AMD Launches Ryzen: 52% More IPC, Eight Cores for Under $330, Pre-order Today, On Sale March 2nd
by Ian Cutress on February 22, 2017 9:00 AM ESTThe biggest x86 launch for AMD in five years is today: Ryzen is here. As always before a major launch, AMD gives a ‘Tech Day’ for relevant press and analysts, and through this event AMD’s CEO, Dr. Lisa Su lifted the lid on one of the most anticipated products in the semiconductor industry. AMD knows how to control the level of enthusiasm for its fans, and today is the end result, with processors going on pre-order from major retailers today at 1pm EST, ready for a general hard launch on March 2nd.
In a similar vein to launches of recent smartphones, AMD is doing a staggered announcement/launch with the products on their new microarchitecture. Where Samsung/Apple might give all the details for a product a few weeks before it’s available to buy, today on February 22nd marks the day where AMD is giving consumers information about Ryzen, and specifically the Ryzen 7 family of eight-core products. All the information today is from AMD, and AMD’s internal testing, and pre-orders also start from today for users ready to put down their money for a launch day part. Reviews of the CPUs, as well as when the CPUs will ship to customers, is on March 2nd. This also happens to be right in the middle of two annual shows, Game Developer Conference (GDC) and Mobile World Congress (MWC), making the time between receiving pre-launch samples and being able to provide independent verification of AMD’s performance claims relatively frantic. We’ll do our best!
The Ryzen Family
With a new processor launch, naming the parts and positioning them within the market is critical. So with Ryzen, the processor stack will be split into three based on performance and price: Ryzen 7 at the high end, Ryzen 5 in the middle, and Ryzen 3 for more price-conscious consumers. Both Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 are set to be launched later, and Ryzen 7 is the first portion of the family to be released.
Ryzen 7 will have three CPUs to start, all having eight cores and supporting simultaneous multi-threading:
- Ryzen 7 1800X: 8C/16T, 3.6 GHz base, 4.0 GHz turbo, 95W, $499
- Ryzen 7 1700X: 8C/16T, 3.4 GHz base, 3.8 GHz turbo, 95W, $399
- Ryzen 7 1700: 8C/16T, 3.0 GHz base, 3.7 GHz turbo, $329
Ryzen 7 1800X will be the high-end part, featuring a base clock of 3.6 GHz and a turbo of 4.0 GHz, within a TDP of 95W, and for $499. Next to this is Ryzen 7 1700X, launching at $399, with a base/turbo of 3.4/3.8 GHz. The final part for the launch is the Ryzen 7 1700, providing eight cores and sixteen threads for $329 at 3.0/3.7 GHz frequencies.
Processors will initially be available for pre-order from 185 retailers and OEMs worldwide, either as individual parts or pre-built systems.
What, not 40% IPC? 52% IPC??
Enthusiasts and analysts use the term IPC, or ‘Instructions Per Clock’, as a measure of how much the underlying microarchitecture improves from generation to generation. Two decades ago, a good design on a smaller node could net a healthy double-digit gain, whereas in recent years 5-10% gain has become the norm. When AMD initially announced that the new Zen microarchitecture they were developing was aiming for a 40% IPC gain, despite the low IPC they were starting from, users remained skeptical. AMD rehired Jim Keller to work alongside long-term AMD architect Mike Clark and produce a team with several goals in mind: high-performance x86, simultaneous multithreading, and a product to be relevant in the computing, PC, server and mobile space again. So despite this, 40% IPC always seemed a somewhat lofty goal, because Bulldozer was so underwhelming, and despite this low starting point. For the Ryzen launch today, AMD is stating that the final result of that goal is a 52% gain in IPC.
This is something we will need to test in due course!
The Ryzen Silicon, and the Future
AMD pointed out that the new 8-core silicon design runs 4.8 billion transistors and features 200m of wiring. Through previous announcements we’ve examined parts of the microarchitecture including cache sizes, threading, front-end/back-end design, and so on.
