The AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive: The 2700X, 2700, 2600X, and 2600 Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 19, 2018 9:00 AM ESTTalking 12nm and Zen+
One of the highlights of the Ryzen 2000-series launch is that these processors use GlobalFoundries’ 12LP manufacturing process, compared to the 14LPP process used for the first generation of Ryzen processors. Both AMD and GlobalFoundries have discussed the differences in the processes, however it is worth understanding that each company has different goals: AMD only needs to promote what helps its products, whereas GlobalFoundries is a semiconductor foundry with many clients and might promote ideal-scenario numbers. Earlier this year we were invited to GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in upstate New York to visit the clean room, and had a chance to interview Dr. Gary Patton, the CTO.
The Future of Silicon: An Exclusive Interview with Dr. Gary Patton, CTO of GlobalFoundries
In that interview, several interesting items came to light. First, that the CTO doesn’t necessarily have to care much about what certain processes are called: their customers know the performance of a given process regardless of the advertised ‘nm’ number based on the development tools given to them. Second, that 12LP is a series of minor tweaks to 14LPP, relating to performance bumps and improvements that come from a partial optical shrink and a slight change in manufacturing rules in the middle-line and back-end of the manufacturing process. In the past this might not have been so news worthy, however GF’s customers want to take advantage of the improved process.
Overall, GlobalFoundries has stated that its 12LP process offers a 10% performance improvement and a 15% circuit density improvement over 14LPP.
This has been interpreted in many ways, such as an extra 10% frequency at the same power, or lower power for the same frequency, and an opportunity to build smaller chips.
As part of today’s launch, AMD has clarified what the move to 12LP has meant for the Ryzen 2000-series:
- Top Clock Speeds lifted by ~250 MHz (~6%)
- All-core overclocks around 4.2 GHz
- ~50 mV core voltage reduction
AMD goes on to explain that at the same frequency, its new Ryzen 2000-series processors draw around 11% less power than the Ryzen 1000-series. The claims also state that this translates to +16% performance at the same power. These claims are a little muddled, as AMD has other new technologies in the 2000-series which will affect performance as well.
One interesting element is that although GF claims that there is a 15% density improvement, AMD is stating that these processors have the same die size and transistor count as the previous generation. Ultimately this seems in opposition to common sense – surely AMD would want to use smaller dies to get more chips per wafer?
Ultimately, the new processors are almost carbon copies of the old ones, both in terms of design and microarchitecture. AMD is calling the design of the cores as ‘Zen+’ to differentiate them to the previous generation ‘Zen’ design, and it mostly comes down to how the microarchitecture features are laid out on the silicon. When discussing with AMD, the best way to explain it is that some of the design of the key features has not moved – they just take up less area, leaving more dark silicon between other features.
Here is a very crude representation of features attached to a data path. On the left is the 14LPP design, and each of the six features has a specific size and connects to the bus. Between each of the features is the dark silicon – unused silicon that is either seen as useless, or can be used as a thermal buffer between high-energy parts. On the right is the representation of the 12LP design – each of the features have been reduced in size, putting more dark silicon between themselves (the white boxes show the original size of the feature). In this context, the number of transistors is the same, and the die size is the same. But if anything in the design was thermally limited by the close proximity of two features, there is now more distance between them such that they should interfere with each other less.
For reference, AMD lists the die-size of these new parts as 213mm2, containing 4.8 billion transistors, identical to the first generation silicon design. AMD confirmed that they are using 9T transistor libraries, also the same as the previous generation, although GlobalFoundries offers a 7.5T design as well.
So is Zen+ a New Microarchitecture, or Process Node Change?
Ultimately, nothing about most of the Zen+ physical design layout is new. Aside from the manufacturing process node change and likely minor adjustments, the rest of the adjustments are in firmware and support:
- Cache latency adjustments leading to +3% IPC
- Increased DRAM Frequency Support to DDR4-2933
- Better voltage/frequency curves, leading to +10% performance overall
- Better Boost Performance with Precision Boost 2
- Better Thermal Response with XFR2
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Flying Aardvark - Monday, April 23, 2018 - link
There's usually a lag from 6-12 months on any change that's already in place. Any topic really. Humans aren't very good at seeing what's in front of them. It requires enough people repeating it over and over around them, until they accept reality.Before that reassurance from society around them, they don't have the confidence to see/admit reality. Just something I've noticed. :)
mapesdhs - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
That's why I like Goodkind's "1st Rule": people will believe a lie either because they want to believe it's true, or they're afraid it's true.Kaihekoa - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
I don't know what reviews you read, but the WCCF review shows slight favor to 8700K in gaming. However, it's an incomplete review of gaming as they only test at 1440p Ultra, where the GPU bears most of the workload, and only show average framerate. Tech Report doesn't even go into any detail whatsoever on gaming and only broaches the topic in a couple paragraphs on the conclusion page. Still, they even show a lead to Intel. Anandtech shows the 2700X leading every game in framerate, which is flat out inaccurate when compared to other reviews.The Spectre BS has marginal, if any, impact on game performance. I don't know how you get the idea that CPU IO is related to loading textures in a game when textures are loaded into VRAM by the GPU. Looking further into the test setup, Anand uses slower RAM on Intel platforms, an ECC mobo for Z170, doesn't disclose GPU driver versions and uses an enterprise OS on consumer hardware. I'm guessing these and/or other factors contributed to the inaccurate numbers, relative to other reviewers, causing me to lose a lot of respect for this once well-regarded hardware reviewer. I'll get my benchmark numbers from PC Perspective and Gamers Nexus instead.
