Ryzen CPU Pre-Orders Go Live

After months of delays and years of waiting, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have finally… almost launched. The top three Ryzen CPUs are now available for pre-order and will be releasing on March 2nd, 2017.

The non-disclosure agreement on reviews is still preventing us from obtaining any reliable benchmarks, but AMD has released some info, and the pricing information is available. Here is what we have:

  1. AMD’s top three Ryzen CPUs are all 8 core/16 thread CPUs.
  2. The Ryzen 7 1800X is 3.6GHz, priced at $500.
  3. The Ryzen 7 1700X is 3.4GHz, priced at $400.
  4. The Ryzen 7 1700 is 3.0GHz, priced at $330.
  5. AMD is positioning these CPUs against Intel’s i7-6800K, i7-6850K, and i7-6900K.

The benchmarks we have today are from AMD, which is both good and bad. It is good to have official benchmarks, as opposed to leaks and rumors. But it is also bad, since we know that AMD is going to showcase its products in the best light possible, and these benchmarks may not be too realistic.

For example, the i7-6900/6800 series of CPUs were worse in single-threaded performance when compared to the 6700K/6600K. Intel’s new i7-7700K is even faster. So, when AMD compares the single-threaded performance and says that it is equal to Intel, it is leaning a bit more towards marketing than being informative.

For multi-threaded performance, AMD says that its new CPUs have a decisive advantage, and this could easily be the case with 8 cores and 16 threads. The higher multi-threaded performance, coupled with much cheaper prices, could spell major trouble for the expensive Intel 6-cores and 8-cores.

The CPU market just got interesting for the first time in a while.

Of course, all the above is still speculative. We must stress that the official benchmarks we have are all from AMD, and not from independent third-party sites. The benchmarks we are seeing may be realistic, or they may be very cherry-picked. Going by past launches, we can reasonably assume that a lot of benchmarking was done by AMD, but they only chose a few benchmarks for the internet showroom.

Nevertheless, we have more info than we did before, and that info is very pleasing. We have every reason to believe that Ryzen is going to help AMD be a lot more competitive, which is excellent news for everyone — especially the consumers. Intel’s lead has only grown since Sandy Bridge, and no one likes a monopoly.

Between now and the 2nd of March, it is going to be quite a spectacle. The hype trains are fully loaded and running at full speed. The fanboy wars are in full swing. The delusions of extreme grandeur have begun to manifest on one side, and the prayers for a catastrophic disaster can be heard from the other side. At Logical Increments, we will be waiting for the proper benchmarks, as we do not support any brand of fanboyism. Instead, we hope that the consumers get a greater variety of CPU choices at friendlier prices this year!

 

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