18 replies to this topic

[Derpy Hooves]

http://wccftech.com/...-merge-samsung/

 

Seems Samsung sees AMD as a viable aquisition for a "new growth engine". Any thoughts on if it will help or hinder either party?

 

Anywho, discuss?

[opicr0n]

Large backer for AMD could push it forward more. Well needed after Intel set AMD back a few years.

[Derpy Hooves]

Not to mention AMD has been struggling fianacially, to add to that, their R&D budget has hit record lows for the past year or so. Though the question stands, would Samsung pull AMD from the desktop/laptop market entirely or let them continue to do their own thing?

[DerMax]

I hope Samsung does that.

[Derpy Hooves]

Same here Dermax, especially since the R9 390X is looking ever so lovely, being 10% faster than Titan X at half the price. Though on the CPU side of things makes me wonder what Samsung will do with Zen and Carrizo.

[n3onfx]

Though the question stands, would Samsung pull AMD from the desktop/laptop market entirely or let them continue to do their own thing?

 

Samsung makes laptops, convertibles and ultrabooks, so I don't see them stopping AMD from doing that since it could be beneficial to them.

 

edit; words

Edited by n3onfx, 02 April 2015 - 01:44 PM.

[Derpy Hooves]

Samsung makes laptops, convertibles and ultrabooks, so I don't see them stopping AMD from doing that since it could be beneficial to them.

 

edit; words

Well at the moment from what roadmaps and such have been leaked to the public.

 

Carrizo: next gen APU aimed at the mobile market presumed to have a better variant of HSA. http://arstechnica.c...nce-less-power/

 

Zen: Primarily focused for server markets, but from leaked data have one heck of a performance/watt ratio, though some things have been leaked about desktop chips http://hexus.net/tec...e-cpus-q3-2016/

 

x64 K12 ARM Core: Obviously designed for the mobile market with the intentions of low power/high performance. http://www.anandtech...-design-in-2016

 

It makes sense for Samsung to keep the K12 and Carrizo for their mobiles and laptops/converts/ultras, but Zen makes no sense in terms that Samsung isn't in the seerver/desktop market, not to mention what will happen to the GPU side of things with Pirate Islands due up in the upcoming months, along with Arctic Islands next year. Then you got Global Foundries which is essentially AMDs own fab facility, what will happen to it, along with Zen, and GPUs is the real question.

[Lioot]

I just want an AMD graphics card because of the nice games bundle. Should've waited for the new ones instead of getting the GTX 970

[Derpy Hooves]

I just want an AMD graphics card because of the nice games bundle. Should've waited for the new ones instead of getting the GTX 970

Well as it stands right now, the bundle packages are unknown, but R9 390X is showing to be 5~6% faster than Titan X, and 10~11% faster than 980 Ti.

[BaronSaturday]

You are all aware that intel just paid all customers that bought a pentium chip over an athlin chip that could prove it 15 bucks because they've been giving benchmark software companies biased compilers. AMD might be looking to make a stink about it as their latest Athlon offerings haven't been doing well.

[Derpy Hooves]

You are all aware that intel just paid all customers that bought a pentium chip over an athlin chip that could prove it 15 bucks because they've been giving benchmark software companies biased compilers. AMD might be looking to make a stink about it as their latest Athlon offerings haven't been doing well.

I have both an Intel system and an AMD system, Intels accel heavily in games, due to the majority of games being single threaded. Intel's singled threaded performance is godly compared to AMDs. As of right now the FX 9590 (a factory OC'd 8350) is just as fast as a second gen i5 in gaming.

 

Of course the Athlons were great, AMD was doing awesome until Rory Reed took over and came up with the brianiac idea of "cluster cores for multithreaded applications). It was great on paper, but once it became reality Bulldozer/PIledriver had loads of shortcomings. It took a patch to correct what was wrong with thread handling in Windows 7 to get the FX line working properly.

[FRX23]

I don't think it's a good thing for us PC customers.

 

Samsung does't give a f*ck to the PC scene, if they acquire AMD it's for strenghten their mobile or TV devices.

[BaronSaturday]

I have both an Intel system and an AMD system, Intels accel heavily in games, due to the majority of games being single threaded. Intel's singled threaded performance is godly compared to AMDs. As of right now the FX 9590 (a factory OC'd 8350) is just as fast as a second gen i5 in gaming.

Of course the Athlons were great, AMD was doing awesome until Rory Reed took over and came up with the brianiac idea of "cluster cores for multithreaded applications). It was great on paper, but once it became reality Bulldozer/PIledriver had loads of shortcomings. It took a patch to correct what was wrong with thread handling in Windows 7 to get the FX line working properly.

AMD is doing two things that I find very interesting right now. Rereleasing the Athlon series. IE the new 3.7 ghz 860K, 760K and 620K. These are actually the same Athlon core in the A Series APUs. They are still working with Piledriver, and I think they've dropped Bulldozer.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the gaming front. I'vs seen the real life application benchmarks and Piledriver is only a few fps shorter on any given game not running mantle as the "equivilant" Haswell offering. Once I wake up I'll look up the videos. I believe the 8350 was nearly neck and neck with the 4770k.