Not hating on AMD, and I even own stock in both AMD and Intel. They offer tremendous value at their price points, but I spend alot of money on my PC and use it for gaming, overclocking/benching, and basic tasks, which all seem better suited to Intel's IPC/clock speed advantage. I need reviews to post accurate numbers so that I can make my upgrade decisions, and this incomplete review with numbers not reflective of actual gaming performance fails to meet that need.
Flying Aardvark - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Come on man. I almost stop responding to replies like this. WCCF benches the base 2700, of course the 8700K wins, they don't include the 2700X. Again, the results line up with AT's. I wrote TR but meant TechRadar.Eh, I'm not going to keep going on addressing all these "points". IO is a syscall, reading/writing to disk is a syscall and that's where Intel takes up to a 50% perf hit with their Spectre v3 patches in place. This is known, and been known for months on the impact for games that do lots of texture steaming like ROTR. I even provided user provided evidence, that beat Anandtech here to the punch by 3 months.
Anand used Intel/AMD memory spec. That's what you're supposed to do when testing a product advertised to use certain components (for good reason, BTW, stupid gamer kids discounted).
Bottom line is that you and people flipping out just like you are wrong. I already knew about this being under the surface months ago. Now that it's impossible to cover it up with the 2000 series launch, more people are simply aware that AMD has taken over.
GreenMeters - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
But Anandtech has the 2700, and even the 2600X and 2600, beating the 8700K. So how are the WCCF benchmarks lining up with Anandtech's?Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
"I just finished running Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmarks, 1080p, very high preset, FXAA.Unpatched:
Mountain Peak: 131.48 FPS (min: 81.19 max: 197.02)
Syria: 101.99 FPS (min: 62.73, max: 122.24)
Geothermal Valley: 98.93 FPS (min:76.48, max: 117.00)
Overall score: 111.31 FPS
Windows patch only:
Mountain Peak: 135.34 FPS (min: 38.21 max: 212.84)
Syria: 102.54 FPS (min: 44.22, max: 144.03)
Geothermal Valley: 96.36 FPS (min:41.35, max: 148.46)
Overall score: 111.93 FPS
Windows patch and BIOS update:
Mountain Peak: 134.01 FPS (min: 59.91 max: 216.16)
Syria: 101.68 FPS (min: 38.95, max: 143.44)
Geothermal Valley: 97.55 FPS (min:46.18, max: 143.97)
Overall score: 111.62 FPS
Average framerates don't seem affected."
From the link you posted, you got rekt by yourself.
Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Actually, I can't bother waiting because, it's futile.The benchmark from that thread shows there has been no noticable performance regression after the updates had been applied.
I know what you gonna do. Look at those min fps. I WAS RIGHT. I WAS RIGHT. You are thinking right now. No, you weren't. If you ever had run TOR benchmarks, you would have experienced it. There are quite severe discrepancies in the inbuilt benchmark when comes to min/max fps. I noticed it myself when I was overclocking 6700k and running game benchmarks, stability tests. Since you are mostly using anecdotal evidence, you do not know how to make proper arguments, don't provide valid sources, we are really limited here, but that's what we have.
To support my statement, here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZEhkcs9hpU
It is not mine, but it is proving my point, there is an issue in the benchmark. It shows wrong/misleading min/max fps pretty often which other benchmarking solutions doesn't record.
The video was published on 7 Jul 2016, so no meltdown/spectre for you. I know you will argue it is no coincidence with those min fps, but look at the max as well.
Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
*solutionFlying Aardvark - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Are you retarded? I know you are because I ran those benchmarks myself and it's reproducible on more games than ROTR. Where's your contradicting information to back your claim, you do know that trying to poke holes in info is not an argument.Ranger1065 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
So sad the review failed to meet your expectations. Enjoy your time at Gamer's Nexus (cough).