AMD Demonstrates Ryzen Performance At New Horizon Event, 95W TDP Confirmed

[Tom Griffin]

In the days waiting for dBASE IV; kinda like Zen we called it "Vapor Ware"; show me Silcon and quit giving me a teaser.

 

[JamesSneed]

In the days waiting for dBASE IV; kinda like Zen we called it "Vapor Ware"; show me Silcon and quit giving me a teaser.

Really dBASE IV? You have a good memory for someone your age. Yes I recall it too.

I am wondering if Intel will respond with an escalated Skylake-x timetable or just let AMD have is day.

 

[IndignantSkeptic]

The CPU makers have now taken so long to make faster processors that programmers have gotten too tired of waiting, and so basically don't use CPUs anymore; they use GPUs instead. There is not much purpose in talking about CPU performance now unless a CPU can make GPUs obsolete. Have you not noticed that changing the CPU, in a machine that uses a GPU, has negligible effect on performance?

 

[neblogai]

As much as this does look promising, until real world tests are performed we know actually very little.

I like the idea of a 8 core CPU, especially if it does compete with intel (that will drive prices down).
My problem is that AMD is showing very little (if you have a winner, no point in doing so). I think there might still be a few issues that they are trying to solve.

One good question will be, how well does it OC?
Another, What Price?
Another, How hot does it run when OCed?
Another, Will the instruction set work well with all OSes? (more importantly, older windows than 10).
Another, Will it even work with older Windows systems?
Another, How good will the chip be in keeping frame consistency stable?

So, still a lot of questions .

I approve AMD giving these teasers. Bits of good information help to create hype, ask questions, speculate and argue- and that is free publicity. AMD has no budget to run adds all over the world. And this type of publicity works on itself, and reaches target population.

Hype in numbers: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/55476/amds-zen-cpu-killing-intel-google-searches/index.html

 

[Brian_R170]

Is there any significant difference between Skylake and Broadwell architecture performance? The 6900K is Broadwell-E, and I assume the Skylake-E parts aren't far away, although probably not soon enough to launch at the same time as Ryzen.

 

[larkspur]

Neat. My 2600K @ 4.6 Ghz took 3x longer to render the image.

Yeah, it was nice of them to give us the opportunity to compare our own systems. My i7-980x @ 4.0ghz took twice as long. I'm very excited for AMD! Might finally get around to upgrading if the price is right and the reviews show consistent performance. Cheers!

 

[firefoxx04]

I hope they retain ECC support and VT-d (or whatever its called on AMD systems). There are plenty of people out there buying AMD simply because its the cheapest way to get ECC and VT-d in the home without buying server grade hardware.

Intel basically offers no ecc support outside of xeon and they used to not allow vt-d until the haswell refresh (4790k for example). Im not sure what they did with 6000 series.

 

[computerguy72]

If indeed AMD Zen is on par with the 6900K or even close to it this would be perfect timing for them. Since Kaby Lake provides 0% IPC improvement AMD should have some time to grab some marketshare. Heck as an Intel fan I might even go AMD this time around if it pans out as it's incredibly annoying Intel took us for granted.

 

[none12345]

For giggles i ran their blender benchmark on my phenom ii 720 clocked at 3.4ghz and it took about 5.5 minutes to complete. So thats a 3 core 3 thread vs 8 core 16 thread, counting by threads that makes it about twice as fast. However im sure you arent getting anywhere near perfect scaling, so that means the cores are probably about 2.5 times as fast w/o SMT.

I dont have a bulldozer to test.

That seems good enough to me, i want more cores, quad core isnt good enough and 1100 is too much, so please please amd have an 8 core at a great price, and shut up and take my money. Even a 6 core at a great price would be good enough for me. A quad core tho im not interested at all in.

 

[alidan]

Here is my understanding of the cpu

1) they put 8 cores with 16 threads on it
2) it can match or surpass intel's 8 core
3) based on gameplay they showed, its not a case where the threading scales just that damn good
4) This was the bare minimum we can expect from zen at launch

and from reading about the cores themselves, just note my understanding is basic here, they have less fpu throughput than intel does. This saves die space, as zen is about 160mm^2 if their half the size of 8350 is real. What this also does is allows them to put out a VERY powerful cpu using less resources because those higher fpu workloads are not used by most people. The most recent thing I heard, so no real veracity to it other than hear say is if they compared zen against intel when intel was using a higher fpu to do the same thing, it would have been 40-50% faster.

