AMD Answers Our Zen 4 Tech Questions, with Robert Hallock

[R0H1T]

That's a bit shortsighted of them to not add 3D cache to all 7000 parts. I could understand 5000 parts, but imo it should have been standard on new gen Ryzens. It's either that or AMD will try to push it as premium feature for bigger profit margins.

Too big &/or hot, margins aren't really the (biggest) problem here.

 

[Aranarth]

Very cool interview, shed some needed light into the PCIe configuration, chipset running on Gen5 is very good to hear.



I'm also interested to know this, will they do the same as AM4 which was supported but up to motherboards to validate it and offer support for it (which most didn't do ), disabled entirely or (dream scenario) there's some incentive for at least some boards to offer it as a feature?

BTW: ECC is baked into DDR5. There is no such thing as NON-ecc ddr5 ram. (eh... kinda sorta wrong I guess)

MORE INFO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM

 

[Chrispy_]

I wonder how basic the IGP is. He did say 'the same RDNA compute units', plural so perhaps it's as few as 2CU (128 shaders).

Robert Hallock specifically said it's for 2D and video only, and beyond having enough shaders to run the encode/decode, shaders are just wasted silicon area for something that's not designed for 3D workloads.

 

[R0H1T]

BTW: ECC is baked into DDR5. There is no such thing as NON-ecc ddr5 ram. (eh... kinda sorta wrong I guess)

MORE INFO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM

But it's not full "ECC"

 

[TheLostSwede]

BTW: ECC is baked into DDR5. There is no such thing as NON-ecc ddr5 ram. (eh... kinda sorta wrong I guess)

MORE INFO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM

Why is this so hard to understand? Yes there is non ECC and ECC DDR5.
You clearly didn't watch or didn't understand the video you linked to.
The ECC in all DDR5 memory is only "in place" ECC, i.e. inside the module, whereas real ECC is "in flight" ECC, i.e. the whole way from the CPU to the DRAM and back.
The ECC in DDR5 memory is the same as ECC inside consumer SSDs, it corrects error in place, but it can do nothing about errors in transit.

I wonder how basic the IGP is. He did say 'the same RDNA compute units', plural so perhaps it's as few as 2CU (128 shaders).

Robert Hallock specifically said it's for 2D and video only, and beyond having enough shaders to run the encode/decode, shaders are just wasted silicon area for something that's not designed for 3D workloads.

It most likely has some basic 3D support, so many thing rely on 3D features in Windows these days, so it would be weird if there weren't basic support.

That's a bit shortsighted of them to not add 3D cache to all 7000 parts. I could understand 5000 parts, but imo it should have been standard on new gen Ryzens. It's either that or AMD will try to push it as premium feature for bigger profit margins.

Shortsighted? So you don't mind paying $100 extra for each CPU SKU? As that seems to be what AMD charged extra for the 5800X3D.
Also, how is it shortsighted when we don't have the first idea how these CPUs perform?

 

[chrcoluk]

This is true. The iGPU eats into the power-budget and that affects CPU boosting headroom. And since iGPU shares system memory, your memory perf naturally drops.

I spent quite some time with the 5700G's iGPU. It's surprisingly capable, but I noticed system performance lowered, so went back to the dGPU.

I wish AMD gave the 5700G a TDP of 105W (140 W PPT). That would've freed up more CPU boosting headroom. Instead they gave it 65W/88W. Maybe the silicon can't take that much power.

In my case I am getting nowhere near the power limit as I undervolt the chip and dont run prime95 all day.

But if it was an issue then yes the decision would be made, do I value VRAM more or a very slight hit on CPU performance.

In games the CPU typically uses 30-50W. On desktop even less, the most demanding thing it ever does is probably OBSS x264 encoding but that doesnt get close to its limit either. RPCS3 is demanding but interestingly still only pulling 50-55W. The figures reported by monitoring for the iGPU is typically around 5-7w.

 

[zlobby]

BTW: ECC is baked into DDR5. There is no such thing as NON-ecc ddr5 ram. (eh... kinda sorta wrong I guess)

MORE INFO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM

 

[The red spirit]

Too big &/or hot, margins aren't really the (biggest) problem here.

