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[Iastfan112]

in the long term. for me the CPUs look promising. if they can do the same on the GPU side stocks may evolve quite nice in the long run. i know i should have invested already 1 yr ago ...

I'm skeptical how much of the upside is already priced in. Keep in mind its gone up x7 in price in the past year without any real concrete product or financials to drive it that high. Then again, I thought the same thing a $7.30 when I sold half my shares(bought at $2 so I'm not crying).

 

[Thraktor]

For me, it's the TDP that's the most impressive part. A 3.7ghz 8 core/16 thread CPU with Broadwell-E IPC with a 65w TDP!?

That's an incredible breakthrough in performance per watt and puts AMD in a great position to tackle the high volume notebook market with very competitive APUs.

You have to admit the pricing is quite impressive as well : )

There was always going to be scope for AMD to be extremely competitive on pricing. The 8C/16T Ryzen die is likely a similar size to Polaris 10, which is selling for around $200 with a PCB and 8 GDDR5 modules packed in. The HEDT CPU market has very high margins, so AMD clearly have the option to trade them off for increased (i.e. non-zero) marketshare.

The TDP is a lot more surprising to me, though, as AMD are still functionally a node behind on manufacturing, and Intel's CPU R&D over the past few years seems to have been pretty heavily focussed on energy efficiency, compared to AMD's Bulldozer-derived cores, which were inefficient even for the process node (although to be fair they've made surprising gains in efficiency over the course of their 28nm CPUs, albeit too little too late). If Ryzen's real-world performance is even remotely competitive with Intel, though, then AMD have not only caught up with, but actually surpassed Intel on perf/W (at least in a desktop environment). Even if the near worst case scenario of performance (~30% behind Broadwell E) the R7 1700 would still offer 50% higher perf/W than 6900X, which is pretty crazy to me.

It does make me wonder whether they'll start selling some 8 core & 6 core laptop CPUs using the Summit Ridge die. Clocked down to ~2.5GHz or so base they could likely fit in the same 45W TDP as Intel's quad-core laptop processors. It would need a discrete GPU, but combined with one of AMD's 35W Polaris GPUs you'd be looking at an incredibly capable mobile workstation that could actually get respectable battery life without being the size of a tank. (For reference, the 15" MacBook Pro combines a 45W CPU and 35W GPU in a 15.5mm thick body). There are plenty of professional applications where people would be willing to pay very good money for a laptop like that (video editing being an obvious example).

Considering that R5 1600x looks like it's coming with the new RGB Wraith cooler that should be good for a mild overcook out of the box, that looks like the defacto recommendation for a gaming rig instead of the i5 7600k to me now if all these rumours stack up.

B350 motherboards should come in much cheaper than Z270 boards as well so you're looking at an overall amazing bang for your buck with genuine upgrade options to boot.

I'd actually say the R5 1400X could be the one to go for for a lot of people. The extra two cores are unlikely to have much of an impact on games, but with (presumably) a decent bundled cooler and a cheap motherboard it could be very good value for money from a whole system perspective.

There's also potentially a good market for any motherboard manufacturer who can put out a no-frills B350 motherboard with good overclocking ability for a low price. They'll obviously be tempted to hobble the B350 boards to push customers up to their more expensive X370 models, but a decent B350 model would likely be good enough for the majority of mid-range gaming PCs.

 

[tuxfool]

The TDP is a lot more surprising to me, though, as AMD are still functionally a node behind on manufacturing, and Intel's CPU R&D over the past few years seems to have been pretty heavily focussed on energy efficiency, compared to AMD's Bulldozer-derived cores, which were inefficient even for the process node (although to be fair they've made surprising gains in efficiency over the course of their 28nm CPUs, albeit too little too late). If Ryzen's real-world performance is even remotely competitive with Intel, though, then AMD have not only caught up with, but actually surpassed Intel on perf/W (at least in a desktop environment). Even if the near worst case scenario of performance (~30% behind Broadwell E) the R7 1700 would still offer 50% higher perf/W than 6900X, which is pretty crazy to me.

