Beast of a chip for HPC work. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2015/04/13/32-thread-amd-zen-apu/1
I'd say the chances of Zen launching with 16 cores is about...zero. Maybe on the second or third refresh it will get there, but launch release?, I'm willing to bet they will top out at 8 cores 16 threads and be competitive with Sandybridge in terms of IPC.
Why not? Opterons have had that many cores for ages. Given it's designed for HPC I don't see 16cores being unobtainable on release. I mean they put 8 core APUs in the current gen consoles.
Will be interesting to see what the first non-apu part could be like, maybe we will see AMD start to compete with Intel at the high end again.
All I'm saying is that if AMD can make an APU that can blitz all games at 1080p on ultra settings with at least 60fps and can easily be cooled.. That's a sale to me! Think of the tiny rigs you could make with just that, a pico psu and an AIO..
Ah you se there's the complication. They sort of need to combine a good CPU and GPU whilst keeping it within thee power confines of just the CPU part, which is no mean feat. A big issue with the consumer high power APU model is that they're power hungry. This means that motherboards and cooling cost substantially more, increasing the overall platform cost to the point where having dedicated hardware is a better option. HPC environments are okay with this as their motherboards are expensive and reliable and noise isn't an issue for cooling. They'd be cooling that amount of GPU grunt anyway so power consumption isn't an issue. But at home those things do become a consideration. You definitely wouldn't want a cheapo motherboard powering a 150W APU, nor a bargain bucket cooler. Sounds like it's baby steps for a while longer in the consumer realm.
I think it's more a case of if AMD can make an APU that can comfortably run most current games especially current gen console ports/side by side releases at 1080p at good settings, a reasonable price and with reasonable power/heat specs. Now that could be a popular thing. I suspect it's what they've been working towards for a while with their desktop APUs, console APU advantage, mantle and freesync.
I forgot about the mobo side of things.. I was thinking along the lines of "If you can get a 2011 cool easily enough with modern coolers, why not an APU! But then you'd have to upgrade power etc.. As for stock coolers.. If AMD puts waterblocks on their GPU's, why not on their APU's as well if needed! Although then it WOULD be going into dedicated territory of pricings.. Ignore my post-pub ramblings!
Keep in mind that AMD's current core architectures are effectively recycled from fairly old designs; a new design from scratch (and this has far too many changes to be a refresh of anything AMD make now) has the potential to drop the power consumption and TDP by an awful lot. Jaguar cores may not be anything special performance wise, but that's mainly due to their low clock speeds. In terms of IPC, they're actually very impressive. Get that kind of IPC up to 3-4GHz without the shared FPUs, I would expect that chip to be jaw-dropping.
?? Kaveri was/is pretty impressive on the graphics front, but is going to struggle with most recent games at reasonable settings. If they bring out an APU that can run GTA 5 for instance smoothly at 1080p with decent settings, now I think that would appeal to a lot of people. People who want a simple, compact, reasonably priced gaming/browsing/media system that isn't a PS4/Xbox One. And that sort of performance should hold up for a while, because I think a lot of big mainstream games will follow the GTA 5 model when it comes to PC releases.
I guess that depends how you define "decent". The APUs AMD put in the current gen of consoles (hint hint) don't do such a great job, sticking with the 1080p/30fps target. The XB1 version of the game lacks lens flare effects and has some sustained frame rate issues. The PS4 version performs more consistently with better quality, but the PC version of course will run with max settings at whatever resolution and frame rate your setup will handle. The A10-7850K isn't far off playable at 1080p high settings and was released 15 months and 1 day ago, so I guess whatever AMD bump up their APU performance with next will probably handle the game just fine. And if doesn't, wtf! Anyone got any idea what we're expecting AMD to release next and when?
