SFF.Network AMD Ryzen announced, detailed and available for pre-order TODAY !

Ever since AMD first announced the work that would later be branded as Ryzen, the company has been strategically and masterfully orchestrating a narrative of dramatic change and disruption to the staid status quo of consumer and enthusiast-grade processors. Today, however, AMD has built up this performance into a crescendo, by revealing their top-performing Ryzen AM4 CPUs today.

Read more here.

 

[Soul_Est]

yeah, but you knew exactly what i was talking about without me having to type in 'extremely small form factor computer that's generally half decent' (which i've now had to type in!)

bit like a hoover - everyone knows that's actually a brand but they still call vacuum cleaners hoovers.

Despite the generalization, I do get your point. Hopefully AMD does make this possible along with an APU containing at least a 4c/4t Ryzen CPU and at least a 14 CU (512 Stream Processor) Polaris GPU.

 

[TheHig]

Holy hell.. Microcenter is doing 30 off motherboards and 20 off some GPUs with a preorder!

Must.Resist.Wallet.Drain...

I imagine the combo will stay on the mobos like always but Dayum!

 

[ChainedHope]

They might be able to do a Ryzen APU on a 4"x4" board, but it could take a while.

Be more interested in a Ryzen based mSTX or uSTX (micro-STX) board to be honest. If those ever came out I'd jump all over it in a heart beat if there was an option to use beefier psu's (1800X + MxM gpu) or even just an APU based 4c/8t or 6c/12t (not sure if 6c apus are a thing).

 

[ElinaNguyen]

AMD Ryzen 1800X and MSI Titanium

 

[HeroXLazer]

AMD Ryzen 1800X and MSI Titanium

Oh, you got the reviewer kit, didn't you? SMH JK

 

[Phuncz]

My Ryzen CPU will probably come in a cardboard box stuffed with recycled paper badly draped around it.
I wanted to get that MSI Titanium board, and then I saw the price (€ 330). You could help a lot if you could tell us more about your overclocking experiences with this. Is it very different than previous AMD or Intel CPUs ? Is the Vcore much lower than previous and current generations ? etc etc.

 

[TheHig]

Just say an article stating that Ryzen preorders are expected to top 1 million units!

This is the top of the stack too so I'm thinking the $150-250ish variants will fly off the shelves. Bang for buck looking strong.

 

[ElinaNguyen]

I tried to overclock 1800X but actually very difficult to achieve @4.2 with low-voltage.

 

[TheHig]

I tried to overclock 1800X but actually very difficult to achieve @4.2 with low-voltage.

Hmm. With all those cores and threads Ryzen may hit the wall like the Broadwell E stuff that doesn't OC too much without some water or exotic cooling solutions.

I seem to remember reading 4.1-4.3 on air at 1.3-1.4v for the 6950x.

 

[Kwirek]

Just say an article stating that Ryzen preorders are expected to top 1 million units!

This is the top of the stack too so I'm thinking the $150-250ish variants will fly off the shelves. Bang for buck looking strong.

Did they mention how many Intel sold at launch? Curious for something to compare those numbers to.

 

[TheHig]

Its more of a short blurb so It may be more fanning the hype train but still pretty cool to see preorders selling out and such.

Big Blue moves millions of units certainly for a long time now but I think Ryzen will hit hard on market share this year.

With either platform we should all get more for less this round which is awesome for consumers.

 

[HeroXLazer]

I'm just going to wait for Vega, as I 'm not going to buy something I'm not going to use yet.

 

[Vittra]

Is there concrete information regarding how many PCI-E lanes the CPU has, and how many the various chipsets have?

I'm not too concerned about CPU performance this time around - the leaks seem to all collaborate that performance will be what AMD is stating. What concerns me is the reliability of the chipset drivers/software, if ECC is supported, and the lanes and configurations.

 

[bean]

@Vittra AMD Ryzen has 24 PCI-E lanes (http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-official-launch/). The split for the x370 chipset 16x for graphics, 4x for the chipset, and 4x for nvme. What will be interesting to see is if x300 chipset changes that around as the chipset doesn't do much.

 

[|||]

Is there concrete information regarding how many PCI-E lanes the CPU has, and how many the various chipsets have?

As @bean pointed out there are 24 PCI-e 3.0 lanes from the processor. 16 lanes for the GPU, 4 lanes to the chipset, and 4 lanes for either an M.2, split between and M.2 and SATA, or split between SATA and general purpose use. There are also 4 USB 3.1 Gen 1 (formerly 3.0) ports directly from the processor.

As for the chipset, you get (what a lot of people miss) either 4 general purpose PCI-e 3.0 lanes or 2 SATA Express ports, 8, 6, or 4 PCI-e 2.0 lanes, 4 or 2 SATA III ports, and a combination of USB depending on the chipset.