It also seems like it will only have dual channel memory apposed to quad channel

However, and here comes a big thing, amd has been targeting sweet spots with their products, or at least trying to for a while, as they were losing out going all out all the time, the 480 is an example of this, a gpu in the top of the price range of what most people would pay. This is likely what they did what the ryzen too.

But there is one more interesting aspect too. This wasn't a server event, this wasn't an enterprise event, this was one that focused on consumers and gamers, why would as someone else said, and 800$ cpu appeal to a gamer when intel's 150-200$ i3/i5 cpu is almost preferable to use in games because an i7 isn't that large a benefit for the price if at all?

The last thing they showed interested me, the 6700 vs ryzen vs 6900

The 6700 is about 340$
ryzen was not confirmed for price
and the 6900 is 1100$

If amd was putting out bare minimum ryzen for well over 500$, why compare it to a 340$ cpu? who the hell would go "I was going to get intel's 4 core i7, but for only 800$ i get amds 8 core so that is better" If anything, comparing it to intel's 6 core would have been the better route.

Amd made a point many times to tell you 'this is the bare minimum for 8 core ryzen' so that means there will be more than one sku. What I read this as is, at minimum this is the performance you are getting, and this is how much it will cost.

I mean an event/investor thing before told them 'we are looking to satisfy 80% of our clients workloads' which clearly tells me that they skimped, but this also lowered the cost, and raised the yields due to chip size. there are numbers floating around telling us there will be a 4 core 8 thread, a 6 core 12 thread below and an 8 core 16 thread above the bare bones zen, they priced them at 150, 250, 350, and 500 respectively. How much you can count on this to be real is up in the air entirely, but that last demo where they showed the 6700 ryzen and 6900 makes me believe the 350 price point a bit more.

 

[fry178]

@IndignantSkeptic
so take a 1080 and run it on a amd athlon X2 vs an i7-6700, then tell me there is no difference.

unless you're gaming at UHD/4K res and/or multi monitor gaming (always gpu limited), the cpu WILL have an impact,
and will be bottlenecking any multi-gpu systems or when running games below 1080p.

i can even see a difference (not small) when comparing my 3770k to a 6900k running the same gpu (1070) at 1080p/1440p.
not saying i will get a 6900, but the difference is enough that i will aim for the 8/16 zen...

@firefoxx04
as i have read up a little on ecc vs non ecc (nuilding a new rig next year), dont waste your money.

getting quality ram (kingston seems to be the best, chip wise) would almost get the same kind of reliability as ECC ram from other brands.
to quote: hard errors and multi-bit errors dwarf single bit errors in a datacenter or home environment by a massive margin, either of which defeat ECC memory.

so unless you're running mission critical stuff or never shutdown your computer, ECC ram will not really make a difference.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/

 

[alextheblue]

@IndignantSkeptic
so take a 1080 and run it on a amd athlon X2 vs an i7-6700, then tell me there is no difference.

unless you're gaming at UHD/4K res and/or multi monitor gaming (always gpu limited), the cpu WILL have an impact,
and will be bottlenecking any multi-gpu systems or when running games below 1080p.

This is true, but even at 4K res, the CPU horsepower required is always rising, assuming you've actually got the GPU horsepower to make 4K playable in the first place. Even in a case where the average framerate between two processors is within a couple FPS, that doesn't mean your experience will be as smooth... some people still forget FPS bars don't tell the whole story. The bottom line is that the more you spend on a GPU, the faster your CPU needs to be to feed it, at least up to a point (which is influenced by your GPU choice).

 

[alidan]

@IndignantSkeptic
so take a 1080 and run it on a amd athlon X2 vs an i7-6700, then tell me there is no difference.

unless you're gaming at UHD/4K res and/or multi monitor gaming (always gpu limited), the cpu WILL have an impact,
and will be bottlenecking any multi-gpu systems or when running games below 1080p.

This is true, but even at 4K res, the CPU horsepower required is always rising, assuming you've actually got the GPU horsepower to make 4K playable in the first place. Even in a case where the average framerate between two processors is within a couple FPS, that doesn't mean your experience will be as smooth... some people still forget FPS bars don't tell the whole story. The bottom line is that the more you spend on a GPU, the faster your CPU needs to be to feed it, at least up to a point (which is influenced by your GPU choice).

