AMD Claims Upcoming Zen CPUs on a Par With Intel
which if true has to be great for consumers
Thursday, May 7, 2015 by starkers | Discussion: Personal Computing
Just as the title says, AMD is claiming that its upcoming Zen processor, which will be based on 14nm process tecnology, will compete with the best Intel can produce. To be honest, I really hope so.
While my main machine is currently Intel based, I have run several AMD machines over the years and hope the company can again become competitive because I have been happy with its products and would rather see it remain a force in the tech world than fold, as some journalists/tech commentators have suggested it would. Put simply, the world does not need another monopoly, AMD's survival benefits consumers of both Intel and AMD alike.
Anyway, here's the article..... http://hothardware.com/news/amd-claims-zen-processor-cores-will-compete-with-intel-announces-next-gen-graphics-with-hbm-stacked-memory
Reply #22 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 11:16 AM
So, if something's better. more efficient than that which ain't broke, you don't go for it?
Like wouldn't that defeat the purpose/idea of upgrading? Building a new machine?
Not at all. Previous satisfaction with a chosen manufacturer simply directs the replacement/upgrade. EG... ALL of my generations of 'home-build' have used ASUS Motherboards. ALL [until the Level 10] have used Lian Li cases. ALL have used Nvidia graphics....again ASUS. All have used the Microsoft Explorer mouse....[1007]....and I still haven't changed from the Logitech Dinovo Edge Keyboard....
I reward good product experiences with brand loyalty...
Fair enough, there's nothing wrong with loyalty, not at all. All my mobos were Gigabyte, up until an ASRock board with better/more features was recommended to me at a lower price than its Gigabyte counterpart. That was for my AMD FX 8150 and it's still going strong. My next departure from Gigabyte was with an ASUS board for my AMD FX 8350, which also is still going strong.... and my next mobo [still awaiting delivery due to a stock shortage] is an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 for my current Intel machine.
However, I'm still undecided with regard to the mobo for the i7 6970X, but it could well be the ASRock Z99 Extreme 11 for its expansion potential over the ASUS X99 Rampage V Extreme.... but more on that closer to the day.
Oh yeah, all my GPUs have been Gigabyte, and all were Nvidia except the last I purchased, which is an ATI Radeon HD 7970 and quite a decent card. So it's not so much that I'm disloyal, but rather that another brand's hardware better suited the need at the time.
Reply #23 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 2:05 PM
The sad thing is that people still believe in the AMD FX 8 core humbug...
DID you see intel do the same thing? No they simply said how it is 4 cores and with hyperthreading can handle 8 threads.
Like they did with 5960X its an 8 core CPU since it only has 8 physical cores but with hyperthreading can handle 16threads still they dont list it as 16 core.
The media claims that AMD ZEn will have 16 cores, meaning 16 physical cores and should handle up to 32 threads hyperthreading.
Guess we will have to wait and see i bet intel will have less consumption what is important for me since my rig runs 24/7.
Reply #24 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 3:40 PM
I'm wishing AMD the best of luck in their new chips. If they can match Intel, they might push Intel to improve further. I can then decide on my next upgrade.
I'm not a brand loyalty kind of guy. I'll go with whatever the flavor of the day is as long as it's value for money.
Reply #25 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 4:46 PM
Well, being a redneck, you know I have an opinion.
It is my opinion that AMD is much preferred over Intel hands down, at least in my world.
I have 3 AMD 6 core processor rigs and one Intel core i7 rig. All self built, all having SSDs and 12 + GB ram, and similar GFX cards. I much prefer the AMDs.
