Quote:AMD's Ryzen 7 launch represents more than just a new CPU family. For most of our readers, it signals the return of competition to the enthusiast-oriented processor market. And considering the flagship 1800X’s potent cost advantage compared to Intel's Core i7-6900K, the competitor AMD singled out months ago, Ryzen 7 does deliver. It's just not as universally superior as the company wanted everyone to believe.

We come away from today's coverage with a number of questions that couldn't be answered in time for the launch. For instance, we discovered Ryzen's tendency to perform better in games with SMT disabled. Could this be a scheduling issue that might be fixed later? AMD did respond to our concerns, reminding us that Ryzen's implementation is unique, meaning most game engines don't use if efficiently yet. Importantly, the company told us that it doesn’t believe the SMT hiccup occurs at the operating system level, so a software fix could fix performance issues in many titles. At least one game developer (Oxide) stepped forward to back those claims. However, you run the risk that other devs don't spend time updating existing titles.

The evening before launch, AMD sent us a list of games that it says should perform well with Ryzen, including Sniper Elite 4, Battlefield 1, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Overwatch, among others. Many of the titles tend to be heavily threaded, which would lend itself well to Ryzen's high core count. We plan on revisiting some of those. Further, AMD suggests adjusting several different parameters for games that suffer from low performance. It recommends using Windows' High Performance power profile (which also helps Intel CPUs). It also says to disable the HPET (High Precision Event Timer), either in your BIOS or operating system, to gain a 5-8% advantage. Our results already reflect HPET disabled, though. Interestingly, AMD's Ryzen Master software requires HPET to “provide accurate measurements,” so you may find yourself toggling back and forth for the best experience.

It’s hard to recommend the Ryzen 7 1800X over Intel's lower-cost quad-core chips for gaming, especially given the Core i7-7700K's impressive performance. That's not a knock against AMD, specifically. After all, we say the same thing about Intel's own Broadwell-E CPUs. High-end Kaby Lake processors constantly challenge pricier competitors, and the flagship -7700K sells for $350. Even after down-clocking the -7700K to 3.8 GHz, it still beats Ryzen 7 1800X in nearly every game in our suite. Those issues would only be exacerbated on a Ryzen 7 1700X, which operates at lower clock rates.

Conversely, the Ryzen 7 1800X is in its element when you throw professional and scientific workloads at it. It isn't the fastest in every high-end benchmark, but any calculation that factors in value almost assuredly goes AMD's way. For years, Intel has operated with impunity, charging inflated prices for incremental speed-ups. The 1800X’s $500 price tag and competitive performance will no doubt excite power users on a budget. To that end, when we weigh the 1800X’s strong showing in workstation and HPC workloads against its issues with games, we can't help but believe that AMD designed this specific configuration with a datacenter-driven mindset and didn’t optimize it thoroughly for desktops. Much like Intel and Broadwell-E, in fact.

AMD’s Precision Boost technology yields a nice dual-core boost during lightly threaded workloads, but it isn’t as advanced as Intel’s sophisticated multi-core Turbo Boost functionality. XFR is a nice feature that automatically offers improved performance with robust cooling solutions, but most of us only get 100 MHz out of it, so it's hard to call it a compelling advantage. Achieving a 4 GHz overclock was straightforward enough through multiplier and voltage adjustments, and there are plenty of AMD-specific firmware settings we need to explore. More headroom could certainly be available (though the Core i7-7700K is honestly more exciting to overclock if all you care about is higher numbers). On the memory overclocking side, AMD hasn’t opened all of the sub-timings yet, and the Core i7-6900K has a throughput advantage with its quad-channel controller.
Ryzen 7 1800X's aggressive price might help put enough pressure on Intel to compel price cuts on Broadwell-E, but the bigger battle is going to happen when Ryzen 5 and 3 emerge to challenge the competition's more affordable (and difficult to usurp) models. AMD is also bringing its Naples server CPUs forward soon, and with what we’ve seen from the Zen core, that should be an exciting launch.

