AMD Ryzen Speculation

[jappypack]

Linus talked about this already, as he mentioned how AMD will have to be aggressive with their pricing. But I just gotta say, if the rumors are somewhat true (and there's a LOT of these "engineering samples" which seem to link to each other), then Ryzen is going to be competitive. 

AMD confirmed that all of the Ryzen goodies will be "available" from day 1. If so, when is day 1? I'm guessing by the end of February or the start of March. 

Yes, the rumors should be treated with a grain of salt, but the whole "SR" variants seem quite legitimate, as, well, AMD can't simply release one processor and 5 different chipsets at the same time. Yes, it is a unified socket so they're saving it for Raven-Ridge, but I don't think anyone would buy an A320 motherboard for an 8 core Ryzen  - essentially a flagship, which means cheaper motherboards wouldn't sell well at all... Thus, I do expect more variants of Ryzen. 

As said though, AMD will have to be aggressive with their pricing. If Intel has a processor which undercuts them, or meets them in price and delivers better performance (a locked skylake, for example), then everyone will go for Intel as they already have a large market share and a lot of brand loyalty. I would buy a 4 core (8 threads if we're lucky) Ryzen that has the price of the i3 7350k, but similar performance of the i5 7600k. That would be a steal for me, who is looking to build an entry-level gaming pc.

So that could mean also a 6/12 Ryzen at the price of an i5, an 8/16 Ryzen at the price of an i7, and the enthusiast variant at the price of a 6800k.

If a quad-core Ryzen goes for about £130, I'm in. I'd spend £160 for the SMT variant.

 

[App4that]

No Ryzen CPU in Q1, that's confirmed by PC world and their interview with AMD. 

[othertomperson]

They have a product that is basically Haswell, and they're competing with a product that is basically Skylake except with 5GHz being normal. AMD are going to have to aggressively price and market the shit out of this.

 

I think it will make sense for the types who would normally be looking at Broadwell-E anyway and just need lots of cores. I think for gamers who don't really benefit from more than 4 cores anyway, Kaby lake just makes more sense.

[jappypack]

8 minutes ago, App4that said:

No Ryzen CPU in Q1, that's confirmed by PC world and their interview with AMD. 

Link? I beg to differ.

[App4that]

1 minute ago, jappypack said:

Link? I beg to differ.

Differ all you want. Truth is no Ryzen Q1.

 

"Speaking of which, while AMD wouldn’t commit to a hard launch date for Ryzen, Hallock did give a glimpse at when not to expect Ryzen, which will launch this quarter. “When companies say first quarter or first half, people assume that means the very end of that time frame,” Hallock said. “The very last day of Q1 is not our trajectory.”

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3155109/computers/new-amd-ryzen-details-revealed-overclocking-crossfire-lineup-info-and-more.html

 

But I appreciate the begging. 

[jappypack]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

Differ all you want. Truth is no Ryzen Q1.

 

"Speaking of which, while AMD wouldn’t commit to a hard launch date for Ryzen, Hallock did give a glimpse at when not to expect Ryzen, which will launch this quarter. “When companies say first quarter or first half, people assume that means the very end of that time frame,” Hallock said. “The very last day of Q1 is not our trajectory.”

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3155109/computers/new-amd-ryzen-details-revealed-overclocking-crossfire-lineup-info-and-more.html

 

But I appreciate the begging. 

Ah, they are not going to release at the end of Q1. That just means, as I said, in February/March.

[App4that]

1 minute ago, jappypack said:

Ah, they are not going to release at the end of Q1. That just means, as I said, in February/March.

That's Q1. 

[Froody129]

Can someone please explain the difference between Zen and Ryzen? Did they change name or is it like a higher end CPU?

[jappypack]

5 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

They have a product that is basically Haswell, and they're competing with a product that is basically Skylake except with 5GHz being normal. AMD are going to have to aggressively price and market the shit out of this.

 

I think it will make sense for the types who would normally be looking at Broadwell-E anyway and just need lots of cores. I think for gamers who don't really benefit from more than 4 cores anyway, Kaby lake just makes more sense.

