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AMD Launches Ryzen, Claims To Beat Intel's Core i7 Offering At Half the Price (hothardware.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Reader MojoKid writes: AMD CEO, Dr. Lisu Su took to the stage at AMD's Ryzen tech day yesterday and opened the event with official speeds, feeds, pricing, and benchmark scores for the company's upcoming Ryzen series processors. AMD's goal with Ryzen, which is based on its Zen microarchitecture, was a 40% IPC (instructions per clock) uplift. As it turns out, AMD was actually able to increase IPC by approximately 52% with the final shipping product, sometimes more depending on workload type. Dr. Su also showed the first die shot of an 8-core Ryzen processor, disclosing that it consists of approximately 4.8 billion transistors. AMD's flagship Ryzen 7 1800X 8-core/16 thread CPU will have a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, a boost clock of 4.0GHz, and a 95 watt TDP. AMD claims the Ryzen 7 1800X will be the fastest 8-core desktop processor on the market when it arrives. The next member of the line-up is the Ryzen 7 1700X with a base clock of 3.4GHz and a boost clock of 3.8GHz, also with 8 cores and a 95 watt TDP. Finally, the Ryzen 7 1700 – sans X – is also an 8-core / 16-thread CPU, but it has lower 3.0GHz base and 3.7GHz boost clocks, along with a lower 65 watt TDP. AMD took the opportunity to demo the Ryzen 7 1800X and it was approximately 9% faster than the Core i7-6900K running Cinebench R15's multi-threaded test, at about half the cost. And in another comparison, Dr. Su put the 8-core 7 1700 up against the quad-core Core i7-7700K, converting a 4K 60 FPS video down to 1080P and the Ryzen CPU outpaces the Core i7 by 10 full seconds. Pricing for the three initial Ryzen 7 series processors will undercut competing Intel processors significantly. AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X will arrive at $499, Ryzen 7 1700X at $399, and Ryzen 7 1700 at $329. Based on current street prices, Ryzen will be between 20% — 50% lower priced but AMD is claiming performance that's better than Intel at those price points.

31 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. FINALLY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Finally competition from AMD! Stop this stagnation madness!

    1. Re:FINALLY! by aliquis · · Score: 2

      It's not ALL that much though.

      Like the 1700X vs 6800K both at $400.

      One finish in 100 seconds the other in 112 seconds.
      That's 11% faster, but with 33% more cores and a lower / core performance.

      The major advantage there though is that a B350 motherboard you will likely be able to get for $100 whereas a X99 one will cost $200.

      1800X vs 6900K is half-price for similar performance so that's of course massive but they aren't all that much faster than the cheaper processors. AMD just doesn't charge as much premium for it.

      Ryzen 7 1700 vs i7 7700K at about the same price.
      8 cores at 3 GHz vs 4 cores at 4 GHz.
      You get 46% higher multi-core performance, expected at same IPC and clock would had been ~50% so very close performance per clock and core but then there's the fact of the clock speed difference and hence the 7700K most likely being faster in single-core tasks. So the question then becomes if you want 25-26% lower single-core performance or 46% higher multi-core performance.

      It's good competitive products and very nice processors for multi-threaded tasks and needs but there's still room for Intel to be relevant at-least.

    2. Re:FINALLY! by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Finally competition from AMD! Stop this stagnation madness!

      Don't worry the MBA's will find some way to screw this up they always do

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    3. Re: FINALLY! by haruchai · · Score: 2

      I'm really rooting for AMD

      Not only am I rooting for them, most of my PCs since the late 90s have been AMD whereas all my laptops and the majority of my servers have been Intel (with a few Sparcs & IBM Power thrown in). As AMD was lagging the past few years, I was seriously thinking of buying Intel for my next performance workstation.
      Now it looks like I can continue with AMD a while longer and if Ryzen measures up, it'll be my 2017 Xmas present to myself.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    4. Re: FINALLY! by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The only "Intel inside" that were allowed in our house are in the wife's Macs... I'll buy Intel when they are the only option left.

      AMD 8088, AMD 386, AMD K6-2, Athlon S754, Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition, FX-6300 Black Edition, an AMD A8 and A10-8700P laptop.

      All but the first three are still in working order. Looking forward to building a new Ryzen desktop later this year.

    5. Re:FINALLY! by nobuddy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      AMD- lately- is 90% of the performance at half (and often less) the price. I'll take that any day. My 8300 with R9 270x plays every game in existence without a problem. Well, it stutters a little on Star Citizen. But so does every PC ever made, no matter how much of a gaming beast it may be.

    6. Re:FINALLY! by Immerman · · Score: 2

      >I don't care about the power used, I care about the noise needed to dissipate the heat generated

      Umm... power used and heat dissipated are basically identical. The actual twiddling of bits does approximately zero work (as defined in physics), so essentially 100% of the power consumed by a CPU is converted into heat.

