AMD - 90% of Intel Performance for 40% of the Price

[guachi]

So I was looking at the PC Gamer review of Ryzen - http://www.pcgamer.com/the-amd-ryzen-7-review/4/. They have a summary chart of CPU and Gaming performance.

On the gaming page, there are results showing what happens if you disable SMT for the 1800x. The gains are about 5%. I think it's reasonable to assume the same 5% gains would apply to the 1700x. I believe the gaming summary is with a resolution of 1920x1080 at Ultra settings with a GTX1080.

If the same gains apply to the 1700x then the 1700x and 1800x have 90+% of the performance of the 7700 in gaming and 90+% of the performance of a 6900 in CPU tasks (according to PC Gamer). There are three Intel processors tested that match that, the 5960x, 6900x, 6950x. Current prices at Newegg for these chips are $1135, $1050, and $1600. The AMD chips cost $400 and $500.

I know we've been disappointed at the Ryzen gaming results but if you ever thought about doing something CPU intensive other than gaming and didn't want to break the bank, now you can have your cake and eat it to. And you can buy a lot of cake with the money you save.

The more I look at the gaming results, the more I realize that I should probably calm down about them. For me, Ryzen is the CPU I've been waiting for but have been too cheap to buy.

 

[LTC8K6]

I've seen a lot of people spend a lot of money for +10%.

 

[TemjinGold]

I've seen a lot of people spend a lot of money for +10%.

Problem is you can't get that 10% in one chip.

 

[13Gigatons]

To be perfectly honest most people can't afford top of the line so AMD will give them pretty good performance without breaking the bank.

 

[Yakk]

For the consumer market I'd say that extra 10% is pure marketing gold, literally.

Huge profit margins allows for lots of marketing to encourage the target market (so called enthusiasts) to "buy up" to a Premium Halo product, which is again just more marketing names.

Something about fool & money ...

 

[TemjinGold]

For the consumer market I'd say that extra 10% is pure marketing gold, literally.

Huge profit margins allows for lots of marketing to encourage the target market (so called enthusiasts) to "buy up" to a Premium Halo product, which is again just more marketing names.

Something about fool & money ...

Right but that last 10% is split into two very different products. You can't get it in a single product.

 

[NesuD]

At this point I am leaning towards the gaming performance issue as being primarily related to optimization issues. I saw a statement by a reviewer and for the life of me can't seem to find the review again that had cpu utilization during the gaming tests significantly lower for Ryzen compared to the Intel processors in the same tests. It seems no reviews are looking at that during these tests to see what is going on. Overall I agree with the OP. Dollar for dollar across all the tested tasks these cpus are killing their high end intel counterparts. If you are a pure gamer and that's all you do then at this point in time you can get 1 intel cpu that does better at 1080 for less money. If you do video encoding or other cpu intensive work with your PC and game with it as well Ryzen even in its current state looks really good to me. Going to wait and see if any reviewers try delving a little deeper into what is going on. Maybe Ian will take a better look when he does his gaming tests.

 

[Teizo]

Lol...the 1700 and 1700X are only $20 bucks cheaper than their intel counterparts. The number of cores is irrelevant. It's the performance in the end that matters most. Guess people are being 'encouraged' some how or another to regurgitate the 6900Ks price compared to the 1800X. These cpus aren't the value people keeping parroting. Don't get me wrong..they are good cpus....but AMD's advocate program must be at it again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUk5T3AkJYE&t=164s

And, considering the only difference between chips is the binning...you can get a 1700 to very likely perform as well as an 1800X....so AMD is even under cutting itself and exposing its own price jacking for the 'higher' end skus.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/03/03/ryzen_1700x_just_as_good_1800x

 

[Ed1]

The problem for AMD Ryzen is same problem with upgrading from 2xxx/3xxx Intel for gaming, only worse.
As for CPU utilization , thats on AMD, they should of got bios and MB straightened out before reviews IMO.

Hopefully they can improve some of it through bios, but who knows.
Also its not like it's a simple cpu upgrade, Its just like Intel upgrade were you need to change everything (CPU, MB, ram etc), full system.

