AMD Ryzen - New CPU Series that is cheaper but better then Intel Core I Series

[Ed.Kloonk]

I don't really see how Norton's violent level of incompetence has anything to do with the CPU.

Yeah. I know.

I blame both companies. I mean, really, what on earth could be in a dos based disk copy program that needs specific intel cpu ops?

And the marketing in those days suggested that the CPU was 'compatible'.

[Monkeh]

I don't really see how Norton's violent level of incompetence has anything to do with the CPU.

Yeah. I know.

I blame both companies. I mean, really, what on earth could be in a dos based disk copy program that needs specific intel cpu ops?

And the marketing in those days suggested that the CPU was 'compatible'.

It's as compatible as any Intel CPUs.. code built for one of my Atoms will not run on a pre-Haswell CPU - it took more than four years for anything but the Atom series to implement MOVBE.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I don't really see how Norton's violent level of incompetence has anything to do with the CPU.

Yeah. I know.

I blame both companies. I mean, really, what on earth could be in a dos based disk copy program that needs specific intel cpu ops?

And the marketing in those days suggested that the CPU was 'compatible'.

It's as compatible as any Intel CPUs.. code built for one of my Atoms will not run on a pre-Haswell CPU - it took more than four years for anything but the Atom series to implement MOVBE.

There's no excuse for putting in code for a specific, exotic part without taking advantage of the very easy defines in C to provide a portable alternative. What fraction of a percent of code needs the specific op codes? It just seems lazy to me.

[Hensingler]

In the end, if Ryzen is as great as AMD says it will be a Win-Win for everyone.

Actually it will be a Win 10 for everyone which is definitely not a win, that or linux.

Shame, supporting Win 7 would have been a big advantage over the latest Intel parts.

[BradC]

Shame, supporting Win 7 would have been a big advantage over the latest Intel parts.

AMDs Ryzen Windows driver support bundle states Win7/10, so it might be worth looking a bit closer at that before discounting it completely.

Code: [Select]

? ? ? ?Description:

???Supports Windows 10/7 (?64-bit)

[BravoV]

Guess its time to upgrade, what kind of heatsink mounting does it use ?

Will old AMD's heatsink work ? I'm talking high end OC air heatsink, had few of them like thermalright, noctua and prolimatech.

[Ed.Kloonk]

When video encoding... stand by with a can of cold spray...   

 

[Terrius]

In the end, if Ryzen is as great as AMD says it will be a Win-Win for everyone.

Actually it will be a Win 10 for everyone which is definitely not a win, that or linux.

Shame, supporting Win 7 would have been a big advantage over the latest Intel parts.

I run windows 10 with no issues. Though I run Win10 pro with a bunch of the store junk and bloat permanently disabled through powershell.  While I do find their privacy settings and policies for win10 very shady, it's not really all the much worse than IOS or Android. Welcome to the era of IoT and Personal Data mining, big brother is always watching.

I upgraded to Win10 for the performance boosts over Win7, but I worked in a Retail PC/PC part store, so I understand how and why some people are unwilling to make the change and that is perfectly fine.


It does appear that AMD is supporting win7 64-bit though according to their drivers page.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download  Scroll to the bottom and look on the right.

AMD Socket AM4/AMD Ryzen™ Processor Software Drivers
Windows 10/7 (64-bit)

[BradC]

Guess its time to upgrade, what kind of heatsink mounting does it use ?

It's looking like old heatsinks with the clip on bracket are compatible, but heatsinks with the screw on bracket certainly require new hardware. I've read Noctua are providing retrofit mount kits for "free" (where free depends on how you can source them).
No serious confirmation on the clips yet, I just based that on a quick comparison of measurements and looking at some of the AM3/AM4 compatible heatsinks that use the clip and don't seem to be providing additional hardware.

[wraper]

Don't get me wrong. I'm an AMD fan from way back

I'm not.

I saved $50? on a mobo/cpu at the computer shop once in ~2002. The bloke conned me into buying the AMD athalon XP. I only wanted another machine to run menial disk maintenance tasks and possible a spare machine if the main rig broke down.