I should point out that we don't know how they determine the TDP. At best it is just a manufacturer guideline and doesn't necessarily reflect the power consumption in real terms for every single task. I would say though that those ISSC slides showing the low core voltages coming off the LDOs do support the theory that they don't use a lot of power but we also don't know how that scales with frequency. IIRC GloFo did make improvements to the efficiency of their 14nm process as seen in the transition from the desktop to the mobile versions of Polaris, so that is also another factor supporting the lower power consumption.

 

[Thraktor]

I should point out that we don't know how they determine the TDP. At best it is just a manufacturer guideline and doesn't necessarily reflect the power consumption in real terms for every single task. I would say though that those ISSC slides showing the low core voltages coming off the LDOs do support the theory that they don't use a lot of power but we also don't know how that scales with frequency. IIRC GloFo did make improvements to the efficiency of their 14nm process as seen in the transition from the desktop to the mobile versions of Polaris, so that is also another factor supporting the lower power consumption.

Yeah, I think Ryzen is on 14LPC (i.e. third gen 14nm, compared to second gen 14LPP for Polaris), so there's probably a bit of a benefit there in terms of power consumption.

I agree that the TDP figures should be taken with a certain degree of caution, but even accounting for differing measurement techniques used by the different manufacturers that's still a huge difference. Intel's lowest TDP 8 core chip is the Xeon E7-4809 v4, which is clocked at 2.1GHz at 115W. It'll be interesting to see the actual power draw (which I wouldn't be surprised to see spike considerably when overclocking), but at the TDPs given it looks like power draw at stock clocks will be surprisingly good.

 

[Datschge]

I think AMD's not so secret sauce is focusing on CPUs without iGPUs. That makes the chips cheaper to manufacture and gives plenty headroom for optimization and overclocking potential. Intel's primary focus on iGPUs over the last couple years may well backfire this round now that AMD is finally able to attacks the higher margin CPU segment again.

 

[bomblord1]

Why havent you OCd already, get some cheap 50$ cpu cooler and get "free" boost.

I have a Corsair h60 water cooler on it I've just never bothered to try overclocking

 

[Hesemonni]

My i5-2500k is about to meet it's maker :/

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

This is all looking really interesting. I'm looking to replace my near-6 year old i5 2500k-based rig with something new, and if AMD's new offerings do well enough in the gaming benchmarks, it'd allow me to put more of my budget on the GPU and SSD.

 

[Big_Al]

My i5-2500k is about to meet it's maker :/

This is all looking really interesting. I'm looking to replace my near-6 year old i5 2500k-based rig with something new, and if AMD's new offerings do well enough in the gaming benchmarks, it'd allow me to put more of my budget on the GPU and SSD.

My i5 2500k is the best CPU I've ever owned but it's time for a refresh - CPU and GPU - so I shall be watching these chips very closely. I really want AMD to be competitive again and actually make Intel sweat a bit, better for all of us consumers

 

[VariantX]

My i5-2500k is about to meet it's maker :/

It's looking that way for my PC too.. The 2500k has a year or two at the most left and it's certainly done its job well these past 4-5 years.

 

[General Lee]

Looks like there's going to be a lot of people moving on from 2500K & 2600K this year. Hopefully Zen will come close enough to 7700K in gaming, I'd really like the extra cores but if the chip doesn't perform as well in games, I might still have to go with Intel. The upgrade itch is real though, so I'd rather not want to wait too long for Intel to potentially drop prices.

 

[TC McQueen]

I have an i5-3570K and I'm upgrading more for the mobo at this point - the CPU's performing fine, but I fucked up when I picked an mATX board, because it means A) either my wifi card gets hit by hot exhaust from my GPU or B) the GPU goes in the slower PCI-E slot.