AMD Zen Microarchiture Part 2: Extracting Instruction-Level Parallelism
AMD Gives More Zen Details: Ryzen, 3.4 GHz+, NVMe, Neural Net Prediction, & 25 MHz Boost Steps
AMD’s CEO was keen to point out that this is a from-scratch design for AMD, using the knowledge gained from features developed for previous products but ultimately under the hood it looks like ‘a typical x86 high-performance core’, with AMD-specific features and tweaks. We were told that AMD’s roadmap extends into the multi-year range, so while the focus for 2017 will be on this family of products, back at HQ the next two generations are in various stages of development.
BENCHMARKS PLEASE
So despite the 82+ motherboards going to be available, 19 initial PC system builders moving into 200+ through the first half of 2017, the big question on everyone’s lips is how exactly does it perform?
Well, AMD gave us the following numbers:
AMD's benchmarks showed that the top Ryzen 7 1800X, compared to the 8-core Intel Core i7-6900K, both at out-of-the-box frequencies, gives an identical score on the single threaded test and a +9% in the multi-threaded test. AMD put this down to the way their multi-threading works over the Intel design. Also, the fact that the 1800X is half of the price of the i7-6900K.
In a similar vein, again with the Cinebench 15 multi-threaded test, the Ryzen 7 1700X scores over and above the Core i7-6800K (its price competition) and higher than the Core i7-6900K which costs 2.5 times as much.
We’ll tell you what our benchmarks say, with official retail processors. But you will have to wait until March 2nd. Sorry.
386 Comments
View All Comments
Outlander_04 - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
Intel Z170 boards split the graphics lanes into x8/x8 too . What is it you are complaining about?The intel set ups in these benchmarks AMD released had twice as much RAM configured in 4 channel . They still got beaten by the AMD running dual channel RAM . What is it you are complaining about?
cheshirster - Friday, February 24, 2017 - link
4 channel to 2 channel memory has no effect on Cinebench scores.karma77police - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
Before you order Ryzenhttps://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7438f4957b9f...
Don't sell your Kaby Lake...
gruffi - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
What does one old game show? Not much. Maybe you should post an x264/x265 comparison, or POV-Ray, or Blender, or Handbrake, or 7-zip, etc. ;) Everyone knows that games are often GPU limited and don't show the full potential of a CPU. And even if a 4-core CPU achieves similar fps as an 8-core CPU in many games, the latter one has way more free resources for additional tasks.willis936 - Friday, February 24, 2017 - link
You did read the game title right?Cooe - Sunday, February 28, 2021 - link
GTAV was already ancient in early 2017 and by and large uses only a SINGLE CORE for basically all primary engine processing / CPU work.Lol anyone that followed your "advice" and bought Kaby Lake over Ryzen 1000 in early 2017, "exclusively for gaming" is feeling like the BIGGEST idiot in the god damn world about now. ESPECIALLY if they got a 4-core/4-thread i5-7600/K over a 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 1600/X. Nowadays, Ryzen 1000 absolutely freaking BITCH SLAPS Kaby Lake in modern titles/game engines, and this trend started as recently as mid-late 2018.
l187l - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
so a ryzen 7 1700 at 3.2 GHz is running the game the same as a more expensive CPU clocked at 4.2 GHz. Sounds like a win to me. Overclock the ryzen 7 and it will have identical minimum FPS, and who cares about 2 secs of max FPS being higher lmfao.For a better comparison, that should have shown the Intel 8 core CPUs as well ;)
Gastec - Friday, February 24, 2017 - link
No, that image is irrelevant without a context.gruffi - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
The second benchmark slide is slightly misleading. If i7-6800K is the base then the Ryzen 1700X bar should show +39%. If Ryzen 1700X is the base then the i7-6800K bar should show -28%.Anyway, I think we can say now, AMD is back! Finally their architecture is competitive again. I hope they can significantly improve it with every new generation.
Gastec - Thursday, February 23, 2017 - link
- Ryzen 7 1700X: 8C/16T, 3.4 GHz base, 3.8 GHz turbo, 95W, $400, £390 on Amazon.co.uk- Intel Core i7-7700K: 4C/16T, 4.2 GHz base, 4.5 GHz turbo, 91W, $340, £328 on Amazon.co.uk
The question is, will Ryzen 7 perform better in games and other single-threaded tests? Because it sure is more expensive than Kaby Lake.