First Ryzen 7 iMac benchmarks?

[Zucker2k]

Of course it's a troll, and your disclaimer doesn't nullify it. As far as the average buyer goes, they go into a retail shop and buy what is on the shelf and skewed by what the sales person steers them to buy. And intel's retail edge program in turn skews the sales person.

I agree with what you're saying but were you around in '06 when Apple switched to Intel? Pure sacrilege. With a switch to AMD though, won't that be a downgrade? Or, is Apple expanding into the value segment?

 

[Gikaseixas]

I agree with what you're saying but were you around in '06 when Apple switched to Intel? Pure sacrilege. With a switch to AMD though, won't that be a downgrade? Or, is Apple expanding into the value segment?

how come it is a downgrade if we haven't sampled the unreleased APU? It could turn out to be a match for Intel's mobile lineup in terms of cpu grunt while having faster gpus. Guess the brand makes it a downgrade automatically right?

 

[PeterScott]

I agree with what you're saying but were you around in '06 when Apple switched to Intel? Pure sacrilege. With a switch to AMD though, won't that be a downgrade? Or, is Apple expanding into the value segment?

People who don't follow tech, won't know anything about what is an upgrade/downgrade or pay any attention to what CPU is in there.

People who do follow tech, will know that it isn't necessarily a downgrade. Like the GPU section of Raven Ridge vs Intel IGP, where RR will almost certainly be an upgrade.

I don't expect we will see Ryzen in a Mac soon, but after Raven Ridge proves itself and AMD can prove to Apple that it can meet the order volumes on time, I think AMD would have a very reasonable shot at winning some Mac business.

Apple would gain a second source to put more pricing pressure on Intel, and likely better APU performance, and more pressure for Intel to improve the IGP.

 

[Reinvented]

I agree with what you're saying but were you around in '06 when Apple switched to Intel? Pure sacrilege. With a switch to AMD though, won't that be a downgrade? Or, is Apple expanding into the value segment?

Pretty sure they need something to fill in the gaps after not doing so well in sales for the latest iPhone. The next best thing to do is offer something that is considered best bang for buck which is a small performance boost across their entire lineup.

 

[slashy16]

Apple uses Premium parts with the best possible performance. There is no way they would settle for AMD parts which are slower than Intel parts in every single metric with the exception of price at certain levels. I'm confident Intel is offering apple their CPU's well below retail. Apple sells their products at a premium and they will not lower their price points if they suddenly offer Ryzen in their lineup. As an apple fan and someone who buys a macbook pro every two years, I would drop Apple in a heartbeat if they offered Ryzen. Why would I want to go backwards in performance? I think it's more likely we see Apple offering a beefy A11x in their computer lineup. AMD is currently for budget-conscious people who don't care about ST performance at all. Maybe things will change next year.

 

[TahoeDust]

Pretty sure they need something to fill in the gaps after not doing so well in sales for the latest iPhone. The next best thing to do is offer something that is considered best bang for buck which is a small performance boost across their entire lineup.

Apple does not "need" to do anything. They are so far beyond dominate it is hard to really grasp. They have around $260B in CASH RESERVE. Their smallest business segment would be on the Fortune 500. They are literally kicking the teeth in of everyone. I think the only thing keeping them from being even more dominate is the fear of the government calling them a monopoly. I promise they have zero interest in offering anything considered best back for the buck...ever.

 

[krumme]

We can, using the same software as Gamernexus :

The 1700 takes 10% more time than the 1700X, so what happened to Blender at GNX, they selected a "better" file to render..?

I have to agree here.
During the years we see a lot of creative power assessment numbers from members of say this community
But this creativity pales in comparison to how the 1700 is handled by the press.
For most its like its poison so they simply benchmark it for performance but leave it off the efficiency assessments or they use some obscure test nobody knows what is.
Its not easy it seems...

 

[ZGR]

Switching to Ryzen in the iMac would be beneficial for thermals.

Apple currently does not engage fans until the CPU hits 100 celcius. Intel Turbo Boost is always on Mac OS unless disabled with a third party program. Because of this, an out-of-the-box Mac will be running at incredibly high temperatures and the user will not be aware of this one bit.

Mac OS supports manual fan control which completely solved this problem, but Ryzen is far less aggressive when it comes to Turbo (XFR).

I think Ryzen, especially with an APU for Macbooks, would be a far more consumer friendly choice when it comes to thermals.

Switching to AMD would be infinitely easier than switching from Power as well. Remember, Power was faster at the time, but Intel was more energy efficient. Energy efficiency is all that matters and AMD has that metric won as well as having really good thermals.

 

[slashy16]

Switching to Ryzen in the iMac would be beneficial for thermals.

