Anandtech forums on trial: The corruption runs deep.

An excellent article written by SilliconWars about AnandTech forums and "unbiased" moderators who run the forums. A must read!

http://techsoda.com/anandtech-forum-moderators-biased-corrupt/

AMD Kaveri Tech Day!

Original source:
http://www.purepc.pl/amd_kaveri_tech_day/amd_kaveri_tech_day_relacja_na_zywo#

Backup:
http://apusilicon.com/amd-tech-day-and-kaveri-details-abound/

Die shot:

IPC up to 20% better:

Kaveri's die shot from the presentation(tried to fix perspective):

Some crude module comparison with "leaked" module of unknown AMD core from 5 months back:

Image of Kaveri's module from tech day(bad quality due to low res. of orig. imae):

Leaked module of unknown core:

Now two overlapped with the 2nd image set with high opacity:

Seems it doesn't match so well. It might be that the unknown module shot is Excavator module(?).

2nd Kaveri leak from China

More benchmarks here:
http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2795083406

Imgur album with all benchmarks:
http://imgur.com/a/OYWL0#0

1st Kaveri leak from JP

I have found something for you guys, posted it on SA and here for now . Hope you like it. The scores are not out of this world like previous time, so this is looking like a legit screenshot. Magic date is January 14.
http://www.gdm.or.jp/voices/2013/1230/56219


Enjoy!

PS It takes 4.2Ghz PD to match 3.7Ghz SR in C15 . 7850K runs C15 at 3.7Ghz, it doesn't turbo up in this workload (at least not in the run that you see in the image above ).

Kaveri is launching soon. What to expect?

Long time since my last blog post. Since AMD is about to launch desktop Kaveri soon (in ~January) I wanted to write a couple of lines about what *I* think about this product launch.

During this year we have had a few "leaks" regarding Kaveri's performance. Conveniently none of these were solid enough to draw any meaningful conclusion regarding actual core performance or clock capabilities. We had a few low clocking and disproportionally low performing mobile parts listed at cosmology.org website and a few geekbench scores of desktop ES parts(single ch. memory). And that's it. Pretty vague and inconclusive.

Now people do have high expectations when it comes to Steamroller cores that power Kaveri, and the "blame" largely lies on AMD themselves. I know since I had them too. AMD did build up a hype with their presentations on HC last year and in a few interviews after that. We had hints of "solid" IPC jumps, new ISA support (turns out it's a few more instructions and not AVX2), quad channel IMC(GDDR5 mode ,4x32bit), 3 module parts, big iGPU perf. gains etc. What we have now is roughly the following:
1) 3 module version is scrapped due to reasons that will be obvious at launch;
2)quad channel GDDR5 support is gone also although IMC has the support sitting idle on-die(deactivated); figure that...
3)"IPC" can be substantially better BUT only if one was to cherry pick benchmarks and filter the "bad" ones(also related to number 1) and what constitutes a total performance of a chip )
4) If Richland had memory BW problem then it will be a minor one when compared to Kaveri.
 I think I've said enough.

I've always expected that the 3rd iteration of Bulldozer core will bring us the most tangible results when it comes to removing bottlenecks and bringing the best from the concept of CMT core but due to wrong decisions on AMD's part this I'm afraid will just remain a dream.
As for me I have my Piledriver based X4 and it's doing fine at 4.2Ghz. I personally see nothing that Kaveri will bring on CPU side to sway me over and swap it in my board. Yeah, sorry folks.

AMD Richland (desktop) reviews

AMD officially launched Richland APUs for desktop PCs. The chips are solid improvement over Trinity, not earth shattering but a good perf./watt (and straight x86 performance) uprgade over Trinity parts.

Here is a summary of most relevant reviews in one topic.
 Enjoy!

What is FX @ 5Ghz exactly and why is it listed as "next generation" FX core by Gigabyte?

Good question huh? Yep sure is. Also what is "TJ" :) ??

Had a better look at the Gigabyte sheet.

It says "AMD next generation FX".
Vishera is no next gen, it is almost two years old already

I assume Gigabyte refers to "TJ", which still should pop into AM3r2.

The sheet is for Rev 3.0 990FXA-UD7 which has some changes to the VRM.
Yet it appears to be a multiplied analog VRM.

Interesting times ahead ;).