AMD Zen - Key Dates and Information

[Chiropteran]

My prediction on pricing:

8C16T BE - $799
8C16T - $599
6C12T - $389
4C8T - $279 ($249 if clocks aren't that great but only okay)
4C4T - OEM only ~ removed from market once Raven Ridge arrives

God, I hope not. Unless the clocks are much higher than expected, the 4C isn't really going to be much of an upgrade for anyone with a 4 year old i7 or more recent. And CPU+MB+RAM prices starting at $600+ just to move to 6 cores, meh I think people who want to pay that much would already own a 6 or 8 core.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Pretty excited about the new upcoming AMD CPUs. Haven't been hyped in this space for a very long time. Might just upgrade over to a Ryzen platform if the price/performance is good.

 

[Zstream]

It will be hard for me to justify moving from my Xeon Haswell. We're talking about memory, motherboard, CPU, and just time to swap it all out and hope that I don't corrupt my windows install... not sure I want to undertake this effort. Maybe I'll wait for zen+ or whatever.

 

[CHADBOGA]

After 1.5 years of Zen speculation I am glad it all comes to an end in 1-2 months from now.

My hope is that with Zen's arrival, Sharikou Phd starts providing analysis again of the overall CPU market.

He was by far my favourite semi-conductor commentator.

 

[Cookie Monster]

It will be hard for me to justify moving from my Xeon Haswell. We're talking about memory, motherboard, CPU, and just time to swap it all out and hope that I don't corrupt my windows install... not sure I want to undertake this effort. Maybe I'll wait for zen+ or whatever.

For me its easy since Ive been using this platform for years now and its majorly outdated in terms of upgrade paths, performance etc. Finally the CPU side of things will get exciting!

 

[imported_jjj]

All they have to do is charge less than Intel for +/-10% performance. Thanks to the HEDT line, that'll be easy for their 8c/16t offerings. And it's not like Intel's 4c/8t chips are cheap either.

Pretty much everybody here doesn't seem to understand how volumes scale with pricing.
Intel''s HEDT market is $4 billions per year so about 2.5 million units.
Ryzen 6 and 8 cores anywhere close to HEDT in price gets crushed by Intel. It's very easy for Intel to adjust prices a bit in a category with low volumes and they have the PCIe lanes advantage.Anyone paying those prices will also see more memory channels as an advantage not as an extra cost.
If AMD wants to sell 500k units for 6 and 8 cores , they should price 8 cores at 600-700$. Intel can easily price 10 cores at 999$ with 8 and 6 cores just 50$ above AMD to just end all the AMD hype.
With such prices AMD would kill the marketing bang and their quads won't sell well either. They'll end up with the entire platform generating a billion in revenue and that''s many times less than its potential.

They can offer twice the cores Intel does by removing the GPU and replacing it with more cores. That's not competitive, it's a lot more than that and Intel's 10 cores die is far too fat to be able to compete at Kaby Lake pricing and 10s of millions of units.That's how AMD milks this.

High pricing=tiny market, that's a fact not a supposition. Intel's ability to compete at high prices is not questionable. At low volumes it's not even noticeable if they adjust pricing given their total revenues..

 

[coercitiv]

God, I hope not. Unless the clocks are much higher than expected, the 4C isn't really going to be much of an upgrade for anyone with a 4 year old i7 or more recent. And CPU+MB+RAM prices starting at $600+ just to move to 6 cores, meh I think people who want to pay that much would already own a 6 or 8 core.

Zen 6c/12t close to $400 would be a tough sell, it's so close to Intel's 6c/12t pricing. This move would only make sense if AMD were in a better shape, with better product portfolio in recent years, and a reputation to match. A slightly lower CPU price coupled with lower MB price would indeed favor them, but only if they were seen as previously competitive.

Zen 4c/8t at higher price than i5 7600k and just bellow i7 7700 will have trouble in reviews, since it will fail to clearly show itself worthy of the price tag. I wouldn't underestimate the power of a well oiled PR machine making sure 7600K @ 5Ghz comes out on top in oc reviews, while i7 7700 takes care of the stock clock contest. Again, being in line with Intel's portfolio price/perf wise will not necessarily induce sales.

AMD can price the halo 8c/16t bin as high as they want, they can go nuts, but they need Zen products to be extremely competitive against Intel's 6c/12t and 4c/8t. They are likely to offer more cores for the same price against the i7 and "free" SMT against i5.

 

[cytg111]

Zen 6c/12t close to $400 would be a tough sell, it's so close to Intel's 6c/12t pricing. This move would only make sense if AMD were in a better shape, with better product portfolio in recent years, and a reputation to match.

At same IPC and somehwat higher clocks I definitely see a 6c/12t Zen going for 389.-. Better performing and 50$ cheaper. I think it fits nicely.

 

[beginner99]

Zen 6c/12t close to $400 would be a tough sell, it's so close to Intel's 6c/12t pricing.

Agree. I expected them to compete with 2 cores more. eg. 8-core vs 6800k ($500), 6-core vs 7700k ($350) and quad vs i3 7320 or slowest i5. ($180).

 

[bjt2]

Or even at 4GHz it can be a lot slower than 6900K...

Just using your baseless 'logic'


I don't envisage the top-end launch SKU being higher than $600, at any rate.

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

Why should be slower at 4GHz if it is faster at 3.4?