Apple currently does not engage fans until the CPU hits 100 celcius. Intel Turbo Boost is always on Mac OS unless disabled with a third party program. Because of this, an out-of-the-box Mac will be running at incredibly high temperatures and the user will not be aware of this one bit.

Mac OS supports manual fan control which completely solved this problem, but Ryzen is far less aggressive when it comes to Turbo (XFR).

I think Ryzen, especially with an APU for Macbooks, would be a far more consumer friendly choice when it comes to thermals.

Switching to AMD would be infinitely easier than switching from Power as well. Remember, Power was faster at the time, but Intel was more energy efficient. Energy efficiency is all that matters and AMD has that metric won as well as having really good thermals.

1) AMD Does not have any Ryzen products available with built-in graphics.
2) Apple doesn't have thermal problems with Intel's current offerings
3) Apple has refreshed all of their products recently and generally only do so once every 1-3 years. AMD will not be offered in Apple products for at least two years assuming they are at all.
4) Switching to AMD Processors would be a massive downgrade on their current offerings.
5) MAC's are generally used for photoshop and right now Intel crushes AMD in photoshop

 

[slashy16]

Apple does not "need" to do anything. They are so far beyond dominate it is hard to really grasp. They have around $260B in CASH RESERVE. Their smallest business segment would be on the Fortune 500. They are literally kicking the teeth in of everyone. I think the only thing keeping them from being even more dominate is the fear of the government calling them a monopoly. I promise they have zero interest in offering anything considered best back for the buck...ever.

IKR ? It shows how little people understand apple. Apple could buy AMD with what it makes in just pure profit each quarter. Apple recently decided to stop upgrading their wireless routers and allow them to slowly die out. That small business they have decided to let die out generates more income than AMD makes on all of it's sales each year. Apple has enough Cash to buy Intel, Disney, Tesla in a single day and not think twice. Apple is huge and Intel worked a minor miracle convincing jobs to switch to x86. Having apple as their customer and a huge boon to Intel. Intel's built-in graphics are a direct result of their apple partnership. If people think the apple/intel partnership will change because of $50 savings per CPU or slightly lower TDP or whatever they are nuts. Apple is in a position to get access to Intel products before anyone else, they can dictate design needs or changes(integrated graphics) and get custom skus. They are most likely getting 50-70% discounts on all SKU and not having to pay for inventory until customers purchase it from apple.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Switching to Ryzen in the iMac would be beneficial for thermals.

Apple currently does not engage fans until the CPU hits 100 celcius. Intel Turbo Boost is always on Mac OS unless disabled with a third party program. Because of this, an out-of-the-box Mac will be running at incredibly high temperatures and the user will not be aware of this one bit.

Mac OS supports manual fan control which completely solved this problem, but Ryzen is far less aggressive when it comes to Turbo (XFR).

I think Ryzen, especially with an APU for Macbooks, would be a far more consumer friendly choice when it comes to thermals.

Switching to AMD would be infinitely easier than switching from Power as well. Remember, Power was faster at the time, but Intel was more energy efficient. Energy efficiency is all that matters and AMD has that metric won as well as having really good thermals.

Again, as others have pointed out in this thread, it is not that crystal clear that Ryzen has the energy efficiency metric won. Yes, the 1700 uses low power, but it also is clocked low. So the "efficiency", i.e. work performed per amount of energy consumed is not nearly as spectacular. And performance does matter. If "energy efficiency is all that matters" then why arent we using all atom in macbooks? Obviously, Apple, as any other manufacturer choses a *balance* between power and efficiency.

 

[exquisitechar]

Apple uses Premium parts with the best possible performance. There is no way they would settle for AMD parts which are slower than Intel parts in every single metric with the exception of price at certain levels. I'm confident Intel is offering apple their CPU's well below retail. Apple sells their products at a premium and they will not lower their price points if they suddenly offer Ryzen in their lineup. As an apple fan and someone who buys a macbook pro every two years, I would drop Apple in a heartbeat if they offered Ryzen. Why would I want to go backwards in performance? I think it's more likely we see Apple offering a beefy A11x in their computer lineup. AMD is currently for budget-conscious people who don't care about ST performance at all. Maybe things will change next year.

I agree that AMD probably won't get their hardware in Apple's products anytime soon, but this is complete nonsense. Do they not offer Radeon GPUs in their machines?

 

[ZGR]

1) AMD Does not have any Ryzen products available with built-in graphics.
2) Apple doesn't have thermal problems with Intel's current offerings
3) Apple has refreshed all of their products recently and generally only do so once every 1-3 years. AMD will not be offered in Apple products for at least two years assuming they are at all.
4) Switching to AMD Processors would be a massive downgrade on their current offerings.
5) MAC's are generally used for photoshop and right now Intel crushes AMD in photoshop

1) Apple loves their integrated graphics. But mobile Ryzen is literally months away.