It's a bummer the Ryzen launch was so clearly rushed. We expected AMD to have a better explanation for its gaming performance, but all of the feedback we received from the company came very last-minute. It's hard to imagine these shortcomings weren't discovered previously and diagnosed more thoroughly. We're happy to put in the time and effort, though. Expect more information as it becomes available.

In the meantime, we would recommend Ryzen 7 1800X for heavily-threaded workloads like rendering and content creation. And while we won't judge a processor on its gaming performance alone, current indications suggest AMD's $500 flagship doesn't beat Core i7-7700K for value in that specific segment.

Quote:AMD, at its post-Ryzen 7 launch Reddit AMA, disclosed some juicy details about its other upcoming socket AM4 chips, beginning with the rest of the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 "Summit Ridge" processor roll-out, and a little bit about its 8th generation socket AM4 APU, codenamed "Raven Ridge." To begin with, AMD CEO Lisa Su stated that "Raven Ridge" will also be sold under the Ryzen brand. This would mark a departure from the less-than-stellar A-series branding for its performance APUs. "Raven Ridge" likely combines a "Zen" quad-core CPU complex (CCX) with an integrated GPU based on one of AMD's newer GPU architectures (either "Polaris" or "Vega").
...
Looking deeper down into the future, AMD will roll out CPU architectures that incrementally update the "Zen" architecture, much in the same way "Piledriver," "Steamroller," and "Excavator" updated "Bulldozer." For now, Lisa Su is referring to two such future architectures as "Zen2" and "Zen3." These could imply that "Zen2" and "Zen3" will still be heavily based on "Zen," but come with new features and minor performance improvements, don't expect the >50% IPC leap seen between Bulldozer and Zen, but a more reasonable 5-15% gain seen between Bulldozer thru Excavator.

Quote:How did they do that?

Quote:No, it’s not a dud—unless you’re looking to replace a 5-year-old, quad-core Intel Core i5 chip for mainstream gaming at the most popular display resolution. There, the Ryzen 7 1700 can stumble, and stumble hard.

(03-03-2017, 07:05 AM)BenSkywalker Wrote:

Quote:How did they do that?

Bulldozer was $245 at launch, and very much unlike Ryzen, it sometimes won(at least beat Intel) benches the enthusiasts care about-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/8

Another take-

Quote:No, it’s not a dud—unless you’re looking to replace a 5-year-old, quad-core Intel Core i5 chip for mainstream gaming at the most popular display resolution. There, the Ryzen 7 1700 can stumble, and stumble hard.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176100/computers/amd-ryzen-7-1700-vs-a-5-year-old-gaming-pc-or-why-you-should-never-preorder.html?page=2

Bulldozer was never *THAT* bad. Getting embarrassed by a five year old mid tier CPU? Ryzen is a new low for AMD IMO.

(03-03-2017, 09:23 AM)gstanford Wrote:

Quote:If you're doing something second best on the planet, you're still better than almost everybody else.

No guarantee that consumers will be interested though, especially not when intel is so strong and not expensive (unless you want more than 4 physical cores for some non general-consumer reason).

(03-03-2017, 11:21 PM)24601 Wrote:

(03-03-2017, 09:28 PM)SteelCrysis Wrote: AMD responds to Ryzen's bad 1080p gaming performance by blaming game devs: https://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/AMD-responds-1080p-gaming-tests-Ryzen

AMD Cult Leader Messiah Stebe Jobes announces today that all game developers are "holding it wrong," plans no fixes due to the problem totally not being fault of AMD's perfect vision of the future.

lol.






And the assertion that games are "optimized" for intel anything is completely laughable.

The only thing games are optimized for if they are optimized at all is for the AMD tablet cores in the consoles.

Only one to blame is themselves on every count, and it's hilarious to see them spinning at 15k rpm simultaneously everywhere on the internet and banning anyone who says the truth.

(03-03-2017, 11:13 AM)googoo24 Wrote: The processors are pretty decent, but the gaming benches are going to hurt it. Shame too, cause the multitasking and efficiency is far superior to that small nuclear reactor (When pushed hard, a la fx 9590) bulldozer.