Except kaby lake costs more than skylake and the improvement is very underwhelming. AMD will have to compete with kabylake/skylake anyway because not everyone needs more than 4 cores, which is essentially the mainstream market. 

[jappypack]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

That's Q1. 

Yeah but it's not "the last day" of Q1. AMD is hinting they're gonna release Ryzen in the middle of Q1, which is February.

[othertomperson]

1 minute ago, jappypack said:

Except kaby lake costs more than skylake and the improvement is very underwhelming. AMD will have to compete with kabylake/skylake anyway because not everyone needs more than 4 cores, which is essentially the mainstream market. 

They have a product that is basically Haswell, and they're competing with a product that is basically Skylake except with 5GHz being normal. AMD are going to have to aggressively price and market the shit out of this.
 
I think it will make sense for the types who would normally be looking at Broadwell-E anyway and just need lots of cores. I think for gamers who don't really benefit from more than 4 cores anyway, Kaby lake just makes more sense.

[jappypack]

2 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

Can someone please explain the difference between Zen and Ryzen? Did they change name or is it like a higher end CPU?

Yeah just a name change due to trademark issues I think.

[jappypack]

1 minute ago, othertomperson said:

They have a product that is basically Haswell, and they're competing with a product that is basically Skylake except with 5GHz being normal. AMD are going to have to aggressively price and market the shit out of this.
 
I think it will make sense for the types who would normally be looking at Broadwell-E anyway and just need lots of cores. I think for gamers who don't really benefit from more than 4 cores anyway, Kaby lake just makes more sense.

That's the same thing you just said..??

[Froody129]

Just now, jappypack said:

Yeah just a name change due to trademark issues I think.

Too bad, I preferred Zen.

 

Oh well, seems like there's always something new on the hoRyzen 

 

(I'll show myself out)

[porina]

4 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

They have a product that is basically Haswell, and they're competing with a product that is basically Skylake except with 5GHz being normal. AMD are going to have to aggressively price and market the shit out of this.

Alongside availability, we're still lacking pricing. They can offer double the cores that Intel does in mainstream, but at what cost? I agree with most in that for the same performance, they will have to charge enough less than Intel to get volume sales. The more interesting part is how do you compare that performance? Especially if you're offering more cores.

 

I'm already itching to bench it, although I'm not sure I need a high end model that extrapolating a lower model should still be sufficient. Just waiting for them to ship!

[App4that]

3 minutes ago, jappypack said:

Yeah but it's not "the last day" of Q1. AMD is hinting they're gonna release Ryzen in the middle of Q1, which is February.

"hinting"

 

If they were that close, why no pricing? Intel had the pricing for Kabylake months ago. 

 

2016, the year we waited for Zen, 2017, the year we waited for Ryzen. Maybe in 2018 the name will be Upryzen. 

[othertomperson]

1 minute ago, jappypack said:

That's the same thing you just said..??

Everything you said was already answered in the post you quoted. I didn't see the point in typing it all out again just for you to not read it again.

 

Just now, porina said:

Alongside availability, we're still lacking pricing. They can offer double the cores that Intel does in mainstream, but at what cost? I agree with most in that for the same performance, they will have to charge enough less than Intel to get volume sales. The more interesting part is how do you compare that performance? Especially if you're offering more cores.

 

I'm already itching to bench it, although I'm not sure I need a high end model that extrapolating a lower model should still be sufficient. Just waiting for them to ship!

Objectively their mainstream CPUs don't perform as well as Intel's. The quad cores will have to be cheaper than Intel's to compete. The 6/8 Cores are equal to Broadwell-E, so they could charge the same amount for them, but let's not forget that Skylake-E is due soon.

[Froody129]

4 minutes ago, App4that said:

"hinting"

 

If they were that close, why no pricing? Intel had the pricing for Kabylake months ago. 

 

2016, the year we waited for Zen, 2017, the year we waited for Ryzen. Maybe in 2018 the name will be Upryzen. 

