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AMD Launches Enthusiast A10-7860K APU, New Mainstream CPUs and Wraith Cooler (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: AMD apparently wasn't done making announcements back at CES 2016. Today the company has shared news of new APUs, processors, fansink coolers, and motherboard updates. The company has been working with motherboard makers to enable a new wave of socket AM3+ and FM2+ motherboards with support for technologies like USB 3.1 (some with type-C and M.2 solid state drives (SSDs). Many of the updated motherboards are already available. AMD also has a trio of new APUs / processors coming down the pipe --the A10-7860K, the A6-7470K, and the Athlon X4 845. The Athlon X4 845 is a quad-core part, featuring four Excavator-class cores clocked at up to 3.8GHz. The processor has 2MB of L2 cache, 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and a TDP of 65W, but no built-in graphics. The A6-7470K is a dual Steamroller-core APU (clocked at up to 4GHz), with 8 GPU cores (at up to 800MHz), 1MB of L2 cache, 16 PCIe lanes, and a 65W TDP. The A10-7860K is a little beefier with four Steamroller cores (clocked up to 4GHz), with 8 GPU cores (clocked up to 757MHz), 1MB of L2 cache, 16 PCIe lanes, and a 65W TDP. Both the 7860K and 7470K are unlocked for more flexible overclocking. Finally, the FX-8370 bundled with AMD's new Wraith cooler will be arriving today at the same price point as the previous edition. According to AMD, the Wraith cooler offers 24% more surface area than the previous PIB cooler and the fan pushes 34% more air.
Pity no Mini ITX boards available for these yet
I thought A4 = 4 cores, A8 = 8 cores. I guess they're getting rid of that in favor of bigger numbers because marketing reasons?
Athlon X4 845 why cut pci-e lanes? amd is losing and this is a bad idea.
Where's the "enthusiasm" over a retread of parts that they launched in 2014 that weren't even very high end [by AMD standards of "high end"] back in 2014?
I don't think you could find anybody who looks at a Core i3 or Pentium -- which compete with these parts on performance and price at much lower power envelopes -- as "enthusiast" parts.
Why is AMD even announcing these parts when they are re-launching what are basically the same 28nm process parts in 3 months with a tweaked memory controller in the AM4 platform?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
AMD didn't technically "cut" PCIe lanes since the underlying chip never had the PCIe lanes to begin with. That Athlon is a rebranded version of "Carrizo" that technically launched last year as a soldered-on mobile only part. It's available in a relatively small selection of notebooks but hasn't taken the market by storm.
Anyway, the Athlon part is just Carrizo put into a socket instead of being soldered to a board. Since Carrizo was only a mobile part designed for low-end systems, it never had 16 full lanes of PCIe connectivity to begin with.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
AMD had a brief period of success in the x86 market in the early 2000's Until between the Pentium 4 and the Intel Core 2. Where people actually wanted AMD Chips not as a chip ripoff of Intel Chips, but because they were a serious competition with many good features that were valued by end use desktop users.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
AMD still make machines that people actually use (I'm running an FX-8320E eight core now, and for my needs it's a great CPU).
I'll also point out that x64 was created by AMD.
It's a little bit on the bullshit side to claim they had a "brief period of success in the early 2000's" ... they're still a company with multi-billion dollar revenues.
They're doing just fine.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And you called out the parent for bullshit? Oh wait, you said the parent had a little bullshit, so I guess you went for the full monty.
Even if Zen actually does what it is supposed to do, there's a very real possibility that AMD won't exist after 2019 when their crippling bond obligations come due.
Anybody who has seen AMD's financials with 6% and 7% interest rates on notes that were issued when the Fed was basically giving money away for free knows that AMD is far, far from "doing just fine." There are plenty of former AMD employees who could tell you that as well.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
If my aging brain remembers correctly, AMD was the first to push the x86_64 in the AMD64 architecture when all Intel had for 64 bit chips was IA-64; and they were also the first to bring AMDV/VT-x to midrange desktop chips (for a while it was only available on Xeons from Intel). They also had better performance per watt than the Intel Chips at the time. It was a good time for AMD but they fell behind when Intel came out with Core2 (based on Pentium M). Since Core2 (and subsequently the iN series) they've been playing catch up, but not too long ago they were the leaders.
