Ryzen Gets Real: AMD Launches Three Ryzen 7 CPUs: Eight Cores, 16 Threads Starting At $329
It would be an understatement to say it’s been a while since AMD has been competitive in the market for high-end, enthusiast-grade PC processors.
For a few years now, the company’s budget-priced "APU" chips have delivered impressive graphics performance and good-enough CPU performance for mainstream computing. (APU is AMD's term, for "accelerated processing unit," for its chips that combine CPU and graphics functions.) But going back before the AMD FX-8150 in 2011, no high-end AMD chip has been all that competitive, in a broad sense, with any Intel Core i7, let alone Core i7 enthusiast-class chips such as the $1,000-plus Intel Core i7-6900K.
But that has the potential to change in a big way, and very soon.
Enter, Ryzen
AMD’s long-anticipated, re-engineered chips based on its "Zen" architecture, with a promised increase in performance per clock of “at least 40 percent,” are finally getting real. The first group of them is launching in the form of three new Ryzen 7 processors shipping on March 2, 2017, with pre-orders starting today, February 22.
The initial processors will be the Ryzen 7 1700, the Ryzen 7 1700X, and the flagship, the Ryzen 7 1800X. They were unveiled at a launch event in San Francisco that Computer Shopper attended the day before.
The Ryzen 7 1700 and Ryzen 7 1700X will sell for $329 and $399, respectively. But in terms of performance for dollar, the flagship $499 Ryzen 7 1800X appears to be the most impressive of the initial bunch.
We saw several demos and had hands-on experience with systems based on this chip at the launch event, and they showed AMD's new top-end 1800X pulling mostly even with the Intel Core i7-6900K on single-threaded tests, and as much as 9 percent ahead on some benchmarks. Now, bear in mind: That $499 price for the Ryzen 7 1800X is more than 50 percent lower than Intel’s current pricing on the Core i7-6900K. All of AMD's Ryzen chips are built on a 14nm process node, similar to the "14nm plus" that Intel's current-generation chips are built upon.
AMD seems poised to reshuffle things in the market for high-end consumer desktops, but chips like the Core i7-6900K (and its pricey X99-chipset platform) and the Ryzen 7 1800X are really meant for serious performance hounds and professional content creators. What about shoppers who want to spend a little less and are looking for a chip that can compete with the top-end processor in Intel's line for mainstream buyers, the 7th-Generation/"Kaby Lake" Intel Core i7-7700K?
For that, let’s take a deeper look at the three new Ryzen 7 chips and what they offer in terms of clock speeds and core/thread counts.
Ryzen 7: The Details
Impressively, all three of these new chips will feature eight cores and 16 threads. (Note also that all three of these initial Ryzen 7 chips are CPU-only, with no onboard graphics; they'll need to be paired with a separate video card.) That core/thread count matches what Intel offers in the $1,000 range with its chips on the X99 platform. The Core i7-7700K, in contrast, which was selling for around $349 at this writing, has just four physical cores and the ability to tackle up to eight simultaneous threads via Intel's Hyper-threading tech.
That seems to give AMD a pretty big leg up in terms of available cores and threads. But note that the $329 Ryzen 7 1700 that's designed to compete with the Core i7-7700K has a lower base clock speed (3GHz), compared to the 4.2GHz base of that Core i7 chip. And we don't yet know for sure how well AMD's new silicon will stack up against Intel's latest architecture when it comes to tasks that aren't heavily threaded to take advantage of several CPU cores.
AMD, in theory, seems to be making up a lot of ground when it comes to instructions per clock (IPC), putting its performance per clock speed closer to what Intel delivers. AMD set the goal going into the Zen platform of increasing that IPC number by 40 percent compared to previous-generation AMD FX parts. But the company says it has gone beyond that, to achieve a 52 percent IPC increase.
