AMD takes the fight to Intel with Ryzen CPU

[The Hand]

AMD strikes back it seems! Just watched the presentation and it's certainly compelling stuff.

[silent]

i really hope this is a good chip, certainly looks impressive and if pricing is cheap, it could be a winner!

[DerbyDave]

it's all about the pricing. i'm expecting (ok, hoping) that the top model will be priced at top 4c/8t i7 levels. if they can reach 8c/16t levels of performance, which it looks like they can, i'm just hoping they don't price it at that level.

[lumireleon]

Excited with the RYZEN....AMD has impressed me since Fury X and RX480....BIG UP BRO

[anselhelm]

Cautiously optimistic (or at least not pessimistic) about this.

Not entirely sold on the Ryzen name, mostly because it will be mispronounced by the same people who still mispronounce Skype as "Sky-pee", but also because Zen was a stronger and simpler name.

I've read that Xs help things sell better, so why not Xyzen ("Zy-z'n" / "Zy-zen")?

In any case, the devil will be in the details. If this chip is genuinely as good as it seems, especially in single-threaded tasks, clocks decently and runs as cool as you'd expect it to for a relatively low TDP, then that's the majority of worries out of the way.

The elephant in the room, however, is the price of the chip and the required motherboards

If this can genuinely compete with a £1000 Intel CPU, which itself requires an expensive £260+ motherboard, then what price is AMD going to ask for this? If it's half of Intel's pricing for each, then that'd still be out of reach for most people. If it's about a third or potentially less, then it's going to be a potentially very-popular product if marketed correctly.

Outside of enthusiasts, I'm more interested to see wins with gaming laptops and system builders. Most people go with Intel as that's what they know and what they've been told is good. AMD really needs to take the fight to Intel now and win both hearts and minds, which is no easy (or cheap) task.

[DanceswithUnix]

Not entirely sold on the Ryzen name, ...

I'm just hoping that calling the chip "Risen" doesn't mean we have to wait for Easter to get one.

[scaryjim]

... The elephant in the room, however, is the price of the chip and the required motherboards

If this can genuinely compete with a £1000 Intel CPU, which itself requires an expensive £260+ motherboard, then what price is AMD going to ask for this? If it's half of Intel's pricing for each, then that'd still be out of reach for most people. ...

For the top end chip, yes, but don't forget that the chip they are talking about is the top end chip - there will be cheaper options with 6 and 4 cores that will be more affordable. Intel's comparable 6 core chips start at around £400, their 4 core (albeit on a different platform entirely) around £300, so I think we can expect that kind of pricing from AMD; possibly lower as they've got market inertia to combat.

And of course platform is important - Intel require you to use a very expensive workstation-based platform if you want more than 4 cores, but AMD won't - the AM4 platform covers the entire range from dual core APUs to the 8C/16T Ryzen we're all getting excited about. That means supporting motherboards should also cover the full range - I'm sure there'll be bells & whistles versions that cost north of £200, but the basic sub-£50 boards should also support the top end chips...

[anselhelm]

Not entirely sold on the Ryzen name, ...

I'm just hoping that calling the chip "Risen" doesn't mean we have to wait for Easter to get one.

Heh. I hope so too on that front, though I won't be surprised if we don't see chips hard-launching until February/March 2017.

... The elephant in the room, however, is the price of the chip and the required motherboards

If this can genuinely compete with a £1000 Intel CPU, which itself requires an expensive £260+ motherboard, then what price is AMD going to ask for this? If it's half of Intel's pricing for each, then that'd still be out of reach for most people. ...

For the top end chip, yes, but don't forget that the chip they are talking about is the top end chip - there will be cheaper options with 6 and 4 cores that will be more affordable. Intel's comparable 6 core chips start at around £400, their 4 core (albeit on a different platform entirely) around £300, so I think we can expect that kind of pricing from AMD; possibly lower as they've got market inertia to combat.

And of course platform is important - Intel require you to use a very expensive workstation-based platform if you want more than 4 cores, but AMD won't - the AM4 platform covers the entire range from dual core APUs to the 8C/16T Ryzen we're all getting excited about. That means supporting motherboards should also cover the full range - I'm sure there'll be bells & whistles versions that cost north of £200, but the basic sub-£50 boards should also support the top end chips...

That's a very good serious of points. I think it will ultimately depend on how much the chips cost to make and how much profit AMD feels it can make whilst it's still perceived as being the underdog to Intel.

My personal hope is that an 8C/16T Ryzen chip will challenge Intel at the 4C/8T price range in order to really take the battle to Intel. It's perhaps more likely that AMD will target their 6C/12T chips at this price range, in terms of needing to make profit on the chips, but I'm still hoping this is the case.

I don't think AMD would try to charge anywhere near Intel levels for the 8C/16T chip, so I'll be genuinely flabbergasted if it breaches the £500 mark, as AMD doesn't have the brand clout to justify it, even if the chip itself does. With hearts and minds at stake, I can see AMD trying to really take the game to Intel here if they're smart and still making a lot of profit.

[scaryjim]

... My personal hope is that an 8C/16T Ryzen chip will challenge Intel at the 4C/8T price range in order to really take the battle to Intel. It's perhaps more likely that AMD will target their 6C/12T chips at this price range, in terms of needing to make profit on the chips, but I'm still hoping this is the case. ...

