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Why AMD shouldn't end the FX line of processors

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  • CPUs
  • AMD
  • Intel
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Should AMD end the FX processors?

Total: 7 votes

  • Yes
  • 34 %
  • No
  • 34 %
  • I wouldn't really care either way
  • 34 %
April 21, 2014 11:13:49 AM

I have been seeing rumours lately pointing towards AMD stopping production of FX processors, and that the Steamroller architecture will not be making an appearance in any FX CPUs this year, if ever. I personally think that AMD is making an enormous mistake, that the FX processors are underrated and are NEEDED in today's market, and here's my reasoning.

-Intel currently offers nothing that can compete with AMD in the low-to-mid range market for gaming CPUs, other than power consumption being an issue for some. The ~$110 FX-6300, which I personally own, can out perform ANY Intel CPU at a similar price point, and with a good cooler, can start to compete with some i5 Processors. This is amazing, but the i5 would of course be running at stock speeds and could be overclocked to easily outperform the FX once more. But consider this: with a Noctua NH-D14, an air cooler I've seen go as low as $65 USD after rebates, can overclock an FX 6300 past 4.5GHz, which gives you i5 4670K performance (a little less, but extremely close) for a price of roughly $180. The 4670K is usually around $220, and to get almost the same performance is amazing. If you still want more performance, the i5 is still what you would want to buy, but if you want the performance that the 4670K offers at stock speeds, just OC an FX 6300 and save money. Honestly, the power consumption isn't as bad as people make it seem, just make sure you don't have a crappy PSU. AMD is underrated.

-Pricing. Similar to my last reason, AMD offers much cheaper CPUs. The cores are weaker, and some people say the parts are lower quality, but they work and they work fine. For much cheaper than what Intel will likely ever offer. AMD can give you an octa-core CPU for as low as $140 USD, whereas Intel doesn't even come close. The Intel will perform better in many cases, but an octa-core chip at budget pricing? many people just getting into video rendering or other things could buy from AMD, save some money, and get an amazing CPU for a cheap price. AMD dominates in pricing.

-More on pricing. If the FX CPUs go away, Intel will have no real competition, and pricing will be in their hands, and their hands ALONE. They can charge whatever they want for CPUs with AMD out of the way, because with no competition, Intel won't have any prices from other companies that they have to compete with. Did you think $120 was expensive for a dual core as it is? Intel could bump that price up to $200 with no more quad and hexa-core AMD's on the market. Intel will gain essentially a monopoly, and possibly ruining the market.

-Steamroller is much better than Piledriver, more power efficient and supports HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture), meaning that they can utilize multiple kinds of processors, to potentially increase performance of the chip by huge amounts. Bulldozer was a flop, coming from an AMD fan I will be very clear that I agree that Bulldozer sucked, and Piledriver was what Bulldozer should have been, but Steamroller is much better than both. With a more efficient chip, think of what would happen if AMD didn't change TDP's for new CPUs. Let's just say Steamroller is twice as efficient as Piledriver. (This is just hypothetically speaking, I do not know how much better it really is). If an FX-8350 could squeeze let's say 250FPS in Minecraft at Max Settings, using 125W. Then a Steamroller CPU could do the same with half of the power, seeing as it would be twice as efficient. If AMD kept TDP the same, however, and the successor to the 8350 also had a TDP of 125W, theoretically performance would double, and Minecraft could possibly see 500FPS at Max Settings. These are just hypothetical numbers, but keeping power consumption the same and using a more efficient architecture could squeeze a lot more performance out of the chip.

-More cores. This is a very debatable argument, but an AMD CPU will almost always have more cores than the Intel counterpart at the same price, which in a way is a form of future proofing. Whether you agree or not, more cores will eventually be used, and to spread the workload over more cores could seriously boost efficiency of the CPU. It's why the FX-6300, a hexa-core chip, can outperform Haswell i3's from Intel, which have two more powerful cores. Maybe not all 6 cores are being utilized, but more than 2 must be being used if the weaker cores can perform better than the Intel. It's future proofing in a way, and it's why I bought the FX-6300 and not an i3 like I originally planned to when I built my PC.