So says the claim. If that pans out in testing, that's certainly a huge jump, and it should make AMD's new chips far more competitive when running software that can't take full advantage of all available threads. (Single-thread performance was always a bugbear for the FX chips.) But it should be noted that AMD's ability to achieve such a huge boost in this area is due, in large part, to the fact that the IPC performance of its previous-generation processors was severely lacking in comparison to Intel. This is definitely a needed boost. We'll have to wait until we run our own benchmarks to see how close it gets them to Intel's Kaby Lake and other recent-gen chips.
Ryzen 7: Boards & Builds
Of course, opting for one of these processors will also mean you’ll need a new motherboard with AMD's new AM4 socket. AMD claims that more than 80 boards will be available at launch, with more to come, from every major motherboard vendor. You can see a few of Gigabyte's Ryzen motherboards in the image below...
If you want to overclock your Ryzen chip, you'll have to opt for a board based on either the B350 chipset, or the top-end X370 chipset. AMD says that boards based on the X370 chipset will be priced in line with Intel's Z270-based boards, which tend to be the priciest in a given board maker's stack. But the main difference between B350 and X370 chipsets is the latter's support for multiple-graphics-card setups. So, if you plan on sticking with a single video card in a Ryzen system you are building or upgrading, you can opt for a B350 board. An AMD representative told us you should see some of those boards available in the early days after the Ryzen 7 chips launch at prices as low as $110. And Asus in particular seems to be bettering that claim. As we were wrapping up this story, the company announced pricing and details on their initial Ryzen boards, including a B350 model with an MSRP of just $89.
If you aren’t the PC-builder type, there will be no shortage of pre-built and custom systems on the market in the coming weeks, as well. AMD’s president and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, stated at AMD’s Ryzen press event that every major PC OEM will have a Ryzen 7-based gaming tower available in next few months. Also, 19 boutique-PC builders will be offering AMD Ryzen-based systems at launch, with more than 200 coming online in the next few months. (You can see a couple of Ryzen-branded systems from Cybertron PC in the image above.)
As for the cooling angle on these chips, AMD will offer its Ryzen CPUs with new heat sinks and coolers, including the new top-end Wraith Spire. The Spire is based on the previous-generation AMD Wraith Cooler, but with a slick-looking, slim RGB LED ring that runs around the perimeter of the fan. It's not yet clear which of AMD's new CPUs will ship with the Wraith Spire, or how much more the chips boxed with the cooler will cost versus the processors that ship without it.
Ryzen 7: (Much) More to Come
Of course, we will have to wait until these initial Ryzen chips pass through the gauntlet of our own benchmark suite to render a final verdict. But the details and hands-on demos we’ve seen so far look very promising. AMD looks poised to compete with Intel at the CPU high end in a way that it hasn’t, really, since Intel launched the first “Nehalem” Core-branded CPUs almost a decade ago in 2008.
And this is just the impending AMD shakeup at the high end. If spending more than $300 on a processor just doesn’t fit in your computing budget, keep paying attention to this space. While AMD would not confirm anything at this point, we'd expect down-the-stack Ryzens to emerge before long, too. Remember, the Ryzen 7 line is being matched up directly against Intel’s Core i7 chips, which are its elite offerings. We would not be surprised at all to see separate lines aimed at Intel’s lesser Core i5 and i3 offerings, as well, before long.
If you’re an enthusiast bound by a tight budget, AMD’s future chips might offer some additional appeal. The chip maker has committed to making every Ryzen processor unlocked for overclocking. On the Intel side of the fence, the only (relatively) mainstream overclockable chip on offer from Intel is the Core i3-7350K that we recently tested. And, at $180, that chip is pricey enough that we noted that many buyers would be better off spending about $50 more on a Core i5 with twice the number of physical cores.
On the mobile front, AMD APU (that is, combined CPU/GPU) chips based on Zen architecture are expected to arrive sometime in the second half of 2017. This will be a tougher segment for AMD to crack, as power efficiency, of course, matters more when you're running a CPU in a slim system with little room for cooling or a big battery. But the desktop side of things, with this initial launch, looks bright. Stay tuned for full reviews of Ryzen gear in the coming days.
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