AMD Ryzen 2, Next Gen Vega & More Detailed

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I think I must have said “AMD is firing on all cylinders” more than two dozen times over the course of last year’s coverage on these pages. From Ryzen to Threadripper and ALMOST everything in between, there were more AMD hits last year than in the last decade. During that time there were some who thought 2017 was just going to be a flash in the pan -a fluke as certain pundits put it- and that in 2018 and beyond AMD’s cadence would surely sslow down.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a hotel room trying to put words to paper after having just finished a good six straight hours of briefings with AMD. Unlike other companies who tend to focus too much on flash and not enough on substance, the AMD of today feels subtle yet in better command of their future than ever before. So while there will always be naysayers, if the last day has taught be anything, it is that 2017 was no one shot deal for this company. The next half decade will be filled with a constant cadence of new technologies as AMD vies to put the past in its rear view mirror.

Basically this visit with AMD before CES was all about setting the stage for 2018 and preview what’s coming up rather than a deep dive into anything. That means details were spread a bit thin as they usually are before any major launches but there are still plenty of dates, names and other elements that were brought to light.

Let’s start things off with a very straightforward roadmap and then get deeper in to upcoming APUs and CPUs on the following page.

AMD’s master plan which was first set into motion when Lisa Su took over was to either match or pull ahead of Intel in the short to mid-term future. They want to do so not by just offering a better price structure but also battling it out in the sometimes-messy trenches of raw performance. But one of the primary challenges standing in AMD’s way was their own manufacturing process inferiority. While Intel CPUs were using 22 nanometer and 14 nanometer lithography, Mrs Su’s cohorts had been stuck on 28nm since around 2014. This placed them at a distinct disadvantage in terms of power consumption, heat and die size. Raw performance was seriously capped.

Ryzen marked a significant step to a much more efficient 14nm process but that was just the beginning. In 2018 we will see AMD’s first moves to a 12nm node for both desktop and mobile processors whereas Intel will remain with their refreshed 14nm technology until Cannon Lake is launched on 10 nanometer later this year. Amazingly, AMD is actually thinking that a move to 7nm will be possible as early as 2019 while a refresh of that will likely come in 2020.

Naturally, this rapid cadence will lead to an almost tick / tock approach to upcoming launches. The first out of the gate will be Zen+ which uses the 12nm manufacturing process to deliver up to 10% better performance by optimizing in some key areas. CPUs based on Zen+ are actually sampling to partners right now in preparation for a launch in April with a refreshed Ryzen series.

Now make sure you realize that there won’t be any fundamental changes to the overall Zen architecture until Zen 2 launches in 2019 with that 7nm process I was just talking about. But according to AMD Zen 2’s design is already complete.

Basically AMD has two dedicated CPU teams that leapfrog each other in the development cycle so once Zen’s architecture was done, that team started work on Zen 2. Meanwhile, the second team started working on Zen+ and now they’ll go on to Zen 3 designs which will be ready sometime in 2020. That’s impressive to say the least.

There’s more to all of this than just changing manufacturing processes too because AMD is also trying to move beyond the usual 7 to 8% yearly performance increase. Intel hasn’t really been moving the yardsticks forward in this respect but AMD thinks they can push things even further and offer their clients much more performance with each new cycle. Whether or not that’s actually achievable is another matter but given each revision should boost clock speeds and overall IPC, the potentially for a paradigm shift is certainly there.

But you have to start somewhere, right? And that first move was with Ryzen and now we know AMD will be launching the second generation of Ryzen desktop processors in April of this year. Due to that 12nm manufacturing process they’ll come with higher clock speeds, better boost algorithms and enhanced overall efficiency. We’ll definitely be covering that launch but it is just the tip of a large AMD iceberg that will be washing ashore in 2018. Let’s see what else they are offering up for both enthusiasts and almost everyone else too.

 

[SKYMTL]

AMD’s 2018 GPU & Processor Roadmaps In Depth

AMD’s 2018 GPU & Processor Roadmaps In Depth

There should be no doubt in anyone’s head that 2018 will be a banner year for AMD once again and at their latest press event, that became quite evident. At this point they’re confident enough to unveil their entire projection for this year and it looks quite promising with Ryzen headlining a large desktop rollout.