      *(there's a theoretical limit, but it's many orders of magnitude less than anything built by humanity)

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    7. Re:FINALLY! by sexconker · · Score: 2

      Beware the hype train - And this is a hype train of the strongest degree. We're approaching No Man's Sky levels of hype here.

      Keep in mind this is a soft launch. No launch silicon in reviewers hands.No objective reviews. Only "benchmarks" that came from AMD, which will always paint their product in a good light.

      Intel isn't "stagnating" - They're responding to market forces. You really have not needed a faster CPU since the launch of Sandy bridge. What the market wants is more features, lower power. That is what Intel has been focusing on and delivering pretty well.

      Lastly, remember that single thread performance is still king in the desktop space. Lots of cores are great for servers and some applications - But for user facing applications (Including games) the most heavily weighted cpu performance bottleneck is the top speed of your core(s). - Multi-threaded programming is hard and there is no magical compiler switch or library that will suddenly make lots of slow cores = One fast core. (For most applications)

      We all want AMD to give Intel some competition and to push prices down.. But don't hold your breath until reviewers have shipping parts in their hands.

      Reviewers have parts. Parts are up for preorder. Parts are going to be available worldwide on the same date. All signs point to it not being a "soft launch" or a "paper launch". We've seen photos over the past few weeks of people receiving trays of parts. Ryzen looks like it'll be out in volume.

      The AMD-provided benchmarks are objective. They're showing multithreaded performance in a highly-multithreaded workload. They also show one single-threaded benchmark. Yes, the R7 1800X will lose out in single threaded performance against clock-for-clock Kaby Lake and Skylake parts.

      Gamers should look at the Kaby Lake 7700k and the Ryzen 1700X.
      People with highly-multithreaded workloads should look at the Skylake 6900k and 6850k, and the Ryzen 1800X and 1700X.
      People concerned mainly with single-threaded performance shouldn't be looking at any recent part from anybody. For most people, the newer fab processes are simply too tight to allow for clocks high enough to justify replacing shit like the Sandybridge CPUs that have been running at 4.5 GHz - 4.8 GHz for 6 years.

      Intel hasn't been doing SHIT for the desktop CPU market for the past 3 years. Look at http://ark.intel.com/#@Process.... There are a total of 16 SKUs in the i7/extreme class in the last 3 years of the Core products across gens 5-7. 4th gen i7 alone had about triple the number of SKUs. Today Intel shits out a few desktop SKUs and abandons the platform. Kaby lake doesn't even have its full stack out and they're already telling people to wait for Cannon Lake because the value proposition of Kaby Lake or Skylake vs Ryzen is a joke.

  2. we've been stuck at 4 core for too long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Intel has had >4 core CPUs but the affordable stuff for consumers has all been 4 core / 8 thread with the rest of the die given over to GPUs that nobody who needs high performance graphics wants anyway.

    I'd be nice to see AMD back in the game to provide some competition for Intel. Lots of workloads can benefit from more cores: compilation, video processing, simulations, many kinds of "embarrassingly parallel" tasks. Anything you might do with xargs -P.

    If AMD supplies some competitive pressure to push larger core counts down into the affordable price ranges for average buyers, that'll be a good thing. It's been an artificial restriction anyway. Plus it is good for the health of the market to have competition.

    1. Re:we've been stuck at 4 core for too long by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      There are certain scientific and data processing applications

      Amazing, that's exactly what I need them for! More the merrier. If you see me on Facebook, it's because I'm waiting on my PC to do something. I use "the cloud" for jobs that are worth the effort of setting up there. But most of the time I'm waiting on my local PC, and double the number of cores would approximately halve that wait.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:we've been stuck at 4 core for too long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some specialized applicatons would benefit from more cores, but these are things that are best done in the cloud and most everyday tasks are linear in nature and do not benefit from more cores.

      No... they are very often not "best done in the cloud", because that would mean uploading a few TB of data over my home internet connection to a cloud server. That would take far longer than is practical not to mention bust my ISP cap.

      There are a shitton of common tasks that benefit from having more cores. Hell, just compiling a large project benefits from having a lot of cores. Video transcoding. Image processing. Batch processing of almost any kind. Many kinds of scientific computing. Just because your use of computers is limited to checking your Facebook feed doesn't mean that's the case for everybody. Some of us use computers as computers, rather than as social media portals.

      I can use as many cores as I can get and as the rest of the system (mem bandwidth depending on nature of task, etc) can feed.