I find it how good of a cpu you need to heavily fluctuate depending on how loaded you want to make the graphics effects.
I'm honestly hoping everyone pushes 4k hard, consoles and pc just so 1080p 60/144 lasts a long time.
I see next to no benefit to going to 4k opposed to higher fps.
then god knows every dev the moment they are given a new effect method, how ever large the performance hit be damned they will abuse the crap out of it on a console, stagnating graphics even more.

 

[fry178]

@alextheblue
nope.
google some gpu reviews that include cpu "load".
above 1440p and the game will perform in the same fps bracket.
and when "i'm" running at an avg of 60 or 80fps, the min fps is most likely not gonna drop below 40, and even if,
it would be because of higher IQ settings (in game) that require more gpu power rather than because of a slower cpu.

so unless you pick a game that is horribly coded and/or known to be cpu limited, or multi gpu set ups (all exceptions to the rule),
almost all games from 2015 and newer running at above 1440p, will NOT get higher avg-fps on a 1000$ intel vs a 200$ amd.

quite the opposite. a 480 running gears of war in 4K will perform slightly better on the amd...
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gears_of_war_4_pc_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,8.html

 

[Bloob]

@alidan if I understood the benchmarks correctly, Ryzen beat 6900K in both integer and floating point calculations

 

[brumsky]

The Blender test uses AVX2, this means the 6900k down clocks to 3.1GHz and does not turbo at all! The test shows a 6900k @ 3.1GHz against an AMD Ryzen @ 3.4GHz - we don't know if AMD has to down clock like the intel chip does.

 

[brumsky]

The Blender test uses AVX2, this means the 6900k down clocks to 3.1GHz and does not turbo at all! The test shows a 6900k @ 3.1GHz against an AMD Ryzen @ 3.4GHz - we don't know if AMD has to down clock like the intel chip does.

 

[Plumboby]

if AMD keep there promise i be keen to try it out as been an intel fan for so so long but if amd is matching intel now for half the price reliable i be testing wont go back to intel unless they can stun the market they be holding for the past decade since the i series if AMD dont be so ginger & give us some real benchmark real world testing be intrested to see

 

[rishab2000]

Is there only one CPU thats coming ? I was expecting there to be a CPU that competes with the I5 6500 or so at at the same price range or even better performance at the same price of I5 6500

 

[jasonf2]

This reminds me a lot of the "core" period prior to the 920 series release. If AMD can come in swinging with something akin to the 64bit FX with strong pricing position Intel will be forced to come out with something that gets them off of the dead center +10% annual gains. What that is going to be though is anyone's guess. AMD is not Intel's only or biggest issue here though. ARM integration into Windows 10 with built in emulation is almost here. Their X86 license embargo will have little or no control over the PC market in the very near future. Every major manufacturer has access to ARM license and fab less manufacturing firms. Intel itself will need some magical 40% performance increase chip here in the very near future to secure dominance. If it cannot hold its lead in that area it cannot hold its price. Without intel's strong margins we will be seeing a very different PC landscape in the coming years.

 

[fry178]

@rishab2000

there should be a 4C/8T, a 6C/12T cpu, and the 8C/16T (models w different clocks)

 

[rishab2000]

@fry178 where do you think the price range for the 4C/8T remain and the Mobos pricing ?

 

[The_Countess666]

others have already confirmed the 6900k's numbers for blender and it does indeed use it's all core boost of 3.5hz during the whole test. (3.7 is single core boost, with turbo 2.0, with turbo 3.0 it can go to 4.0ghz)

so it was a 3.4ghz zen vs a 3.5ghz intel and they were equal.

 

[rishab2000]

anyone have an idea of the pricing of the CPUs ? and what is an SoC ? I read that the Ryzen is an SoC and not a CPu from PCWORLD.com

 

[Aelf]

I've been thinking of a new system based on i5-6600 but this Ryzen CPU got me wondering if I should wait. What came to my mind is 1) Ryzen might be a better solution price-wise, and 2) due to competition, Intel might drop their prices. Then again, new CPUs will require new mobos and developing and them might take a while, so all in all I have no idea if it's worth waiting.