreement is for royalties.



That doesn't make the market any bigger. In fact, it just makes it smaller and smaller. In tiny markets it's usually the tiny players that get the boot. Given that even during good times AMD struggled to make money, how do you think they'll fair now that times aren't so good and prospects are even worse?



Yep. A publicly traded company is purposely sending out false rumors that they're in troubled times so they can fire people, and somehow that's a good thing.



I'm sure it hasn't hurt their stock value and affected their profits.



Which means they're going to rely on other processors for their money...

... like, oh idunno, Kabini.

Amd is also relying on its embedded market for a lion share of its profits for this year and yes 28nm jaguar kabani will be a killer app as intel will no atom level processor to compete with it till the 22nm one in 2014. God i sound like a broken record but surface pro @ surface rt price levels.

Checked amd's stock price lately its been on quite an upswing http://www.google.com/finance?q=AMD&ei=zZjjUNCmIsikrQHqzgE

Now pelo lets not DERAIL THIS THREAD FURTHER

 

[sheesh721]

God i sound like a broken record but surface pro @ surface rt price levels.

Yea, maybe they'll use it in some other really hot selling Microsoft products for those few months as well.. like the Zune.

 

[maxius]

Yea, maybe they'll use it in some other really hot selling Microsoft products for those few months as well.. like the Zune.

ah the zune good concept still the only hd radio mp3player on the market if you can find one but for fucks sake ms software sucked yack balls the "surface" is a good concept making a x86 pro = or less than the rt's price will speed adoption as windows 8 only works on tablets/touch

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Yep. A publicly traded company is purposely sending out false rumors that they're in troubled times so they can fire people, and somehow that's a good thing.

You mean that never ever happened before. It is called strategy, the new management likes to do this to justify their position. they have numbers to "back it up" everyone knows that numbers can be made to spin around to suit whichever scenario they need to justify their method of handling matters in AMD.

Why don't you do digging through analyst reports on AMD and find the 1001 differences between them.

It has never been or stated that AMD would faceroll Intel and become the biggest processor company in the world. Don't forget that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
didn't have any of this and still they went under.

Maybe it is time for you to learn that with AMD you need to focus on the products and not their financial position.