 

[opticalmace]

I have an i5-3570K and I'm upgrading more for the mobo at this point - the CPU's performing fine, but I fucked up when I picked an mATX board, because it means A) either my wifi card gets hit by hot exhaust from my GPU or B) the GPU goes in the slower PCI-E slot.

TBH the wifi card should be fine with the heat. Probably doesn't even get as hot as you'd think.

 

[Matthew23]

Looks like there's going to be a lot of people moving on from 2500K & 2600K this year. Hopefully Zen will come close enough to 7700K in gaming, I'd really like the extra cores but if the chip doesn't perform as well in games, I might still have to go with Intel. The upgrade itch is real though, so I'd rather not want to wait too long for Intel to potentially drop prices.

Count me as well with my 5 year old 2500k. It might be a good idea to sell your old CPU before the used market is flooded with them. With cheaper VR HMDs coming this year and more full games likely to release soon I suspect a lot of gaming PC upgrades in 2017.

AMD seems to have picked the right time to release a new product.

 

[Nostremitus]

Yeah, my 2500K is a bit old in the tooth.

 

[Paragon]

My i5-2500k is about to meet it's maker

Hopefully!
I'm still concerned that they're only using dual-channel memory for an 8-core CPU, and that the Passmark memory test scored worse than my 2500K using DDR3 1600.
I get that the DDR4 memory used was not the fastest, but it still shouldn't be performing worse than a 5 year-old CPU with DDR3.
A lot of new games seem to really benefit from increased memory bandwidth and reduced latency too.

Single-threaded performance/IPC is a concern as well.
It really depends what is a "typical" overclock for these chips.
If it's below 4.5GHz, I'm not sure it's going to be a great gaming CPU.

I really think it's going to end up having something like 25-50% better multithreaded performance but noticeably worse per-core performance when compared to a 5GHz 7700K.
And the latter is more important for most games.

I just wish that there wasn't so much speculation and leaks happening.
AMD seem to be really bad at launching products where they talk about it for months or years and there are leaks far in advance of the product's release - many of which are misleading.
The Fury X launch was a disaster and it's looking like Vega might be too.

For me, it's the TDP that's the most impressive part. A 3.7ghz 8 core/16 thread CPU with Broadwell-E IPC with a 65w TDP!?
That's an incredible breakthrough in performance per watt and puts AMD in a great position to tackle the high volume notebook market with very competitive APUs.

AMD TDP is not comparable to Intel TDP.
In the Blender test against the 6900K the Ryzen CPU only had 3W lower power consumption - and that was with the chip locked to 3.4GHz while the 6900K had turbo enabled.

 

[hipbabboom]

I'm actually surprised that AMD was bold (read: crazy) to name their CPU this. Why the hell not double-down and name their new chipset Agent Orange while they're at it? Yikes!

 

[RenegadeXV8]

...
Single-threaded performance/IPC is a concern as well.
It really depends what is a "typical" overclock for these chips.
If it's below 4.5GHz, I'm not sure it's going to be a great gaming CPU.

I really think it's going to end up having something like 25-50% better multithreaded performance but noticeably worse per-core performance when compared to a 5GHz 7700K.
And the latter is more important for most games.

I think you're overestimating how important clockspeeds are, past a certain point. Many games don't really scale well past the 3.5GHz mark, because a GPU bottleneck is much more likely, even at 1080p. It's why I left my 4770K at stock turbo (3.8GHz) despite cooling it with a Corsair H100i. The difference between 4.5GHz and 3.5GHz on the same Intel CPU in Witcher 3 and Battlefield 1, for example, is negligible.

 

[LelouchZero]

I think you're overestimating how important clockspeeds are, past a certain point. Many games don't really scale well past the 3.5GHz mark, because a GPU bottleneck is much more likely, even at 1080p. It's why I left my 4770K at stock turbo (3.8GHz) despite cooling it with a Corsair H100i. The difference between 4.5GHz and 3.5GHz on the same Intel CPU in Witcher 3 and Battlefield 1, for example, is negligible.