Found out the dos-based Norton Ghost disk cloner doesn't support non-intel in the fine print and sure enough after an hour or two munching on a drive, it hangs.

Never bothered to find out if it ran win98 as reliably(?) as on a Pentium 4 I got soon after in disgust.

The board found use as a firewall for about four years until the caps blew out and the thing wouldn't boot anymore. I learned my lesson.

I don't really see how Norton's violent level of incompetence has anything to do with the CPU.

Nor blowing caps as it was widespread issue in the industry at the time. Heck even Dell motherboards (for intel BTW) with japanese nichicon HM/HN caps failed after a year of work.

[BravoV]

Guess its time to upgrade, what kind of heatsink mounting does it use ?

Notcua has a new AM4 model that looks like just another Noctua with a special mounting bracket.
If you can buy the bracket along, you are likely to use your old Noctua.

It's looking like old heatsinks with the clip on bracket are compatible, but heatsinks with the screw on bracket certainly require new hardware. I've read Noctua are providing retrofit mount kits for "free" (where free depends on how you can source them).
No serious confirmation on the clips yet, I just based that on a quick comparison of measurements and looking at some of the AM3/AM4 compatible heatsinks that use the clip and don't seem to be providing additional hardware.

Ok, confirmed, no need for new AM4 bracket, old AM3 bracket works ! 

Source -> http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/780364-My-time-with-Ryzen

[CJay]

2. Pins on AMD CPUS are  rather stiff and not easy to bend, and if few are bent, very easy to straighten. On intel motherboard, you look on it funny, and pins are already bent. Very hard to straighten them if you don't have a microscope, sharp tweezers and straight hands.

Never bent pins on a socket but I've accidentally bent a few cpu pins so I can't vouch for how difficult a socket is to fix (it looks like it'd be a sod of a job) but CPU pins are not stiff enough to survive a drop from a few inches without bending and I've seen plenty snapped off by people who tried to straighten them, the more stiff the pin is, the more likely it is to snap when you try and straighten it.

They are however, as you say, much simpler to straighten than a socket if they're not bent too far and you take care when straightening them.

3. If CPU pins are bent, you cannot insert it into the socket, nothing bad happens.

Not true, I've replaced several CPUs and motherboards in desktops and servers because people have bent CPU pins and managed to burn up a board and or CPU, one particularly memorable instance was on a HP DL580 system on which you could see the power traces to the affected CPU  because they'd cooked so much it'd caused the fibreglass to burn and bubble. You don't have to get the pins into the socket, all you need to do is bend them enough that they short to an adjacent pin.

[wraper]

Ok, confirmed, no need for new AM4 bracket, old AM3 bracket works ! 

Source -> http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/780364-My-time-with-Ryzen

Only if you buy motherboard with which has AM3 style holes in addition to AM4 holes. Or use spring bracket as stock coolers do.

[David Hess]

Never bent pins on a socket but I've accidentally bent a few cpu pins so I can't vouch for how difficult a socket is to fix (it looks like it'd be a sod of a job) but CPU pins are not stiff enough to survive a drop from a few inches without bending and I've seen plenty snapped off by people who tried to straighten them, the more stiff the pin is, the more likely it is to snap when you try and straighten it.

They are however, as you say, much simpler to straighten than a socket if they're not bent too far and you take care when straightening them.

The problem I have seen with the Intel LGA sockets involves coplanarity and lack of compliance.  If the motherboard becomes warped which is easy to do if the CPU heat sink is mounted incorrectly, then it is easy for some of the socket pins to not make good contact resulting in improper operation at best or a burned socket and possibly CPU at worst.

[Hensingler]

I run windows 10 with no issues.

Funny how people claim to run Win 10 without issues then explain they needed the pro/enterprise version and how and what they disabled and turned off and it is still a privacy leak and of course no one knows what the next update which most people can't refuse will bring.

There is a reason why almost twice as many people are still running Win 7 compared with Win 10 despite Win 10 being free and rammed down their throats by Microsoft. Sadly if enough sheeple accept the polished turds Microsoft produce that is what all of us are going to get, but, hey I'm glad you have no issues, apart from the ones you had, and have, and that updates will bring.