I don't think that AMD gives a shit about die size in high end chips and they clearly don't care too much about power usage, judging from ridiculous 170W socket limit.

 

[zlobby]

I don't think that AMD gives a shit about die size in high end chips and they clearly don't care too much about power usage, judging from ridiculous 170W socket limit.

I'm pretty sure they do, because the 'waffles' are with limited yield per such one, but I believe they did their math.

 

[Chrispy_]

It most likely has some basic 3D support, so many thing rely on 3D features in Windows these days, so it would be weird if there weren't basic support.

It absolutely does have full 3D API support because it's the same RDNA2 compute units we're already seeing in Zen3+ laptops. Presumably that means it'll have raytracing acelleration too! (ROFL)
It's not that it won't do 3D, it's that isn't not intended for 3D use, and will probably (my guess) have the bare minimum number of CUs required to handle AV1 encode.

Think UHD 710 graphics which are basically Iris Xe but with 80% of the shader units stripped out. You can still technically run everything an Iris Xe can run but you're going to get 5fps instead of a playable experience. It might play Half Life 2 if you keep the resolution low, but the point of the UHD 710 isn't to play games or realtime 3D rendering, it's there to support display output as cheaply as possible whilst having the basic feature support necessary for a modern OS.

 

[The red spirit]

Shortsighted? So you don't mind paying $100 extra for each CPU SKU? As that seems to be what AMD charged extra for the 5800X3D.
Also, how is it shortsighted when we don't have the first idea how these CPUs perform?

I don't have 5800X3D myself, and 100 USD is already like 70% of my whole CPU budget. Anyway, that was the price AMD wanted to charge and also it was on older node too. So it could be much less expensive if AMD wants that.

I'm pretty sure they do, because the 'waffles' are with limited yield per such one, but I believe they did their math.

They can just make different SKUs for different core counts like they did before and what would be the reason to not give higher end CPUs all best that they have? Price isn't really that important for high end chips.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I don't have 5800X3D myself, and 100 USD is already like 70% of my whole CPU budget. Anyway, that was the price AMD wanted to charge and also it was on older node too. So it could be much less expensive if AMD wants that.

AMD doesn't own any foundries, they sold them off quite some time ago... So sadly AMD doesn't control what they pay for things like this anymore, which limits how much they can charge for something, unless you're suggesting they should make a loss on the CPUs with 3D V-cache.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thanks W1zz

one question I didn’t see was

will these have ECC support??

Agreed. That's only question that needed asking that W1zzard skipped.. Otherwise solid interview and info.

Trainman!

 

[The red spirit]

AMD doesn't own any foundries, they sold them off quite some time ago... So sadly AMD doesn't control what they pay for things like this anymore, which limits how much they can charge for something, unless you're suggesting they should make a loss on the CPUs with 3D V-cache.

I don't talk about foundries I talk about their high profit margins on anything Ryzen 5000 and that Ryzen 7000 series will use newer node. Not sure if you know, but AMD made shit ton of profit during pandemic, they certainly were cashing in as much as they could due to extraordinary times. It certainly distorted prices much more than CPU shortage ever did.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I don't talk about foundries I talk about their high profit margins on anything Ryzen 5000 and that Ryzen 7000 series will use newer node. Not sure if you know, but AMD made shit ton of profit during pandemic, they certainly were cashing in as much as they could due to extraordinary times. It certainly distorted prices much more than CPU shortage ever did.

If you know the details of AMD's profit margins, do you mind sharing them? It would be interesting to see.
Also, what's the purpose of operating a business to you?
I didn't see any CPU shortage at all, GPUs on the other hand.

 

[W1zzard]

will these have ECC support??

Forwarded to AMD, not sure if they can answer this yet, will let you know

 

[The red spirit]

If you know the details of AMD's profit margins, do you mind sharing them? It would be interesting to see.

Open AMD website and find annual report in investor relation section. It's public information.

Also, what's the purpose of operating a business to you?

