CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 140

Today is a new day, and that means new Ryzen ThreadRipper leaks: with some news of AMD's upcoming flagship Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X processor throwing up its fists in a Geekbench database war with Intel's latest and greatest Core and Xeon CPUs.

This time, we're looking at the Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X which is AMD's flagship 16C/32T processor with a base clock of 3.4GHz. We should expect boost CPU clocks of 3.6GHz, while XFR will take it to 3.8GHz. There'll be 32MB of L3 cache, and 8MB of L2 cache for a total of 40MB. But we're here for the performance numbers, right? In the single-core test on Geekbench, the Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X scored 4074, but compared to Intel's new Core i9-7900X with 10C/20T of performance - the 1950X gets thrashed, with the 7900X hitting 5403.

But no one is going to be buying AMD's new Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs for their single-core performance, so moving onto the Geekbench multi-core score on the Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X we have 26,768 - which is a much better result, and closer to the 33,945 that the Core i9-7900X scores. AMD will surely have many more optimizations to make to its Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs and the upcoming X399 chipset, but for now Intel is in the lead by a massive margin. Somewhere that AMD can destroy Intel is on price... something Intel seems to be happy keeping a premium on.

Intel must be shaking in its boots over the various threats from AMD, and now there's news that AMD has scooped back a huge 10.4% of the CPU market share from Intel... all in Q2 2017.

PassMark's quarterly market share report has interesting results, from thousands of submissions that flow through their database each quarter. Remember: PassMark's market share data comes from benchmark submissions, and not total systems sold - it also doesn't include any operating systems other than Windows.

AMD now owns 31% of the CPU market, which is a huge freakin' deal compared to the 20% they had just three months ago. This is the largest CPU share dominance AMD has enjoyed over the last 10 years, and a 10% gain in the CPU market in a single quarter is a massive achievement.

AMD has been on the offensive ever since it launched Ryzen earlier this year, with the next few weeks leading into the Ryzen ThreadRipper family of CPUs and their respective X399 chipset, but AMD also teased its mid-range Ryzen 3 CPUs destined for a couple of months from now.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen PRO family of processors were announced in the last 24 hours, with some - but not all, details on Ryzen 3. Ryzen 3 should have the same cache structure as the lowest-end Ryzen 5 processor, the Ryzen 5 1400. We will receive 8MB of L3 cache enabled, versus the 16MB of L3 cache on Ryzen 5 1500X, 1600, and 1600X. Each core will still retain its full 512KB of L2 cache, and lowered TDPs of just 65W.

We don't know the full details on Ryzen 3 just yet, but Ryzen 3 will be 4C/4T processors without SMT enabled like Ryzen 5. Ryzen 3 1300 should be a 4C/4T chip @ 3.5/3.7GHz, while the Ryzen 3 1200 will be a 4C/4T processor at 3.1/3.4GHz. We should expect the Ryzen 3 1300X as well, but we'll have to wait and see about details on that in the near future.

The battle of the top chips continues. Samsung Electronics is reportedly focusing on the next generation of 6nm chip fabrication technology. In order to do so, the Korean tech giant will stop further investments in the 7nm chip manufacturing technology.

Samsung is expected to introduce 8nm chips next year as an improved version of the 10nm technology, which has already been found in some of the best Android smartphones in 2017 so far. The Koreans will produce a limited number of 7nm line and focus its investment on the 6nm market.

Samsung should be installing two new ASML machines, vital for improving chip manufacturing efficiency, this year, and seven more in 2018. The manufacturing of Samsung's 6nm process and chips using it is expected to begin starting in 2019.

UPDATE: The video points fingers at not just Intel and GIGABYTE, but also ASUS and MSI X299 motherboards. The video stated that the X299 Aorus Gaming 3, Prime X299-A, and MSI's X299 Gaming Pro Carbon VRMs throttled when all cores were overclocked to 4.6GHz on a test bench. It was also pointed out that with proper airflow, the VRMs do much better and shouldn't throttle. These motherboards are at the entry-level to mid-range side of each brands' X299 line up.

Intel's new X299 platform is now out, with various issues towed behind it, professional overclocker 'der8auer' says the platform is a complete "VRM disaster".