Those are GPU bound scenarios, if you used a more powerful GPU or lowered settings to achieve a higher frame-rate such as 100+ fps then you're more likely to run into CPU bound scenarios in some games, that 4.5GHz could raise your average and/or minimum frame-rate by around 15+ percent in CPU limited games, additional threads may also help as well if the game scales past 4 threads.

 

[Jaguar Victory]

I'm actually surprised that AMD was bold (read: crazy) to name their CPU this. Why the hell not double-down and name their new chipset Agent Orange while they're at it? Yikes!

Is this a Ryzen/ricin joke?

 

[Paragon]

I think you're overestimating how important clockspeeds are, past a certain point. Many games don't really scale well past the 3.5GHz mark, because a GPU bottleneck is much more likely, even at 1080p. It's why I left my 4770K at stock turbo (3.8GHz) despite cooling it with a Corsair H100i. The difference between 4.5GHz and 3.5GHz on the same Intel CPU in Witcher 3 and Battlefield 1, for example, is negligible.

If you care about minimum framerates - specifically keeping the minimum framerate up above 60 FPS in all games - then CPU performance becomes critically important.
Your GPU is barely even a factor. You can always turn down the resolution or graphical options, but you can't do anything about a CPU bottleneck other than overclocking or replacing the CPU with something faster.
With a 2500K at 4.5GHz, nearly every new graphically intensive game that I bought last year was bottlenecked by my CPU and not the GPU.
I even upgraded from a 4GB GTX 960 to an 8GB GTX 1070, and saw no performance improvements in those situations. The only thing that changed was the GPU load.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:

• GTX 960. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 60% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 33% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 1620p resolution, ultra settings. 99% GPU load, 43 FPS.

 

[scoobs]

God I can't freaking wait for the benchmarks to start rolling out.

 

[Matthew23]

With a 2500K at 4.5GHz, nearly every new graphically intensive game that I bought last year was bottlenecked by my CPU and not the GPU.
I even upgraded from a 4GB GTX 960 to an 8GB GTX 1070, and saw no performance improvements in those situations. The only thing that changed was the GPU load.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:

• GTX 960. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 60% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 33% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 1620p resolution, ultra settings. 99% GPU load, 43 FPS.

Seems like your cpu should be performing better, I wonder about possible cooling issues? This benchmark has a 2500k stock speed at 72/57 (ave/min frames) for Mankind Divided.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page5.html

 

[pa22word]

Seems like your cpu should be performing better, I wonder about possible cooling issues? This benchmark has a 2500k stock speed at 72/57 (ave/min frames) for Mankind Divided.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page5.html

Benchmark isn't representative of actual gameplay in MD. That area dude posted plus a few areas in the hub hammer the CPU much harder than the benchmark ever does.

EDIT: also, bruv, disable that in game sharpening and use reshade holy fucking shit man x_o

 

[Matthew23]

Benchmark isn't representative of actual gameplay in MD. That area dude posted plus a few areas in the hub hammer the CPU much harder than the benchmark ever does.

Ah ok, I'm not familiar with the game and took his comments as poor general performance throughout.

I have the same cpu/gpu and haven't run into issues yet. Although other than Forza H3 I suppose I haven't picked up too many heavy cpu dependant games in the past year.

 

[kraspkibble]

if AMD do a good job with these CPU's i may look to upgrade from my 6700K sooner than expected. i wonder if intel will push out CPU's with more than 4/8 cores.

it's a win win for everyone no matter what you buy intel or amd. c'mon AMD we need you to get this right.

 

[RenegadeXV8]

If you care about minimum framerates - specifically keeping the minimum framerate up above 60 FPS in all games - then CPU performance becomes critically important.
Your GPU is barely even a factor. You can always turn down the resolution or graphical options, but you can't do anything about a CPU bottleneck other than overclocking or replacing the CPU with something faster.
With a 2500K at 4.5GHz, nearly every new graphically intensive game that I bought last year was bottlenecked by my CPU and not the GPU.
I even upgraded from a 4GB GTX 960 to an 8GB GTX 1070, and saw no performance improvements in those situations. The only thing that changed was the GPU load.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:

• GTX 960. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 60% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 33% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 1620p resolution, ultra settings. 99% GPU load, 43 FPS.

