It's going to be epic. Really can't wait tbh. Hoping that entry level Ryzen quad core systems can be chucked together with a decent GPU for under £400 total (laughing at the £697 I3/1050 rig in CPC this month) and we can get more PC gamers aboard
It's not a benchmark but i found this video from PCPer really interesting. It's a talk about Zen architecture between David Kanter, Josh Walrath, and Ryan Shrout.
Hahahah and I had my CPU cooler hooked up to aluminium ducting that I fed out the window. My suspicion is that the initial launch will be very positive for AMD but won't have as big an effect on Intel customers as some expect. For example, having just shelled out on an X99 system I'm keen to see just how much I'd have saved or lost by going for Ryzen instead. CPU prices are one thing, but we have no indication on the cost of AM4 motherboards, especially the high-end ones that are required for overclocking. I ended up splashing out on a very good motherboard for £237 (after that experience with ebuyer), and together with the rest of my components I'm a little over £710. I'm eagerly anticipating the first review of Ryzen so that we can get a thumb on that elusive single threaded performance.
Have you not been reading the forums? the boards are cheap, with Asus's flagship Crosshair coming in at $209. The Prime is $150 and they (Asus) are making boards that overclock for as low as $69. The Crosshair has a 8 pin and 4 pin, so it is looking like it will be similar in phases to the last Crosshair, 8+2+2 with the last two being extra for heavy ram overclocking. Buying X99 now was pretty crazy tbh. I'm not having a go, but I would have at least waited to see how Zen was. Even if just to see how it impacted Intel's super high prices. Intel boards have always cost far more than the AMD equivalent. Look at the RIVE pricing for example when compared to the Crosshair Formula FZ, it was double. Which leads me to believe that Intel charge highly for their chipsets and their socket licensing. I highly suspect you could have saved £100 and got a top end board and got two extra cores for your cash. Plus let's be honest if it really is all it's cracked up to be X99 boards and CPUs are going to nose dive in the second hand market. Thankfully I have had my 5820k since about 6 weeks after it launched so I really couldn't care any more. It isn't for sale and probably never will be now. And just to compound my hoarding I recently stuck an upgrade into my X79 rig that I have used ever since that cost me £100. If Ryzen is absolutely amazing and as good as touted then I may replace the venerable hardware in my silver rig (the one with all of the water cooling gear). We shall see, but tbh I doubt it. I quite fancy a PS4 Pro now. https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gp..._x370_and_b350_motherboards_have_now_leaked/1 ^Asus boards. Well, three of them.
Yeah I saw these "leaked" prices and will take them with a pretty hefty pinch of salt. When I say indication of cost, I mean actual retail prices for a complete setup. Even the CPUs themselves might be priced quite differently from what we've seen leaked so far, which is why I'm waiting with baited breath. And I don't think buying X99 now was crazy at all - buying any hardware at any time could be considered "crazy" on the basis that an update is just around the corner, so that's no reason not to pull the trigger. I'm very likely going to have spent more than I would have on a Ryzen setup, but that doesn't phase me at all because I'm reaping the benefits of my updated system now rather than having to wait another four (or more) weeks for AMD. And things like drivers/OS compatibility are simply not an issue for me. If I had to go to Windows 10 for AMD, it would be a deal-breaker.
Compared to a grand for the 6900k. The CPU to have is looking like the 1700. Which costs way less, probably less than you paid for your 5820k depending on where you got it. Plus there will be gouging going on at launch I have absolutely no doubt. I have seen two other places in the EU that have listed them and they cost less than that. And yeah, I still think it was pretty crazy to pay Intel prices when they have had absolutely no competition for years and they know it. Especially when it was mere weeks away from Ryzen's launch. Not quite as crazy as buying an I3k atm mind, but still yeah I would personally have waited. That said a couple of things do spring to mind. Firstly you probably won't need any more speed/power/cores for a long while (that's my mindset on my 5820k which tbh I'd never have bought if I could have gotten a spare X79 board for my 3970x) and it's still a very healthy upgrade on what you had before. But you did pay Intel Tax on it, and I am sure that AMD will do a hex core CPU that performs around the same for a lot less money. Remember, for years and years AMD have been desperately trying to sell Vishera for peanuts. Charging £500 even for a CPU must feel awesome to them. I think that is why they can hammer Intel's prices and still make a decent living.