On Ryzen Win 7 support opinion is divided. AMD said they would and then said they wouldn't and yes some Ryzen hardware seems to list Win7 drivers.

[MarkS]

Funny how people claim to run Win 10 without issues then explain they needed the pro/enterprise version and how and what they disabled and turned off and it is still a privacy leak and of course no one knows what the next update which most people can't refuse will bring.

Agreed, but I think most people are referring to it being stable. I'm running the home version of Windows 10 without stability issues, but I have had to disable and block far too much. It's a potential security nightmare.

[Corporate666]

Finally something to possibly kick intels butt again!
Perhaps now Intel will pick up the pace... My 6yr old 2600k is still doing fairly ok compared to the latest 7700k, and thats a shame imo...

Of course AMD still needs to prove itself with the new Ryzen CPU's. Im very suspicious about them not sharing too much single core performance figures yet... Hopefully this wont be just as big of a problem as with their previous architecture. I would not pre-order for this reason alone.

That's THE BIGGEST advantage to Ryzen.  I remember many years ago when I was a working stiff and AMD came out with (I think it was) the Athlon (or was it the Phenom?  it was whatever one made them actually competitive with Intel).  I bought a lot of stock in AMD and made a killing. 

Fast forward to this week... I just bought a new laptop that uses a Core i7 7700HQ processor to replace my Core i7 3610QM processor laptop - that I bought in 2012.  And the new processor is only about 15% faster.  That is absolutely crazy... almost 5 years later and it's only a hair faster.  Back in the day, a 5 year old computer would be virtually unusable.  I guess it's good from a consumer standpoint that the rate of change has slowed, but the other thing that bothers me is I paid more for this laptop than the one from years ago, and the specs aren't really any better (memory, hard drive, screen size, resolution, battery life). 

In other words, the rate at which computers have been getting faster has ground to a halt.  But also, the rate at which the same specification parts have been getting cheaper has also ground to a halt.  The only exception is graphics cards. 

Ryzen will hopefully change that - light a fire under Intel's ass.  They have been abusing the consumer by soaking them and gouging them for YEARS. 

[innkeeper]

On the surface it would seem we have hit a cpu core performance wall

Personally I still run 4 i7-920's overclocked which are circa 2008/9 because i've seen no need to upgrade as there has been no significant performance increases at the price level at around 199 retail at the time.
(note these can overlcock to like 4.2ghz+ pretty easily, but i run them at a conservative 3.8-4.0ghz 24/7 for the last 8 years) These were known for there overclocking, but still at a modest overclock, there jsut 25% slower then the i7-7700hq, and on par with the i7-980 circa 2009 .. where it has the advantage is a TDP of 45W vs 130W+ for similar performance cpus made 8 years ago.

So i agree, performance wise on the consumer level, there has not been much advancement at the per core performance level.
Where there has been advancement is number of cores per die and TDP.

On the consumer side though, graphic performance has been sticking to mores law in its growth, and along with it the floating point processing abilities that can be offloaded to a gpu (i draw a parellel to that  the old math coprocessors). SSD's have givin a huge performance boost to disk io, and memory continues to get faster as we go from ddr-ddr2-ddr3-ddr4-ddr5

I think this is due mostly economic reasons frankly and where the ROI is for development of new technologies. The money for intel is selling cpu's for visualized environments and in cloud architectures where a single cpu goes for 3,000 dollars.  What comes out of that is larger number of cores on a single chip, not necessarily driving higher performance per core, but, lower TDP per core for the most cost effective power consumption.

This fits and overall shift even at the consumer level as applications get more and more efficient at using multiple cores it becomes more important to ahve more cores then the performance per core.

I am a big AMD fan but have not used them in a long time ...  sadly it has taken AMD a long time to catch up to intel in recent history.  AMD used to rule the virtualization space, and was a price leader int he home computing space in the early 2000's intel recognized this and concentrated on architectures to compete and dominate the virtualization space and quicly surpassed amd

I've noticed that intel has reacted to the release of the Ryzen by immediately lowering the cost of the competing cpu's to lower then amd's retail costs. this is likely more of a loss leader to not allow amd to get a foothold again. The only way we will see the consumer prices stay low is if amd succeeds in this generation of cpus at retail. otherwise intel remains the 1000 lb gorilla in the room.