Look, trust me, you're preaching to the choir here and I know exactly what you're saying and understand it. I play a lot of competitive online shooters so I know the value of absolute minimum framerates.

But from a reasonable perspective, most people with a balanced configuration will never run into a critical CPU bound scenario with a 4/6/8-core 8/12/16-thread CPU (I probably should have specified this first). No one (I would hope) is going to be playing games at a sub-HD resolution with lower details on a 1070 or above. Your Deus Ex example is good but the problem is MD scales better with threads than frequency, and it's also notoriously heavy on the CPU for whatever reason. It's not exactly representative of the current state of PC games.

This is why I think saying a 3.4GHz+ 4/6/8-core 8/12/16-thread CPU wouldn't be good for gaming is a little disingenuous, because while it may not be the best for very specific scenarios like chasing the highest FPS possible in Overwatch or CS:GO, for almost everything else it would be more than enough.

(I'm also assuming Ryzen at least matches Broadwell IPC in games.)

I wish more sites tested this. Techspot is one of the few sites that actually tests all their games in a range of frequencies on the same CPU, from 2.5GHz to 4.5GHz. The vast majority of games show zero difference to minimums or averages at 1080p.

 

[Paragon]

if AMD do a good job with these CPU's i may look to upgrade from my 6700K sooner than expected. i wonder if intel will push out CPU's with more than 4/8 cores.

6-core mainstream i7s next year with Coffee Lake.
Intel have had far more than 8 cores available for years, just not mainstream.

Seems like your cpu should be performing better, I wonder about possible cooling issues? This benchmark has a 2500k stock speed at 72/57 (ave/min frames) for Mankind Divided.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page5.html

I always look for the lowest performing area in a game for performance testing, which is why the performance is lower than their benchmark.
I have an NH-D14 so the CPU barely hits 60C under sustained load.

The exact performance there isn't what matters though, just backing up my point that most recent games have actually been bottlenecked by the CPU when you start looking at minimum framerates, since you can always turn down graphics options to reduce GPU load.

also, bruv, disable that in game sharpening and use reshade holy fucking shit man x_o

Don't worry, I normally have sharpening disabled and sharpen it with my display since that doesn't rely on injection.
I only enabled it for the screenshots because TAA looks so blurry without any kind of sharpening.

EDIT:

But from a reasonable perspective, most people with a balanced configuration will never run into a critical CPU bound scenario with a 4/6/8-core 8/12/16-thread CPU (I probably should have specified this first). No one (I would hope) is going to be playing games at a sub-HD resolution with lower details on a 1070 or above. Your Deus Ex example is good but the problem is MD scales better with threads than frequency, and it's also notoriously heavy on the CPU for whatever reason. It's not exactly representative of the current state of PC games.

The point of reducing resolution/settings was to demonstrate that the low performance was not being caused by the GPU at all, and to show that dropping in a faster GPU made no difference.
Deus Ex scaling well across multiple cores would be something in favor of Ryzen.
You're correct that this is not representative of most games, since most scale better with frequency as they are not built to utilize more than 2-4 main threads.
I could find examples that are CPU-bound in most big 2016 releases.

 

[AndyH]

If you care about minimum framerates - specifically keeping the minimum framerate up above 60 FPS in all games - then CPU performance becomes critically important.
Your GPU is barely even a factor. You can always turn down the resolution or graphical options, but you can't do anything about a CPU bottleneck other than overclocking or replacing the CPU with something faster.
With a 2500K at 4.5GHz, nearly every new graphically intensive game that I bought last year was bottlenecked by my CPU and not the GPU.
I even upgraded from a 4GB GTX 960 to an 8GB GTX 1070, and saw no performance improvements in those situations. The only thing that changed was the GPU load.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:

• GTX 960. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 60% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 720p resolution, mixed settings. 33% GPU load, 43 FPS.
• GTX 1070. 1620p resolution, ultra settings. 99% GPU load, 43 FPS.

