[EDIT]hmmm.....whats going on at AMD? (and history of 3Dfx Rampage)

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.techpowerup.com/229540/amd-b...t-disabled

With AMD's Ryzen chips launch being ever closer to us, details about its product line - which still remain mysterious enough - eventually begin to slip. Reportedly, AMD's entry-level Ryzen chips - the SR3 line of processors, if previous leaks ring true, will be made up of 4-core processors with AMD's SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), the equivalent to Intel's HT (Hyper-Threading) disabled. These will be, apparently, true 4-core processors, without any additional logical processors exposed by SMT.

If reports about AMD's line-up being composed of 8-core and 6-core processors, then with this news, we can now theoretically paint the numbers on AMD's Ryzen line-up. As it stands with this new information, it could be composed of entry-level four-core parts (under the SR3 product stack, and a base clock of 3.4 GHz at the minimum for any Ryzen-based part, according to AMD); a midrange six-core, twelve-thread part (under the SR5 moniker; I don't figure AMD would disable their much-lauded SMT on this six-core part); and the top-of-the-line, SR7 8-core, 16-thread chip we've seen in so many benchmarks and leaks.

I find it strange that AMD would cut the SMT out of any of its processor lines, though - at least, from all of its processors. My educated guess would be that AMD is planning to release a special-edition part (or a specific part number) just like Intel does in its i3, i5 and i7 product lines to differentiate between multiplier-locked (non-K processors) and multiplier-unlocked (K processors, such as the i5-7600K). Though, with all AMD Ryzen processors having an unlocked multiplier, like the company has often announced, this differentiation might be between SMT-disabled and SMT-enabled chips - perhaps with AMD bringing back their Black Edition line of processors for this particular use-case. It just seems strange for AMD to shed one of their vaunted technologies (which would allow them to improve their performance at little to no cost added) completely, considering the comeback the company is planning to accomplish.

https://www.techpowerup.com/229537/amds-...-2017s-gdc

It would appear as if AMD has seemingly (and not purposely) given us some lights as to when their hotly anticipated Ryzen chips will hit the wild - and some of our wallets. While they haven't specifically given an exact date, the talk to be given by AMD at the annual Game Developer Conference (GDC) reads: "Join AMD Game Engineering team members for an introduction to the recently-launched AMD Ryzen CPU followed by advanced optimization topics". The "recently-launched tidbit is the most important, since it places Ryzen's launch necessarily before the end of GDC - which will happen between February 27th and March 3rd. AMD has, in the meantime, altered the original headline by cutting the "recently launched" tidbit altogether.

It would seem that GDC wouldn't be the best stage from where to announce AMD's upcoming star - they surely would want it to be a star of its own show, instead of competing for attention with all the news, events and announcements that are bound to come out during both GDC and the Mobile World Congress, which happens at the same week. As such, I believe we should take March 3rd as the end-date at which Ryzen has already been effectively launched, though I would expect AMD to host its own event even before February 27th. And with AMD's own Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's Computing and Graphics business, saying that AMD is done with paper launches, that would mean retail availability for AMD's Ryzen processors before that February 27th date.