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AMD have released more information about Zen, but the official name is now AMD 'Ryzen' (pronounced as Rye-zen). Their livestream event just finished, so here's a quick overview for you.

They announced that Ryzen 'Summit Ridge' will be on their AM4 platform, which will support DDR4 memory, USB 3.1 v2, NVMe storage and PCIe v3. It will have 8 cores, 16 threads with a base clock of at least 3.4 GHz+ (they may tweak that higher at release). It will boost higher, but they haven't said how high. This is wrapped up in a neat 95W TDP package, so that's not bad at all for what it does.

image
It's worth noting, that this is their high-end, so their lower end which hasn't really been talked about will differ.

They will come with 'SenseMI', which includes a bunch of thermal and voltage sensors. With this feature, it will apparently be able to adapt the performance based on heat conditions at lower voltages, so if you have a really good cooler for example it can maximise the performance for you. This also includes a smart prefetch and other goodies to help boost performance.

It will be available sometime in Q1 of 2017 for the desktop chips (Q2 for server chips), but hopefully we will see a more solid date soon.

The AMD CEO claims they have hit their goal of 40% improvement over their last generation's IPC (instructions per cycle). This is a massive improvement, and if really true it will put AMD firmly back on the map for a lot of people.

They did three tests against an Intel 3.2GHz 6900K, where the AMD chip came out just about on top, which is pretty impressive. See the linked video in this tweet:

Using Blender, we put Ryzen up against it's biggest competitor, clock for clock, at #NewHorizon. The results speak from themselves. pic.twitter.com/0glPor1jpf

— AMDRyzen (@AMDRyzen) December 13, 2016


I still think it will be more interesting to see real-world benchmarks done by others, so we can remove any marketing speak and just see hard numbers. I am excited to see them though, as Ryzen could really be the game-changer we've been needing.

What do you think, sound good to you?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Hardware
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35 comments
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kellerkindt Dec 13, 2016
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Finally. Competition.
Keyrock Dec 13, 2016
Still awaiting benchmarks performed by an independent 3rd party (I don't trust benchmarks performed by AMD or Intel themselves), hopefully Ryzen is AMD's big comeback. Lord knows we desperately need some competition again.


Last edited by Keyrock on 13 December 2016 at 10:25 pm UTC
Avehicle7887 Dec 13, 2016
Zen > Ryzen, I'll call it 'Rise of Zen'.

As has been said, I'd like to see 3rd party benchmarks too.

Since AMD is also more OSS friendly than nVidia it might finally be the perfect time to build that full AMD system. :-)
Breeze Dec 13, 2016
Cherry picked benchmarks Bulldozer beat Intel. When the reality was Bulldozer was worse than the 6 core Thuban in a good portion of benchmarks. I still remain sceptical, but hopeful about AMD being competitive with Intel.
cRaZy-bisCuiT Dec 13, 2016
Mhh rendering performance is not of much interest for me. Of course compiling would benefit from 8 fast cores but it's no improvement for gaming. I'll stick to my 3570k. Whenever I need to upgrade my rig it will be AMD if it's at least somehow competetive.
Ehvis Dec 14, 2016
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I've always chosen my CPUs based on single core performance. Even today that is still a good selection for real world performance. So, I'll keep an eye on this and see how it all works out in practice.
mrdeathjr Dec 14, 2016
I've always chosen my CPUs based on single core performance.

Even today that is still a good selection for real world performance.

So, I'll keep an eye on this and see how it all works out in practice.

In my case choose new cpu using same parameter

I stay interested in i3 7350K because at stock clock have 20% more speed in single core (geekbench) compared my actual Pentium G3258 @ 4.1Ghz

20% is good but is low, in i3 7350K stay interested in how much is possible OC using air cooling solution without surpass 60 to 65 degrees

But if i3 7350K can OC to 5.0 or 5.2Ghz with 1.3 of vcore (maximum) and without surpass 60 to 65 degrees using air cooling solution will be must have in my case

^_^
GustyGhost Dec 14, 2016
I would be more excited to hear them announce support for Coreboot and the end of PSP integration but you can't win them all.
Comandante Ñoñardo Dec 14, 2016
So... The bulldozer modules are very much alive with another name; instead of modules, now they are called cores...
The FX 8xxx was four cores and eight threads...
And now we have eight cores and sixteen threads with less TDP than the FX8xxx... Good sign! :)
I wonder how many FPU per core we have...
STiAT Dec 14, 2016
Due to my old rig had given up (RiP my Alienware X51 R1(!!) <sniff>, I will miss it), I recently was looking for a fast-buy low-budget gaming PC - christmas is coming, and I currently ain't got the cash to spend for a really good rig at the moment (the PC was at 600, which is not too bad). Got myself one with a FX4-4350 @ 4x4.4 ghz, with a 1050 Ti graphics card.