Intels are good, don't get me wrong. But the gain in performance doesn't match the increase the price. IMO...YMMV
There in lies the problem. Intel is faster, how much depends on processor and usage. For some economics makes AMD a consideration, but you're hard pressed to run a business based purely on that. That's why Hyundai and Kia are trying to break into the luxury car market. More money up there. In addition, the gap is getting bigger which is going to make more problems in the future. Right now I can get a 6 Core 5600 series Xeon that walks all over most of AMD's current offerings for $100 on eBay. That level of disparity only hurts AMD more. When you reach a point that your competitors 4 generation old equipment off eBay matches your current offerings, that's bad. Fortunately for AMD, those system's chipsets (X58) were right before SATA 6Gb and USB 3 so there's still a reason to go new. But that's not the case with the next generation. Those will match the feature set of AMD's current systems. AMD needs to figure out their strategy. If they want to compete with Intel in the enthusiast segment they need to seriously rethink their game plan. Or they can stick with what they are good at and pray Intel doesn't really try to start fighting them there.
Personally, I just replaced the last of my AMD boards with Intel and don't see myself going back any time soon.
Dafuq? So my precious 980x is worth only 100 bucks these days?
Anyway, its not just AMD offerings it walks over. For 100 it walks over all current Intel quadcores as well...they are at best equal in performance due to potentially higher frequency and some IPC improvements, but i dont think there is one going just for 100... and what goes the cheapest sixcore for? Still about 500?
Reply #26 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 4:52 PM
The sad thing is that people still believe in the AMD FX 8 core humbug
I believe in no FX 8 core humbug whatsoever..... both my AMD rigs perform admirably and I've never had power consumption or overheating issues with either of them...
.... but then you must be an Intel fanboi who hates it when people like and opt for AMD instead.
Okay, so you like Intel, we get that, and so do I, but I also like the AMD processors I've used as well. So what if Intel's CPUs have been faster than AMD's thus far, though for a price, and not everyone is prepared to pay the extra for a little more speed. At the end of the day, it boils down to peoples needs, what they like best and what they can afford, and yes, you're entitled to your opinion/preferences, but to continually mock/ridicule the opposition benefits no-one and just fans a flame war.
As for Intel vs AMD, I hope humble pie is on the menu when AMD releases a great and truly competitive CPU series at a great pricepoint.
I'm wishing AMD the best of luck in their new chips. If they can match Intel, they might push Intel to improve further. I can then decide on my next upgrade.
That's pretty much what I've been saying, that AMD is an important cog in the scheme of things... both in pushing Intel to lift its game and by helping to moderate pricing. Without AMD releasing cost effective CPUs. just try imagine what Intel might charge in a monopoly market????? And while AMD has struggled to keep pace with Intel, performance-wise, much less rival it, I believe the change in leadership and engineering staff, with the new 14nm architecture will produce better than past results.
Reply #27 Thursday, May 14, 2015 4:10 AM
Reply #28 Thursday, May 14, 2015 9:03 AM
.... but then you must be an Intel fanboi who hates it when people like and opt for AMD instead.
This is probably because the 8 physical cores(yes, there are 8 physical cores, it's not hyper-threading) on the AMD chips have some shared resources that result in lost performance. It's supposed to be about 20%, hyper-threading on the other hand has a very minor performance gain over just the individual cores.
The problem with calling people fanboi's over not being impressed with the FX 8 core is that it truly is a terrible CPU. Vishera's perform like 4 year older Intel's with half the cores, running at 75% of the clock speed.
The FX-9590 is as hot as you can get one, the thing burns 220 watts, an i7 4770k gives almost identical performance for multi-threaded applications, and 50% more for single threads, at 84 watts. The physical reality is that they run extremely hot for their performance. If you keep your system for more than a couple years, the cost benefit of buying an AMD would be depleted by their power consumption even with only light use, and who needs an 8 core for light use? If you really work it, you could blow a hundred bucks a year in extra electricity.
Reply #29 Thursday, May 14, 2015 11:25 AM
The problem with calling people fanboi's over not being impressed with the FX 8 core is that it truly is a terrible CPU.
In your opinion. Like I said, I've had no issues with either of mine and the performance meets my needs. However, the thread is NOT about past efforts or what ran rings around what. It's already understood that AMD made mistakes in its bid to rival Intel's offerings, so no, this thread was/is to discuss the upcoming CPUs from both companies, what we might expect from AMD since it has moved from the Bulldozer build and has based its new range on 14nm.