(03-05-2017, 04:59 PM)24601 Wrote: Inb4 Titan Volta comes out and makes zendozer a bottleneck at 4k

Squirm little viral marketers, squirm

(03-05-2017, 06:13 PM)RolloTheGreat Wrote: If you're speaking to me on the viral marketer thing, I doubt there is anyone on the internet AMD detests more than me.

(03-06-2017, 08:34 AM)googoo24 Wrote:

(03-05-2017, 06:13 PM)RolloTheGreat Wrote: If you're speaking to me on the viral marketer thing, I doubt there is anyone on the internet AMD detests more than me.

Well, he does think I'm you. And that you're a psycho. *shrugs*

Quote:This further reinforces our stance on the 1800X: You are far better off buying an R7 1700 for $330, applying a 5-minute overclock and a half-decent cooler, and netting a chip that outperforms a stock 1800X, or performs equally to an overclocked version. There is no reason to purchase an 1800X if you are OK with the idea of applying an overclock. Now, we’d normally assume that most folks aren’t overclocking – see: “just want the best” people who buy a 7700K – but it’s a few minutes of work and grants performance that minimally equals the R7 1800X.

The one point of hesitation here is on the future binning of these CPUs. We’re not sure if the early 1700 models will OC higher, or if they’re modified 1800X parts that retain the same headroom. Our sample overclocks to 3.9-4.0GHz, depending on workload, and can push memory to 2933 in those overclocked cases. We know some other folks were able to achieve similar overclocks on their review sample R7 1700 CPUs.

We’re still waiting on our purchased 1700 to come in so that we can review the stock cooler, but overall, thermals are significantly reduced over the 1800X. The performance at the price point, when considering a light overclock, is a far better argument in terms of price than the 1800X. Even for production workloads, the overclocked 1700 produces equal performance to the overclocked 1800X.

So again, we strongly advise against the 1800X as a CPU for a gaming machine. If you’re doing zero production, you’re not doing any content creation, then you’re still generally getting a better deal with an i5 or i7 CPU. For folks who are combining content creation (similar to what we do) with gaming, or may be considering streaming, the R7 1700 is actually a viable chip – and far more so than the 1800X.

AMD is its own best competition at the price point, when considering those use cases.

We still have to look at the 1700X, but based on initial results, the R7 1700 looks like the hero of AMD’s initial lineup. It is far easier to argue this CPU, just know that you’re still limited in terms of gaming performance at the cost. Rendering workloads are far boosted over equivalently priced Intel CPUs. We can stand behind the R7 1700 under the right usage conditions – just figure out if you fit into those conditions.

The story may change for Ryzen at some point, but we don’t review based on promises. We review based on what’s available on the market now. We’ll revisit the CPUs as updates roll-out.

Quote:First off, we want to thank XtremeSystems and AMD for giving TweakTown the opportunity to test Ryzen's solid state storage performance. We are pleased with the PCIe storage performance that Ryzen delivers. It is within striking distance of Intel and we believe that for the most part user experience between the two platforms is comparable. However, SATA performance between the two platforms is another matter. Ryzen is at a distinct disadvantage compared with Intel if you are running a SATA SSD.

(03-08-2017, 03:00 AM)SteelCrysis Wrote: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8073/amd-ryzen-ssd-storage-performance-preview/index5.html

Quote:PCMark 8 gives us a very accurate representation of real-world performance. In terms of storage bandwidth, the Intel platform holds a 21% advantage over AMD.

Conclusion: Intel offers significantly better PCIe storage performance than AMD. However, it's not light years ahead as it has been in the past. Ryzen is very promising, and the difference between it and Intel isn't enough to cause us to be unwilling to recommend Ryzen as a storage platform.

Quote:There’s currently a bit of a gap between how AMD has described the desire for its platforms (strong demand!) and why motherboard manufacturers are apparently having such trouble shipping them. LegitReviews has a lengthy quote from an anonymous company that’s worth a read, basically arguing that AMD cut out the motherboard vendors until the last possible second, saying: “They have done nothing they should have been doing to support the launch platform partners and always delay or give no response on support requests.”

