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AMD have announced Ryzen 5 will launch in April

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AMD initially launched Ryzen 7 their enthusiast higher performing chips, but now they're gearing up for the lower end with Ryzen 5 which will launch on April 11th.

Here's their sneak-peek video:
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Fun fact: At 7:17 it looks like they have a unit running Ubuntu to help with their testing.

The models launching will be:
Ryzen 5 1600X - 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.6 GHz clock rate with 4.0 GHz Precision Boost, 95 Watt TDP
Ryzen 5 1600 - 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.2 GHz clock rate with 3.6 GHz Precision Boost, 65 Watt TDP
Ryzen 5 1500X - 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.5 GHz clock rate with 3.7 GHz Precision Boost, 65 Watt TDP
Ryzen 5 1400 - 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.2 GHz clock rate with 3.6 GHz Precision Boost, 65 Watt TDP

They will apparently use the exact same socket as Ryzen 7, meaning if you decided one day to upgrade from Ryzen 5 to Ryzen 7, then you won't need a new motherboard.

AMD have also answered a few questions burning in the community here, which is worth reading.

I know a bunch of you picked up Ryzen 7, but will any of you be going for the cheaper Ryzen 5 option? Will be very interesting to see how Ryzen 5 stacks up against their older processors. Considering one of the huge selling points of Ryzen was the increase in IPC (instructions per clock), it should be a decent option for cash-strapped gamers. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Hardware
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21 comments
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lvlark Mar 16, 2017
I'll probably pick one up in June. May not have enough money before, nor time to actually put it to use.

That does give me time to wait out benchmarks and decide whether the extra cores (or even extra wattage of the 1600x) will be worth it.


Last edited by lvlark on 16 March 2017 at 10:32 am UTC
hm11 Mar 16, 2017
lets see, im aiming for the lower end stuff as of now due to $$$ restraints lol but i hope these processors deliver but until then ill hold on for reviews.
themixturemedia Mar 16, 2017
Still rocking my 8370 right now and plays fine, still waiting for my RX 480. I will see after I get that if I still need to upgrade or not.
Cmdr_Iras Mar 16, 2017
Im interested in how Ryzen is going forward, but for the time being my i5 4670K is more than enough to handle modern games especially coupled with my 1070.

However I would like AMD to keep pushing intel because I would hapily buy a future generation AMD CPU when it comes time to upgrade; hell if AMD's GPU's get upto par in performance I would hapily switch to one as well when the time comes.
Ehvis Mar 16, 2017
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Since they appear to have figured out why the Ryzen 7 performs relatively poorly on some games, the 4 core Ryzen 5 may actually be quite interesting for gaming. Especially if the clock can be upped a bit.
D34VA_ Mar 16, 2017
At 7:17, you can clearly see a PC running Ubuntu to the right.
Arehandoro Mar 16, 2017
Interesting times. Might have to upgrade in a year time or so, perfect to see benchmarks and user experiences before.
Xpander Mar 16, 2017
Rocking a Ryzen 7, very happy with my purchase. Gamers will be happy with the R5, im quite sure. It probably wont reach to the levels of Kaby Lake performance, but for budget gamers i believe it will be an amazing product.
MayeulC Mar 16, 2017
By the way, I didn't watch the video, but Ars technica put the prices down:

There are four Ryzen 5 parts launching on April 11. At the top end is the R5 1600X: 6 cores, 12 threads, with a base of 3.6GHz and a turbo of 4.0GHz, for $249. Below that is the $219 1600. It has the same core and thread count but cuts clock speeds to 3.2/3.6GHz. At the bottom end are a pair of 4-core, 8-thread parts: the $169 1400 at 3.2/3.4GHz, and the $189 1500X at 3.5/3.7GHz.

This is quite appealing, and could do for a very cheap upgrade. Also, given the price of the lowest-end ones, Ryzen 3 will probably be quite inexpensive.

I will need to upgrade at some point, but don't need anything extremely fancy, so I am quite tempted by those. I will probably wait until we have all the benchmarks to make my choice, though.

Plus, I am not sure if the "core cluster" will be useful in games without them rethinking their threading model. The infinity fabric adds around 100ns latency to interprocessor communication (which sits at around 40ns for two cores in the same cluster, and 23ns for two threads in the same core, IIRC). So, it might not be worth having more than one cluster for now.
That said, games can always try to optimize for this, and we might then see huge performance improvements (for example, decoupling physics, rendering and AI in a way that minimizes the need for synchronization, then split them over the different clusters). Time will tell, I guess.
EDIT: I did a bit of research, and it seems they will have their cores in a 2+2 configuration, so it might not be optimal for gaming. Also, it seems to be "core complex", not "core cluster". They might have a better memory bandwidth in this situation, though.

Then, they are already a good fit for other tasks, such as video encoding, compiling, raytracing... And multitasking, of course. So, don't strike them out just yet.