This is a strange spot in the game. I get around 44-46 FPS here with an i5 750 running at 3.6ghz and a GTX 1060, with maxed out settings at 720p and 1080p. I wonder why your 2500k isn't doing better.

 

[Tomasoares]

CPU is much more important than people gives credits for lol

I've got a 970gtx, which should run most games fine, but with a fx-6300 processor I can't make them run well (aka without dropping from 60fps) regardless the graphic quality or resolution I select. Please be good, Ryzen.

 

[RenegadeXV8]

The point of reducing resolution/settings was to demonstrate that the low performance was not being caused by the GPU at all, and to show that dropping in a faster GPU made no difference.
Deus Ex scaling well across multiple cores would be something in favor of Ryzen.
You're correct that this is not representative of most games, since most scale better with frequency as they are not built to utilize more than 2-4 main threads.
I could find examples that are CPU-bound in most big 2016 releases.

I would actually appreciate if you would, no joke. I'm always looking for an excuse to overclock my 4770k since I enjoy overclocking in general, but every time I look at CPU benchmarks I forget about it, since there's not nearly enough of a difference to make the increase in heat and voltage worth it.

 

[Paragon]

This is a strange spot in the game. I get around 44-46 FPS here with an i5 750 running at 3.6ghz and a GTX 1060, with maxed out settings at 720p and 1080p. I wonder why your 2500k isn't doing better.

Well that's a very specific spot which was the low-point in performance and it did fluctuate a bit.
Game Mode in Windows 10 seemed to help a bit, but the point remains that it's CPU-limited rather than GPU-limited and there's nothing you can do about that without a faster CPU.
Since Deus Ex is well multi-threaded, I'm sure Ryzen would actually perform well, but most games still favor frequency over cores. (to a point)

I would actually appreciate if you would, no joke. I'm always looking for an excuse to overclock my 4770k since I enjoy overclocking in general, but every time I look at CPU benchmarks I forget about it, since there's not nearly enough of a difference to make the increase in heat and voltage worth it.

Most of the sites out there are publishing average framerates or GPU-bound tests instead of doing proper CPU testing.
All of these games from 2016 had framerate problems caused by my 2500K @ 4.5GHz:

• ABZÛ
• Batman: The Telltale Series
• Civilization VI
• Dark Souls 3
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Dishonored 2
• DOOM
• Forza Horizon 3
• HITMAN
• Watch Dogs 2
• XCOM 2

And there are other games that I didn't play, but I know would have issues on my system, like Battlefield 1, Far Cry Primal, Rise of the Tomb Raider, or Total War: Warhammer.

 

[GinoFelino]

Such a missed opportunity that Vega isn't releasing simultaneously.

I'm planning my first PC build right now, but can't afford to wait for Vega. A full AMD build is much more attractive than a Ryzen-nVidia combo.

I assume new motherboards will release day and date with Ryzen to fully accommodate all the new features?

 

[longdi]

Looks like there's going to be a lot of people moving on from 2500K & 2600K this year. Hopefully Zen will come close enough to 7700K in gaming, I'd really like the extra cores but if the chip doesn't perform as well in games, I might still have to go with Intel. The upgrade itch is real though, so I'd rather not want to wait too long for Intel to potentially drop prices.

If zen is able to overclock to 4.5ghz easily than it will perform as well if not better than 7700k. People underestimate the need for more cores in games.

Zen is a good time for 2500k and 2600k users.

 

[shark sandwich]

Such a missed opportunity that Vega isn't releasing simultaneously.

I'm planning my first PC build right now, but can't afford to wait for Vega. A full AMD build is much more attractive than a Ryzen-nVidia combo

Any particular reason for this?

