CPU/Mobo AMD Ryzen CPUs launched

[vishalrao]

Yeah every tom dick and harry has unboxing videos up, waiting for every tom dick and harry to post reviews too in a day or two fingers crossed no bad surprises (bugs) and everything is good with the CPUs and mobos.

Looks like for linux usage probably will have to wait for a few months for good CPU support and stuff like Realtek audio chipset drivers to come.

 

[vishalrao]

See http://www.anandtech.com/show/11177/making-amd-tick-a-very-zen-interview-with-dr-lisa-su-ceo

The NDA/embargo should lift around 7:30 PM India time today - eagerly awaiting the flood of reviews to come

 

[Jasku]

^^ Good read.

Something to whet your appetite - http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-1700x-delivered-early-benchmarks/

 

[psyph3r]

AMD is competitive once again, waiting for more 1700x reviews to show up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170...-7-review-a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700
https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-and-1700-processor-review_191753
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_ryzen_7_1800x_1700x_1700/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176191/computers/ryzen-review-amd-is-back.html
https://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2017/03/02/amd-ryzen-1800x-and-am4-platform-review/1
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/102964-amd-ryzen-7-1800x-14nm-zen/
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...814-amd-ryzen-7-1800x-performance-review.html

 

[vivek.krishnan]

Finally, we can hark back to the days of the Athlon and say, yes its time again...

 

[m-jeri]

To be honest, Its like they are gunning for the enterprise market. They did amazing stuff there.

I can only digest the single core performance when i look at the price tag.

Edit: My usage for my sentry rig is VM's. Thankfully, that still looks good.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

Single core performance is definitely a sore point. I am not even sure how much of an upgrade it will be over my existing sandy bridge 2500k in terms of single core performance considering that a 2500k can easily run 24/7 @ 4.5 GHz. My usage involves both gaming and heavy multi threaded usage. Unless this CPU can over clock well, single core performance is going to leave a lot to be desired.

 

[Arkon]

Doesn't look very good . I have a 4yr old i5-3550 that I am looking to replace. I was hoping for a 5-6k mobo + 10-12k processor but I doubt I will get anything that will improve on my current processor at that price point. I can stretch up the budget a bit, lets see how R5-1600 turns out and costs.

 

[Darth Vader]

Nothing here for gamers, thank you AMD My Sandy Bridge is going to live on forever

 

[mav2000]

Looks like I will be stuck on Ivy bridge with a perpetual 4.5 OC

 

[vishalrao]

I'm speculating that these early gaming benchmarks being dull is due to the software not being optimised - software meaning things like OS (thread scheduler) and not the actual games - even though some reviews are saying the integer operations (which is what games mostly use) are slower on Zen compared to Intel.

Also, some places seem to indicate the SMT ("hyperthreading") is either not performing well or actually hindering multithreaded performance - now again I hope this is just an OS/driver issue and not a problem with the CPU hardware implementation itself - I'm sure places like AnandTech will investigate further in the coming days.

But at the end of the day, for me (no gaming), the base R7-1700 (non-X) still looks like a decent VFM option to go with an ASUS Prime B350-Plus mobo. Even if I have to disable the SMT to stick with only 8 cores and 8 threads instead of trying the 16-thread thing it still makes me drool.

I am highly tempted to burn some money right now and buy off primeABGB but will try to hold off for at least 6 months (maybe a year) (but that is soooo far away) until latest Win10 and Linux releases are out with full/proper support for the CPU and mobo - and of course to give this some soak time in case people discover some unexpected defects/bugs in the chips.

 

[Chaos]

In most of the reviews, single core boost clocks are not going up as much as it should. BIOSes are still buggy it seems.

 

[bssunilreddy]

I am still confused with naming terminology of Ryzen compatible mobo's.

Intel's naming should have been followed instead.

 

[vishalrao]

I really liked this video out of all the various articles/videos (that I've seen) out there, pretty sane/rational comments he makes IMHO, especially since he recommends the base R7-1700 model as the best deal to go for which I agree with - and also puts in a word for the upcoming R5 and R3

 

[vishalrao]

Feeling a bit disappointed in the R7 purely from a technology standpoint - it's still great VFM though - which is why I ordered a 1700 yesterday

So looks like there is plenty room for improvement for Zen2 and it looks like R5 (4 core / 8 thread) might end up even better value for gamers than any R7 model.

If I've been reading/understanding correctly (on various articles/forum threads) the CPU is not a "native octa core" but has this thing called "CPU Complex" a.k.a. "CCX" which are interconnected via a "data fabric" that has *only* 22 GB/s link speed compared to some number of Intel's nearly 40 GB/s. Kind of like Intel's "MCM" (multi chip module) in the Core2Quad days.

So even with BIOS updates and fixes/improvements to OS/apps/games thread scheduling there won't likely be much improvement in heavy multithreaded performance. Probably lesser number of threads (like 4 or 8) could be optimised to stick to a single CCX to boost perf.

Interestingly, since I guess R5 upcoming CPUs will only have single CCX (native quad core) the multithreaded performance will be relatively better. And hopefully AMD can ramp up the clock speeds of R5 to match a Core i7 (4.5 - 5ghz) so it will be a real contentder.

For Zen2 I hope they do away with the CCX bullshit and make truly native octa core chips otherwise Intel has a good chance of staying ahead of the game.

 

[vishalrao]

FYI this post was very revealing: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-strictly-technical.2500572/page-9#post-38776310

Mainly the "1 CPU" and "Half CPU" results (yellow and green bars) are of interest.

 

[vishalrao]

CCX style layout is probably needed (feasible) due to the crossbar links going up exponentially n * (n-1) / 2 where n is the number of cores. It's probably feasible for 2 and 4 cores needing only 1 and 6 links respectively, but going to native 8 cores will need 28 links between them, perhaps native octa-cores will become a reality with 10nm or 7nm process.

With CCX and dual-quad-core layout you only need 13 links.

All this in very layman terms of course because that is at the level I can follow this stuff

 

[bssunilreddy]

Looks like R5 might have better value for Gamers though.

But the clocks need to be pushed further or ramped up.

 

[Arkon]

After going through a few more benchmarks, AMD seems to be doing fine at 1440p resolution. Since that is my target resolution, maybe Ryzen will be an upgrade for me after all!

 

[vishalrao]

Another customer lined up