What If Zen 2 Actually Sucks?

[AlphaAtlas]

In some of his recent videos, Scottish YouTuber AdoredTV mentioned that he's often criticized for having a bias towards AMD. Obviously, he doesn't believe that to be true, as he has no problem with positivity or negativity towards any manufacturer, but the criticism apparently inspired him to take a look at the potential performance of Zen 2 based on public demos. As we've noted before, benchmarks and demos from chip designers need to be taken with a grain of salt, so the YouTuber decided to take a closer look at the claims AMD has made, and the conditions they ran the demos in.

Check out the analysis here.

What if AMD cherry picked the best scenarios and Zen 2 actually sucks?

 

[TangledThornz]

That's a heck of a 'what if' because the hype is real, dawg.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Heaven forfend.

 

[xmadror]

I just can't trust any AMD hype after all these years. But with that said I'm pretty happy with my 2600x and any improvement over that should be interesting.
The real question is if it'll be enough for me to upgrade. Which will be answered right here on [H]!

 

[GoodBoy]

Then it sucks?

 

[leviathon]

AMD is getting there, but they need to keep it the advancements up. I think they have a ways to go to catch Intels ipc, but who knows. I know they arent making any headway with the gpu side of things, which really sucks. Hopefully Intel will slow nVidia down.

Personally, I dont think Zen 2 will be much better than the 2000 series, maybe 5%.

 

[1Nocturnal101]

CPU side I trust them to put out a good product GPU side it seems to be all hype and misplaced fanboys hoping for more.

 

[PaulP]

AMD is getting there, but they need to keep it the advancements up. I think they have a ways to go to catch Intels ipc, but who knows. I know they arent making any headway with the gpu side of things, which really sucks. Hopefully Intel will slow nVidia down.

Personally, I dont think Zen 2 will be much better than the 2000 series, maybe 5%.

Part of Intel's superiority in IPC is due to the aggressive speculative execution techniques it employs in its chips. But, as we now know, some of these techniques have opened up windows for side channel attacks. The question now is whether Intel will have to roll back some of those IPC gains in order to prevent these types of attacks. Time will tell, of course.

 

[coynatha]

As long as they hit 80-100% of the performance at a much more reasonable price like they do now, I think we'll all be happy.

And I learned how to sit through these video's instead of begging for an article - turn the speed up to 1.5x.

 

[QuiteSufficient]

I realistically expect the improvements to be almost identically in line as those seen with Intel chips from Sandy -> Ivy -> Haswell ->etc

2-3% when measured clock-for-clock. Power will drop, just as it did with the intels, when die shrinking. Enthusiasts don't really care about power.

 

[Neapolitan6th]

Is it not fair to say we could generally expect a few humdred Mhz clock boost? (At least when OCing)

7nm Vega VII cards have been OCed to 2100mhz while their previous 14nm Vega brother pushed 1800mhz max.

And that clock boost is to say nothing of IPC improvements (which could be in the aforementioned 2-5% realm of improvement)

 

[vegeta535]

It is funny how Intel seems to give no fucks about what AMD. Instead of lowing price somewhat they keep rasing them with each generation. If I didn't have a 7820x atm I would definitely be upgrading to a AMD CPU and not giving Intel a 2nd look.

 

[Aireoth]

The same thing that happens every time a product sucks Pinky.

 

[Vader1975]

I am quite happy with my 2700X and don’t really see the need to upgrade to 7nm immediately. Im thinking wait for DDR5 and the gen later and then do a ground up rebuild. My AMD Frontiers on water have been doing just fine powering 1440 ultrawide.

 

[DNMock]

I am quite happy with my 2700X and don’t really see the need to upgrade to 7nm immediately. Im thinking wait for DDR5 and the gen later and then do a ground up rebuild. My AMD Frontiers on water have been doing just fine powering 1440 ultrawide.

I think PCIE 5.0 is slated to drop in a year or two as well. DDR5 and PCIE5 are both way more exciting (especially the PCIE) than any of the upcoming CPU's IMO

 

[mkk]

I like analysis. It's like a form of entertainment that doesn't make you dumber. And on YouTube of all places. What are the odds?

Anyway if in real practice the only advance would end up being significantly higher clock speeds than I get out of my R7 1700, then I'll take it.

 

[Mode13]

2700x is already a great CPU so it obviously wont suck. What will suck is when AMD doesn't meet the insane expectations created by all of the leaks showing even 16 core models boosting to 5.2ghz out of the box. People will cry foul as usual if it isn't true.