    3. Re:we've been stuck at 4 core for too long by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Old Xeons are, in fact, far cheaper than modern Intel consumer CPUs with a similar performance. Take E5-2670 for example. It costs around 100 bucks, has 8 cores/16 threads and 20 megabytes of cache. For the same money you'll get a Core i3-7100 at best, which has a somewhat better single core performance, but is utterly outclassed in multicore.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    4. Re:we've been stuck at 4 core for too long by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      There are certain scientific and data processing applications

      Amazing, that's exactly what I need them for! More the merrier. If you see me on Facebook, it's because I'm waiting on my PC to do something. I use "the cloud" for jobs that are worth the effort of setting up there. But most of the time I'm waiting on my local PC, and double the number of cores would approximately halve that wait.

      Ditto. I'm regularly maxing out local i7s on long simulations and computations. I look at all that GPU area on the die and think it would be nice if they added a few more cores instead. I think there are more of us out there than people think. Not everything is serving crappy XML over crappy REST protocols.

       

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  3. About time. by Jethro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I built myself a gaming PC about two years ago. I've been an AMD supported for decades, so I went with the best CPU AMD was offering at the time. Two years later, it's still the best CPU AMD offers.

    I remember the heyday where AMD actually overtook Intel. Their CPUs were actually better and cheaper. That's no longer the case, but (at least when I built my gaming rig) I was not willing to pay 50%+ more for maybe 10% higher performance, so it was still AMD for me.

    The important thing, though, is that we need competition in order to spur innovation. Before AMD started nipping at Intel's heels, it was all about the MHz (and who could get to GHz first). After that, we started seeing CPUs with more cores and better threading and all the good stuff. I hope Ryzen makes Intel very worried - worried enough that they innovate the hell out of their CPUs. I also hope Ryzen makes AMD enough money that they can continue to innovate, and continue to compete with Intel. Because when that happens, it is we the consumers who win.

    --


    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
    1. Re:About time. by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      I built myself a gaming PC about two years ago. I've been an AMD supported for decades, so I went with the best CPU AMD was offering at the time. Two years later, it's still the best CPU AMD offers.

      Well, I built a PC 7 years ago. It STILL is within roughly 30% of the top comparable system you can build today. These are Intel CPUs btw. Their performance plateaued with the Sandy Bridge core design, although the Gulftown I have competes well with the top end available with even the current i7s. Yes, the 4790K is faster single threaded, but if you OC both the extra overhead available on the Gulftown closes the gap considerably. And overall performance the Gulftown doesn't get doubled until you go to the current 20 core monster that isn't even available for desktop use yet.

      So just realize that Moore's law is done, at least for the last 8 years it has not held. Real performance has barely doubled in the last 7 years by any measure. We have reduced power and heat during that time frame for equivalent performance. So there's still progress, but it's not the 1990s through 2010 heyday we experienced where major performance improvements occurred pretty much every 2 years.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  4. Re:by 10 full seconds by aliquis · · Score: 2

    In the video Linus did https://www.youtube.com/watch?... the difference was 99.xx vs 112.yy seconds.

    But I don't think that one used a 7700K but a 6800K.

  5. Re:frist ps0t by epine · · Score: 3, Funny

    alternative facts

    We used to call them "hot grits". In was an everyday topic of discussion.

  6. More cores by kcdoodle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I run all my Windows machines Virtually. I really like to be able to dedicate a core or two to each Virtual machine and still have enough left over for my Linux host OS.
    Four cores just ain't enough for me. I'm looking forward to 128 core processors...

    --

    - I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
  7. All of this has happened before... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It seems that every time Intel gets a significant pile of laurels, they like to rest on them. Then someone comes up from behind to kick them in the ass. AMD has done it before, perhaps with this generation they can do it again.

    And who wins? We all do. Last time, Intel got off their ass and created the Core-series that has expanded PC processing power to the point where upgrade cycles have gone from 3 years to 6+. Let's hope that this shot across the bow ushers in a new era of chip design that brings features we want, rather than the features that they think we want.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    1. Re:All of this has happened before... by Solandri · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's the way it looks to enthusiasts, but that's not what Intel has been doing. About a decade ago, we hit the point where processors were "fast enough" for mainstream tasks. People stopped buying i5 and i7 processors, in favor of i3, Celeron, and Pentium. For the last 10 years, only enthusiasts and gamers have cared about improved performance. The vast majority of the market cared more about power consumption. Intel hasn't been worried about AMD, but they were scared to death of ARM. They rushed to bring Atom to market to keep the low-end on x86/x64, instead of moving to ARM.

      So they haven't been resting on their laurels. They've been working hard at reducing power consumption. That's what really hurt AMD after they lost their performance lead. For a few years AMD still offered more performance per Watt, making AMD the natural choice for moderate-load servers and systems meant to be left on 24/7. But Intel soon beat AMD there, taking away AMD's only advantage. (That's when AMD used their ATI acquisition to integrate a GPU which could beat Intel's integrated GPU - essentially carving out a spot in the low-price gamer market.)

