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There’s an increasing groundswell of trust in AMD and their Ryzen chip. It’s great news, I’ve owned one for two years now and it’s fab. The new XBox will featu

There’s an increasing groundswell of trust in AMD and their Ryzen chip. It’s great news, I’ve owned one for two years now and it’s fab. The new XBox will feature a custom Ryzen of some form. Who’s next, Apple?

martin_bech 7y ago
Playstation 5 will also be based of Ryzen gen2 CPU and Navi GPU, both AMD.
- UI_at_80x24 7y ago
  AND the new Google Stadia (using AMD GPU's server-side to do the heavy-lifting).
- masklinn 7y ago
  Pretty sure Intel simply doesn't do bespoke parts (especially relatively low margin ones) so AMD is pretty much the only option. After dropping Gen 7's PPC, both the PS4 and the XB1 were customised AMD APU, and there's no great architectural rival.
  - the8472 7y ago
    Intel does semi-customized parts, but mostly at the other end of the spectrum for cloud vendors.
  - dangus 7y ago
    Never say never. The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      > Never say never. I didn't? > The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel. The original xbox was a PC in a box, the CPU was not a customised part.
      - dangus 7y ago
        I didn't literally say you said never, "never say never" is a common phrase. And yes, the CPU was customized: https://www.anandtech.com/show/853/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/853/2 At the very least, half of the cache is disabled. They cherry-picked a feature from the Pentium III lineup that they wanted to keep while lowering the cache to Celeron levels. It's a deliberate modification to reduce cost while maintaining desired performance. It's not detectably customized beyond that but it's not like it's a SKU you can buy off the shelf, either.
Nexxxeh 7y ago
>it’s fab. Given that it's AMD, shouldn't that be "it's fabless"? I've got a mix of Intel and AMD, and have had no loyalty back to when I replaced my Pentium 75 with a pre-unlocked AMD Duron from OcUK. I'm so glad to see AMD not only raise its game exponentially, but also force Intel to compete. It's good for everyone. My next purchase will probably be a Ryzen 5 2600, because the price drop ahead of the 3xxx has made them ridiculous value for money. Definitely a good time to be a PC gamer. Slightly frustrating that the integrated graphics 3x00G chips are basically Ryzen 2xxx chips though. I hope the g-range gets a refresh with proper Zen 2-based chips shortly. WRT "who next", did you see the Chinese AMD custom Ryzen+Vega APU console last year, the Subor Z-Plus, with 8GB GDDR5 as shared system and graphics memory?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Given that it's AMD, shouldn't that be "it's fabless"? It's "fabless fab!"
- tracker1 7y ago
  Totally agreed on the 3xxx(G|H) parts not being Zen 2, and really misleading on that front. Though they're mostly underclocked with lots of room for boost, so competitive to Intel's. Also the onboard vega gfx almost doesn't suck by comparison.
- Nexxxeh 7y ago
  As a correction to the above, I replaced my Pentium 75 with a K6-2 350, which was then replaced with the unlocked Duron.
mtgx 7y ago
I could understand Apple not wanting to jump all over Ryzen 1000 from day one, but not even Zen2 2-based Ryzen 3000? Even after the whole 5G spat it had with Intel? I'm not sure what they're waiting for exactly.
- TacticalTable 7y ago
  The thought would be that they don't want to do any architecture shifts before they bring it all over to their own ARM chips. And AMD still doesn't really deal with laptop processors.
- fwip 7y ago
  Thunderbolt.
  - Zekio 7y ago
    Shouldn't be deal breaker anymore since thunderbolt became a part of USB
  - unicornfinder 7y ago
    Actually it's confirmed that some of the X570 motherboards will have TB3.
    - fwip 7y ago
      Good to know, thanks!
    - ct520 7y ago
      WHAT?!? Thats awesome news
      - jackvalentine 7y ago
        Some x470 boards support it to via an addin card and thunderbolt header. To get displayport passed through you need to run a cable from your graphics card output to the addin card input. It's not very tidy and doesn't work 100%. I'm hoping someone eventually just does the needful and sticks a thunderbolt chipset on a PCIE4 graphics card and makes it work somehow.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
The existing Xboxes and PlayStations already use AMD CPUs.
joshstrange 7y ago
The current rumor is Apple is going to ARM in 2020 for their computers. There is uncertainty if that will include MacBook Pros or Mac Pros initially or if it will just be their Air and maybe the MacBooks to start with. That's not to say they won't take their higher-end computers to AMD but I would bet if they are moving to ARM at all they are going to push for everything to be on ARM eventually and it's probably not worth the effort to switch from Intel to AMD in the interim.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  As long as they're coming out with new hardware configurations anyway, why should switching to AMD require substantial effort? There are modified Darwin kernels that allow Hackintosh to work on AMD processors. These kernels have some stability issues, but if hobbyist outsiders can get most of the way, I don't forsee it being a big hurdle for actual Apple engineers.
  - blihp 7y ago
    Because strategically, the move to ARM makes more sense for them to focus on even if sticking with Intel is a bit more painful in the short term. They already have a large team working on ARM processors and an architecture license for the platform. With x86, they are basically just resellers. So adding AMD's flavor of x86 to their lineup would likely be seen as a distraction for them without providing a long-term benefit.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      But by that logic, they shouldn’t come out with any new, non-ARM laptops at all! As I see it, as long as Apple is putting out x86 hardware, there’s no reason why it can’t be AMD x86 hardware. (I’m also secretly hoping the ARM thing won’t actually happen, but that’s neither here nor there, and I’m probably wrong.)
      - joshstrange 7y ago
        Honest question, why don't you want them to transition to ARM?

martin_bech 7y ago

Playstation 5 will also be based of Ryzen gen2 CPU and Navi GPU, both AMD.