It's not just Intel that get the blame, but motherboard makers as well with der8auer saying that the blame is "50/50" on both Intel and motherboard companies. Intel's problems lie in the new X299 platform launching two months early, as it was meant to be released in August and came out in June. This forced motherboard makers into overdrive, with der8auer adding the companies had "almost zero time for developing proper products".

At MWC Shanghai Qualcomm announced a bunch of new products including the new mid-range processor, the Snapdragon 450.

This processor is designed to be put in mid-range smartphones, with a heavy focus on the Chinese market and Chinese manufacturers.

The Snapdragon 450 has an improved CPU and GPU with a 25% increase to both over the Snapdragon 435. It will feature an eight-core processor and Adreno 506 GPU which should offer better performance at lower power thanks to also being a 14nm FinFET chip.

Apple is preparing their next-gen iMac Pro systems, which can be configured with Intel's new Purley-based CPUs rocking up to 18C/36T and ECC RAM for the best you can get in an AIO desktop PC.

These are the configurations we should expect for the new iMac Pro:

But, there's now news coming from Pikeralpha that one of the most interesting parts of Apple's new iMac Pro could be the fact that it uses an ARM co-processor. The use of an ARM co-processor would allow the iMac Pro to perfect regulate the power going through the machine, perfectly tweaking the CPU and GPU management to keep power draw down, and thus temperatures. This is incredible important for an all-in-one that rocks a 18C/36T processor, 128GB of ECC RAM, and a bunch of PCIe-based NVMe SSDs, and AMD's new Radeon Vega GPU architecture.

AMD has been making some pretty serious waves with its Zen CPU architecture, but now that the enterprise/server-grade EPYC processors are here, Intel is in for a big fight - even with its spiffy new Xeon Platinum line of CPUs.

AMD's new EPYC 7601 comes in 32C/64T, but has been used in a dual-CPU server with a total of 64C/128T for some serious computational power - with SiSoft Sandra and Cinebench R15 2P benchmarks. We're seeing a competition between Intel's new 28C/56T processors in both single- and dual-CPU configurations, with a dual-CPU rig with Intel's new Xeon Platinum 8180 and a total of 56C/112T of power.

The benchmarks saw an average all-core CPU clock of 2.7GHz on all 64C/128T of AMD's dual EPYC 7601 system, while the dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 had 3.4GHz across all of its dual-CPU goodness at 56C/112T. In the Cinebench R15 performance, we're looking at AMD's EPYC 7601 scoring around 6879 points, while Intel's new Xeon Platinum 8180 pushes 8301.

If Intel wasn't already in enough trouble with AMD's constant onslaught of products with Ryzen and now Ryzen ThreadRipper, the company is now going to have a huge storm surrounding it over a newly-discovered flaw in Intel's Skylake and Kaby Lake architectures with Hyper-Threading.

The HT-enabled processors with critical flaws were discovered on the Debian Linux user list, and sent out without a warning notification - but these issues extend to Windows, and other operating systems, too. The errors with HT-enabled Skylake/Kaby Lake CPUs can lead to various issues ranging from your entire system locking up, major data corruption or loss, or even more. As HotHardware points out: "the replication conditions are very specific and are unlikely to be encountered by most users in the wild". Still, it's not a good thing to see a company the size of Intel experiencing major issues like this, especially with AMD now competing in a big way in the CPU market again.

The problems surrounds Intel errata documentation, explained as:

Intel has been reacting to AMD's new Ryzen CPUs with the tease and release of their new Core i9 processors, but the mainstream Coffee Lake CPUs that are set for a reported launch early next year are being teased more and more.

The latest on Intel's upcoming Coffee Lake-based Core i7 processors is that they will come out in 6C/12T flagship models, with similar to performance of AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X, which is also a 6C/12T processor. There's now a listing on the Geekbench database of a few new Intel processors, with a 6C/12T model with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 12MB of L3 cache. We should expect the 6C/12T processor to come with up to 3.5GHz base and 4.2GHz boost clocks, which is hefty for a 6C/12T mainstream CPU, especially from Intel.

With the Geekbench entry, the chip is clocked at 3.2GHz base, and has a single-core score of 4619 and multi-core score of 20,828. If we compare this against a retail AMD Ryzen 5 1600X processor, we have a single-score of 4574, and multi-core score of 20,769. Right on the money against the Ryzen 5 1600X.