AMD Zen (Ryzen)

[Howie]

It looks increasingly like there will be an unlocked 8 core 16 thread chip with 3.4GHz core and 3.8GHz boost for around $390. If so this could be a real game changer. I hope the rumours turn out to be true and the gaming performance is good.

[Oliver]

I'd rather have half the number of cores/threads and twice the performance per core for obvious reasons.

To be frank, seeing as more games are benefiting from higher single core performance vs. multiple cores than not, it makes me wonder why CPU developers are not tailoring their 'gamer' CPUs towards that goal.

[Eddie]

Silicon can't run much faster than it already is, so to get more performance you need more of it now. The problem is that game devs aren't being too proactive when it comes to multi-threading.

We'll see if AMD coming back in to frame changes anything though (if they do end up truly competitive).

[Howie]

Well Intel have just released their laughably priced i3 7350K with 2 cores and 4 threads with good per core performance. The thing is, it's not even as good for gaming as an older i5 and it's more expensive.

I think games in general are starting to scale past 4 cores now but DCS is a bit of a peculiar beast as the engine is so old and not really optimised to run on more than 2 threads.

The launch lineup for Ryzen currently looks like this.

Ryzen 7 1800X is $490 (4.0Ghz Boost)
SKU number:YD180XBCAEWOF
UPC number:730143308366
No Cooler.
95W TDP

Ryzen 7 1700X is $380 (3.8Ghz Boost)
SKU number:YD170XBCAEWOF
UPC number:730143308342
No Cooler.
95W TDP

Ryzen 7 1700 is $317 (3.7Ghz Boost)
SKU number:YD1700BBAEBOX
UPC number:730143308328
Bundled with Wraith Cooler.
65W TDP

I wonder what makes the 1700 a 65w TDP part though, as all Ryzen chips are supposed to be fully unlocked.

All the Ryzen 7 series chips are 8 core 16 thread too.

[Dojo]

Ryzen is close. Even if it doesn't best Intel in all areas, it will create price pressure. This is only good news for us. The official prices are slightly higher than what Howie posted, but initial performance numbers are starting to emerge.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd...00x,33702.html

[Eddie]

It's certainly looking interesting.

[Dojo]

Full reviews aren't out for a few days, but the price pressure is already here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyl.../#4478e7a225df

I'd wait a ~month before building anything new, although good times ahead.

[Eddie]

Yeah, some of the early benchmark chatter I'm hearing is quite impressive.

[Howie]

I'm struggling not to pull the trigger. It won't compete with Intel for clock speed or DCS performance but 8 cores at that price is a steal.

All of the overclocked system builds I've seen so far have been around:

~3.8GHz for 1700
~4.0GHz for 1700X
~4.2GHz for 1800X

So that gives you some idea of what to expect. With this in mind I'm leaning towards the 1700. Single thread performance @ 3.8 on Ryzen looks about 5% faster than my 2500K @ 4.2 on cinebench.

[Eddie]

Good video on gaming performance.



It is looking like a real option to be honest, the point of Ryzen being less bad at gaming than Kaby Lake is at "pro" tasks is very much a big advantage.