AMD *Ridge vs. Intel *Lake

[The Evil Overlord]

Zen's not an AM3 chipset right...?

 

As if it is, it might be worth getting a Republic of Gamers Crossfire v Formula z board with any of the current gen FX chips, and if it is indeed compatible, just swap out the processor...

Just spitballing, I'm not even sure if that would work, I know it used to in the past.

[SenatorRobb]

3 minutes ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Zen's not an AM3 chipset right...?

 

As if it is, it might be worth getting a Republic of Gamers Crossfire v Formula z board with any of the current gen FX chips, and if it is indeed compatible, just swap out the processor...

Just spitballing, I'm not even sure if that would work, I know it used to in the past.

It's an AM4, which their are no mobo's as of yet...

[The Evil Overlord]

1 minute ago, SenatorRobb said:

It's an AM4, which their are no mobo's as of yet... grrr

See? I told you, you probably know more than me

[Luc2k]

10 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Greatly clears things up, and I will plan on getting a Radeon at first with raven ridge (Damn, just wish it wasn't a year away because this is, or was, my gaming rig)... But I think I'll wait for it. I think Zen is going to help bring AMD back into the fight, at least poise them to have a chance of going head to head with Intel.

Certainly hope so. The leaks and rumours create a very promising image, close to current Intel tech while at a more affordable price. While I'm trying to stay off the hype train, I'm probably going to get Zen in any case as Intel doesn't seem to do much other than increase clock, prices and add hardware level DRM.

[SenatorRobb]

4 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Certainly hope so. The leaks and rumours create a very promising image, close to current Intel tech while at a more affordable price. While I'm trying to stay off the hype train, I'm going to get Zen in any case as Intel doesn't seem to do much other than increase clock, prices and add hardware level DRM.

Yes really was hoping to avoid the DRM as well. Otherwise Kaby Lake could be good. Though I noticed the AM4 Mobo's allow up to 24 lanes of PCI-e x16, which isn't the x16 what says there is 16 lanes? So is that 24 lanes of 16 lanes, so would that be 24*16? Slightly sarcastic but also serious.

Edit: Would you mind sharing your build/upgrade plans?

[SenatorRobb]

22 minutes ago, The Evil Overlord said:

See? I told you, you probably know more than me

I've learned a lot in a short time period, like learning the current stuff was easy peasy, but the history including the theories and reasoning of past and present hardware decisions and why the work, my brain still needs to recheck stuff time to time.

Edit: Maybe Luc2k Knows, are TPM 2.0 supported by raven ridge or zen?

Edit 2: Or if anybody knows, Tia!

Edited November 27, 2016 by SenatorRobb

[Luc2k]

47 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Yes really was hoping to avoid the DRM as well. Otherwise Kaby Lake could be good. Though I noticed the AM4 Mobo's allow up to 24 lanes of PCI-e x16, which isn't the x16 what says there is 16 lanes? So is that 24 lanes of 16 lanes, so would that be 24*16? Slightly sarcastic but also serious.

Edit: Would you mind sharing your build/upgrade plans?

Well, it would mean it would support 2 cards, one running at full speed x16 and one at x8, or possibly 3 at x16/x4/x4. However there are articles that say that the top chipset will have 32 lanes for GPUs. I wouldn't worry too much about that as current GPUs don't push enough data to be hampered too much.

 

My build would not really be comparable to yours as I'm not really going for high-end especially as my monitor is a puny 1680x1050. I'm still waiting for a couple of monitor technologies to become mainstream (e.g. Quntum Dot) before I change that or for a 27" 1440p @120Hz VA panel with Freesync at a decent price.

 

Going by this rumour article, I'm aiming for the 350$ 8-core, a motherboard with the B350 chipset.

 

MOBO: AM4 B350

CPU: Zen 8-core

GPU: Gigabyte R9 390

RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 @2600Mhz CL15

SSD: 256GB M.2

PSU: Seasonic X-560

Case: Fractal Design R5

 

From the current build I'm keeping the GPU and the PSU. SSD and case are low priority since they would only be small upgrades. The RAM specs are a guideline because that is the sweet spot for Intel CPUs and we don't know it for Zen.