As for the fanboi bit, that was merely a bit of tongue-in-cheek/fooling around... hence the >
Reply #30 Friday, May 15, 2015 7:57 AM
I believe in no FX 8 core humbug whatsoever..... both my AMD rigs perform admirably and I've never had power consumption or overheating issues with either of them...
.... but then you must be an Intel fanboi who hates it when people like and opt for AMD instead.
Okay, so you like Intel, we get that, and so do I, but I also like the AMD processors I've used as well. So what if Intel's CPUs have been faster than AMD's thus far, though for a price, and not everyone is prepared to pay the extra for a little more speed. At the end of the day, it boils down to peoples needs, what they like best and what they can afford, and yes, you're entitled to your opinion/preferences, but to continually mock/ridicule the opposition benefits no-one and just fans a flame war.
As for Intel vs AMD, I hope humble pie is on the menu when AMD releases a great and truly competitive CPU series at a great pricepoint.
The humbug is that the first line of AMD FX that were thrown on the market claimed to be a true "8 core CPU" that was just after intel released the first generation of i7. Did it had 8 cores or was it just a clever marketing act…
Google it and you will know. ![]()
The power consumption is lower on Intel.
Meaning that it will save you some money over the year... why is that interesting for me? Well as I stated my PC runs 24/7 and not only 2-4 Hours a day
And this means by the end of the year i will be able to buy another middle class GFX card or a new SSD from the saved money only by using an Intel CPU.
Is that worth paying 50 USD more for the brand?
If making smart decisions is making me an Intel Fanboi - I’m gladly accepting the title J
Reply #32 Friday, May 15, 2015 2:11 PM
I'm just hoping AMD produces something faster than Jafo's setup. Then he will have no choice but to abandon Intel.
Reply #33 Friday, May 15, 2015 3:32 PM
I'm just hoping AMD produces something faster than Jafo's setup. Then he will have no choice but to abandon Intel.
Thing is, kona, it's not about AMD beating Intel or the other way around. Intel make some great processors, and I have one. No, it's about AMD finally breaking the shackles of its previous builds and producing a truly competitive CPU that not only impresses its own customers but Intel's as well. Whether people switch from Intel to AMD is not so imprtant right now, but rather that AMD asserts/reinforces itself as a serious contender as a chip manufacturer.
It may be true that Intel has led the way over the last 8 - 10 years, and rightfully so, given the quality and performance of its high-end chips, but AMD has made some inroads with 14nm technology and a new architecture that embraces a fresh momentum going forward.
It is a new era and AMD has taken the right steps to lift its game and be around for the next... and the one after that as well.
Reply #34 Friday, May 15, 2015 3:53 PM
Considering Jafo's setup will be surpassed by Skylake, which comes in the third quarter of this year, before AMD's next generation rolls out in 2016, it's a bit of a foregone conclusion that his system wont be the top of the food chain next year regardless of whether Zen does better or not, unless Intel decides to stick with 4 cores as the max.
Reply #35 Friday, May 15, 2015 5:01 PM
Oh how I love it to have so many CPU experts on board.
If there's something I don't know about past, present AND future processors, Somebody here is bound to know the ins and outs of every CPU known to man... AND those that aren't.
And then I wondered as to why this reminded me so much of a necro-thread..... given how such great emphasis has been placed on past performances rather than discussing what the future may hold.
It eventually dawned on me.... I need to be able to travel forward in time. Perhaps then I may know as much as the experts here and be truly able to discredit future technology with some degree of confidence, just like them.
Oh, and for anyone who thinks sacasm is the lowest form of wit.... I was being facetious.
Reply #36 Friday, May 15, 2015 6:12 PM
People are trashing previous processors, and expressing doubt about their ability to deliver, not trashing future processors. Maybe Zen will be the best thing since sliced bread, but aside from the economy market they haven't accomplished squat since Intel's Pentium 4 flopped over going with sdram instead of rdram and being unable to actually utilize it's bandwidth capabilities and knock the K8 architecture off it's pedestal.
