Details on Kaby Lake overclocking (7700k, 7600k)

[Belize]

In some scenarios Zen can match Broadwell-E in IPC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQS8s7TOXsE

We still however, don't know how final silicon will perform in other tasks. This blender demo is everything we've got aside from some geekbench 4 scores.

I'm going to take that press conference with a small spoonful of salt. It's much better to wait until consumers put it through its paces and assume that the marketing team...uh... "enriched" the presentation.

[Vash The Stampede]

I am more interested in zen tbh, we know what the pricing will be on the intel side of things and intel is still refusing to up core count on each series while zen has an 8 core 16 thread CPU for the mainstream. Sadly tho, i think even if zen competes in some games its still gonna fall well short of intel for the games i play (WoW, overwatch, mmo's etc).

Given what little is known about Zen, it's likely to be about Haswell or Skylake level of performance, clock per clock. The issue is that it doesn't clock very high. There was a benchmark that showed Zen vs 8 core Broadwell-E and Zen was equal or better. At 3Ghz, Zen was faster, but problem is Broadwell-E can clock much higher than 3Ghz. This may not be an issue considering how much a 8 core Broadwell-E i7-6900K costs $1k. Even at half the cost, Zen would be a major win.

Meh.
More than 4 cores are pretty useless unless you do stuff like video encoding.
There is a reason why more than 4 cores never caught on in the mainstream segment: most software can't use them.

The problem with more than 4 cores is the software. The problem with the software is that hardly anyone has more than 4 cores, so they won't write fragile code for a small fraction of the market. I blame Intel for this as they still sell a lot of dual core CPUs for their laptops. Even their Desktop i7's are getting confusing. Which is it? A 4 core with HT, a 6 core with HT, or a 8 core with HT? There's even a 10 core with HT. They all cost a fortune for something most of us wouldn't gain any benefits from.

[Artorius]

The problem with more than 4 cores is the software. The problem with the software is that hardly anyone has more than 4 cores, so they won't write fragile code for a small fraction of the market.

No, the problem is that they don't write scalable software that can work well with a few cores and work better with more of them.

[Granyala]

The problem with more than 4 cores is the software. The problem with the software is that hardly anyone has more than 4 cores, so they won't write fragile code for a small fraction of the market. I blame Intel for this as they still sell a lot of dual core CPUs for their laptops. Even their Desktop i7's are getting confusing. Which is it? A 4 core with HT, a 6 core with HT, or a 8 core with HT? There's even a 10 core with HT. They all cost a fortune for something most of us wouldn't gain any benefits from.

While it would certainly encourage DEVs to code for more cores if they were more prevalent in peoples rigs, It's actually quite hard (read: expensive) to do and it doesn't necessarily scale all that well.
Most game studios would simply not bother with the expense for a rather marginal gain in performance, even if 6 cores+ were the norm by now.

[Thunderball]

Given what little is known about Zen, it's likely to be about Haswell or Skylake level of performance, clock per clock. The issue is that it doesn't clock very high. There was a benchmark that showed Zen vs 8 core Broadwell-E and Zen was equal or better. At 3Ghz, Zen was faster, but problem is Broadwell-E can clock much higher than 3Ghz. This may not be an issue considering how much a 8 core Broadwell-E i7-6900K costs $1k. Even at half the cost, Zen would be a major win.

Given what's known there is no way it will come close to Skylake. Also, if Zen is on par with Broadwell-E that means that it's single core performance is on par with Intel, meaning that it should be at least 25% faster than Skylake i7, which is not happening.

[Snackwiches]

What's peoples fascination with overclocking?
These days the real life improvements you get outside of E-Peen benchmarks are imperceptible.

"watch me talk about things I clearly dont understand!"

[Vash The Stampede]

Given what's known there is no way it will come close to Skylake. Also, if Zen is on par with Broadwell-E that means that it's single core performance is on par with Intel, meaning that it should be at least 25% faster than Skylake i7, which is not happening.

There were benchmarks released by AMD. Obviously this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it did show that Zen is doing well. I'm fine with Ivy Bridge IPC performance so long as the price is right.

While it would certainly encourage DEVs to code for more cores if they were more prevalent in peoples rigs, It's actually quite hard (read: expensive) to do and it doesn't necessarily scale all that well.
Most game studios would simply not bother with the expense for a rather marginal gain in performance, even if 6 cores+ were the norm by now.

If game studios don't want a bottleneck then they have to push for multithreaded code. Blizzard is certainly seeing this issue with WoW, but they don't consider it a big enough issue to spend boat loads of money to make the game scale better. Other games have certainly shown they can scale up beyond 4 cores.