At its most basic, this new lineup will be headlined by second generation Ryzen 2000-series processors which feature the new 12nm manufacturing process. Oddly enough, the upcoming Raven Ridge 2000G-series APUs have the same nomenclature but they will actually utilize the original Ryzen / Zen core design but with some updates. APUs with Zen+ are due to roll out sometime in 2019.

Starting on February 12th AMD will be launching those new desktop APUs which combine Ryzen and Vega graphics into an impressive little entry level family. Potential confusion due to the naming convention aside, they’re targeted directly at Intel’s soft underbelly in the sub-$175 market.

Probably the most exciting new addition AMD’s 2018 lineup will be coming in April with the second generation Ryzen CPUs. There’s a full lineup being launched from higher end 8-core, 16 thread variants all the way down to more basic quad core chips. To add some icing on top of that cake, there will also be a new series of motherboards and suite of updated feature sets. Don’t worry though, current boards will be compatible with Ryzen 2000 series processors.

A bit further on that in the second half of the year Zen+ will be used to refresh Threadripper into a newer and faster beast. There are precious few details about any of these items but expect more information as they year goes on since AMD’s marketing folks have become masters of feeding us a constant drip of information.

In order to prepare their current lineup for the arrival of new processors, AMD will be rolling in some pretty significant price cuts which you’ll start seeing almost immediately. For example, the 1900X has received a big $100 cut to $450 because since the higher performance 2000-series variant may end up encroaching slightly upon its precious territory. The rest of the Ryzen 7 lineup has also received price drops ranging from $150 for the 1800X to $15 for the Ryzen 5 1500X.

You’ll also notice the addition of those two new APUs with standard Ryzen cores and Vega graphics: the 4 core, eight thread Ryzen 5 2400G at $170 and the quad core Ryzen 3 2200G for just $99. These will actually act as lineup replacements for AMD’s Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200. Meanwhile the 1400 and 1200 will remain on sale until existing stocks are sold out.

So that pretty much rounds up the lineup changes for AMD on the processor front but what about graphics? Well that area is one where they arguably need the most help but unfortunately it looks like there’s going to be a bit of a wait until the Radeon series can pull free of Vega’s failures. There’s hope on the horizon though.

Sometime in 2018 we will see the Vega architecture transition to a 7nm manufacturing process but there’s no word whether or not gaming cards will actually receive this refresh. But I’m guessing not since AMD’s board partners are still struggling to launch custom variants and the ROI for switching to another manufacturing process at this early juncture would be somewhat counter-intuitive.

Between the current generation of Vega and the 7nm, there won’t be any significant core changes since the smaller node is being effectively used as a testing ground for the Navi architecture refresh rather than being pushed as a mass-launched product. Supposedly AMD already has 7nm cores in hand for use in their Radeon Instinct MI25 cards that are used for deep learning algorithms.

The first significant change for the consumer cards will likely come with Navi which is due sometime in 2019 and then there will be a brand new architecture coming in 2020 which should utilize an optimized 7nm manufacturing process. Here’s the issue though: we are all still waiting for lower end desktop Vega cards outside the current Vega 64 and Vega 56 variants and that could be answered by what’s being done in the mobile space.

Other than the 56 and 64 which will remain around for the rest of 2018 and the 7nm Instinct MI25 hitting the shelves for machine learning, AMD has also announced discrete notebook GPUs based on the Vega architecture. It could be these mobile cores will eventually morph into lower end desktop variants that will finally be able to go up against the GTX 1060 and GTX 1050 series.

Unfortunately AMD wasn’t really able to provide us with any more information about the specifications or official launch date of these mobile GPUs but it looks like there will be some notebook designs with them before Q2 2018. It does look like there is a single stack of HBM2 though so that means memory will likely be between 4GB and 8GB. There are also a few notebooks on display at CES and we’ll have coverage of those in the coming days.

 

[SKYMTL]

The 2000-series Ryzen CPUs & APUs in Depth

The 2000-series Ryzen CPUs & APUs in Depth

AMD’s newest processors and APUs were naturally front and center during the presentations and this article wouldn’t be complete without spending a bit more time explaining what they could potentially offer.

By moving towards 12nm AMD has been able to achieve significantly higher clock speeds without associated power consumption or heat production uplift. In order for Ryzen to compete against Coffee Lake - particularly in gaming- items like higher frequencies in lightly threaded situations were needed and to achieve those, efficiency needed to be addressed above all else. There will also be some improvement in areas like cache / memory speed and latency. Hopefully Ryzen will finally be able to consistently hit DDR4 memory speeds above 3000MHz.

