Ryzen Release Thread

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/inte...,5125.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/inte...125-4.html

One presentation stuck out more than the rest. Intel presented a deck that outlined what it considers to be its advantages against AMD’s EPYC CPUs. The slides generated a lot of controversy over the last week, but they haven't been presented in context. We’re going to fix that.
...
AMD's lack of gaming optimization at launch was cited by Intel as an indicator that EPYC would begin its life similarly flat-footed, necessitating a similar optimization period for enterprise-oriented apps. Of course, that's an odd claim, in our opinion, considering Intel's statements to us about the impact of Skylake-X's mesh on some games:
...
Core i9-7900X uses the same core and mesh design as the Intel Scalable Processor family, so it's easy to contend that these same issues might affect Intel's Purley processor in some workloads.

The final slide includes Intel's summation of its talking points, and the company stated, again, its key concept that "not all cores are created equal."

It's easy to see why the slides are generating controversy. Taken in context, Intel's claims do have some technical merit that we'll have to explore in more detail. But other points are more educated guesses than definitive conclusions.

In other areas, Intel may have simply spoken too soon. VM interoperability, for instance, may be a challenge for AMD at first. However, we've since learned that the company is already partnering with the major hypervisor vendors. This may help smooth over any performance issues before EPYC goes on sale. While it's true that AMD doesn't have an ecosystem to match Intel's, EPYC is collecting quite the list of supporters. It's possible that Intel also underestimated EPYC's management features.

Many consider the glued-together desktop die messaging to be ill-conceived from a company that also repurposes enterprise silicon for desktop PCs. It could be argued that AMD designed its Zeppelin die for data centers, an opinion we've voiced several times, and uses the same tactic of sharing it with the desktop models.
...


It's interesting that Intel did not focus on AMD's comparatively higher TDPs during its workshop. That is one of the most important concerns in the data center, as greater efficiency reduces total cost of ownership. Early testing indicates EPYC processors may have competitive power attributes, despite their higher TDP ratings, likely due to fine-grained power optimizations.

Intel is usually nonplussed in the face of competition. But its reaction to EPYC speaks volumes. In the end, absolute performance isn't nearly as important as the price-to-performance ratio, and initial signs indicate that AMD is off to a good start. AMD has scrapped its way through the last several years selling mostly budget parts, so any market gains are a win. Significant data center penetration could be a watershed moment for the company and fuel more investment in future products.

Conversely, Intel already delivers compelling performance, and its mature ecosystem will be hard for AMD to outshine. But the industry is pining for a suitable low-cost alternative, and if AMD's EPYC delivers, Intel's strengths might not be able to hold it off.