I think the AMD64 architecture was probably the most significant in those days because it meant that you could run more than 4GB of RAM without PAE overhead.
If losing billions is considered "doing just fine", then sure they're doing just fine. I mean, when was the last time they had a profitable year? Not to mention their revenues keep falling. Yes they're doing just fine.
I chose an FX8350 over an i5 because performance was objectively better than the i5 that cost 50% more for the applications that actually exercised my CPU at the time (Planetside 2, BF3/4, and transcoding).
I would have had to buy an i7 at 2x the price to match the FX8350, and why do that when I could use that money to upgrade my graphics card to the point that no Intel processor could have matched the performance increase?
Not everyone is a Saudi Prince, after all. I have a job and a family to feed, and with only $1500 to spend on a gaming rig, why waste money on Intel?
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Apple is doomed! They are still only on A9.
AMD has been missing out on these benchmarks for a long time: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/hi...
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Yeah they did great last year.
They lost less profit than the year prior. PROGRESS!!!!!
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
In case anyone wasn't sure what an APU was (I had no idea).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Accelerated_Processing_Unit
AMD is a large company with many divisions. Some are "doing just fine", others not so much. Pointedly in the context of this particular thread, the previous poster is correct, in that AMD had "brief period of success in the early 2000's", however in terms of mid-range to enthusiast retail CPU market. At the low end they do fine, and for the server market they do even better.
You're right, the x64 was created by AMD, during that period of time, and was cutting edge and way before its time. Too far, in that no one really used that instruction set until many years later, after the chips that introduced it have long since obsolesce. Anyway I remember longing for the Athelon 64's back in the day, but in that one market segment, ever since Core 2 Duo they have never managed to catch up. However since then they have also gotten into the video GPU market in addition to those listed above. Anyway I would love to see them challenge Intel again in that segment (though in some very specific applications they do, just in general no so much).
I am not sure if they are doing well on the business side but their CPUs and GPUs are more than good enough for many users (if not most users). The market in general is mature and saturated. My aging AMD box performs well enough that ANY full system upgrade would seem gratuitous.
Intel may be the big bad monopoly but it's GPUs are less than exciting.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It wasn't just being able to run more than 4GB of RAM. It was being able to "use" all 4GB of your RAM. You used to be capped around 3.25GB due to hardware I/O mapping. If you had more than one video card at the time you could have under 3GB of RAM available.
PIKE, you "editors," not PIPE.
And for all you AMD haters and doomsayers, you do realize that AMD gets paid for every Intel x64 chip that Intel sells, right? Otherwise you would be using some retarded Itanium consumer chip or still on 32 bit. Stick this chip on a decent MSI or ASUS motherboard with some fast ram and you have a nice PC for little cash.
They're doing just fine.
No. No they're not.
AMD can sustain their chronic losses for another year or so. After that someone will have to rescue it or shut it down. jellomizer and many others are absolutely right; AMD has not followed up their success from the Athlon/x64 era with competitive products. They've been coasting, trying to subsist in the `value' end of the market with second tier products. Trouble is Intel also competes in the value end of the market, so buying AMD doesn't actually net much savings.
Can't really trust AMD and their "core" counts any more. Used to buy AMD CPUs almost exclusively in the past. Then got a top of the line, supposedly 8-core, FX-8350 (two of them in fact). When tried running 8 processes in parallel, got about 40% performance drop. After reading the fine print, turns out it has only 4 independent units, and pairs of "cores" sharing resources, effectively making it a 4-core CPU in reality. Fuck you, AMD!
However, my new laptop is a core i7-4720HQ, it runs circles around the FXs. So, they are sufficient, but as good 3rd and 4th gen i5s steadily decrease in price, the price/performance ratio swings ever more in intel's favor.
I like AMD. I really do, but they are not in a good spot. I really hope the zen CPUs later this year help stem the bleeding.
Silence is a state of mime.
If you're wondering what a Wraith Cooler is, here's an image.
I think the AMD64 architecture was probably the most significant in those days because it meant that you could run more than 4GB of RAM without PAE overhead.
They were also the first x86 vendor to utilize an on-die memory controller, which was a huge advancement for its time. This gave a noticeable performance improvement over systems using on-board controllers.
It also depends on when you want to spend the money: Intel is currently a lot more power efficient.