IMO the best thing to do at this stage is wait and see, because it's all essentially speculation even with pre-order prices and it's not worth circling the drain with ifs and buts. We still lack meaningful, in-depth performance analyses of the Ryzen chips and that's what will make or break the launch. And I wouldn't say I paid Intel price for my 5820K; I made a point of getting it as cheap as possible and ended up paying £335 for a new retail boxed chip, considerably cheaper than any of the big etailers which are all nearer £400. I could have scored a decent second hand system on the forum for £525 all in but I chose not to, and I have no regrets (except for the stupid ebuyer hiccup...but let's not talk about that).
You should be happy with your X99 platform, as it looks like it will be marginally faster than Ryzen. You're also getting a tried and tested platform with good overclocking potential. Ryzen may well offer similar performance, but we don't know how much at this stage - and overclocking performance in particular is completely unknown. (but I can't imagine it'll be anything like as good as Intel) Having said that, I'm patiently waiting for Ryzen - the Ryzen 1700 looks tasty... hopefully not too expensive. I particularly like the idea of having a 4+ core CPU with X99 performance on a much cheaper platform. If only you could get a 6+ core CPU on the Intel Z270 motherboards! Maybe Intel will be forced to release one - we will see.
They will probably have to release one in the next release of their 3% upgrade cycle. Also, there are new benchmark leaks... https://www.overclock3d.net/news/cpu_mainboard/amd_ryzen_3dmark_physic_score_leaks/1
I expect the Crosshair to cost £180-£210. They are not "cheap" and never were.. I paid £170 for my CHVFZ IIRC. However, the new one is feature laden and comes with an OP AMP and DAC on the sound side of things, as well as what is looking like Nichicon gold caps. I'm familiar with those, as I have a couple of upgrade a project amp with and they are not cheap. However, when I bought mine it was comparable feature wise to the Rampage. And the Rampage cost twice as much. Which particular board did you end up getting? I would hazard a guess and say that it probably has quite a steep "Intel tax" on it because Intel are known for charging a lot for their chipsets and there is a licensing fee you need to pay per socket. That is why Nvidia no longer make chipsets and boards because they got into a row with Intel and Intel said "FU, no more sockets for you". But if the top end board costs £209 (even if it's euro for quid) then that is less than you paid for your board, which at £230 odd won't be very high end. I bought a very high end board for my 3970x (MSI BB XP II) and it cost me nearly £300. Still a good £50 less than the Rampage, mind. I guess the test will be seeing exactly what Ryzen offers at £335 then really. We had those. Kaap reckons they are bogus because to calculate the single core performance they have literally divided the overall score by the core count. Which isn't the best way of doing things BUT is at least a rough guide (albeit very rough). All AMD need to do is come over on their 40-45% claim over Vishera. By the time you hum and har and add up all of the 3-5% gains Intel have made you come right out around Broadwell E. No he won't. Not if the claims and benchmarks we have seen are true. 8 core 16 thread Ryzen is pretty much neck and neck with 6900k 8c 16t Broadwell. That means it is quite a chunk faster than a 6c 12t Haswell. You have two extra cores and two extra threads that are slightly faster clock per clock, if the AMD benchmark was "apples for apples".