[SenatorRobb]

2 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Well, it would mean it would support 2 cards, one running at full speed x16 and one at x8, or possibly 3 at x16/x4/x4. However there are articles that say that the top chipset will have 32 lanes for GPUs. I wouldn't worry too much about that as current GPUs don't push enough data to be hampered too much.

 

My build would not really be comparable to yours as I'm not really going for high-end especially as my monitor is a puny 1680x1050. I'm still waiting for a couple of monitor technologies to become mainstream (e.g. Quntum Dot) before I change that or for a 27" 1440p @120Hz VA panel with Freesync at a decent price.

 

Going by this rumour article, I'm aiming for the 350$ 8-core, a motherboard with the B350 chipset.

 

MOBO: AM4 B350

CPU: Zen 8-core

GPU: Gigabyte R9 390

RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 @2600Mhz CL15

SSD: 256GB M.2

PSU: Seasonic X-560

Case: Fractal Design R5

 

From the current build I'm keeping the GPU and the PSU. SSD and case are low priority since they would only be small upgrades. The RAM specs are a guideline because that is the sweet spot for Intel CPUs and we don't it for Zen.

Would it be accurate to say most GPU's use PCI-e x4 or x8?? Just trying to absorb and learn as much as I can.

[Luc2k]

22 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Would it be accurate to say most GPU's use PCI-e x4 or x8?? Just trying to absorb and learn as much as I can.

Well, not exactly. You can read this for a better understanding.

 

To expand a bit on my previous mention of the DDR4 sweet spot. On Intel's platform at any rate, higher frequencies improve minimum FPS, but after 2600Mhz the improvement is greatly diminished.

[Andre S. Veteran]

21 hours ago, SenatorRobb said:

Edit: Sorry for the rambling, It's better edited now, I think, considering how tired I am. I must've done something right on the previous build because not only did it work and run, but it loaded windows in 3 seconds flat and logged into windows in 1 second or less maybe about 0.89 seconds.

So.... do you still need another computer?

[SenatorRobb]

2 minutes ago, Andre S. said:

So.... do you still need another computer?

Well I have an AiO, which frankly sucks for my needs, but I also can use my xbox one for gaming until I get this rig back up. Why?

 

Edit: Are you capable of editing thread tags as a MVC? Because I messed up one tag on this thread.

[SenatorRobb]

13 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Well, not exactly. You can read this for a better understanding.

 

To expand a bit on my previous mention of the DDR4 sweet spot. On Intel's platform at any rate, higher frequencies improve minimum FPS, but after 2600Mhz the improvement is greatly diminished.

So you probably could use 2 or 3 x8 lanes, and as long as games support the crossfire/sli technology, it'll be sweet, at least as far as I understand it. Thanks guys, I've learned a lot because of your help, and understanding. I'm practically salivating for a Zen "Raven Ridge" w/Radeon's. Another question, the Raven Ridge APU won't crossfire with the radeon's but that doesn't mean you can't run the radeon's in crossfire mode themselves as just dGPU's, correct?

[Luc2k]

1 hour ago, SenatorRobb said:

So you probably could use 2 or 3 x8 lanes, and as long as games support the crossfire/sli technology, it'll be sweet, at least as far as I understand it. Thanks guys, I've learned a lot because of your help, and understanding. I'm practically salivating for a Zen "Raven Ridge" w/Radeon's. Another question, the Raven Ridge APU won't crossfire with the radeon's but that doesn't mean you can't run the radeon's in crossfire mode themselves as just dGPU's, correct?

The APU will definitely crossfire with other Radeons, it's just that it will most likely be with cards like RX460/470. You will be able to crossfire discreet cards with no issue.

[SenatorRobb]

3 hours ago, Luc2k said:

The APU will definitely crossfire with other Radeons, it's just that it will most likely be with cards like RX460/470. You will be able to crossfire discreet cards with no issue.

