Whats the catch on the new AMD Ryzen CPUs?

[Rengar_hunter]

Hi. I know that they are same power as the best Intel CPUs but they are 50% cheaper?? I am just wondering is there any catch, drawback on this new AMD Ryzen??

 

[geofelt]

The good is that they have more cores, 8 with 16 threads.
That is very good for multithreaded apps that can utilize all the threads.
For gaming, which uses only a few fast cores, not so good since the individual thread performance is less.
Then, even the cheapest ryzen 1700 costs as much as a I7-7700K

For gaming today best to stick with Intel,
For production, ryzen can be good.

Then, there is also the new product issues; expect to see glitches with the new AM4 motherboards.

 

[Ryan_78]

naa it doesn't seem like it. AMD seems to have finally figured how to get more IPC and use the intel SmartCache method of putting more L3 cache even though it is slower. also they have seemed to changed to contact pins instead of the older gold pins. and plus they are selling higher core/thread CPUs that will evenly match intel in multithreaded performance, but falls within a few percent on signgle threaded (it doesn't seem like they have figured how to get Pentium G3258 style cores yet tho 🙁 )
the power consumption on their higher tier chips are lower than intel 95w vs 135w, which is VERY surprising. and the fact of an easy up to 1 GHz Oc ability on each of their chips is amazing. there is almost no drawback, other than still slightly lower single core performance, but the price difference makes up for it. that's why intel is so scared of AMD right now, and NVidia is in danger with the new Vega GPUs.
I would say well done AMD, and go for the Ryzen if you don't plan on using JUST single core (almost no gamer/worker does anyways. having more, but now just as powerful cores,is more useful)

for gaming though, stick with some i5. not every gamer needs heavy multicore. also need to see how the AM4 boards get fixed up.

 

[Spectre694]

So far nothing too bad actually chiopset isn't as robust and they do have a few issues with gaming performance but overall they are quite competitive and come in at a great price.

 

[captaincharisma]

AMD ryzen chips just came out so if you really want one its best to wait a while all the bugs get worked out on both the hardware and software sides.

 

[Rengar_hunter]

The good is that they have more cores, 8 with 16 threads.
That is very good for multithreaded apps that can utilize all the threads.
For gaming, which uses only a few fast cores, not so good since the individual thread performance is less.
Then, even the cheapest ryzen 1700 costs as much as a I7-7700K

For gaming today best to stick with Intel,
For production, ryzen can be good.

Then, there is also the new product issues; expect to see glitches with the new AM4 motherboards.

Does this means that Intel will lower the prices of their CPUs ?

naa it doesn't seem like it. AMD seems to have finally figured how to get more IPC and use the intel SmartCache method of putting more L3 cache even though it is slower. also they have seemed to changed to contact pins instead of the older gold pins. and plus they are selling higher core/thread CPUs that will evenly match intel in multithreaded performance, but falls within a few percent on signgle threaded (it doesn't seem like they have figured how to get Pentium G3258 style cores yet tho 🙁 )
the power consumption on their higher tier chips are lower than intel 95w vs 135w, which is VERY surprising. and the fact of an easy up to 1 GHz Oc ability on each of their chips is amazing. there is almost no drawback, other than still slightly lower single core performance, but the price difference makes up for it. that's why intel is so scared of AMD right now, and NVidia is in danger with the new Vega GPUs.
I would say well done AMD, and go for the Ryzen if you don't plan on using JUST single core (almost no gamer/worker does anyways. having more, but now just as powerful cores,is more useful)

for gaming though, stick with some i5. not every gamer needs heavy multicore. also need to see how the AM4 boards get fixed up.

 

[geofelt]

Intel never lowers the price of their processors.
That does not mean that retailers might not cut their margin to move less competitive products.

Likely, Intel will introduce tweaked variants of their 6 and 8 core offerings to be more competitive.