So sadly the "cheaper" part is no longer true.

I do wonder of amd has any server grade cpus in line for launch. that would be a game changer.

[Terrius]

I run windows 10 with no issues.

Funny how people claim to run Win 10 without issues then explain they needed the pro/enterprise version and how and what they disabled and turned off and it is still a privacy leak and of course no one knows what the next update which most people can't refuse will bring.

There is a reason why almost twice as many people are still running Win 7 compared with Win 10 despite Win 10 being free and rammed down their throats by Microsoft. Sadly if enough sheeple accept the polished turds Microsoft produce that is what all of us are going to get, but, hey I'm glad you have no issues, apart from the ones you had, and have, and that updates will bring.

On Ryzen Win 7 support opinion is divided. AMD said they would and then said they wouldn't and yes some Ryzen hardware seems to list Win7 drivers.

I run Windows 10 home on a windows 7 era laptop with no issues as well (the laptop didn't even have windows 8 support). So you certainly don't "need" nor did I say you "need" the pro or enterprise version.  I simply stated I run windows 10 with no issues though I use Win 10 Pro and disabled the bloat and dodgy stuff.

My PC ran perfectly fine with the bloat and dodgy privacy stuff , but anyone who knows anything at all about IT security immediately disables all the key-loggers and other things baked into Win 10, or at least I would hope they do.

I find it particularly amusing when people freak out about windows privacy issues and then immediately go on facebook/social media on their phone... Never realizing or caring that all of the things they are scared about windows 10 are already baked into Android, IOS and the majority of social media apps.

Windows 10 has 25.6% of the market share now, so it has already done far better than windows 8 or 8.1 combined. While there are people who prefer windows 7 still, that market shrinks each month especially in the enthusiast and business markets.

It is important to note however that windows 10 falls in a period where most enterprise and business customers are looking to migrate to a newer version of Windows due to 7's extended support cutoff in 2020. Windows 8 and 8.1 both fell outside of this upgrade period so most enterprise/business customers ignored them.


I happily acknowledge that there are issues with windows 10, but it is far from the fiasco that was Windows 8. There seems to be some sort of rose coloured glasses issue going on where people remember Windows 7 as being perfect and having no privacy/security/usability issues... and yet at launch out the majority refused to upgrade from XP and many had the exact same issues that people have with windows 10. Fact is no matter how good an OS is at launch it will never be as stable and secure as the OS that has been patched for the last 5-10 years, change is always difficult.

Microsoft is actually fairly open about what their updates will bring, it is easy enough to find the patch notes if you actually care.

The biggest pet peeve I have, is the automatic install of all service packs and driver updates. In my opinion it is far from a "Polished Turd" but it all depends on how open to adaptation you are. The fact remains, this is the direction Windows is headed, and while it may not be ideal, it is certainly better than Windows 8 and 8.1 which both failed horrendously due to innumerable compatibility issues that still plague the OS.



As for the Ryzen support, it is listed on the official AMD drivers page as supporting Windows 7, so it is supported. Whether Motherboard and device manufacturers wish to use engineering time developing for Win 7 which is E.O.L.(End Of Life) and has already been dropped from Mainstream support and will be dropping extended support in 2020, well that is a completely different issue.




Anyways back on topic,

I am excited to see what Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 will bring to the table. If they can manage the same single threaded performance as Ryzen 7 but in cheaper more mainstream machines, it could become a decent rival to the I5s and I3s.

[Hensingler]

I find it particularly amusing when people freak out about windows privacy issues and then immediately go on facebook/social media on their phone... Never realizing or caring that all of the things they are scared about windows 10 are already baked into Android, IOS and the majority of social media apps.

I find it particularly amusing when people try to use the privacy invasion of google and facebook as an excuse for the new privacy invasions perpetrated by Microsoft.

[BradC]

I've noticed that intel has reacted to the release of the Ryzen by immediately lowering the cost of the competing cpu's to lower then amd's retail costs.

