Who Controls the User Experience? AMD’s Carrizo Thoroughly Tested
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2016 8:00 AM ESTHow to Iterate Through Design
While AMD’s Carrizo is still based on this Bulldozer design, it represents the fourth iterative update, called Excavator, which is now produced at the 28nm process node compared to the 32nm original design. At each juncture from Bulldozer (rev1) through Piledriver (rev2) and Steamroller (rev3) to Excavator (rev4), AMDs goal has been the same as most other semiconductor manufacturers - produce a list of fixes that provide the most benefit for the least amount of time, then work through that list. This is not an uncommon procedure for iterative updates, and in itself retains the logical thought of improving the design as much as possible.
What this method perhaps misses are the bigger leaps in design philosophy where shifting fundamental paradigms can have a bigger impact on key properties of the product, but these changes in philosophy often carry the burden of increased risk and cost, where failure is seen as a waste of resources. Nevertheless, the Excavator core and the Carrizo design, according to AMD, implements a significant number of fundamental paradigm shifts compared to previous revisions, and as a result Carrizo behaves differently in a large number of key metrics. The base design underneath is still inherently the Bulldozer concept, however the 'skunkworks' style adjustments, according to AMD, significantly improve the power consumption, the single core performance and the potential battery life over previous AMD processor designs in mobile segments. All current gains on this design have only come from AMD, lacking independent verification.
For a more detailed look at AMD's Excavator design, with high density libraries and power management, read our run down of Carrizo's technology from our launch article here.
Gaining OEM Support
Aside from the processor itself, the image of AMD based devices, especially in the mobile segment, is not overly positive. As mentioned above, there are two sides to this story - original equipment manufacturers whom use AMD processors in their designs have to be confident that it will provide a level of performance suitable for the experience they expect the consumer to have. Similarly, the end user must also receive a platform that benefits the price point purchased and retains a level of quality consistent with providing a good experience. Former poor experiences can be a heavily influence in future purchasing decisions, and those with a negative opinion require a fundamental design change or significant external recommendations in order to make a change against a gut feeling. If a user keeps getting a poor design, regardless of which side of the fence is responsible (or both), both will be negatively affected, and sometimes one more than the other.
This applies to both consumers and business users, the latter of which is often down to individuals at companies making recommendations based on brand and business sense. If a business buyer insists on Dell, for example due to a long term support contract, they will source the most appropriate Dell device out of the range based on research and that gut feeling. In order for a semiconductor company to be competitive in this space, they need to work closely and extensively with the business OEMs to build devices that facilitate the experiences required with a level of industrial design that enables the appropriate experience. It is not difficult to search online for details of users that are disgruntled with devices from both Intel and AMD, particularly in areas such as industrial design of the device, performance, battery life, temperature and quality.
While Intel has a number of arms with partners based on the success of the Core architcture over the last decade, AMD’s stable of partners is not so large. AMD has three top tier partners – HP, Lenovo and Toshiba – all of whom are represented in this report. Like many other notebook manufacturers in the industry, all of these three are well known for some models but hounded on others, especially those at the bottom of the price stack or due to unique sets of security principles. As mentioned previously, HP focuses a lot on the Enterprise space with items like the Elitebook line, but if personal experience is anything to go by, consumer use of Elitebooks has declined. Toshiba meanwhile suffers from the race-to-the-bottom syndrome where sometimes a simple $30 upgrade can make the difference, and Lenovo’s recent software issues have been well documented. AMD works with these three partners the most, such that when they score a big contract (such as 30,000 units with HP for Dr. Pepper/Snapple) it is actually a big contract for AMD.
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alexruiz - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Ian,What specific model of the Elitebook 745 G3 did you test?
You listed the QHD screen (2560 x 1440 IPS) but you also wrote that it came in at just under $700. Is this correct? The one that you received for $700 included the QHD screen?