My old 900mhz Athlon was still operational when my mother switched to a laptop, K7 and K8 are the glory days of AMD, it would be nice to have them back, but their current offerings have been... depressing? Even the K8 wasn't really the performance beast it looked to be, the problem on the Intel side was that sdram was an absolute dog, even after it went to a double data rate, and the architecture had been based around rdram's superior bandwidth capabilities. I was running a dual 2.4ghz Xeon workstation, with 512 megs of dual channel 533mhz rdram, and that p4 architecture screamed with the proper bandwidth available. Of course, the memory chips set me back 500 bucks, even if they did bring twice the bandwidth of their ddr competition, and were still smoking it even when DDR2 released two years later.
AMD has potential to unseat the king of the hill, they've done it in the past, but that doesn't mean we should expect them to just because they say they'll be able to compete for the enthusiast market again. They're not even claiming it, competing with and surpassing are two different circumstances. Anyone expecting Zen to be faster than Skylake is setting themselves up for disappointment, because it wont be unless AMD is suicidal and doesn't want to advertise a superior product that will, unfortunately, release after it's competition does.
Reply #37 Saturday, May 16, 2015 6:37 AM
Maybe Zen will be the best thing since sliced bread,
Maybe! And maybe Skylake will be a resounding flop. I hope not, though, because it could well be the next Intel CPU for me, that's instead of the i7 4960X I'd already slotted for my next build. However, should the Zen prove to be a quality CPU with ample speed and performance, I may just upgrade my AMD machines bit by bit as well.
As for AMD's past offerings, I know they haven't been close to matching Intel's performance, but that was never the claim. I've been an AMD user since the early Athlon days and, apart from one 939 socket CPU, which was discontinued shortly threafter, and thus, compatible motherboards disappeared also, I've been more than satisfied with my AMD purchases, with the FX 8350 more than adequately meeting my needs.
I don't do any serious gaming, so that has never been an issue... an old P4 box with 2 gigs of RAM and [non-net-connected] XP serves me well enough there. I do, however, edit and convert video, music and family photos, etc, and the FX 8350 is no slouch. Put it this way, the i7 4790K might be a tad faster at completing the same or similar tasks, but only by a few nano-seconds, and that I do not mind. Were the difference to be 20 minutes or up to an hour, well then I'd obviously be looking into a faster, more powerful CPU.
At the end of the day, all but one of my AMD purchases have delivered according to my needs, and if I need a high-end CPU, then I have the 4790K for all those resource intensive tasks that people seem to think the AMD's can't handle.
As for my being facetious, it was done with tongue-in-cheek and was not intended to be taken seriously.... hence the >
to denote a bit of silliness.
Reply #38 Monday, May 18, 2015 5:23 AM
Well as I stated my PC runs 24/7
I turn mine off when I'm working at Phillip Island for the MotoGP and World Superbikes. Otherwise it is on 24/7/349.
Well mine does if i take a larger trip but only for insurance reasons other than that it keeps running and only restarts for updates.
Ohh and since i have a dog it gets turned of every two month for a short cleanout
>My PC is over 4 years old and still looks like new from the inside also a reason why it can hold
Reply #39 Wednesday, May 20, 2015 2:44 AM
How can you be so confident when neither company has released their Zen or Skylake offerings? Both are based on 14nm and AMD has a complete new architecture we have not yet been able to test, so saying the gap is getting bigger is somewhat premature.
Because I spoke in the present tense not the future? Intel's last several releases have been widening the gap and AMD's next great hope isn't scheduled out until 2016. Somebody referred to it as "dethroning the king". Yeah, the Athlon 64's did that for a while. Longer than many expected. But Intel took their throne back with vengeance and has continued beating AMD while they were down.
AMD has compounded that by making bad business decisions which puts them in a worse situation to try to repeat their performance. When they pulled off the Athlon 64 they were fighting one war. Now they are fighting Intel on one front and nVidia on the other and AMD has been steadily cutting their R&D budget. Intel has literally over 10 times the R&D budget at this point and Skylake is expected to beat Zen to the market. That gives AMD a pretty big mountain to climb. It would be great if Zen does exactly what you guys are hoping. I'm just not going to hold my breath.