I think your second suggestion is more likely, tbh - ~£400+ 8C/16T chips, with the 6 core around £300 to challenge desktop i7 and 4 core at around £200 to challenge desktop i5. It depends on whether they're looking to make sales or margin. An entry-level 4C/8T chip at $199 (before tax, obv.) would make a nice marketing highlight alongside the 4GB RX 480 @ $199 for a VR-ready AMD PC.

... I don't think AMD would try to charge anywhere near Intel levels for the 8C/16T chip, so I'll be genuinely flabbergasted if it breaches the £500 mark, as AMD doesn't have the brand clout to justify it, even if the chip itself does. With hearts and minds at stake, I can see AMD trying to really take the game to Intel here if they're smart and still making a lot of profit.

The big issue with pricing low is that it'll reinforce the impression many people have of AMD being the "budget" option - that's a tag they really need to get rid of. One thing to remember is that the people who are likely to buy the big chips will generally be more knowledgable than the average consumer, and have a better awareness of the marketplace. I doubt you'll find many 8C/16T Ryzen in big name integrator boxes, for example. So they actually need to charge significantly more for the halo products than they've been able to in recent years, as long as the performance supports the pricing - that's the only way to lose that "budget" tag (even if the mainstream products actually end up being priced more in the budget range).

Also, it's worth remembering that the genuine mainstream products for this cycle are APUs - Bristol Ridge with Excavator cores that are already in production, and Raven Ridge coming later in the year with Zen cores. If they price the Ryzen chips too low, they'll end up canabalising their own market space for those products...

[Corky34]

The 8C/16T Ryzen isn't going to be the only Zen chip and going on the early power draws vs performance figures their touting i dare say the Zen silicon will find its way into everything from high cost low volume performance devices all the way down to low power high volume device like tablets & phones, IMO that would be ideal for AMD as they can cover the whole market using the same silicon.

[scaryjim]

... all the way down to low power high volume device like tablets & phones ...

I really can't see zen making it into phones - there's a limit to just how far a technology can scale in either direction, and phone processors need to be in the sub-watt range most of the time. If it was that easy Intel would've put their big cores in phone a long time ago; they've had a hard enough time getting their small core into mobile devices, and have taken some significant revenue hits along the way. I hope AMD are too savvy to fall into that trap...

However AMD are certainly looking to spread Zen as an architecture down to 15W and below, and it may get down far enough (<~5W) to go into tablets (although more likely as an APU than a CPU); certainly they've discussed canning their small cores in favour of Zen addressing the whole market.

[DanceswithUnix]

..., IMO that would be ideal for AMD as they can cover the whole market using the same silicon.

I think using the same socket is more important.

There are times when I want to throw together a cheap machine with the option of upgrading it to something decently fast. Right now that isn't an option, but AM4 promises to be able to provide the entire range.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I did have a thought the other day when reading about Vega. I do wonder if a Zen APU will be released for laptops using a Zen chip and a stack of HBM2?? The HBM2 could be utilised as both system and graphics RAM.

[kompukare]

I did have a thought the other day when reading about Vega. I do wonder if a Zen APU will be released for laptops using a Zen chip and a stack of HBM2?? The HBM2 could be utilised as both system and graphics RAM.

Eventually I would think so, but currently AMD are still massively manpower constrained I would imagine.
Or at least that's what the only explanation of why never released anything else on AM3+, why every time a new console comes out their other products tend to be late (Polaris & XBone Slim/PS4Pro) and so on. Often it seems the main design R&D is done but they do not have enough people to validate/alter it for various segments at once.
Having said all though, it seems that for their R&D spend they have once again gotten extremely good value with Zen. But even if someone gave them a $1billion investment tomorrow and they went on a hiring spree it would probably take most of 2017 until the full product stack (CPUs, APUs, and graphics) is out.

[Xlucine]

I think using the same socket is more important.

There are times when I want to throw together a cheap machine with the option of upgrading it to something decently fast. Right now that isn't an option, but AM4 promises to be able to provide the entire range.

Depending on your definition of 'decently fast', you might be able to do it now with the intel small socket. A B150 motherboard comes in just under £60, and if you don't want to upgrade to a K-series or run multiple graphics cards it should have all the basics that you need in a motherboard. You can't upgrade it to have more that 4 cores, but for sub-4k gaming I can't see any glaring issues. Ryzen will probably have better OC support lower in the range, but a cheap AM4 board won't be too different from a cheap intel board & OC'ing a CPU doesn't get much in modern games.

I did have a thought the other day when reading about Vega. I do wonder if a Zen APU will be released for laptops using a Zen chip and a stack of HBM2?? The HBM2 could be utilised as both system and graphics RAM.

Once you get a GPU big enough to warrant HBM, I'm struggling to see a reason to make it compete for space with a CPU. It'd be a neat design, and should give a very compact laptop, but it won't be massively more compact than an APU with some soldered on RAM & it's bound to cost more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Once you get a GPU big enough to warrant HBM, I'm struggling to see a reason to make it compete for space with a CPU. It'd be a neat design, and should give a very compact laptop, but it won't be massively more compact than an APU with some soldered on RAM & it's bound to cost more.

I was talking about the APU itself on an interposer with the HBM2 acting as system RAM. It would also mean,that you could remove the need for a dGPU. Imagine something like a MacBook PRO for example which ships with a dGPU?? HBM2 allows 8GB per package.