This is in-line with what ExtremeTech has heard from various motherboard vendors, many of whom have been frustrated with AMD’s overall approach to this launch. Some of that frustration may be flowing in both directions, but it definitely may be responsible for choking the flow of motherboards into the channel. We had some issues with our own Ryzen launch platform — issues that were both board-specific and out-of-character for motherboard manufacturers at a major launch.

Motherboard vendors appear to be right that AMD pulled this launch in and pushed for an extremely aggressive rollout. We have no doubt that this caused some problems on the motherboard side of the equation, since UEFI testing and feature specifications take time to implement. It also wouldn’t be surprising if the full lift for a launch like this caught AMD short-handed; the company has slashed headcount significantly since it last launched a new CPU family, and the degree of interest from enthusiasts and motherboard companies means more hardware to validate and more tests to perform. That’s a lot harder for AMD than for Intel, which has far more revenue and employees.

AMD does, however, appear to have a point about demand. So far Ryzen sales appear quite strong, and interest in the platform has been high. If you’re having trouble finding a board, we recommend waiting for some platform reviews and additional launches before picking up hardware, especially given the fairly early state of the platform in general.

Quote:The company does still recommend users utilize the "High Performance" plan in their Windows setup for best performance, claiming the software management of CPU speed interferes with Ryzen's native management. There may be an update forthcoming for the Windows "Balanced" plan to fix how it operates with Ryzen, but there will not be a scheduler update planned as of now.

Quote:AMD is now saying reports of poor thermal performance from the flagship Ryzen products can be attributed to a simple thing: Temperature Offsets. Apparently, to keep a "consistent fan policy," AMD has placed a 20C offset on the Ryzen 1700X and 1800X products, making them report temperature a good 20C above what the sensor reads. This interesting design choice may most assuredly be confusing to end users, but AMD is confident software will soon automatically adjust for this offset and report the true temperature when required.

Quote:In a blog post titled "Tips for Building a Better AMD Ryzen System", AMD has shed some light on the current memory support quirks with their Ryzen CPUs. First interesting detail: Ryzen processors do not offer memory dividers for DDR4-3000 or DDR4-3400. As such, AMD recommends that users looking to use higher memory speeds with their Ryzen processors instead look towards 3200 or 3500 MT/s. Due to Ryzen's preferences when it comes to memory, AMD also recommends that users pay particular attention to motherboard vendor's memory QVL lists for speeds greater than DDR4-2667.
...
AMD also stressed incoming updates in regards to memory support of its AM4 platform, with updates being pushed to motherboard makers this May, which should enable support for memory at speeds "higher than the current DDR4-3200 limit without refclk adjustments." For reference, see below memory support tables according to memory speed, rank, and quantities supported by Ryzen processors.

Quote:An important point to note here is that this little known benchmark has been tailored by its developer to be highly specific to the CPU micro-architecture, with separate binaries for each major x64 architecture (eg: Bulldozer, Sandy Bridge, Haswell, Skylake, etc.), and as such the GitHub repository does not have a "Zen" specific binary.

Quote:What I'd also like to mention is how unfinished the whole motherboard ecosystem feels. AMD sent me a Gigabyte Aorus motherboard with Corsair memory, so I assumed they properly tested that combination for optimum user experience. Not really. Once you setup the system, your memory will run at 2133 MHz, which is extremely low and will severely restrict performance in both application and games. You want to be running 2666 MHz at least. So, off I went into the BIOS, set 2666 MHz - nothing happened. The damn motherboard BIOS just didn't apply the memory frequency. At this point many novices would RMA the memory, or motherboard, or CPU or everything altogether, claiming "it doesn't work." The magic bullet (on my Gigabyte board at least) is that every single memory timing and memory voltage has to be configured to a manual value - not "auto" (this works fine on Intel of course, where you can leave most settings on auto, or just select "XMP3000," and boom ready to go). After this change the Gigabyte Ryzen board would boot at 2666 MHz memory and run fine all day. We got 3000 MHz memory though, so 2933 MHz was tried, and ended up being unstable, no matter what I did. I ended up buying a bunch of memory kits with same-day delivery, and oh wonder, the newly bought Corsair 3000 MHz memory kit works fine (AMD sent me the exact same model, but apparently never tested its 2933 MHz stability). Several 3200 MHz memory kits that work fine on Intel at even higher clocks, barely worked at 2666 MHz, and 2933 MHz remained a no-go. Once you've mastered the memory hurdles, you'll find various posts online by users, reviewers and AMD themselves, recommending you turn off HPET and SMT, use the Windows High Performance power profile and more tweaks. I'm not sure if this a solid buying argument to professional workstation users that just want a system setup quickly and ready to go, because every hour they spend tweaking costs them money.