The Xeon 5600's are like crack right now. I can't stop buying them. I've got Xeon's in 7 different computers in my house right now. On the ones where I don't need max performance, the L5640's are 6 core, 60W parts and can be had for $60. That gives my servers 12 cores and 24 threads at 120W. It's glorious. On the ones I wanted more speed on, the X5680 gets me MOAR SPEED.
In your opinion. Like I said, I've had no issues with either of mine and the performance meets my needs. However, the thread is NOT about past efforts or what ran rings around what. It's already understood that AMD made mistakes in its bid to rival Intel's offerings, so no, this thread was/is to discuss the upcoming CPUs from both companies, what we might expect from AMD since it has moved from the Bulldozer build and has based its new range on 14nm.
It's not just his opinion, numbers back it up. This is the part where we seem to lose you. You've made it clear AMD does what you need it to. Great, I'm happy for you. That doesn't mean it's a good product, it just means it does what you need to. I know people who are perfectly happy with their old Atom powered tablets. That doesn't mean it's a good processor, that just means they have low demands/expectations. Try something more demanding on your systems and see if you still think they are that closely matched. Hook a Kill-A-Watt up while you do it too, just for giggles.
You keep trying to dismiss this unrelated to the topic, but it's important because you are only seeing one hurdle that AMD has to jump. AMD isn't just behind on performance, they are behind on efficiency too and that is not something easy to overcome. You personally may not care about efficiency (although you should) but every OEM does. Better efficiency means cooler temps and better battery life on mobile devices. Intel understands this which is why their focus has almost entirely been geared towards that with the last several generations. They've been making slight performance increases instead focusing on efficiency and die sizes. All Intel would have to do right now to completely crush AMD is lower prices. You say this thread is about what WE might expect from AMD but whenever somebody explains why they have low expectations you try to argue with them. It sounds to me this thread was supposed to be an AMD fan-boi rally club. ![]()
Reply #40 Wednesday, May 20, 2015 5:43 AM
@ Xavier Mace,
I've had a rough few days healthwise and I'm not up for debating the issue in dept with you. I neither have the strength or desire.
Thing is, I've already conceded that Intel has had the better of it in recent years.
I've also conceded that AMD did itself no favours during that period.... and was often its own worst enemy.
Point is, that's done and dusted now. Is there a need to keep rehashing it over and over?
The other point: AMD has a new leadership and a new team of engineers working on 10nm/a new architecture, thus throwing out the old and bringing in a new era.
So, in reality, nobody but AMD knows what Zen will be capable of. In other words, nobody should be mouthing off using past examples that no longer apply.
I would LOVE to see some actual details about your comparison since 3rd party reviews usually show the 4790K about 40% faster at tasks like handbrake encoding. It sounds to me like you just have really low demands on your system.
Okay, think what you will. I know the 2 machines, and the FX 8350 iin some ways is snappier than the i7 4790K. That may have something to do with the Gigabyte GA Z87X UD5H board the 4790K is currently on. It was the best I could manage at the time, but it should get a performance boost next week when I upgrade to a Z97 chipped board. BTW, the FX 8350 is on an ASUS 990FX Crosshair V Formula-Z ... just take my word for it, it fechen flies.
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!







Reply #21 Wednesday, May 13, 2015 9:29 AM
So, if something's better. more efficient than that which ain't broke, you don't go for it?
Like wouldn't that defeat the purpose/idea of upgrading? Building a new machine?
Not at all. Previous satisfaction with a chosen manufacturer simply directs the replacement/upgrade. EG... ALL of my generations of 'home-build' have used ASUS Motherboards. ALL [until the Level 10] have used Lian Li cases. ALL have used Nvidia graphics....again ASUS. All have used the Microsoft Explorer mouse....[1007]....and I still haven't changed from the Logitech Dinovo Edge Keyboard....
I reward good product experiences with brand loyalty...