Making some profit, but realistically you want fair prices too. I don't think that you would feel great if company made 100% profit margins. That's not yet a case, but in 2021 AMD made nearly 20% profit margin, a bit over 3 billion dollars. Meanwhile, even on good years like 2019, it only had around 5% profit margin. Same with nVidia too, huge profit margin growth during pandemic. It reached over 35% profit margins and that's just obscene. Even Apple "only" had 25% profit margin. This ridiculousness doesn't just end there. TSMC also had unusually high profit margin of over 35%. So by my rough calculation, 5800X3D could cost (at least have MSRP) as low as 235 dollars and still be profitable for AMD and TSMC. And that's still generous, you can go and investigate profit margins of silicon sellers and etc and it could be lower. And BTW those were profit margins, meaning that's what they make after investments, taxes, wages and other expenses. Even if they both want to make cozy profit, 5800X3D could have been priced at 300 USD and it would have been worth it for AMD and TSMC. But at this point both AMD and TSMC just scalp as much as they can. It's just ridiculous.

I didn't see any CPU shortage at all, GPUs on the other hand.

There weren't any APUs at all for like a whole year, also various low end Ryzens were in constantly short supply. 3300X was a myth not a CPU. Even some high end chips were missing. If you wanted PC at all, going Intel was legitimate option, especially at budget.

 

[mechtech]

Forwarded to AMD, not sure if they can answer this yet, will let you know

Thanks. Was thinking of trying an ecc build just because. But I see ecc ram has a 1 yr warranty which is pretty disappointing!!

edit. Did they say when you will get the 5500, 4600 and 5700x for review??

 

[konga]

I didn't see any CPU shortage at all, GPUs on the other hand.

To be fair, t took me two months of persistent searching and restock alert watching to be able to buy a Zen 3 CPU in the US. Couldn't get one until January, and even then I was hearing about people having problems snagging one up until february or march of 2021. So there was definitely a shortage there for a bit.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Open AMD website and find annual report in investor relation section. It's public information.

Per CPU SKU? I don't think so.

Making some profit, but realistically you want fair prices too. I don't think that you would feel great if company made 100% profit margins. That's not yet a case, but in 2021 AMD made nearly 20% profit margin, a bit over 3 billion dollars. Meanwhile, even on good years like 2019, it only had around 5% profit margin. Same with nVidia too, huge profit margin growth during pandemic. It reached over 35% profit margins and that's just obscene. Even Apple "only" had 25% profit margin. This ridiculousness doesn't just end there. TSMC also had unusually high profit margin of over 35%. So by my rough calculation, 5800X3D could cost (at least have MSRP) as low as 235 dollars and still be profitable for AMD and TSMC. And that's still generous, you can go and investigate profit margins of silicon sellers and etc and it could be lower. And BTW those were profit margins, meaning that's what they make after investments, taxes, wages and other expenses. Even if they both want to make cozy profit, 5800X3D could have been priced at 300 USD and it would have been worth it for AMD and TSMC. But at this point both AMD and TSMC just scalp as much as they can. It's just ridiculous.

You really have no idea how things in this industry works, do you? So many things have over 100 percent profit margin.
20 percent profit margin is nothing
Some computer related parts and components have 30-60 percent margin. Asus has more margin than AMD if AMD only has 20 percent profit margin.

I guess you don't know, but I've been writing about the tech industry for over a decade and worked in it for even longer.
Your concerns here are not news, but you also don't seem to understand the rest of the supply chain. AMD most likely sells the CPU you mentioned for the price you mentioned, but then you have distributors that add 20% to that and retailers that add another 10-20% or more if they're really greedy. Don't forget things like import duties, tax etc. that ends up on top of all of that. So the retail price you see, has nothing to do with what a company charges for a product.

You should try running your own business for a while, I did and it's not easy. You need to make sure you have money for a bad month or three, so what you call greed are often companies that are making sure they have a buffer for when times aren't so great. I have personally sold things with a 40 percent profit margin, yet saved my customer for said product three times as much money. I created another solution for the same customer that set them back 1/10th of what they were paying, yet I made a tidy profit and my suppliers made a profit, everyone was happy.

There weren't any APUs at all for like a whole year, also various low end Ryzens were in constantly short supply. 3300X was a myth not a CPU. Even some high end chips were missing. If you wanted PC at all, going Intel was legitimate option, especially at budget.