      A Core 2 Duo system would use about 70 Watts idle, 150 Watts under load. A Sandy Bridge system would use about 45 Watts idle, 120 Watts under load. A modern Skylake system uses about 35 Watts idle, 80 Watts under load. Subtract the 20-30 Watts consumed by components other than the CPU, and the reduction in CPU power consumption over the last 10 years has been remarkable.

    2. Re: All of this has happened before... by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      Intel rest on their laurels as a matter of strategy.

      If that's what Intel is doing, it's a stupid strategy. If Intel could produce a processor running at 8 GHz but otherwise identical to an I7-7700K, they could charge $3000 apiece for them and sell as many as they could make. Intel doesn't because it can't; physics and present technology don't allow it.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    3. Re: All of this has happened before... by llZENll · · Score: 2

      Really but why? I've quite enjoyed not having to upgrade my sandy bridge. I overclocked it to 4.5Ghz 6 years ago and it's still faster in everyday tasks than even the latest $1000 offering, only in extreme multi core tasks does it lack, which I rarely need.

      A new system is such a distraction from my work. Days to reinstall and update everything, weeks to weed out issues and acclimate to a totally new setup.

      Now if we could only get Microsoft to support Windows 7 indefinitely. I'd gladly pay $10/year for infinite support, or at least for another 5-10 years before AI takes my job.

  8. Re:I'll believe it... by David_Hart · · Score: 2

    When Newegg has listings for the new processors and motherboard. Although it might be too late for me since I retired my nine-year-old Vista-compatible AMD quad-core motherboard for a Windows 7-compatible AMD eight-core motherboard last year. I might let the platform mature before I spring for new hardware.

    Based on the news articles, you should start seeing these on Newegg within a couple of weeks (March 2nd). Supposedly AMD primed the retail channel prior to the announcement.

  9. What about single thread performance? by fred6666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It still matters for most people, and it has been a problem for AMD.
    Will they offer lower priced Core i5/i3 competitors based on this architecture?

    1. Re:What about single thread performance? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      They will. Apparently slightly later. Maybe they'll even follow the Kaveri/Carrizo/Excavator model and release parts for laptops in a single line with with four-core desktop CPUs. This hasn't been announced but I'd find it perfectly logical since it worked quite well so far.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  10. Finally! Will it last for AMD? by bobbied · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think it's interesting that AMD finally got this CPU off the drawing board and actually onto silicon, finally. It has been a long time in development and has suffered many delays along the way, both from management changes and financial difficulty. They have put all their CPU eggs in this basket and I sure hope they have a good design here because Intel needs a bit of competition.

    I'm confident that AMD will make a go of this new architecture. It was a totally clean sheet design and has some unique and innovative features which may spur another round of slugging it out with Intel. What I find interesting here is the price point. Where I'm positive Intel has been racking in profit on their current offerings and will easily match AMD's prices, I'm hopeful that AMD will be able to press this new design into better performance than Intel can manage with their current technology at this price point.

    If history is any indicator, AMD will not be able to keep up once they wake the sleeping giant that's Intel. Where I'm not sure Intel really cares about the PC market (which is lagging a lot) they do care about profit. The question really becomes how much will this hurt Intel? I'm not sure it will be all that much, because Intel is diversified, doing lots of stuff in their own fabs. AMD has no fabs of their own anymore and really only have two business lines where they are the distant second player.

    Will it last for AMD? Will this put them back into an increasing market share and profitability? I hope so, but the guys over at Intel surely already have a good idea what they will do and what affect this will have on their bottom line. AMD may be off the mat, but they are seriously out classed by a company with deep pockets and technical ability.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  11. Re:Why so expensive? by Moof123 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    8 cores vs 4 cores. You gotta compare the equivalent number of cores, then kvetch over different clock rates and other details to really compare.

    Ryzen 1800X (8 cores) = $500
    Intel's consumer grade i7-6900K 8 cores (latest available) = $1000 (i.e. Ryzen is 50% lower than $1000)
    Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-4809 v4 (8 core) = $1600 (highway rape...)

    To compare 4 core vs 4 core:
    Ryzen 1400X (4 core with hyperthreading) = $200
    Intel 7700K (4 core with hyperthreading, though higher clock rate) = $340

  12. Re:Why so expensive? by Misagon · · Score: 2

    Intel has variants of the Core i7 7700 that have lower or the same clock as AMD Ryzen 1400X, but none of those costs less than $300 either.

    --
    "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  13. Re:Paper launch by iCEBaLM · · Score: 2

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    You can preorder them on newegg. Release is apparently Thurs/Fri next week.

  14. Re:Paper launch by jimbo · · Score: 2

    Well, with only a week from "launch" to availability it's perhaps unkind to call it a paper launch - those boxes are already on their way to retailers.

  15. Not only are the CPUs less expensive... by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 4, Informative

    ....AMD mainboards are noticeably less expensive. Intel is the synonym for overpriced.