I am not sure the Dual PCI-e Slots for X300 in the chart above is accurate. I'm also curious about how the RAID is handled.

What will be interesting to see is if x300 chipset changes that around as the chipset doesn't do much.

By the above chart, I had assumed the X300 would be very minimal, simply flowing the 4 PCI-e 3.0 lanes through, possibly providing a SATA alternative. Motherboard manufactures could then route a lane to gigabit ethernet, a WiFi card, and have USB and/or SATA bridges on the other two lanes.

However, Guru3D showed a chart with I/O for the X300 that sourced ComputerBase, but I am highly skeptical of it: it has "0" for the number of PCI-e lanes on X370, B350, and A320.

I'm not too concerned about CPU performance this time around - the leaks seem to all collaborate that performance will be what AMD is stating. What concerns me is the reliability of the chipset drivers/software, if ECC is supported, and the lanes and configurations.

For ECC, you will probably have to wait for the "Pro" processors. I am not aware of any reason the new chipsets will or won't support it...they're supposed to be pretty universal, but they haven't been talked about much by AMD yet. Supposedly the BIOS' are still being refined, so the good news is that getting better performance from this new platform may simply be a BIOS flash down the road.

 

[BirdofPrey]

So it looks like some benchmarks have started to trickle out with the embargo lifted.

It's about what I expected. They did a good job closing the performance gap, but their cores are still a bit weaker than Intel, so they are close to the performance of Intel chips in highly threaded workloads due to the higher core count, but suffer at less threaded workloads, so all the enthusiast gamers are going to be disappointed.

 

[alexep7]

hearing rumours about unexpectedly high power consumption...

 

[Phuncz]

While no home run in every benchmark, it's still interesting to see it lead immensely in others, especially when compared to the price equivalents. I am curious if the performance gaps in some areas will be closed if software manufacturers will adapt to the new technologies.

Oh yeah, how about those power consumption numbers ? Impressive.

hearing rumours about unexpectedly high power consumption...

Not according to reviews: https://tweakers.net/reviews/5239/5...rug-in-de-race-opgenomen-vermogen-en-ipc.html

 

[TheHig]

To achieve some parity with Intel's current offerings is huge. Make no mistake there.

Pure gaming users may still choose intel for more fps from the clocks you can squeeze out of Kaby maybe... However Ryzen looks like it is shaping up to be strong across various use cases early on. It's an ' all arounder' that seems to deliver exceptional value. I for one am all about that.

 

[3lfk1ng]

To me the R7's are like the Volkswagen GTI of processors. They are the absolutely best choice for an 'all arounder' but may not be the best at everything they do. That's good enough for me.

I suspect that the R7 suffers in some places due to a lack of bios/firmware maturity. There are some benchmarks where the end result is totally unexpected (far lower than other 8-core variants from Intel). I know that Intel does a terrific job working with hardware/software vendors on optimizations so perhaps we will see another case of AMD's Fine Wine technology over the next few years. A lot of the reviewers were upset at the lack of time that they had to make the review and vowed to continue testing in a later, "part II" review.

- AMD was quick to disclose that they are working with board partners on BIOS' optimizations to improve memory speeds.
- Lack of support for higher memory speeds was brought up several times in various reviews.
- For some really strange reason, pairing Ryzen with Nvidia didn't do well in benchmarks. Pairing Ryzen with AMD GPU's was non-issue.
- A lot of things performed better with SMT disabled.
- The XFR feature seems like a sad joke at this point. I wonder if this will get scrapped altogether.

At any rate, AMD has done exactly what they set out to do.
- They have released a processor that is competitive.
- They have produced a product at a price that Intel cannot beat.
- 8 cores for the masses. The new Unity and Lumberyard are built to handle all the HP you can throw at them, will be interesting to see how this will help gamers in the long haul.

In the end, I think we were able to conclude the following
If you're a gamer and games are ultimately all you care about, a 7700k might still the best option since the R5/R3s are effectively the same thing with disabled/failed cores (I could be wrong but I wouldn't expect high overclocks from them). However, when gaming at higher resolutions (especially VR) the benchmarks started to shift towards the R7s benefit (still slower than a decently overclocked 7700k though).

If you're a content creator+gamer+streamer, the 1700/x/1800x is perfect.

If you're a SFF enthusiast looking to shove 8-cores into a shoebox, the highest total system power consumption I as able to find was reported at roughly 250watts (total system power consumption being measured at the outlet).

I am going to get an 1800X and as AMD continues to mature this platform, I will likely replace it in 2-4 years since the AM4 platform promotes a 4-year lifecycle.

Welcome back AMD and hello to affordable computer prices all around!