 

[Zojirushi]

Definitely interested in emulator performance (CEMU). Probably a good "real world" benchmark for raw ass clock speed.

 

[GinoFelino]

Any particular reason for this?

Not really, to be honest. Just makes sense to me. They're likely built to complement each other, right? Probably have a single software program to control both and such, and maybe play to each other's strengths in other ways as well.

Also, the motherboard thing with the new Intel Z270 boards offering improvements over older boards. Will Ryzen be accompanied by new motherboards as well?

 

[dr_rus]

If zen is able to overclock to 4.5ghz easily than it will perform as well if not better than 7700k. People underestimate the need for more cores in games.

Zen is a good time for 2500k and 2600k users.

As someone who upgraded from 4 cores to 6 cores less than a year ago I can safely say that people are actually heavily overestimating such need.

Some recent rather eye opening examples here include the launch of a 2-core i3 7350K with the following results:

Let's wait for benchmarks, shall we?

 

[V_Arnold]

Newsflash: games with bad multicore scaling exist.

 

[shark sandwich]

Not really, to be honest. Just makes sense to me. They're likely built to compliment each other, right? Probably have a single software program to control both and such.

Also, the motherboard thing with the new Intel Z270 boards offering improvements over older boards. Will Ryzen be accompanied by new motherboards as well?

AFAIK there is nothing magical about AMD CPUs/chipsets that make them work better with AMD GPUs. Thankfully they are all built on standards so any CPU can work equally well with any GPU

As far as motherboards, yes there will be a completely new lineup of AMD motherboards coming along with Ryzen. Ryzen uses a new socket (AM4) and will not work with older motherboards.

 

[AndyH]

Well that's a very specific spot which was the low-point in performance and it did fluctuate a bit.
Game Mode in Windows 10 seemed to help a bit, but the point remains that it's CPU-limited rather than GPU-limited and there's nothing you can do about that without a faster CPU.
Since Deus Ex is well multi-threaded, I'm sure Ryzen would actually perform well, but most games still favor frequency over cores. (to a point)

Perhaps it could be memory bandwidth limited - I am running with DDR3 1600mhz. Of course, another advantage of modern CPUs is access to faster DDR4 memory.

Digital Foundry have produced videos demonstrating the benefits of increased memory bandwidth on older CPUs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4

Ryzen does seem like it could potentially shake up the CPU market. It may have been part of the influence that pushed Intel into offering more cores in each segment with the upcoming Coffee Lake line up. Obviously, Intel have also been struggling to increase IPC recently. Hopefully AMD do keep prices down to levels that could encourage consumers to switch from Intel.

Generally speaking, there is a trend towards task based threading models that benefit from increased thread counts. Although they are not a silver bullet, as not all problems can be computed in parallel, they do help to increase performance. Increasing core counts should be a win in coming years. Although for now we are in a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, as many programs, especially games, are designed to operate with few threads.

An additional benefit for programmers is the free access to all features of AMDs CPU profiling tools, when using AMD processors. The equivalent Intel tools cost thousands of dollars.

Ultimately, these rumours are encouraging, but the benchmarks will reveal all.

 

[GinoFelino]

AFAIK there is nothing magical about AMD CPUs/chipsets that make them work better with AMD GPUs. Thankfully they are all built on standards so any CPU can work equally well with any GPU

As far as motherboards, yes there will be a completely new lineup of AMD motherboards coming along with Ryzen. Ryzen uses a new socket (AM4) and will not work with older motherboards.

Thanks! In that case, I'll keep an open mind about the whole thing and wait for Ryzen (benchmarks/pricing) to come out.

 

[Paragon]

As someone who upgraded from 4 cores to 6 cores less than a year ago I can safely say that people are actually heavily overestimating such need.
Some recent rather eye opening examples here include the launch of a 2-core i3 7350K with the following results:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph11083/85558.png
Let's wait for benchmarks, shall we?