What I'm thinking of getting is some RX 500's, but now I'm concerned I won't be able to crossfire them, I'm not worried about not crossfiring (so to say) the APU, as long as I'm not prevented from corssfiring the dGPU's.

[SenatorRobb]

I'm thinking I'll RMA my current board tomorrow, grab a skylake. It's gonna be hard to wait a year, a bit too hard. I'll give this rig to a family member (The original setup) and build myself a second rig with AMD solution at heart. I'm checking to see if Radeon RX 5XX's could still crossfire even with an APU.

[Luc2k]

6 hours ago, SenatorRobb said:

I'm thinking I'll RMA my current board tomorrow, grab a skylake. It's gonna be hard to wait a year, a bit too hard. I'll give this rig to a family member (The original setup) and build myself a second rig with AMD solution at heart. I'm checking to see if Radeon RX 5XX's could still crossfire even with an APU.

I'm still somewhat puzzled about why you want to go with an APU in a top-end rig. They're great and all, but they'll probably only have 4 high-power CPU cores or 8 low-power ones, like consoles.

[SenatorRobb]

1 minute ago, Luc2k said:

I'm still somewhat puzzled about why you want to go with an APU in a top-end rig. They're great and all, but they'll probably only have 4 high-power CPU cores or 8 low-power ones, like consoles.

So summit ridge, by contrast, would have 8 high powered cores? Like I said, I'm learning.

[Luc2k]

4 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

So summit ridge, by contract, would have 8 high powered cores? Like I said, I'm learning.

Yes, it will, along with being released in a month or two.

[SenatorRobb]

Just now, Luc2k said:

Yes it will, along with being released in a month or two.

Then that does change my plans. So if summit ridge is just a month or two away, AM4 socket Mobo's should be releasing very soon, at least I'd think so. Do you know when Vega is coming to market?

[Luc2k]

3 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Do you know when Vega is coming to market?

Well, there's this rumour, but the conservative date is early next year.

[xendrome]

On 11/26/2016 at 1:05 PM, Open Minded said:

Two things about that GPU

1.  The voltage regulators were catching fire on the GTX 1080 cards.  EVGA issued thermal pads to solve the problem.  Now I don't know if that did anything to help the cards that are out in the wild or if that's the only fix EVGA

did to the card so the VRU wouldn't go Note 7.  This issue has been isolated to EVGA GTX 1080 cards.  This was a month or so ago and I've yet to hear anything new about the fixed cards.  It sucks because

EVGA has always been my go-to for Nvidia GPUs.  I've always had excellent luck but this has shaken my faith in the company a bit.

Pretty sure this was confirmed by people running Furmark, not good for any video card to be running. Stories on these types of failures going back to 2011. If the card is run within spec, even overclocked it won't burn up.

 

 

[Luc2k]

2 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Pretty sure this was confirmed by people running Furmark, not good for any video card to be running. Stories on these types of failures going back to 2011. If the card is run within spec, even overclocked it won't burn up.

Since other manufacturer's weren't affected by this, it does point to a EVGA problem. And it wasn't even all their cards, just the more expensive FTW edition ones.

[xendrome]

13 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Since other manufacturer's weren't affected by this, it does point to a EVGA problem. And it wasn't even all their cards, just the more expensive FTW edition ones.

Point is, the EVGA cards are fine for normal usage. And EVGA has the best customer support and warranty in the business, they will replace a card with problems without question on an advanced RMA.

[Luc2k]

8 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Point is, the EVGA cards are fine for normal usage. And EVGA has the best customer support and warranty in the business, they will replace a card with problems without question on an advanced RMA.

So why didn't they take the cards back and add thermal pads themselves instead of having customers do that and risk voiding those best warranties?

[SenatorRobb]

It would be a shame to have spent so much money on this rig, then refuse to spend just $300 to replace the processor after RMA'ing the Mobo.
So I might just throw in that i7 6700 or and i5 6600, if the i5 isn't a bad idea, as it's more of a gaming rig then anything else, or supposed to be. Then I can focus my efforts on the AMD solution and then not upgrade too much for a while, as I'll have two good gaming type rigs and an AiO in the house.