2) Yes they do! Intel has a huge thermal problem in the Mac because of Apple's fan profile. This is not an Intel problem but an Apple problem. Switching to AMD will not instantly fix this, but help immensely as XFR is far, far less aggressive than Intel Turbo Boost.

3) What about the Mac Mini? 1000 days since refresh with Tim Cook saying it isn't dead!

4) Oh cmon, a massive downgrade? Pfft!

5) As a Mac user that is BS. We use Macs for everything. Macs are PCs. It isn't just for photoshop. And it isn't like Ryzen is slow at Photoshop. A 3.6 GHz Ryzen is faster than the majority of Macbooks out in the field already.

 

[LightningZ71]

The Mac Mini makes the most sense for a switch. The Mini was always about having the cheapest parts available. Heck, the last one was designed to be non-user serviceable. Setting up the "next" mini with a RR (or great horned owl SoC if the do a package for RR for that) with a pair of embedded DDR4 DRAM channels running at a tailored speed could give them quite the entry point package. I suggest that, for less than the cost of an i3, they could have WAY better graphics, and better performance for the processor (8 threads instead of 4). And, it would be selling at a price point that Intel wouldn't like to bother with in the first place.

 

[PhonakV30]

1) AMD Does not have any Ryzen products available with built-in graphics.
2) Apple doesn't have thermal problems with Intel's current offerings
3) Apple has refreshed all of their products recently and generally only do so once every 1-3 years. AMD will not be offered in Apple products for at least two years assuming they are at all.
4) Switching to AMD Processors would be a massive downgrade on their current offerings.
5) MAC's are generally used for photoshop and right now Intel crushes AMD in photoshop

Apple will use both AMD/Intel CPU, a massive downgrade ? are you kidding me? looks like you think apple should not use any AMD products even only one iMac ......

 

[Topweasel]

Again, as others have pointed out in this thread, it is not that crystal clear that Ryzen has the energy efficiency metric won. Yes, the 1700 uses low power, but it also is clocked low. So the "efficiency", i.e. work performed per amount of energy consumed is not nearly as spectacular. And performance does matter. If "energy efficiency is all that matters" then why arent we using all atom in macbooks? Obviously, Apple, as any other manufacturer choses a *balance* between power and efficiency.

Not that much lower but the efficiency is pretty apparent when looking at power usage per core (90w for 3.9GHz 8c, versus 90w 4.3GHz 4c). Sure Ryzen isn't as fast or quick as a i7, but it's per core efficiency shouldn't be questioned.

There are a bunch of fallacies.

1. That Ryzen is a step back. In the purest sense it is SL and KBL and even now Coffee lake are chips capable of clocking faster and overall the cores offer a higher IPC. But a lot off the "step back" is in the clock speed. If they even out Ryzen offers a lot more "resources" for the workload.
2. The reason they would equal out is that every single Apple product right now is severely thermally limited. This isn't about what Desktop fully unlocked and power sucking parts are better. They use much more power restrictive models and the two are probably closer in clock speeds per watt as the power gets more restrictive.
3. Tons of Apple products rely on iGPU. For those systems Apple has been sacrificing a lot on the CPU to maintain usable graphics and as many have contended have force Intel into at least evaluating using another manufacturer's GPU on an MCM module. That will probably not see the light of day if it even existed.
4. With AMD's APU all of a sudden you get high 2GHz low 3GHz 4c8t with as good if not better than iris level graphics. This would be a big win for several of their product lines.
5. Apple could buy AMD. They are probably valued at enough to make a strong push to purchase Intel but they aren't that much larger than Intel and Intel also is a ridiculously high margin company. Between the physical value of the company, the revenue, the profit, and the stock value of the company it would take Apple almost a Trillion dollars to purchase them. Losing Apple would be a big hit, but not crippling, and the biggest reason to play ball with Apple wouldn't even be in lost revenue but because AMD gaining Apple would give AMD a platform to financially solvent for a long time. If Intel is worried about AMD as they climb out of the pit they were in, what would an AMD swimming in money look like.
6. On the same end Apple makes shrewd moves to basically pull a Walmart in terms of pricing bringing their suppliers within a brink of selling at cost by the sheer volume they at and anything they can't do that to they basically absorb and build up a company to do it for them. They don't have nearly the same negotiating power with Intel as they would with AMD.
7. In the end any AMD even with a long running relationship with them on GPU's is probably a tactic to get better pricing from Intel. Intel is still the better part overall. With better history off competitive. They are already able to influence Intel's design decisions. This is something that even Dell and HP have struggled with in the past. There is little reason to make a switch if you don't have to. All Intel has to do is play ball and they keep the contract.