 

[bjt2]

God, I hope not. Unless the clocks are much higher than expected, the 4C isn't really going to be much of an upgrade for anyone with a 4 year old i7 or more recent. And CPU+MB+RAM prices starting at $600+ just to move to 6 cores, meh I think people who want to pay that much would already own a 6 or 8 core.

If the 8c/16T top is 3.7-3.8 base, it will destroy the 6900K. It can even be priced to $999... $799 seems honest. Considering that at worst it will be 3.6/4.0... Up to +20% than 6900K (Handbrake: +8%, +12% clock) and probabily at least on par on other benchmarks...

 

[rancherlee]

I remember when Athlon came out and it wasn't much cheaper than the P3 and they traded blows on performance. I payed 313$ for a Athlon 700 back then, the most I've every payed for a chip actually. If the Zen is on par core vs core then they will be priced close to the same Intel part IMO, the ONLY place it will be significantly cheaper than an Intel counterpart at launch is the 8c/16t Zen.

 

[krumme]

I remember when Athlon came out and it wasn't much cheaper than the P3 and they traded blows on performance. I payed 313$ for a Athlon 700 back then, the most I've every payed for a chip actually. If the Zen is on par core vs core then they will be priced close to the same Intel part IMO, the ONLY place it will be significantly cheaper than an Intel counterpart at launch is the 8c/16t Zen.

K7 beat p3 by a significant amount in all fpu heavy workloads.
They were not comparable in performance imo like we will see for zen vs bwe. Avx2 workloads is nowhere in sight for nearly all users and is nothing compared to the difference for quite ordinary fpu loads you could give p3 and k7. It was quite clearly different classes. For heavy user and not gamers and ordinary office users K7 was a much faster cpu. It was reflected in the price even if slot A was a mess.

 

[dahorns]

If the 8c/16T top is 3.7-3.8 base, it will destroy the 6900K. It can even be priced to $999... $799 seems honest. Considering that at worst it will be 3.6/4.0... Up to +20% than 6900K (Handbrake: +8%, +12% clock) and probabily at least on par on other benchmarks...

I think you need to keep in mind that the 6900k overclocks happily to 4.3 to 4.5.

 

[bjt2]

I think you need to keep in mind that the 6900k overclocks happily to 4.3 to 4.5.

And Ryzen can't be overclocked? Has even lower TDP...

 

[zinfamous]

I think you need to keep in mind that the 6900k overclocks happily to 4.3 to 4.5.

Ryzen has already been reported at 5.0ghz "on air," though supposedly not stable. Don't you think that Ryzen, then, would just as happily overclock to at least 4.5ghz without much worry? these things are already showing 3.6/4.0. A happy OC to a minimum 4.3 should not be any kind of problem for Ryzen.

 

[dahorns]

Ryzen has already been reported at 5.0ghz "on air," though supposedly not stable. Don't you think that Ryzen, then, would just as happily overclock to at least 4.5ghz without much worry? these things are already showing 3.6/4.0. A happy OC to a minimum 4.3 should not be any kind of problem for Ryzen.

From the reports I read that was a one-core suicide run, not an 8-core overclock. My main point was that the top tier Ryzen and the 6900k are likely to be running at near identical clocks for anyone that would be using them.

On a related note, do we know if the Ryzen turbo is all core or some fraction?

 

[leoneazzurro]

From the reports I read that was a one-core suicide run, not an 8-core overclock. My main point was that the top tier Ryzen and the 6900k are likely to be running at near identical clocks for anyone that would be using them.

On a related note, do we know if the Ryzen turbo is all core or some fraction?

Report also said that they could not go higher because VRM's instability, not processor. Anyway, we'll se when the actual product comes out.

 

[Abwx]

Don't you think that Ryzen, then, would just as happily overclock to at least 4.5ghz without much worry? these things are already showing 3.6/4.0. A happy OC to a minimum 4.3 should not be any kind of problem for Ryzen.

We can be sure that they respected their usual 10% frequency margin minimum, so if the retail chip works up to 4GHz it should be capable of 4.4GHz.

 

[raghu78]

We can be sure that they respected their usual 10% frequency margin minimum, so if the retail chip works up to 4GHz it should be capable of 4.4GHz.

I think 4.4-4.5 Ghz on air for 24x7 is quite realistic. 6900k does not do any better than that. So it will be a very close contest. Hopefully AMD is sensible enough to price their SR CPUs from USD 200 - USD 500. If AMD can get a 3.4 Ghz base clock 8C/16T with the Wraith cooler at USD 400 and a 3.6 Ghz base clock 8C/16T with an AIO cooler at USD 500 they will do very well.

 

[bjt2]

From the reports I read that was a one-core suicide run, not an 8-core overclock. My main point was that the top tier Ryzen and the 6900k are likely to be running at near identical clocks for anyone that would be using them.

On a related note, do we know if the Ryzen turbo is all core or some fraction?

I am a professional and never overclock my systems, especially at work...

 

[Charmonium]

Possible Ryzen release date

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/242649-amds-ryzen-sort-gets-release-date

 

[inf64]

Possible Ryzen release date

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/242649-amds-ryzen-sort-gets-release-date

This has to be 5th repost of the same thing in last 1-2 days...

 

[Charmonium]

Sorry. It looked like new news and I did a search on Ryzen release date and didn't see anything.

 

[inf64]

I know, but this is AT forum. Even the tiniest rumor posted on twitter/reddit/random other forum is ending up in one of these threads(maybe in every single Ryzen thread) after like 5 minutes .