 

[OutOfPhase]

I think we're mixing up "sucks" with "might not match hopes and dreams".

If it was just Zen all over again, it still wouldn't suck.

 

[tetris42]

Then it sucks?

Guess we can close the thread.

 

[bildad]

Depends on your definition of suck. If you expect Zen 2 to be the second coming with 50% increase in performance, then it's going to suck. If your expectation is a more meager gain like Sandy bridge to ivy bridge then it won't suck.

 

[N4CR]

Considering they are already competitive, it would have to be TSMC-contamination levels of fucked up to suck this time around.

Along with many others I predicted they will reach at least 4.5-4.6GHz all core. If they exceed that then it's icing on the cake.
There is a bench floating around with a 5GHz Zen(+?) vs a 5GHz 979723497x KFC EEEE whatever number it is this time from Intel and the IPC and perf on the OC Zen sillicon was higher. TLDR: They don't need to exceed Intel clocks (for marketing they do) but just need to be close to equal or beat their best. I think it's a cinebench or similar but it was quite telling, if the GHz is there then Intel will be [H]ertzing.

 

[sc5mu93]

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

I have a prediction:

1. AMD's product won't live up to the hype.
2. But it won't suck either.
3. It'll be a little bit slower than the absolute best from their competitor. It might even win a few use cases.
4. But it'll be cheaper, too.
5. So it will sell.

Repeat this for every single AMD product launch that isn't related to Bulldozer (heaping pile of suck - they appear to have learned from this gross error, thank the Lord).

 

[Lakados]

I just need it to be better than the current Ryzen lineup, it doesn't have to beat Intel at every point I just need it to exist so I can upgrade my system already, I just need the CPU and GPU for my rig everything else has been trickling in for weeks.

 

[Elf_Boy]

Going from my 1800x to a 2700x is a minor temptation I must fight.

If the new generation has a significant not-suck factor I may not be able to withstand the want to upgrade. I'd want a new MOBO at that point too for the new features and auto OC -- and New Ram.

I can use the same Hard drives, right?

Just saw a 1TB NVME M.2 for $148.99 on Amazon. I know it doesn't help much with the single threaded loaders - in game assets (The Secret World) and teleports (WOW, ESO, ETC) do load much faster.

 

[Dullard]

In some of his recent videos, Scottish YouTuber AdoredTV mentioned that he's often criticized for having a bias towards AMD. Obviously, he doesn't believe that to be true, as he has no problem with positivity or negativity towards any manufacturer, but the criticism apparently inspired him to take a look at the potential performance of Zen 2 based on public demos. As we've noted before, benchmarks and demos from chip designers need to be taken with a grain of salt, so the YouTuber decided to take a closer look at the claims AMD has made, and the conditions they ran the demos in.

Check out the analysis here.

What if AMD cherry picked the best scenarios and Zen 2 actually sucks?

Or maybe he's just tossing out a vague "what if AMD were to suck" scenario to bump up his case that he's not actually biased towards AMD.

I don't think Zen 2 will suck, and I don't believe this guy thinks it will, either. But he'll likely get plenty of clicks from his provocateur headline - just not from me.

 

[MMitch]

I have a prediction:

1. AMD's product won't live up to the hype.
2. But it won't suck either.
3. It'll be a little bit slower than the absolute best from their competitor. It might even win a few use cases.
4. But it'll be cheaper, too.
5. So it will sell.

Repeat this for every single AMD product launch that isn't related to Bulldozer (heaping pile of suck - they appear to have learned from this gross error, thank the Lord).

You nailed it, the hype train is way to overpowered most of the time and the performing a tad short of competition (with hardware issues that once patched properly if possible...) make everyone cry out loud.
The fact is AMD is delivering solid product perf / $ and always has been and so far, all the new attack vector are either easily fixed with almost no performance loss or are already not subject to it.

The tide is turning and yeah from a 1080P gamer perspective Intel "unpatched" may be better but it's also much more expensive and no upgrade possible.

Anyway, this has been said many many many times. Intel is living on brand loyalty so far especially in the server market. Time will tell how to pans out and people may get fired sooner than later for buying Intel with all those flaws

 

[DeeJayBump]

Cross-posting my reply from the AMD Processors thread:

My take after watching this was simply Jim playing "Devil's Advocate" and attempting to lay out a scenario where his sources/leakers are completely wrong and thus "Zen 2 will suck" but in the wrap-up, Jim states:

"...I was talking to an AMD PR guy recently, and I told him I was planning this video, and he said to me "Jim, I think you're going to have a challenge to say Zen 2 will be bad." Well, I tried, and I just can't suspend my belief much further than I've been doing all video. I speculated on how Zen 2 may not succeed, but with the info we have, I feel I'm making multiple stretches to justify that [Zen 2 wil be bad/suck/Zen 2 may not succeed] possibility...."

