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AMD Zen won't help PC gaming and PC VR as much as we hoped.

RonsonPL
Heroic Explorer
New info just appeared:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/new-amd-engineering-sample-zen-processors-get-higher-clocks.html

in short:

Seems like the CPU production process is designed for low clocks. 😞
Which is exactly what I feared when I heard about GloFo going for Samsung's 14nm 😞
Just 3,1GHz on 4-core, and power consumption growing rapidly when clocks are increased. 
4c = 65TDP (3.1GHz)
8c = 95TDP (3.3GHz)

I hoped Zen will at least be able to outperform 2011's Sandy Bridges overclocked to 4,9GHz on air coollers, but now even that isn't certain.

Anyone still wonders why Intel delayed 10nm and 7nm recently and priced Skylakes so high? 
Intel will continue to have a monopoly in the part of market that is interesting to gamers demanding fast CPUs.
A year ago I really hoped Zen will be "an earthquake" which will cause serious price dowfall in gaming (enthusiasts) CPU market segment. It would lower the prices of fast CPUs needed for VR, it would force Intel to lower the prices of its CPUs.
But while I still think it will be a huge improvement compared to module-based architectures currently used by AMD, and I really think Zen won't be another "Bulldozer fiasco", I just lost hope for "revolution". 😞
We also won't see any significant speed boost on next Intel CPUs (comparing overclocked on air vs. overclocked on air).
If Zen was great, We could get +30-40% worst case scenario (single threaded performance) in next 3 years and at normal prices.
Now we'll get 10nm "K" CPUs at sick prices, most likely still with some stupid glue instead of solder which will lower achievable clocks by a lot.
If Zen disappoints, it will have broad consequences for everything PC related, VR and not VR.
Not an Oculus hater, but not a fan anymore. Still lots of respect for the team-Carmack, Abrash. Oculus is driven by big corporation principles now. That brings painful effects already, more to come in the future. This is not the Oculus I once cheered for.
91 REPLIES 91

Believe it or not, it's possible to be interested in high performance VR and power efficiency. All it means is that if there are 2 chips with similar high performance, power consumption can be a deciding factor. Not for everyone I agree but I wouldn't make a sweeping statement that it's irrelevant.
I had a good performing air cooler and it wasn't quiet on my 5820k, although that chip was reasonably efficient at the time, it's a small die, so heat is a major factor and water cooling is the only option if you want a quiet PC.

Also, don't forget, people who are into high performance VR may also be into high performance video encoding, which I am (or CAD rendering) and if I have that task in the background while I'm working, silence is golden.

shadowfrogger
Heroic Explorer
A Ryzen at 3.4ghz with smart turboboosts shouldn't do as well as Intel but is still unlikely to be cpu bound for the game until you hit 100+ fps at some point.  For around 100fps/less vs Intel, the difference will be less then 5-10%. So you can play all current games only limited by the GPU, then it will play all future games for even longer as devs start to use more cores.  It's more of a long term domination for games.

Unless there's any major improvements in cpu's, you could probably keep it for 5+ years without losing major performance, In fact it'll be gaining performance as games support better multi-cores. We are unsure if higher fps will come from higher cores at lower speed or lower cores at higher speed.  Right now the latter is true.  If you program a dx12 game with high counts of cores in mind, it's possible that the opposite might happen.
Intel still have better chips, but they might not have better chips at the same price.

Xbox Scorpio has 8 cpu cores, the ps5 is very likely to also have 8 cpu cores.  It won't just be PC's that games will use higher counts of cpu cores.  Any game right now that has both dx11 & dx12.  The
dx12 was probably patched on and devs seems like they are not having a
great run with dx12 right now.



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