I'm excitedly awaiting Zen though.
Be relentless!
That FX has its place, for some people it makes sense.
However, don't let benchmarks fool you, the i5 is better than you think, at least the new ones are.
AMD's big problem is that Intel keeps cranking out new chips that are a bit faster and consume less power every year, while AMD's chips have largely not changed in three years.
That is true, but as the saying goes, you can only perform that trick once. What do you do for an encore?
Intel did it awhile later and negated the benefit, from a competitive point of view.
AMD has been very helpful in pushing Intel along, I would not want to see the x86 CPU business without them. But that day may be coming soon, AMD is in a lot of trouble.
Which is odd since Core 2, without an on-die memory controller, had higher IPC than K8. I never really understood how that was possible.
You're getting I/O confused with processing power...
And you called out the parent for bullshit? Oh wait, you said the parent had a little bullshit, so I guess you went for the full monty.
Even if Zen actually does what it is supposed to do, there's a very real possibility that AMD won't exist after 2019 when their crippling bond obligations come due.
Anybody who has seen AMD's financials with 6% and 7% interest rates on notes that were issued when the Fed was basically giving money away for free knows that AMD is far, far from "doing just fine." There are plenty of former AMD employees who could tell you that as well.
Only because Intel payola [1] during those years didn't really get punished (sure they paid a fine, but honestly they got off pretty easy) while AMD spent all that time developing x86 and Intel just embraced it.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?...
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Did you try, cough, playing games with it?
The only RUNTIME demanding (i.e. "just wait a bit longer" won't cut it) tasks that I can through at my notebook are games.
And at that kind of tasks, AMD Carrizo notebook chip pwns most things Intel has offer (bar Iris Pro, which is much more expensive)
only problem is an fx8350 is NOT faster in gaming compared to an i5. hell, an i7 doesnt even always beat an i5 in gaming.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-13.html
http://www.hardwarepal.com/planetside-2-cpu-benchmark/
http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html
intel tends to have stronger single core performance, which is what most games prefer. i bought an phenom II x4 back in the day because, according to the benchmarks at the time, it was just a little under an i5 2500k in performance, yet much cheaper. as time marched on, the performance gap between the 2500k and my phenom II x4 grew larger and larger. i eventually upgraded to a used i5 2500k and still use it today (@ 5.0ghz).
buying an amd cpu to save a little money and put elsewhere can be a very good idea, but dont fool yourself thinking the fx8350 performs better than a comparable i5 in planetside 2 or bf3/4.
and my god man, $1500 and you only got an fx8350? whered the rest of the cash go?!
Intel knows pretty well they would be knee-deep in anti-trust trouble if AMD died. They'll see to this not coming. A permanently struggling AMD that still sells mediocre x86 CPUs is in Intels best interest. And actually, AMD CPUs still deliver good bang-per-buck, if you don't need a high-end system, which few really require.
Yeah! They're losing money on almost every sale, but they're making it up through volume...
My notebook has an nVidia 960M in it, so yes, it plays games just fine. I will not own a PC without a fairly serviceable GPU since I do game some (not as much as I used to)
Silence is a state of mime.
To add to my other comment though, for machines without need of a GPU or where a discrete unit is used, the price/performance gap has gone more in intels favor. If you want an embedded GPU, then the AMD apus are where it is are, especially for price. You can get an A8 for 400-500 bucks. Add an SSD and you have a fair machine. Anything close in the Intel+GPU camp will smoke it with the discrete GPU but cost 300+ more.
Silence is a state of mime.
Catching up to Intel as they are starting to hit Moore's law will fix this. AMD needs to hope they can survive their bond debt and maybe restock their coffers with more antitrust money.
It was never the hardware only the way a consumer OS mapped it into memory. Microsoft didn't have this problem with their server operating systems (not even Win2k) and neither did anyone else. It was nothing but a design flaw in a small number of consumer operating systems by a single vendor.
but everywhere I look I see the i5 4690k beating the 8350. 6 months ago I'd agree the value was there but Intel just dropped their pants. Right now I can get an 4690k combo off newegg for about $20 bucks more... I'm running an A10-5800 right now and for a low end rig I'm pretty happy with it, but I also got it for the cost of the ram when a friend of my brother's upgrade. Right now I can't see running AMD. On the plus side they at least keep Intel on their toes, and Zen might fix everything :)
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We shall see... even if AMD gets chips out this year on the 14nm GF scale, that doesn't mean they'll solve their issues. Intel has been on 14nm for how long now? 10nm is coming in a year or so?
