Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)

[Vattila]

Except for the details about the improvements in the microarchitecture, we now know pretty well what to expect with Zen 3.

The leaked presentation by AMD Senior Manager Martin Hilgeman shows that EPYC 3 "Milan" will, as promised and expected, reuse the current platform (SP3), and the system architecture and packaging looks to be the same, with the same 9-die chiplet design and the same maximum core and thread-count (no SMT-4, contrary to rumour). The biggest change revealed so far is the enlargement of the compute complex from 4 cores to 8 cores, all sharing a larger L3 cache ("32+ MB", likely to double to 64 MB, I think).

Hilgeman's slides did also show that EPYC 4 "Genoa" is in the definition phase (or was at the time of the presentation in September, at least), and will come with a new platform (SP5), with new memory support (likely DDR5).

What else do you think we will see with Zen 4? PCI-Express 5 support? Increased core-count? 4-way SMT? New packaging (interposer, 2.5D, 3D)? Integrated memory on package (HBM)?

Vote in the poll and share your thoughts!

 

[Rigg]

If true this is huge

AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs See Major Price Cuts As Ryzen 7000 Retail Launch Approaches: 5800X3D Down To $379, 5950X at $499, 5900X at $349, 5800X at $239, 5600X at $179

With the retail launch of the Ryzen 7000 approaching, the existing AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs have started to receive some pretty major price cuts.

wccftech.com

It's been true for months at Micro Center besides the recent 5800x (-$60) and 5800x3d (-$20) cuts.

 

[Markfw]

Might not be anything official from AMD and retailers tend to discount older generation parts before a launch, but it doesn't matter what the reason is if you can get a cheaper part.

Zen 3 is still a great CPU and even though AM4 is EOL if the price is cheap enough, it can make a great system.

Didn't you read ? AM4 is NOT EOL. It will continue as (most likely) the value line. For how long I don't know, but Lisa said so.

 

[Saylick]

If true this is huge

AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs See Major Price Cuts As Ryzen 7000 Retail Launch Approaches: 5800X3D Down To $379, 5950X at $499, 5900X at $349, 5800X at $239, 5600X at $179

With the retail launch of the Ryzen 7000 approaching, the existing AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs have started to receive some pretty major price cuts.

wccftech.com

Yet another half-assed, two-bit article from Hassan from WCCFTech... I was trying to figure out in the article which store offered the prices listed in the heading and there wasn't an obvious link or anything, then I see this:



I figure it's MC pricing that gets that low, which if it is the case is kind of disingenuous since not everyone has access to MC.

 

[Mopetar]

Didn't you read ? AM4 is NOT EOL. It will continue as (most likely) the value line. For how long I don't know, but Lisa said so.

We're probably mincing words, but it's not getting any new products so it's a dead end going forward as far as upgrade options. That doesn't make it useless and it'll still get some support and updates (so if you want to use EOL in that way you're absolutely correct) and with price cuts is probably better value for dollar than a new Zen 4 build. But you pay a price for buying into AM4 now and that's having no path forward excepting plugging in a better Zen 3 CPU to get more cores.

 

[Markfw]

We're probably mincing words, but it's not getting any new products so it's a dead end going forward as far as upgrade options. That doesn't make it useless and it'll still get some support and updates (so if you want to use EOL in that way you're absolutely correct) and with price cuts is probably better value for dollar than a new Zen 4 build. But you pay a price for buying into AM4 now and that's having no path forward excepting plugging in a better Zen 3 CPU to get more cores.

I would guess that is will be competing price wise and performance wise with the 13001 or whatever the bottom few Raptor lake are.

 

[moinmoin]

it's not getting any new products so it's a dead end going forward as far as upgrade options.

Yes and no. I think it will still get more products, but those will be lower budget and nothing that tops the already available top end products.

 

[Kaluan]

We're probably mincing words, but it's not getting any new products so it's a dead end going forward as far as upgrade options. That doesn't make it useless and it'll still get some support and updates (so if you want to use EOL in that way you're absolutely correct) and with price cuts is probably better value for dollar than a new Zen 4 build. But you pay a price for buying into AM4 now and that's having no path forward excepting plugging in a better Zen 3 CPU to get more cores.

By that kind of silly reasoning, Socket 1700 will go EOL in exactly 4 months on the dot, if ADL launch was any indication. How 'bout that as a "no path forward" for a so called next-gen product people are supposed to be excited about?

EOL literally means something is either not produced anymore and/or not maintained or supported anymore. None of that applies here, so maybe let's not change the meanings of words for giggles, there's already enough of that going around everywhere else.

And at any rate, I'd like a peek into that factual inside info source you have/crystal ball. Cause there's literally no way anyone can say for sure there's no new SKUs being launched for that socket.

 

[randomhero]

So are you telling me that two wrongs does make a right?

Nah, this would be like six wrongs does make a right

 

[deasd]

The MT ratio is shockingly high. 21.55!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1567059671655260161

for comparison 5950x ALL cores OC 5.1Ghz only has 19.86 MT ratio:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1340906673137840128

stock 17.58

 

[Borealis7]

The MT ratio is shockingly high. 21.55!
for comparison 5950x ALL cores OC 5.1Ghz only has 19.86 MT ratio:
stock 17.58

MT ratio seems like a very irrelevant and made-up metric, notice that neither Intel nor AMD use or cite it as a metric for anything.
the reason is the MT ratio just scales with the number of threads, each thread's frequency, the IPC of the architecture and most of all it is very workload dependent (the level of parallelism of the task you are performing). a CPU can have a MT ratio of 20 in one task and 15 in another...
you could compare the same task performed across many CPUs and measure the MT ratio, but the result would be not be a measure of efficiency unless you are comparing CPUs with the same number of threads and at the same frequency PER THREAD (or logical core). looking at the end result, and measuring performance/Watt is the industry standard and basically the only thing that matters because that translates directly into money.