Last edited by MayeulC on 16 March 2017 at 11:54 am UTC
g000h Mar 16, 2017
For me, the unpleasant thing about upgrading to Ryzen is this:

Need to buy new motherboard (not checked prices, but likely to be £100)
Need to buy new RAM probably 2x 8GB DDR4 (not checked prices, but likely to be £140)
Need to buy new CPU (and Ryzen 7 is more than £300, ouch)
Possibly buy new CPU Fan (£25 maybe)

Likely to be £400 - £700 upgrade cost. Ick :(
Marky Mar 16, 2017
I'm waiting for AMD to either open the PSP, allow the user to disable the PSP or at least for Ryzen to become coreboot compatible. Aside from that, Ryzen looks awesome.
PublicNuisance Mar 16, 2017
For me, the unpleasant thing about upgrading to Ryzen is this:

Need to buy new motherboard (not checked prices, but likely to be £100)
Need to buy new RAM probably 2x 8GB DDR4 (not checked prices, but likely to be £140)
Need to buy new CPU (and Ryzen 7 is more than £300, ouch)
Possibly buy new CPU Fan (£25 maybe)

Likely to be £400 - £700 upgrade cost. Ick :(

That's the usual procedure on the Intel side as well so it's kind of a moot point.
g000h Mar 16, 2017
For me, the unpleasant thing about upgrading to Ryzen is this:

Need to buy new motherboard (not checked prices, but likely to be £100)
Need to buy new RAM probably 2x 8GB DDR4 (not checked prices, but likely to be £140)
Need to buy new CPU (and Ryzen 7 is more than £300, ouch)
Possibly buy new CPU Fan (£25 maybe)

Likely to be £400 - £700 upgrade cost. Ick :(

That's the usual procedure on the Intel side as well so it's kind of a moot point.

Yes, but I'm already on the AMD side. ( AMD FX 8350 8-core 4GHz base clock )

Having to upgrade practically the entire innards of my system makes this almost equivalent to an entire PC purchase. What I'm saying is that it is a shame that this isn't a plug-in replacement to current FX series CPU, possibly costing closer to £200 and no need to buy "a whole PC" to get it.

It is annoying me that I feel that I have to upgrade to keep a smooth performance in AAA gaming. Fingers crossed that Vulkan games will work better, and there will be plenty of them in the future.
Keyrock Mar 16, 2017
My i7-4790K is fine for the time being. I'll see what the market looks like in a generation or two.
Comandante Ñoñardo Mar 16, 2017
In theory, due to the amount of core/threads, the ryzen 5 1400 and the 1500x are the equivalent rivals to the Intel core i7 4790K...
Let's see what happen in the real world.
MintedGamer Mar 16, 2017
Since they appear to have figured out why the Ryzen 7 performs relatively poorly on some games, the 4 core Ryzen 5 may actually be quite interesting for gaming. Especially if the clock can be upped a bit.

That's not really true, but its how the media have chosen to spin it. All the Ryzen chips are great for gaming, they're not poor at all. It's like saying a 6700k or even a 2500k is poor for gaming. Everyone knows that's not true. Just because its not the fastest of all for most games, the sound bite becomes "Ryzens no good for gaming" which is false, its just not the fastest, but it is by far the best bang for buck and will only improve as time goes on, BIOS matures, faster RAM speeds are tested as Ryzen is very dependant on memory speed, and software support matures.

Any well designed system would be GPU bound so testing at unrealistic resolutions to stress the CPU isn't really a real-world test. I doubt any gamer would spend a lot on a new CPU and use a slow old GPU.
Pompesdesky Mar 17, 2017
Yes, but I'm already on the AMD side. ( AMD FX 8350 8-core 4GHz base clock )

Having to upgrade practically the entire innards of my system makes this almost equivalent to an entire PC purchase. What I'm saying is that it is a shame that this isn't a plug-in replacement to current FX series CPU, possibly costing closer to £200 and no need to buy "a whole PC" to get it.

It is annoying me that I feel that I have to upgrade to keep a smooth performance in AAA gaming. Fingers crossed that Vulkan games will work better, and there will be plenty of them in the future.

The problem is the AM3+ socket of your FX CPU is really old already, see how many Intel sockets have passed in the meantime. At some point they need to change it to enable new tech such as DDR4 or others that AM3+ isn't able to handle. If AM4 is anywhere near AM3+ in terms of longevity it'll be a good investment :)
KuJo Mar 17, 2017
It would seem Microsoft is ever looking for more creative ways of pushing its Windows 10 operating system towards the masses. Some Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users have apparently encountered one of these: a lock on system updates. The error message, which reads "Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows", points towards a hardware lock-in in exchange for added security and updates.
-> https://www.techpowerup.com/231550/microsoft-locks-system-updates-for-windows-7-8-1-on-ryzen-kaby-lake-systems

Dear Windows gamers, you are welcome! :D
finaldest Mar 17, 2017
Just got my new Ryzen setup up and running. Has some memory and bios issues at first but all is now good.

Installed malware 10 first to test hardware performance and I ave now just installed the latest Manjaro and updated to the latest kernel.

Manjaro would not install unless I chose the "non free" driver option but overall installing Linux on Ryzen was a breeze and only took 10 mins to install unlike on Skylake.

for those that are interested here are my specs.

Ryzen 1800x
Asus CH6 Mobo
Vegence LPX 3000mhz Ram
GTX 1070

Very impressed with Ryzen, but its now time to start testing some games.
Vuko2000 Mar 17, 2017
Havent seen yet even one All In One PC (even announced) wit components from AMD. Since years I use AMD Gpu and CPU but now I whould like to buy All In One PC no way to find in POLAND. Everything with Intel CPU
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