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aLkaLiNE on 09 May 2015
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shikamaru317 said:
aLkaLiNE said:
Does this suggest that AMD was ahead of their time?

From what I understand the FX processor was inefficiently utilized due to having more cores running at a lower frequency but the aim of the new APIs are to increase cross threading performance. Intel = less cores at a higher frequency, AMD = more cores at a lower frequency (from what I'm understanding)

What's funny is I had built our gaming PC in 2010 for Senior Project with an AMD quad core Phenom II processor running around 3.2ghz. My lil brother later upgraded to an FX 8 core something or another and I told him it was actually a downgrade but he wouldn't listen (because, more cores = better amirite? lol)

I think so. I think when AMD created the FX line of CPU's they were hoping that game developers would code their games to make use of 6 or 8 threads, but things didn't end up happening that way, very few games have been coded to use more than 4 threads, some even still use 2 threads. That's why Intel has had the advantage for the last few years, their CPU's have considerably higher IPC (instructions per clock) than AMD's CPU's do, so they have the advantage in these games that are coded for 4 threads. Thanks to DX12 and Xbox One/PS4 having 8 core CPU's, we may finally start seeing games that are coded for 6 or 8 threads, which means that even AMD's older CPU's should become more useful, and their new Zen CPU architecture that's releasing next year is going to have 40% higher IPC than Excavator, so AMD CPU's could come close to Intel in IPC and have more cores than their Intel pricing counterparts, AMD finally might be actual competition for Intel again.

Exciting stuff.

 

Now is the time to invest in AMD. Their stock prices are at a 15 year low.  I don't expect any of you to take my advice :P But I invested in Sony when I felt they were about to make a comeback and wound up doubling my investment.  I could see AMD yielding an even higher return.