Can you point to any evidence of that? There have been a couple of very poorly researched clickbait articles that have said that was the case, but as yet they've proven to be hot air. If you have any credible evidence I'd appreciate a link.

Frankly I don't think Intel can *afford* to do an immediate price drop. A) that would draw immediate attention to the AMD products and announce loudly that they are a viable option to everyone who might not have noticed that yet, and B) that would also be admitting they have been taking the absolute piss for the last 5 years and reaming their clients with a pineapple. Nether are particularly a good look.

[Terrius]

I find it particularly amusing when people freak out about windows privacy issues and then immediately go on facebook/social media on their phone... Never realizing or caring that all of the things they are scared about windows 10 are already baked into Android, IOS and the majority of social media apps.

I find it particularly amusing when people try to use the privacy invasion of google and facebook as an excuse for the new privacy invasions perpetrated by Microsoft.

I wrote a fairly lengthy reply to that quote but it seems like a discussion for a separate topic, this thread was about the new Ryzen CPUs and whether they will put up a fight against Intel. So if you want to discuss that further I'd happily join another thread about it! It is quite an interesting topic to be honest. 



Back on point, so far the benchmarks are mixed, but mostly agree on the fact that in Multi threaded application these new chips are killers, and in single threaded they are respectable. It's been many years since AMD has hit even a slight parity in the CPU markets!  I am really looking forward to the R5 and R3 chips, their potential is quite high if they can maintain this performance but in a cheaper more mainstream package.

I've noticed that intel has reacted to the release of the Ryzen by immediately lowering the cost of the competing cpu's to lower then amd's retail costs.

Can you point to any evidence of that? There have been a couple of very poorly researched clickbait articles that have said that was the case, but as yet they've proven to be hot air. If you have any credible evidence I'd appreciate a link.

Frankly I don't think Intel can *afford* to do an immediate price drop. A) that would draw immediate attention to the AMD products and announce loudly that they are a viable option to everyone who might not have noticed that yet, and B) that would also be admitting they have been taking the absolute piss for the last 5 years and reaming their clients with a pineapple. Nether are particularly a good look.

I don't know about anywhere else but there were about $20-$40 price drops on the Intel chips here in Canada that started on March 1st. Uncharacteristic for this time of the year, normally those drops don't happen until closer to big sale days/months. Their socket 2011 chips haven't had any movement price wise though, just the 7000 series chips.

[Deridex]

Ryzen performs as i expected.
And it even seem to work well for a completly new cpu-architecture. Even if there are a few issues left, i gotta say: Well done AMD 
But i will wait some more months, till all fixes for the performance issues are done. I don't like being a beta tester.

[Howardlong]

What seems clear now is that the overclocking potential is minimal unless you go to impractical exotic methods. Partially this may be to do with their use of an indium based thermal interface to the heat spreader, providing excellent thermal conductivity, and therefore being able to run the chips close to their limit even with air based coolers. Even the extreme de-lidders don't appear to be able to do much to better it.

The one question seems to be around the 1080p games performance anomaly, which isn't anywhere near as pronounced in 1440p or 4k when compared to Intel Broadwell-E. Anecdotally there also seems to be a marginally improvement by disabling SMT.

Irrespective, for creators and productivity, there is now a compelling alternative to Intel in the single socket market.

[FireFlower]

Poor OC potential is probably due architecture noise amount on signal paths. Better cooling (liquid) improves a bit heat noise and you get a little bit more overclocking but that's about it with conventional methods. 

Sub-temps the heat noise is not truly not an issue anymore and you can go much higher overclock.  Seems like same problem experienced with Phenom II series where temps were fine but you hit a wall around 4GHz and nothing you can do about it above room temps.

Basically AMD engineers are probably at this moment improving 14nm process and tweaking signal paths on architecture to go for higher clocks.


Game performance problems is pretty obvious when Intel easily has more than 75% of the market share on gaming platforms so you an easily think game developers optimizing their games for just Intel processors and ignored AMD's optimization guides? Dunno I am not game developer, just  my personal opinion why game performance has so much gap compared to similar clock speed Intel counter parts.