UI_at_80x24 7y ago
AND the new Google Stadia (using AMD GPU's server-side to do the heavy-lifting).
masklinn 7y ago
Pretty sure Intel simply doesn't do bespoke parts (especially relatively low margin ones) so AMD is pretty much the only option. After dropping Gen 7's PPC, both the PS4 and the XB1 were customised AMD APU, and there's no great architectural rival.
- the8472 7y ago
  Intel does semi-customized parts, but mostly at the other end of the spectrum for cloud vendors.
- dangus 7y ago
  Never say never. The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > Never say never. I didn't? > The Xbox had a customized Coppermine Pentium-III era processor from Intel. The original xbox was a PC in a box, the CPU was not a customised part.
    - dangus 7y ago
      I didn't literally say you said never, "never say never" is a common phrase. And yes, the CPU was customized: https://www.anandtech.com/show/853/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/853/2 At the very least, half of the cache is disabled. They cherry-picked a feature from the Pentium III lineup that they wanted to keep while lowering the cache to Celeron levels. It's a deliberate modification to reduce cost while maintaining desired performance. It's not detectably customized beyond that but it's not like it's a SKU you can buy off the shelf, either.

Nexxxeh 7y ago

>it’s fab. Given that it's AMD, shouldn't that be "it's fabless"? I've got a mix of Intel and AMD, and have had no loyalty back to when I replaced my Pentium 75 with a pre-unlocked AMD Duron from OcUK. I'm so glad to see AMD not only raise its game exponentially, but also force Intel to compete. It's good for everyone. My next purchase will probably be a Ryzen 5 2600, because the price drop ahead of the 3xxx has made them ridiculous value for money. Definitely a good time to be a PC gamer. Slightly frustrating that the integrated graphics 3x00G chips are basically Ryzen 2xxx chips though. I hope the g-range gets a refresh with proper Zen 2-based chips shortly. WRT "who next", did you see the Chinese AMD custom Ryzen+Vega APU console last year, the Subor Z-Plus, with 8GB GDDR5 as shared system and graphics memory?

stcredzero 7y ago
Given that it's AMD, shouldn't that be "it's fabless"? It's "fabless fab!"
tracker1 7y ago
Totally agreed on the 3xxx(G|H) parts not being Zen 2, and really misleading on that front. Though they're mostly underclocked with lots of room for boost, so competitive to Intel's. Also the onboard vega gfx almost doesn't suck by comparison.
Nexxxeh 7y ago
As a correction to the above, I replaced my Pentium 75 with a K6-2 350, which was then replaced with the unlocked Duron.

mtgx 7y ago

I could understand Apple not wanting to jump all over Ryzen 1000 from day one, but not even Zen2 2-based Ryzen 3000? Even after the whole 5G spat it had with Intel? I'm not sure what they're waiting for exactly.

TacticalTable 7y ago
The thought would be that they don't want to do any architecture shifts before they bring it all over to their own ARM chips. And AMD still doesn't really deal with laptop processors.
fwip 7y ago
Thunderbolt.
- Zekio 7y ago
  Shouldn't be deal breaker anymore since thunderbolt became a part of USB
- unicornfinder 7y ago
  Actually it's confirmed that some of the X570 motherboards will have TB3.
  - fwip 7y ago
    Good to know, thanks!
  - ct520 7y ago
    WHAT?!? Thats awesome news
    - jackvalentine 7y ago
      Some x470 boards support it to via an addin card and thunderbolt header. To get displayport passed through you need to run a cable from your graphics card output to the addin card input. It's not very tidy and doesn't work 100%. I'm hoping someone eventually just does the needful and sticks a thunderbolt chipset on a PCIE4 graphics card and makes it work somehow.

lern_too_spel 7y ago

The existing Xboxes and PlayStations already use AMD CPUs.

joshstrange 7y ago

The current rumor is Apple is going to ARM in 2020 for their computers. There is uncertainty if that will include MacBook Pros or Mac Pros initially or if it will just be their Air and maybe the MacBooks to start with. That's not to say they won't take their higher-end computers to AMD but I would bet if they are moving to ARM at all they are going to push for everything to be on ARM eventually and it's probably not worth the effort to switch from Intel to AMD in the interim.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
As long as they're coming out with new hardware configurations anyway, why should switching to AMD require substantial effort? There are modified Darwin kernels that allow Hackintosh to work on AMD processors. These kernels have some stability issues, but if hobbyist outsiders can get most of the way, I don't forsee it being a big hurdle for actual Apple engineers.
- blihp 7y ago
  Because strategically, the move to ARM makes more sense for them to focus on even if sticking with Intel is a bit more painful in the short term. They already have a large team working on ARM processors and an architecture license for the platform. With x86, they are basically just resellers. So adding AMD's flavor of x86 to their lineup would likely be seen as a distraction for them without providing a long-term benefit.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    But by that logic, they shouldn’t come out with any new, non-ARM laptops at all! As I see it, as long as Apple is putting out x86 hardware, there’s no reason why it can’t be AMD x86 hardware. (I’m also secretly hoping the ARM thing won’t actually happen, but that’s neither here nor there, and I’m probably wrong.)
    - joshstrange 7y ago
      Honest question, why don't you want them to transition to ARM?