Open-Source AMD HSA Should Come To Fruition This Year

[profoundWHALE]

Latency of complex GUI / website to keyboard and mouse events usually depends on single thread performance. Every modern desktop CPU should be fast enough, but latency can be different.

Intel is amazing for having low latency/fast memory lanes which really helps in the performance or even performance perception. That being said, I paid a total of about $500 CAD (after taxes) for a top end AMD card and CPU. Top end Intel 4790K and on sale for same price as 4770K: $360 + $7 shipping + $36.70 taxes, which is about $400 CAD. I did buy my GPU from ebay though which helped with the cost. Throwing on a NVidia card and hitting about the same price point would basically be worthless because it would be a $100 card. Also typically Intel boards are more expensive... but I would have to say that the boards are worth the money.


All that aside, this is what I got from the ARMA 3 FPS battle:
$200 FX-8350 Stock (4.0 GHz) @ 48 FPS
$360 4770K Stock (3.5 GHz) @ 49 FPS
_____
$160 for 1 fps = Intel not worth it

$200 FX-8350 OC (4.5 GHz) @ 52 FPS
$360 4770K OC (4.5 GHz) @ 55 FPS
____
$160 for 3 fps = Intel not worth it

Oh, I just wanted to add that Intel's i7 line have integrated GPUs, while the AMD FX do not.
That being said, Intel's closest offering, Xeon, is significantly more expensive so it's not even worth looking at.

[pal666]

Nothing has perfect scaling, even atomic instructions used in lockless methods have overhead. Thus a 50GHz cpu would always be better than 50 1 GHz cpus in performance.

but not in performance per dollar

[Luke_Wolf]

Is this seriously your conclusion? No, wait. What was even your point exactly? What were you trying to prove by comparing the two?

The point is that in terms of real world performance AMD single threading is more than good enough, even for your ARMA 3 maxed out. Can you squeeze a few extra FPS out of the intel processor? yes. Enough to seriously impact gameplay? no despite the fact that it's got significantly better single thread performance.

Meanwhile the design of the PS4 and the XBone means that most games are going to have to be designed to take advantage of 8+ threads in order to achieve the performance required for next-gen graphics with minimal single thread requirements because well... they're running on a netbook architecture, and as we can see in the requirements for Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 that the dual core thing is quickly becoming quite a thing of the past.

[smitty3268]

The point is that in terms of real world performance AMD single threading is more than good enough, even for your ARMA 3 maxed out. Can you squeeze a few extra FPS out of the intel processor? yes. Enough to seriously impact gameplay? no despite the fact that it's got significantly better single thread performance.

Hint: no one was comparing AMD to Intel performance, it was just the importance of single-threading performance.

Try running that test with a 2.5Ghz processor on 8 cores vs a 4.5Ghz processor (of the same architecture) on 2 cores and let's compare the results. At least, that's what i thought the topic was - you seem to be talking about something else.

[rvdboom]

Hint: no one was comparing AMD to Intel performance, it was just the importance of single-threading performance.
Try running that test with a 2.5Ghz processor on 8 cores vs a 4.5Ghz processor (of the same architecture) on 2 cores and let's compare the results. At least, that's what i thought the topic was - you seem to be talking about something else.

Well, it seems to me the single vs multiple thread came out because of the the lack of single thread performance of AMD CPUs compared to Intel, but anyway, even in your example, I think that in more and more situations, the first option is better than the second.
Most desktop performance sensitive apps are properly multi-threaded (video and audio encoding, 3D rendering) now or will be within a year or two (games). For the rest, I have a desktop using a quad-core 3.7GHz Kaveri and a laptop with a quad-core 1.4Ghz Temash : for regular desktop usage (office, web), I don't feel there's that much difference between the two, even with things like Google Docs in Firefox. I got a much better responsiveness improvement going from magnetic disk to SSD.
I'm sure your mileage will vary but in 97% of the situations, I'm pretty sure the above is true. And the remaining 3% only affect a small minority of users.

To be back on topic, having a Kaveri, I'm really looking forward to see what HSA can bring to the table, especially for video encoding. However, I don't really understand right now what will be needed to take advantage of it.

[Luke_Wolf]

Hint: no one was comparing AMD to Intel performance, it was just the importance of single-threading performance.

Try running that test with a 2.5Ghz processor on 8 cores vs a 4.5Ghz processor (of the same architecture) on 2 cores and let's compare the results. At least, that's what i thought the topic was - you seem to be talking about something else.

Would you kindly try reading through the thread to the origin of a discussion first before making such a comment? This is what started the discussion:

amd need to improve the single core performance a lot and not put more and more cores in their cpu, why is the point of a 16 core cpu if apps use no more than 6/8?