 

[k1114]

Well it kinda does, even though it was inevitable and info was already out before ryzen. The next top end mainstream i7 (~$340 always) is going to become a 6 core with coffeelake. No price has been said, not even in rumors, but it would make sense that it'll push the core count up with prices (and model names) at the same brackets. We've already seen them with the 5820k being a 6 core at $390 at release. We've already seen pentiums with kabylake now being 2c/4t instead of 2/2. We've been stuck with quad core being the top mainstream for a long time since core 2 quad and it was inevitable that it would increase some day. This is all just my personal thinking.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

The catch is that the Ryzen/AM4 platform is very immature at this point -- it's still in the "early adopter" stage. RAM in particular is very hit and miss right now -- you have to fiddle with lots of settings to get RAM working at any decent speed.

Performance and stability/compatibility will see improvements as manufacturers release new BIOS versions (we are already seeing this, but there is still a long way to go).

 

[cavalierpenguin]

The Ryzen cpu's are great for their price and a very good investment however, if you can spare the money the intel alternatives are a more stable platform and have significantly less bugs. that is just how it goes with new products though; there are always issues. AMD is working to fix the bugs on the Ryzen cpu's and I would wait a month or two just for some of the early issues to be worked out.

 

[Trender]

Well it kinda does, even though it was inevitable and info was already out before ryzen. The next top end mainstream i7 (~$340 always) is going to become a 6 core with coffeelake. No price has been said, not even in rumors, but it would make sense that it'll push the core count up with prices (and model names) at the same brackets. We've already seen them with the 5820k being a 6 core at $390 at release. We've already seen pentiums with kabylake now being 2c/4t instead of 2/2. We've been stuck with quad core being the top mainstream for a long time since core 2 quad and it was inevitable that it would increase some day. This is all just my personal thinking.

Then with what you said would it better to buy R7 1700 for gaming instead i7-7700k? Because soon Intel will release 6 cores i7 for the same price and so games will be optimized for more cores using and 7700K performance is going to be as it is now, but R7 1700 will be better with Intels mainstream 6 cores?

 

[geofelt]

Game developers have little incentive to re-engineer their games so that 6 or 8 cores are required to run them. They would sell fewer games.
It is difficult to redesign a app into discrete parts that can be run on many cores. You still need a good master core to manage all the subtasks.
Amdahl's law explains how there is a limit to the effectiveness of many threads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

If you are a gamer without unlimited budget, it is hard to justify more than a I5-6700K with a decent overclock.
Best to spend the extra budget for a I7 or ryze on a stronger graphics card.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

naa it doesn't seem like it. AMD seems to have finally figured how to get more IPC and use the intel SmartCache method of putting more L3 cache even though it is slower. also they have seemed to changed to contact pins instead of the older gold pins. and plus they are selling higher core/thread CPUs that will evenly match intel in multithreaded performance, but falls within a few percent on signgle threaded (it doesn't seem like they have figured how to get Pentium G3258 style cores yet tho 🙁 )
the power consumption on their higher tier chips are lower than intel 95w vs 135w, which is VERY surprising. and the fact of an easy up to 1 GHz Oc ability on each of their chips is amazing. there is almost no drawback, other than still slightly lower single core performance, but the price difference makes up for it. that's why intel is so scared of AMD right now, and NVidia is in danger with the new Vega GPUs.
I would say well done AMD, and go for the Ryzen if you don't plan on using JUST single core (almost no gamer/worker does anyways. having more, but now just as powerful cores,is more useful)

for gaming though, stick with some i5. not every gamer needs heavy multicore. also need to see how the AM4 boards get fixed up.

Are you sure about that 1 GHz OC for every chip? Haven't seen anything over 4.2 GHz (from a base 3.6 GHz) that wasn't running some type of refrigerant so far.

 

[geofelt]

It would seem that what you are getting with a 1800x vs a 1700 is a better bin.
Here are some early stats from silicon lottery:

Ryzen 7 1700
93% reach 3.8GHz @ 1.376V
70% reach 3.9GHz @ 1.408V
20% reach 4.0GHz @ 1.440V

Ryzen 7 1700X
100% reach 3.8GHz @ 1.360V
77% reach 3.9GHz @ 1.392V
33% reach 4.0GHz @ 1.424V

Ryzen 7 1800X
100% reach 3.8GHz (assumed)
97% reach 3.9GHz @ 1.376V
67% reach 4.0GHz @ 1.408V
20% reach 4.1GHz @ 1.440V