I went into it in the 7700K review topic, but you should know that most of Anandtech's gaming benchmarks are basically worthless since they're all averages, and some are potentially GPU-bottlenecked too.

However you're right about lots of games not benefitting from >4 cores - especially if you're comparing to a 4c/8t CPU. I posted a number of examples here.
Four threads is definitely a bottleneck in some newer games today, but a hyperthreaded quad-core is often better for those games than having eight cores.

I do want more than four cores, because I actually have games/applications that will benefit from it, but I'm still very concerned about giving up performance in games that don't, since more cores generally means that your per-core performance is lower.

Perhaps it could be memory bandwidth limited - I am running with DDR3 1600mhz. Of course, another advantage of modern CPUs is access to faster DDR4 memory.

I think that when you're bandwidth limited you see reduced performance, but at <100% CPU utilization.
At least I think that is what happens when I see <100% CPU & GPU utilization, but am still experiencing performance issues. I haven't been able to set up a test for that.

Digital Foundry's testing is exactly why I'm concerned about the memory performance in these Ryzen benchmarks, since it's performing worse than my 2500K in many tests.

Generally speaking, there is a trend towards task based threading models that benefit from increased thread counts. Although they are not a silver bullet, as not all problems can be computed in parallel, they do help to increase performance. Increasing core counts should be a win in coming years. Although for now we are in a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, as many programs, especially games, are designed to operate with few threads.

Yes, we've already seen some games in the past year or so benefit from >4 threads and I hope it continues.
The issue is that even in these games, since you're sacrificing per-core performance for having more cores, they often end up performing better on the hyperthreaded quad-cores which can run at higher clockspeeds.

We're getting close to hitting a wall where the only option is to add more cores though.
Intel seems to be struggling to improve IPC, and I can't see them pushing things much further than the 5GHz they're at now with Kaby Lake.

 

[icecold1983]

Is amd really going to offer 2x the cores at a similar price with only 5 to 10% less ipc?

 

[kabel]

Is amd really going to offer 2x the cores at a similar price with only 5 to 10% less ipc?

Seems so

 

[s_mirage]

Is amd really going to offer 2x the cores at a similar price with only 5 to 10% less ipc?

Hopefully, although I can't help but be worried that there's a down side somewhere. If they really are offering a lot more pound for pound, and Ryzen does well, doesn't that risk starting a price war with Intel? Good for consumers, not necessarily good for AMD.

 

[Siddiqui]

ASUS motherboard price leak via a retailer:
http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-am4-asus-motherboard-prices-leaked/

$209 Asus Crosshair VI Hero
$149 Asus Prime X370-PRO
$89 Asus Prime B350-PLUS
$69 Asus Prime B350M-A [mATX, no VRM heatsinks]

All support overclocking. I was hoping for some X300 ITX boards at launch but I haven't seen any yet...

 

[Hesemonni]

Such a missed opportunity that Vega isn't releasing simultaneously.

I'm planning my first PC build right now, but can't afford to wait for Vega. A full AMD build is much more attractive than a Ryzen-nVidia combo.

The first PC I built had Athlon XP 2600+ and a Radeon 9800 Pro . And it was a monster. I too would love to go all AMD if the benchmarks are decent just to support the underdog.

 

[TC McQueen]

All support overclocking. I was hoping for some X300 ITX boards at launch but I haven't seen any yet...

IIRC, I've heard the ITX boards might not come out until the APUs do.

 

[GinoFelino]

ASUS motherboard price leak via a retailer:
http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-am4-asus-motherboard-prices-leaked/

$209 Asus Crosshair VI Hero
$149 Asus Prime X370-PRO
$89 Asus Prime B350-PLUS
$69 Asus Prime B350M-A [mATX, no VRM heatsinks]

All support overclocking. I was hoping for some X300 ITX boards at launch but I haven't seen any yet...

Hm, so looks to be roughly $30 less than the Z270 counterparts.