I am just a humble B.Sc CompSci, but that is my view on the subject.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If true this is huge

AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs See Major Price Cuts As Ryzen 7000 Retail Launch Approaches: 5800X3D Down To $379, 5950X at $499, 5900X at $349, 5800X at $239, 5600X at $179

With the retail launch of the Ryzen 7000 approaching, the existing AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs have started to receive some pretty major price cuts.

wccftech.com

Yeah! 5950X for $500!!! Crap, there goes Intel's workstation revenues down the toilet!

 

[BorisTheBlade82]

But for a given workload it is an indication of a gen on gen improvement regarding SMT. With bigger caches it is very likely that Zen4 improved on that.

 

[Markfw]

Yeah! 5950X for $500!!! Crap, there goes Intel's workstation revenues down the toilet!

You can get them for that now on ebay.

 

[LightningZ71]

Yeah, that price ~$500 for the 5950x, isn't that amazing. It's been weeks that you could find them there. The 5900x has also been going for sub $350 for weeks now as my son took advantage of to upgrade his 2700x to a 5900x for $339 over two weeks ago.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Still, it's amazing that a top-of-the-line chip is easily available for that much. I don't see anyone selling me a 12900KS for that amount.

 

[inf64]

Still, it's amazing that a top-of-the-line chip is easily available for that much. I don't see anyone selling me a 12900KS for that amount.

Well, soon the 7950X will make the 5950X a mainstream desktop part, no wonder we have price cuts . ~30% higher ST and ~45% higher MT performance is a huge uplift. Still, the 5950X will remain a formidable force, especially for people on AM4 who do a lot of content creation and gaming.

 

[nicalandia]

Naked Zen4 Socket...

 

[nicalandia]

82C stock or that OC?
Anyway, sounds good.

82C is OC speed

 

[Timmah!]

82C is OC speed

Thanks. So it was not fake?

 

[Kaluan]

Yeah, that price ~$500 for the 5950x, isn't that amazing. It's been weeks that you could find them there. The 5900x has also been going for sub $350 for weeks now as my son took advantage of to upgrade his 2700x to a 5900x for $339 over two weeks ago.

5950X @$500 would actually be worse value than 7950X @MSRP in certain ways heh


Judging by the slides/footnotes, I think some are overestimating how big the performance gain from EXPO will be, I think most will be fine with some 5200CL38. It was compared vs JEDEC 4800 after all, more or less the worst case scenario, under-spec and all.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Naked Zen4 Socket...

View attachment 67191

Sigh.....ziiiiiip.

 

[Mopetar]

I would guess that is will be competing price wise and performance wise with the 13001 or whatever the bottom few Raptor lake are.

Definitely will have to since AM5/Zen 4 won't have anything comparable for months since AMD isn't launching the bottom half of the product stack until later.

Considering DDR5 is still a bit pricey it doesn't make a lot of sense for AMD to sell budget CPUs yet. Who would want to pay more for their board and RAM than the CPU they're going to pair with it?

By that kind of silly reasoning, Socket 1700 will go EOL in exactly 4 months on the dot, if ADL launch was any indication. How 'bout that as a "no path forward" for a so called next-gen product people are supposed to be excited about?

That's probably a better way of defining it. I would say that Intel doesn't have any newer replacement options for socket 1700 either now or in the near future and even after the RL launch, there's still a good chance that additional CPU models will be released.

My only complaint is that "No Path Forward" just doesn't sound good to my ears. Maybe "Dead End" is a bit more fitting. It suggests that it's not going anywhere, but that hasn't necessarily reached that end yet.

 

[jamescox]

MT ratio seems like a very irrelevant and made-up metric, notice that neither Intel nor AMD use or cite it as a metric for anything.
the reason is the MT ratio just scales with the number of threads, each thread's frequency, the IPC of the architecture and most of all it is very workload dependent (the level of parallelism of the task you are performing). a CPU can have a MT ratio of 20 in one task and 15 in another...
you could compare the same task performed across many CPUs and measure the MT ratio, but the result would be not be a measure of efficiency unless you are comparing CPUs with the same number of threads and at the same frequency PER THREAD (or logical core). looking at the end result, and measuring performance/Watt is the industry standard and basically the only thing that matters because that translates directly into money.

I am just a humble B.Sc CompSci, but that is my view on the subject.

It seems like that is true of just about everything though. I think the term IPC is massively misused. It varies massively between applications and can vary significantly between different components of the same application. It can also vary significantly with input data. That is why you should look at data for the applications you actually run.

 

[Timmah!]

Still, it's amazing that a top-of-the-line chip is easily available for that much. I don't see anyone selling me a 12900KS for that amount.

Nah, its still only 16C chip in age, where 96C ones exist. There is really nothing top-of-the-line about it, except being top chip into AM4 socket.

 

[biostud]

It seems like that is true of just about everything though. I think the term IPC is massively misused. It varies massively between applications and can vary significantly between different components of the same application. It can also vary significantly with input data. That is why you should look at data for the applications you actually run.

Exactly, and why AMD used an average of 22 applications to give an average IPC lift of 13%.