Apols for DP, but interesting reading... OK, so Kaap says that apparently the scores are bogus because to calculate the single core score they have merely divided the overall score by the number of cores. TBH in a perfect world that would actually be a half reasonable way of calculating a CPU's power and allowing you to basically put it in a list and compare it with others. 3DMARK Firestrike is a benchmark, and was designed to scale with hardware no matter how much you add. So personally I don't think it was a terrible thing to do, and here is why. OK, so I have a Ivybridge 8 core 16 thread Xeon. It is a chopped down version of the retail 2680 V2. Mine has 8 cores as opposed to 10 though, because it's an ES (Engineering Sample). It does have the 20mb cache, though. OK so I decided to see if I could replicate my CPU's core score in Firestrike, by deliberately hobbling it (and thus making it act like a lower end CPU) and here is what I found. Firstly I ran the CPU with four cores enabled and the rest disabled. I disabled any background apps etc. So here is Firestrike with 4c 8t. OK, so our Physics score is 8320. So, using the method used here let's divide that by the core count of 4. 8320 / 4 = 2080. Note that I ran HWMON and monitored the clock speeds closely. Note that the CPU hit a maximum of 3300mhz. OK, so for the next test I ran the CPU as a 6 core 12 thread. The reason I used 4 and 6 cores in the test is because they both boost to the same speed on my CPU. Here is how the CPU fared (physics score) with 6c 12t. Let's ignore the overall score and focus instead on the physics score, which is 11,652. Let us then divide that number by 6 (because we have 6 cores active.) The score is 1942. So, overall we have a four core score of 8320 that divides down to 2080 and a 6 core score of 11,652 that divides down to 1942. That's pretty damn close tbh and IMO well within a margin of error. I could also be scoring higher per core on the 4 core arrangement because it has extra cache, now that there are less cores. Also, if we look back at the benchmark posted today. OK so concentrate on the 5960x single core result. 2018 @ 3ghz. My CPU is very very close in layout and cores etc as the 5960x but obviously mine is Ivybridge, not Haswell. So I should be within 10% of the 5960x. If these tests and results are bogus then somebody went to an awful lot of trouble making them break down quite well.
All this speculation is fun and games, but I'm going to wait for Ryzen to actually launch and see what the price, performance and availability is actually like. There are just too many ifs and buts at the moment. Normally I wouldn't be this sceptical but I've been burned by AMD promising the earth in the past... as far as I'm concerned, I'll be delighted if Ryzen is a success, but AMD don't have much credit in the bank with me when it comes to pre-launch hype. Obviously there's a massive temptation to seize upon the scraps of information that are out there and start extrapolating and hypothesising, but let's face it, the PC industry is infamous for the amount of FUD that surrounds any big launch, and Ryzen is probably the most anticipated new product line for years. I'll sit it out for the next three weeks and we'll see what happens at launch
It'll be interesting to see what the availability is upon launch and in the following weeks. I'm aiming to wait at least a week or two after launch (mostly due to finances) before I buy into Ryzen. I look forward to reading and digesting all of the reviews online. Intel managed to supply good stock of the i7 7700k after launch, it seemed to stay "in stock" everywhere. Although that may have been as a result of a complete lack of interest by the market
I seem to recall Skylake (and in particular the 6600K) being really limited in availability just after launch, which resulted in well-known etailers raising their prices by 20-25% until stock became more widely available. If the same thing happens with Ryzen then that'll be terrible news for customers and for AMD themselves, so I really hope AMD are going to be able to get product out in sufficient quantities and we don't see another paper launch.
I don't think the price helped. Plus it was kind of close to Ryzen and rumours had already began to circulate by then. CPUs do not seem to be the disposable yearly toy tbh. I know loads of people who are still on X58 waiting for something truly new and at the right price. And if they are not on X58 they are usually sitting on Sandy... Intel have not exactly really pushed CPU boundaries since Sandy. What was the point? AMD were miles behind and they have had their own stage and audience ever since. BJ - yeah exactly. I love the fun and games leading up to a launch. Always great fun to speculate When I went from my AMD 8320 @ 4.9ghz to a 3970x at the same speed I saw a massive difference. Plus I also bagged a lot of new features too (PCIE 3 etc, yeah you could hack run it on Sandy E...). I think that is what people are waiting for really. Not just these tiny upgrades that require a new board and possibly RAM etc. It's become ridiculous.
Wait for launch is my oppinion. £600 is about where I expected it to be. And the only way the 1700 is a good buy is if it can match the high cpu. Let's be honest AMD are not doubling the top end cpu for no reason. There must be something that we are not aware off. Either the cpus cannot all hit 4ghz which is what I feel it is. Or they are over charging greatly at the top end
It's always diminishing returns as you go up the product stack But you also have to consider the pricing of the competition - if you're selling something that's just as good as your rival's product but only costs 10% as much (hypothetical example here) then people are going to look at the two products and ask "What's wrong with the cheap one?" It's about value and perceived value... For that reason I'd surprised if AMD undercut Intel by too much - and that's without even considering AMD's cashflow situation and finances in general. The idea that AMD can afford to sell Ryzen super cheap to grab market share is a bit flawed, imo, as they have to hit profit margins or they'll run out of money.