Some people will now claim that it's not AMD's fault that the motherboards aren't ready. In my opinion it is. Why not give motherboard manufacturers all hardware and all support they need, with plenty of time to spare?

Despite the motherboard issues, overclocking the CPU itself works well (functionally), also thanks to AMD's Ryzen Master utility, where you can make changes in real-time and apply them without a reboot. On the 1800X model specifically I'm not sure if overclocking is worth it. AMD's Boost and XFR will work in tandem to maximize CPU performance automagically. For example, in workloads with few threads the CPU will boost up to 4.1 GHz, without any manual setting changes, a frequency that you'll probably not reach with manual overclocking unless you use watercooling or super-high voltage. Manual overclocking can still be beneficial for heavy workloads that use all cores, where XFR and Boost might not be active or running at lower frequencies.

For years Intel has spoon-fed us incremental improvements to their architecture, especially on the power efficiency side, claiming that their processors are reaching the climax of what is possible for x86 power-wise. Then in comes AMD Ryzen with a much lower R&D budget and at least matches, sometimes beating Intel power-efficiency, and often delivering better performance at the same time. Even with all its eight cores stressed with Prime95, the Ryzen 7 1800X draws just as much power as the quad-core i7-7700K.

If you compare Ryzen 7 1800X pricing to Intel's highest-end offerings, then AMD has a clear winner on their hands once the platform issues are ironed out. The 1800X comes at much better pricing with very similar performance. Looking at the Ryzen 7 lineup though I feel that most people will not need a 1800X and could probably go for the 1700 non-X, which is much more affordable with only little lower performance (we'll test this in a future review). If I were in the market for Ryzen personally, I'd wait till the platform is more mature, and the major bugs are fixed.

Quote:Now, as for the rest of the rumor, it’s by no means impossible. AMD is already planning to build a 32-core Ryzen with 8 memory channels (one per CCX). A 16-core device could easily turn out to be a quad-channel part, and that would compete well against Intel’s HEDT lineup.

The one thing I’d caution against, however, is treating this rumor as if its either proof AMD will launch such a chip or that this kind of processor would be desirable to most enthusiasts. First, AMD will be required to cut clock speeds. The more cores you have, the lower your maximum clock is going to be. That’s always been true for server chips from both companies. Even allowing for some variation between product SKUs, higher core counts mean lower clock speeds or similar clock speeds at a substantially higher TDP. Intel’s E7-8894 v4 (24 cores) has a base clock of 2.4GHz and a boost clock of 3.4GHz in a 165W TDP. The E7-8891 v4 (10 cores) has a base clock of 2.8GHz and a boost of 3.5GHz in the same 165W power envelope.

Which of these CPUs is “better” depends entirely on how multi-threaded your workloads are, of course, but the trend holds clear. If AMD wants to build a 16-core Ryzen, even in a 150W TDP, it’s going to have to give up some clock speed to get there. It might make a fabulous workstation chip, but I’d bet you’d get better gaming performance from a different CPU in AMD’s lineup.

Would a 16-core Ryzen punch holes in Intel’s product family? Possibly. There is some concern that by joining that many CCX’s together, the relatively limited 22GB/s of bandwidth between the CCX’s could prove a scaling bottleneck with that many chips to handle. And it’s absolutely possible, even likely, that gamers would see little benefit from this kind of firepower. Games are typically designed to run on higher clocks with lower threads; few platforms can saturate threads to the point that they count for more than raw clocks.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see if this rumor proves true. Depending on what AMD pulls off, it might be able to regain market share, even at the highest end of the non-server market.