 

[TemjinGold]

Lol...the 1700 and 1700X are only $20 bucks cheaper than their intel counterparts. The number of cores is irrelevant. It's the performance in the end that matters most. Guess people are being 'encouraged' some how or another to regurgitate the 6900Ks price compared to the 1800X. These cpus aren't the value people keeping parroting. Don't get me wrong..they are good cpus....but AMD's advocate program must be at it again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUk5T3AkJYE&t=164s

And, considering the only difference between chips is the binning...you can get a 1700 to very likely perform as well as an 1800X....so AMD is even under cutting itself and exposing its own price jacking for the 'higher' end skus.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/03/03/ryzen_1700x_just_as_good_1800x

I will buy your $20 argument. But the rest of that makes no sense. How can the Ryzens be "good cpus" when "the number of cores are irrelevant." One or the other: If the number of cores are irrelevant, then the Ryzens are horrible cpus because they are losing and aren't much cheaper. If they are good cpus, then the number of cores isn't irrelevant. So which is it?

 

[guachi]

Lol...the 1700 and 1700X are only $20 bucks cheaper than their intel counterparts.

I'm not certain what the closest Intel equivalent to the 1700 is. But, like I said in my original post, the closet Intel counterparts to the 1700x (and 1800x. Their performance is very close) are the 5960, 6900, and 6950 (at least in this test). And those are $1000+.

Are there any Intel chips other than the above three that could achieve 90% of 7700 in games and 90% of 6900 in productivity? I'm looking on Newegg for chips PC Gamer didn't test that might qualify and I'm seeing none.

I guess what I'm saying is that "Zen" turns out to be a good name after all. It really is a balance between two use cases.

If that matters to people, it's really easy to say to them "You get 90% of the best of both worlds in one chip"

 

[NesuD]

The problem for AMD Ryzen is same problem with upgrading from 2xxx/3xxx Intel for gaming, only worse.
As for CPU utilization , thats on AMD, they should of got bios and MB straightened out before reviews IMO.

Hopefully they can improve some of it through bios, but who knows.
Also its not like it's a simple cpu upgrade, Its just like Intel upgrade were you need to change everything (CPU, MB, ram etc), full system.

I am pretty sure the bios has little if anything to do with cpu utilization. If that were the case you should have seen the behavior consistently in the non gaming multithreaded tests as well and that wasn't the case.

 

[Teizo]

I will buy your $20 argument. But the rest of that makes no sense. How can the Ryzens be "good cpus" when "the number of cores are irrelevant." One or the other: If the number of cores are irrelevant, then the Ryzens are horrible cpus because they are losing and aren't much cheaper. If they are good cpus, then the number of cores isn't irrelevant. So which is it?

I say they are good cpus because while they lag behind in gaming, they are competitive in all other categories that utilize all their cores. Also, I was saying that the 6/12 architecture of Broadwell-E 6800K does not make the Intel chip a lesser value even though it has less cores and threads because performance is what matters...and at least when it comes to the 6800K overclocking it doesn't mean you get it to it's advertised speeds on all cores like the 1700X.

So, if someone prefers AMD over Intel..they don't have to feel as though they are sacrificing allot of performance to do it...and if someone prefers Intel over AMD...they aren't getting ripped off like people are making it out to be. Granted the 6900K is over priced and the argument between it and the 1800X is a valid argument to be made. But, as stated the R7 chips 90% (guesstimate) are going to buy are not the value compared to Intel people are shouting about...so from that perspective I think that needs to be pointed out.

 

[Teizo]

I'm not certain what the closest Intel equivalent to the 1700 is. But, like I said in my original post, the closet Intel counterparts to the 1700x (and 1800x. Their performance is very close) are the 5960, 6900, and 6950 (at least in this test). And those are $1000+.

Are there any Intel chips other than the above three that could achieve 90% of 7700 in games and 90% of 6900 in productivity? I'm looking on Newegg for chips PC Gamer didn't test that might qualify and I'm seeing none.

I guess what I'm saying is that "Zen" turns out to be a good name after all. It really is a balance between two use cases.

If that matters to people, it's really easy to say to them "You get 90% of the best of both worlds in one chip"

If you go by price, then it would be the 7700K. It is definitely overall a better cpu for production type workloads that can leverage the extra cores...but for the use most 'enthusiasts' are going to use it...gaming...it is not really a better value. From a server standpoint though...the 1700 would be really good...besting its own siblings the 1700X and 1800X price/per.