Speaking of gaming, there will be a new multi core algorithm boost state for higher performance in gaming and other real world scenarios.

I’ve already said there won’t be any significant architecture changes to Zen+ and the second generation Ryzen processors but that doesn’t mean there aren’t improvements. In order to take better advantage of the lower power consumption and potential for higher frequencies AMD will be updating Precision Boost and the Extended Frequency Range technologies.

While we don’t have all that much information about how these two items will be changing, it looks like Precision Boost will be better able to predict upcoming workloads and further balance core output. That means higher Base and Boost frequencies can be achieved more often.

Despite all these new items, AMD has committed to keep their AM4 socket around for a while, until at least 2019. That means current generation motherboard chipsets like B350 and X370 will be compatible with upcoming Raven Ridge APUs and second generation Ryzen desktop processors.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that even though older motherboards will have some forwards compatibility, you may be missing out on key next gen features and performance if you pair up an older mobo with a new CPU. What that means is up for discussion since AMD wasn’t willing to discuss specifics yet.

The proof of this is apparent with the upcoming X470 motherboard series. While a simple BIOS update will insure second gen Ryzen CPUs are simple drop in upgrades for X370, only the newer boards will be truly optimized for them. AMD wasn’t willing to talk about any details but it looks like X470 will feature improved performance, additional overclocking capabilities and some new feature level support. It will be interesting to see what that translates to in the real world and we’ll have more information for you shortly.

This brings me to the next part of AMD’s big announcements: the Raven Ridge APUs which will be launching on February 12th. The first of those will be the Ryzen 5 2400G that comes with a 4 cores, 8 threads base clock of 3.6GHz and a Boost clock of 3.9GHz. The Vega graphics side of that chip will have 11 Compute Units which means 704 SIMD units or roughly 1/5th the raw processing power of a Vega 56. It may not sound like much but this is crazy powerful for an integrated graphics chip. For $170 there seems to be a lot of value here.

The Ryzen 3 2200G is cut down a bit with lower boost and base frequencies but it is still a naively quad core part and its graphics side has 8 CUs enabled. At just $100, I could see this becoming the go-to solution for entry level systems. Both of these are 65W TDP parts.

I also mentioned on the last page the two new APUs will actually act as lineup replacements for AMD’s Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200. I’m sure some of you may have been looking at those processors for your upgrade needs but you may think otherwise when the 2000G series hits.

You can actually see that through higher clock speeds the 2400G and 2200G are able to easily outperform the 1400 and 1200 in every single application. As with Intel processors you are buying an integrated GPU you won’t need if using a discrete one but it is hard to argue against these numbers given how low the new APUs are priced.

This makes it even more apparent that at least in multi threaded environments the 2400G and 2200G are not only better than the original Ryzen CPUs they are replacing but they can also handily beat Intel CPUs from a price / performance standpoint. The 2200G is going to have a tough fight against the i3-8100 particularly in gaming with a discrete graphics card but it still looks like a phenomenal value.

AMD even tested the Ryzen 5 2400G against Intel’s i5-8400 and it looks like integrated performance will line up with that Intel CPU when it is paired with a discrete GT 1030 GPU. What’s even more impressive is that the Intel / AMD setup will have a TDP that’s about 30W higher than the integrated AMD solution.

Obviously AMD is going to show scenarios where their multi core architecture is going to shine and these are two more instances, particularly because the integrated graphics is being used in both. Nonetheless, there’s definitely something to take away from this…..the new APUs are even better able to compete than the original Ryzen CPUs at their given price points.

In gaming the 2400G is obviously going to be the better bet given how far Intel’s integrated GPUs are behind from an architecture and driver perspective. This is likely why Intel decided to team up with the Radeon Technology Group for some semi custom chips that will provide high end gaming capabilities to thin and light notebooks.

The 2200G is in the same position as well against the i3-8100 but it will definitely be interesting to see how these chips line up with one another in other real-world scenarios.

Like with all of the other chips in AMD’s currently lineup, these new APUs will feature fully unlocked CPU multipliers as well as the capability to overclock the Vega graphics subsystem. AMD actually showed us that a simple bump in memory speeds will result in a pretty significant gaming performance speed up. Adding some GPU overclocking on top of that saw over 40% better performance in 3DMark Fire Strike.