"...What I would say is that I think there's a decent chance that AMD does choose to launch the 12-core parts first of all, with 16-core parts coming later. It could even well be that they launch this 8-core part first of all, but I believe that would be a mistake. But for me this [only launching 8-cores initially, with 12 and 16-core coming later] is the most likely "bad news" regarding Zen 2 and it wouldn't be done for technical reasons but for marketing and segmentation reasons. We'd get the [more than 8-core] chips eventually, but they'd be rolled out ever-faster parts over a few months...."

 

[Krenum]

If Zen 2 sucks, the AMD's boat is sunk! And that would suck.

 

[DrDoU]

Would like a 2nd AMD processor.Would look real hard at a 12 core 24 thread cpu.

 

[Kardonxt]

I'm at the point of, "who cares?"

This stupid 6600k still plays all of my games on high settings. Heck I have a buddy who still rocks a 1055t with a GTX 970 and plays everything fine.

Unless you're in the "games are unplayable bellow 144hz" crowd, it hardly seems to matter anymore. Now that all games are console ports, systems seem to last forever. Toss in a new gpu ever 5 years and keep chugging.

 

[iDShaDoW]

I am quite happy with my 2700X and don’t really see the need to upgrade to 7nm immediately. Im thinking wait for DDR5 and the gen later and then do a ground up rebuild. My AMD Frontiers on water have been doing just fine powering 1440 ultrawide.

I think PCIE 5.0 is slated to drop in a year or two as well. DDR5 and PCIE5 are both way more exciting (especially the PCIE) than any of the upcoming CPU's IMO

This is exactly why I haven't bothered to grab another 32GB even though it would be nice for my VM lab...

Might be tempted to get a new motherboard and CPU when the next ones drop and sell my X470-F and 2700X to offset the price of upgrade though. But I'll definitely be looking for a more major overhaul of my system once DDR5 drops (assuming RAM prices continue to come back down to earth).

 

[nutzo]

I think PCIE 5.0 is slated to drop in a year or two as well. DDR5 and PCIE5 are both way more exciting (especially the PCIE) than any of the upcoming CPU's IMO

A server with PCIE 5.0 and a boat load of NVME slots would really help with the disk I/O .

 

[horskh]

What if Zen 2 doesn't suck?

 

[DNMock]

You nailed it, the hype train is way to overpowered most of the time and the performing a tad short of competition (with hardware issues that once patched properly if possible...) make everyone cry out loud.
The fact is AMD is delivering solid product perf / $ and always has been and so far, all the new attack vector are either easily fixed with almost no performance loss or are already not subject to it.

The tide is turning and yeah from a 1080P gamer perspective Intel "unpatched" may be better but it's also much more expensive and no upgrade possible.

Anyway, this has been said many many many times. Intel is living on brand loyalty so far especially in the server market. Time will tell how to pans out and people may get fired sooner than later for buying Intel with all those flaws

I think the hype train is more about Intel being stuck on their 14nm architecture for another year while Zen is getting a node shrink now after ryzen already got them really close.

For the first time in a very long time AMD could very well take the crown away from Intel and it won't take much to do that.

 

[Skull_Angel]

As excited I am for AMD, and as much as I'm near EoL on my current build (going 5+years); I'll probably wait for the refresh, because that's what new releases in hardware and software have taught me to do. I think Zen 2 will be as many of us have expected, [near] parity with current Intel, but I agree about not being disappointed if it doesn't do more than that.

 

[Patton187]

CPU side I trust them to put out a good product GPU side it seems to be all hype and misplaced fanboys hoping for more.

I'm rooting for them to put out a compelling console product. It does set the new baseline. Which right now is the base ps4 with its 7850.

 

[M76]

Basically if it's just as good as Zen then it already doesn't suck IMO.

 

[Motley]

Well if there is any time for AMD to put up or shut up, its right now. With Intel's CPU shortage, and Nvidia RTX debacle, they could really swing over more Intel fanboys.

My prediction, Zen 2 will be good, but not great, just like Zen 1.

 

[HVAC]