Note: I've never personally tested these myself.

[Derpy Hooves]

AMD is doing two things that I find very interesting right now. Rereleasing the Athlon series. IE the new 3.7 ghz 860K, 760K and 620K. These are actually the same Athlon core in the A Series APUs. They are still working with Piledriver, and I think they've dropped Bulldozer.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the gaming front. I'vs seen the real life application benchmarks and Piledriver is only a few fps shorter on any given game not running mantle as the "equivilant" Haswell offering. Once I wake up I'll look up the videos. I believe the 8350 was nearly neck and neck with the 4770k.

Note: I've never personally tested these myself.

"Zen" is supposed to be the Piledriver successor, but they have no plans to bring it to desktops, only servers.

 

Also as for the A series Athlon's, they're alright but don't really have the pony up power to really feed anything over an R9 270X properly. Also on the Mantle side of things, AMD has put it out to pasture. http://vr-zone.com/a...tx12/88025.html

[BaronSaturday]

"Zen" is supposed to be the Piledriver successor, but they have no plans to bring it to desktops, only servers.

 

Also as for the A series Athlon's, they're alright but don't really have the pony up power to really feed anything over an R9 270X properly. Also on the Mantle side of things, AMD has put it out to pasture. http://vr-zone.com/a...tx12/88025.html

True, but it is interesting that they invested so heavily into the Athlons again.  Why was it revisted?  We all thought we saw the end of Athlon with the FX line.  But then we saw all the Kevari stuff.  People didn't really give the APUs that much credit.  In the budget market, where are you going to find a quad core with as much power as an 860K right now for $80?  You know what I mean?  I'm not really sure what AMD is doing, but they're doing it and it is something to follow.

As for mantle, I was happy to see it happen, but it wasn't really necessary?  Does that make sense?  Even when they announced it, MS was already talking about DX12 especially in relation to the XbOne.  It did a lot of cool things, I'm not convinced that DX12 is better, but Mantle only works on AMD cards and no one was buying the cards for Mantle support.  IDK.  The last 10 years have been odd for AMD.  After the Phenom series it's been odd.  The APU's are great.  I had a 6350 in my rig before I had to sell it.  It was great.  Gaming, rendering.  It did everything I needed it to do and more.  And those sexy new stock coolers are bad ass. 

IDK.  AMD really just needs to knuckle down and commit to something big if they're going to compete.  I'm not terribly certain this Samsung thing is it, but it may fund their next big thing.  We shall see.

[DreamedArtist]

This would be very interesting indeed, we need AMD to start going up against Intel and I heard that AMD was testing out Arm processors inside there cpu's so maybe this samsung merger would further Jump that and maybe see stronger cpu's for gaming.

[BaronSaturday]

ARM holdings is strictly mobile right? That could mean android support? Shield support? All kinds of neat things. Doesn't AMD have something similar to ARM?

[OdinTheWise]

[Derpy Hooves]

True, but it is interesting that they invested so heavily into the Athlons again.  Why was it revisted?  We all thought we saw the end of Athlon with the FX line.  But then we saw all the Kevari stuff.  People didn't really give the APUs that much credit.  In the budget market, where are you going to find a quad core with as much power as an 860K right now for $80?  You know what I mean?  I'm not really sure what AMD is doing, but they're doing it and it is something to follow.

As for mantle, I was happy to see it happen, but it wasn't really necessary?  Does that make sense?  Even when they announced it, MS was already talking about DX12 especially in relation to the XbOne.  It did a lot of cool things, I'm not convinced that DX12 is better, but Mantle only works on AMD cards and no one was buying the cards for Mantle support.  IDK.  The last 10 years have been odd for AMD.  After the Phenom series it's been odd.  The APU's are great.  I had a 6350 in my rig before I had to sell it.  It was great.  Gaming, rendering.  It did everything I needed it to do and more.  And those sexy new stock coolers are bad ass. 

IDK.  AMD really just needs to knuckle down and commit to something big if they're going to compete.  I'm not terribly certain this Samsung thing is it, but it may fund their next big thing.  We shall see.

Yeah, but the question is, is it to little to late? I mean they are at a point where a buyout is immenent, from what KitGuru has pointed out their R&D budget is just barely over 200 million. With them working on server chips, ARM, GPUs, etc that 200 mill is spread pretty darn thin. http://www.kitguru.n...phics-products/

 

Mantle was nice, it brought the idea of hardware to hardware graphical API access to the game, which is what DX12 is more or less bringing to the table already. Top it all off what work they had done with Mantle is now being deployed in Vulkan from the Khronos Group for the next evolution of OpenGL.

 

This would be very interesting indeed, we need AMD to start going up against Intel and I heard that AMD was testing out Arm processors inside there cpu's so maybe this samsung merger would further Jump that and maybe see stronger cpu's for gaming.

 

Well AMD had been working on their K12 ARM SoC to compete in the mobile market for quite sometime now since back in 2014. Though it's kinda interesting how it has both ARM instructions and x86/64. All bundled into one nice neat little package.