So yes, yes they were. When in fact any modern desktop processor has plenty of single thread performance, and single thread hasn't really been an issue for a long time, and there's more to be gained from going wider.

[przemoli]

Single thread have many problems:
1) Context switching - thats expensive, and less cores mean more freaquent occurance
2) Power efficiency - more varied task less opportunity to switch off. And switch off/on up/down take time. On 50 1GHz CPUs there is just 50 times more opportinities to do it without impacting perf (or more!).
3) Production efficiency - have 5 faulty cored on 50 core chip? Sell it as lower end 40 core chip ...
4) Time to design - modularity is obvious. SIZE of simulators to design single core chip matter too. And with size TIME of downloading/swapping design rose (number of bugs and thus number of swaps too).
6) Space - so less space on chip for other modules - look at ARM space

And to my best knowlege 6GHz currently cost You 2 milions per chip all in all
And first thing You do is to clock DOWN that CPUs
(-> IBM mainfraims)

[smitty3268]

Hint: no one was comparing AMD to Intel performance, it was just the importance of single-threading performance.

Would you kindly try reading through the thread to the origin of a discussion first before making such a comment? This is what started the discussion:

amd need to improve the single core performance a lot and not put more and more cores in their cpu, why is the point of a 16 core cpu if apps use no more than 6/8?

So yes, yes they were. When in fact any modern desktop processor has plenty of single thread performance, and single thread hasn't really been an issue for a long time, and there's more to be gained from going wider.

Uhh, where was intel referenced in that statement? I imagine the original poster wants Intel to focus on improving single core performance too, and not sacrifice that for extra cores.

As for why AMD was specified at all, well, it's because this article was about AMD. Nothing to do with Intel.

So thanks for making my point - even after going back and finding the starting point, you completely misinterpreted things from the start.

[Luke_Wolf]

Uhh, where was intel referenced in that statement? I imagine the original poster wants Intel to focus on improving single core performance too, and not sacrifice that for extra cores.

As for why AMD was specified at all, well, it's because this article was about AMD. Nothing to do with Intel.

So thanks for making my point - even after going back and finding the starting point, you completely misinterpreted things from the start.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention at all, Rikkihno is an Intel/Nvidia fanboy. Go look through his posts and tell me that's not the case. The forum makes it easy just click on his username and then click on the view posts button that pops up. As a result any such statement by him can be automatically be assumed to be in comparison to intel or nvidia. Much like when a political candidate runs smear ads even if it only literally says things against X, the idea being pushed is X is bad so you should choose Y.

Let's take another example, if a well known Microsoft pundit were to start complaining about Linux, or ODF, or LibreOffice or whatever, despite the fact that said pundit doesn't mention Microsoft or one of their products once you would still know very well exactly what it's being compared to and what the implication is.

[profoundWHALE]

Uhh, where was intel referenced in that statement?

Hey, genius, listen up.

If you get a computer (x86), 99% of the time it will be Intel or AMD. But that's not the part you are missing.

Now, if we don't assume it's just x86, but that it's about single-threaded CPU performance, regardless of architecture, it will still most likely be Intel. IBM was referenced once and you didn't complain about that, which leads me to believe that you just have a vendetta for Luke_Wolf.

I imagine the original poster wants Intel to focus on improving single core performance too, and not sacrifice that for extra cores.

What was being talked about was scaling with multiple cores (after a while you see less of an increase in performance per extra core) vs less or even 1 ridiculously fast core (running into problems with heat, size, and other things). Then someone was comparing Intel to AMD saying that Intel is faster, which was not disputed, but rather clarified: Faster, but at a price. Then someone talked about improvement in single threaded performance with AMD CPUs. It is well known that Intel has superior single threaded performance and they are the only other x86 CPU manufacturer to compare with. Do you really need a summary of this thread?

So thanks for making my point - even after going back and finding the starting point, you completely misinterpreted things from the start.

Wow. It's like the lights are on, but nobody is home.

I imagine the original poster wants Intel to focus on improving single core performance too, and not sacrifice that for extra cores.

You just interpreted whatever he was saying, which was that they were talking about Intel, and it's already apparent that you didn't read through the thread... So that means you said nobody was talking about Intel, when people were clearly talking about Intel, and then claimed he falsely interpreted what someone said, only to falsely interpret that someone themselves, and then try to correct him on the topic of the article when he himself doesn't even full have it.

As for why AMD was specified at all, well, it's because this article was about AMD. Nothing to do with Intel

Right and wrong when you said that the article is about AMD. It's actually about AMD's HSA, which can apply to almost anything including different manufactures, software, licensing, architectures, even politics if you tried hard enough.


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TL;DR, smitty3268 is either intoxicated, a terrible troll, or a total moron. Also I just wasted 30 minutes of my life. You're welcome.