Thanks
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
The link on the page goes to the T3L35UT#ABA, which is a 1080p screen. I'm guessing the spreadsheet and/or pricing is incorrect somehow.Ian Cutress - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
I remember being told it was 700, though I may have misheard and perhaps they were speaking GBP. But AB is right, the larger screen is 1080p and more expensive.The HP website is surprising though - the UX on the website is crazy to find a product that isn't the latest and greatest. It is very difficult to find anything and you seem to pay a premium for speccing out a custom Elitebook. Trying to spec out the one I was given came to $1900 from a $1620 base, which clearly isn't right because the high end 'buy now' model was about $1120 with similar specifications.
http://goo.gl/5spQls
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
GBP certainly makes a lot more sense. The base USD$750 model on HP's site has an A8-8600B, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD. If you want to find a Carrizo system with an "awful user experience" there it is.Custom-building an HP business system from their site is also expensive for no reason other than "because we said so." They really want you to buy the mass-manufactured SmartBuy models, although you may have better luck with a custom unit (read: "reasonable pricing") if you buy from a 3rd-party reseller.
I would like to see some GPU benchmarks with a second stick of RAM added to the 745 G3 though. Single-channel memory gives integrated graphics the Tonya Harding treatment.
Intel999 - Sunday, February 7, 2016 - link
Another review of Carrizo in the HP 745 G3 showed a 30% improvement in gaming when the second stick of RAM was installed. It went from woefully behind Intel to just ahead of them after sufficient RAM was provided.It is remarkable that any OEM would damage their own reputation by putting out crap that is obviously intended to funnel sales to Intel.
Imagine an OEM putting out a model, let's call it HP100, and offering it with identical specs with the only difference being a Carrizo CPU vs. an I5 from Intel. Few if any, would notice a difference in performance in the real world, not talking benchmarks.
The OEM would have a $100 savings on the Carrizo version if not more. If they were to sell it for $50 less than the Intel version they would sell more and that extra $50 profit on the AMD machine would more than offset the "rebates" they are getting from Intel. So they could have a higher profit margin at a lower price point. Afterall, with all the Intel marketing you'd still have plenty of people opting for the Intel version with it's lower profit margin. Just not as many and overtime you could approach Intel and point out that you make more money off AMD machines and who knows, maybe for the first time in recent history the OEM would control how their company is run and Intel would say "I guess we can cut our price by $25" and then you would be making the same profit on both Intel and AMD machines since, of course, the OEM wouldn't pass that $25 to the customer.
They could still offer junk machines at lower price points. Fill em up with Celerons or whatever they wanted attached to HDDs, 4GB of RAM, and crap screens.
Surely, no OEM is still following the old Intel rebate plan that allowed Intel to determine the market share that the OEM is allowed to give AMD. Or, are they?
Lolimaster - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
I hate HP store with all my might, back in the day I got better experience donwloading from japanese p2p's not knowing japanese and just using a simple guide.keeepcool - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Please, just dont let Toshiba make laptops, just DON'T.Sorry for the word, but Toshiba is a shit brand that deserves to die. All their laptops have cooling solutions that are badly designed from the start, and the they cut all the corners and go for paper thin 4mm heatpipes on top of deformed and pitted 1.5mm cooper plates that make poor contact with the dies, the fans are thin, the thermal paste is worse than toothpaste, just stop allowing them to disgrace AMD name.
HP is also guilty of this, after the disgrace that where the dv6 models almost no one in Portugal and a lot other countries ever want a laptop with AMD cpu or gpu, because DV6's are just know for being litteral toasters that crash and burned, yes part of that was due to lack of maintenance, but still, it left a very sour taste regard AMD/ATI equiped laptops.
Today only people with low monetary margins will go for an AMD laptop, because they are the cheapest ones, and even then HP and Toshibas just manage to make toasters out of 7 and 15Watts TDP, its like they actually spend time engineering them to became so hot with so little TDP's...
tipoo - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
50.27 Wh, 3 cell Li-Po design, rated to 10.25 hours. Out of a 3.3GHz AMD APU.You know, HP, somehow, I don't believe you.
bluevaping - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Nice article. And I get the point of the article about OEM's and AMD. I mostly agree with Shadowmaster 625. But it would have been nice to see a dual channel memory test. The Elitebook supports it. Slap in the extra ram and test it. And try dual channel 1866 Ram too.tipoo - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Shame the Lenovo doesn't support dual graphics - any reason why, or will this be updated in drivers? Especially as the integrated one has the same number of SPs as the dedicated, it could add a lot to the power equation.