Maybe where you live, but not where I live. I guess the channel in your part of the world didn't bother bringing them in.

To be fair, t took me two months of persistent searching and restock alert watching to be able to buy a Zen 3 CPU in the US. Couldn't get one until January, and even then I was hearing about people having problems snagging one up until february or march of 2021. So there was definitely a shortage there for a bit.

I think most of that was shipping related though, since from Q2 2020 pretty much anything and everything got stuck due to a bunch of stupid shipping related reasons. Meanwhile the costs went up from US$1,200 for a container to the US from Asia to US$12,000, which meant a lot of companies stopped shipping certain things. Airfreight didn't make sense in a lot of cases either, due to increased demand, which increased the costs. On top of that, there were some local shipping and production related issue with lockdowns and what not, which had a knock-on effect. This is what happens when most things are made somewhere else and the system put in place is so fragile that a weeks delay one end means months of delay the other end.

 

[The red spirit]

Per CPU SKU? I don't think so.

Obviously not per SKU. Those are company annual reports.

You really have no idea how things in this industry works, do you? So many things have over 100 percent profit margin.
20 percent profit margin is nothing
Some computer related parts and components have 30-60 percent margin. Asus has more margin than AMD if AMD only has 20 percent profit margin.

I guess you don't know, but I've been writing about the tech industry for over a decade and worked in it for even longer.
Your concerns here are not news, but you also don't seem to understand the rest of the supply chain. AMD most likely sells the CPU you mentioned for the price you mentioned, but then you have distributors that add 20% to that and retailers that add another 10-20% or more if they're really greedy. Don't forget things like import duties, tax etc. that ends up on top of all of that. So the retail price you see, has nothing to do with what a company charges for a product.

All the more reasons to say that AMD junk is overpriced and ahs been for damn too long. Ryzen 5000 series makes FX chips appear like insane value chips. At least they managed to pump out 8 core chips for 130 EUR.

You should try running your own business for a while, I did and it's not easy. You need to make sure you have money for a bad month or three, so what you call greed are often companies that are making sure they have a buffer for when times aren't so great. I have personally sold things with a 40 percent profit margin, yet saved my customer for said product three times as much money. I created another solution for the same customer that set them back 1/10th of what they were paying, yet I made a tidy profit and my suppliers made a profit, everyone was happy.

Why would I? I see many other companies not making profits as high as AMD and it's very damn obvious that they are scalpers and they certainly have exploited pandemic to jack up prices to the moon. And now you try to explain to me how this is normal. It's obviously not, it's stupid, but since most people don't care or don't notice, AMD has zero incentive to stop and they will charge even more for worse products in the future. The whole Ryzen 5000 series were complete dumpster fire in terms of value and RX 6400 with RX 6500 XT were even more insulting releases (literally worse than RX 5300 for double the price). X3D stuff was even worse value stuff, but at least I could understand that they are high margin products for rich and stupid. But it's not okay, when they jack up prices of 5600X and don't release 5600 until the moment when whole platform becomes obsolete. Let's be honest, once AMD patched up their PR, they have started being dicks, probably even more than nVidia.

Maybe where you live, but not where I live. I guess the channel in your part of the world didn't bother bringing them in.

What if you are wrong? People here on TPU were writing about same things, no it really was a CPU shortage.

 

[progste]

USB 4? Are they keeping the usb type-a and type-c connectors?

 

[lexluthermiester]

What if you are wrong? People here on TPU were writing about same things, no it really was a CPU shortage.

Where YOU live, perhaps. In A LOT of other places in the world, not so much. The Ryzen 3300X was actually fairly common, depending on where you were and where you looked.

 

[TheLostSwede]

USB 4? Are they keeping the usb type-a and type-c connectors?

USB4 is only Type-C.
You'll still get Type-A connectors on the motherboards.
You might want to check out some of the Computex motherboard posts, although only the Gigabyte one has pictures of the rear I/O.

 

[The red spirit]

Where YOU live, perhaps. In A LOT of other places in the world, not so much. The Ryzen 3300X was actually fairly common, depending on where you were and where you looked.

It was during switch from 3000 to 5000 series.