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AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

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Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#51

Post by Jach »

kbhn wrote: post #43
turblety wrote: post #33

Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”) [1]. This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they…

> Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the exact same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel. I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none…

Totally agree. And these "maybe they are backdoors" have not actually been demonstrated in the wild yet (apart from Intel's AMT that most people don't have to worry about). If you want to fearmonger, at least do it with demonstrated issues not just "maybes". So a much bigger security issue is buying a laptop from anyone at all at this point that isn't a Mac or a Surface, i.e. directly from the OS vendor. Lenovo does shit like this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-soft... (which also references the earlier Superfish shit they pulled). Sony has done shit like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... Dell et al: http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-find-insecure-bios-...

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#52

Post by CoolGuySteve »

zanny wrote: post #8
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #5

How are the Linux Radeon drivers these days. Last time I tried (8 years ago) they were awful compared to the NVidia equivalent. But now that I might be able to get a 3 pound ultrabook with decent graphics, I'm willing to put up with a lot more inconvenience .

Linux AMD open source drivers are top notch now. Even have really good foss OpenCL support. The only asterisk right now is that you only want to use these new APUs / any Vega GPU on distros running kernel 4.15 or later (which will release probably Jan of next year).

How are the open source drivers for games? Can you render Civ 5/6 or Rocket League?

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#53

Post by kevingadd »

Desktop Ryzen still suffers with thermal/power efficiency issues compared to desktop Intel cores, so I wonder if they've managed to address that issue for these mobile cores. If not, I wonder how customers will feel about paying a battery life tax for better performance...

Incidentally, AMD GPUs have been at a disadvantage compared to NVIDIA's in the power management area for a while, as well. Which is unfortunate because they're very good cores with (arguably) a better feature set for compute/rasterization than NVIDIA's. Intel seems to have the market for low-power GPUs on PC sewn up as well. If AMD manages to make improvements here they could put out a very compelling product, if only because you wouldn't need GPU-switching in your laptop (with all the hassle that entails) and it'd be easier to substitute a laptop for your desktop when you do compute-heavy work.

For example, https://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-r... shows worse idle power draw and worse load power draw for Ryzen. In desktop cases this gap doesn't matter as long as you have a good heatsink+fan but it will map to worse battery life and worse noise/thermals in a laptop. (An extra thirty watts in total system draw under load can add up on your utility bill, though.)

Power draw on AMD's GPUs is not great either, unfortunately: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-... And past GPUs they've released also had issues with drawing more power over the PCIe slot than it was rated for (and exceeding their TDP in general, I believe).

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#54

Post by MrRadar »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #32
mtgx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think if the 8-core APU isn't happening this generation (obviously with 45+ W TDP), then it should definitely happen whenever AMD switches to the 7nm process.

I believe that they will actually go to 6-core APU, not 8. The reason for this belief is that currently the basic building block of Zen line is the CCX, which is 4 cores. Raven ridge is 1 CCX and GPU, Ryzen chips are 2 CCX, EPYC CPUs are made of 4x ryzen, for a total of 32 cores. But, when AMD advertised their server platform, the promised that in the next generation there will be 48-core chips that will be drop-in c…

It's pretty crazy to think that in just a year or two 192 threads will likely be available on commodity dual-socket x86 server hardware...

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#55

Post by baldfat »

firethief wrote: post #21
baldfat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are 200% faster. Says so in the article. Think when Apple finally moved to Intel and th speed increase. EVEN though Apple claimed they were the as fast if no faster before the switch. AMD had horrible performance on laptops and they are finally able to say they doubled the speed AKA they had a horrible product before. "For its own part, AMD claims that the new Ryzen chips will offer dramatically improved perform…

That's triple the speed.

Double speed 200% = 2.00

2000 mhz * 2 is 4000 mhz

Tripple would be 300%

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#56

Post by turblety »

kbhn wrote: post #43
turblety wrote: post #33

Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”) [1]. This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they…

> Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the exact same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel. I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none…

Apologies I have edited my post to explain Intel have the same likely backdoored system too.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#57

Post by robhu »

baldfat wrote: post #55
firethief wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's triple the speed.

Double speed 200% = 2.00 2000 mhz * 2 is 4000 mhz Tripple would be 300%

Yes and it's "200 percent more", the more being the key bit. More being 100% + (200%), i.e. 300%, i.e. triple.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#59

Post by paulmd »

mrchicity wrote: post #27
mromanuk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve bought a Ryzen 5 for a home server, but sadly is awfully unstable. Apparently there is a bug in the Ryzen family. I’m using it with Freenas 11 (FreeBSD) and the system is having horrible random freezes with black screen. There are some threads talking about same issues, this make me lose faith in AMD, and going back to Intel.

Check whether your chip is affected by the segfault bug. It affects Ryzen CPUs, but not Threadrippers or Epycs. It's a free RMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6ubmd1/ryzen_compilati... If your system is totally new, try checking your RAM with memtest too. My Threadripper build had similar issues in Linux and Windows. Ended up being my PSU. I tried to save $30 buying a refurb one from Corsair. My system would…

> On a desktop you can always swap hardware, but on a laptop you're stuck with what you get.

Raven Ridge is the same stepping as Ryzen, i.e. potentially subject to the segfault bug. I'm really curious whether it will manifest there too or not.

It's a pretty generic errata that manifests under load. Compiling happens to be one way that flushes it out pretty reliably (as with many errata), and nerds do a lot of compiling in Linux, but it can and does manifest as general OS and application crashiness even in other operating systems (including in Windows). It's a ticking time-bomb, sooner or later some OS or application update could hit the trigger conditions more regularly.

There's nothing quite like being "the brand that randomly crashes all the time" to build a brand image with your customers. And I'm sure OEMs are going to love handling RMAs for AMD's defective processors.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#60

Post by subwayclub »

MrRadar wrote: post #54
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that they will actually go to 6-core APU, not 8. The reason for this belief is that currently the basic building block of Zen line is the CCX, which is 4 cores. Raven ridge is 1 CCX and GPU, Ryzen chips are 2 CCX, EPYC CPUs are made of 4x ryzen, for a total of 32 cores. But, when AMD advertised their server platform, the promised that in the next generation there will be 48-core chips that will be drop-in c…

It's pretty crazy to think that in just a year or two 192 threads will likely be available on commodity dual-socket x86 server hardware...

It's the race for core counts that we've been expecting since the mid 2000s - just a lot later than anyone expected since we detoured into GPU and mobile computing.

Our software still isn't really ready for it, but I guess that's to be expected.

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