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AMD Releases New Tonga GPU, Lowers 8-core CPU To $229
Vigile (99919) writes AMD looks to continue addressing the mainstream PC enthusiast and gamer with a set of releases into two different component categories. First, today marks the launch of the Radeon R9 285 graphics card, a $250 option based on a brand new piece of silicon dubbed Tonga. This GPU has nearly identical performance to the R9 280 that came before it, but includes support for XDMA PCIe CrossFire, TrueAudio DSP technology and is FreeSync capable (AMD's response to NVIDIA G-Sync). On the CPU side AMD has refreshed its FX product line with three new models (FX-8370, FX-8370e and FX-8320e) with lower TDPs and supposedly better efficiency. The problem of course is that while Intel is already sampling 14nm parts these Vishera-based CPUs continue to be manufactured on GlobalFoundries' 32nm process. The result is less than expected performance boosts and efficiency gains. For a similar review of the new card, see Hot Hardware's page-by-page unpacking.
Sometimes I want to send headlines of this sort back to 1998 and see how the people of that era would react.
First...?
I PC game, and for the first time in decades have zero reasons to upgrade. My rig is now about 2 years old and runs every title at max setting. Unless I upgrade to 4K monitor (and I see no reason to) my PC should last me another 3-4 years before I get bumped to medium settings.
I just can't justify upgrading everything for messily 10% gain. As such, both Intel and AMD have to work harder on backwards compatibility. I might buy new CPU when it goes on sale if I also don't have to upgrade motherboard and RAM.
I suspect my next CPU will be arm(MIPS). I am astonished that I see I CPU the cost of several 1080p tablets. I am a little tired of all the posters of my computer does everything... I would love a faster machine, but at these prices they can whistle, and that is without the escalating cost of ram... and Microsoft bleeding it's monopoly to those tied into it.
This GPU has nearly identical performance to the R9 280 that came before it
Which had nearly identical performance to the 7950 that came before it. Which came out nearly three years ago.
Meanwhile, this says it all about the CPU. Sure, the AMD might save you $100 over the (faster) Intel, but you'll pay that back on a beefier PSU and cooler and electricity bills to support the beast.
What happened, AMD? I loved you back in the Athlon64 era...
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
King Tupou VI wants royalties
That's nice. Too bad the single core performance on the 8 core still SUCKS. There's a reason it beats the i5...because it has 2x the cores. Back in Windows 7 where almost all tasks are single core, even those in the OS itself, I need fast single core performance. What AMD needs to invent is hardware core multiplexing. In other words, have 8 cores but represent them to the system as 1 core and handle the distributed processing in the firmware. That would crush Intel.
Frustrating!
Or Octapussy.
OK, since Slashdot is running these weekly Tom's Hardware-type posts, lemme axe you something:
I've got a system I put together maybe three years ago. I used a good motherboard bought a good case, good RAM, very good PSU. It was when the first i5s were coming out, so it's an i5-750 (2.7ghz, I think). I didn't spend a lot of dough on a GPU, but I've been able to play everything up to and including Watch Dogs on this setup.
I want to be ready for the fall games (The Crew, GTA V, Dragon Age Whatever, Witcher 3, Arkham Whatever). Should I just start over with a new mobo processor or can I get value out of a new GPU (say, an nVidia 770 or AMD R9 285)?
mobo: Gigabyte GA-P55-UDsomething
RAM: 8 gig
GPU: HD 6850
SSD for system drive and Caviar black for games (maybe I should drop $150 on a 250gig SSD for my games? I'd have to trim down how many Steam and GOG games I have installed though, because now I've probably got 300gig including Wolfenstein (40+gig!)
24" 1920x1080
So what about it. It looks like this fall I might bump up against some of the new games requirements. Whole new rig or can I get mileage out of a new GPU?
Also, my wife thinks a grown man playing computer games is a little bit pathetic, and I can't really argue with her, so it's probably best if I keep the same big coolermaster case so maybe she won't notice I've spent more money my gaming rig. Bad enough when that new keyboard with the Cherry MB Brown keys came and all of a sudden my keyboard was glowing bright blue and I had to explain why I had to replace the old logitech keyboard.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If IBM did the processor, they would have called it 4 Core with SMT2. Basically you have 4 modules, with 2 of many of the components, but a lot of shared components. Notably, each of the 4 modules has a single FPU (so it's more like IBM's SMT8 versus SMT4 mode if you talk about their current stuff).
So it's more substantial than hyperthreading, but at the same time not reasonable to call each chunk a 'core'. I think it behaves better than Bulldozer did at launch *if* you have the right platform updates to make the underlying OS schedule workload correctly, but it's still not going to work well (and some workloads work better if you mask one 'core' per module entirely).
Basically, it's actually pretty analogous to NetBurst. NetBurst came along to deliver higher clock speeds since that was the focus of marketing, with some hope of significant workloads behaving a certain way to smooth over the compromises NetBurst made to get there. the workloads didn't evolve that way and NetBurst was a power hungry beast that gave AMD a huge opportunity. Now replace high clock speed with high core count and you basically have Bulldozer/Piledriver in a nutshell. I'm hoping AMD comes back with an architecture that challenges Intel agin, just like Intel came back from NetBurst.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
ARM and MIPS are different things. The companies are different, instruction sets are different, cores are different, etc. They've nothing to do with each other.
So they released a new card that's almost exactly the same as my years old 7950, except it has less memory bandwidth (256 vs 384 bit bus), 33% less video ram (3GB vs 2GB) and costs 50$ more than I paid for my 7950. Two years ago. Fail hard.
Their new cpu is still based on the same ancient 32nm process, and they're about to be not one but TWO full process nodes behind intel (even more if you count marketing transistor sizes vs. real transistor structure sizes). Predictably, overall performance and performance per watt are in the shitter. Fail even harder.
Why do people focus so much on which execution units this or that is scheduled to. These "cores" share an instruction fetch and decode unit, which is all anyone needs to know. That means no matter what marketing voodoo they attempt, the cores can only fetch an instruction packet every other cycle. The theoretical 2x 2 wide execution unit is also a farce because each unit need only accept instructions every other cycle allowing them to have much less logic because of guaranteed reduced throughput. Put it all together and you have what is equivalent to single hyperthreaded core with only 2 execution units worth of logic and no option to turn the hyperthread off and allow continuous fetch on one instruction stream. Utter piece of garbage from what used to be a good company.
Buy a Tonga!