"watch me talk about things I clearly dont understand!"

If you have any experience with overclocking, you will see he isn't wrong. Sure you get more performance from the overclock, but usually not enough to be noticeable in games. Only if the game is really suffering in performance. That doesn't mean you shouldn't, but don't get your expectations high.

[Granyala]

"watch me talk about things I clearly dont understand!"

"watch me not being able to follow a discussion and making a useless post just for the heck of it"

See? Me can do that too!

Obviously this should be taken with a grain of salt,

Well.. I'd recommend a shipping container full of salt.

Or to be more diplomatic about it: Most corporate preview benchmarks have very little in common with the real life performance of the product.

[Artorius]

Given what's known there is no way it will come close to Skylake. Also, if Zen is on par with Broadwell-E that means that it's single core performance is on par with Intel, meaning that it should be at least 25% faster than Skylake i7, which is not happening.

That 8/16 Zen isn't even supposed to be cheap. It can very well beat a 4/8 Skylake in throughput (and it certainly will), but you can expect that to cost 500+ USD.

You'd need a 4/8 Zen CPU to make any meaningful comparison to a 6700K, which also should be cheaper than its Intel counterpart but not that much cheaper.

[Granyala]

I'm reasonably sure that AMD would align themselves to Intels pricing if they were able to bring out competitive parts and not the other way around.

[Thunderball]

That 8/16 Zen isn't even supposed to be cheap. It can very well beat a 4/8 Skylake in throughput (and it certainly will), but you can expect that to cost 500+ USD.

You'd need a 4/8 Zen CPU to make any meaningful comparison to a 6700K, which also should be cheaper than its Intel counterpart but not that much cheaper.

Problem is that AMD has been struggling with single thread performance since forever and the supposed evidence suggesting that the deficit is gone doesnt seem very realistic, especially given the power usage figures of those CPUs.

[DeltrusDisc]

Only if you have VRR, if I am not mistaken. Else VSync will probably nuke sth like 75 or 80 down to 60. Not entirely sure though.

FF-XIV feels wonderful at a steady 60 FPS. Super fluid, no comparison to anything below 60 really. I can feel dropping down to 55 immediately (darn VSync) but my fresh 1070 is not at fault here. OCing definitely shows a 10-15 FPS improvement in densely populated cities, so I am pretty harshly CPU limited at 1080p. ._.


Yep. That#s what I was referring to. Naturally an OC'd skylake will have advantages.

I used to be an advocate for turning on VSync... I now keep it off and limit the fps with the scroll bar. 55 fps is just that, 55 fps. 75 is 75 and 80 is 80.

[Afrospinach]

I'm reasonably sure that AMD would align themselves to Intels pricing if they were able to bring out competitive parts and not the other way around.

Pfft. AMD has been posting losses for decades now, they REALLY hate money so expect aggressive loss leader pricing - across the board, lol.

[Granyala]

I used to be an advocate for turning on VSync... I now keep it off and limit the fps with the scroll bar. 55 fps is just that, 55 fps. 75 is 75 and 80 is 80.

Well then you have screen tearing and I do believe when I play in a window, Windows actually forces VSync. Not entirely sure though.

[Artorius]

Problem is that AMD has been struggling with single thread performance since forever and the supposed evidence suggesting that the deficit is gone doesnt seem very realistic, especially given the power usage figures of those CPUs.

Not forever, just since Bulldozer. And Zen is a whole new uarch that focused on giving better ST performance, it isn't unrealistic to believe they achieved something good regarding IPC. The problem is whether the CPU can clock high enough or not. The fact that they had to downclock Broadwell-E in their presentation suggests that it can't. But then again, it was an ES chip and they almost always clock the consumer chip higher than the ES.

[DeltrusDisc]

Well then you have screen tearing and I do believe when I play in a window, Windows actually forces VSync. Not entirely sure though.

Thankfully the screen-tearing isn't all that bad and not present that much in WoW, considering how slow pace the game can be, especially for a ranged class. :P

If I dip to 50 fps or something, which is very likely, considering I play at 3440x1440... then I want it to actually be 50 fps.

[Granyala]

If I dip to 50 fps or something, which is very likely, considering I play at 3440x1440... then I want it to actually be 50 fps.

Yeah, played Crysis 3 the same way on my 7870. Dipping down to 27 still felt way better than being crushed to 15. Screen tearing be damned.

[Alantor]

Didn't we have similar leaks with Skylake?