Looks like they used Ln2 before they switched to aio cooler 🙂 Look at the "insulation" on the MB.

I hope for Intel sake that this is not a sign of things to come for Vermeer...

Mundosold:

I suspect the reason AMD has been slow at releasing Zen2 desktop APUS is because they are TOO good. They'd eat away at the higher margins the Chiplet design has, who would buy a 3800X/XT if a 4700GE beat it in gaming? But that isn't too big a problem with Zen3 around the corner now.

I disagree; right now, AMD knows Intel is still winning in terms of gaming. Losing a sale to Intel is worse (for AMD) than buying a lesser-valued product. Besides, nobody needs more than 8c/16t for gaming. Anyone who is building a gaming PC with more than that either doesn't understand what games need or intends to do a lot more than just gaming. The way I see it, AMD could make a little something for everyone: * CPUs with up to 8c/16t and a handful of cores that use the monolithic design: great performance for the average user, and best option for gamers. * Low-end variants using the chiplet design with binned parts: these would be the budget option, and for basically anyone who doesn't have latency-bound tasks (so, most people), this would be the most sensible choice. * 8c+ parts using the chiplet design, because having up to 64 cores on a monolithic die isn't realistic.

Mundosold:

These are monolithic design instead of the Chiplet design of their normal Zen2 desktop chips. Because they have no separate IO die, they don't have to deal with the higher latencies and power usage. I suspect the reason AMD has been slow at releasing Zen2 desktop APUS is because they are TOO good. They'd eat away at the higher margins the Chiplet design has, who would buy a 3800X/XT if a 4700GE beat it in gaming? But that isn't too big a problem with Zen3 around the corner now. Intel is in a lot of trouble AMD has the chiplet design which gives them the massive scalability needed to make 64 core chips, while also having yields so good that they can now produce monolithic consumer oriented chips that work well for gaming and laptops. All AMD needs now is some 6w monolthic quad core chips for embedded devices and x86 tablets.

Current x86/64 designs will always suffer in some way in single-threaded performance in one way or another, when going for super-duper high-core-count designs. It's either you go with a ring-bus design up to 6~8 cores where it really starts to hold back (like token ring networking from the early 90's, which was really good until you got it busy), or you go with a slightly slower high-speed bus between cores that has less wait time than a busy ring-bus design would. Intel has ring-bus and dual ring-bus designs on it's consumer-facing product line, and a mesh style like AMD on it's HEDT/XEON offerings where it's superior to use that method of high-capacity intercommunication. AMD's design is really hampered by ram speed especially on Zen 1 and a little less on 12nm Zen 1+. As you mentioned, the monolithic design of Zen3 should really kick things up a notch, and the mobile parts already are showing this. Also, as faster ram speeds come to the consumer space, it will really show maturity and superiority in design provided AMD can keep the IMC running at faster and faster speeds each generation. Hope they can, for us the consumers. I like actually having something to upgrade to every few years, I am pretty sure I speak for others too, here. So I'm loving this innovation now. So to conclude; I don't care who is faster - AMD or Intel - I just want them to keep competitive with one another so that things keep moving along and we have lots of cool new stuff to come here to see, and argue over (well some folks!), and upgrade to (yay!).

If they manage to get IF speeds much higher on Zen 3 ( 2200 Mhz+ ), those CPUs will rip a new one to Intel, including in their last fortress: "gaming performance" Zen2 CPUs capable of 1933 Mhz IF (very rare) get really close to 9900K already (and 10900K isn't much better). Another 300 Mhz there and DDR4-4400 Linked will be wrecking, with potentially under 50ns memory latency and much lower inter-core latency. (And if they manage slightly higher base/boosts as well, that will add to the mix of winning)

@schmidtbag I fully expect that is where Zen3 is going with 8-core CCX's. You get up to 8-cores in a monolithic like design with great latency which should also help in lower power devices like laptops by reducing Infinity Fabric power draw. I expect AMD's APU's in 2021 with Zen3 and RDNA2 will be pretty competent at 1080p gaming. We should be seeing APU's that can outperform the new XBOX chips in 2021. To me it is very obvious where AMD is heading and frankly if I were Nvidia I would be very concerned about the 5 year outlook when APU's start to heavily eat into dedicated GPU sales. Intel also sees this since its why they started the whole big GPU push it isn't so much to have dedicated GPU's 10 years from now its because they have to invest to then make that design as an EMIB chiplet for competitive APU designs.

8 is the new 4 in terms of gaming but it should be more than enough for 5-10 years. Not unlike 4C/4T CPUs lasting so long. However many (especially young) gamers like to do the 4k stream while playing. I personally will never do that though I am lazy with broswer tabs and keeping things open while gaming so 8C fits me perfectly.

Oversemper:

I'd like it to be at least 10-12 cores, so that 8 cores can be booked for the gaming needs, while the remaining 2-4 cores can serve for the windows 10 needs.

There is a very strong chance that next-gen consoles will be reserving at least 2 threads (more likely 2c/4t) for background tasks, much like current-gen consoles. That means console games will likely only have 6c/12t available to them. So, it's highly unlikely a gaming PC will need more than 8 cores in the foreseeable future. Of course, there will be some games on PC that will take advantage of more cores, but unless you're chasing benchmarks, I'm quite confident 8c/16t will be plenty sufficient, and even 6c/12t ought to be enough in most cases if you don't go too heavy on background tasks. Even games that can use more than 8c/16t will still likely be better off with a higher overclock than more cores. If this remains true and you care about achieving the best frame rate possible, you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot if you opt for more cores, since you're basically limiting your max all-core overclock. EDIT: Let's not forget about things like how the Zen cores have better IPC. Even if the core/thread count were the same on next-gen consoles, the performance difference would be immense.

Hummm, maybe AMD will be releasing 12 Cores Dies for Zen 3. That will resolve the latency problem and other stuff.

Anyone can feel it? 8c/16t is the new 4c/8t ... huh? Even though i don't do much on my pc except "GAMING", Gaming never ever was in the list of predisposing factors of my unbearable itch of upgrading my processor.

Oversemper:

4c/8t became obsolete pretty much the same day ps4/xbox-one came out, current-gen consoles always define the floor for a desktop gaming machine to jump off. Though ps4/xbox-one cores were slow, so a lot of 4c/8t could compensate for by IPC and frequency. But that will not be the case with ps5/xbox-x.

The thing is, console will always lag behind pc in terms of hardware . As the time advances, this thing gets more true even for midrange pc . As ps5/xbx is still in the future , it looks like different. But after 2-3 years from now, u again look @ specs even considering a closed delicately coordinated hardware ecosystem, it would look bland, and at best would be comparable to at best some midrange desktop configurations.

TiePhiter:

I had a feeling we were going to see exactly this situation with the memory in regards to Zen 3's IMC. It's the one part of the architecture they haven't really perfected yet, and clearly they have worked on it a lot. A Ryzen CPU /w 4233MHz RAM @ CL14!!!!!! I'm legitimately almost drooling at the thought of Zen architecture with RAM and IF/IMC speeds above 4000 stable for 24/7 use.

Drolling about unreleased hardware? This is old hardware 😉 https://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=356168&d=1592836072