That's because Intel changed nothing and has just been pushing up prices incrementally over the last few gens.

 

 

Hehe, there are new hoRyzens for AMD. They just have to beat Intel and Zen who knows

[App4that]

4 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Everything you said was already answered in the post you quoted. I didn't see the point in typing it all out again just for you to not read it again.

 

Objectively their mainstream CPUs don't perform as well as Intel's. The quad cores will have to be cheaper than Intel's to compete. The 6/8 Cores are equal to Broadwell-E, so they could charge the same amount for them, but let's not forget that Skylake-E is due soon.

I expect the same out of Skylake-E as we've seen with Kabylake. Not sure if it's worth worrying about. 

[App4that]

1 minute ago, Froody129 said:

That's because Intel changed nothing and has just been pushing up prices incrementally over the last few gens

Wait? You're blaming Intel, for AMD stringing people along? 

 

*giggle*

[porina]

4 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Objectively their mainstream CPUs don't perform as well as Intel's. The quad cores will have to be cheaper than Intel's to compete. The 6/8 Cores are equal to Broadwell-E, so they could charge the same amount for them, but let's not forget that Skylake-E is due soon.

We still don't really know how they will perform, under what circumstances. We have the Blender and Handbrake demo, and some less reliable leaks in other things. For normal stuff, it might be ok to approximate to Broadwell-ish era, but I'm also interested in not so normal stuff and will bench the crap out of it when I can. From what can be gathered so far, they're not competing in HEDT as a platform, even if the CPU might have enough power to go there.

[othertomperson]

4 minutes ago, App4that said:

I expect the same out of Skylake-E as we've seen with Kabylake. Not sure if it's worth worrying about. 

We didn't see enough of desktop Broadwell to get a good grasp of how it compared to Haswell, but assuming it's the usual Tock-Tick the difference from Broadwell to Skylake will be much bigger than the difference from Skylake to Kaby Lake.

 

Remember, Skylake is a whole new architecture, whereas Kaby Lake is the same architecture on an improved 14nm process.

 

2 minutes ago, porina said:

We still don't really know how they will perform, under what circumstances. We have the Blender and Handbrake demo, and some less reliable leaks in other things. For normal stuff, it might be ok to approximate to Broadwell-ish era, but I'm also interested in not so normal stuff and will bench the crap out of it when I can. From what can be gathered so far, they're not competing in HEDT as a platform, even if the CPU might have enough power to go there.

AMD have gone through extreme lengths to compare their IPC with Broadwell's. Clock for clock they are around the same. Do you not think if they could show their IPC equalling Skylake's instead that they would not have fallen over themselves to do it?

 

Whether or not they want to compete with HEDT, that's where they are. That's where Ryzen makes sense to me. They have the cores on a reasonable enough architecture to make X99 irrelevant. I can't say the same for the mainstream market.

[App4that]

1 minute ago, othertomperson said:

We didn't see enough of desktop Broadwell to get a good grasp of how it compared to Haswell, but assuming it's the usual Tock-Tick the difference from Broadwell to Skylake will be much bigger than the difference from Skylake to Kaby Lake.

 

Remember, Skylake is a whole new architecture, whereas Kaby Lake is the same architecture on an improved 14nm process.

Broadwell-E is 14nm. Basically Skylake. 

[Froody129]

3 minutes ago, App4that said:

Wait? You're blaming Intel, for AMD stringing people along? 

 

*giggle*

I'm saying it's not hard to choose a price when you're basically selling the same product under a new name. 

 

While with AMD the price is crucial and if they get it wrong and crash out of the CPU market after making a loss on their Zen investment. Zen what Zen? We need an upRyzen from AMD to bring competition back into the market

 

[othertomperson]

2 minutes ago, App4that said:

Broadwell-E is 14nm. Basically Skylake. 

lol so Kepler and Maxwell are the same thing because they're both on 28nm? There's much more to an architecture than the process node.

 

Broadwell-E is basically Haswell, not Skylake.