While it should not, it outperforms my former i7-2600k (~ the same release date as the i7-2600k) with nvidia 980 (ye, I upgraded the graphics card in the X51) by .. quite a lot. That surprised me. May be due to it running at 4.4 ghz at a core, not 3.4 as the i7 was.


Last edited by STiAT on 14 December 2016 at 1:55 am UTC
Trump Dec 14, 2016
I been waiting over a year now for the Zen release to build a new computer. Excited to see the performance and core increase. Let's just hope they are telling the truth though about performance.

And another exciting note, my compilation time will decrease lol.

Now this close to release I need to save up money for 2 new 400 or 500 series gpu to replace my 980s.
boltronics Dec 14, 2016
I built my current rig at the start of the year, so I'm not due for a high-performance upgrade/replacement for a while... but when I am I'll definitely go AMD if it stacks up roughly the same (or somewhat close) to Intel.
m0nt3 Dec 14, 2016
So... The bulldozer modules are very much alive with another name; instead of modules, now they are called cores...
The FX 8xxx was four cores and eight threads...
And now we have eight cores and sixteen threads with less TDP than the FX8xxx... Good sign! :)
I wonder how many FPU per core we have...

It will have 8 FPUs (1 per core, no modules like Bulldozer), the 16 thread is 8 core and two threads per core, SMT (Simultanius Multi-Threading), like Intel Hyper Threading.
catchatyou Dec 14, 2016
I'm still rocking an FX 8320, so I'm looking forward to an upgrade to Zen. Pair that with Vega, and I'll be set for a few more years. I might even move up to a 4k gaming system in a smaller form factor like MicroATX or MiniITX. Exciting times are ahead!
zimplex1 Dec 14, 2016
I need it...
Xpander Dec 14, 2016
Should be pretty good upgrade for me :)

i ran the blender test also

Ryzen had 35 sec

mine:

FX-8320@4,4ghz
![


you can download the file from here to test yourself with blender 2.78:

http://download.amd.com/demo/RyzenGraphic_27.blend


Last edited by Xpander on 14 December 2016 at 8:33 am UTC
MayeulC Dec 14, 2016
I've been waiting for zen for around 4 years. I will wait for the benchmarks to arrive, and the stocks to be more favorable, but I will probably end up making a new (Ry)Zen+Vega rig. Yeah, coreboot would also be a must, but I doubt this will happen anytime soon, especially on desktop-grade systems.
TheRiddick Dec 14, 2016
If people can clock their lower end Zen CPU's at ~4.5ghz (for boost, or if it auto does it) then I will be happy with getting a AMD CPU. Still not sure on what to expect from this auto-clocking business, makes no sense stating a TURBO speed if the thing clocks up to whatever it wants/needs anyway?

Normally you'd find the top stable clocks and volts for the CPU then let it apply those through the typical clock throttling method, having the CPU 'decide' itself on what it can achieve doesn't seem sensible or even stable!


Last edited by TheRiddick on 14 December 2016 at 11:54 am UTC
elmapul Dec 14, 2016
can someone explain me, why the hell their logo take so much to render?
they put countless polygons on a plane just to make it take more time to render?
why not show an impressive demo like try to render some frame of sintel at any resolution?
the other demos where more impressive, the blender demo made blender looks dumb.
g000h Dec 14, 2016
About 2 years ago, I was buying Core i5 CPUs for work, and after the first few it dawned on me that Intel were locking them to No. Threads = No. Cores, so you buy a 4 core Core i5 and you don't get 4 cores / 8 threads which I'd been expecting. Pretty unhappy with Intel about that. The alternatives were pay a big chunk more for Core i7, or jump ship to AMD FX processor (8 cores ~ 8 threads) for *less* money than a Core i5.

So, I jumped ship and now 70% of the PCs at work are running AMD FX processors.

Sure, single core performance is better at a given clock-speed with Intel chips, but AMD makes the best value processors, and for multi-core work, AMD FX are pretty effective.

Hoping AMD get "back on top" with their new Ryzen.
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