I honestly wish AMD the best of luck, we need them to keep Intel honest, I have no desire to pay monopoly prices... but the future isn't pretty for AMD.
AMD has a long history of technology sharing pacts with Intel. IIRC, during the late 1980s and early 1990s AMD basically sat on its collective ass and let Intel do all the hard work.
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A 32bit OS can address 4GB of memory. Hardware devices overlay memory addresses to allow I/O with the OS, and something like a dedicated graphics card will have its own memory that also takes up addressing space. The hardware wasn't just a graphics card but everything, serial/parallel ports, PCI controller and slots, IDE controller, etc.
There was a fix to allow addressing more than 4GB with 32bit hardware with something called Physical Address Extension (PAE). This was active in Microsoft's server OSes, and it was available in the initial release of consumer XP; however, it was removed in either SP1 or SP2 (can't remember which). The theory was that with servers only certain hardware was ran and those drivers would be certain to support PAE. With a consumer OS lots of random hardware could be ran and a driver that didn't support PAE would bomb out and crash the system if trying to address an address that was outside the 4GB cap.
So before PAE was included there was a hard cap of 4GB of addressable memory with a 32bit CPU that no OS could work around.
The hardware (PCI, IDE, etc) could support any addresses as long as the OS and drivers were supported like PAE on a 32bit OS, or a 64bit OS.
But in the end, you could have 4GB of RAM on a system running Windows XP. But you'd only have 3.25GB of usable memory due to the hardware I/O mapping.
Well, I'm thinking more on a five year timeline. If they can make it that long Moore's law failing should help them even out. Now if only AMD will dump that arm "seekoority" management core from their chips they introduced in 2013... Not having that was a big selling point between 2009-2013...
AMD doesn't have 5 years left, there is a reason their stock is where it is. The investors know the company is on borrowed time.
It essentially has no value, beyond its patents and deal with Intel, the rest of the enterprise is worthless, according to Wall Street. (who isn't always right, but can be right from time to time)
AMD is burning cash, racking up debt, and has a lot due in the next three years. They won't have any income to pay it off and likely can't finance it anymore.
This is sad, since we need them to do well, but our needing that doesn't make them profitable. :(
Side note:
AMD has less than $1 billion in cash left, bleeding a bit more each year, with $600 million in cash needed Jan 1, 2018 or they default on the 2020 bank debt.
AMD has a market cap of $1.6 billion. Intel is nearly $150 billion. Intel has over $25 billion in cash on hand.
Intel could buy AMD with cash more than 10 times over.
This is not a battle of equals, sad to say. AMD has done a bunch of tricks in the past few years to survive, but they are running out of them.
Example: AMD recently sold its headquarters building and then leased it back, to raise cash.
You can only do that stuff so many times before you run out of things to sell.
Diapers.
The design flaw I am describing even occurs with multi-cpu systems that should be able to address a full 4GB per CPU/core like Win2k, solaris, linux, etc could do on 32 bit systems. I've got a Win2k system that's still fired up every couple of years to run legacy software (with an evil hardware dongle so no VM replacement) with 6GB of memory since it's got two Pentium Pro CPUs. Vista 32 bit with a pile of cores can't do that due to the design flaw.
It's available in a relatively small selection of notebooks but hasn't taken the market by storm.
I don't think I've ever seen AMD's CPUs in laptops, except in HP's consumer laptops, and consumer laptops these days have glossy screens and everything else you wouldn't want from a laptop.
Probably Intel who has been offering a sweetened deal for the manufacturers, for the past decade and a half.
Is the dongle an external one? VMWare and VirtualBox will let you directly access a physical USB, serial port, and parallel port device.
Now they do which is nice, but not many years back it was not the case. However since parallel ports are becoming rare things it may as well remain on the same hardware until people stop using the legacy software - which may have already happened since it's been used three times in the last eight years and not at all in two.
Anyway the point is the 32 bit server line of MS stuff didn't have the design flaw, for a brief period the server and desktop line was the same thing, and that I have an example to hand.