These are my reasons that AMD shouldn't stop producing FX CPUs, and incorporate Steamroller into the next gen FX lineup. Let's get something out of the way, I have nothing against Intel. I happily admit that they are better performers in many tasks, but I see the potential in AMD CPUs, and they aren't as bad as people say. (They actually work perfectly fine and some Intel's run much hotter). I will likely buy an Intel if AMD discontinues the FX lineup once I upgrade to get better rendering speed. Anyway, if you have anything to add, feel free.

More about : amd end line processors

a c 473 à CPUs
a c 117 À AMD
a b å Intel
April 21, 2014 11:42:44 AM

- It depends in the arena they're competing. Intel still dominates AMD in single-threaded performance. Games are still being released that use only a few cores, and the i3's can outperform the FX's still, at a similar price point. If it utilises 4 cores and FX and i3 could be on par, or the FX likely a little ahead. More than that and the FX will pull ahead.

- Couldn't agree more.

- And again. Competition drives excellence. From AMD's financial standpoint, IMO they should quit with FX and cut their losses. What I'd like to see happen is for HSA to improve and them to gain profit from that, then put further finances into RnD for HEDT again and compete with intel in that field (AMD can't really match intel's i7s, and certainly not the extreme series [ignoring the price delta]). Of course it's not purely that simple.

-I wouldn't say TDP is really an issue except in OC'd chips or the 9xxx series. Of course an efficient architecture would be great, bulldozer and piledriver are a little lacking.

- 8 cores in 4 modules, I care not to debate the logistics of it. They're not cores in a traditional sense though, and compared to Intel they lack IPC. If all newer programs were to utilise all of its threads it could be perfect.

I think they logically should end the lineup since they're not profiting. However I would hope they wouldn't.
a c 902 à CPUs
a c 171 À AMD
a c 103 å Intel
April 21, 2014 11:49:03 AM

The FX line should end with AM3+ and a new line, take its place, that is compatible with FM2+. AMD, IMO, cannot afford a two socket strategy on desktop, like Intel can. Rework steamroller to add L3 cache and remove the IGP, would be my solution to start with. Selling such a chip as FX would prove confusing to those that don't know any better. They are already selling cpus that lack, or have disabled, IGP with the 750k and 760k.
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a c 93 à CPUs
April 21, 2014 12:15:54 PM

I expect and hope that the FX line (as it is now) will die out.

Bulldozers architecture was a recipe for a disaster, where piledriver and it successors are meant to fix it, which are going VERY slowly.

Bulldozer and its family have implemented CMT. (Cluster core)(What AMD calls modules).
This kind of architecture generally require good frontend (BP, fetch and decoders), which AMD currently isn't capable of making. (due to low R&D budget).

Having both cores in the module share the FPU (Better called SIMD), can be terrible is so many ways, it isn't even funny.

Haswell SIMD is better than the one in piledriver (which both cores share).

Steamroller wont hit the FX line, as they only made minor changes to the CPU itself. (added decoders, made some cache changes and a minor FPU fix), which have little to no performance gain, what so ever.

When AMD reach excavador, we are going to see some improvement with their SIMD. They will finally support AVX2. (skylake which will be around after will support AVX512. AVX2 = AVX256 sort of speak), so they would still be behind in SIMD performance.

As said, AMD have a hard time implementing both L3 cache and IGP. Cache alone can fill up to 20-50% of the die spaces, which is alot (incase you wonders).

AMD have a far better changes to compete in the APU market, so why keep fighting a fight you will eventually lose?

Also Intel are more or less pretty stable with their pricings.
a c 902 à CPUs
a c 171 À AMD
a c 103 å Intel
April 21, 2014 12:50:19 PM

That is why I said add L3 cache and remove IGP. I figured there were die space issues as to why they are not both present now. They already know how to make these chips work without a working IGP, just make a chip without one and add the L3 cache in. Consolidating both the APU line and the HEDT line to one socket. The A6 would be basically their Celeron, A8 and A10 would be like the Pentium G and i3 lines in terms of hierarchy, and the new chips would be i5/i7 type line.
April 21, 2014 6:49:56 PM

JOOK-D said:
- It depends in the arena they're competing. Intel still dominates AMD in single-threaded performance. Games are still being released that use only a few cores, and the i3's can outperform the FX's still, at a similar price point. If it utilises 4 cores and FX and i3 could be on par, or the FX likely a little ahead. More than that and the FX will pull ahead.

- Couldn't agree more.

- And again. Competition drives excellence. From AMD's financial standpoint, IMO they should quit with FX and cut their losses. What I'd like to see happen is for HSA to improve and them to gain profit from that, then put further finances into RnD for HEDT again and compete with intel in that field (AMD can't really match intel's i7s, and certainly not the extreme series [ignoring the price delta]). Of course it's not purely that simple.

-I wouldn't say TDP is really an issue except in OC'd chips or the 9xxx series. Of course an efficient architecture would be great, bulldozer and piledriver are a little lacking.

- 8 cores in 4 modules, I care not to debate the logistics of it. They're not cores in a traditional sense though, and compared to Intel they lack IPC. If all newer programs were to utilise all of its threads it could be perfect.

I think they logically should end the lineup since they're not profiting. However I would hope they wouldn't.


Very nice arguments. I'm glad you were polite about your opinion, it's nice seeing people politely respond for change.
April 21, 2014 6:54:28 PM

vmN said:
I expect and hope that the FX line (as it is now) will die out.

Bulldozers architecture was a recipe for a disaster, where piledriver and it successors are meant to fix it, which are going VERY slowly.

Bulldozer and its family have implemented CMT. (Cluster core)(What AMD calls modules).
This kind of architecture generally require good frontend (BP, fetch and decoders), which AMD currently isn't capable of making. (due to low R&D budget).

Having both cores in the module share the FPU (Better called SIMD), can be terrible is so many ways, it isn't even funny.

Haswell SIMD is better than the one in piledriver (which both cores share).

Steamroller wont hit the FX line, as they only made minor changes to the CPU itself. (added decoders, made some cache changes and a minor FPU fix), which have little to no performance gain, what so ever.

When AMD reach excavador, we are going to see some improvement with their SIMD. They will finally support AVX2. (skylake which will be around after will support AVX512. AVX2 = AVX256 sort of speak), so they would still be behind in SIMD performance.

As said, AMD have a hard time implementing both L3 cache and IGP. Cache alone can fill up to 20-50% of the die spaces, which is alot (incase you wonders).

AMD have a far better changes to compete in the APU market, so why keep fighting a fight you will eventually lose?

Also Intel are more or less pretty stable with their pricings.


Steamroller wasn't so much about performance as it was efficiency. Similar to nVidia introducing Maxwell, which more or less halved power consumption with the 750 ti compared to the 650 ti yet still performed the same or better. Also, the die space problem...I'm very limited on my knowledge of actual physical properties of CPUs, but would the 32nm process of current FX processors be the problem? I know Intel is already working on getting smaller than the 22nm that they already use, while AMD lags behind. Just a guess, you seem to have more experience with physical properties of processors than me, so I am legitimately curious.
a c 93 à CPUs
April 22, 2014 1:15:15 AM

True.

Streamroller is like Ivy-brigde. (Only small improvements over the previous architecture).

The problem is that cache is using a hell lot of the die space. (reason why the APU doesn't have L3 cache), and it require an insane R&D budget to get into an architecture featuring both L3 cache and an IGP.

I think the problem is that bulldozer and it successors are running with CMT (Cluster-core, what AMD is calling modules), it is taking up alot of space, even through they are trying to be spaceefficient by removing redundant parts.

The bobcat/jaguar architecture is a way better design, and I agree with its philosophy much more than the bulldozers family architecture.
a b à CPUs
April 22, 2014 4:51:07 AM

CMT is actually decently space efficient, and SR did a good job reducing the overhead of using CMT as much as possible. But AMD still made a bet that programs would easily be able to scale, something that is not trivial to do at all. Hence why fewer cores with higher per-core performance, for desktops at least, is the way to go.

Likewise, this also makes it hard for AMD to scale down. Does a dual-core AMD chip look at all competitive in the low power space? Even though AMD's APU's would otherwise be attractive, the low overall performance of the CPU side of the house allows low power i3's to continue to steal the show in that market.

AMD's taken the BD arch about as far as it could go, and it still hasn't reached SB performance. AMD either needs to scrap the arch and start over, or if they don't have the funds to do so, focus exclusively on APU's.
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